This is the forty-seventh post in a series that I call, “Recovered Writing.” I am going through my personal archive of undergraduate and graduate school writing, recovering those essays I consider interesting but that I am unlikely to revise for traditional publication, and posting those essays as-is on my blog in the hope of engaging others with these ideas that played a formative role in my development as a scholar and teacher. Because this and the other essays in the Recovered Writing series are posted as-is and edited only for web-readability, I hope that readers will accept them for what they are–undergraduate and graduate school essays conveying varying degrees of argumentation, rigor, idea development, and research. Furthermore, I dislike the idea of these essays languishing in a digital tomb, so I offer them here to excite your curiosity and encourage your conversation.
If I had to pick one seminar at Kent State University as being the most important to my shifting my thinking and rigor into running gear, it would have to be Professor Tammy Clewell’s Methods in the Study of Literature class. Methods is the introductory class that all PhD students have to take. Each year, a different faculty member teaches this class, and I am glad that the planets aligned for me to take this class from Professor Clewell. My joy for taking this class derives from Professor Clewell’s laser-beam accurate and calmly delivered criticisms. She expected rigor in our work, but she delivered her appraisals and commentary kindly. There was no malace in her demeanor—only the daily expectation of meticulousness, demonstration of preparedness, and application of theory. Her candor about higher education and the challenges of scholarship were eye-opening and appreciated. I was very happy to take another class from Professor Clewell the following year and even more so when she agreed to lead my postmodern theory exam and join my dissertation committee. For all of her efforts teaching, advising, and advocating, I am eternally grateful.
This is the first of five Recovered Writing posts from Professor Clewell’s Methods seminar. Each post is one project from the seminar. They should be considered parts of a semester-long process of entering professional discourse. These are attempts at learning, arguing, and improving. The culmination of this work is the fifth project/post in this subseries—a publishable-length essay, “The Image of Women in Philip K. Dick’s Ubik.”
In the first project, each student defined his or her specialization and created a reading list. Since this was at the beginning of my tenure at Kent State as a PhD student, my concentrations and reading list changed over time. However, it was incredibly useful to set a draft of this important framework down in writing at this point of my academic career.
Jason W. Ellis
Professor Tammy Clewell
Methods in the Study of Literature
25 Sept. 2008
Project #1: Literary Area and Reading List
I am declaring twentieth-century American literature as the focus of my doctoral study at Kent State University. American literature produced during the past century is mapped onto a variety of movements and genres that serve as guides rather than absolute categories, because many authors inhabit more than one category and they are organic structures connected in many ways by multiple networks of history, technology, and culture. Significant movements include Modernism (Pound and Williams), the Harlem Renaissance (Wright and Hurston), the Lost Generation (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, and Dos Passos), the Futurians (Asimov, Pohl, Kornbluth, and Merril), the Beat Generation (Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs), New Journalism (Capote, Wolfe, and Thompson), New Wave Science Fiction (Dick, Ellison, and Delany), and Postmodernism (Pynchon, Reed, Vonnegut, and Gibson).
Within this network of literature, I make the best connection with Postmodernism and post-World War II Science Fiction including New Wave. New Wave began as a British SF movement with Michael Moorcock taking over the editorship position at New Worlds magazine in 1964. Noteworthy British New Wavers include Moorcock, Brian Aldiss, and J.G. Ballard. What’s important about New Wave is that it is the point at which SF matures. It is characterized by literary experimentation, incorporation of the soft sciences (e.g., psychology), breaking accepted social norms, and focusing on characters. In America, the movement’s touchstone is Harlan Ellison’s 1964 edited collection, Dangerous Visions. It included works by Philip K. Dick and Samuel R. Delany among many other SF authors from both sides of the pond. Other major American New Wave authors include Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, and Roger Zelazny. My interest in Postmodernism comes from the fact that it co-evolves with New Wave and the two movements share many similar themes and concerns such as post-capitalism and challenges to the individual.
I choose Philip K. Dick’s 1969 SF novel, Ubik, for the subject of a paper exploring the significance of this work in relation to a dialog with other works such as Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) and Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions (1973). The novel is about Joe Chip, a man with psychic blocking powers employed by a company that hires out such persons to protect corporate interests. Following an ambush on assignment, Chip is put into “half-life,” or cryonic storage, because his injuries are too severe for immediate repair. While in half-life, he is threatened by a predatory psychic also in half-life and the only protection is a ubiquitous commercial product called “Ubik.” Dick questions the nature of reality and the individual’s connection to reality through consumerism in Ubik. Additionally, he destabilizes the nature of reality for his characters as well as the reader.
This work, originally considered mere genre fiction, should be reexamined with greater seriousness. The author’s other works are in continuous print and there is greater recognition of his work thanks to the many filmic interpretations including Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), Minority Report (2002), and A Scanner Darkly (2006), as well as the recent Library of America publication of Philip K. Dick: Four Novels of the 1960s (2007), which includes Ubik. Also, other SF authors have gained increased attention in recent years such as the inclusion of Ursula K. Le Guin in The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Volume E: Literature since 1945. Therefore, Ubik deserves increased consideration and further analysis in order to situate it within the larger framework of literary texts and culture in which it is situated.
Twentieth-Century American Literature Reading List
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening (1899).
London, Jack. The Call of the Wild (1903).
Sinclair, Upton. The Jungle (1906).
Cather, Willa. O Pioneers! (1913).
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland (1915).
Frost, Robert. Mountain Interval (1916).
Sandburg, Carl. Chicago Poems (1916).
Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “Renascence” (1917).
Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburgh, Ohio (1919).
Millay, Edna St. Vincent. A Few Figs From Thistles (1920).
Cummings, E. E. Tulips and Chimneys (1923).
William, Carlos Williams. Spring and All (1923).
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby (1925).
Stein, Gertrude. The Making of Americans (1925).
Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises (1926).
Wilder, Thornton. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927).
Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury (1929).
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms (1929).
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying (1930).
Buck, Pearl S. The Good Earth (1931).
Stein, Gertrude. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933).
Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! (1936).
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).
Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men (1937).
Dos Passos, John. U.S.A. (1938).
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).
Wright, Richard. Native Son (1940).
Welty, Eudora. A Curtain of Green: And Other Stories (1941).
Smith, Betty. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943).
Hersey, John. Hiroshima (1946).
Lowell, Robert. Lord Weary’s Castle (1946).
Warren, Robert Penn. All the King’s Men (1946).
Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire (1947).
Mailer, Norman. The Naked and the Dead (1948).
Merril, Judith. “That Only a Mother” (1948).
Pound, Ezra. The Pisan Cantos (1948).
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman (1949).
Asimov, Isaac. I, Robot (1950).
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye (1951).
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man (1952).
Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea (1952).
O’Connor, Flannery. Wise Blood (1952).
Steinbeck, John. East of Eden (1952).
Vonnegut, Jr., Kurt. Player Piano (1952).
Kornbluth, Cyril M. and Fredrick Pohl. The Space Merchants (1953).
O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955).
Ginsberg, Allen. Howl and Other Poems (1956).
Kerouac, Jack. On the Road (1957).
Burroughs, William S. Naked Lunch (1959).
Heller, Joseph. Catch-22 (1961).
Dick, Philip K. The Man in the High Castle (1962).
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962).
Plath, Sylvia. The Bell Jar (1963).
Bellow, Saul. Herzog (1964).
Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast (1964).
Dick, Philip K. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965).
Ellison, Harlan. “’Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (1965).
O’Connor, Flannery. Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965).
Capote, Truman. In Cold Blood (1966).
Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49 (1966).
Sexton, Anne. Live or Die (1966).
Ellison, Harlan. “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967).
Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968).
Wolfe, Tom. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).
Dick, Philip K. Ubik (1969).
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness (1969).
Vonnegut, Jr., Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).
Warren, Robert Penn. Audubon (1969).
Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1971).
Levin, Ira. The Stepford Wives (1972).
Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo (1972).
Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity’s Rainbow (1973).
Vonnegut, Jr., Kurt. Breakfast of Champions (1973).
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Dispossessed (1974).
Delany, Samuel R. Dhalgren (1975).
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony (1977).
Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff (1979).
Toole, John Kennedy. A Confederacy of Dunces (1980).
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple (1982).
Mamet, David. Glengarry Glen Ross (1984).
Gibson, William. Neuromancer (1984).
DeLillo, Don. White Noise (1985).
Morrison, Toni. Beloved (1987).
Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash (1992).
Powers, Richard. Galatea 2.2 (1995).
Palahniuk, Chuck. Fight Club (1996).
Roth, Philip. American Pastoral (1997).
Dynamic Subspace 