Eighteenth lecture for my students in English 104A, UC Santa Barbara, spring 2012. Course website: http://patrickbrianmooney.nfshost.com/~patrick/ta/s12/index.html

1. Lecture 18: Delphine and Faunia
English 104A
UC Santa Barbara
Spring 2012
4 June 2012
“According to another European observer of America,
Jean Baudrillard, part of the pleasure of travel is ‘to dive
into places where others are compelled to live and come
out unscathed, full of the malicious pleasure of
abandoning them to their fate. Even their local happiness
seems tuned to a secret resignation.’”
—Geoff Dyer, The Ongoing Moment

2. A few words about the final exam
● Monday, June 11, 4-7 p.m., Girvetz 1119.
● Worth 30% of total grade for the quarter.
● Although I empathize with people who have
difficult handwriting, if I can’t read an answer, I
can’t grade it.
● Bring blue books
● No, really, you should bring blue books. Think about
bringing two, just to be absolutely sure that you
have enough paper to write on.

3. Three sections:
● Term identifications (pick one from each group of four, for eight
identifications total; eight points each). Explain where term
occurs (by naming both the text and its author), what it means,
and what its significance is.
● Quote identifications (pick nine of about twenty-five, four
points each). Identify author, text, speaker, and (in 1-2
sentences) what its significance is.
● A comparative essay (fifty points), approx. 2-3 pages, on a
topic asking you to think broadly about what we have learned
about American society this quarter.
Extra credit:
● Questions are either very difficult or from the optional reading.
Sometimes both.
● Maximum possible: 9 points (final exam is worth 150 total).
● Three sections. Pick one difficult question from each section.

4. Sample term identifications
“Term identifications (pick one from each group of four, for eight
identifications total; eight points each). Explain where term
occurs (by naming both the text and its author), what it means,
and what its significance is.”
● Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt
● Signifier/signified
Sample answers can be found on the
course website.

5. Sample quote identifications
“Section 2: Quote identifications. Pick 9 of the following passages.
Identify the name of the work from which the quote comes, the author
of the work, who is speaking in the passage quoted, and, in 1-2
sentences, describe its broader significance to the work from which it
is drawn and/or the larger concerns of the course. (4 points each.)”
“And still he missed it, even set – sitting right there in his
own office and actively watching Flem rid Jefferson of
Montgomery Ward. And still I couldn’t tell him.”
“Loneliness, far from being a rare and curious
circumstance, is and always has been the central and
inevitable experience of every man.”

6. Sample quote identifications
(notes toward answers)
“And still he missed it, even set – sitting right there in
his own office and actively watching Flem rid
Jefferson of Montgomery Ward. And still I couldn’t tell
him.” (This is the whole of chapter 11 of William
Faulkner’s The Town.)
“Loneliness, far from being a rare and curious
circumstance, is and always has been the central and
inevitable experience of every man.” (This is from the
editor’s introduction to book four of Thomas Wolfe’s
You Can’t Go Home Again – it is not from The Heart
Is a Lonely Hunter.)

7. Paper-related reminders
● You must hit at least four full pages on your
second paper. I will still be applying this
requirement as a bright line on paper two, and
there will be no chance on paper two to remove
this penalty.
● People wanting to remove the penalty from paper
one must hit a bright-line minimum length of five full
pages.
● I will be fully applying the MLA-compliance and
grammar penalties on paper two.
● The absolute latest time to hand in a paper is
when you begin to take the final.

8. Delphine and perception
“Afraid of being exposed, dying to be seen –
there’s a dilemma for you.” (Coleman’s assessment
on 185; ch. 3)
At the NY Public Library: “She’s looking for the man
who is going to recognize her. She is looking for
the Great Recognizer.” (200; ch. 3)
“It’s not that she’s now prejudiced, it’s just that she
realizes she would not have so misjudged a man of
her own race.” (262; ch. 4)
“She closes her eyes to try to sleep and make it all
go away, but the instant her eyes are shut, there
are his eyes. They are staring at her and then they
explode.” (280; ch. 4)

9. Delphine, on feminism
“Since she doesn’t herself have that much
conviction about all the so-called discourse she
picked up in Paris and new Haven, inwardly
she crumbles. Only she needs that language to
succeed.” (266; ch. 4)
“and yet she remembers being in France and
being at Yale and living for this vocabulary; she
believes that to be a good literary critic she has
to have this vocabulary. She needs to know
about intertextuality.” (271; ch. 4)

10. Delphine, on Faunia
“He [Coleman] settles on this broken woman
who cannot possibly fight back. Who cannot
begin to compete with him. Who intellectually
does not even exist. He settles on a woman
who has never defended herself, who cannot
defend herself, [...]” (198; ch. 3)

11. Faunia
“The kid who is false, the kid who hides herself
and lies, the kid who can’t read who can read,
who pretends she can’t read, takes willingly
upon herself this crippling shortcoming all the
better to impersonate a member of a
subspecies to which she does not belong and
need not belong but to which, for every wrong
reason, she wants him to believe she belongs.
Wants herself to believe she belongs.” (164; ch.
3)

12. “she was quite lacking in something, and I
didn’t mean the capacity to attend to small talk.
What I meant I would have named if I could. It
wasn’t intelligence. It wasn’t poise. It wasn’t
decorum or decency—she could pull off that
ploy easily enough. It wasn’t depth—
shallowness wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t
inwardness—one saw that inwardly she was
dealing with plenty. It wasn’t sanity—she was
sane and, in a slightly sheepish way, haughty-
seeming as well, superior through the authority
of her suffering. Yet a piece of her was
decidedly not there.” (212; ch. 4)

13. “The illiteracy had been an act, something she
decided her situation demanded. […] Think
about it. Afflicts herself with illiteracy too.. Takes
it on voluntarily. Not too infantilize herself,
however, not to present herself as a dependent
kid, but just the opposite: to spotlight the
barbaric self befitting the world. Not rejecting
learning as a stifling form of propriety but
trumping learning by a knowledge that is
stronger and prior.” (297; ch. 5)

14. Faunia’s funeral
“Her god was nature, and her worship of nature
extended to her love for our little herd of cows,
for all cows, really, for that most benevolent of
creatures who is the foster mother of the
human race. Faunia had an enormous respect
for the institution of the family dairy farm. […]”
(Sally on 286; ch. 5)
“Over time, she was no longer invisible to the
student, no longer just a housekeeper, but
another person who they’d developed respect
for.” (287; ch. 5)

15. Statements of identity
“Being stupid Faunia—that’s my achievement,
Coleman.” (233-4; ch. 4)
Coleman: “Self-discovery—that was the punch to
the labonz. Singularity. The passionate struggle
for singularity. The singular animal. The sliding
relationship with everything. Not static but sliding.
Self-knowledge but concealed. What is as
powerful as that?” (108; ch. 2)
“Buried as a Jew, I thought, and, if I was
speculating correctly, killed as a Jew. Another of
the problems of impersonation.” (325; ch. 5)

16. “Everyone Knows”
“‘Everyone knows’ is the invocation of the cliché
and the beginning of the banalization of
experience, and it’s the solemnity and the sense of
authority that people have in voicing the cliché
that’s so insufferable. What we know is that, in an
unclichéd way, nobody knows anything. You can’t
know anything.” (209; ch. 4)
“For all that the world is full of people who go
around believing they’ve got you or your neighbor
figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not
known. The truth about us is endless. As are the
lies.” (315; ch. 5)

17. “Dad, everyone in Athena knew. That’s how it got
to us.”
“Everyone? Who is everyone?”
[…]
“Lisa. Lisa heard it first.”
“Who did Lisa hear it from?”
“Several sources. People. Friends.” (173; ch. 3)
“Simply to make the accusation is to prove it. To
hear the allegation is to believe it. No motive for
the perpetrator is necessary, no logic or
rationale is required. Only a label is required.
The label is the motive. The label is the
evidence. The label is the logic.” (290; ch. 5)

18. Some reminders
Bring blue books to the final!
Tomorrow is election day.