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Book Note: Poetic Justice and Legal Fictions, by Jonathan Kertzer

In Arts & Letters, Book Reviews, Humanities, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, Law-and-Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, Literature, Writing on September 28, 2012 at 8:45 am

Allen Mendenhall

The following excerpt first appeared as part of the Routledge Annotated Bibliography of English Studies series.

This book is a compilation of literary essays that at first blush seem to have no through line save for an attention to law in the abstract.  Nevertheless, each chapter is connected by the theme of justice and the relation of language to both law and literature.

Á la Flaubert, the book treats justice as the supreme literary value, and it distinguishes between the justice of literature and the literariness of justice.  Language has its own jurisdiction and can be used judiciously, and the author seems to believe that signifiers can represent the phenomenal world in ways that have a practical bearing in law.  By the same token, language itself is regulated by laws even as it enacts laws.  The author discusses literary justice as a poetic expression of the material world.

The phrase “poetic justice” refers to the possibility that poetry might offer something better than truth in order to bring about justice; the truly poetic is just.  Genre and jurisdiction resemble one another in their conceptual claims to authority or law.

Beginning with judicial discourse in comedies, more specifically with the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, the book moves through Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Disgrace, Huckleberry Finn, The African Queen, Billy Budd, the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Anil’s Ghost, and other works.  The book therefore does not limit itself to discussion of a particular historical period, a fixed geography, or a specific genre.  Rather, it weaves together a wide range of novelists, theorists, and historical figures, many of whom are unlikely to be categorized together were it not for their interests (some longstanding, some fleeting) in law.

What allows the book to read as a unified whole is its analysis at the intersections of justice, law, and literary forms.

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Book Note: Machinic Modernism, by Beatrice Monaco

In Arts & Letters, Book Reviews, Fiction, Humanities, Literary Theory & Criticism, Literature, Modernism, Philosophy, Pragmatism, Rhetoric, Rhetoric & Communication, Western Philosophy, Writing on September 20, 2012 at 8:45 am

Allen Mendenhall

The following excerpt first appeared as part of the Routledge Annotated Bibliography of English Studies series.

Machinic Modernism: The Deleuzian Literary Machines of Woolf, Lawrence and Joyce

This book investigates several modernist novels in light of the theories of Gilles Deleuze and, to a slightly lesser degree, Felix Guattari.  The author is interested in how the “machine-like” work and style of Deleuze and Guattari facilitate pragmatic readings of texts.  These pragmatic readings suggest that textual activity in several modernist novels reflects broader cultural activities, that the metaphysical movement of text corresponds to various social movements, and that text reproduces historical circumstances in signs and syntax.

The book seeks to depart from conventional forms of scholarship and to resist Deleuze-Guattarian paradigms that overemphasize pragmatism and empiricism at the expense of radical innovation.  In a way this book is a Deleuze-Guattarian treatment of Deleuze and Guattarian with a focus on key modernist novels such as Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow, and James Joyce’s Ulysses.  Just as Deleuze and Guattari reframe seminal issues of philosophy in terms of pragmatism, so these modernist novels negotiate cultural and discursive phenomena with a bearing on then-current philosophy.

This book seeks to build a critical “machine” with which to interpret the machine in texts as well as to negotiate the so-called machine age; it also interrogates the organic-mechanic duality already interrogated by Deleuze.  In so doing, it considers differences in literature in light of Deleuzian pragmatics to show that the philosophical moves taking place in Deleuze reflect similar moves taking place in modernist literature generally.  The book argues that To the Lighthouse and The Rainbow implicate metaphysical structures in interesting ways but also in ways that are not entirely satisfactory without an understanding of Ulysses.  In Ulysses the theories and mechanic imperatives of Deleuzian modernism find their fullest expression.

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Three Poems by Amy Susan Wilson

In Arts & Letters, Creative Writing, Humanities, Poetry, Writing on September 13, 2012 at 8:45 am

Amy Susan Wilson lives in Shawnee, Oklahoma and has recently published in Southern Women’s Review, Dead Mule, Red River Review, Cyber Soleil Journal, Red Dirt Review, Crosstimbers, Southern Literary Review,and in other similar journals. Amy is at work on a novel, The Fine Life of Mrs. Delbert L. Smith, which explores the first female attorney in Oklahoma to practice oil and gas law.  Non-fiction writing interests include Senior, over age fifty-five beauty pageants, and the pay day loan industry as it intersects with spirituality. Amy lives in Shawnee, Oklahoma with her family and three rescue dogs: Matthew, Pedro, and Snowball. She holds an MFA from Columbia University.

The following poem first appeared in Volume 11, Crosstimbers (Spring-Summer, 2011).

Doing the Hula

 

Don Ho, Hawaiian Breeze,

whisks her from this living room of green shag,

sensible sofa covers

to sandy white beaches with

girls swiveling hips, jiggling away

Just like Laki-Laki at Don Ho’s side.

 

Pall Mall clutched tight as a rosary,

sweet tea pressed into the other.

With each gulp and crank of vinyl

Eunice becomes Lead Hula Gal

her gray permed poodle hair

glossy-black; waist length.

All the men want her.

Don Ho blows a kiss

into her ear

as she hulas into the coffee table

laughs into the lamp

cry-giggles to the floor.

I will not forget the time

she brought out her ukulele

and Colt 45

held it to her left temple

then crown.

Grandma Eunice,

if you were to drive

by 3901 Windsor Way,

peek into the window at yourself

you’d see a woman

downing Diet Coke & rum

that only you call ice tea.

You’d see a woman

stumble through the fluorescent night,

your Maui Island faraway

as you dance into the dust

of volcanic ash.

 

 

The following poem first appeared in Volume 3, Red Dirt Review (Spring 2012).

Waiting in Line at the Pott. County Wal-Mart

 

 

If you live in the rural South and you are female and own a vehicle, or your cousin owns a vehicle, you can’t help but shop or just browse Wal-Mart at least once a week. In fact, Wal-Mart is not unlike attending the First Baptist Church; it is there and you must, you must participate in that weekly or more visit because it is how you were raised, and the urge to be a part of this world is coded into your Southern female DNA . If you are from the East or West coast you likely won’t understand, but anyone from here, the rural South, this South, well, ya’ll know what I mean.

                                                                        -Amy Susan Wilson

                                                                                                                                               

 

This dude runs some Morning Star corn dogs

down the conveyer,

there goes four Silk Soy Strawberry yogurts

but this guy, he’s no fruit

No Sir

tan biceps –Big–

but not too big

cute jogger’s butt

framed in Levis

he stands about 6’3–

oh, here goes some organic blueberries

wow, I am like marrying you

if you’d ever get off your phone

so I could say,

Blueberries, isn’t it nice they’re in season?

 

That’s what I’d say cuz I can’t think

of anything better;

How pathetic.

Wait, he’s going ninety an hour

on his cell:

So fight the cocks anyway

Just  fight’em ‘n place five, C.J.

 

What? He’s yacking about birds?

fighter birds?

How can you buy soy ‘n fight birds?

You know they attach razor blades to their ankles;

even Kris Steele, a Republican,

voted against cock-fighting.

 

Mmm, second thought,

Mister those Levi’s

just hang out on your bony ass

‘n your nose pug-like,

a girl nose

No a Michael Jackson nose.

Lord, now I have to get a divorce

cuz I married you

when Lynelle here rang up

teriyaki tofu, some three olive hummus–

I honeymooned with you at a green resort

in Tucson

as you sacked

with cloth reusable, recycled  bags

you brought from home.

 

Lord, I can’t help

but linger at Coin Star

as you drain the change

from your hemp wallet—

I thought you were tan from jogging

with a big black rescue dog

 

the kind no one wants to adopt

but no, I find out you’re tan from

raising rooster bulls to cock fight.

 

Gosh dang, cock fighting.

murdering the Lord’s creatures.

Are you the one

to attach the razors?

Or does your buddy C.J.

do your dirty work?

 

How do I find men like you?

 

Now you’re climbing into a hybrid Escape,

a bumper sticker:

 “Support the N.R.A.”

Oh shit!

I need an annulment

and fast.

 

You catch my eye and grin.

Listen, this three minute marriage

it’s over

I’m glad to be single again

and whew,

start my new life over

totally without you.

 

 

Slut Butt Miller: A Barber’s Daughter

Whale-O-Suds Tunnel Wash,

Jimmy Maloney unfastens

midnight-blue push-up

one hand.

White wife beater

daisy duke shorts

litter John Deere

floor mats

along with

Jack Daniels

Pall Mall pack.

That gush

of green soap,

creamy mint frosting

you’d see on top

a cupcake.

Turtle Wax

complimentary,

3:00 in the a.m.

Tonight

Blaine Sawder

football keg

Haunted Hill.

Pink thong

unwraps

Jolly Rancher easy,

watermelon kind.

After

the after party

Slut Butt

squeals donuts alone

Shawnee Bowl.

Neon pin

oil derrick tall

winks egg-white.

All the boys

gone home

texting from bed

their real

sweethearts.

 

Keystone glued

to cup holder,

Slut Butt

circles her Father’s

‘95 beige Impala

round and round

that empty lot,

swears to FM

and humidity

her Daddy visits

like in a movie

but a dream,

Recall your tire swing

            Salt Fork River?

                        I cut from old tread

            roped to oak—

                        You was my

            Little Angel,

                        Baby-Girl.

 

Her Mama

irons shirts

seventy-five cents

a pop,

Benny Lee

            Yacking to you 4:00 a.m.—

            And I won $500 million

            Oklahoma Lottery.

Asphalt and sky

pitch-black

as the inside

of a beer can,

the backseat

of some boy’s truck

waiting.

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This Fall at the New American Shakespeare Tavern in Atlanta

In Arts & Letters, Atlanta, Humanities, Literature, News and Current Events, News Release, Shakespeare on September 10, 2012 at 8:45 am

Allen Mendenhall

When my wife and I can get a babysitter, we love going to the New American Shakespeare Tavern on Peachtree Street in Atlanta.  The Tavern, as it is affectionately called by regulars, is offering the following performances this fall:

All’s Well that Ends Well

Measure for Measure

Macbeth

Titus Andronicus

All who live in and around Atlanta, and who appreciate Shakespeare, ought to visit the Tavern for a guaranteed night of fun and good acting.  Click here to support the Tavern.

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Hunting: A Poem

In Arts & Letters, Creative Writing, Humanities, Poetry, Writing on September 5, 2012 at 8:45 am

Allen Mendenhall

The following poem first appeared here in Arator.

Hunting

The deer, leaned over, frightens

at the sound of the crack,

the broken stick beneath his  hoofs

or the hunter’s feet.

Wagging his tongue in the  moonlight,

shaking his fist at the sky,

the hunter loses choice and  chance.

A moment later

it would have been gunfire:

the sound

either unreal or untrue

that cannot be heard

except by the living.

A crisp cool tug of air,

like the long drag of a  cigarette,

wisps across the earth,

slaps him  in his face,

reminds him

of the coming cancer.

He looks through the sights, down  the barrel,

and fires at the nothing that’s there

to kill the something that is,

the sum of his existence,

and ours:

hope and truth.

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American Literary History and Pragmatism

In America, American History, Arts & Letters, Emerson, Fiction, History, Humanities, Literary Theory & Criticism, Literature, Nineteenth-Century America, Walt Whitman, Writing on August 29, 2012 at 8:45 am

Allen Mendenhall

American literary history, even before C.S. Peirce named “pragmatism” as a philosophy, validates much of what pragmatism has to offer.  Joan Richardson speaks of “frontier instances” whereby certain writers become aesthetic outposts from which we can trace continuities of thought and artistic representation.  She treats literature as a life form that must adapt to its environment; similarly, Richard Poirier looks to a tradition of linguistic skepticism in American literature to show the role that artistic influence and troping have had on American culture.  Long before Richardson and Poirier, George Santayana exercised his own literary flair in his celebratory, summative essays about American culture and experience.  If American literary history can undergo operations of tracing and mapping, it might be because—as Richardson, Poirier, and Santayana have suggested—the unfolding and development of an American literary canon have been processes of evolution.  Literary texts and movements have shown a tendency toward growth that is responsive to the natural and changing circumstances of the time.

Richardson begins A Natural History of Pragmatism with 17th century Puritan ministers and then quickly moves to Jonathan Edwards.  Edwards is representative of the Calvinist notion of limited disclosure, the idea, in other words, that God reveals his divinity to us through the shapes, forms, and outlines he provides to us in the phenomenal world.  From this idea (and others like it) began the uniquely American insistence on the value of nature and the physical universe to thought and the spiritual or psychological realm.  As Americans sought to make themselves culturally and intellectually independent from Europe, both in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they used the New World landscapes and vastly unexplored (by Europeans at least) terrains as objects of their fascination and as sources of inspiration.  Even figures like Jefferson insisted upon the scientific study of the natural world in order to authorize theories about law and politics, which he wished to distinguish from European ways.  Jefferson, like William Bartram, another naturalist, lionized Natives as being more in tune with nature and hence more “lawful” in the sense that their communal governments were in keeping with the laws of nature.  However problematic we may consider these romanticized depictions today, we should at least say of them that they inspired further attention to sustained observation of nature as a critical component of what was intended to be a new way of thinking divorced from the Old World of Europe.

Santayana says that when orthodoxy recedes, speculation flourishes, and accordingly it is no surprise that as Puritanism solidified into an orthodoxy of the kind against which it once defined itself, there was a resistance among artists and writers and thinkers.  Emerson, for one, adapted the thinking of the Calvinists while maintaining their commitment to the natural world as a means for realizing higher truths.  Instead of God revealing himself to man through the forms of the natural world, God, according to Emerson, was realized within the person with a poetical sense, who was inspired by the natural world to discover the divinity within himself.  To become one and to see all—that is, to become a “transparent eyeball”—was something of a religious experience for Emerson.  Read the rest of this entry »

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“The Glass Eye,” A Poem by Amy Susan Wilson

In Arts & Letters, Creative Writing, Creativity, Poetry, Writing on August 22, 2012 at 8:45 am

Amy Susan Wilson is a writer living in Shawnee, Oklahoma. She holds an M.F.A. from Columbia University and her work has appeared in the Southern Literary Review, Southern Women’s Review, Red River Review, and other journals.

The Glass Eye

Acting like you come

to pet my dog Bullet

No Sir Little Missy

you come to lookit

the quarter-sized hole

in my head

where my glass eye lives.

 

‘Jack in the Box Joe’

I call him.

Pops just like Jack

out of his tin box,

or dentures

From my mouth.

Hold out your hand

I’ll drop him to your palm

go on

he won’t bite.

 

Girl, slow your jabbering down.

Did Jack in the Box Joe

ever fall out my head

when he wasn’t supposed to?

 

Three springs back

Tornado Juanita

drove trucks, trailers

Big Lots!

ten counties over;

that wind a noodler’s arm

yanking Joe out my socket,

Joe a catfish

bunkered deep the nest

of my skull.

 

Campground Twelve,

Lake Shawnee,

Jack in the Box Joe plunked

Right smack that

memory foam posture pedic queen

lodged the top

an old oak.

 

Last June

International Youth Rodeo Finals,

lost my eyeball

Expo building.

 

Youth barrel racing

starting up–

old Joe roll behind a saddle stall,

a miracle that loudspeaker,

            Rodeo fans

            we got us one navy purse

            an eyeball turned in

            Anyone missing an eye

            Or lady’s purse

            Go left of Roy’s Funnel Cakes

            Right of Connie’s Chicken Gizzard Wagon;

            Again, anyone lost an eyeball

            Assert to Rodeo lost and found.

 

Jack in the Box Joe

plopped back in

that empty space

in my head

Joe all grateful,

sputters a little

            Thanks Man,

Joe going hippie

on me

sometimes.

 

Do I have to clean him

since he’s made of glass?

Windex, a paper towel

spit-shines Joe

clear as a prize blue marble

or show Corvette.

 

How did I get the nickname

“Eyeball-Satellite?”

Joe and me

we spot rain

good as a NASA satellite.

Rain, sleet twenty counties away,

the glass eye twitches.

 

If Jack in the Box Joe

knew stocks like he knows rain

I’d be rich  

as Wal-Mart clan,

Bentonville area.

 

Did you know Alice Walton

got herself a DUI

Christmas 2012?

Forth Worth ranch,

I-35.

Miss Alice

coulda splatted

like a water bug,

liquor a respecter

of no one.

 

Watch Little Miss Amy Susan;

My eye’s gonna twitch.

Rain our way come this hour.

Best to scoot on home

eat your Mama’s

corndog, okra supper.

 

Oh foo and poo

fiddle stickers to boot,

you think I could make this up?

Joe and me

got to feed Bullet his Purina

I mix with a little Swanson’s

scoot home girl–

beat the rain,

don’t forget

to count your blessings

for all you have.   

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“Bottle Tree,” A Poem by Amy Susan Wilson

In Arts & Letters, Creative Writing, Humanities, Poetry, Writing on August 15, 2012 at 8:45 am

Amy Susan Wilson is a writer living in Shawnee, Oklahoma. She holds an M.F.A. from Columbia University and her work has appeared in the Southern Literary Review, Southern Women’s Review, Red River Review, and other journals.

Bottle Tree

My Nanna’s backyard elm

outfitted with blue, red

green glass bottles

tied with chicken wire the width

of a hen’s beak

to each branch.

 

            Scarin’ crows away,

Gram’s explained.

Wind chimes hung like gaudy ear bobs

from lobes of lower branches:

a lady bug with silver spoons,

that copper kettle adorned with

aqua beads, a faded red tin cup,

the kind hobos carry

while riding the rail.

 

Each sunset

those Blue Nun bottles

soft purple

like a mood ring

or Goddess moon from Jupiter.

          Mama back at Griffin,

I’d sigh,

run my palm

down the spine

of charcoal bark.

 

I never told Nanna,

kids at school

just Ruby-Lucille

me winning

a big red Escalade

Firelake Casino

someday I would—

 

Mama and me

we’d chomp green M&Ms

all the way to California,

big blue ice chest

the kind with wheels

loaded with biscuits

Pepsi, Paydays

strawberry ice cream bars galore.

 

Grams calls Griffin

          A  nerve hospital

           A mini-vacation from life.

 

Church ladies whisk

meatloaf

salisbury steak

Sunday afternoons,

          Grams too old to handle a child

          This stage of life

          All by herself.

 

Always,

Mrs. Harlan Dodge Simpson

presses a green bean casserole,

Old Testament

coloring book

to my palms—

 

lambs, cows

slaughtered on an altar,

carnation red crayon

for blood

twelve pack Crayola.

           

Ruby Lucille always waits,

backyard,

those bottles

clink like diamond bracelets

TV stars load their arms with.

          “Well Lady Bug,

          A fine plan

          You and your Mama,

          Heading to L.A.

          Someday,”     

Ruby Lucille whispers

in her bottle tree language,

Ruby Lucille

never laughing

never  letting on.

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Kenneth Burke’s Constitution: In Brief

In Arts & Letters, Communication, Humanities, Information Design, Literary Theory & Criticism, Philosophy, Rhetoric, Rhetoric & Communication, Semiotics, Western Philosophy on August 8, 2012 at 8:45 am

Allen Mendenhall

Kenneth Burke treats the constitution—or, in some cases, constitutions—as a dialectic, symbolic act that is representative of the tendencies and preferences of communities.  Burke applies the elements of the pentad—act, agency, agent, scene, and purpose—to form what he calls paradigmatic anecdotes for understanding how constitutions apply to and interact with communities.  The pentad, for Burke, is equipment for simplifying complex ideas into understandable categories or anecdotes.  It provides, in that sense, what he calls an “idiom of reduction” for understanding human motives.

Humans are sign-using creatures motivated by different “grammars,” and it is a grammatical move to interpret human action in terms of the pentad.   A constitution is not simply a tangible document—indeed, as Burke points out, there is no written constitution in Britain—but instead represents a symbol of the coordination of individuals that provides them with a calculus for determining not only how to act, but also how to know what motivates action.

Constitutions put forth general types, or principles, that can be considered ideals, and these types, principles, or ideals provide standards or criteria by which individuals in a community aspire to act.  A constitution is therefore more of a symbol of that which coordinates human behavior within a given community than it is a top-down imposition of legislative fiat.  A constitution, in short, is a communicative sign validated and made useful by its ability to induce cooperation among people.

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Rugged Individualism in Slave Narratives

In American History, Arts & Letters, Emerson, Humanities, Liberalism, Libertarianism, Literary Theory & Criticism, Literature, Nineteenth-Century America, Slavery on August 1, 2012 at 8:45 am

Allen Mendenhall

The transcendental idealism of Emerson and Thoreau found its most illuminating expression and drew its most ardent followers before the Civil War would temper the spirits of many Americans.  Emerson and Thoreau both advocated for removing oneself from the constraints of society and for realizing an inner drive and power for epistemological, spiritual, and political purposes.  This individualism had more credence in New England than it did in the Southern states, and it is therefore not surprising that 19th century slave narratives would seek to appropriate that discourse of individualism in order to explain and condemn the realities of slavery.  Slavery could be cast as a symptom of the collective mindset, an evil that clearly could be seen as such if only individuals would separate themselves from conformity with the social unit and prevailing ideology.

Frederick Douglass, in both Narrative of the Life and his later work My Bondage and My Freedom, reveals that his childhood in slavery was relatively relaxed compared to that of other slaves, yet as he moved from master to master and was denied education—that is, as he grew into a man—the regulation of his body became harsher and more violent.  Douglass, who, as a lecturer, impressed upon his listeners a sense of rugged masculinity, uses his narratives to show how an individual can stand up to an entire institution.  In both narratives he vividly depicts his battle with Mr. Covey, a vicious overseer who was determined to train Douglass into docile submission by means of overwhelming violence.  It is an inner will as much as brute strength that brings about Douglass’s triumph over Covey, and it is Douglass’s determination to read and to learn that allows him to circumvent white law to achieve the literacy that made both of these works possible.

As an anti-slavery advocate in the North, having attained his freedom, Douglass expressed his individualism in a variety of ways, not least of which in his insistence to remain independent of William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists with whom Douglass had, as it were, a falling out.  Douglass also articulated a desire for blacks to embrace the ideal of personal responsibility and to look to their own personhood as a means for pulling themselves out of their unfortunate condition.  His enabling rhetoric was intended to be inspirational and to imitate the rhetoric and values of New England whites, without whose support neither he nor other slaves could mobilize political action.  Other authors of slave narratives such as William Wells Brown (who, it should be mentioned, had a falling out with Douglass) employ similar tactics and strategies regarding the appeal to individualism.  Brown also promoted himself as a masculine figure who realized his autonomy and drew strength from his own will to deliver himself from bondage.

Harriet Jacobs’s narrative couches individualism in more ambiguous terms.  She gives herself the name Linda Brent in the narrative, which is addressed explicitly to the “women of the North.”  Her narrative is replete with apostrophes to these women readers and, therefore, with signals and coded references meant to gain sympathy and provoke anger at the institution of slavery.  When Linda’s master attempts to take her in as his sex slave, she goes so far as to have an affair with a white man, Mr. Sands, as a form of resistance.  Knowing the decorum of her audience and the precariousness of her status as a freed slave, Linda repeatedly acknowledges the sinfulness of her act but stresses, too, that she cannot be held to the same standards as white women, who enjoy the freedom to make moral choices.  In a system of slavery, Linda suggests, there are no moral choices because one is reduced to selecting between one bad act or another.  Like Douglass, Linda finds freedom in the North, and, like Douglass, she spends time in England, where, she indicates, freedom flourishes, at least in relation to the United States.  Jacobs’s narrative can be taken as an urgent statement on the agency of slaves in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and the image of the strong woman that she cultivates (not just in herself but in the person of her grandmother) resonates as a powerful trope that others would pick up on. Read the rest of this entry »