Writing and posting this on Saturday preceding Wednesday’s class. There were some great things about this week and some not so great things. To start, I landed a tutoring job today! I will be morphing students into SAT and ACT-taking machines. The hours replace what I would have been doing at the dance studio, which I think will make me rediscover a bit of my purpose more. I will still be teaching in some degree, just not dance. Rather, how to answer questions asking you for a synonym for a word, but you have no idea what any of the words mean at all. Yay.
On the not so great side, I had to unfortunately get rid of my beautiful little rose bush. This week I noticed some kind of little bug infestation that was eating away at the plant. I’m no expert, as we know, so I showed my father who told me my best bet was to let the plant go. I’m sad about this because it was doing really well and I really liked having it around. But, I will try again with a new plant. I just didn’t think that plant would be gone so soon.
Moving onto my thesis, I completed my write-up for Remarkably Bright Creatures. I am so torn about whether it is postmodern or not because with this book, it really comes down to the technique in which the story is told and the content of the narrative. The technique is postmodern at its core, but the content is a wholesome, sincere story. So, is it postmodern or New Sincerity? I think it’s similar to that of Good Material, which I studied over the summer, and found that it was sincere with postmodern elements. I believe that whatever literary era we are in now, whatever we end up calling it, will unearth itself in this way: some new overarching developments with postmodern elements on the side. So, I don’t think we are done with postmodernism yet, and we may never be, but the state of things is changing.
I know that it may seem very easy to poke holes through the sheet that is New Sincerity, but two books kind of point this way. I know, two books sounds absolutely ridiculous, and they may even be the only two books that do this today and by chance I have picked them to study. But, I have been wondering if the separation we all feel from each other exacerbated by the current political and economic spheres we find ourselves in may actually be causing some kind of regression (if that is the correct word to use here). My thinking is leaning towards that we have been feeling disengaged from each other for so long that we find solace in connecting with characters from books who want their stories told, and this is why this research matters. Maybe, stories are finding their way to the top again after years of being fed artificial graphics.
I will be thinking more about this because I am totally not sure about any of that at all. In the meantime, I will be starting my next book soon. I have picked This Other Eden by Paul Harding to cover the historical fiction subgenre. In the summertime, I decided to stay away from historical fiction because I did not see usefulness in studying a retelling. Though, looking back at my literature review, none of the pieces of scholarship I read mentioned what postmodern historical fiction looks like and how it could change if we are out of postmodernism. Plus, I realized that I did include an article that studied a fantasy book with a post-postmodern lens, or something or other. So, I felt including fantasy within my scope would not be filling a gap. I love historical fiction so I am excited to see where this takes me.
