8/14/2019 C21st US Fiction: 'American Rust'
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Philipp Meyer,American Rust
Week 10: 'Recession America'
(1) It had been an intricate system and when the mills shut
down, the entire valley
had collapsed. Steel had been the heart. He wondered how long it
would be before
it all rusted away into nothing and the valley returned to a
primitive state. Only the
stone would last.
(Meyer, 2009: p. 8)
beginning ofAmerican Rust
the novel as a cosmology of the blue-collar middle class; a
cartography of industrial decline (similar to how
A Mercy & The Known Worldare cartographies of colonialism
and antebellum slavery, respectively)
economics & collapsonomics The study of economic and state
systems at the edge of their normalsocial and economic function,
including preventative measures to avoid destructive feedback loops
and
vicious cycles. (http://collapsonomics.org/)
parallels with the literature of the Great Depression deliberate
contemporary references (to Afghanistan,
IEDs, Hilary Clinton, etc.) to mark the book as
contemporary.
urban decline Detroit (automotive) vs. Pittsburgh
(manufacturing)
Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World(shift from American
hegemony to multi-polarity)
(2) None of it was permanent. The Swede would go back to the
soil, blood goes
from sticky thick to dust, animals eat you back to the
earth.
(AR, p. 34)
(3) In the end it was rust. That's what defined this place. A
brilliant observation.
She was probably about the ten millionth person to think it.
(AR, p. 132)
transience, death, mourning? Is it conservative,
backward-looking, nostalgic for American manufacturing?
reflexivity & genre: noir, bildungsroman (albeit
arrested/hijacked), or something else entirely?
(intense) inner monologues for all characters, but esp. Isaac
and The Kid (compare & contrast w. Bret and
The Writer inLunar Park)
(4) There was something particularly American about it blaming
yourself for
bad luck that resistance to seeing your life as affected by
social forces, a tendency
to attribute larger problems to individual behaviour. The ugly
reverse of the
American Dream.
http://collapsonomics.org/http://collapsonomics.org/
8/14/2019 C21st US Fiction: 'American Rust'
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(AR, pp. 229-230)
pathologies of the American Dream, of capitalism? Remember the
corporate-trained assassain, Chigurh, in
No Country for Old Men
structure & (constrained) agency; are these characters
victims or culprits?
Meyer: You are in control of making the best decision you can
for the circumstances () which are
determined by your family, your background, the place you grew
up, the people around you, who is a strong
role model in your community
(http://www.steinershow.org/podcasts/newest-podcasts/philipp-meyer-
author-american-rust)
(5) [T]he skeleton of the neighbor's house, Pappy Cross, gone
twelve years. Moves
to Nevada to be with his sons, within two weeks someone came and
stole his
gutters, security door, doublepane windows. Called him in Nevada
to tell him,
never got a call back. Whole house rotting to nothing.
(AR, p. 285)
geography, space, architecture?
Grace's trailer, which she's unwilling to invest in fixing up,
for fear it would be an admission of failure
this 'aint suburbia (any more) think of the books from suburban
insecurities; American Rustis closer
to the edge of chaos (Hobbes' state of nature) than Security
orLunar Park, with Harris barely holding thechaos at baybefore
budget cuts (cf. pp. 273-278) but it's the same broad landscape
(6) ... He [Harris] grinned at his own joke and then felt a
lightness come over him.
Both of those boys were worth saving, he thought. That is
something you wouldn't
have known.
(AR, p. 363)
an ending of sacrifice, redemption, (pre-)mediated revenge
questions of violence both as the inciting incident, with Poe in
prison, and as Harris' resolution is that
satisfying? How about the ethics of Meyer's conclusion?
http://www.steinershow.org/podcasts/newest-podcasts/philipp-meyer-author-american-rusthttp://www.steinershow.org/podcasts/newest-podcasts/philipp-meyer-author-american-rusthttp://www.steinershow.org/podcasts/newest-podcasts/philipp-meyer-author-american-rusthttp://www.steinershow.org/podcasts/newest-podcasts/philipp-meyer-author-american-rust
