American Undercurrents in the 21st Century: Trauma, Transformation, and the Reader as Witness in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room

Laura Virginia Castor

EN

American Undercurrents in the 21st Century: Trauma, Transformation, and the Reader as Witness in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room

Abstract

In Man Walks into a Room, Nicole Krauss offers valuable ways of thinking about 11 September’s prehistory, and to some extent, its aftermath. She does so through her exploration of the consciousness of the main character, Samson Greene’s consciousness. This development includes careful attention to a sense of place in historical context that allows a space for the reader’s role to emerge as witness. As such, Krauss’s narration urges readers to consider tensions between individual freedom and loneliness, and between American progressive ideals and more fragile, post 11 September global identities

Keywords

Post 9/11 literature, trauma theory, literature of the American West, witness literature.

References

Balaev, Michelle. The Nature of Trauma in American Novels. Chicago, IL: Northwestern UP., 2012. Print.
Birman, Lisa Interview with the author, Skype, 15 May 2013.
Bjerre, Thomas Ærvold. “American Literature after September 11” Anglo Files. Feb. 2009: 48-61. Print.
Burn, Stephen J. “Mapping the Syndrome Novel.” Diseases and Disorders in Contemporary Fiction: The Syndrome Syndrome 10 (2013): 35. Print.
Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso, 2004. Print.
Carnegie, Dale. How To Win Friends and Influence People. 1936. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981. Print.
Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. Print.
Castor, Laura. “Photograph, Story, and Memory in Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” Less is More: Short Fiction Theory and Analysis. Ed. Jakob Lothe, Hans H. Skei and Per Winther. 157-67. Oslo: Novus P, 2008. Print.
Codde, Philippe. “Keeping History at Bay: Absent Presences in Three Recent Jewish American Novels.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies. 57.4 (Winter 2011): 673-693. Project Muse. 2011. Web. 13 Feb. 2014.
Cvetkovitch, Ann. “Trauma Ongoing.” Trauma at Home: After 9/11. Ed. Judith Greenberg. 60-66. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2003: 60-66. Print.

Davis, Walter A. Death’s Dream Kingdom: The American Psyche Since 9-11. London: Pluto Press, 2006. Print.
De Grom, Babette. Second and Third-Generation Trauma Representation: A Comparison of Thane Rosenbaum’s Second Hand Smoke and Nicole Krauss’s Great House. Diss., U. of Ghent. 2011. Web. 28 Feb. 2014.
DeLillo, Don. Falling Man. New York: Scribner, 2007. Print.
Drinnon, Richard. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and EmpireBuilding. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1997. Print.
“Duck and Cover Bert the Turtle Civil Defense Film.” YouTube.com, (11 Jul.y 2009). Web. 13 Oct. 2013.
“Duck and Cover” Wessels Living History Farm: Farming in the 1950s and 60s. (2007). Web. 25 March 2015.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Self-Reliance.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol.1. Shorter 7th ed. New York: Norton, 2008: 542. Print.
Etulain, Richard W. “The American West and Its Historians.” Historically Speaking. 3.5 (Jun. 2002): 15-17. Project Muse. 2002. Web. 7 Feb. 2014.
Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York: Routledge, 1992. Print.
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Boston, MA: Mariner Books, 2005. Print.
Frémont, John Charles. The Expeditions of John Charles Frémont. Urbana: U. of Illinois P., 1973. Print.
Goldstein, Cheryl. “Every Individual Should Feel As If”: Exilic Memory and Third Generation Holocaust Writing. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science. 3.8. (Apr. 2013): 67-75. Project Muse 2013. Web. 21 Feb. 2014.
Kaplan, Ann. Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2005. Print.
Kenniston, Ann and Jeanne Follansbee Quinn, Eds. Literature after 9/11 (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature). New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.
“The Kitchen Debate.” TeachingAmericanHistory.org. (2006-15, ND). Web. 11 Oct. 2013.
Klein, Joshua. “The Amazing Intelligence of Crows.” TED Talk, (March. 2008). Web. 11 Oct. 2013.
Krauss, Nicole. Man Walks into a Room. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2003. Print.
------. The History of Love. London: Viking, 2005. Print.
------. Great House. New York: Norton, 2010. Print.
------. Interview. “We Create Who We Are.” Louisiana Channel, 26 Dec. 2012. YouTube. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.
Lang, Jessica. “The History of Love, the Contemporary Reader, and the Transmission of Holocaust Memory.” Journal of Modern Literature. 33.1 (Fall 2009): 43-56. Print.
Leming, David. “Crows and Ravens.” The Oxford Companion to World Mythology. Native Languages.org (2013). Web. 11 Oct. 2013.
Levine, Peter A. In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. 2010. Print.
Limerick, Patricia. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: Norton, 1987. Print.
May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York: Basic Books, 1988. Print.
McInerney, Jay. The Good Life. New York: Knopf, 2006. Print.
McNally, Richard. Remembering Trauma. Cambridge, MA: Belknap P. of Harvard UP, 2003. Print.
Mitrea, Alexandra. “Narrativizing Trauma in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated and Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love.” EastWest Cultural Passage 2 (2012): 49-60. Print.
Morley, Catherine. ‘How Do We Write about This?” The Domestic and the Global in the Post-9/11 Novel.” Journal of American Studies 45.4 (Nov. 2011): 717-731. Print.
Morrison, Toni. “Home.” The House That Race Built. Ed. Wahneema Lubiano. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997: 3-12. Print.
“Native American Crow Mythology.” Native American Legends, Meaning, and Symbolism from the Myths of Many Tribes. NativeLanguages.org (2013). Web. 13 Oct. 2013.
Noble, David W. Death of a Nation: American Culture and the End of Exceptionalism. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2002. Print.
O’Sullivan, John. “ John L. O’Sullivan on Manifest Destiny.” 1839. Mtholyoke. edu, 2014. Web. 26 Feb. 2014.
Schwartz, Lynne Sharon. The Writing on the Wall. New York: Counterpoint, 2005. Print.
Selejan, Corina. ““The Opposite of Disappearing”: Jewishness and Globality in Nicole Krauss’s Novels The History of Love and Great House.” EastWest Cultural Passage 1 (2011): 87-96. Print.
Stamelman, Richard. “11 September: Between Memory and History.” Trauma at Home: After 9/11. Ed. Judith Greenberg. Lincoln and London: U of Nebraska P, 2003. 11-20. Print..
Starovecka, Zuzana. “Ravens and Crows in Mythology, Folklore and Religion,” Perspectives: The Student Magazine of the Department of British and American Studies (30 Oct. 2010). Web. 25 .March. 2015.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Death of a Discipline. New York: Columbia UP, 2003. Print.
Stedman, Gesa, “Brain Plots: Neuroscience and the Contemporary Novel.” Real-Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature 24 (2008): 113-124. Print.
Turner, Frederick Jackson. “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” The Frontier in American History. Ch.1. 1920. Xroads. virginia,edu, 2014. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
West, Elliot. The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado. Lawrence: U of Kansas P, 1998. Print.
White, Richard. It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1991. Print.
Workman, Sarah R. Witnessing the Past from the Postmodern Present: Intertextuality in Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love and Anne Michael’s Fugitive Pieces. Diss. Georgetown U, 2010. Print.
Zierler, Wendy. “Connections and Collisions: Identities in Contemporary Jewish-American Women’s Writing (review).” American Jewish History. 93.1 (Mar. 2007): 105-107. Print.

Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

African Language, Literature and Culture

Journal Section

Research Article

Authors

Laura Virginia Castor This is me

Publication Date

April 1, 2015

Submission Date

May 12, 2014

Acceptance Date

-

Published in Issue

Year 2015 Number: 41

IZ

https://izlik.org/JA43LC89BX

APA

Castor, L. V. (2015). American Undercurrents in the 21st Century: Trauma, Transformation, and the Reader as Witness in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room. Journal of American Studies of Turkey, 41, 45-68. https://izlik.org/JA43LC89BX

AMA

1.Castor LV. American Undercurrents in the 21st Century: Trauma, Transformation, and the Reader as Witness in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room. JAST. 2015;(41):45-68. https://izlik.org/JA43LC89BX

Chicago

Castor, Laura Virginia. 2015. “American Undercurrents in the 21st Century: Trauma, Transformation, and the Reader As Witness in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room”. Journal of American Studies of Turkey, nos. 41: 45-68. https://izlik.org/JA43LC89BX.

EndNote

Castor LV (April 1, 2015) American Undercurrents in the 21st Century: Trauma, Transformation, and the Reader as Witness in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room. Journal of American Studies of Turkey 41 45–68.

IEEE

[1]L. V. Castor, “American Undercurrents in the 21st Century: Trauma, Transformation, and the Reader as Witness in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room”, JAST, no. 41, pp. 45–68, Apr. 2015, [Online]. Available: https://izlik.org/JA43LC89BX

ISNAD

Castor, Laura Virginia. “American Undercurrents in the 21st Century: Trauma, Transformation, and the Reader As Witness in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room”. Journal of American Studies of Turkey. 41 (April 1, 2015): 45-68. https://izlik.org/JA43LC89BX.

JAMA

1.Castor LV. American Undercurrents in the 21st Century: Trauma, Transformation, and the Reader as Witness in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room. JAST. 2015;:45–68.

MLA

Castor, Laura Virginia. “American Undercurrents in the 21st Century: Trauma, Transformation, and the Reader As Witness in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room”. Journal of American Studies of Turkey, no. 41, Apr. 2015, pp. 45-68, https://izlik.org/JA43LC89BX.

Vancouver

1.Laura Virginia Castor. American Undercurrents in the 21st Century: Trauma, Transformation, and the Reader as Witness in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room. JAST [Internet]. 2015 Apr. 1;(41):45-68. Available from: https://izlik.org/JA43LC89BX

JAST - Journal of American Studies of Turkey

Abstract

American Undercurrents in the 21st Century: Trauma, Transformation, and the Reader as Witness in Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks into a Room

Abstract

Keywords

References

Details

Primary Language

Subjects

Journal Section

Authors

Publication Date

Submission Date

Acceptance Date

Published in Issue

IZ

Cite