Narrative Transformations
107
Oregon State, as it turns out, is the third university she has attended—previously
staying for one year at Columbia and for one term at Corcoran, Everett’s old
stomping grounds. After they marry, Everett finds himself on the job market and
with very few offers beyond the campus visit and he is intrigued by an offer to
interview at Corcoran.
At the campus visit Everett is told that an aged Super Goat Man is still
on campus, still teaching a course or two, and that he will join them at the
faculty dinner. Everett also finds out that when Angela was a student at
Corcoran she dated and had a brief affair with Super Goat Man. "We fooled
around a few times. It was stupid,” she tells him (142). Everett responds "I don’t
know why but I find that totally disgusting” (142). But Everett does know why.
For Everett, Super Goat Man is the embodiment of the Other—more
specifically, he represents the sexual threat of the Other. Not only is he part
man, part goat—with its dionysian associations—more importantly, he is a
superhero (albeit, a minor superhero) and therefore he is the actual of every
kid’s fantasy. With the full attention of everyone at the faculty dinner, he leans
towards Super Goat Man and in a voice louder than necessary tells him, "I once
saw you rescue a paperclip” (147). And in uttering that sentence, he recasts a
memory best left forgotten and effectively emasculates Super Goat Man, the
college, and his own candidacy for a position at Corcoran University and the
story ends.
Arguing that his "so-called originality—which is just as often called
[his] ‘surrealism’ or [his] ‘postmodernism’—is overstated at the expense of how
deeply traditional his work is," Jonathan Lethem claims that "any innovation is a
sort of howling red flag. . . . It’s in the nature of the innovations to demand
disproportionate attention and description” (Bimbaum). And though Lethem is
speaking about the reception his novel The Fortress o f Solitude15 received—how
in his mind it was mis-perceived as avant-garde rather than the collaboration
between traditional realism and postmodernism he saw it to be—innovation is
the hallmark of his work and of his recent collection of stories Men and
Cartoons.16 These nine stories appropriate the spirit of comic book culture,
while at the same time they expand and transform the genre in order to re
interpret it and resituate it within the boundary of prose fictioa These stories
transform the ordinary into the “amazing” and the common place into the
“incredible” as did their science fiction precursors—and, as did and still does,
comic book culture.17
Oregon State University
William Petty
Notes
1 (a) It is surprising the music isn’t part o f this list since in the past 40 plus years youth
culture has divided itself along the lines o f styles or genre o f music— everything from
Goth to Punk to Alternative to Heavy-Metal to Hip Hop and on and on— each has its own
look and ethos and codes that help like-minded fans find each other as it also helps