Category Archives: Books

“The Over-Education of the Negro: Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual”

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October 5, 2012, Room 8301, The Graduate Center

“The Over-Education of the Negro:  Academic Fiction, Higher Education, and the Black Intellectual”

Lavelle Porter, Ph.D. Program in English

This presentation will be an overview of my dissertation project on “academic fiction,” a genre defined by its fictional depictions of professors, graduate students and university life. In particular my work focuses on academic fiction produced by black writers. While the dissertation is mostly about the academic novel as a literary genre, my analysis also includes works in other creative genres, including short stories, plays and films.  The field of Black Academic Fiction includes work by a diverse range of black intellectuals including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paule Marshall, Percival Everett, Ishmael Reed, Samuel R. Delany, Adrienne Kennedy, Zadie Smith, Spike Lee, and many others.   In this project I survey the critical literature on academic fiction and I describe how black academic fiction explores some common themes in all academic fiction, while also addressing a distinct set of issues related to the social, historical and political status of black Americans.

#AutumnalCity

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A few years ago, I noticed a book published about September 11, 2001 titled To Wound the Autumnal City.  I haven’t read that book, but as a Samuel R. Delany fan I certainly recognized the title.  It is the opening line from Delany’s epic science fiction novel Dhalgren (1975).  Looping the last line of the novel back to the first line creates this sentence:

“Waiting here, away from the terrifying weaponry, out of the halls of vapor and light, beyond holland and into the hills, I have come to to wound the autumnal city.”

A social reading of Dhalgren started up a few days ago and continues through November. This appears to be an extension of the #OccupyGaddis social reading from this summer.

I was intrigued by the plans for this Dhalgren reading but I didn’t think that I would have time to participate, what with several other deadlines bearing down on me.  But on Monday I pulled my ragged paperback of Dhalgren off the shelf and put it in my backpack thinking I might get a chance to dig in to it at some point.  I pulled the book out on my commute and starting reading.  Now,for the past two days I have spent my train rides between Manhattan and Brooklyn reading the novel.

I have also been reading the tweets about it on Twitter under the hashtag #AutumnalCity.  (I am not on Twitter, and have no interest in joining it, not even for this.)  There is a Goodreads group where you can find more information on the reading and how it works and participate in discussions there.

I remember first trying to read Dhalgren back in 2001 when I was still living in Ann Arbor.  I’m pretty sure I bought this tattered yellowing paperback that I have now from the Dawn Treader bookshop.  I remember feeling that reading it was a chore, not without moments of pleasure, but certainly “difficult.”  I made it about 2/3 of the way through, then left it and never came back to it.  I’ve read tons of Delany’s writing since then, but never made it back to finishing Dhalgren.

I’ve been surprised at how easily I have slipped into the flow of reading it this time.  I’m sure the subsequent decade of reading and writing about Delany’s work has something to do with this.  I’m up to page 60 so far, and I have already recognized some of the overlapping scenes from his short book Heavenly Breakfast, about living in a rock-commune in the East Village in the 1960s.  I also recall the peyote hallucination in his memoir The Motion of Light in Water, an incident which, I believe, was meant to “reveal” the source of one of the images from Dhalgren; a group of kids walking down the street projecting holograms of dragons and other mythical beasts.

I can’t promise I will blog about it more as the reading goes on, but I will be keeping an eye on what other people are writing about it. And I wanted to do my part to spread the word so others could join in.  I have a million other things to work on right now, but reading one of the best books by my favorite author, in my favorite city, during my favorite season of the year, was too much to pass up.

You can follow the twitter discussion about it here: http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/%23AutumnalCity

Update:
I meant to re-post the schedule but the Goodreads site was down.  Here it is:

“The schedule starts September 7 and asks you to read about 10 pages per day.”
Sept. 7: Start
Sept. 26: page 200
Oct. 16: page 400
Nov. 5: page 600
Nov. 26: done!

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

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Invisible Man: A Memorial to Ralph Ellison
Sculptor Elizabeth Catlett, 2003
Riverside Park @ 150th Street, Manhattan
Bronze, granite

I don’t usually get so topical on here, but after reading reports about last night’s RNC speech by a certain actor, I couldn’t help thinking about Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, as I’m sure many other people are doing today.  I’m writing about Ellison in my dissertation because of the college scenes in the first part of the novel, which were based on Ellison’s experiences as a student at Tuskegee.

The opening paragraph of the novel is simply perfect in describing that bizarre scene that so many witnessed last night, an aging white conservative actor lecturing an empty chair meant to represent the nation’s first black President:

“I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything except me.”

These lines are prescient in describing the way in which all sorts of paranoid xenophobic anxieties have been projected onto Obama over the last four years.  He is a cipher for the right wing’s narrative of an apocalyptic takeover of America by scary brown foreigners, ball-breaking feminists and nelly homosexuals, all sullying the pure white wholesome Christian America that only ever existed in their imaginations.

I think of the paint factory scene in the novel and the factory’s slogan of “KEEP AMERICA PURE WITH LIBERTY PAINTS.”  The factory’s popular “Optic White” brand of paint is used on the nation’s monuments, and The Invisible Man finds out that “Optic White” paradoxically requires a secret ingredient of black goop in order to achieve its pure white color.

I am hoping that people will take this debacle as an opportunity to re-visit Invisible Man. (That’s asking too much, I know.  We will all be talking about the next scandal in a few more hours). At least I would think that any professors who are teaching on Ellison this semester would be grateful for this teachable moment.

A couple of months ago I noticed this video of a rare interview with Ellison from 1966 posted by the Oklahoma Historical Society on YouTube.  I’m not sure how widely viewed this was before it was posted, but I had not seen it before and I was happy to find it.  So far  it is only clocking about 1400 hits, and it deserves a lot more.  At about the 12 minute mark he starts talking about how he composed Invisible Man.  For anyone interested in Ellison’s work, the whole clip is well worth your time.  Take a look and pass it on.

Orals List #3 – Samuel R. Delany: Race, Sexuality and the Paraliterary

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Samuel R. Delany: Race, Sexuality and the Paraliterary 

Selected Primary Works

Fiction 

Babel-17 (1966)

“Aye, and Gomorrah…” (1967)

“The Star-Pit” (1967)

The Einstein Intersection (1967)

Equinox (formerly Tides of Lust) (1973)

Dhalgren (1975)

Trouble on Triton (formerly Triton) (1976)

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand (1984)

“The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals” in Flight from Nevèrÿon (1985)

The Mad Man (1994)

Hogg (1995)

Atlantis: Three Tales (1995)

Dark Reflections (2006)


Memoirs and Non-Fiction

Heavenly Breakfast: An Essay on the Winter of Love (1979)

The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village (1988)

Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics (1994)

Longer Views: Extended Essays (1996)

Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

Bread and Wine: An Erotic Tale of New York (1999)

Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts and the Politics of the Paraliterary (1999)

1984: Selected Letters (2000)

About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters and Five Interviews (2006)

“Some Queer Notions About Race.” Brandt, Eric, ed. Dangerous Liaisons: Blacks, Gays, and the Struggle for Equality. New York: The New Press, 1999

Steiner, K. Leslie.  “Samuel R. Delany.” http://www.pseudopodium.org/repress/KLeslieSteiner-SamuelRDelany.html

Secondary Criticism  

Ash of Stars: On the Writing of Samuel R. Delany. Ed. James Sallis.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996.  [Significant individual essays from this collection are listed separately]

Bravard, Robert S. and Michael W. Peplow. Samuel R. Delany: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography, 1962-1979.  Boston: G.K. Hall, 1980.

Davis, Ray.  “Delany’s Dirt.” Ash of Stars: On the Writing of Samuel R. Delany. Ed. James Sallis.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996.

Dubey, Madhu.  Signs and Cities: Black Literary Postmodernism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Fox, Robert.  Conscientious Sorcerers:  The Black Postmodernist Fiction of Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed and Samuel R. Delany.  Greenwood Press, 1987.

Freedman, Carl. Critical Theory and Science Fiction.  Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 2000.

James, Kenneth R.  “Introduction.” 1984: Selected Letters.  By Samuel R. Delany.  Rutherford: Voyant Publishing, 2000.

Posnock, Ross. Color & Culture: Black Writers and the Making of the Modern Intellectual. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Reid-Pharr, Robert F.  “Disseminating Heterotopia.” African-American Review. Volume 28, Issue 3 (Autumn, 1994), 347-357.

Shaviro, Steven.  Connected, Or What It Means to Live in the Network Society. University of Minnesota Press, 2003.

The Review of Contemporary Fiction: Edmund White/Samuel Delany. Vol. XVI, no. 3, 1996.

Tucker, Jeffrey.  A Sense of Wonder: Samuel R. Delany, Race, Identity and Difference.  Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2004.

Woodehouse, Reed.  Unlimited Embrace: A Canon of Gay Fiction, 1945-1995. University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.

Theoretical and Historical Background

Chauncey, George.  Gay New York: Gender Urban Culture and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994.

Foucault, Michel.  The History of Sexuality: Volume 1. New York: Random House, 1978.

Foucault, Michel.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.  New York: Random House, 1977.

Marx, Karl.  Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy.  1867.

Orals List #2 – Comedy, Humor and Satire in Black Literature

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Comedy, Humor and Satire in Black American Literature 

Primary Works

Beatty, Paul.  White Boy Shuffle.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Bennett, Hal.  Lord of Dark Places. New York: Norton, 1970.

Brown, Cecil.  The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger.  New York:  Farrar, 1969.

Carrothers, James D.  The Black Cat Club: Negro Humor and Folklore. Funk & Wagnalls, 1902.

Chesnutt, Charles W.  The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales.  1899.

Ellison, Ralph.  Invisible Man.  New York: Random House, 1952.

Everett, Percival.  Erasure.  New York: Hyperion, 2001.

Fauset, Jessie.  Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral. 1929.

Fisher, Rudolf.  The Walls of Jericho.  New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1928.

Himes, Chester.  If He Hollers Let Him Go.  1945.

Hughes, Langston.  The Ways of White Folks.  1933.

Hurston, Zora Neale.  Moses, Man of the Mountain. New York: J.B. Lippincott, 1939.

James, Darius.  Negrophobia: An Urban Parable: A Novel. Secaucus: Carol Pub. Group, 1992.

Kelley, William Melvin. Dem. 1967.

Killens, John Oliver.  The Cotillion, or One Good Bull is Half the Herd.  1971.

Reed, Ishmael.  Mumbo Jumbo.  1972.
—. Reckless Eyeballing. 1986.

Ross, Fran. Oreo.  New York: Greyfalcon House, 1974.

Schuyler, George S.  Black No More:  Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, A.D. 1933-1940. 1931.

Thurman, Wallace.  Infants of the Spring.  1932.

Secondary Criticism

Dickson-Carr, Darryl.  African-American Satire: The Sacredly Profane Novel. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.

Ferguson, Jeffrey.  The Sage of Sugar Hill: George S. Schuyler and the Harlem Renaissance.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

Freud, Sigmund. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. (1905).

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.  Figures in Black:  Words, Signs, and the “Racial” Self. Oxford:  Oxford UP, 1989.
—.  The Signifying Monkey:  A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988.

Levine, Lawrence.  Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977.

Lott, Eric.  Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class.  Oxford University Press, 1993.

Lowe, John. Jump at the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston’s Cosmic Comedy.  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

Napier, Winston.  African-American Literary Theory: A Reader.  New York: NYU Press, 2000.

Schuyler, George. “The Negro-Art Hokum.” Nation 122.3180 (June 16, 1926): 662-63.

Spiller, Hortense.  “’All The Things You Could Be By Now if Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother’: Psychoanalysis and Race.” Black, White and In Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Watkins, Mel. On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying and Signifying – the Underground Tradition of African-American Humor. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.

Anthologies

Beatty, Paul, ed.  Hokum:  An Anthology of African-American Humor.  New York: Bloomsbury, 2006.

Dance, Daryl Cumber, ed.  Honey, Hush!: An Anthology of African American Women’s Humor.  New York: Norton, 1998.

Watkins, Mel, ed. African American Humor:  The Best Black Comedy from Slavery to Today.  Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2002.