No Man's Land - Page 16

Well, we're approximately 16 days from what pundits and reporters have been calling the "Apocalypse," when the US of A reaches its debt ceiling. Maybe the end of the world DOES happen in and around 2012. After all, religious nuts and blockbuster movies have been advertising this very fact since 2009. Like most Americans, I have no idea what will transpire, but it's certainly not going to be good. I get the sense that this is the sentiment in Washington as well. Something is looming. Something big.

About a week ago on "All Things Considered" I remember hearing that nothing would happen. That the US Gov't could make certain cuts and coast on tax money for about two years. Apparently some of the Tea Party members may have heard this same thing, because Michelle Bachman has gone on record to state that nothing would happen at all. This is perhaps a bit overblown. Something is going to happen, but the public at large is not going to hear or see it until perhaps a few months after, when Wall Street starts to suffer and countries like China start realizing that the US economy is clamoring for largess. In our present society, we like to believe in that instantaneous "fix" that can come at the last moment and avert catastrophe, just like it does in the movies. Certainly Washington, Democrats and Republicans alike, has done its share of damage to reinforce this in the public eye. Obama has stated that reforms wouldn't happen until much later, months to years down the line, and this seems the more accurate admission. There is no Noah's-Ark-like outcome here. We're ALL in the same boat, and there's a mighty big leak.

As we get into the cogs of No Man's Land, and the Miller family's own money problems, I keep reflecting back on the current state of the economy and how problems, like the one illustrated in this chapter, will not only be felt by the periphery of American workers, but the majority. The small companies, unable to cope, will certainly be swallowed whole by other larger companies. C'est la vie. I'm not one to go on bashing corporations in my free time, there are plenty of people in the media who do that for me, but the concerns of the Miller household certainly do criticize the climate mentioned. There are obviously differences, and I meant it to be just as critical of the small-town business ethic, which can, at times, seem like a plane on auto-pilot, heading straight for a mountain.

I'll get off my soap-box now. Who cares what the writer thinks about his own work, anyway? As a critic of literature, I am aware of the intentional-fallacy, the death of the author, and Stanley Fish. But I feel that this blurb, as Mr. Grimlee and I have called it, should do some blurbling. It should put some of these pages into historical context and express the writer and artist's plans and concerns in charting and reconsidering its development. My critical theoretical focus is textual studies, and next quarter I'm teaching a class at the University of Washington in this very topic. In textual studies, which in part is concerned with editorial intentions as much as materiality, these things matter in the long-run. I'm not sure they matter right now, but perhaps they will in the future. Maybe my opinions will all end up in a wash and only debris of it carried along by the tide. Until next week.

-Chris
07/17/2011