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Barthelme's Time Machine
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Hilmar Örn Óskarsson Bókmenntir og myndlist Time Machine A Look at Barthelme’s “Sentence” A brief glance at Barthelme’s “Sentence” might lead one to the conclusion that the story is simple and pure non-sense; completely devoid of all meaning and value in every respect. With such a glance one might even go so far as to call it gibberish – a total waste of the writer’s time and resources and then most definetely a waste of mine. However, a deeper and closer examination would without a doubt lead one to an entirely diffirent, more rewarding conclusion – there are in fact (at least) two highly important “factors of sense” to be found in Barthelme’s “Sentence.” One concerns the deceptive nature of literature as such and the other, to put it as simply as possible, tackles a question of time. I will discuss both of these here – however, for reasons soon to be known, my main emphasis is going to be on that second factor regarding time. There is a strong deconstructive element in the “Sentence” and it’s deconstruction is primarily aimed, in a broad sense via literature, at language. Barthelme’s story has an important twist though in that it’s deconstructing does not take place solely on an aesthetic level or a theoretical one. In a sense it launches its attacks from both of these standpoints. If we were to break this argument up into smaller units we could say that on the aesthetic level attacker number one is the story itself. “Sentence” is essentially a work of art and as such dismantles itself to reveal what “makes it tick” so to speak and one might then define those shorter stories within the story as subsequent (smaller) attackers from the same army, for example the story about the married couple or the description of Robert Houdin’s Fantastic Orange Tree. This latter example becomes in fact a rather well accomplished flirt with the deception in Barthelme’s “Sentence” - being so completely shameless in it’s lying. On the other hand we have the theoretical side of the “Sentence” – it’s strong awareness of reader-response criticism and it’s somewhat scientific or at least methodical approach to dissecting itself. thus, considering everything carefully, in the sweet light of the ceremonial axes, in the run-mad skimble-skamble of information sickness, we must make a decision as to wether we should proceed, or go back, in the latter case enjoying the pathos of eradication, in the former case reading an erotic advertisment Here we have a perfect example of the forementioned reader-response criticism awareness.
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