Class:

Winterson's Weight represents the re-examination of a life spent in exile. But the mythic corollary here is not between a contemporary life that may be abstracted to be a Greek epic as in Joyce's Ulysses. In this instance, we here from the myth that is compared to the narrator's/author's statements about her life. Thus, the work is not just a metafiction regarding the retelling of the work to "contemporize" the tale in terms of its psychological values, but also a metafiction that brings in its "author" to question why she wrote the work and what relation it has to her.

So now we move both backward and forward here:

1) If we suggest that Weight is a metafiction, then is Ulysses?

2) Regarding Derrida's quote in the calendar in relation to this metafiction, how is Atlas an Echo and the "author" a narcissus?

3) If it is the case that Atlas is an Echo, then how does that explain the end of the novel (if we can for now call it a novel)?

 

It is still hard for me to wrap my head around what Derrida says and make complete sense of it, but I will give it a try. I think that Atlas is an echo because he is someone who is trapped by himself, and can only say and repeat what the author has him say. The author relays her feelings through Atlas and he makes his own realizations in his situation and what the author has him say takes on meaning in a way that makes sense for his situation. The author is a narcissus because she can only see herself through the work and the character of Atlas. He is so scared to put down the weight he has been told to carry, and she never questions why she is carrying her weight just like Atlas.

The end of this book talks about how what we see is only a small part of the universe we inhabit. This being said she says that we should not worry so much about holding up the weight we think we are bound to. There may not be any need for us to hold up this weight, I am not completely sure if I understand the end.

I don’t think Ulysses is a metafiction if Weight is, per se. Ulysses stands on its own as a metafiction, not comparatively, at least not obviously. (You probably know something I do not, however.) Ulysses may be construed as metafiction via Joyce’s uber engagement of the reader, specifically in the “Ithaca” chapter. Joyce is, in a way, addressing specific conventions of the story, namely plot and pacing, by a line of presupposed, perhaps even rhetorical, questioning of character actions. He put down on paper what the reader ought to be supposing at that point in the story. You are reading and supposing the same thing, for the most, at the same time or thereabouts. It’s weird. This idea might be a bit of a stretch, though.

Atlas is Echo because he is tethered to something, relegated. His movement isn’t entirely free. But he, like Echo, adapts eventually . . . I think. This question confuses me a bit.

Winterson is a narcissus in a very obvious sense, as most, if not all, authors are intrinsically. She commits herself to a rather unfaithful re-telling of a long established story, and then she changes the ending to selfishly suit her own purposes.

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Sincerest and warmest of regards,

Sean C.

Isn't it true that all characters in all stories could be considered to be blind?  and we as readers are considered to be as well?

With that said, Atlas is blind, and, therefore an Echo.  An Echo because he can only repeat/relate to the world, or universe rather, that he knows.  After all, he is stuck in one spot, holding the world on his shoulders.  I think that there is also this sense of the gods not wanting Heracles or Atlas to think deeper about questions (i.e. questioning the gods why?) that restricts them much like Echo's restriction of speech; hence, the characters are blind.  As for the idea of the author being a Narcissus, I'm just going to state what you have probably already figured out, that the story reflects her; therefore, it's about herself, therefore she's a Narcissus (pretty insightful, I know).  But back to my first couple of questions, I ask them because we never get to know the characters outside of the realm/context the author writes them in which is why we are blind, and because the characters are constructed, they never get to know each other more than the way they are constructed on the page.  Therefore, they are blind to their own "selfs" and to the "selfs" of the other characters.

Atlas is an echo because he can only repeat the words that Winterson tells him he can say.  He is controlled by someone else in this regard.  Also, he is trapped, obviously, by the burden of holding up the world.  He seems to have no choice but live out his punishment.  Winterson is a narcissus because she thinks that what she writes is important enough to be read. By writing this novel, or any for that matter, she is assuming that what she has to say, her story, will cause people to want to read about her.  Atlas is a myth that has already been told, but she adapts it and adds in pieces of her story, so it will suit her own purposes as an author.

I am not sure how to answer this question.  In the end of the story, Atlas puts the "weight" down.  He lets go of the earth.  I suppose he could still fit the mold of echo in this situation because he is technically not making his own decision to put the earth down.  He realizes he no longer needs to hold the earth because Winterson writes it that way.  She is making the decision, and then she goes on to write a bunch of nonsense about herself and the universe that really lost me.

Atlas and Echo are similar in the fact that they are both being controlled by other people. Atlas is controlled by Wintersen, the author, and has no power over the decisions being made about him. Similarly, Echo's every word is controlled by those around her, she cannot make the decision to speak whatever she pleases. The author is a narcissus in the fact that she ultimately uses the fiction to reflect upon herself. At the end of the both stories, the characters submit themselves to that which controls them. Echo responds to Narcissus and Atlas submits himself to what the narrator wants and walks away.

Atlas is Echo because everyone else says so.  Is that not reason enough?  Truly, all are blind, we can see that, but with like regards, all are Narcissus.  All are everything, as is always the case.  I don't have to look at each case to know that, because every situation I've lived through thus far has told me so.  Having run into the same cave walls over and over again, I don't even need to use my sonar to tell me there's a wall there.  Weight is a metafiction because I say so.  It has many aspects of meta-fiction, perhaps moreso than Ulysses, but that neither negates the metafictionicity of Ulysses, nor makes it better, more applicable, or more Postmodern.  That is to say, metafiction isn't relative, as one of my esteemed peers has already declared.  Metafiction, if compared with anything, ought be compared with standard fiction (if such a thing exists, for is there standard anything?).  Atlas is echo because Atlas is unoriginal.  Everything around at all ceases to be original, but despite Derrida's confirmation of unoriginality, Atlas is decidedly unoriginal in other aspects as well.  The author is narcissus because the author reflects society, reflects the "author," and the author's thoughts.  The author is the signifier that the sign can never fully depict, and like all signifier, the true substance behind it is ever changing.  All that the "author" can do is give a fixed description that acts as a mirror for whatever reader peers into it.  It reflects the ideas, interpretations, and impressions of those that read.  Yeah.

Class:

Seems all of you focused on different questions as a kind of "chorus" :)  I really enjoyed reading what you've had to say so far.

Some additional considerations--and I pray they are clear despite the DayQuil:

1. As Sean noted, Ulysses may be construed a metafiction and focuses on "Ithaca." Although more of the episodes also criticize fiction or dramatize creating fiction, there is an argument with Joyce about "intentions," or what is "in the fiction" metafiction or "what's made of the fiction" metafiction. I'll let the rest of you decide about that one. Given the comments of Winterson in Weight, is it metafiction? Are we reminded that the myth is her construct and somehow related to her life?

Perhaps we might also regard how metafiction can "cross-contaminate." Here's what I mean. As much as we can say Joyce and Winterson borrow from Greek myth, and we read from the Greek myth back to their texts for clarifications, Joyce and Winterson's texts "read" the Greek texts and we reinterpet the "orginals" from the perspective of Joyce and Winterson. So our understanding of the "original" texts is altered. So is our understanding of The Odyssey and Atlas altered as a result of these contemporary works?

2. Kenny, Sean, Allison, Melanie all seem to declare something of character as puppet, or at least voice-box to author (perhaps similar to Ulysses in the way that the older Bloom and younger Stephen are tropic stages of Joyce's own life and perspectives, according to Kevin Dettmar in The Illicit Joyce of Postmodernism). It's true that all characters are controlled by their authors...or is it? Can't certain personality types granted to characters carry their logical progressions forward "out of the desired field of control" of their authors? Haven't you heard authors complain that after they wrote a character a certain way, that character took off in an unpridictable direction? So let's keep that in mind too. The truth, as Dedalus might agree, is "midway" ("Scylla and Charybdis"). As much as that might be true, is Atlas such a character who might "run away?" Perhaps not. Like Prometheus, his life is fairly stable--albeit torturous. Wait...Prometheus gets set free in this work too right? So is this then Winterson's way of setting wrongs right? Is she saying something of "mythic figures" damned to their fates by literature and not any "real" curse of the Gods?

So then we are focusing on one's perspective of "freedom?" We are all doomed in a way to repeat what others have said? English language idioms aside, we are all fated to use tropes, symbols, from discourses not our own? We are all doomed to be cast in others fictions as "likenesses" of other people's fictions? Ever heard someone say to you that you "bear the weight of the world on your shoulders?" So in that way you entered into the space of Atlas by way of someone narrating you there? So we "echo" a language, its significations, it's values "in freedom?" Is then unique achievement in literature located from the construal of readers located in a time who have perhaps forgotten past achievements of authors who have aleady done the kind of literature we call unique? I guess if not, we can all rely on Jeff; if he says so then "It is written."

And the Narcissus. Allison's reply is interesting as it suggests that perhaps all writers find what they feel worthy of public consumption...or something egotistical. Of course, Lacan would claim we are all trapped by the narcissus as the metaphor of the mirror stage of development. As for Derrida? It seems he's discussing something about projection? How it's impossible for us to see the world apart from the self and its desires (and in Kristevan terms, its abjects?). So perhaps the weight we all bear is "seeing the world" as we hold it so close to our heads? Meaning that the only thing that seperated Echo from Narcissus was the sensory gland that they used (voice/ears versus eyes). So the blindness that we are discussing here isn't physical as you all predicted, it's a blindess to "objectivity." So is that then why the author must admit to herself that she's not objective but part of the subject? Is there freedom in that act?

Then again, as Eric reminds us, there is perhaps a distinction here without difference? Echo is Narcissus and Narcissus is Echo? If Echo cannot have her own voice she is preoccupied with the self and it's "real reflection"; likewise if Narcissus can only see himself--all all else in periphery--he is attempting to focus on periphery or the blurry halo reality, or a kind of echo, for what is outside of self and real? So what then separates these two "identities" is perhaps utterance versus the gaze?

3. The ending. What is the weight to Winterson? Wait, if this is a metafiction, then what might that weight be? Are we even talking about Winterson here or "author/god" or something like Zeus? So is the "author" discussing fiction, or creating a work that has a "real-world-message?" Holding an esteemed position as a writer up to the world? (Similar to Borge's "Borges and I" http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/english016/borges/borges.html )

Having to feel responsible for what readers comprehend? Kenny is this what you think you mean by the weight "we" are bound to hold up? These threads all fit core metafictional concerns.

Or perhaps is there something else, something more personal here that weighs her down? Or as Jeff implies, if not directly states, is there something weighing her down in terms of old conventions...(and yes Jeff I did catch that your post troped Narcissus and Echo by how it responds...your own trope was not lost on me )...all novels must point back to their author's lives: conflicts, desires, ideals. So then is she going with the personal intrusions because that is her own "weight she must bear?"

Great discussion so far. Thanks all for your participation. Let's hear from the others too Taylor, Aaron, and Michael.

 

if Atlas is a sort of Echo, in that he can only say the words put into his mouth.. how much more is Heracles an echo of both Winterson, outside the story, and Hera, within it. He never has a thought of his own, except one... "Why?" and that is fleeting. Eventually, he even kills himself, due to the ideas that others have given him. The main difference here, though, is that while Echo used her repeated speech as a chance to show her love Heracles doesn't seem to be able to love, and Atlas, although he loves the world, listens to voices but never responds.

As for the idea that all writers are Narcissistic, in wanting to be heard, it could be said that all of us exhibit the same selfish (?) desire in our everyday speech. The fact that we are always searching for words to claim as our own, to somehow be known, without our words ever giving us sight beyond our own selves... are we not just gazing into a mirror, dimly... blindly?

In the end, though, Winterson's "weight" is all about the story, but moreso the telling of the story... which seems to be the main focus of metafiction. For her, and possibly for all of us, the telling then takes on a cathartic aspect, as well as a sort of self-discovery. Through this self discovery, based on story telling, one begins to see herself, it would seem, in a more real way. By learning to understand oneself, one can then begin to understand, at least to an extent, the nature of the world around, by the way it effects the speaker. I guess, then, all of us, in speaking, writing, in discourse, are both Echo and Narcissus... we think, then we repeat our thoughts to prove our love for ourselves, and for the world around us... something that Atlas was never able to do, at least in Winterson's story. It is interesting though that the weight Atlas is tied to throughout the story, is somewhat self-inflicted, not really needing him to stay afloat.

etc.

1. In my eyes, Weight is more of a metafiction and Ulysses is more of a paracriticism. Using the definitions that we were giving in class, "metafiction can be about a text, an author and making a confession about the text" and "paracriticism takes on text and criticizes it". In lieu of these definitions I feel that Weight takes on the text, but is about the text too leaving room for the author to be an active part, if not deconsstruct herself. Ulysses, takes on the text and morphes the text to suit Joyce's purpose. As I am typing this, i can see that both text embody elements of both.

2. Atlas is an Echo because in the author's narcisstic manor she uses Atlas to "echo" the way that she feels. Atlas is Echo because he takes is the "appropriation" of the narrators words; like Echo took on the words of Narcissus.

3. The end of the novel is the author "walking away" from her burdens in which she feels like "the weight of the world" was lifted off of her. Atlas is repeating the words of the author. The author can only see herself as Atlas and she is blind to everything around her. The author can speak for herself whereas Atlas is forced to repeat the words that she lays out for him.

I was thinking of the weight Winterson mentions would be more of a personal weight, but that is what I was wondering about. I didn't know how she was relating to the burden that Atlas was carrying. I guess she could just be saying that she feels like the world is on her shoulders and there is pressure on her, but I don't know why.

If Derrida's quote about Echo, and Narcissus is applied to Weight, one can argue that Winterson is immersed in a intimate love affair with Atlas and in that, is ultimately in love with herself.  Atlas is Winterson.  Winterson looks at him and she sees her own reflection, and when Atlas speaks, his words are not his own, but those of Winterson; his voice is the sound of hers, only. Atlas is an Echo. The life span of Winterson's narcissustic love affair is determined by her personal endeavor to keep re-telling the story; for, silence is the death of the relationship. This book is really cool, it is a re-telling of stories of Greek mythology, but simultaneously, a re-telling of her own life. Does her love affair have anything to do with Nostalgia?