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Forum #2 - Thursday, January 25, 2007
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Revisiting Carson McCullers's Clock Without Hands (1961)
Critics of Clock had devastating remarks, to say the least. This presentation offers a different, revamped reading of the novel under the assumption that McCullers's artistic prowess had moved beyond the confines of a Modernist prose to become one of the early novels in the Postmodern aesthetic. Brian McHale's excellent discussion of the shifting perspectives between Modernism and Postmodernism is a crucial element to defining these distinct periods of literary (out)growth. For McHale the definition of postmodernism, aside from being anti-modernist, is a shift from epistemological perspectives to ontological outlooks, consequently, we have the schizophrenic fragmentation so often connected with the postmodern movement. This book better fits in the canon today than it did in 1961. Critics of the day simply could not see this important shift in stylings (perspectives) in her writing at the time. Additionally, this suggestion of artistic growth is not a new activity for Southern writers, as it can be argued that the South itself became too small of a microcosm for another southern great, Cormac McCarthy who expanded his artistry westward.
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