I thought I would do a general thoughts/observation on Sag Harbor post to bid the blogosphere farewell for the semester.
The novel has been giving my this weird childhood-I-never-experienced feeling; like Benji's adventures are all familiar even though I've personally had almost no experiences like them. I think it's because summertime beach-town is a pretty common setting in pop culture and stories about kids messing with BB guns and alcohol and working summer jobs are probably pretty familiar to most of us. But I think that Sag Harbor puts a few spins on this archetype. There're Benji's family issues and complicated racial conundrums and the generational differences in Sag Harbor, and commentary on hip hop culture and it's evolution (the list goes on I'm sure). Whitehead has worked a lot of themes into his summertime beach-town story and made it a pretty interesting read. I've been enjoying it. New train of thought:
We were introduced to Benji's sister (rather late) for the first time in the last chapter. She reminded me of Julia in some ways; very cool and sure of herself (at least from her younger brother's perspective). She also seems very opinionated. I think it would take a lot of conviction to leave Sag and her parents and adopt a new sub-culture like she did. I don't know how important Elanor will be to Benji's development (judging by how much she's appeared so far, I'm guessing not a whole lot) but she seems to have the potential to be an important role model (like Julia ends up being for Jason).
I still haven't read the last chapter so I suppose a question to ask would be "Will Benji reach his goal and be transformed by the end of the next two weeks?" Of course I don't think that Benji will be completely transformed (he's still being called Benji, after all), but he has certainly made some progress. Narrator Ben had that moment of connection with Benji at the concert, he's had what seems to be his first kiss, gotten his braces off, acquired the BB that will stick with (in) him for the rest of his life. He hasn't had any great revelations, and he hasn't progressed as notably as Jason had by the end of Black Swan Green, but he's had quite the summer and I'm sure he's somewhat different for it.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Monday, May 11, 2015
Hangman
I was curious about how autobiographical Black Swan Green is, so I looked up David Mitchell and was not super surprised to find out that he has a stammer. I guess this means that stammering wasn't chosen (at least not solely) as a plot element due to its propensity to represent more general adolescent issues, but I think it does this very well. There was certainly a distinct difference between how open I was about expressing my thoughts in 5th grade vs. how open I was about expressing them in 6th grade. Somehow the foreign everything of middle school and the increasing social complexity that comes along with adolescence made me more self conscious about how I was projecting myself to the rest of the world. So I edited my speech, my posture, just like hangman forces Jason to edit which words he uses, and it really limited my communication (although not nearly as much as Jason is limited).
Like Unborn Twin, Hangman is personified as an independent entity inside Jason with its (his?) own desires and schemes to make Jason miserable. This seems an appropriate representation to me of some part of you that you have no control over and therefore doesn't quite feel like you. I can picture it, though I've never had a stutter.
Jason explains that he has dubbed his stutter "Hangman" because it first appeared when he couldn't get the word nightingale out during a game of hangman in class, but I think the fact that Hangman uses words to "execute" Jason's social standing probably also has something to do with it.
At the end of the book when he's talking with/at the old lady, he seems to make some progress in understanding Hangman. He decides that he doesn't cause it, rather the expectations of whoever he's speaking with do. So if he speaks with people/things that won't judge him, he does just fine, and that if he could stop caring, Hangman would go away entirely. This is both probably true of stuttering and, I think, sort of representative of Jason's larger social issues in the novel. He finally overcomes his struggles with coolness not when he achieves it but when he stops caring about it. And, in fact, this causes him to be perceived as cool to some extent (or at least not to be teased mercilessly).
I was kind of expecting Jason to kick it by the end of the novel and I think the fact that he doesn't reinforces the idea that his development as a character isn't over. It also made his (fairly abrupt) transition into a confidence in his social standing more smooth. I also take it that Mitchell himself still doesn't have Hangman completely under wraps and that is he still somewhat embarrassed about it "I'd probably still be avoiding the subject today had I not outed myself by writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Black Swan Green, narrated by a stammering 13 year old."
Like Unborn Twin, Hangman is personified as an independent entity inside Jason with its (his?) own desires and schemes to make Jason miserable. This seems an appropriate representation to me of some part of you that you have no control over and therefore doesn't quite feel like you. I can picture it, though I've never had a stutter.
Jason explains that he has dubbed his stutter "Hangman" because it first appeared when he couldn't get the word nightingale out during a game of hangman in class, but I think the fact that Hangman uses words to "execute" Jason's social standing probably also has something to do with it.
At the end of the book when he's talking with/at the old lady, he seems to make some progress in understanding Hangman. He decides that he doesn't cause it, rather the expectations of whoever he's speaking with do. So if he speaks with people/things that won't judge him, he does just fine, and that if he could stop caring, Hangman would go away entirely. This is both probably true of stuttering and, I think, sort of representative of Jason's larger social issues in the novel. He finally overcomes his struggles with coolness not when he achieves it but when he stops caring about it. And, in fact, this causes him to be perceived as cool to some extent (or at least not to be teased mercilessly).
I was kind of expecting Jason to kick it by the end of the novel and I think the fact that he doesn't reinforces the idea that his development as a character isn't over. It also made his (fairly abrupt) transition into a confidence in his social standing more smooth. I also take it that Mitchell himself still doesn't have Hangman completely under wraps and that is he still somewhat embarrassed about it "I'd probably still be avoiding the subject today had I not outed myself by writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Black Swan Green, narrated by a stammering 13 year old."
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Horsefly Shuffle
As several people have mentioned in class, Sag Harbor is very similar to a book we read in AA lit last semester called The White Boy Shuffle.
Both books are written by young African American males who are torn between different cultures in race related ways. They both have similar, sarcastic, contemporary-seeming narrations and they were both written about the 80s from a later perspective (TWBS was published in '96 and Sag in '09).
Both books are written by young African American males who are torn between different cultures in race related ways. They both have similar, sarcastic, contemporary-seeming narrations and they were both written about the 80s from a later perspective (TWBS was published in '96 and Sag in '09).
I noticed these parallels almost immediately, but the similarities really got to me when Benji mentioned that the "horsefly shuffle" (a fly swatting technique for summertime hikes through the brush) is the only dance he can do, because The White Boy Shuffle is named for the only dance that Gunnar, the main character in TWBS, can do. Perhaps this is total coincidence. Maybe the __ shuffle was just a common expression in the 80's and self confident, coordinated main characters aren't any fun, but to me it seemed pretty bizarre that this would appear in both novels. I think, in WBS, the dance represents Gunnar's awkward position in between the white world and the black world, as a kid who spent his early childhood in a mostly white area as the cool black kid and then seemed like a nerd when he moved to Hillside. Likewise, in Sag Harbor, it seems that Benji is simultaneously unusual at his (primarily white) prep school, and somewhat separated from the "street culture" that he's trying to imitate (his little blurbs about it make it seem very alien; he's thinking really hard about those ___ lookin' ___ expressions and things), and the fact that he can't dance might play into that like is does for Gunnar. The significance of the dance is more obvious in White Boy Shuffle, but I think that maybe a similar interpretation can be applied to Sag.
I think that a big theme in what we've read so far of Sag Harbor is that Benji (and all of Sag Harbor) is in this awkward place with respect to black history and traditional black problems and things. He and his friends kind of want to embrace classic black culture (like Nick) but aren't quite authentically inclined to follow it. It's not natural for them; they have to work at it. Likewise, Benji really ought to know about all these famous black people like W. E. B. Du Bois, but he doesn't because in his everyday life he is benefitting from their achievements and therefore not constantly forced to think about the issues which they fought against/ not exposed to them sufficiently because he's always around white people. And, he still has to deal with the world's (specifically white peoples') perceptions of his blackness. Like, he has to actively avoid stereotypes and stuff.
Benji's black, but also, in some senses, kind of not (for some very restrictive cultural definitions of 'lack'), just like Gunnar at the start of TWBS. Both books bring up the very complicated issues brought about by the slow and uneven meshing of cultures in modern America.
I think that a big theme in what we've read so far of Sag Harbor is that Benji (and all of Sag Harbor) is in this awkward place with respect to black history and traditional black problems and things. He and his friends kind of want to embrace classic black culture (like Nick) but aren't quite authentically inclined to follow it. It's not natural for them; they have to work at it. Likewise, Benji really ought to know about all these famous black people like W. E. B. Du Bois, but he doesn't because in his everyday life he is benefitting from their achievements and therefore not constantly forced to think about the issues which they fought against/ not exposed to them sufficiently because he's always around white people. And, he still has to deal with the world's (specifically white peoples') perceptions of his blackness. Like, he has to actively avoid stereotypes and stuff.
Benji's black, but also, in some senses, kind of not (for some very restrictive cultural definitions of 'lack'), just like Gunnar at the start of TWBS. Both books bring up the very complicated issues brought about by the slow and uneven meshing of cultures in modern America.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Beloved/Housekeeping
As we read Housekeeping, I keep getting reminded of Toni Morrison's Beloved (I'm sorry for those of you who weren't in African American Lit; this isn't going to make a whole lot of sense if you haven't read Beloved.)
First off, they're both very female-centric novels that take place in America some time ago and, as such, are largely centered around daily household life. In the beginning of Housekeeping, Sylvia lives with her kids in this timeless, idyllic, unambitious way that is very like Sethe's early days in the North (though Sethe is much more involved with the community at this point). Then the kids run away (for some unknown reason in Housekeeping and after the central tragedy in Beloved) leaving their mothers in secluded households (though Sethe has Denver).
The Houses themselves are very significant to both books. They serve as the central setting and almost have personalities. In Beloved, since the house is haunted, the personality is something like the very bitter baby ghost that inhabits it. In Housekeeping it represents the family history and permanence and the attitudes towards its keeping of the people who inhabit it.
Both stories play with the concept of time in weird, ambiguous ways. Throughout Beloved I could tell that Morrison was making some point about the nature of time and memories, but the mysterious ambiguity with which she presented this point made it very difficult to pin down and describe (in a cool way). So far this has been true for Housekeeping as well. The separation of Fingerbone from the larger historical time and events and the in-depth look into the memories of other people that Ruth couldn't have possibly known as well as she seems to and the lake eating things up and sealing over forever and Ruth's fantasies about those things coming back out of the lake and the permanence of the house and the transience of the people in it all point to some time-related theme that I can't quite wrap my head around.
Both books kind of open with the death of the grandmother character (Baby Suggs/Sylvia), but you get to know them through memories.
Both are eerie, quiet character studies
In the end of Beloved it is mentioned that the residents of the town chose to forget the story and it gets lost as if it never really happened, which is sorta reminiscent of Ruth's attitudes towards not remembering things accurately (like the people who died on the train) and the fallibility of our perception. Although, once Ruth and Sylvie are gone, I don't know if Fingerbone is the type of town to brush their story under the rug or hold onto it and maybe distort it like they did with the train accident, and like Lucille did with her mother's death.
The Houses themselves are very significant to both books. They serve as the central setting and almost have personalities. In Beloved, since the house is haunted, the personality is something like the very bitter baby ghost that inhabits it. In Housekeeping it represents the family history and permanence and the attitudes towards its keeping of the people who inhabit it.
Both stories play with the concept of time in weird, ambiguous ways. Throughout Beloved I could tell that Morrison was making some point about the nature of time and memories, but the mysterious ambiguity with which she presented this point made it very difficult to pin down and describe (in a cool way). So far this has been true for Housekeeping as well. The separation of Fingerbone from the larger historical time and events and the in-depth look into the memories of other people that Ruth couldn't have possibly known as well as she seems to and the lake eating things up and sealing over forever and Ruth's fantasies about those things coming back out of the lake and the permanence of the house and the transience of the people in it all point to some time-related theme that I can't quite wrap my head around.
Both books kind of open with the death of the grandmother character (Baby Suggs/Sylvia), but you get to know them through memories.
Both are eerie, quiet character studies
In the end of Beloved it is mentioned that the residents of the town chose to forget the story and it gets lost as if it never really happened, which is sorta reminiscent of Ruth's attitudes towards not remembering things accurately (like the people who died on the train) and the fallibility of our perception. Although, once Ruth and Sylvie are gone, I don't know if Fingerbone is the type of town to brush their story under the rug or hold onto it and maybe distort it like they did with the train accident, and like Lucille did with her mother's death.
Monday, March 30, 2015
What I can glean of Ruth from what she's told us of others
Ruth is great. By far the best protagonist we've followed so far, in my opinion.
This is a somewhat difficult position to hold given the remarkable lack of effort she has put into developing her own character. Sylvie and Lucille have both been thoroughly described, but Ruth's own appearance and character are of more mystery than than the frightful amalgam of physical and mental color that is Bernice; a character who inhabits like four pages. We almost never hear about Ruth's emotions or even opinions (beyond ways in which she chooses to describe things), especially not her individual thoughts (she does talk about the motivations of her and her sister as a pair fairly frequently, but not in particularly personal ways).
But this is part of what I enjoy about Ruth. Her apparent lack of self interest makes her seem chill and not self-absorbed (as I could imagine would be tempting when writing about ones own childhood), to a similarly charming effect as Sylvie's apathy towards social convention.
In fact, she shares a lot of Sylvie's more charming aspects. They've both got a sort of go-with-the-flow attitude; Ruth rarely ever decides to do anything, and Sylvie seems not to have made a long term plan in her life (and very few short term plans). Unlike Lucille, the (in my opinion much less pleasant) foil to the Sylvie-Ruth mindset, Ruth doesn't mind Sylvie and even aspires to her way of life to some extent. Pages 105 and 106 present the reader with a rare moment of self reflection (Ruth is surprisingly self-aware given how little she seems to exist in her own head as opposed to drifting through the world around her) which is much more like what I would expect from a typical coming of age novel, during which Ruth details her fears about her "incomplete existence" and what not. During this little spiel she admits to suspecting that she and Sylvie are of a kind, and though she says she fears this possibility, it seems like she kind of wants to be claimed by Sylvie, and is somewhat taken a back when she is not.
I think the primary difference between the two characters, is that, while Sylvie's whimsical, childlike manner could make her come off as a little slow or oblivious (actually this is kind of ambiguous, but there are no real clues that Sylvie is especially aware of her eccentricity), Ruth's narration reveals a subtle but very sharp wit and surprising social acuity given her actions as a character. It's very possible that the wit we're reading is developed later in life, but regardless of which Ruth has it (old or young), it's certainly impressive and stands in stark contrast with Sylvie's assumed train of thought.
Ruth's subtle, but often really biting criticism of other characters illustrates a very well developed understanding of her world. It's almost Holden-esque, the way she undercuts their dignity with the subtleties of her descriptions, but I think she tends to do it in a much more clever way. Ruth's description of Bernice almost tells the reader more about Ruth than any passage that is actually about her (in fact, this is the line that convinced me of my love for Ruth). To say that Bernice "managed to look like a young woman with a ravaging disease" is a super concise and well worded commentary on the futility of trying to preserve one's vanity into old age. It's a smart thing to say, or at least I think so, and its hilarious to imagine this thought beginning to develop in the mind of Little-Ruth as Bernice gossips to their mother in the doorway.
Another delightfully mean description: "Fingerbone was never an impressive town. It was chastened by an outside landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history has occurred elsewhere."(62)
The one legitimate criticism of Ruth that I can think of is that she's not very prodiuctive. However, I think that this book is very skeptical of traditional views on productivity. If Ruth can live her life happily with no ambition what so ever, I think that's totally fine.
This is a somewhat difficult position to hold given the remarkable lack of effort she has put into developing her own character. Sylvie and Lucille have both been thoroughly described, but Ruth's own appearance and character are of more mystery than than the frightful amalgam of physical and mental color that is Bernice; a character who inhabits like four pages. We almost never hear about Ruth's emotions or even opinions (beyond ways in which she chooses to describe things), especially not her individual thoughts (she does talk about the motivations of her and her sister as a pair fairly frequently, but not in particularly personal ways).
But this is part of what I enjoy about Ruth. Her apparent lack of self interest makes her seem chill and not self-absorbed (as I could imagine would be tempting when writing about ones own childhood), to a similarly charming effect as Sylvie's apathy towards social convention.
In fact, she shares a lot of Sylvie's more charming aspects. They've both got a sort of go-with-the-flow attitude; Ruth rarely ever decides to do anything, and Sylvie seems not to have made a long term plan in her life (and very few short term plans). Unlike Lucille, the (in my opinion much less pleasant) foil to the Sylvie-Ruth mindset, Ruth doesn't mind Sylvie and even aspires to her way of life to some extent. Pages 105 and 106 present the reader with a rare moment of self reflection (Ruth is surprisingly self-aware given how little she seems to exist in her own head as opposed to drifting through the world around her) which is much more like what I would expect from a typical coming of age novel, during which Ruth details her fears about her "incomplete existence" and what not. During this little spiel she admits to suspecting that she and Sylvie are of a kind, and though she says she fears this possibility, it seems like she kind of wants to be claimed by Sylvie, and is somewhat taken a back when she is not.
I think the primary difference between the two characters, is that, while Sylvie's whimsical, childlike manner could make her come off as a little slow or oblivious (actually this is kind of ambiguous, but there are no real clues that Sylvie is especially aware of her eccentricity), Ruth's narration reveals a subtle but very sharp wit and surprising social acuity given her actions as a character. It's very possible that the wit we're reading is developed later in life, but regardless of which Ruth has it (old or young), it's certainly impressive and stands in stark contrast with Sylvie's assumed train of thought.
Ruth's subtle, but often really biting criticism of other characters illustrates a very well developed understanding of her world. It's almost Holden-esque, the way she undercuts their dignity with the subtleties of her descriptions, but I think she tends to do it in a much more clever way. Ruth's description of Bernice almost tells the reader more about Ruth than any passage that is actually about her (in fact, this is the line that convinced me of my love for Ruth). To say that Bernice "managed to look like a young woman with a ravaging disease" is a super concise and well worded commentary on the futility of trying to preserve one's vanity into old age. It's a smart thing to say, or at least I think so, and its hilarious to imagine this thought beginning to develop in the mind of Little-Ruth as Bernice gossips to their mother in the doorway.
Another delightfully mean description: "Fingerbone was never an impressive town. It was chastened by an outside landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history has occurred elsewhere."(62)
The one legitimate criticism of Ruth that I can think of is that she's not very prodiuctive. However, I think that this book is very skeptical of traditional views on productivity. If Ruth can live her life happily with no ambition what so ever, I think that's totally fine.
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Distortion from inside the Bell Jar
In class today, we talked about how Sylvia Plath's mother attributed The Bell Jar's less than flattering depiction of herself and other presumably realish people to an effort on Plath's part to document the distortion of truth experienced by people suffering from mental illness. Conflict of interest behind this statement aside, I think that it's interesting to think about how (and if) Esther's bell jar (so to speak) warped her (and by extension our own) perception of the Book's world.
We know that her judgement of other people can be a little harsh. She yells at Joan that she hates her when Joan's been nothing but nice. She also has a tendency to blame her own problems (and the problems that society imposes on her) on individuals. She blames the unpleasant, confining and autonomy-lacking nature of motherhood (and womanhood in general) on Buddy (calling him a hypocrite) who is not responsible for (though certainly benefits from, and perhaps perpetuates on a small scale) the system. She blames her career-related indecision and need to chose (a bad combination that will yield no figs at all) on Jay Cee, claiming that Jay Cee told something terrible to her when really all she did was ask about Esther's plans for the future.
But are these views a result of her mental illness? I can see a healthy (albeit somewhat frustrated) mind making these judgments. For one thing, they're not factual inaccuracies so much as odd, emotionally ridden opinions. For another, Jay Cee is an appropriate representation of the flaws in the limiting track to adulthood that she's following and Buddy is a good representation of sexist double standards; there is some legitimacy to Esther pinning these issues on them.
So is the bell jar warping her views of the world, or providing her insight into the true nature of things?
For the most part, during her decent into insanity (or rather the bell jar's decent onto her), the narrative remains strangely objective and, since the narrator has overcome her depression, there is theoretically some sort of system for potential filtration of straight-up factual inaccuracy (her older, sane self).
Even so, there are instances during which Esther is clearly perceiving things incorrectly. She claims that she can't read. Since she's obviously not illiterate this indicates some sort of issue between her brain and her eyes. Potentially even more troubling than this is that she keeps informing people that she can't read while obviously reading things. The headlines from her tabloids provide a significant part of the structure of the narrative during her illiteracy. She can read, she just can't read the intellectual things that she used to, which suggests a deeper problem. Similar to this is her supposed inability to sleep. She insists that she's not sleeping, but if she had actually gone for the number of nights that she claims with no sleep she would be dead.
Esther's illness doesn't seem to manifest in ways as serious or concrete as straight up hallucination, but it certainly effects her opinions of others, normalcy and even herself.
We know that her judgement of other people can be a little harsh. She yells at Joan that she hates her when Joan's been nothing but nice. She also has a tendency to blame her own problems (and the problems that society imposes on her) on individuals. She blames the unpleasant, confining and autonomy-lacking nature of motherhood (and womanhood in general) on Buddy (calling him a hypocrite) who is not responsible for (though certainly benefits from, and perhaps perpetuates on a small scale) the system. She blames her career-related indecision and need to chose (a bad combination that will yield no figs at all) on Jay Cee, claiming that Jay Cee told something terrible to her when really all she did was ask about Esther's plans for the future.
But are these views a result of her mental illness? I can see a healthy (albeit somewhat frustrated) mind making these judgments. For one thing, they're not factual inaccuracies so much as odd, emotionally ridden opinions. For another, Jay Cee is an appropriate representation of the flaws in the limiting track to adulthood that she's following and Buddy is a good representation of sexist double standards; there is some legitimacy to Esther pinning these issues on them.
So is the bell jar warping her views of the world, or providing her insight into the true nature of things?
For the most part, during her decent into insanity (or rather the bell jar's decent onto her), the narrative remains strangely objective and, since the narrator has overcome her depression, there is theoretically some sort of system for potential filtration of straight-up factual inaccuracy (her older, sane self).
Even so, there are instances during which Esther is clearly perceiving things incorrectly. She claims that she can't read. Since she's obviously not illiterate this indicates some sort of issue between her brain and her eyes. Potentially even more troubling than this is that she keeps informing people that she can't read while obviously reading things. The headlines from her tabloids provide a significant part of the structure of the narrative during her illiteracy. She can read, she just can't read the intellectual things that she used to, which suggests a deeper problem. Similar to this is her supposed inability to sleep. She insists that she's not sleeping, but if she had actually gone for the number of nights that she claims with no sleep she would be dead.
"'I can't sleep. . .'
They interrupted me. 'But the nurse says you slept last night.' I looked around the crescent of fresh, strange faces.
'I can't read.' I raised my voice. 'I can't eat.' It occurred to me I'd been eating ravenously ever since I came to."
All of her complaints about her body failing her are ill-founded. I think that she perceives these physical issues because the bell jar is messing with her perception. Interestingly, it's actually messing with her perception of herself, not the outside world as the metaphor of a piece of glass between her and everything else would seem to suggest. Although, I suppose, in a sense, anything physical and removed from her conscious mind (like these problems seem to be) could be blocked out by the bell jar.
Adding to the list of Esther's strange ideas under the influence of depression:
eating raw eggs and ground beef is acceptable, personal hygiene is too habitual to be worth it, slitting your wrists would be perfect if it didn't involve ruining your beautiful wrists.
They interrupted me. 'But the nurse says you slept last night.' I looked around the crescent of fresh, strange faces.
'I can't read.' I raised my voice. 'I can't eat.' It occurred to me I'd been eating ravenously ever since I came to."
All of her complaints about her body failing her are ill-founded. I think that she perceives these physical issues because the bell jar is messing with her perception. Interestingly, it's actually messing with her perception of herself, not the outside world as the metaphor of a piece of glass between her and everything else would seem to suggest. Although, I suppose, in a sense, anything physical and removed from her conscious mind (like these problems seem to be) could be blocked out by the bell jar.
Adding to the list of Esther's strange ideas under the influence of depression:
eating raw eggs and ground beef is acceptable, personal hygiene is too habitual to be worth it, slitting your wrists would be perfect if it didn't involve ruining your beautiful wrists.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
This post is going to be kinda personal, which is something I don't usually do, but I find that I'm relating to Holden, and that Catcher in the Rye is a personal book that begs a personal response. So, I've decided that if I was generally in a significantly worse mood and had been taught the moral standards of upper-class 50's culture, my stream of consciousness would sound quite a lot like this book. Holden has this fickle but selective negativity (specifically directed towards coming of age) that I can (unfortunately) totally relate to. I don't mean to elevate myself to Holden's level in any sense; I'm not nearly as upset as he is, my beliefs don't manifest in ways that are nearly as dramatic as flunking classes and roaming about New York, and I wouldn't be nearly as fun to listen to. But the complaints (and the ways that he undermines those complaints with compliments and can't figure out how to follow through with them in the real world) struck a chord with me while I read. (Warning: because of this my theories about Holden will probably be warped by my theories about myself.)
I understand the hate, but I'm not sure why it exists. I don't actually hate things (and I think Holden doesn't either because he often undercuts his insults with things like "but he's a pretty nice guy" and would never wish harm on anyone), I just get annoyed by them sometimes. But does Holden get annoyed by things because he legitimately doesn't relate to the culture he's growing up in and often finds adults shallow and subtly dishonest? Does he have a legitimate critique of society? (Part of me would say yes, but since I'm pretty much in his position, that doesn't mean much) Or is he just bad at fitting in with that kind of crowd and afraid of responsibility and not being able to bend over and pick up the chalk one day?
His whole kids are better than adults thesis is certainly questionable. I understand it because in a way I believe it myself, but if you think about it, children are just as "phony" as young adults in a lot of ways. They're just as rude to one another for equally stupid reasons, it's just less subtle. They're shallow, they just care about toys and their own definitions of coolness instead of, say, money. They probably outright lie more (though Holden does this too so maybe it doesn't quite count). Adults have more subtle methods of communication with one another, but isn't there a possibility that those are just as honest/effective as those of children if you have a social IQ high enough to understand them? (which Holden very well might not-- although I don't actually think this is his problem)
Holden takes issue with the value that adults place on fame, prestige and outward appearances (as do I) but are kids actually indiscriminate in their treatment of other people? Maybe really little ones are, but as soon as they're old enough to understand their parents' biases, they adopt them. In fact, I would argue that they do this often in more thoughtless, extreme ways simply because they haven't had the time to question their own beliefs yet. There was a time when I would have said to you 'all republicans are stupid or evil'. And if someone had introduced themselves to me as a republican, I would have said "what?? why on earth??" and disregarded their opinions from there on out, not because I had had bad experiences with republicans but because I had picked up on my parents political opinions despite not really understanding them. I have fortunately outgrown this attitude.
Anyway, my point is that kids are also capable of discrimination. So why do we (Holden and I) have this problem with adults that we don't have with kids? Maybe it's because we're trying to justify our emotional aversions to coming of age.
I understand the hate, but I'm not sure why it exists. I don't actually hate things (and I think Holden doesn't either because he often undercuts his insults with things like "but he's a pretty nice guy" and would never wish harm on anyone), I just get annoyed by them sometimes. But does Holden get annoyed by things because he legitimately doesn't relate to the culture he's growing up in and often finds adults shallow and subtly dishonest? Does he have a legitimate critique of society? (Part of me would say yes, but since I'm pretty much in his position, that doesn't mean much) Or is he just bad at fitting in with that kind of crowd and afraid of responsibility and not being able to bend over and pick up the chalk one day?
His whole kids are better than adults thesis is certainly questionable. I understand it because in a way I believe it myself, but if you think about it, children are just as "phony" as young adults in a lot of ways. They're just as rude to one another for equally stupid reasons, it's just less subtle. They're shallow, they just care about toys and their own definitions of coolness instead of, say, money. They probably outright lie more (though Holden does this too so maybe it doesn't quite count). Adults have more subtle methods of communication with one another, but isn't there a possibility that those are just as honest/effective as those of children if you have a social IQ high enough to understand them? (which Holden very well might not-- although I don't actually think this is his problem)
Holden takes issue with the value that adults place on fame, prestige and outward appearances (as do I) but are kids actually indiscriminate in their treatment of other people? Maybe really little ones are, but as soon as they're old enough to understand their parents' biases, they adopt them. In fact, I would argue that they do this often in more thoughtless, extreme ways simply because they haven't had the time to question their own beliefs yet. There was a time when I would have said to you 'all republicans are stupid or evil'. And if someone had introduced themselves to me as a republican, I would have said "what?? why on earth??" and disregarded their opinions from there on out, not because I had had bad experiences with republicans but because I had picked up on my parents political opinions despite not really understanding them. I have fortunately outgrown this attitude.
Anyway, my point is that kids are also capable of discrimination. So why do we (Holden and I) have this problem with adults that we don't have with kids? Maybe it's because we're trying to justify our emotional aversions to coming of age.
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
First impressions
This post was written on Sunday night as I read the first three chapters of Bell Jar, but Blogger didn't save it so I'm recreating it as best I can.
I'm trying to decide if I like the narrator or not. In a way she seems like Holden (Her oldish, casual style certainly sounds like him) and I like Holden, but they've got some key differences.
"These girls looked awfully bored to me. I saw them on the sunroof, yawning and painting their nails and trying to keep up their Bermuda tans, and they seemed bored as hell. I talked with one of them, and she was bored with yachts and bored with flying around in airplanes and bored with skiing in Switzerland at Christmas and bored with the men in Brazil. Girls like that make me sick. I'm so jealous I can't speak."
"Bored as hell" and "Girls like that make me sick" sound very Holden. Although, Holden never admits to being jealous of the people that he dislikes (with the exception of Stradlater who he makes pretty clear he doesn't actually hate).
She talks about clothes more than he does too which makes her sound more superficial. "It suggested a whole life of marvelous, elaborate decadence that attracted me like a magnet." I'm not so keen on that sentence. Although, I'm not sure how much distance is implied between the narrator and the character (her younger self). "Attracted" is put in the past tense, not the present which indicates that her opinions might be different at the moment. The story is in the past tense, so it's a little unclear, but she does occasionally use the present tense when expressing her opinions: " and a short, scrunty fellow detached himself and came into the bar with us. He was the type of fellow I can't stand." Is similar but in the present. I'm also not too keen on that sentence.
She's complaining about bored privileged girls while moping about thinking about being electrocuted instead of enjoying her fancy clothes and parties.
There are a lot of subtle similarities between Esther and Holden. She introduces herself with a false persona (Elly form Chicago) in a bar in New York. She employs casual racism (which Holden also does on occasion; a symptom of the time period, I'm sure):"Yellow as a chinaman." Oh boy. She's also tall and skinny and though she's not stricken with social anxiety, she's not the most gregarious of characters.
Overall, however, I would say that they are pretty different people. To me, Holden comes across as more compassionate, and of course their attitudes towards school are completely different (even if hers might be getting more critical). He's rich, she's poor, and he would not be too keen on the people she's hanging out with, particularly "famous as hell" Lenny. Although, I don't know how she feels about Lenny either. Maybe that's another thing-- she's less opinionated. Or, at the very least, we're not presented with her thoughts quite so intimately.
She just left Doreen in a puddle of vomit. I have decided that I do not like Esther. Given that this is a coming of age novel, this may very well change.
I'm trying to decide if I like the narrator or not. In a way she seems like Holden (Her oldish, casual style certainly sounds like him) and I like Holden, but they've got some key differences.
"These girls looked awfully bored to me. I saw them on the sunroof, yawning and painting their nails and trying to keep up their Bermuda tans, and they seemed bored as hell. I talked with one of them, and she was bored with yachts and bored with flying around in airplanes and bored with skiing in Switzerland at Christmas and bored with the men in Brazil. Girls like that make me sick. I'm so jealous I can't speak."
"Bored as hell" and "Girls like that make me sick" sound very Holden. Although, Holden never admits to being jealous of the people that he dislikes (with the exception of Stradlater who he makes pretty clear he doesn't actually hate).
She talks about clothes more than he does too which makes her sound more superficial. "It suggested a whole life of marvelous, elaborate decadence that attracted me like a magnet." I'm not so keen on that sentence. Although, I'm not sure how much distance is implied between the narrator and the character (her younger self). "Attracted" is put in the past tense, not the present which indicates that her opinions might be different at the moment. The story is in the past tense, so it's a little unclear, but she does occasionally use the present tense when expressing her opinions: " and a short, scrunty fellow detached himself and came into the bar with us. He was the type of fellow I can't stand." Is similar but in the present. I'm also not too keen on that sentence.
She's complaining about bored privileged girls while moping about thinking about being electrocuted instead of enjoying her fancy clothes and parties.
There are a lot of subtle similarities between Esther and Holden. She introduces herself with a false persona (Elly form Chicago) in a bar in New York. She employs casual racism (which Holden also does on occasion; a symptom of the time period, I'm sure):"Yellow as a chinaman." Oh boy. She's also tall and skinny and though she's not stricken with social anxiety, she's not the most gregarious of characters.
Overall, however, I would say that they are pretty different people. To me, Holden comes across as more compassionate, and of course their attitudes towards school are completely different (even if hers might be getting more critical). He's rich, she's poor, and he would not be too keen on the people she's hanging out with, particularly "famous as hell" Lenny. Although, I don't know how she feels about Lenny either. Maybe that's another thing-- she's less opinionated. Or, at the very least, we're not presented with her thoughts quite so intimately.
She just left Doreen in a puddle of vomit. I have decided that I do not like Esther. Given that this is a coming of age novel, this may very well change.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Observations
I seem to be unable to organize my thoughts in any productive way, so I'm going to throw together some observations and call it a post.
1. This has stopped some in the later story, but early on Joyce repeated words and phrases a lot. I'm not sure what he was getting at with this. Maybe he was just trying to capture the feel of a child's stumbling, undeveloped voice. For several examples: "Suddenly he became aware of something in the doorway. A skull appeared suspended in the gloom of the doorway" "breath had made him feel a sick feeling", this explanation seems to cover it, but for the repeated phrases (like "little drops of water in a fountain slowly falling in the brimming bowl" which appears again though slightly altered), I bet there's another explanation (though I have no idea what it is).
And actually, I realized today in class that the word repetition continues to an extent, it's just more elegant, so I haven't noticed it.
"He was alone. (...) He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea-harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air"
2. Stephen's coach tells him to run with his arms straight to his sides, which Stephen questions immediately. However, when he's practicing abstinence from any sort of comfort what so ever after he's been scared back into piety, he mentions that he holds his arms straight by his sides "like a runner". Just a little throw back to something mentioned earlier in the book. If I had to read into it I would say that this shows that at this point in the story he lacks the ability to question things that he once (rightly) questioned. Although that may be stretching it.
3. After studying ellipses in physics, Stephen writes the words "ellipsoidal fall" (referring to the earth's orbit) in a poem. So at least he's learning something in college.
4. Stephen's development reminds me a little of the development of the narrator's in "Invisible Man" in the sense that he's trying to make sense of the world and his place in it and in the process switches between extremes quite a bit. The narrator first respects white authority, running along like he's supposed to, just like Stephen respects the authority of the church in the beginning of the book. Then they snap back dramatically: the narrator joins the communists, and Stephen surrounds himself in sin, before rejecting this way of life for a more moderate(? not sure if this is the right word), individual state devoted to art and thought. I can relate to the narrator's thought process more than Stephen's though. Stephen's is a lot more emotional and poetic and less intellectual and grounded in real issues. My opinions have developed more or less like the narrator's.
Also, they both lead weirdly solitary lives. I don't think I know anyone with so few personal connections. Neither character seems to feel any strong feelings towards anyone else. (I'm discounting Stephen's weird connections with girls he barely knows.) The narrator barely keeps in touch with his family and has no friends that last him through the book and Stephen seems to always be at a distance from his peers and family as we have mentioned extensively in class.
1. This has stopped some in the later story, but early on Joyce repeated words and phrases a lot. I'm not sure what he was getting at with this. Maybe he was just trying to capture the feel of a child's stumbling, undeveloped voice. For several examples: "Suddenly he became aware of something in the doorway. A skull appeared suspended in the gloom of the doorway" "breath had made him feel a sick feeling", this explanation seems to cover it, but for the repeated phrases (like "little drops of water in a fountain slowly falling in the brimming bowl" which appears again though slightly altered), I bet there's another explanation (though I have no idea what it is).
And actually, I realized today in class that the word repetition continues to an extent, it's just more elegant, so I haven't noticed it.
"He was alone. (...) He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the sea-harvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air"
2. Stephen's coach tells him to run with his arms straight to his sides, which Stephen questions immediately. However, when he's practicing abstinence from any sort of comfort what so ever after he's been scared back into piety, he mentions that he holds his arms straight by his sides "like a runner". Just a little throw back to something mentioned earlier in the book. If I had to read into it I would say that this shows that at this point in the story he lacks the ability to question things that he once (rightly) questioned. Although that may be stretching it.
3. After studying ellipses in physics, Stephen writes the words "ellipsoidal fall" (referring to the earth's orbit) in a poem. So at least he's learning something in college.
4. Stephen's development reminds me a little of the development of the narrator's in "Invisible Man" in the sense that he's trying to make sense of the world and his place in it and in the process switches between extremes quite a bit. The narrator first respects white authority, running along like he's supposed to, just like Stephen respects the authority of the church in the beginning of the book. Then they snap back dramatically: the narrator joins the communists, and Stephen surrounds himself in sin, before rejecting this way of life for a more moderate(? not sure if this is the right word), individual state devoted to art and thought. I can relate to the narrator's thought process more than Stephen's though. Stephen's is a lot more emotional and poetic and less intellectual and grounded in real issues. My opinions have developed more or less like the narrator's.
Also, they both lead weirdly solitary lives. I don't think I know anyone with so few personal connections. Neither character seems to feel any strong feelings towards anyone else. (I'm discounting Stephen's weird connections with girls he barely knows.) The narrator barely keeps in touch with his family and has no friends that last him through the book and Stephen seems to always be at a distance from his peers and family as we have mentioned extensively in class.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Portrait of the Artist, thus far, has been a novel about the language arts. We know that, since it's sort of autobiographical, and the title calls the main character an artist, Stephen will most likely end up as an author.
We can see the influence that literature has on him very early in the book.
It begins with the story Stephen's father tells him about... well, I'm not really sure, but it's certainly a story, and it presumably has some importance in Stephen's life, because Joyce takes the time to write about it. This first section also ends with a little rhyme told to him by Dante about apologizing and eye-picking, which seems to have worked itself into his brain.
As we learn more about Stephen, one thing becomes apparent: he's a nerd. Instead of playing sports, he just shuffles back and forth on the court, the "fellows" don't like him, and he's a good student. Maybe the idea is that he has to escape the depressing realities of his real life, I'm not sure, but as is often true of fictional nerds, he spends much of his life in his imagination. And, if his inspiration for his imagination isn't coming from real life, it's probably coming from the stories he consumes. We see evidence for this in the way he thinks about his own actions. In his mind, his life is all very dramatized. Like we mentioned in class, he compares his bravery in telling on the pandier, to the heroic acts of the men in historical tales.
Each chapter has its own story arc, which I suspect is partly due to Stephen imposing the pattern he has observed in literature onto the events in his life. He puts himself in the position of a story's protagonist and seeks out a great resolution or revelation because that's what's supposed to happen. Nothing (not the kids cheering for the rector instead of him, or the fact that the chance encounter with a magical female figure isn't all that random or magical) can ruin his idea of these little happy endings. Stephen feels a deep, romantic connection between himself and Emma at the party, and when the night doesn't turn out like it ought to, he has to write the proper ending in a poem.
Stephen has also obviously thought harder about poetry than his classmates, because he picks the controversial Byron (obviously his own decision) as his favorite instead of a more popular poet. We can see that he really connects with Byron's emotionally laden, romantic style in the flowery language that is used in the book at this time, and the fact that he will soon deviate from the church for the sake of passion or love or maybe just rebellion. The poetry foundation describes Byron's hero as "defiant, melancholy, haunted by secret guilt", which is a good description of Stephen in this section of the novel.
And, after all this deviation, he doesn't feel guilty till he reads (emphasis on reads here) that his sin would offend the Virgin Mary, and that it might multiply into all the others. At which point, he becomes obsessed with the souls in purgatory, which are no more than abstractions to him, and so, in a sense, like the characters in a story. I dunno, the last ones are stretching it a bit, but I do think that stories have an unusually large effect on his development.
We can see the influence that literature has on him very early in the book.
It begins with the story Stephen's father tells him about... well, I'm not really sure, but it's certainly a story, and it presumably has some importance in Stephen's life, because Joyce takes the time to write about it. This first section also ends with a little rhyme told to him by Dante about apologizing and eye-picking, which seems to have worked itself into his brain.
As we learn more about Stephen, one thing becomes apparent: he's a nerd. Instead of playing sports, he just shuffles back and forth on the court, the "fellows" don't like him, and he's a good student. Maybe the idea is that he has to escape the depressing realities of his real life, I'm not sure, but as is often true of fictional nerds, he spends much of his life in his imagination. And, if his inspiration for his imagination isn't coming from real life, it's probably coming from the stories he consumes. We see evidence for this in the way he thinks about his own actions. In his mind, his life is all very dramatized. Like we mentioned in class, he compares his bravery in telling on the pandier, to the heroic acts of the men in historical tales.
Each chapter has its own story arc, which I suspect is partly due to Stephen imposing the pattern he has observed in literature onto the events in his life. He puts himself in the position of a story's protagonist and seeks out a great resolution or revelation because that's what's supposed to happen. Nothing (not the kids cheering for the rector instead of him, or the fact that the chance encounter with a magical female figure isn't all that random or magical) can ruin his idea of these little happy endings. Stephen feels a deep, romantic connection between himself and Emma at the party, and when the night doesn't turn out like it ought to, he has to write the proper ending in a poem.
Stephen has also obviously thought harder about poetry than his classmates, because he picks the controversial Byron (obviously his own decision) as his favorite instead of a more popular poet. We can see that he really connects with Byron's emotionally laden, romantic style in the flowery language that is used in the book at this time, and the fact that he will soon deviate from the church for the sake of passion or love or maybe just rebellion. The poetry foundation describes Byron's hero as "defiant, melancholy, haunted by secret guilt", which is a good description of Stephen in this section of the novel.
And, after all this deviation, he doesn't feel guilty till he reads (emphasis on reads here) that his sin would offend the Virgin Mary, and that it might multiply into all the others. At which point, he becomes obsessed with the souls in purgatory, which are no more than abstractions to him, and so, in a sense, like the characters in a story. I dunno, the last ones are stretching it a bit, but I do think that stories have an unusually large effect on his development.
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