The Slow Demise of Modernism, Aleatory Keepsakes, ’70s Trauma and Looking through the Glass Darkly in Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The article focuses on text-based image constructions in Colum McCann’s 9-11 novel, Let theGreat World Spin (2009). Disparate largely first-person narrators reveal the dark subterraneancontent of the narrative mostly taking place in the ghettos of New York struggling with (Nixon era)moral and economic bankruptcy, poverty and the aftermath of the Vietnam War. A range ofcharacters viewing Philippe Petit’s widely seen wire-walk between the Twin Towers on August 7,1974 introduce themes of beauty and transcendence. Postmodern art including the wire-walker’sperformance, comics, subway tags, and family keepsakes contrasts with conventionally modernistart and architecture. Resume Cet article se propose d'analyser les representations visuelles agencees par Let the Great World Spin(2009), un roman post 9/11 de Colum McCann. Une serie de narrateurs devoilent peu a peu lathematique tres noire du recit qui se deroule essentiellement dans les ghettos de New Yorkconfrontes a la fois a la faillite morale et economique (le recit est situe dans la presidence deNixon), la pauvrete et les sequelles de la guerre du Vietnam. Plusieurs personnages du roman ontassiste a la prouesse du funambule Philippe Petit, qui a traverse sur un fil la distance entre les ToursJumelles le 7 aout 1974. Leur temoignage introduit dans le roman les themes de la beaute et de latranscendance. Le texte construit une opposition entre l'art postmoderne, dont la performance dufunambule, les bandes dessinees, les tags du metro et les albums de famille, et l'art et l'architecturetraditionnellement modernistes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.021 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".