Machine, Metaphor, and the Writer by Bettina Knapp

Abstract

Book Reviews entre le récit par les mots et le récit par l’image. Mais cette petite lacune est rachetée par d’autres aspects utiles de l’ouvrage: les photos extraites des films présentés, un appendice bio-filmographique, le générique des films et un index. Ces compléments sont heureux et contribuent à faire de ce livre un ouvrage de référence pour quiconque s’intéresse au cinéma, à la littérature et à la société en Afrique. M . E lisabeth M udim be-B oyi Duke University Bettina Knapp. M ac h in e, M etaph o r , a n d the W riter. University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 1989. Pp. viii + 244. $27.50. Bettina Knapp is the guru of archetypal criticism. Read her final paragraph: “ Will we allow humanity to be swept along mindlessly by the momentum of technology? Or will we attempt to find a balanced course. The problem is ours. Do we face it or walk away?” (218). Crafted as a persuasive essay, Machine, Metaphor, and the Writer “ applies” Knapp’s honed methodology. A short introduction defines the Jungian lexicon and serves as a statement of intent: to “explore the nature of the relationship between the protagonist and the machine” (7), between the author and the word, and the effect on readers in the “ mega-complex into which the mega-machine has transformed their world” (7). Knapp then devotes eleven chapters to works representing Orient and Occident. A succinct re­ capitulative conclusion is followed by a bibliography and an index. After a biographical sketch, a plot summary with commentaries reveals the “ symbols, images, and motifs [. . .] in relation to the meaning and impact of the specific machine that is featured [. . .] in each piece of writing” (10). Comparisons are drawn with mythology (Icarus), spirituality (mandala imagery), and religions (Elija’s visionary experiences). A train in Joyce’s “ A Painful Case” causes an “ epiphanic experience” (11), and in Witkiewicz ’s The Crazy Locomotive “ is viewed as a destroyer of individuals, societies, and cultures” (11). Throughout Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s Wind, Sand, and Stars, a plane represents an “ inability to grow up” (72), a “ vagina dentata" (84), and “ aspiring to know spatial climes” (81). Again, in Arreola’s “ The Switchman” a train “ serves to heighten the feelings of aliena­ tion and powerlessness of finite beings living in the infinite vastness of an impersonal uni­ verse” (98), while in Yizhar’s Midnight Convoy, wheeled vehicles illustrate the quest for “ the right path” (112). Osaragi’s The Journey involves trains, cars, buses, and boats in a “ semiology of transformation” (125) making possible “expanding reality and cosmicity” (148). In “ The Man-Eater of Malgudi,” Narayan employs a printing press as a “ paradigm for the cosmic process of creation and dissolution” (150) in which “ letters, syllables, and words become manna” (151). The sidewinder computer in Shepard’s Operation Sidewinder exemplifies the “ mechanics of the profane and the sacred” (193) when paired with an initiatory Hopi dance. In Jarry’s The Supermale, the protagonist is seen as a robot, in Pirandello’s Tonight We Improvise, theater itself becomes a machine “ hungry for poetry” (11), and in Handke’s Kaspar, words “ become mechanical devices endowed with concre­ tion” (12). Unfortunately, there are some puzzling errors. In the Jarry chapter, for example, plac­ ing the protagonist on the five-man cycle skews the analysis of the Jungian “ shadow.” Fur­ thermore, a confusion of Hindu and Native American nullifies the parallels to Yogitantrics . Marcueil is, in the novel, a “ Peau-Rouge,” “ un Indien chasseur de scalps.” Jarry’s displacement of the Indian of his sources to his own text is lost. Knapp seems to force her selections into a mold: Marcueil is perhaps not a “ negative view of the machine VOL. XXX, NO. 2 109 L ’E sprit C réateur age” (28) for his death recasts the newly invented electric chair used to punish an inhuman man. Nonetheless, this book (it could have been titled “ Machine, Metaphor, and the Male Writer” ) is criticism with its convictions showing. Its mission is such that its misreadings are forgiven in a rush of gratitude for Knapp’s concern with...