what once was, is no more

As I type this, I am waiting for tomorrow's series premiere of Fear the Walking Dead, the pre-quel to AMC's The Walking Dead (based, more or less, on Kirkman and Moore's Image comic series).

Post-apocalyptic fiction (at least post-civilization fiction) is much older than works like Richard Matheson's I am Legend. Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, from the 1700's, might fit loosely in this category, and most major empires that have fallen (Persia, Greece, Rome, etc.) have been survived by accounts of the declining years, where governments and social structures unravel and the monstrous "hordes" of invaders sweep over their lands, destroying their accomplishments like the zombies who will be sweeping over Los Angeles tomorrow night.

There is even an odd little bit of "what once was, is no more" about this lecture because when you read it, the Pilot episode of Fear the Walking Dead will be in the past.

Station Eleven

As civilization falls to another plague in Mandel's 2014 novel, the focus is an unusual one for a post-apocalyptic work. Yes, there is still plenty of the how-do-we-survive element, the human spirit pitted against those who have lost their humanity, the sort of thing that makes Cormac McCarthy's The Road and George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road exciting.

But here's the difference between the thrill ride of Mad Max and the so-called literary novel (and I will put The Road into theis "literary" bag as well): along with the suspense, plot reversals, shock, violence there are layers of ideas. Not surprisingly, longer works of fiction have more space to offer up more ideas than shorter works of fictions (short stories, lyric poems, one-act plays). For good or ill, this means we can approach Station Eleven from many different angles. Just as the traveling troupe in the novel experiences diverse cultures as the wend their way from one settlement to the next, the reader experiences a diversity of themes, ideas, issues along the way.

For the most part the themes are not new; they have been expressed in various forms of communication (art, music, literature, speech, even math) throughout human history, with the ideas and examples becoming more complex as human history progresses. But the fact that these are human themes is what makes them work; they resonate with readers because they are part of a shared set of experiences. No, I have never had to fight off a zombie (though I do know how; I have read The Zombie Survival Guide, twice); however, haven't most of us had to deal with the occasional thoughtless individual who ignores our interests and tries to chew us up (figuratively)? If zombies (and vampires) are not literal (and I am not saying they are not), they certainly make great symbols.

In addition to finishing the novel this week, you were asked to look at three (and a half?) short works--a story (actually the opening of an episodic novel), two poems, and an optional essay (or book if you chose to read the original source where that essay came from). So we have different genres from different time periods (from the late 16th century to the late 20th century) which all connect to ideas expressed in Station Eleven. Those connections allow for comparison/contrast, and they introduce just a few of the key ideas in the book.

These next sections are certainly not exhaustive.

They are not lengthy, deep interpretations of the short works. The goal is just hit a few high points, show how those points were reached, make some quick and fairly easy connections with the novel.

Yes, each of these could be expanded into a complete comparative literary analysis, and detailed, documented quotations from all works would support the claims that I am going to make quickly here.

My point is not to give you more paper examples; my point is to show that the book draws on a rich history of themes, and each of those themes can be traced throughout the novel not only to reinforce the older works but also to add to them in interesting new ways.

"Ozymandias" and "Not marble nor the gilded monuments"
by Percy Bysshe Shelly and William Shakespeare (respectively)

For no idea I can put my finger on, this poem was once read over images of a desert as the sign-off on a local television station. Most of you are far too young to even know what a sign-off is (stations used to shut down their transmitters during night and early-morning hours, and just before the shut down there was usually a patriotic-themed clip--fighter jets zooming across the sky with the star-spangled banner playing in the background--that sort of thing, before the set displayed a test pattern or went dark), but even through the 1970's they were common, and some parts of the world still shut down their transmitters after mid-night.

Anyway, one night someone (likely a frustrated English major) decided to play this reading of "Ozymandias" for the sign-off, and I took notice, not only because this was weird but because even to a young Me, with aspirations of being a scientist, this was pretty powerful stuff. This cold, sneering image of one of the most powerful kings in history brags, "'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' / Nothing beside remains" (ll 10-12). This arrogant king, who built an empire and all of its trappings (the architecture, statuary, burial vaults) that would stand as monuments to his greatness forever, puts himself above all other rulers ("ye Mighty"), but he is cheated of his eternal fame by nature. What's left, though, are "Two vast and trunkless legs" (l 2), and "Round the decay / of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away" (ll 12-14).

To my science mind this sang, "Time and erosion are the great equalizers." No matter how permanent, eternal the works of humans might seem, they are all subject to becoming "Dust in the wind" (Kansas).

The connection to the post-apocalyptic world of Station Eleven is obvious. All of the inventions, technologies, artistry of the world start to decay once the grid fails. Well, not quite all. Yes, the cities are falling to ruin. A single child's tea set seems miraculouslly intact, but, for the most part, the things of the world are dying out. However, Shakespeare survives, though his works.

In Shakespeare's Sonnet 55: "Not marble nor the gilded monuments" he anticipates this from all the way back in the late 1500's (possibly the early 1600's, dates and Shakespeare get iffy).

As Shelly will do a couple hundred years later, Shakespeare bemoans the fact that all of the monuments, the creations of even princes will turn to "unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time / When wasteful wars will statues overturn" (ll 4-5). Time/erosion, war, natural disasters all eventually tear down the things humans create. The poem suggests that the lover in the poem, however, will outlive death and will last until the world is worn out to "ending doom" (l 12). Why? Because "this powerful rhyme" (l 2), this poem, endures as it is communicated from generation to generation, from culture to culture. And it has endured.

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre burned to the ground. It was rebuilt but later pulled down by the Puritans (probably in an attempt to grab the land to build slums). It was re-re-built in modern times, but it is not the same theatre, not even quite in the same spot. Shakespeare's Sonnet 55, however, is still intact, over four hundred years after it was written, and it is certainly not the oldest extant work of literature (Antigone, for example, goes back 2600 years).

Unlike an artifact, communication lasts as long as someone is left to read or speak or perform or sketch or film the work and share it with another person.

At the center of the novel is a troupe that does just that--it travels from place to place sharing Shakespeare, classical music, even news with people. The book is filled with sources of information, from tabloids to comic books, the bible to a book of potentially-damning letters, even the reserruction of a home-grown paper that weaves its way through several chapters. Even the makeshift museum only makes sense because there is a curator/docent to give the items context. Without the story about what it was, and how it worked, a "thing" is just that, "a thing." Communication, sharing information, then, is one of the things that holds the remnants of this future civilization together.

Fighting a losing battle :(

This weeks' optional reading, "Interface," is one that I have used in my English 101 class for years. I still do, so some of you will have read it before.

Most of my students don't like it, saying it is too hard, too weird.

It is my favorite essay from that class (*sigh*)

"Interface"
from David Sudnow's Pilgrim in the Microworld

This idea that civilization's grow or recur or are built upon earlier civilizations is central to David Sudnow's 1983 work "Interface."

A Berkeley professor, Sudnow can't understand why perfectly-intellegent people would give up interesting conversation for interacton with dots on a television screen. These are the days of Atari 2600, and the latest craze is Missle Command. Eventually, as these stories go, he gets interested, buys a console, plays a little Missle Command, gets good at it, becomes hooked. None of that is the point of his essay.

He recognizes that this recreational fluff through this console is the first real interface between the masses and computers. Prior to that, computers were the stuff of eggheads and science fiction. Here, in a very primitive but practical way, programmers had created something that the average human (children even) could interact with.

And Sudnow dubs the PC (the Commodore 64 had come out the year before Sudnow's book, and the Vic 20 the year before that; people were beginning to buy PCs) "The organically perfect tool." Well, perfect for what?

One of my all-time favorite scientists, Bill Nye the Science Guy, centered an episode of his kids' show around the following statement: "Information can be stored outside the body." Huh? How? What does that even mean? Who cares?" His notion was the same as Sudnow's--progress (for good or ill), human history, civilization occur because humans can store information outside the body. If your teacher shouts, "I HAVE IT! I NOW KNOW THE MEANING OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING" and then promptly dies, you are frustrated. You were thaaat close. If that teacher had written it down, his death might be sad, but you would have access to the answer, the information. Writing things down is storing information outside of the body.

So is painting/sketching; so is musical composition; so is mathematics/equations; so is vidoe/audio recording. A paintbrush helps you to paint; a Stratocaster helps you play music; a typewriter helps you write a paper, a slide rule (?) helps you solve an equation, but the computer does it all, and it can store the information in multiple locations (to be found and acted upon), and it can be transmitted almost instantly to multiple listeners/viewers/readers. Comparing this to other sorts of human accomplishment (the Great Pyramid at Giza, for example), the monuments (once we remove the art, writing, math, etc.) are "Just labor" by comparison. They are amazing feats, but they do not affect how people live their lives, learn, grow, change.

One wonders if this is the key to the ending of the novel, of the town to the south. I am not going to spoil the ending, just in case a few of you are still finishing it up, but when you get there, think about it :)

interlude

the good gray guardians of art

An actual side story for the sidebar:

In 1979 I was a fledgling part-time English teacher, supplamenting my income working nights in the mainframe computer industry. I was doing OK, but I was certainly not rich. $200 in 1970's dollars was a lot to me.

At the same time I had a subscription to the New Yorker magazine.

The Kirin Beer corporation (Japan) was having special, limited-edition mugs made by the most prestegious companies around the world, and I fell in love with the Wedgewood Turquoise Florentine mug, but at $200, it was a lot to spend on a fancy. You only live once, maybe, so I bought it. Months passed before it arrived, and I was delighted with all of the Japanese postal stamps/markings (the world was not globalized back then, the East was still mysterious). The purple Wedgewood box sitting inside straw (they used to pack things in straw) was a tease, and the mug itself was absolutely gorgeous. (On a side note, the pattern is the one Princess Di chose for her bridal registry).

I drank a ceremonial bottle of Kirin in the mug (which my friends later said was stupid; I could have gotten lead poisoning...oh well), carefully cleaned the mug, then put it gingerly back in its box, in the straw, in the packing box, and into a safe safe cupboard, far away from me and any harm.

I have seen the mug exactly twice since then--both times when I rediscovered the box when I moved from apartment to apartment to house.

In the Skymiles Lounge, Concourse C, of the Severn City Airport in Station Eleven is the fabled Museum of Civilization. The various artifacts might be of questionable worth or interest back here in the early 21st century. An American Express Card is not likely to make it into the Tate Gallery; a broken cell phone is not of interest to the Smithstonian; scraps from an old tabloid would not make it into the British Museum Reading Room. Is this art? Is it the junk from Flea Market Flip and Garage Gold?

Clark, the curator of the Museum of Civilization has this to say on the matter:

Clark had always been fond of beautiful objects, and in his present state of mind, all objects were beautiful. He stood by the case and found himself moved by every object he saw there, by the human enterprise each object had required. Consider the snow globe. Consider the mind that invented those miniature storms, the factory worker who turned sheets of plastic into white flakes of snow, the hand that drew the plan for the miniature Severn City with its church steeple and city hall, the assembly-line worker who watched the globe glide past on a conveyer belt somewhere in China. Consider the white gloves on the hands of the woman who inserted the snow globes into boxes, to be packed into larger boxes, crates, shipping containers. Consider the card games played belowdecks in the evenings on the ship carrying the containers across the ocean, a hand stubbing out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, a haze of blue smoke in dim light, the cadences of a half dozen languages united by common profanities, the sailors' dreams of land and women, these men for whom the ocean was a gray-line horizon to be traversed in ships the size of overturned skyscrapers. Consider the signature on the shipping manifest when the ship reached port, a signature unlike any other on earth, the coffee cup in the hand of the driver delivering boxes to the distribution center, the secret hopes of the UPS man carrying boxes of snow globes from there to the Severn City Airport. Clark shook the globe and held it up to the light. When he looked through it, the planes were warped and caught in whirling snow. (Mandel 255)

artifact: [ahr-tuh-fakt] Noun. 1. any object made by human beings, especially with a view to subsequent use. (dictionary.com)

Hmmmm...

impartially protective, though / perhaps suspicious

Richard Wilbur's poem "Museum Piece" is tricky. Oh it seems simple enough. Yes, words have to be looked up, and a Google search of Toulouse is going to net you a city first, not the artist Toulouse Lautrec, so there is a bit of work involved. Still, the situation and the language are simple enough. Guards in an art museum are performing their night rounds (though one guard is sleeping); they look at and judge the painting, though they don't have a personal interest in the works, so they don't really care; they are "impartially protective" (l 3). You can bet if they actually owned one of the multi-million-dollar Edgar Degas paintings, they would take more interest in protecting it.

By the end of the poem there is a funny/shocking revelation that painter Edgar Degas (1834-1917) once bought a painting by master artist El Greco (1541-1614) and used it as a clothes rack. WHAT? To be fair, this is an apocryphal story, but what is Wilbur suggesting? Is the artist snubbing the earlier painter's work, showing extreme disrespect for what was considered "art" three hundred years earlier? It seems so. However, it doesn't really make sense.

Since I play guitar (quite badly...*sigh*), let me put this in a guitarist's context. Slash is still a pretty amazing guitarist. His fortes are hard rock and metal and blues rock. I was never a Guns'N'Roses fan (sorry!), but I recognize his mad skills.

And there's the thing. I don't especially like his work, but trying to play my Jazzmaster since the 1970's I certainly appreciate his genius with his Gibson Les Paul (maybe if I changed guitars...?). London-born Slash may or may not listen to classical guitar, such as the works of 19th-century Spanish guitarist Antonio Jurrado. He may find the delta blues too muddy (there is a joke there) for his own electrified power style. But you can bet he apppreciates their skills. Likely, he learned to play practicing their works. He built his rock blues on the backs of delta bluesmen like Robert Johnson and Mississippi John Hurt. THEY made HIM possible.

And here's where Wilbur's poem gets perplexing. Yes, the impressionist painters (Degas, Lautrec, Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, Seraut, Renoir, etc.) were wild and crazy guys. Their work was considered shocking when it first appeared. Their blending of science (optics) and painting was "not art" according to the "Good gray" (old/established) artists controlling the Paris galleries. It must have been like the painter of a traditonal portrait trying to make sense of L.A. street art. "What is this?"

The old may not "get" or appreciate the new, but the new is built on the foundations of the old. Degas would have been amazed by El Greco's talent. So why does Wilbur have him using an El Greco painting "To hang his pants on while he slept" (l 16).

Let me suggest some things to look at rather than just give you the answer (yes, that's maddening of me, but it's more fun to discover things):

dismaland?

The opening image comes from artist (?) Banksky's 2015 (happening as I type this) theme park--Dismaland. Located in an abandoned swimming resort in Weston-Super-Mare in England, this dark, grim parody of Disneyland is a, well, what is it? Here are a couple of images from Dismaland, and top-down view of the park and an interesting sign:

dismaland2    dismaland3

The park features a terrifying carrousel, an frustratingly-impossible-to-finish mini-golf course, some impossible carnival games (like the "topple the anvil with a ping pong ball" booth), images of Disney-like princesses spilled dead out of their crashed pumpkin carriages, a travel trailer ride that simulates out-of-control flipping, and lots more.

There are art works from over fifty international artists (including Banksky), and the whole "thing" was curated by Christopher Jobson and others.

With sellout crowds every day, it was open to the public for just five weeks. The museum? park? art installation? is certainly a satire of our "Happiest Place on Earth." Here is the official Dismaland website; (it stayed up a little longer than five weeks; now it is a political statement by the artist).