The Infernal Desire machines of Doctor Hoffman

1. The Infernal Desire machines of Doctor Hoffman A Surrealist Frame Narrative Novel By Angela Carter The Magic Flute

2. Angela Carter Angela Carter (7 May 1940 – 16 February 1992) was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. In 1969 Angela Carter used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, Japan. She wrote about her experiences there in articles and a collection of short stories, Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1974), and evidence of her experiences in Japan can also be seen in The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972).

3. Angela Carter cont... Two of her fictions have been adapted for the silver screen: The Company of Wolves (1984) and The Magic Toyshop (1987). At the time of her death, Carter had started work on a sequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre based on the later life of Jane's stepdaughter, Adele Varens. Angela Carter died in 1992 at the age of 51 at her home in London after developing lung cancer. “I don’t on the whole remember my own dreams, but I quite often use the formal structures of dreams—formal structures which I tend to get from Freud rather than from my own experience.” -Angela Carter to John Haffenden82

4. Angela Carter cont… • Angela Carter interview

5. Literary Significance and Reception The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is“the finest surrealist novel of the past 30 years. It perfectly captures the ideas and ideals of surrealist beauty.” (Jeff VanderMeer) The novel serves as a useful tool to describe our Western culture not because of interpreting our culture, but because the very structure, in fact, is the causes our culture. However, he criticized Carter’s wordiness and her overuse of abstraction, simile, and metaphors. While she was successful in her early career, this novel failed to achieve commercial success.

6. The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, was published in the United States as The War of Dreams. This novel is heavily influenced by surrealism, Romanticism, critical theory, and Western philosophy. It has been called a theoretical fiction, as it engages in issues of its time, notably feminism, mass media and the counterculture.

7. The Infernal…. Set in an unspecified Latin American country, the novel presents the story from the perspective of Desiderio, a government minister , whose city is currently under attack by Doctor Hoffman's reality distorting machines. Doctor Hoffman’s machines expands the dimensions of time and space allowing ever-changing mirages to inhabit the same dimension as the living. So Desiderio embarks on a journey to find Hoffman's former physics teacher, bringing him to Hoffman's castle.

8. The Infernal… In the end rejecting a caged unreality and eternal fulfillment, in the form of Doctor Hoffman's daughter Albertina, he kills both the doctor and his lover-to-be and restores reality becoming the reluctant hero of this tale.

9. The Infernal… Structure The novel is a first person frame narrative. Desiderio recounts the events of his past with several instances of second person. "...it was I who killed her. But you must not expect a love story or a murder story. expect a tale of picaresque adventure or even of heroic adventure..." (14). Carter depicts many of Desiderio's events and de-familiarizes the reader throughout the novel. In the introduction he essentially gives away the ending and the climax. This formal choice repeats throughout the novel as Carter constantly references the outcome of actions and events that have not occurred in the text.

10. Characters- The infernal… • Doctor Hoffman – an evil sadistic master physicist and the antagonist of the novel. He and his colleague Mendoza, uses their ability to create a new form of reality where nothing is bound by time or the normal rules of physics. Through the use of the desire machines which he fuels with “eroto-energy”, his new discovery that can power them with omnipotent and everlasting energy, he launches and attack on mankind.

11. Characters- The infernal… • Desiderio – The narrator and protagonist he is now an old man and recounts the events of his life to explain how he became a hero. He is a government minister in an unspecified Latin country that works under the Minister who sends him on a journey to find and quietly assassinate Dr. Hoffman and destroy his machine. His journey leads him to find his “true self”.

12. Characters- The infernal… • Albertina– supports her father's (Dr. Hoffman) actions and ideals. She is Desiderio’s soul mate and wants to use the energy from their love to propel the machines, thus increasing her father's power. Her name is most likely a reference to Proust's "Albertine", a female character that serves as an "other", or mirror for the protagonist as is her function in this novel.

13. Themes- The infernal… • Feminism- Carter creates women who are sexual even when their desires are seemingly undesirable to most female’s perspectives. Her female characters are strong and unbreakable, supporting Carter’s feminist views of female sexuality and identity. • Rationality versus Desire-Desiderioconstantly struggles over logic and love as he is clearly attracted to and in love with Albertina, however he kills her. In the end logic prevails for him.

14. Themes- The infernal… • Finding True Identity- This theme appears throughout every one of Desiderio’s adventures, he is forced to find his true self while being bombarded by illusions and distractions. • The Media's Effect on Society - Doctor Hoffman’s illusion inducing machines create the same effect as today’s newspapers, magazines, websites, and television broadcasts. The mass media constantly effects peoples’ thoughts, emotions, and beliefs.

15. Infernal… Throughout the novel, Carter asks the reader to define what is real versus what is an illusion. Hoffman’s machines keep “projecting representations on the world,” and in the modern world “technology makes the reign of all images possible.” (Suleiman 111) Carter warns to be wary of images for they can be mere illusions. While in Doctor Hoffman, she addresses the established boundaries between scientific disciplines to establish this point.

16. Infernal… Doctor Hoffman is peopled with characters that debate the reality of the “real” by means of their very existence. Therefore, the extent of “realness” depends on using criteria appropriate for the worlds — reality or dream/fantasy. For Carter there is an obvious and sometimes dangerous parallel between appearance, or role, and identity.

17. Work Cited: Infernal… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Infernal_Desire_Machines_of_Doctor_Hoffman http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/writers/12245.shtml Suleiman, Susan Rubin. “The Fate of the Surrealist Imagination in the Society of the Spectacle.” Flesh and The Mirror. Ed. Lorna Sage. London: Virago Press, 1994. 98-116 VanderMeer, Jeffrey. “Angela Carter (1940 - 1992).” The Modern Word - Scriptorium. 16 Dec. 2006 < http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/carter.html>

18. Infernal….Presentations Thursday and Friday Chps 1-3 using Close Read criteria