Professor David B Hobbs: Keynote for Guest Lecture Series in Ottawa
Mary Shelley鈥檚 The Last Man, Marlen Haushofer鈥檚 The Wall, Guido Morselli鈥檚 Dissipatio H.G., David Markson鈥檚 Wittgenstein鈥檚 Mistress, and Anna de Marcken鈥檚 It Lasts Forever and Then It鈥檚 Over are all narrated by 鈥渆ndlings鈥 鈥 the term biologists use to denote the final living members of a soon-to-be-extinct species 鈥 and thereby inhabit the imagined position of the conventional lyric poem, in which a solitary mind in quiet reflection expresses personal feelings and speaks to an absent or abstract addressee. Professor Hobbs鈥檚 talk asked: what would it mean to call these novels 鈥渁postrophes,鈥 and how might the protocols of lyric reading push us to understand them differently? To do so, he explored what these novels do with the concept of duration, how they narrates departures from gender norms, how they depict becoming "closer" to the animal world while bringing language to it, and finally, what kind of political goal that a sustained texture of loneliness might serve.