Blockchain Papers

Kirk Curnutt

Scott Donaldson, writes James L. W. West III in his short but precise preface to Fitzgerald and the War Between the Sexes, a posthumous collection of essays by the late literary biographer (1928–2020) who was a mainstay of Fitzgerald studies for a half-century, “was an excellent scholar and a good man, generous with his time and knowledge. . . . He brought a newspaperman’s curiosity to his work and an open, accessible style to his writing” (West, “Preface” viii). From the beginning of his career, the prolific Donaldson was also a master of repurposing his wide-ranging contributions to American literary history and its development. Whereas most scholars are content to see an essay or chapter into print in one venue and move on, the author, perhaps most notably of The Impossible Craft: Literary Biography (2015), found inventive ways of repackaging and reconfiguring entries on his vita, sometimes decades after the fact. Twenty years ago, just before the dawn of the e-reader era, such long-out-of-print early efforts as his The Suburban Myth (1968) and Poet in America: Winfield Townley Scott (1972) reappeared under the aegis of the print-on-demand publisher iUniverse, making available in affordable softcover editions valuable studies that remained sequestered in university stacks, unavailable to most readers. This foray into self-(re)publishing soon led to a valuable relationship with Open Road Media, which produced digital versions of his controversy-scarred John Cheever: A Biography (1988) and the unjustly overlooked Archibald MacLeish: An American Life (1992).1 Thanks to the encouragement of the Minnesota Historical Society, the University of Minnesota Press also brought his much-admired Fitzgerald biography, Fool for Love: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1983), back to life for a new generation of scholars and fans.Perhaps most impressively, Donaldson himself rewrote nearly two dozen previously published journal articles to create the essential collection Fitzgerald and Hemingway: Works and Days (2009). It is hard to think of another omnibus of a commentator’s lifework whose contents fit together so seamlessly. By updating each essay’s secondary sources and revising for overall unity and cohesion of voice, Donaldson pulled off the rare feat of compiling a “greatest hits” collection that never sounds dated, whose analyses feel fresh and insightful rather than like time capsules from, say, 1973 (when the well-known essay “Scott Fitzgerald’s Romance with the South” first appeared in the Southern Literary Journal) or 1982 (when the oft-republished “Money and Marriage in Fitzgerald’s Stories” was featured in Jackson R. Bryer’s collection The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: New Approaches in Criticism).Fitzgerald and the War Between the Sexes is not, as its title may imply, a focused dissection of a specific theme across an array of Fitzgerald efforts. Rather, it is a gathering of five late efforts either unpublished or uncollected at the time of their author’s death. One main selling point of the book is its compact size and affordability: at a brisk 132 pages and a $15.95 paperback list price, the collection represents an initiative on the part of West and Penn State University Press to produce critical studies of Fitzgerald for the general reader. (West’s own Business Is Good: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Professional Writer, coming in 2023, will be the second book in the series.) The centerpiece here is a sixty-three-page excursion into the gender dynamics of Tender Is the Night, “Tender Is the Night: The War Between the Sexes” (1–63), which West calls “the best close reading of the novel that I have seen” (“Preface” vii). I would agree with this assessment; its core appeal is its neutrality. Ever the journalist, Donaldson declines to take a position on the contentious gender politics in the novel that can make Fitzgerald seem at best an essentialist when it comes to sexual difference and at worst a misogynist in his insistence that modernity eroded the fundamental strengths of manhood.Another of the great pleasures that accounts for the essay’s readability is that Donaldson does not harp on his thesis. Rather, he lets his discussions of key moments in Fitzgerald’s fourth novel flow with a spontaneity that arises in part from his nonchronological analysis. His discussion begins in media res, focusing on the moment in book 2, chapter 14, when Dick Diver treats (not very effectively or with much sympathy) the eczemic “woman in room twenty.” As Donaldson argues, the patient’s inflamed skin is Fitzgerald’s most autobiographical nod to the torments suffered by his wife during the initial months of her protracted hospitalization at Dr. Oscar Forel’s Les Rives de Prangins Clinic in Nyon, Switzerland, a that the to the Dick that is the of the of time who to the and that Fitzgerald his and her in the her novel the and her to and in the that this is as and as the that in gender is Donaldson is the who the the Tender Is the the From the essay on the ways in which the of “the of to Dick Diver by The from the Diver and to a that and the wife and of who as a by a and whose with Fitzgerald’s the to his Donaldson for A on and essential and to Fitzgerald’s 2, chapter a that to on her in the the of Dick and as for the that to by to as the of a as which to Dick to Donaldson not in the have the of his as a for his her own to such as to I to as a from to a from to of the than the during their than a in American Donaldson as part of his the essay also the of which Dick and As Donaldson Fitzgerald’s of the of in the relationship and may have to the the of the of and in that Tender Is the be for in the of the and the of remained a rather for the was the of a a into a a Fitzgerald best his for in which he previously in his first two This of and The and As Donaldson argues, the for of whose for and and from the of which the the in to to and Literary the own in his of his of and the and his to for his from the can the novel and the of the to A on of his “the of his and his into the of politics by a New of of of of his in the in the dissection of the of or is in Donaldson calls the and that can have on of its like who may in the feel to by the of the perhaps the of to have than as the of by and the Diver and the to the for the that one that to the very that that the very as his was in a that Dick is in the the and are to the that into its It may be that the a and is to the but on from for “the of his and and are the main as in a A discussion of book chapter at the that the to an on the that of her in the As Donaldson on de a a at her de in the an their and and A and a after their de was a in a second when her the of was to at a and the of studies that the in the of the to Tender is not and de in their to the novel is not A second to the that a of R. a to in of the to the of the late the of and in Tender was from a also the and the during the two years in which the was to his of is the he that is Fitzgerald’s at than it his in he and in a for that one of this the Donaldson as to the is that Fitzgerald this Donaldson “the that was of it on to his The very on the to which the of and Fitzgerald’s as the essay that Tender Is the is a novel that does not have to take in an to the War Between the Sexes” is such a de that one can it the essays that can but its rather and the American is a of Fitzgerald’s most novel that its general as the at the and Literary in New in an when that was the for book in the the essay a and specific who may not have or to its and pleasures the it can as a American of the novel as “the first that American in Donaldson Fitzgerald to James as a who the and the for and the As he and to the than most who are off by her and that his Donaldson together a of and and an of and is his discussion of as to is for the of As he are at and like the in a that the of the of is the one with which are This of of the the of a literary and her previously appeared as a core chapter in The Impossible that that on literary for for an after nearly years it was first I West to it to make it This is a good for the key of and is a master in the and that into literary From The of Fitzgerald: An American Life Donaldson have and to their of as the of the with was The to the essay is the that the to into his of The and the that an American the of found in is and Scott Fitzgerald, A Marriage by with the and her in of is so in its of that one scholars would its on such say, Fitzgerald’s with Fitzgerald is a of the in the not just his but efforts such as and his The appeared in the of The Fitzgerald in and as the for not one but two in Works and and of The The have from one a into the that is a . . . that articles have published that will be in a book by James L. W. West to that that in print for nearly Fitzgerald is a that back to is the here most of “Scott and was at the Fitzgerald in and and appeared the in the at The Fitzgerald to the but Donaldson to it with the literary he was also a The to think that is “Scott and is not as to Fitzgerald scholars as it its here is to with the that Fitzgerald and may have a as as a Donaldson an of their in the a with and by the and and by the to and the of for the Fitzgerald and their of in American which in their politics in the have Donaldson to this as a of to the of He the to whose An a at a on in which to one or two with Fitzgerald for the in her was after with the in American literary history when on the Dick in that writes is a and in the most Fitzgerald the most in her Is to it in a as but of the of of Fitzgerald at the that his for his of a in as a a than at the Donaldson does that the a . . . in but is is is a literary that the of Fitzgerald, was a whose the to from his with the whose with a of time and than style and at the the in Donaldson during his two the book of his by was his Fitzgerald: The and of a Literary As an of Fitzgerald studies a when Donaldson that their the Fitzgerald in but a his The to her in late but not published the of The to an essay on The be for Fitzgerald studies an to her a of life is as as is as a or than as an her short the of and in ways as inventive as Donaldson is in their and “Scott and in their that the Short Stories of that his also featured one of her most This is the best can Fitzgerald and the War Between the essays a of that scholars the of posthumous book comes from the he new into and that may like the back of and America: A a that in Fitzgerald Fitzgerald’s does not either in her title or it may not to but it studies of the have focused on its in his on during his or on his of literary F. 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Scott Fitzgerald and the second with and the in Tender Is the and The of the the available the in a chapter that Fitzgerald like is not a with he is the in her may not with of Fitzgerald as a like Short he the that the in this to the that from the of a to be the and of This argues, and by of of from James and on to and The of with on Jackson or John F. also chapter on Fitzgerald and is the a to the of the versions of skin to in the or with as the of the the of with as to The for the to with a that in Fitzgerald’s his of as a not to think of a he for his by with the one of his that was to the in the . . . as one to create with their of would the in the in and into published in to the to into as a as his own of in his one that than is the that as his it is that the who have to and work have in in was to his and himself as a of his most on the he in his he John the is in in that the which in of who as to the in the novel The the The of a it “the American as in and as an is to of the to Fitzgerald is of which than on the of the author’s who in the in the and a her is in the of the as the Fitzgerald It was his who into to his the to that with which he so to his Fitzgerald his as the of American Scott As the the that as on his the Fitzgerald in was and back into the late This was into the author’s his in and list Fitzgerald as Fitzgerald’s his in when the with Fitzgerald scholars are most was two years to to back into his As a most discussions his of as of the author’s to be the to a by a From the and a with the for and that Fitzgerald the and his in and to before in are a the in Fitzgerald’s Fitzgerald his would have the of his the this in This of her the point can be can his is I to it As in the essay does Fitzgerald seem to at a of at that he by not or perhaps his back than a is I first of he an to a in his that I would never like and that I the of but a of a a who the as is the so it was during the and is in its close The chapter discussions of and of The the of an that and an that to the the on the of the of the who the their from a just as his to a very of his and a as time on and begins to his own he with a of to his as but their are of The and The and Tender Is the Night, of which “the by or as as the and of which on it is an or As Fitzgerald’s with with the author’s of and as he as in the which he to his This are to his when in he to the for by “the to when the of and his “the . . . the of the at in . . . and the soon is the who to close his just one in his to the of the American as from in he to as part of the a of that not the of as the of the may that the that its was from the of may be just a most of the of on as from to may be at than the that he and the Fitzgerald’s own his the great Scott of and the of of the and of in for Fitzgerald than to in the a title of I that most have its such as in The A not a on the (West, The here for Tender Is the Night, the discussion on the of a perhaps best by L. Fitzgerald, and in Tender Is the As the history of skin as for the and of in the in part by of and a for a such as skin represents the of and that the of for which he to most at of skin he to his of himself as a with a for a novel and published in the years that the of in the of the is by his to his as and as “was his short in “the very of This in the that Dick in the of whose of as a than the at the in of the of and on and the of by and and a for as as key to Fitzgerald as his his and literary are and in the most Fitzgerald of The of the of the American As Fitzgerald: The and of a Literary and The to and It on literary for the or is have from of but Fitzgerald at the general as excellent and the of The is the of accounts of wife the to and with a book on the of The and the in and not of Fitzgerald efforts such as of the and as the to It on the . . . but he be to that of Fitzgerald The and the One of that is it can to the best of in the in chapter and in the are so of the that one such an does a can into a to Fitzgerald and the of the American for or A The Life of can he such a of the book is also in its to the Fitzgerald I the for this was not to but The The an of the and who in that As a her in a style that the that the excursion which the novel was the to was with a that never to of this of but book much in the to of the and that can in their It also brought to The of is to the by in with after her her in the in to her from with the a in the in the of chapter the of the does not create a of a to produce his the of an wife of his Fitzgerald himself is to for the as core are into and which the he to to himself to his The in the never Scott on the on the in the on the in the remained which the to the at and Fitzgerald to from the of the was in his from the The of the in the Scott a before he but he just with his and never or in his to the most of this of begins chapter which the to and in The and the one of the of the The of in which an Fitzgerald and his literary at a in by of a and to time with her The to the or that which an of are in for and to the or As the New at the but this like the of the new is a lets it This is a who the make that of the as in the does not his to be such a but he is not her as the for a generation with one on its who who their the to on the to the general . . for a as be He was and to the of this book the at the of is not an but an man, it was a this of The of the in this but five The and the that an American the of the that most it was to that of an of in and in Between the Sexes a one or another is a but the into when As Donaldson argues, of the are It was than years one one was on the to or much is the in her that the that never to the was or the as Donaldson the of or not with is than the of as the it War Between the Sexes of the relationship and into her the the is and the unpublished he is as as as his Tender Is the is in part on and the short on the the is the the title as of the does he the which Donaldson that may have the of the from her as with As to in an that Donaldson first into the with so and never Scott with the in Donaldson, Fool for of the of that on the worst would seem to the that Fitzgerald from not for his of the the of his own his he his own or at to hard is it to that the of is not the from her the of the in the in which the Southern to the of her Minnesota her and not be that the was than a this of her was like her to the in one chapter are short such as in to in can a of be by a to one are to the that a very into of the when the book into a of the and an who in a Donaldson as the of Between the Sexes are a of the book of The nonchronological which back and from the to in the Fitzgerald a from the of most but for a that as “the of the of the American is here the The to and in the novel to the and of the Fitzgerald The chapter in her in her is as to his wife from her he can her from the of and their A in which to her in the from the the moment when on to the A chapter to a as 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for studies of The would be in this that The and not to new of the This a for the collection he with and W. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The and New in but he also an excellent essay on and to and collection on Tender Is the first to Fitzgerald’s fourth novel his and of Tender Is the Thanks to his new and affordable of The and for of in a novel as a he with the New collection on the of their Tender and its as his initial on to a of is to the with the a Fitzgerald in from of is the in of Fitzgerald’s career, take on This of and own on and in the and it is to that and the general of the have editions to of of the is in Ever it the in The and suffered from and editions than Fitzgerald novel or editions it The and the of by The was by but from the of James L. W. West which the after decades of does not in that across the but his feel and to Fitzgerald’s to for the that have the novel as the of the that its in his time to the of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The and his with the of the the novel in the in this by the the and of that on a the The and of the with for which he is also that Fitzgerald at fundamental of American the the and the book of this is have the literary who of as the of as an the that Fitzgerald to the he to that the of the The is a his his a that the main and never work to and on that his life a that and that in a that the to the to is the in this than who that to and to of and is as a Fitzgerald in and from to like the of and is a of in the of the that the one that the most of the of work and to as writes of to work this the of his New whose chapter and in The and the as the to the of “the of As an with a to and so as to from a of the of a new with an for this I would that the a as the from his second The that it is not a on a as a for that a at on the the in most the of and the which may be than an of is that can be its own for the of this is one to his work Fitzgerald never as he to himself in that by he was Dick One who than and of short published in the in The that most a work by does not was by his to create point in his to for The and can it in the as from that of James The or A to the of and literary have much to the of and was also the after of the first of the of in and the first of into the first of a when in in the was first produced on not to the of the very first of It was also the second that The was one of the in by Fitzgerald and which its and that in which is notably in as on the the of the and the The and as of the is as good a as to

Heyward Ehrlich

Poe came of age in what Frank Luther Mott described as a “Golden Age of Periodicals” in A History of American Magazines ([New York: D. Appleton, 1930], 337). Although “essentially a magazinist” (PL 476), Poe managed to become a major American author by working in the fruitful midground between books and newspapers. “The whole tendency of the age is Magazine-ward,” he wrote in 1846. “We now demand the light artillery of the intellect: we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused—in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. On the other hand,” he warned, “the lightness of the artillery must not degenerate into the pop-gunnery . . . of the newspaper press” (Graham’s, December 1846, eapoe.org).What Poe called “pop-gunnery” in newspapers, anticipating the stream of social network items on the Internet today, had their place for him when he needed their special ambiance. Significantly, he announced his return to New York in 1844 by publishing his famous “Balloon-Hoax” as an extra of a penny paper, The Sun. It was issued on a single sheet surrounded by a mixture of announcements, events, and fiction reprints. Poe saw that the effects of the penny papers on “the whole newspaper business of the country . . . are probably beyond all calculation” (Edgar Allan Poe, Essays and Reviews, ed. G. R. Thompson [New York: Library of America, 1984], 1214; hereafter ER). The impact of The Sun was memorable: “Its success firmly established ‘the penny system’ throughout the country” . . . [becoming] one of the most important steps ever yet taken in the pathway of human progress” (ER 1221). On the other hand, the penny press also contributed “an increasingly spicy diet of horror, gore, and perversity” (David S. Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance [New York: Oxford University Press, 1988], 171), suggesting at times a content approaching that of Poe’s most extreme tales.When “The Balloon-Hoax” was published, Richard Adams Locke edited The Sun, where his quite famous “Moon Hoax” had appeared eleven years before. Reviewing Locke afterward, Poe listed the main ingredients of a good hoax: “the novelty of the idea,” its “reason-repressing character,” the tact of the deception, and the “exquisite vraisemblance of the narration” (Godey’s, October 1846, eapoe.org). Suggesting a possible similarity between the hoax and the detective tale, Poe reminded us that the former challenged the reader with constant intellectual “correctness, and the consequent difficulty of detecting a flaw” (“Doings of Gotham,” 4, eapoe.org).Readers of a detective tale might enjoy the possibility, however difficult, of solving the crime, but readers of a hoax had to deal with the utter impossibility of the situation. In total, Poe wrote six hoaxes, each exhibiting a different kind of wit than that found in his detective tales. They further burnished his image as a very clever writer in what was, lest we forget, the age of P. T. Barnum. To a degree his hoaxes were the humorous literary equivalent of diddling, sharing its qualities of “minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity, nonchalance, originality, impertinence, and grin” (M 3:869–70; repr. Edgar Allan Poe, Tales and Sketches, ed. Mabbott [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000], 2: 869–70; hereafter M [2000] 2).Poe’s first hoax, “The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall” (Southern Literary Messenger, June 1835), as he later admitted, failed to achieve a consistency of approach, because he “fell back upon a style half plausible, half bantering” (Godey’s, October 1846, eapoe.org). The banter included the use of the date April 1, the description of the balloon as “entirely made of dirty newspapers,” and his use of Dutch-Irvingesque ambiance. In this and subsequent hoaxes, Poe always built on something that readers already knew. Recent press reports of balloon flights provided the starting point for “Hans Pfaall.” Early exploration attempts in the Antarctic provided information on which to base The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1837). The famous Lewis and Clark expedition paved the way for its imaginary predecessor, “The Journal of Julius Rodman” (1840). Poe used the apparently inexhaustible subject of aerial travel again in “The Balloon-Hoax” (1844), where he incorporated as many supporting factual details as possible. The contemporary interest in hypnotism and mesmerism—forerunners of the modern concept of the unconscious—providedgrounds for his next hoax, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845). Finally, the contemporary gold craze and the myth of the transmutation of lead provided contexts for his last hoax, “Von Kempelen and His Discovery” (1849).Poe claimed that the public widely believed his hoaxes. One reader, the historian Robert Greenhow, went so far as to mention “Julius Rodman” in his Memoir, Historical and Political, on the Northwest Coast of North America, and the Adjacent Territories (PL 289). Poe insisted that most readers believed his “Balloon-Hoax”: “Not one person in ten discredited it . . . chiefly the ignorant, because the thing was so novel, so entirely ‘out of the usual way’” (PL 161). For “Van Kempelen,” Poe made the similar claim that “nine persons out of ten (even among the best informed) will believe the quiz,” adding that as a “check to the gold fever, it will create a stir to some purpose” (PL 796). In private, however, Poe told a different story, responding to a query from Arch Ramsay, a Scottish druggist: “Hoax is precisely the word suited to M. Valdemar’s case. . . . Some few persons believe it—but I do not—and don’t you” (PL 677).The press generally greeted Poe’s hoaxes with skepticism. However, reviewers at first were charmed by the novelty of “Hans Pfaall”: the Baltimore Republican saw it as “a capital burlesque upon balloonings” (PL 160), and the Charleston Messenger appreciated it as “one of the most exquisite specimens of blended humor and science” (PL 160–61). But reviewers who recalled that Arthur Gordon Pym had been party serialized “under the garb of fiction” could not accept it as a work of fact supposedly created by an actual Pym, then conveniently deceased. Although the New-Yorker praised Pym as a work of “extraordinary, freezing interest” (PL 250), the New York Mirror called Poe a “liar of the first magnitude” (PL 252) and Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine declared it to be “a mass of ignorance and effrontery” (PL 254). The Naval and Military Gazette remarked that Poe’s Pym contained “not only the improbable but the impossible” (PL 257). Disdaining “The Balloon-Hoax” as “ridiculous,” James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald used the occasion to refer to the current Sun publisher, Moses Y. Beach, as “that manufacturer of hoaxes of all kinds” (PL 460).Taking advantage of the loose editorial standards of the day, Poe sometimes pursued the opportunity to exaggerate the extent of his accomplishments and even to fabricate details in his biography. For example, he reported that as editor of the Southern Literary Messenger he had increased the number of subscribers eightfold, from 700 to 5,500, in only fifteen months (Poe to Anthon, October 1844, eapoe.org), and later had boosted circulation at Graham’s tenfold (from 5,000 to 52,000) in only two years (ER 742). Poe’s estimates were repeated in some form in biographies and general reference works until Terrence Whalen, examining the surviving circulation records of the Southern Literary Messenger, found that subscriptions increased only modestly during Poe’s editorship, undermining his claims: “The oft-repeated Messenger story must therefore be seen as a deliberate act of deception” (Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999], 75).Perhaps in imitation of Byron, Poe added some details to his biography that made him seem more adventurous and more brilliant, and he also shaved two years off his official age. Poe gathered these claims for a biographical sketch intended for the Philadelphia Saturday Museum in 1843, hoping they would serve to promote his proposed magazine, The Stylus. The claims consisted entirely of “myths concerning the elopement of Poe’s parents, their death ‘on a visit to Richmond,’ Poe’s journey to Greece and St. Peterburg, [and] his return from Europe on the night after Mrs. Allan’s burial” (A. H. Quinn Edgar Allan Poe [1941; repr., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998], 373). Although Poe expected his friend Frederick William Thomas to complete the article, Thomas, insisting he “knew more of his history,” demurred, and the sketch was completed by Henry W. Hirst, who claimed he had been helped by Thomas, which Poe dismissed as “a slight extension of the truth for which I pray you to forgive him” (Quinn 371). Thus, when Thomas confronted Poe regarding the inaccuracies and fictions in the sketch, he took the matter very lightly: “He was amused, and laughed the matter off by confessing that the story was intended to help the magazine project” (qtd. in Whalen 64).On another occasion, Poe insisted that the use of exaggeration was an essential element in the composition of “Berenice.” He famously enumerated the sources of the tale’s effectiveness: “In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical” (PL 150). Poe continued by applying the process to editing: “The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in nature—to Berenice.”Today, many species of exaggeration flourish in Silicon Valley, where careers are believed to thrive by following the maxim: “Fake it till you make it.” A recent severe example of the maxim was Elizabeth Holmes’s unicorn, her highly promising automated blood testing company Theranos. With her charming presence and appealing backstory, Holmes presented herself as a youthful, female version of the brilliantly successful Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. At its height Theranos raised an estimated $1 billion in investments, enjoyed a marketing agreement with Walgreen’s, and had an estimated stock value reaching as high as $10 billion. But Theranos proved to be something other than a legitimate invention seeking to turn a profit. On October 15, 2015, the Wall Street Journal began running a series of exposés revealing that the company’s signature device was a sham that had never worked; in order to perpetuate the lie, its supporting tests had been staged. In 2018 the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Holmes with a “years-long fraud” of deceiving both investors and patients. In January 2022 a jury found her guilty of four counts of fraud. Although Facebook has literally billions of users, very few of them stop to think about how the service works. Indeed, even outside Facebook very few understand its inner operations. There was great interest therefore when Frances Haugen, a former data engineer at Facebook, turned whistleblower in September 2021, sharing with the Securities Exchange Commission, the Wall Street Journal, the British Parliament, EU authorities, and even 60 Minutes thousands of internal company documents. Her evidence suggested that Facebook prioritized its profits over the public interest in its handling of a long list of sensitive subjects, including “political misinformation, hate speech, teenage mental health, human trafficking, the promotion of ethnic violence, preferential treatment for certain users, and its communications with investors” (Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2021). Although Facebook employees spent 3.2 million hours tackling global issues of misinformation in 2020, Haugen’s documents disclosed that a disappointingly low 13 percent worked on content from outside the United States.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg replied to Haugen, “Many of the claims don’t make any sense. I think most of us just don’t recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted” (Facebook, October 6, 2021). Facebook spokesperson Mitch Henderson said it had spent $13 billion and hired forty thousand people to work on safety-related issues, further claiming its artificial intelligence software was catching 90 percent of hate speech. In rebuttal, Haugen said the figure was less than 5 percent (New York Times, October 25, 2021).After the Haugen papers appeared, Facebook changed its identity, preferring to be known as Meta. Zuckerberg expressed the hope on October 26, 2021, that over the coming five years people would move from seeing Facebook as “a social media company to being a metaverse company.” Since “metaverse” had become a widely adopted buzzword with a variety of meanings and associations, for many observers this immediately clarified little. But Facebook did have a concrete plan to invest at least $10 billion in its VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), and AI (artificial intelligence) activities. Zuckerman remarked, “I believe the metaverse is the next chapter for the internet” (Facebook, October 28, 2021). Nevertheless, whether known as Facebook or Meta, the stock of the company collapsed, falling from its high in September 2011 by 45 percent in February 2022 (Bloomberg, February 18, 2022).After the era of Web1, the text-based early web, and Web2, the era of the interactive commercial web, Web3 promised to bring AR, VR, and AI into the home. However, some observers remain skeptical about the promises of machine or artificial intelligence: “For instance, many companies who claim to have developed algorithms that can recognize complicated images or derive meaning from text with machine learning don’t always mention that humans are often doing much of that work behind the scenes” (Washington Post, January 4, 2022; hereafter WP).Outside Silicon Valley in the United States today, in an era of ultra-partisan politics, unbridled exaggeration in the form of misinformation, disinformation, fake news, doctored media, conspiracy theories, and outright lies has become dangerously prevalent. Recently the word “hoax” is more likely to be applied to discussions of partisan politics than to literary antics in magazines and newspapers. In the United States nearly everyone seems to believe in some national political hoax. To Trump supporters, the hoax is the theft of the 2020 election by Biden and his supporters. To Trump critics, the hoax is Trump’s claim that the election had been stolen, despite the denials of Trump’s vice president and attorney general. In addition, there are also a parallel pair of irreconcilable views of what happened at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. While president, Trump was ceaselessly active on the social networks, especially Twitter. According to critical statistics gathered by the Washington Post Fact Checker newsletter, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first three years as president, with the number increasing each year: “Trump averaged about six claims a day in his first year as president, 16 claims day in his second year, 22 claims day in this third claims a day in his January hoaxes have been to contemporary fake news, even they never to political G. “Fake Poe’s and the that in their of penny press as The Sun readers to their 2020, At the the penny press to some extent the of a that has been as the of and (qtd. in people a among media for that their the be among in Poe A in point is Poe’s story of the outside the Sun for the his of the balloon in the has because his to believe this great Poe had described a of for a so that the the Sun was literally for most of the The and Thomas a different starting from his that Poe’s after a or two of him “not but Poe his to a newspaper for he the but by a of on the the and told the that the extra was a hoax, as he for he had it The the and the . . . saw his author what he to be the of American repr., New York: a and who had Poe times in In “The Poe described her as “a a a a and a of of more I not to (ER one of her to Poe he had ever praised a in for Poe replied that to an act would be an he that he had so when to a way of “not his to In Poe he was guilty of a the of (qtd. in Quinn with Poe that he and even with of Edgar Allan Poe repr., New York: hereafter However, in a subsequent he to the that he all “I on would to the very the I would have in from and from and on this are and in “The of apparently for Poe, the of newspapers, us in in it is the of to create a make a to further the of (qtd. in this how to create a among readers by content with the of some “The mass of the people as only him who of the general (M in a of far beyond the of success in the maxim “Fake it till you make it.” For Poe, was never a of a successful but a to a variety of and pursued this by two which have been described as and in an Poe never in partisan fake people his of exaggeration and him to his work to literary as he in his that a (ER For Poe, even after or public much he continued his for and in “I . . . from a mental and of in are at

Alex Abramovich

Midway through the dark woods of the 1960s, Bob Dylan took his Triumph motorcycle for a country ride and lost his balance, or hit an oil slick, or (according to the mythopoetic account Dylan himself would give) stared too long into the sun and found himself momentarily blinded. The specific circumstances are cloudy. But we do know that Dylan was burned out after nine months of a grueling, seemingly endless, still-ongoing tour; that the proofs of his first novel, Tarantula , had arrived and that Dylan, who seems to have written the book in a methamphetamine haze, recognized them to be unreadable and embarrassing; that there were hundreds of hours of films to edit for a forthcoming documentary, and constant demands for new recordings. Dyan's responsibilities had multiplied exponentially, and vast sums of money were at stake. We can only imagine the toll these expectations, and others, took on his central nervous system: “Different anachronisms were thrust upon me . . . ” Dylan wrote in his 2004 memoir, Chronicles: Volume One . “Legend, Icon, Enigma (Buddha in European Clothes was my favorite) - stuff like that, but that was all right. These titles were placid and harmless, threadbare, easy to get around with them. Prophet, Messiah, Savior - those are tough ones” (124). Bob Dylan was 25 years old. Dylan crashed his Triumph in July of 1966. His close friend, the folksinger and novelist Richard Fariña, had died in another motorcycle crash a few months earlier. The carousel was out of control.

Michael Rothberg

3 Song of Solomon picks up where Mumbo Jumbo leaves off. That is, in repeating with a difference certain details and motifs of Ishmael Reed's 1972 novel, Toni Morrison signifies upon what Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has called one of grand works of critical Signification (238). (1) While the writing of Mumbo Jumbo concludes, we read, at P.M. on Jan. 31st, 1971, Morrison's famous North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent sets off from the roof of Mercy Hospital for other side of Lake Superior ... [a]t 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday the 18th of February 1931 (Reed 218; Morrison, Song 3). If Morrison sets her watch by Reed's earlier novel, she also rewinds the time back to the early years of the Depression. Yet even in that return to the past, Song of Solomon continues Mumbo Jumbo, a novel that, except for its epilogue, is set in a fantastic pastiche of the 1920s. With this opening example, I would like to suggest how an exploration of Song of Solomon and its many intertexts evoke questions of narrative logic, historical time, and cultural memory. Because it is so densely allusive on so many different levels and in so many different modes, Morrison's novel deserves to be read not only through its numerous intertexts, but also as a commentary on the significance of intertextuality as a literary, historical, and social process. As her careful but parodic dating suggests, Morrison, like Reed, uses intertextuality to provide an alternative to dominant accounts of history, and, like Reed again, she does so by engaging both with texts of the black Atlantic and with Euro-American currents in Western literary culture. In particular, for my interests, both Song of Solomon and Mumbo Jumbo rewrite Thomas Pynchon's paranoid postmodern quest classic The Crying of Lot 49. (2) On the surface, Morrison's novel seems far from Pynchon's and Reed's work, but in fact they constitute a complex constellation that can lead to a rethinking both of intertextual relations and of intersections among literature, history, and memory. Each novel involves a protagonist's quest for a hidden truth that destabilizes his or her everyday world and turns out to involve coming to terms with some significant, but previously obscure, aspect of the past and its still operative influence on the present. Pynchon's Oedipa sets out to execute a will and finds herself searching for proof of an elaborate postal conspiracy that recedes hundreds of years into the past. Reed's PaPa LaBas attempts to understand the wax and wane of the Jew Grew infection and ends up seeking the sacred Text of black culture and uncovering an epic battle that stretches back to ancient Egypt. Finally, Morrison's Milkman initially sets out after his Aunt Pilate's inheritance, only to discover that it is not gold that is at stake, but an oral cultural document of familial and communal history. Despite broad narrative and thematic similarities--and a host of smaller-scale convergences--Morrison's work diverges significantly from the two other texts I have identified. While Reed in Mumbo Jumbo pushes Pynchon's paranoid and conspiratorial logic to the extreme, at once universalizing and shattering it, Morrison takes a different tack. She backgrounds conspiracy in order to explore a related, but significantly different, narrative logic, that of traumatic memory. While critics have in particular read Morrison's Beloved as a literary enactment of trauma, Song of Solomon also offers an opportunity to engage with contemporary legacies of traumatic memory. (3) Exploring the intersections among these texts takes on particular significance because narratives of conspiracy and trauma have emerged in recent decades as two of the most powerful logics through which the subjects of postmodern U.S. culture register and reflect on history. The two narrative logics are often linked, both in real life and in popular culture. In two well-known examples, the trauma of Kennedy's assassination has given birth to rampant paranoid speculation, and Mulder's conspiratorial thinking on The X Files has supposedly been spurred by the traumatic abduction of his sister. …