On the last day of class Professor Unsworth briefly brought up
the issue of classifying the books we read this semester into
categories. I think it would be valid to say that the books we read
all deserve to be put in their own categories, but that's not very
interesting... After the last day of class I was discussing the books
we read for this class with one of my house mates. It turns out that
this semester he read a lot of the books we read for entc 312. When I
asked him about this, his comment was "Yeah, those books are sort of
all the same."
I'm curious to hear other's opinions on the classification of
these books. This grouping can certainly be done in a lot of
different ways, as the classification of each book is dependent on
which aspects of a book seem important to the classification and which
aspects seem secondary. If I had to group them into categories, I'd
start by putting Galatea 2.2 and Neuromancer in a category, as these
novels both derive their plot from existing plots. Galatea gets its
plot from the myth of Pygmalion, and Neuromancer uses a common
detective story plot with the added twist that some of the characters
are AIs. Also, these books both deal with artificial intelligence.
If you disregard the AI similarity, I suppose you could also put
Empire of the Senseless in this category of derivative works.
I think you could put Dark Decade by itself in the language
poetry category, or you could group it with The Mezzanine in the
"Little Emphasis on Characters and Plot" category. Hmm.. This leaves
me with no clear grouping for Vineland, White Noise, and Mumbo
Jumbo... :)
What do other people think about this? If you were to group
these books, how would you do it?
-James