Abstract
The memory of judgment and the Holocaust is of great interest in postmodernists’ writings. The relationship between postmodernism and the Holocaust is always paradoxically juxtaposed. William Gass, an American postmodern writer and critic, touches the topic of the Holocaust in his masterpiece Middle C (2013). Gass tends to trivialize fascism to every man and every ordinary life, to disrespect the “sacred”. The novel has the skill in faking the identity or the details of its putative history. Is the Holocaust a subcategory of war crimes or the inhumanity of genocide? Is there any reliable way of establishing the reality of the Holocaust either through the memory of groups or individuals? Are genocide and occasional or no systematic atrocities the inevitability of a state? In this paper, we tend to explore the collective memory and individual memory of witnesses of the Holocaust presented in Middle C and the puzzlement of judgment as a war crime or inhuman genocide, thus arguing the ethos of history and shock of mediocrity in our daily life.
About the authors
Fan Fang is a Professor of English in School of International Studies, Zhejiang University. She got her PhD from Xiamen University (2005). Her research interests and publications are in the area of English and American Literature, and also Australian literature. She was a visiting scholar in English Department, Harvard University (2008–2009) and a senior visiting scholar in Faculty of English, Cambridge University, UK (July-August, 2015). She is entitled Qiushi Young Scholar at Zhejiang University, and accepted in 151 Talent Program of Zhejiang Province. Now she is general secretary of Association of Foreign Languages and Literature in Zhejiang Province. Address for correspondence: School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, 310058, China. Email: hzhzdonna@zju.edu.cn
Zhixiang Gao is a PhD candidate at Zhejiang University. Her research interest lies in studies of English and American Literature, and also Australian literature. Address for correspondence: School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, 310058, China. Email: 11705007@zju.edu.cn
Acknowledgements
This paper is for the program entitled “Cultural Memory in William Gass’s Postmodern Works”, which is funded by Zhejiang Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences (No. 18NDJC162YB).
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