Upon looking back on the online digital editions, I was surprised to see that so few were as well constructed as the Blake archive that me and my partner presented on.  Of course, Blake's work, with his blending of art and literature with his Illuminate Press, presents perhaps the ideal candidate for such scholarly work, it seems odd that so few authors receive similar attention, particularly in the case of Dickinson, who's publishers so decisively changed her poems from how they originally appeared by her own hand.  Still, the lack of such editions might bring us back to previous conversations where talked about the legitimacy of online publications, and how the status of what's online still seems to fall short of the esteem most feel for books. This is changing, and, given the Blake archive, should change, particularly in his case, considering how unique each of his printed books were.

As for other turns, it seems I've now discerned the key passages in AKM in which I'll apply my "reflexive masochist" lens.  It seems the moment when Burden discovers Anne has been sleeping with Talos and his eventual "Drowning by West" will be incredibly useful considering the many homodiegetic Is the author Burden conjures in recounting his relationship to Anne.

Some Recommended Books

Though I might provide some of my Annotation Highlights for the class:

Gender Trouble

This essential text in gender theory scrutinizes the “naturalness” of gender under various philosophical, anthropological, psychoanalytical, and political frameworks.  Butler reveals that gender cannot be separated from identity and that persons only become intelligible to themselves and others by becoming gendered.  Though throughout much of the novel Burden fails to live up to the standards of Southern masculinity in which he’s immersed, we can understand—through Butler’s work—the reflexive masochism latent Jack Burden’s narration in that he must continually present himself in some masculine fashion in order to effectively conjure a past self to make his agency intelligible to the reader (and, subsequently, to himself).   

Living to Tell...

Phelan’s work singlehandedly pioneered the notion of an implied author whose agency steers and generates any given text.  The implied author isn’t the real author, but a subset of the real author who imbues their text with their values and aesthetic standards.  This notion of an author outside the text requiring a constructed agent in the textual field to perform the text, can be applied to Burden the author—though in a decidedly artificial and microcosmic manner—as he looks back and conjures (and separates) the various versions of himself in the book.  Also, Living to Tell has a wonderfully useful glossary of narrative theory terminology.

Southern Masculinity since Reconstruction:

In contemporizing male tropes in terms of the time period of AKM (1930s), Southern Masculinity: Perspectives on Manhood in the South since Reconstruction shows how notions of “Muscular Christianity,” evolutionary theory, and Nietzsche’s overman, pushed the “new” Southern masculinity into a category of behavior defined more by will, sexuality, and physical force.  This fits Talos perfectly in both his philandering and his drive to give Louisiana a more modern/dynamic economy.  Similarly, since manhood in the South has been typically classified as governed by the passions rather than intellect (a quality Burden readily applies to himself), Burden can’t be a leader and must subjugate his intellectual agency to another, more muscular, patriarch.

Last Class, Some New Reworkings

It was nice getting to meet some of the new faculty last week.  I particularly enjoyed meeting Matt Hooley, whose academic interested mirror many of my own: Modernism, Ecocriticism, the relationship between art and literature.  Besides supplying me with a nice reading list to beef up on ecocriticism, he also gave me some advice on how I might be able to blend Modernism with Ecocriticism by examining works of art from the Modernist period. For those interested in ecocriticism, you might want to look up Lawrence Buell and Tim Morton. 

As for other updates, it seems I needed to reframe the narrative theory component of my research project accordingly: 

Where Willie is a vacuum of volition, Burden suffers an identity crisis that precludes him from entering Anne Stanton’s life as legitimate suitor because he has no presiding worldview where he can be seen as master of himself or subsequently—in terms of Southern culture—a viable husband and patriarch to Anne Stanton.  All this only highlights the performative aspect of Burden’s own narration and how the noir cynicism and self-loathing latent to his homodiegetic voice and characterizations are a manifestation of his youthful inability to become a true gentleman like Adam, Anne Stanton’s brother, who exhibits morality, confidence, and strength.  More of an thinker than a doer, the homodiegetic Burden has been thrown into a perpetual state of affected impassivity whereby his cynicism and self-loathing can still be seen as inherently masculine, though largely ineffectual in a paternalistic sense, if we employ the lens of what Kaja Silverman calls “Reflexive Masochism” to certain segments of Burden’s recreated/homodiegetic narration.

Southern Manhood and AKM, old an new

Friend in his text, Southern Manhood, attributes an “honor-mastery” paradigm to masculinity in the antebellum South whereby the son honors his father by carrying on his cause and livelihood as he endeavors to create and reign over his own household. Oddly, though, Friend describes this “mastery” as being internally realized and achieved through personal conduct, not by public acknowledgement. Accordingly, the homodiegetic Burden—a self-professed student of history, unsure of his father’s identity—fails to live up to these standards allows himself to become mastered by another (Talos). Though this symbolic order is restored by the end of the novel as Burden moves into Judge Irwin (his biological father’s house), marries Anne Stanton, and begins telling his story, the homodiegetic Burden inveterately struggles with how he’s supposed to live his life. More than anything, Southern Manhood; Perspectives on Masculinity in the Old South makes a clear distinction between honor, which was acted out for public consumption, while mastery was achieved internally. This contradiction elaborates the notion of masculinity as gender performance in that Burden’s narration betrays his former self’s lack of masculine self-mastery and assurance.

In contemporizing male tropes in terms of the time period of AKM (1930s), Southern Masculinity: Perspectives on Manhood in the South since Reconstruction shows how notions of “Muscular Christianity,” evolutionary theory, and Nietzsche’s overman, pushed the “new” southern masculinity into a category of behavior defined more by will, sexuality, and physical force. This fits Talos perfectly in both his philandering and to his drive to give Louisiana a more modern/dynamic economy with his road projects and hospitals. Outwardly, Talos is seen as a savior by promoting industrial/economic growth and dismantling the good-old-boy networks (though he ironically establishes his own) that mired the old south. Similarly, since manhood in the south has been typically classified as governed by the passions rather than intellect (Burden typifies himself as a man of ideas), Burden can’t be a leader and must subjugate his intellectual agency to another patriarch.

The Battle of Editions

All though I still think the change of Stark's name to Talos to Polk's "Restored Edition" of AKM highly questionable (given Talos's literary pedigree, I wonder if a footnote would've sufficed given how out of place and literary the name sounds), I've decided to go with this "restored" version of AKM particularly because Polk argues that the original incarnation of Jack Burden was even more "smart alecky" than his published form.  Polk also argues that Warren's editors often scaled back some of his more sordid depictions for the sake of decorum and these omissions have proved to be quite sardonic.  Scenes involving both Burden and Anne Stanton have more bite to them in terms of descriptive flair and do a lot of work highlighting his reflective masochistic state.  Similarly, Polk's restored edition takes into account the point of telling (Burden, we learn by the end of the book, is married to Anne) and thus keeps passages which complicate the relationship between of the Hetrodiegetic and Homodiegetic Is.  Beyond these considerations, most of the scholarship of AKM has been grounded in the previous edition, thus making further use of Polk's edition all the more enticing.      

Notes on my Enumerative Bib.

 Typically, I've found my research taking me four essential  directions: First, studies of AKM and of Warren’s work in general; Second, studies in Masculinity, Gender, and Feminism; Third, Southern Studies and Southern Masculinity; Fourth, Noir and Narrative Theory.  All lot of the Warren and AKM sources are dated (typically in the 60’s and 70’s, with nothing more recent than 2007), but incredibly beneficial in grounding and contrasting my analysis from established approaches.  In terms of Masculinity, I found it beneficial to lump Southern Studies and Southern Masculinity together in that the frame of “Southerness” often adheres to representations in literature, as the broader topics of Masculinity, Gender, and Feminism, seem more rooted in National Identity, Anthropology, Politics, and Gender Studies.  The other three categories of this enumerative bibliography are typically more contemporary than that of the first in that most of the scholarship listed here comes from the 90’s to as recent as 2010.  Since the topics are combined for my project, it seemed only natural to combine Noir studies and Narrative Theory into one category since it will be the combined application of certain Noir tropes and their inherent Narrative approaches in which I will attempt to entrench Jack Burden’s first person narration in an inherently Reflective Masochistic state.  

Applying Lenses

Evaluating preconditions of the Heterodiegetic “I”.  By saying that Jack Burden speaks from a “fallen” perspective, it’s imperative to construct what that previous state may have been.  Very little in All the King’s Men gives us any access to what Burden was like before meeting Willie Stark, but there are some moments, like when he recalls Anne Stanton and her brother swimming in their youth.  In this particular reminiscence, Jack plunges into the moment when he simultaneously realized his love for Anne, yet also his inability to be her man, because he’s not morally assure of himself as Adam.  Oddly, the look intended for Anne, the one full of want, doesn’t stay on her, but then shunts to Adam who recognizes the intent and grows embarrassed by it.  What ensues is a quick comparison between Jack and Adam where Jack realizes he—though as intelligent and capable—lacks the ethical certainty that Adam has.  Accordingly, Jack cannot be Anne’s “man” because he doesn’t have authority over himself.  Moments like this, compared to, say, the time Jack disabuses Willie during his first campaign of his chances at winning and he feels his “heart suddenly go soft and fluid in my chest like a melting snowball you squash in your hand,” (AKM 127) offer many great counterpoints in terms of homo-sociability and language, especially given the nostalgic exactitude—and grace—Jack lends to his memory.  Similarly, Jack, though he feels terrible for being the one to crush Willie (this is the Wille before his Talos like transformation) and his rag to riches aspirations of wealth and power, can only permit himself any tenderness by appropriating it in masculine way.  Notice how he melts, softens, but only by the end of the analogy do we see a fist closing around the snowball.  If this isn’t reflexive masochism made narrative, I don’t know what is.

Notes on the Enumerative Bib

As I move forward into collecting sources for my Enumerative Bibliography, it's been interesting to consider what types of terms I should classify these various texts by without being too broad or too narrow (whereby only a couple sources fall under a particular heading).  Sure, on the surface, these headings seem like a small thing, but I'm beginning to understand that they actually have an import on the formation of my projects.  Just saying "Southern Masculinity" or "Noir Narratives" begin to organize more than the sources, but also shape our thinking and galvanize contexts for my critical applications.  Similarly, it will be useful to hone key organizing concepts in which I might pull sources as you write and apply various frameworks/lenses to the reading(s) I've in mind for my primary source.  Also, it's nice that WorldCat has immediate citations in all formats.