Watch out for this character in Second Life ... he's trouble!
Sunday, June 1, 2008
The Canonization of Snow Crash
An excerpt from Snow Crash (just Chapter 1) shows up in The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Literature, which I am using in one of my classes. Though I skewed the syllabus for the fiction readings heavily sci-fi, I decided not to include the excerpt. Can this book be effectively excerpted? What is lost by thinking of it through the lense of "postmodern fiction," rather than the sci-fi genre to which it owes so much?
The anthology comes with a site to help the teach lead the discussion, here as the recommended questions:
It's hard to imagine using these questions and not belittling the text. At its opening, Stephenson's novel feels like something written purely for fun, like a short-short story.
I'm not positing a criticism of Norton here -- the recommended questions for most of the other texts are spot-on -- rather I am suggesting that this novel is difficult to consider without the context of its genre and the rest of the book. Indeed, Snow Crash was originally conceived to be a graphic novel, and I've always felt its abruptness owed something to that. (The Norton anthology nicely includes excerpts from several graphic novels.)
The anthology comes with a site to help the teach lead the discussion, here as the recommended questions:
- Like many works of science fiction, Neal Stephenson’s cyberpunk novel Snow Crash presents a not-too-distant future based on an extrapolation of current trends. Identify the present-day economic, social, and technological trends from which Stephenson is working. Is his vision of the future credible?
- After a detailed description of the Deliverator’s high-tech equipment, the narrator asks, "Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a roll model." How might the Deliverator be both a "roll model" and a "role model"?
- How does the Deliverator’s life compare to that of the Burbclave inhabitants? Does he have more freedom? What constitutes freedom for the Deliverator?
It's hard to imagine using these questions and not belittling the text. At its opening, Stephenson's novel feels like something written purely for fun, like a short-short story.
I'm not positing a criticism of Norton here -- the recommended questions for most of the other texts are spot-on -- rather I am suggesting that this novel is difficult to consider without the context of its genre and the rest of the book. Indeed, Snow Crash was originally conceived to be a graphic novel, and I've always felt its abruptness owed something to that. (The Norton anthology nicely includes excerpts from several graphic novels.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)