The Eleventh Hour
Weird literary late Rushdie — knowledge, forgetting, afterlives.
Mechanisms
Knowledge replaced by ignorance; memory by forgetting
Public amnesia as active project — forgetting is manufactured, not decayed.
Also, “knowledge” is being replaced by “ignorance,” “memory” is being replaced by “forgetting,” and nothing, no shameful action, however atrocious, remains in the public mind.
Why it matters
Public amnesia as active project — forgetting is manufactured, not decayed.
Use when: Use when public amnesia is the active project, not a side effect.
Invention masquerading as memoir
Form as argument: when the memoir is invented, truth and lies stop being separable by genre.
In other words, what we are given is invention masquerading as memoir, an appropriate choice for a tale in which truth and lies are not without importance.
Why it matters
Form as argument: when the memoir is invented, truth and lies stop being separable by genre.
Use when: Use when a narrative form is itself the lie/truth argument.
The stranger in the bed is himself
Identity horror needs a body on the mattress — the abstract split lands when it is physical.
M.’s heart began to pound, or at least he felt as if that was what was happening, and then a confusion gripped his mind, because the body in the bed—the stranger—was himself.
Why it matters
Identity horror needs a body on the mattress — the abstract split lands when it is physical.
Use when: Use when identity split needs a physical punchline.
Cap keeps its cap-ness after material lift
Objects carry function-form past the body — the afterlife has a dress code.
Just as he had risen out of his body to become whatever he was now, so also his cap had been lifted out of its material self and somehow retained its cap-ness.
Why it matters
Objects carry function-form past the body — the afterlife has a dress code.
Use when: Use when an object retains function-form after leaving the body-world.
Questions
Echo of life or proof of afterlife
Residue phenomena sit exactly on the glitch/evidence line, and the ambiguity is the engine.
Was it just some sort of leftover echo of life—an aberration that did not fundamentally undermine her views—or might it be proof of the reality of life after death?
Why it matters
Residue phenomena sit exactly on the glitch/evidence line, and the ambiguity is the engine.
Use when: Use when a ghostly residue could be either glitch or evidence.