Postmodern City Text:
Toronto, Taipei as Examples
Tentative Schedule
1. General Introduction:
1. 2/19 / Modern & PostmodernCity: General History and Major ThemesUnderstanding Cities & City Life
2. 2/26 / "Urbanism as a Way of Life"
"Toronto: The Meeting Place" -- NFB
"Taipei, Taipei" --Jay Shih
Selections from 《城市人》 詹宏志
2. Toronto and Taipei: Past and Present
3. 3/4 / Chapter II, In the Skin of a Lion by Michael OndaatjeArarat by Atom Egoyan
4. 3/11 / 〈古都〉
《超級大國民》
3. Concept City & City Visions
5. 3/18 / Excerpts Invisible City by Italo Calvino;Yo-Yo Ma - Inspired by Bach Vol. 1, The Music Garden
6. 3/25 / 〈系統的多重關係〉 by 黃凡;
〈馬桶〉〈上班族的天空〉〈文明幾何〉by 林燿德
7. 4/1 / "Metropolis: The City as Text" 1.2; 2.2
"A City is not a Tree"
Group Report
8. 4/8 / 《徵婚啟示》
I've Heard the Mermaid Sing by Patricia Rozema
4. Lived City (1): Love and Desire on Cities' Margins
9. 4/15 / "Metropolis: The City as Text" 3 Unreal City《愛情萬歲》蔡明亮
10. 4/22 / "I'm Running for My Life" by Austin Clarke
"Blossom" by Dionne Brand
Exotica by Atom Egoyan
11. 4/29 / 《孽子》
12. 5/6 / 《孽子》(2)
"The Robber Bride" (chaps 39-49) from The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
13. 5/13 / Robber Bride (2)
Group Report
5. Lived City (2): Postmodern City and Space of Flows
14. 5/20 / 《愛情來了》陳玉勳; 〈城市飛行〉黃銘正〈公寓導遊〉張大春
〈台灣的文化編入與脫落－依賴城市都市象徵支初步觀察〉
15. 5/27 / "Postmodern Urbanism and Canadian Corporate City"
"In Various Restaurants" by Daniel Jones;
"Rescue" from Concrete Forest
16. 6/3 / The Five Senses by Jeremy Podeswa
"The Reconstruction of Social Meaning in the Space of Flows" Manuel Castells
Postmodern City Text:
Toronto, Taipei as Examples
Table of Content
Theories on Reading City as Text, Taipei and Toronto
Title and author / source / p"Urbanism as a Way of Life" / 1. / 1
Selections from 《城市人》 詹宏志 / 2 / 6
"Metropolis: The City as Text" / 3 / 14
"A City is not a Tree" / 1 / 43
"Postmodern Urbanism and Canadian Corporate City" / 4 / 50
〈台灣的文化編入與脫落－依賴城市都市象徵支初步觀察〉 / 5 / 64
"The Reconstruction of Social Meaning in the Space of Flows" Manuel Castells / 1 / 75
Literary Texts
Title and author / source / pIn the Skin of a Lion ("Little Seeds" & "The Bridge") Michael Ondaatje / 1. / 1
〈古都〉by 朱天心 / 2 / 23
Invisible City by Italo Calvino / 3
〈系統的多重關係〉 by 黃凡; / 4 / 90
〈馬桶〉by 林燿德 / 5 / 113
〈上班族的天空〉〈文明幾何〉by 林燿德 / 6 / 118
"I'm Running for My Life" by Austin Clarke / 7 / 128
"Blossom" by Dionne Brand / 8 / 139
The Robber Bride (“Onset” & "Robber Bride") by Margaret Atwood / 9 / 147
〈公寓導遊〉by 張大春 / 10 / 209
"In Various Restaurants" by Daniel Jones / 11 / 222
"Rescue" Cordelia Strube / 11 / 228
* See the end of the textbook for the sources.
Sources:
1 (Theory) Legates, Richard T. & Frederic Stout, eds. The City Reader. NY: Routledge, 1996.
2 (Theory) 詹宏志. 《城市人》. 台北︰麥田, 1996.
3 (Theory) Bocock, Robert; Kenneth Thompson, eds. Social and Cultural Forms of Modernity. Oxford : Polity Press, 1992.
4 (Theory) Caulfield, Jon. City Form and Everyday Life: Toronto's Gentrification and Critical Social Practice. Toronto: U of Toronto P: 1994.
5 (Theory) 夏鑄九﹒ 《空間,歷史與社會論文選1987--1992》﹒台北市︰台灣社會研究, 1993[民82] .
1(Lit) Ondaatje, Michael. In the Skin of a Lion. Toronto: Penguin, 1987.
2(Lit) 朱天心． 《古都》． 台北︰麥田, 1997.
3(Lit) Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978].c1974.
4(Lit) 黃凡． 《都市生活》 台北︰聯經總經銷,民76[1987].
5(Lit) 林燿德． 〈馬桶〉﹒ 《精銳詩人十二家新作展》
6(Lit) ---. 《銀碗盛雪》﹒ 洪範, 1986.
7(Lit) Clarke, Austin. In This City. Toronto: Exile, 1992.
8(Lit) Brand, Dionne. “Blossom.” Other Solitudes: Canadian Multicultural Fictions. Eds. Hutcheon, Linda & Marion Richmond. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1990.
9(Lit) Atwood, Margaret. The Robber Bride. Toronto: McClelland-Bantam, Inc., 1993.
10(Lit) 張大春﹒ 〈公寓導遊〉﹒ 時報，1992.
11(Lit) Concrete Forest: The New Fiction of Urban Canada. Ed. Hal Niedzviecki. Toronto: M & S, 1998.
12(Lit) Michael Ondaatje
In the Skin of a Lion
The novel begins with a curious and intimate remembrance of childhood obsessions and embedded images. And like the memories of a child, the story that unfolds doesn't tell us all the expected facts in a linear fashion. . . .
Patrick Lewis leaves the Canadian wilderness for Toronto in the 1920's. He seems to have no specific course for his life and wanders among the city's working class like an Englishman exploring the Amazon jungle. He immerses himself in the life of each tribe he comes to until something propels him to move on. This is a mythic and stylized version of Canadian history, as if working class revolutionaries had really won their struggles, becoming the conquering heroes who chose what version of their stories went into the history books. The attention lavished on the details of various trades—bridge builders, leather tanners--doesn't seem unusual in this context. The laborers are noble and exotic: a thief is a shaman, the baker, a hero. http://www.mashmagazine.com/00feb/febbook.htmlhttp://www.mashmagazine.com/00feb/febbook.html
Patrick雖是土生土長的加拿大人，但家境窮困，幼時住在地圖沒有畫到的區域﹙10﹚。在成長過程中，他先身處鄉野，後「移民」到多倫多﹐再慢慢走入社會地圖的邊緣，認識社會剝削勞工的事實，最後並加入抵制權力的活動。派翠克進入多倫多社會的經驗大致可分三種︰他的勞工工作、搜尋工作、和戀愛經驗；三種經驗交錯，使他慢慢開放自己，同情勞工，並加入他們。
The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when
you have gone to the earth I will let my hair
grow long for your sake, I will wander through
the wilderness in the skin of a lion.
THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH
Never again will a single story be told
As though it were the only one.
JOHN BERGER
The Robber Bride
by MARGARET ATWOOD
Synopsis
This is the wise, unsettling, drastic story of three women whose lives share a common wound: Zenia, a woman they first met as university students in the sixties. Over the course of 30 years, she damaged each of them badly, betrayed their trust and treated their men as loot; then died. As the book opens, Zenia reappears in the restaurant where the three friends are eating lunch. In a richly layered narrative, Atwood skillfully evokes the decades of the past as she reveals the dark, sometimes chilling aspects of her characters’ childhoods. She retraces their lives, including their catastrophic encounters with Zenia, until we are back in the present — where it’s yet to be discovered whether Zenia can still wreak havoc.
Our excerpts and the book’s section titles (excerpts underlined):
1. Onset pp. 1-4 Zenia in history and the ”present” of the novel: Oct 23, 1990
2. The Toxique – Tony, Charis and Roz meeting in Toxique, seeing Zenia by accident. (The story told respectively from the three characters’ perspectives.)
3. Black Enamel – Tony’s childhood and her experience with Zenia
4. Weasel Nights – Charis’s
5. The Robber Bride –Roz’s
Chap 39: (Oct 23, 1990) Roz in her office and back home after meeting Zenia.
Chap 40: (May 1983) Roz and her husband Mitch
Chap 41: Roz and Mitch’s knowing each other and their marriage. (May 1983) p. 354 – meeting Zenia
Chap 42: Roz’s childhood with her mother in their rooming house. Her school’s Catholic education.
Chap 43: Roz’s father back from WWII. Roz getting to know about anti-Semitism.
Chap 44: the Father’s mistresses and his getting rich. Roz takes on a Jewish identity. Roz as a hybrid (388-90).
Chap 45: Roz after marriage, finds out about her father’s money. Roz, WiseWomanWorld and Mitch. (May 1983) Why she wants to meet Zenia again.
Chap 46: (May 1983) meeting Zenia. P. 404 Zenia’s stories
Chap 47: Zenia joins WiseWomanWorld. Mitch’s betrayal and Zenia’s disappearance p. 418-.
Chap 48 Mitch’s return. 1986 March Zenia’s death and then Mitch’s. Roz’s nervous breakdown.
Chap 49: (Oct 23, 1990) Roz on the cellar floor and then back up to the living room, comforted by the twins.
6. The Toxique: the three women go to meet Zenia respectively, facing her challenges (seduction and denial). Zenia’s death.
7. Outcome
Natasha Waxman
An ex-Canadian, ex-secretary, ex-waitress, ex-banana cultivator, ex-international child traumatizer, ex-tooter, and ex-enumerator, Natasha Waxman is presently a Michener Fellow pursuing an MFA in creative writing from the Texas Center for Writers. (source: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lac/XX/bios/waxman.html )