William Burroughs early book Junky is generally separated from his later experimental fiction. Stylistically it accords much more to realism than the postmodern aleatory method he later innovated. However, Burroughs’ preoccupation with resisting all forms of subjectification, his disenchantment with bourgeois life and his simultaneous literal and tropic use of addiction as a form of flight from powers of normalization and conformity are strongly present in this early work. This paper explores Junky on three fronts. First, it shows the novel as an elaboration of a posthumanist existentialism by emphasizing the materiality of the body through Burroughs’ explanation of the physiological mechanisms of addiction. Through this existentialist posthumanism, the novel critically responds to Sartrianexistentialism, which was so fashionable at the time of Burroughs’ writing, and repudiates the Jeffersonian idealization of the transcendental subject and its middle class figurations. The emphasis on the material body simultaneously challenges post-structuralist renderings ofBurroughsian readings. This leads to a conception of strategies of flight from all forms of conformity by utilizing Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the Body without Organs and immanent Life. Junk is a vehicle of flight and self-affirmation, a means of highly individualized, libertarian modes of subjective deterritorialization. Addiction and habitual use are not mere uncontrolled thirsts, but forms of actualizing a wholly detached social and independent individual. But the danger of junk lies in its reterritorializing of the body through new assemblages of need and dependence, leading the protagonist to ultimately seek a different mode of escape. Junk illuminates our posthuman existential condition and leads Burroughs to seek new experimental forms of aesthetic expression.
{"title":"The Flight of the Junky: Existential Posthumanism and Immanent Life in Early Burroughs","authors":"Tod Hoffman","doi":"10.16995/orbit.8454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.8454","url":null,"abstract":"William Burroughs early book Junky is generally separated from his later experimental fiction. Stylistically it accords much more to realism than the postmodern aleatory method he later innovated. However, Burroughs’ preoccupation with resisting all forms of subjectification, his disenchantment with bourgeois life and his simultaneous literal and tropic use of addiction as a form of flight from powers of normalization and conformity are strongly present in this early work. This paper explores Junky on three fronts. First, it shows the novel as an elaboration of a posthumanist existentialism by emphasizing the materiality of the body through Burroughs’ explanation of the physiological mechanisms of addiction. Through this existentialist posthumanism, the novel critically responds to Sartrianexistentialism, which was so fashionable at the time of Burroughs’ writing, and repudiates the Jeffersonian idealization of the transcendental subject and its middle class figurations. The emphasis on the material body simultaneously challenges post-structuralist renderings ofBurroughsian readings. This leads to a conception of strategies of flight from all forms of conformity by utilizing Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the Body without Organs and immanent Life. Junk is a vehicle of flight and self-affirmation, a means of highly individualized, libertarian modes of subjective deterritorialization. Addiction and habitual use are not mere uncontrolled thirsts, but forms of actualizing a wholly detached social and independent individual. But the danger of junk lies in its reterritorializing of the body through new assemblages of need and dependence, leading the protagonist to ultimately seek a different mode of escape. Junk illuminates our posthuman existential condition and leads Burroughs to seek new experimental forms of aesthetic expression.","PeriodicalId":37450,"journal":{"name":"Orbit (Cambridge)","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48272186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Among the many, intertwining motifs spanning the volumes of Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Familiar, the repeated reference to forget-me-nots is not one that leaps off the page to the reader. Its presence in Xanther’s seizure in Volume 4: Hades speaks to larger notions of memory of tragedies such as the Armenian Genocide, or even the chronomosaic timelines present in Danielewski’s earlier novel, Only Revolutions. This paper, while exploring notions notions of memory through Adriana Cavarero’s theory of the narratable self, will argue that their root is in Elsa Morante’s 1974 novel La Storia, which centers on a Jewish mother and her son, both epileptic, in Rome during World War II. Yet, while both works utilize their characters’ epilepsy as a way to better acknowledge the suffering and tragedies occurring around them, Morante’s articulation of the crushing wheel of history differs from the more hopeful presentation Danielewski provides. Through her epilepsy, Xanther instead emerges as a character who highlights the importance of giving voice to others, especially those unable to speak for themselves.
在马克·z·丹尼尔列夫斯基(Mark Z. Danielewski)的《熟悉》(the Familiar)中，有许多交织在一起的主题，其中反复提到的“勿忘我”(forget-me-not)并没有让读者从书页上跳出来。它出现在第四卷《哈迪斯》中赞瑟尔被抓的情节中，说明了对亚美尼亚种族灭绝等悲剧的记忆，甚至是丹尼尔列夫斯基早期小说《只有革命》中出现的时间轴。本文通过阿德里亚娜·卡瓦雷罗的可叙述自我理论来探讨记忆的概念，并认为记忆的概念源于埃尔莎·莫兰特1974年的小说《故事》，小说以二战期间罗马的一位犹太母亲和她的儿子为中心，他们都患有癫痫。然而，尽管两部作品都将主人公的癫痫症作为一种更好地承认发生在他们周围的痛苦和悲剧的方式，但莫兰特对历史车轮的表达不同于丹尼尔列夫斯基提供的更有希望的呈现。通过她的癫痫病，克兰瑟反而成为了一个强调为他人发声的重要性的角色，尤其是那些无法为自己说话的人。
{"title":"Forget-me-not: Giving Voice to Memory in Mark Z. Danielewski's \"The Familiar\" and Elsa Morante's \"La Storia\"","authors":"Corey Flack","doi":"10.16995/orbit.8322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.8322","url":null,"abstract":"Among the many, intertwining motifs spanning the volumes of Mark Z. Danielewski’s The Familiar, the repeated reference to forget-me-nots is not one that leaps off the page to the reader. Its presence in Xanther’s seizure in Volume 4: Hades speaks to larger notions of memory of tragedies such as the Armenian Genocide, or even the chronomosaic timelines present in Danielewski’s earlier novel, Only Revolutions. This paper, while exploring notions notions of memory through Adriana Cavarero’s theory of the narratable self, will argue that their root is in Elsa Morante’s 1974 novel La Storia, which centers on a Jewish mother and her son, both epileptic, in Rome during World War II. Yet, while both works utilize their characters’ epilepsy as a way to better acknowledge the suffering and tragedies occurring around them, Morante’s articulation of the crushing wheel of history differs from the more hopeful presentation Danielewski provides. Through her epilepsy, Xanther instead emerges as a character who highlights the importance of giving voice to others, especially those unable to speak for themselves.","PeriodicalId":37450,"journal":{"name":"Orbit (Cambridge)","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47651012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay is the introduction to the special issue of Orbit: A Journal of American Literature on Mark Z. Danielewski's The Familiar. As a starting point for readers, it places the the five novels in the context of a longer literary history of multimodal writing. I argue that this alternative history undermines the realist monomodal paradigm that still persists in literature and literary criticism and challenges their normativity that has, for example, mainly excluded multimodal forms such as children's literature or comics. At the same time, I identify a corresponding narrative bias in considerations to multimodal literature, as I connect The Familiar to poetic models of meaning-making. I also argue that the imagination is a central concern of Danielewski's pentalogy, connecting plot elements such as VEM to readerly engagement and empathy. Finally, the introduction includes summaries of all the contributions to this special issue as well as a link to a bibliography of Danielewski criticism.
{"title":"Introduction: Becoming Familiar with The Familiar, or, The Imaginary Novel and the Imagination","authors":"S. Pöhlmann","doi":"10.16995/orbit.8645","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.8645","url":null,"abstract":"This essay is the introduction to the special issue of Orbit: A Journal of American Literature on Mark Z. Danielewski's The Familiar. As a starting point for readers, it places the the five novels in the context of a longer literary history of multimodal writing. I argue that this alternative history undermines the realist monomodal paradigm that still persists in literature and literary criticism and challenges their normativity that has, for example, mainly excluded multimodal forms such as children's literature or comics. At the same time, I identify a corresponding narrative bias in considerations to multimodal literature, as I connect The Familiar to poetic models of meaning-making. I also argue that the imagination is a central concern of Danielewski's pentalogy, connecting plot elements such as VEM to readerly engagement and empathy. Finally, the introduction includes summaries of all the contributions to this special issue as well as a link to a bibliography of Danielewski criticism.","PeriodicalId":37450,"journal":{"name":"Orbit (Cambridge)","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48628803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper analyzes Danielewski's poetics of numbers and digits in the first season of The Familiar. I argue that Danielewski's recent work signals a balance shift from the topological to the arithmetical. In this regard, numbers fulfill a crucial role (1) in the serial makeup of the volumes, which could be labelled as his exorithmetic; (2) in the plot of the novel itself, his endorithmetic; and (3) as a recursive device that conjoins the materiality of the novel with the numbers in the plot, his mesorithmetic. While Danielewski's exorithmetic provokes hypotheses about the voluminousness of the project, the staggering numbers in the world of The Familiar are related to Xanther's epilepsy, Dov's teachings, and Anwar's trauma.
{"title":"Into the Catsum. Mark Z. Danielewski's Arithmopoetics","authors":"B. Sezer","doi":"10.16995/orbit.8226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.8226","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyzes Danielewski's poetics of numbers and digits in the first season of The Familiar. I argue that Danielewski's recent work signals a balance shift from the topological to the arithmetical. In this regard, numbers fulfill a crucial role (1) in the serial makeup of the volumes, which could be labelled as his exorithmetic; (2) in the plot of the novel itself, his endorithmetic; and (3) as a recursive device that conjoins the materiality of the novel with the numbers in the plot, his mesorithmetic. While Danielewski's exorithmetic provokes hypotheses about the voluminousness of the project, the staggering numbers in the world of The Familiar are related to Xanther's epilepsy, Dov's teachings, and Anwar's trauma.","PeriodicalId":37450,"journal":{"name":"Orbit (Cambridge)","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46920684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This transcript recounts █████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ none of which has been altered or redacted
{"title":"‘Questionable + Intelligence’: Inter + Legere","authors":"Mark Z. Danielewski","doi":"10.16995/orbit.8563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.8563","url":null,"abstract":"This transcript recounts █████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ none of which has been altered or redacted","PeriodicalId":37450,"journal":{"name":"Orbit (Cambridge)","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48356407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The commercial longevity and actual continuity of Mark Z. Danielewski’s series The Familiar was, by default, subject to the audience’s enthusiasm about it. But the latter hinges on a number of factors, which include not only the appeal of the plot and the author’s cult status, but also, importantly, the material conditions of the reading experience and the broader patterns of the economics of contemporary publishing industry. The argument of this essay considers the characteristics and effects of The Familiar’s somewhat inglorious digital incarnation, to infer that the absence of a ‘proper’ (i.e. medium-specific) and functional (i.e. responsive to highlighting, annotations, word selection and search, translation, and other functions afforded by digital devices) e-book edition significantly factored into the causes of the “pause” in the series’ progression, announced by the writer on February 2nd, 2018.
马克·z·丹尼莱夫斯基(Mark Z. Danielewski)的电视剧《熟悉》(The Familiar)的商业寿命和实际连续性，默认情况下取决于观众对它的热情。但后者取决于许多因素，其中不仅包括情节的吸引力和作者的崇拜地位，而且更重要的是，阅读体验的物质条件和当代出版业经济的更广泛模式。本文的论点考虑了《熟悉》不太体面的数字版本的特点和影响，推断缺乏“适当的”(即特定于媒体的)和功能(即对高亮、注释、单词选择和搜索、翻译以及数字设备提供的其他功能的响应)的电子书版本是导致该系列进展“暂停”的重要因素，作者于2018年2月2日宣布。
{"title":"“The worst of both worlds\": The Familiar e-books and their unhandy limitations.","authors":"Ian Ezerin","doi":"10.16995/orbit.8335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.8335","url":null,"abstract":"The commercial longevity and actual continuity of Mark Z. Danielewski’s series The Familiar was, by default, subject to the audience’s enthusiasm about it. But the latter hinges on a number of factors, which include not only the appeal of the plot and the author’s cult status, but also, importantly, the material conditions of the reading experience and the broader patterns of the economics of contemporary publishing industry. The argument of this essay considers the characteristics and effects of The Familiar’s somewhat inglorious digital incarnation, to infer that the absence of a ‘proper’ (i.e. medium-specific) and functional (i.e. responsive to highlighting, annotations, word selection and search, translation, and other functions afforded by digital devices) e-book edition significantly factored into the causes of the “pause” in the series’ progression, announced by the writer on February 2nd, 2018.","PeriodicalId":37450,"journal":{"name":"Orbit (Cambridge)","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45250463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Albert Rolls, Thomas Pynchon: The Demon in the Text (Edward Everett Root Publishers, 2019). 156 pp.","authors":"D. Benea","doi":"10.16995/orbit.4810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.16995/orbit.4810","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37450,"journal":{"name":"Orbit (Cambridge)","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48934012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Focus on Grendel's Mother leads us to expect a feminist attack on male heroic narrative, but Maria Dahvana Headley offers us a complex and nuanced look at parent-child, upper-lower class, and male-female patterns of interaction in this novel symbiotic upon the Anglo-Saxon BEOWULF. Since the attacks sometimes seem contradictory, I use diffused satire theory to separate the various kinds of satire, show where contradictions and ambiguities occur, and show how they can be resolved. Headley makes the point that you need to hear from all the voices in an event, not just from the last one who writes the history. What she does is give us those various voices and goad us to work out our personal positions on the issues for which she offers no easy satiric answer.
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