Please cc V. Lombari

[John M. Krafft]

From:	MX%"T-AMLIT at BITNIC.CREN.NET"  6-MAY-1995 23:58:27.06
To:	JMKRAFFT
CC:	
Subj:	PED: Teaching Popular Culture in Literature

***PED: PEDAGOGY***

From:   IN%"vlombari at comp.uark.edu"  "Victoria Lombari" 30-APR-1995 19:28:00.18
Subj:   (Query)Popular Culture

        How do you teach contemporary writers who use popular
culture in their fiction/poetry/drama? For example, do you see it as a
trend to mention entertain media within a story or novel? Do you find it
disturbing to find brand names throughout a novel? Does the reference to
a familar song within a piece of fiction help you to situate yourself in
time and space within the story, or is it an annoyance? (For example,
anyone who has read Pynchon's Vineland can easily recall the effects of
such popular culture flowing forth from nearly every page.)
        In "Contemporary Fiction and Popular Culture" (Writers and Their
Craft: Short Stories and Essays on the Narrative) Constance Pierce
suggests that writers who effectively use popular culture within their
works can "locate a story in time, tell something immediately significant
about a character, and enliven the surface of the narrative" (386). She
also suggests that these references can draw in a reluctant reader (p386).
        On the other hand, Richard Kearney (in The Wake of
Imagination:Toward a Postmodern Culture) suggests that the consumer media
has infected our imaginations so much that we can't look at anything
without some advertising image coming to mind (1).Literature seems to be
his preferred cure for this malady, if the literature is designed to
move us past all the mas produced images and back to individually
controlled images (363,361). He adds that as one reads literature, he/she expres
ses his/her "willingness to imagine
oneself in the other person's skin, to see things as if one were,
momentarily, at least, another, to experience how the other half lives"
(364,368).
        Sanford Pinsker (author of Bearing the Bad News: Contemporary
American Literature and Culture) suggests that contemporary American
fiction relies too heavily on allusions to the entertainment media and
popular culture at the expense of developing strong characters acting in
real stories (31).
        Other critics, like Irving Howe and Hannah Arendt, have lickened
mass culture to "a bubonic plague of the modern mind" (according to David
Manning White's Popular Culture in America, page 16).
        Where do you stand on this issue?
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Date: Sat, 6 May 1995 23:38:23 -0400
Reply-To: Teaching the American Literatures <T-AMLIT at BITNIC.CREN.NET>
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From: "tamlit at guvax.georgetown.edu \"Randy Bass\""
      <TAMLIT%GUVAX.bitnet at BITNIC.CREN.NET>
Subject: PED: Teaching Popular Culture in Literature
To: Multiple recipients of list T-AMLIT <T-AMLIT at BITNIC.CREN.NET>
Message-ID: <95May6.235800-0400edt.4205-9+559 at list.cren.net>

John M. Krafft, English                 | Miami University--Hamilton
Voice:   513-863-8833, ext. 342         | 1601 Peck Boulevard
Fax:     513-863-1655                   | Hamilton, OH  45011-3399
E-mail:  jmkrafft at miavx2.ham.muohio.edu
         jmkrafft at miavx1.acs.muohio.edu