Thursday, 29 June 2006: The Pilgrims . . .  Jonathan Raban, from Hunting Mr. Heartbreak: A Discovery of America [handout]

Text-objective discussion leader (Raban article): Pauline Chapman

Text-Objective Discussion of Raban's "Hunting for Mr. Heartbreak"

Objective 6.   “Vertical immigration”: as immigration has increased and trade and national barriers have fallen, societies may be becoming less identified by nationality and more by economics and technology: first world-third world, upper class-lower class, highrise-street, electronic media-manual labor.

Protestantism, (1972) p. 345

"acrylic"  "synthetic"

"a pair of washable trousers with creases built in and guaranteed to last forever"

"a regular guy"

"homely touch of American puritanism"

"IT'S SMART TO BE THRIFTY"      

Capitalism, (1988) p. 345-6

"gold, silk, scent and lizardskin"

"heraldic blazonry"

"platinum card country"

"exclusiveness and nobility"

"pleasuredome"  "entertainment"

"Air People" and "Street People"

Air--elevators, TV, telephones, computer, stereo

Street-- p.348 "the styrofoam cup, the cracked and dirt-lined open palm." (348) hand-lettered signs

Air--p.345 "The air trapped in the swing door reeked of new leather and Rive Gauche."

Street-- p. 351 "I was a virus, a bad smell, a dirty smear that needed cleaning up."

Air--p.352 "faint purr of the air conditioning..alpine silence."

Street--p.  "noise of the trains...slamming and screeching"

Air--p.351 "a Bach cantata on the stereo system"

Street, p. 348  "a desperate chamber orchestra of rattles, chinks and plunks"

Air--p. 350  "marching backs of men"  "trajectory"  "Manhattan tunnel vision" "zombie"

Street--p.350 "virtually invisible--bits of stationary furnitture"

Air--p.   "multistory fiction"  p.352  "a world of your own imaginative making." Dreams

Street-- p. 347  "low realism"

Air--p.351 "tidiness, it's over-careful taste...display of little girl things"

Street--p351 "wild disorder, its vulgarity, its tough grown-upness" 

marked--"skin eruptions, their wasted figures, poor hair and bony faces."

Question:

What do the "Air People" and the dominant culture have in common?  How do they differ?

Objective 7. To observe competing economic ideals or states exposed by immigrant literature.

7a. To identify communal or utopian elements. . . concepts of community, social obligations, and limits.

Comments on the morality of aggressive capitalism or ignoring the "street people?"

7b. To discuss immigrants’ shock at and adaptation to American economic models, variously identified as Social Darwinism, competitive individualism, laissez-faire, freemarket, high-growth capitalism

p. 348  "Competition meant advertising. . . . beggars...expose weeping patches of violet scar tissue, growths, amputations, open sores."

"We piled, hip to haunch, onto this creaky Jacob's ladder, talking in Spanish, Haitian French, Brooklyn, Russian." (346)

"Suppose you'd just arrived from Guyana or Bucharest--here would be your vision of American plenty, the brimming cornucopia of the fruits of capitalism.  Here goods queued up in line for people, not vice versa.  Here you were treated as an object of elaborate cajolery and seduction."  (346)

Questions:  (take your pick!)

What is all this advertising trying to sell and does it deliver?

Is "vertical immigration" a way for minorities and immigrants to be accepted without assimilating? 

Does it really work for anyone besides the advertisers and retailers?

Is this an American phenomenon or international? The products are often European...

7c. A surprising feature in immigrant literature (and perhaps elsewhere): the identification of shopping and sexuality. (Consistent with Darwinian survival through competitive sexuality)

"Here you were treated as an object of elaborate cajolery and seduction."  (346)

Help me out here:

What is the connection of shopping and sexuality? Is it just "using sex to sell?"

Or does it have to do with temptation and pleasure?