Did someone mention partially fictionalized travel narratives? What about collectors and the narratives their collections weave? "...Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can," (4) -- Or any collection for that matter, as our friends Blumenbach and Banks would have us believe. Perfect! I call dibs on writing about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas! At the moment, I'm thinking I should look at how early travel narratives can be fiction, then look at how New-Journalism is necessarily fictionalized. A quick critical examination there then I think its off to close read a few passages from the Damberger (or others? I'll take suggestions) and draw compelling parallels between various Thompson passages about how fiction works in all narratives. I plan to work something in about fiction and collections as well -- as in the fiction of how various collections are represented. Aside from drug collections, F/L deals with collections of cars, hotel rooms, hotel services/food, and collections of technological devices used by Thompson to constantly type his news articles and stay in touch with Rolling Stone while on the road ( i.e., The Mojo wire -- like a primitive portable fax machine). This section could lead into various other technologies of travel/collection -- more stuff we've visited from the really old guys.
Mainly, I want to explore (by our classroom definitions) ideas of fiction and collection in travel narratives and various technological elements that helped along the way. Thompson needed to stay in touch with his center of calculation (Rolling Stone HQ). On some level I want to compare technology that Thompson used to stay in touch to navigation devices like sextents and maps used by Cook, Banks, etc. Finally, I think I want to note something about how Thompson and Acosta travelled to very culturally foreign locations, despite the fact they never left America. Examining the cultural other and its environment. Thompson attempted this and still ultimately (probably) failed in similar ways that the Royal Society failed to portray foreign cultures -- but I want to examine this curiosity and want to explore the cultural other. At least Thompson's misrepresentations of Americans did not lead to scientific racism ....... (like many of those old guys) ...
1 comment:
Kellan,
You have a number of ideas going here, all of them intriguing, but I would warn you against trying to pack in too many comparisons between Thompson and the early travel writers, which could cause your paper to seem cursory. I would suggest focusing on two or three elements of comparison, and then analyzing Thompson's text (the one you are most interested in) in depth. For instance, the concept of collection is one we've talked about throughout the course, and we have numerous examples as well as theoretical texts (ie, Stewart). Your list in the blog of Thompson's, and by extension other NJ writers', collections, would be a fascinating subject for analysis. You'll also have to spend some time setting up a rationale for comparing these 18/19-c travel and NJ. Why put these two movements side by side? This idea has the potential for some original insights.
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