Why the late 80s early 90s rock references, you ask? I just finished the second and now at least passably readable draft of my writing sample that starts by obliquely claiming that the existence of the R.E.M. song is evidence of Lenny Bruce's thoroughly established status as a pop icon. It goes on from there. If you want to be my best friend forever / get invited to my birthday party / be written into my will, etc., you could read it for me and give me some notes to improve it. It's over at the old site, which required some serious dusting before they would allow me to host anything over there:
Nyet's paper on Lenny Bruce and Underworld
If you're too lazy to click, here's the conclusion, which more or less sums up the salient ideas. You know, like a conclusion more or less should:
Don DeLillo’s Underworld is a seminal American postmodern text that speaks specifically to the technological and social anxiety of the Cold War. The choice of Lenny Bruce as postmodern spokesman and prophet effectively narrates the postmodern position within the text via his textual portrayal, the extra-textual extension of the character, and the contemplation of symbolism and representation his character’s inclusion engenders. Bruce’s real-life descent is not an indictment of the text’s message as unreliable. It is an element of his popular narrative that simultaneously illustrates the benefits / detriments of extra-textual content and emphasizes the instability of representation. It can be interpreted as the death of the real under the auspice of the image. The meta-emphasis on the problems of representation that the Lenny Bruce choice highlights are emblematic of the postmodern anxiety that the decentralization of truth and the paranoia thereby created forestall all attempts at realizing stable truth, and that our most creative / visionary efforts could potentially devolve into the same demise as Bruce. The postmodern paranoid anxiety of Underworld is not limited to the overt problem of atomic holocaust, but encompasses the larger question of the technological representation of truth. The complexities of Lenny Bruce as the textual and extra-textual spokesman for this anxiety demonstrate the problems of this representation.
So that's an example of the mangled, head-spinning prose you'll encounter if you delve into the depths of the PDF. Of course, in the paper itself, I use examples, so if you haven't read Underworld, it will be even more frustrating. Huzzah!
(Seriously, if you have a moment and some mad editing skills, I'd greatly appreciate a once over).
I've still got some work to do on my SoP and I need to finish piece together the app, but three weeks before the app is due, I feel I am sitting relatively pretty. That's it for now; enjoy upcoming posts of "the rest of t-weekend" and "a bunch of links i've found recently." And if you're lucky, you'll get to see my eyeballs!
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