Special Topics Roundtable - Part Two: In Which We Extend the Discussion By Way of Post-It Notes

DJ Cayenne from Baby Got Books weighs in for Round Two: (See also Round One)

I'm excited to be a part of the Special Topics Round Table, and many thanks to Callie for having me over to play.  Please jump into the comments and add to the discussion.

I agree with much of what Callie had to say in Round One about Special Topics in Calamity Physics. I agree that parts of the book drag on and that the book was probably too long in general.  Some have argued that Pessl tried to cram too much into this book, and I'll give them that. Here and there pieces of the book feel a little forced – like she didn't want to leave anything on the table. Her biggest fault may be that she hasn't yet learned restraint. Judicious editing may have made for a better book. Yet, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel. I think that all of us (many of us? Some of us?) can agree that clearly Pessl has talent to burn. 

I didn't get that "hey look at me, aren't I clever" vibe from the book that seems to have turned many people off. I liked Blue, and I found her to be a believable character. Maybe I accepted her voice as "real" after years of conditioning at the hands of The Gilmore Girls. I thought the ending was earned and didn't feel like I had been unfairly duped. As soon as I finished, I immediately flipped back to the beginning to look for clues that I had obviously missed. My enjoyment of the book came from the excitement that I get from reading a book that is willing to try new things. That may be my own lit illness.

I couldn't wait to get my hands on the Special Topics after reading Janet Maslin's review in the New York Times. She called the book the "most flashily erudite novel since Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated." - a book that was easily more polarizing than Special Topics. I'm figuring out that my new favorite sub-genre may be Flashily Erudite. I enjoyed Foer's follow-up, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, (including the flip book at the end) which seemed to anger just about everyone. I've just written a glowing review of Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts that features a flip book and other nifty diversions. I'm a fan of both of Mark Z. Danielewski's books, although his books are flashy in a different way. It seems that I am often alone defending these types of books from a chorus of boos. Hmmm, maybe there's a lesson to be learned here.

A reviewer in the LA Times used the phrase "post-internet" in a review of Raw Shark. That's a great framework for explaining what appeals to me in these books. We're becoming used to having pictures accompany our text. We're able to jump back and forth between hyperlinks, between web sites, and between video/pictures/text/spreadsheets/games on the same page. Why do we become upset when a novelist slips pictures into a novel, uses a flip book to advance the story, or arranges text in a way that we're not used to seeing in a book? Used correctly, and I guess that's the operative word, something as simple as a hastily drawn picture on a Post-It note can be genius.

Me brushing up on my Special Topics

My appreciation of (sick affinity to?) novelists who want to experiment with new ways of telling stories gives author's plenty of latitude in my judgment of their work. I especially like it when a young author is not afraid to swing for the fences. They seem to be willing to take the biggest chances, because they have far less to lose that established authors. I think that authors like Pessl, Foer, Hall, etc. are expanding the way that we tell stories and what we think of as literature. I'm all for it. If they fall a little short here or there, I still applaud the effort, and I thank them for trying. I thought that Special Topics was an audacious (if flawed) debut, and I expect great things from Pessl down the road.

Before I go, I wanted to throw out something from the book for discussion. The narration of the book was one of the things that interested me.  In the beginning of the book, Blue quotes her father:

Always have everything you say exquisitely annotated, and where possible, provide staggering Visual Aids, because, trust me, there will always be some clown sitting in the back - somewhere by the radiator - who will raise his fat, flipperlike hand and complain, "No, no, you've got it all wrong."

Blue seems to be self-aware enough to realize that she may be considered an unreliable narrator, and she attempt to disabuse of us of that notion from the beginning. Blue uses this quote as a license to annotate away. Her story, which is intensely personal to her, must not be interrupted by the fat, flipperlike hand in the back of the room. Blue's citations, however, were often clearly made up. What do you make of someone who quotes fake references to convince us that they are telling us the truth?

Along those same lines, some of the questions on the final exam are things that Blue either did not/could not know, or she did not tell us about them. Some time has gone by when the exam is written, but has Blue been less than forthcoming about all that she knows? I have a few theories, but I'm interested in hearing what others have to say. Can we even discuss it without giving away huge chunks of the book?

I'd also like to note that we are having a contest to give away two signed copies of the book (in paperback) over at my place. If you haven't read the book yet and you'd like to make up your own mind – for free – be sure to enter. We'll announce a winner on Monday.

Comments

[Herman Glimscher]

Concerning literary techniques, these are the same discussions that arose 80 years ago about Modernism. In fact, these techniques remind me of Modernist techniques, just drawing from a different general culture.

[DJ Cayenne]

Herman! Fancy meeting you here. That was a little before my time, I'm afraid. One of these days I need to learn the formal definitions of the contemporary movements. One of the things that I kept seeing in discussions of the Raw Shark Texts specifically were references to its Post-Modernism. I've never had a good handle on what that means, because the term seems to be thrown around pretty loosely to describe anything vaguely hipster-ish or ironic. I was not an English major in college, so a lot of these terms seem to run together. What would be the difference in Modernism and Post-Modernism, other than one followed the other?

[Herman Glimscher]

According to Wikipedia, the two are by some thought of as one, although postmodernism is something of a reaction to modernism.

I'm not an English major either, but I've never let my ignorance get in the way of having an opinion. In literature, the two most prominent modernists were James Joyce and T.S. Eliot. (Note that The Waste Land had footnotes, something which had never been done before.) They rejected traditional ways of making art, which resulted in such things as atonal composition and abstract impressionism.

Eventually, you get Mark Rothko painting squares and rectangles and John Cage having people holler into grand pianos.

I think the term "postmodern" has come to have a generally understood meaning of being any work of art that is self-consciously aware of its own artiness. I would turn to better sources than a ragged-out autodidact, though.

[DJ Cayenne]

Herm: Wow. It's like having our own private chat room over here. I guess the Friday before a holiday is not the best time to expect a lot of feedback. Oh, well. Thanks for your explanation of postmodernism. I'd say that the people who reacted very negatively to this book in particular would say that it is too aware of its own artiness. The word "showoff-y" keeps turning up.

I went to WikiPedia to look up "postmodern literature and found this:

"Postmodernist (synonymous with postmodern) literature is not necessarily the same as the literature of postmodernity: the movement ("postmodernism") focuses on eclecticism (the choosing of the "best" of previous movements), based on the postwar value system, while any literature of the period postmodernity might be mislabelled "postmodern", although it has none of the aspects other than the time of publication: thus, the field of aspects nihilism, spiritual voidness and search for identity, and especially "intertextuality, pastiche, and parody", may be postmodern, while noir fiction and new fantasy are not; the postwar value system also is dominated by the failure of the complete Western value system in the 1940s."

I guess you need to be in a PhD program to follow that description.

[Herman Glimscher]

DJ: I know. I started skimming some of the entries there and found myself drowning in jargon. and I read Paul Fussell's War and Modern Memory for fun.

[Herman Glimscher]

I'm sorry. Paul Fussell's book is called "The Great War and Modern Memory."

[Becky]

Your comment on Blue's citations was something I never even considered. I assumed the references were fake because Pessl came up with them on the fly as she needed them, not that Blue was deliberately using false sources.

[DJ Cayenne]

Becky: It's just something that occurred to me. Pessl is reading in town on Tuesday. I'll ask her. I like to think that there was more to it than showmanship.

[Kerry]

I was troubled by the fake citations. If they'd been real, I might have though Pessl was showing off (as she has so often been accused of doing), but then I wasn't so sure these citations weren't real to Blue. Perhaps they were a ironic statement against the blatant bookishness/precociousness Blue displays (which is often present in contemporary fiction [particularly that with a postmodern bent, I believe (but don't quote me on that- an English degree is necessarily proof of a certain grasp on this stuff)]). But if the citations had been real, they would have been so much more interesting to me. As they stood, I wondered if they weren't a waste of time? I would be interested in your theories otherwise!

[Kerry]

*isn't* necessarily proof, I mean. sorry. on the verge of bed you see...

[callie]

In Pessl's interview during the LA Times Festival of Books, she said she started out with the hope of having real quotes for everything, but then couldn't find quotes that said what she wanted them to say, so she started making them up. I don't think it goes much deeper than that, sadly.

Yet, it is an interesting angle - that Blue knew the quotes weren't real...or that they were real to her. I don't think either was intended by Pessl, however.

[amcorrea]

Not a good sign if a book's readers read more carefully than the author...

[DJ Cayenne]

Hmmm. That's interesting regarding her intentions with the quotes. Still, I get the impression that Blue is hiding something from us. Given the betrayal that occurs (I don't want to give anything aware here, so I'll speak as carefully as I can) - it seems that Blue is more forgiving of the betrayer than most of us would be. Is she complicit with the betrayer? I don't know the answer, but I think it is an interesting question.

[Herman Edwards]

I have a small problem with people pointing to the work of Foer and Danielewski and the like as being groundbreaking and refreshing. All the techniques have been done before tenfold. Look to the Dadaists and the poet Tristan Tzara. Tzara, who influenced William S. Burroughs with his cut-up techniques. Look to William Gass and Gaddis and Barthelme. I could go on. Praise the writers for their prose and maybe their ability to incorporate techniques seamlessly but if you're simply praising them for doing something new and creative, check the library and see that it's all been done before. I only have a problem when the techniques are a crutch, simply gimmicks. "No tricks." - Raymond Carver. P.S. I actually like Foer quite a bit.

[Jefe]

I believe the references are all REAL to BLUE in that fictional world and are not made up by her. I also don't believe she knows more than she is letting us know, until the final exam wherein maybe she has had time to reflect on new possibilities after going over it all again and having some time away from it. -- Jefe, Moderator of Books and Bars book club in MPLS.
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