HCJ Lecture:
- Existentialism was a movement in port war arts and culture, especially in music (jazz), theatre and literature.
- JP Sartre – Existentialism in humanism (1946)
- Existentialism and Literature
- ‘Being and Nothingness’: - Written by Jean-Paul Sartre – An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. It is a philosophical treatise and its main purpose was to assert the individual’s existence as prior to the individual’s essence.
This book was influenced by Heidegger’s book – ‘Being and Time’.
Within Being and Nothingness, man is a creature haunted by a vision of ‘completion’ which religions identify as God.
‘Things in Themselves’: objects which are indeterminate but completely bound by their facility (e.g. trees, rivers, cheese, road kill, natural objects). They change constantly (e.g. decay) such as tree roots. The constant decay of everything is depressing which makes you feel sick. Sartre thinks that the answer to this is like Albert Camus – just to face up to the decay and rottenness of everything and not be bothered by it. Rotting and decay is a constant theme of art influenced by existentialism.
‘Things for Themselves’: Criticism – this is an idealist re-working of Marxism; the categories of Bourgeoisie and Proletariat are re-interpreted as ‘the determined’ or people as objects (e.g. sex objects) and those who determine others (e.g. journalists, writers intellectuals etc.).
- Rehabilitation of Marx and Hegel is known as the Critique of dialectical reason. Sartre is a follower of Heidegger and Husserl.
Hegel’s geist is ‘consciousness which is nothing’ (i.e. never an object).
Hegel sees everything as change – Sartre agrees. ‘Life has no essence, it is only becoming’.
- Existentialism and literature – You cannot write for slaves; writing is the act of human freedom. Freedom is not an abstraction guaranteed by law, it is the actual practice of freedom; freedom is not something that is given to you it is a social practice. George Orwell made a similar point in ‘Why I Write’. This was written by George Orwell to illustrate his personal journey to becoming a writer.
In this essay, he points out his four motives for writing:
- Sheer Egoism – Some people write in order to feel clever.
- Aesthetic Enthusiasm – The writer should make his work look and sound good.
- Historical Impulse – Simply being able to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
- Political Purpose – ‘No book is genuinely free from political bias’.
The New Journalism: (Reading)
- The book is a manifesto for a new type of journalism and a collection of examples of New Journalism by American writers. The examples within the book are notable because they do not conform to the standard way of even-handed unbiased journalism.
- The term ‘Radical Chic’ was introduced by Tom Wolfe – the concept was described as being an exercise in double-tracking one’s public image: on the one hand, defining oneself through committed allegiance to a radical cause, but on the other, vitally demonstrating the allegiance because it is the fashionable way to be seen in moneyed, name-conscious society. Those who engage in radical chic remain frivolous political agitators. They are ideologically invested in their cause of choice only so far as it advanced their social standing.
- Existentialism was a movement in port war arts and culture, especially in music (jazz), theatre and literature.
- JP Sartre – Existentialism in humanism (1946)
- Existentialism and Literature
- ‘Being and Nothingness’: - Written by Jean-Paul Sartre – An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. It is a philosophical treatise and its main purpose was to assert the individual’s existence as prior to the individual’s essence.
This book was influenced by Heidegger’s book – ‘Being and Time’.
Within Being and Nothingness, man is a creature haunted by a vision of ‘completion’ which religions identify as God.
‘Things in Themselves’: objects which are indeterminate but completely bound by their facility (e.g. trees, rivers, cheese, road kill, natural objects). They change constantly (e.g. decay) such as tree roots. The constant decay of everything is depressing which makes you feel sick. Sartre thinks that the answer to this is like Albert Camus – just to face up to the decay and rottenness of everything and not be bothered by it. Rotting and decay is a constant theme of art influenced by existentialism.
‘Things for Themselves’: Criticism – this is an idealist re-working of Marxism; the categories of Bourgeoisie and Proletariat are re-interpreted as ‘the determined’ or people as objects (e.g. sex objects) and those who determine others (e.g. journalists, writers intellectuals etc.).
- Rehabilitation of Marx and Hegel is known as the Critique of dialectical reason. Sartre is a follower of Heidegger and Husserl.
Hegel’s geist is ‘consciousness which is nothing’ (i.e. never an object).
Hegel sees everything as change – Sartre agrees. ‘Life has no essence, it is only becoming’.
- Existentialism and literature – You cannot write for slaves; writing is the act of human freedom. Freedom is not an abstraction guaranteed by law, it is the actual practice of freedom; freedom is not something that is given to you it is a social practice. George Orwell made a similar point in ‘Why I Write’. This was written by George Orwell to illustrate his personal journey to becoming a writer.
In this essay, he points out his four motives for writing:
- Sheer Egoism – Some people write in order to feel clever.
- Aesthetic Enthusiasm – The writer should make his work look and sound good.
- Historical Impulse – Simply being able to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
- Political Purpose – ‘No book is genuinely free from political bias’.
The New Journalism: (Reading)
- The book is a manifesto for a new type of journalism and a collection of examples of New Journalism by American writers. The examples within the book are notable because they do not conform to the standard way of even-handed unbiased journalism.
- The term ‘Radical Chic’ was introduced by Tom Wolfe – the concept was described as being an exercise in double-tracking one’s public image: on the one hand, defining oneself through committed allegiance to a radical cause, but on the other, vitally demonstrating the allegiance because it is the fashionable way to be seen in moneyed, name-conscious society. Those who engage in radical chic remain frivolous political agitators. They are ideologically invested in their cause of choice only so far as it advanced their social standing.
- The Feature Game:
- First job after Graduate School – New York Herald Tribune.
“The managing editor worked in a space that was as miserable and scabid as the lowest reporter’s.”
“On newspapers very few editorial employees at the bottom – namely reporters – had any ambition whatsoever to move up, to become city editors, managing editors, editors-in-chief, or any of the rest of it. Editors felt no threat from below.”
“Reporters didn’t want much...only to be stars!”
“We were all engaged in a form of newspaper competition that I have never known anybody to even talk about in public.”
Feature writers: “What they had in common was that they all regarded the newspaper as a motel you checked into overnight on the road to the final triumph.” “The final triumph was known as The Novel.” “The best feature writer in town.” “The ‘feature’ was the newspaper term for a story that fell outside the category of hard news.”
“But I figured I could take them. You had to be brave.”
“Half the people who went to work for publishing houses did so with the belief that their real destiny was to be novelists.”
“The novel seemed like one of the last super strokes, like finding gold or striking oil, through which an American could, overnight, in a flash, utterly transform his destiny.”
“By the 1950’s The Novel has become a nationwide tournament.”
“There was no room for a journalist unless he was there in the role of would-be novelist or simple courtier of the great.”
“There was no such thing as a literary journalist working for popular magazines or newspapers. If a journalist aspired to literary status – then he had better have the sense and the courage to quit the popular press and try to get into the big league.”
“As for the little league of feature writers – two if the contestants, Portis and Breslin, actually went on to live out the fantasy. They wrote their novels…Which is to say that the old dream, The Novel, has never died.”
“They were dreamers all right, but one thing they never dreamed of. They never dreamed of the approaching irony. They never guessed for a minute that the work they would do over the next ten years, as journalists, would wipe out the novel as literature’s main event.”
Wolfe’s manifesto for The New Journalism:
Scene by scene construction – Rather than rely on second-hand accounts and background information, Wolfe considers it necessary for the journalist to witness events first hand, and to recreate them for the reader.
Dialogue – By recording dialogue as fully as possible, the journalist is not only reporting words, but defining and establishing characters, as well as involving the reader.
The Third Person – Instead of simply reporting the facts, the journalist has to give the reader a real feeling of the events and people involved. One technique for achieving this is to treat the protagonist like characters in a novel. What is their motivation? What are they thinking?
Status Details – Just as important as the characters and the events, are the surroundings, specifically what people surround themselves with. Wolfe describes these items as the tools for a ‘social autopsy’ so we can see people as they see themselves.
- First job after Graduate School – New York Herald Tribune.
“The managing editor worked in a space that was as miserable and scabid as the lowest reporter’s.”
“On newspapers very few editorial employees at the bottom – namely reporters – had any ambition whatsoever to move up, to become city editors, managing editors, editors-in-chief, or any of the rest of it. Editors felt no threat from below.”
“Reporters didn’t want much...only to be stars!”
“We were all engaged in a form of newspaper competition that I have never known anybody to even talk about in public.”
Feature writers: “What they had in common was that they all regarded the newspaper as a motel you checked into overnight on the road to the final triumph.” “The final triumph was known as The Novel.” “The best feature writer in town.” “The ‘feature’ was the newspaper term for a story that fell outside the category of hard news.”
“But I figured I could take them. You had to be brave.”
“Half the people who went to work for publishing houses did so with the belief that their real destiny was to be novelists.”
“The novel seemed like one of the last super strokes, like finding gold or striking oil, through which an American could, overnight, in a flash, utterly transform his destiny.”
“By the 1950’s The Novel has become a nationwide tournament.”
“There was no room for a journalist unless he was there in the role of would-be novelist or simple courtier of the great.”
“There was no such thing as a literary journalist working for popular magazines or newspapers. If a journalist aspired to literary status – then he had better have the sense and the courage to quit the popular press and try to get into the big league.”
“As for the little league of feature writers – two if the contestants, Portis and Breslin, actually went on to live out the fantasy. They wrote their novels…Which is to say that the old dream, The Novel, has never died.”
“They were dreamers all right, but one thing they never dreamed of. They never dreamed of the approaching irony. They never guessed for a minute that the work they would do over the next ten years, as journalists, would wipe out the novel as literature’s main event.”
Wolfe’s manifesto for The New Journalism:
Scene by scene construction – Rather than rely on second-hand accounts and background information, Wolfe considers it necessary for the journalist to witness events first hand, and to recreate them for the reader.
Dialogue – By recording dialogue as fully as possible, the journalist is not only reporting words, but defining and establishing characters, as well as involving the reader.
The Third Person – Instead of simply reporting the facts, the journalist has to give the reader a real feeling of the events and people involved. One technique for achieving this is to treat the protagonist like characters in a novel. What is their motivation? What are they thinking?
Status Details – Just as important as the characters and the events, are the surroundings, specifically what people surround themselves with. Wolfe describes these items as the tools for a ‘social autopsy’ so we can see people as they see themselves.
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