Narrative style, time travel, and truth in literature. A casual discussion. But really it kind of blew my mind, especially after all the different "worlds" Prof. Kemp drowned us with in the introductory lecture. My mind was already on a metaphysical path; the panel's preoccupation with recursive time and patterns and history (both personal and public) only worsened that trend. I'm going to relate this idea of "circular reading" that Matt brought up to Walter Benjamin's Angel of History. Apologies in advance if it gets sloppily abstract.
A brief synapsis: Matt wrote his paper on A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, wherein the author, Julian Barnes, presents different events of history out of order and narrated from several points of view. Apparently, the result is depressing, and every chapter ends with destruction, death, etc. Except the last; the last advocates that love is the cure for all the mess that happened before. Matt proposed that instead of taking the novel at face value and reading it linearly, it should be read out of order, so that that last message of hope might be dispersed throughout the despair that is the rest of the novel.
Benjamin's angel can only read time linearly because he faces the past and ignores the future. The result is that all that over-quoted "wreckage" gets "piled at his feet." But if he only learned to view things more circularly, considering the future in how it factors into the past, then that wreckage could be alleviated, much as the despair in Barnes' book is lightened by hope. My basic idea I got out of it is that circularity is not just a way to read literature. It is a way to approach all time lines, including our own. But it's damned tricky to do, in my opinion.
-Becca
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