I enjoyed this class. The novels we read were good reads and really fun to talk about during class. A lot of the literature I've read in my English classes this year I would never dream to tackle on my own but with a class full of different perspectives, reading stuff like Libra or Mumbo Jumbo doesn't seem nearly as daunting.
As compared with last semester, I think some of the books we read were a little harder to talk about right of the bat. Sometimes I felt like I didn't have enough to say about the books this semester then suddenly, half way through the book, once I was finally oriented, I would have too many things to say in class discussion. I like being able to draw upon last semester's literature in relation to this semester's because it was helpful in gaining a better understanding of what authors were doing with certain characters. Also, at the beginning of this semester I was disappointed to learn that there would be no pastiches, which I enjoyed last semester, but the semester project definitely made up for that loss of fictional composition. This semester's project was much more challenging than last semester's but it was really interesting and I found myself really enjoying the writing.
Although initially the readings about postmodernism seemed pretty dry, I appreciated doing them because it made me feel like I was learning something new in English class while I usually feel like I'm practicing old skills in English. They also provided proper context for what we were going to be doing all semester.
I think my favorite book was Kindred and my least favorite was the first couple chapters of Mumbo Jumbo or the first like ten chapters of Libra. The latter two were the most difficult books this semester in my opinion. I thought I was going to want to die the whole time I was reading Mumbo Jumbo but I surprised myself, got oriented, and started really liking the Reed's relaxed writing style. I think that my response paper for Mumbo Jumbo was my best one.
Looking back at the class and thinking about what I'm taking away from it, I think the examination between history and fiction has not changed my opinions of either but it has given me a new perspective on how one should study both. My story really helped me see that. For me, new perspectives are extremely valuable. I think learning is based on looking at things in different ways and so listening to someone who has a different idea than yourself is just as valuable as learning a new skill.
This was a great class. Thanks! I look forward to next year.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Assorted thoughtsn on Libra
I want to get some of my general thoughts and observations about Libra out in this blog post since there will be no response paper on the novel. Here it goes:
On page 198, Lee, speaking about Francis Gary Powers, considers the fact that, "once you did something notorious, they tagged you with an extra name, a middle name that was ordinarily never used." He says that it makes a name sound historic. Later in the novel, when Lee has become the murderous Lee Harvey Oswald, he feels that the middle name makes his name seem funny and fake and made up. I think that he is feeling a sort of dissociation with the deed and thus a dissociation with the name. I think the significance of his observations about adding the middle name go back to the central theme of this class because a person's everyday name is who they are whereas their complete name is the character that history creates for them. The extra names almost seem to account for discrepancies between the historical record and fact. It's sort like with horses or dogs in shows, their registered official name is what goes down in record books and their call name is only known by those who were close to the animal.
The fact that Lee "likes the idea that whores are profound" further attests to his tendency to over romanticize life. It seems akin to the idea that he sees himself being an integral part of history.
The quotation on page 261 about why Beryl Parmenter cuts out certain newspaper articles really struck me. Some atrocities are listed and the reason she saves the clippings is "because these are the things that tell us how we live." I think it's striking because it's true but you have to think about why it's true. These are the things that are going in newspapers and everyone will know. The majority of the population doesn't bother itself with the daily life news of other people but what is in the newspaper shows what is "important" and the newspaper is what is going to make something go down in history.
The fact that Lee insists on keeping Marina isolated through a language barrier is interesting to me. I haven't quite come up with a reason that suits me. It reminds me of Rezia and Septimus from Mrs. Dalloway. The most obvious reason I could think of for why he didn't want to teach her English is to keep his beating her quiet. I don't know about this theory. I think a better idea is that he is trying to keep her inside of his Russian-Alek life and out of his Lee Harvey Oswald- lone gunman life. He gets really angry when he believes she's becoming too American.
Also about Lee and Marina: Their relationship reminds me of Rufus and Dana from Kindred too because they have an abusive, dysfunctional relationship but they need each other. Lee even admits to needing Marina although he hates it and she speaks very little English and needs him to get around and for income. I think Lee's disgust with his attachment to Marina has to do with the fact that she ruins his lone gunman persona and gives him something to be attached to. Lee uses aliases to try to distance himself from his life with Marina.
The realization of intensely planned events, such as the attempted assassination of General Walker and ultimately the JFK assassination, is really well portrayed by DeLillo. First of all, DeLillo emphasizes the fact that the planners don't have control over every detail which makes his plot seem more realistic. I also like the description on page 277 before Lee shoots at Walker when DeLillo writes, "what a sense of destiny he had, locked in the miniature room, creating a design, a network of connections. It was a second existence, the private world floating out to three dimensions." It must be crazy to see a manufactured series of events slowly take place in real life.
It's interesting that all of Lee's shots seem not to do their job. He shoots himself to avoid transfer and fails. He fails to kill General Walker. Finally, he fails to kill JFK (although this was probably his best shot). His incompetence throughout the book helps to connect the man with the rifle in the window to the goofy soldier with a harebrained scheme.
And last but not least: I still don't know what "Wayne felt sweet and light as Jesus on a moonbeam," means.
On page 198, Lee, speaking about Francis Gary Powers, considers the fact that, "once you did something notorious, they tagged you with an extra name, a middle name that was ordinarily never used." He says that it makes a name sound historic. Later in the novel, when Lee has become the murderous Lee Harvey Oswald, he feels that the middle name makes his name seem funny and fake and made up. I think that he is feeling a sort of dissociation with the deed and thus a dissociation with the name. I think the significance of his observations about adding the middle name go back to the central theme of this class because a person's everyday name is who they are whereas their complete name is the character that history creates for them. The extra names almost seem to account for discrepancies between the historical record and fact. It's sort like with horses or dogs in shows, their registered official name is what goes down in record books and their call name is only known by those who were close to the animal.
The fact that Lee "likes the idea that whores are profound" further attests to his tendency to over romanticize life. It seems akin to the idea that he sees himself being an integral part of history.
The quotation on page 261 about why Beryl Parmenter cuts out certain newspaper articles really struck me. Some atrocities are listed and the reason she saves the clippings is "because these are the things that tell us how we live." I think it's striking because it's true but you have to think about why it's true. These are the things that are going in newspapers and everyone will know. The majority of the population doesn't bother itself with the daily life news of other people but what is in the newspaper shows what is "important" and the newspaper is what is going to make something go down in history.
The fact that Lee insists on keeping Marina isolated through a language barrier is interesting to me. I haven't quite come up with a reason that suits me. It reminds me of Rezia and Septimus from Mrs. Dalloway. The most obvious reason I could think of for why he didn't want to teach her English is to keep his beating her quiet. I don't know about this theory. I think a better idea is that he is trying to keep her inside of his Russian-Alek life and out of his Lee Harvey Oswald- lone gunman life. He gets really angry when he believes she's becoming too American.
Also about Lee and Marina: Their relationship reminds me of Rufus and Dana from Kindred too because they have an abusive, dysfunctional relationship but they need each other. Lee even admits to needing Marina although he hates it and she speaks very little English and needs him to get around and for income. I think Lee's disgust with his attachment to Marina has to do with the fact that she ruins his lone gunman persona and gives him something to be attached to. Lee uses aliases to try to distance himself from his life with Marina.
The realization of intensely planned events, such as the attempted assassination of General Walker and ultimately the JFK assassination, is really well portrayed by DeLillo. First of all, DeLillo emphasizes the fact that the planners don't have control over every detail which makes his plot seem more realistic. I also like the description on page 277 before Lee shoots at Walker when DeLillo writes, "what a sense of destiny he had, locked in the miniature room, creating a design, a network of connections. It was a second existence, the private world floating out to three dimensions." It must be crazy to see a manufactured series of events slowly take place in real life.
It's interesting that all of Lee's shots seem not to do their job. He shoots himself to avoid transfer and fails. He fails to kill General Walker. Finally, he fails to kill JFK (although this was probably his best shot). His incompetence throughout the book helps to connect the man with the rifle in the window to the goofy soldier with a harebrained scheme.
And last but not least: I still don't know what "Wayne felt sweet and light as Jesus on a moonbeam," means.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Writing Historical Fiction
I thought that the project was really difficult. It was really hard for me to come up with the initial idea. I think the hardest part was trying to decide how I was going to start finding a time period to deal with. After I had my first idea (the one I used) things got easier. (Just a note: Once I had already turned in my proposal I also considered writing about the Soweto Uprising and Hector Pieterson during the end of Apartheid in South Africa or the Tsavo Man eating lions. I may pursue one of these as a blog post....)
OK, so at this point I had my topic and had to figure out how I was going to proceed with the execution of the story (LOL punny). I thought narrative style would be a simple place to start but I soon found that there were just too many choices. I could see my story taking shape in so many different ways. It was surprisingly overwhelming. I started and stopped and drafted and redrafted until I finally had a tone I liked. My story actually had three possible starting chapters and it wasn't until the night before the draft was due that I could commit to one. I am not a decisive person and my indecisiveness led to way more wasted time than I had bargained for. My ending was pretty set in stone. I just wasn't sure how I was going to come to it.
I think it was also a little frustrating in the beginning when I was just blindly researching because I didn't have a clue what I was looking for yet. When I got into my topic more I knew the kind of things I needed but at first I had no agenda. I like to organize my time very carefully because I don't have that much free time to waste but it was hard to to make a schedule for this project. My initial plan was also shattered when I discovered that much of the information I knew about my topic was blatantly falsified to turn Henry Morant into a hero. The legit research I turned up actually created a much more nuanced story so it's ok.
I also found myself a little uncomfortable with writing history. I feel like it's easy to push things too far in historical fiction, especially for an inexperienced fiction writer, like myself, and because these people really existed and really struggled and died I was uncomfortable putting words in their mouths and thoughts in their heads. (Even though SO MANY people have already lied about what happened....) I stayed very close to historical truth, even about Morant's wife becoming a cannibal. I added Michael though so I could have a character to work with in the aftermath of the trial and as a symbol. Also, I didn't feel odd putting words in his mouth because he's mine and there is no danger in disrespecting the historical record. I did feel bad, however, when I (SPOILER ALERT) killed Michael at the end. Inexplicably bad, in fact. But, no matter.
So, anyways, I thought this was a hard project, although I did enjoy it and didn't dread working on it. I like writing fiction and I think we don't get enough opportunity to in school to write fiction. I think by writing fiction one learns how to use language connotation more effectively. It's just a different style and helps you see writing in a different way, which encourages growth as an author.
OK, so at this point I had my topic and had to figure out how I was going to proceed with the execution of the story (LOL punny). I thought narrative style would be a simple place to start but I soon found that there were just too many choices. I could see my story taking shape in so many different ways. It was surprisingly overwhelming. I started and stopped and drafted and redrafted until I finally had a tone I liked. My story actually had three possible starting chapters and it wasn't until the night before the draft was due that I could commit to one. I am not a decisive person and my indecisiveness led to way more wasted time than I had bargained for. My ending was pretty set in stone. I just wasn't sure how I was going to come to it.
I think it was also a little frustrating in the beginning when I was just blindly researching because I didn't have a clue what I was looking for yet. When I got into my topic more I knew the kind of things I needed but at first I had no agenda. I like to organize my time very carefully because I don't have that much free time to waste but it was hard to to make a schedule for this project. My initial plan was also shattered when I discovered that much of the information I knew about my topic was blatantly falsified to turn Henry Morant into a hero. The legit research I turned up actually created a much more nuanced story so it's ok.
I also found myself a little uncomfortable with writing history. I feel like it's easy to push things too far in historical fiction, especially for an inexperienced fiction writer, like myself, and because these people really existed and really struggled and died I was uncomfortable putting words in their mouths and thoughts in their heads. (Even though SO MANY people have already lied about what happened....) I stayed very close to historical truth, even about Morant's wife becoming a cannibal. I added Michael though so I could have a character to work with in the aftermath of the trial and as a symbol. Also, I didn't feel odd putting words in his mouth because he's mine and there is no danger in disrespecting the historical record. I did feel bad, however, when I (SPOILER ALERT) killed Michael at the end. Inexplicably bad, in fact. But, no matter.
So, anyways, I thought this was a hard project, although I did enjoy it and didn't dread working on it. I like writing fiction and I think we don't get enough opportunity to in school to write fiction. I think by writing fiction one learns how to use language connotation more effectively. It's just a different style and helps you see writing in a different way, which encourages growth as an author.
Brief Discussion of Identity in Libra
I think that this blog post may leak over into becoming a few posts. If we were going to have a response paper I'd probably write about something like this but choose a more specific focus. On the blog I can just riff.
A good place to start when talking about identity is names. Many of the characters in Libra have aliases and false names. One reason for this could be an attempt to dissociate with what they do in their jobs and differentiate that from their home lives. This desire for dissociation and differentiation probably stems from a desire to protect their loved ones and their family lives. The CIA guys that do a bunch of high level intelligence work and then go home to their families and they don't want to lose that. They want that life to be a part of them too.
Which brings me to my next idea, lifestyle and its affect on a person's sense of identity. Each name sort of corresponds to a life, thus the people in the book employ different aliases at different times depending on what they need to do. Lee has one hitch in his transformation from one guy to another, he has his wife and his children. I would speculate that he hates needing and loving her is because it frustrates him that she forces him to keep that familial side of him and he can't completely disappear into the world of lives he created for himself. He doesn't want to have connections, yet, Marina keeps him connected. I also think that this association between her and his emotional side is the reason he beats her. He beats her out of frustration and ultimately, to try and beat down the side of him that she represents.
Appearance too has an affect on identity and how someone is perceived. For example, David Ferrie makes himself have a striking appearance and he quickly becomes recognizable to the reader as "the guy with no hair" or the "kinda creepy looking one." He owns his disease and consciously makes an effort to make his appearance part of his identity. Lee too exhibits many changes in appearance. When we looked at pictures of him in class, I was commenting to someone about how he looked different in every picture. I think it's Marina or maybe his mother at the end that notes how different he looks in jail.
This wishy-washy changing identity stuff is the stuff that conspiracy theories are made of. Theorists take these small discrepancies in identity, particularly in Lee, and make the leap to suggesting that there were multiple "Lee"s . Double, triple, or seemingly infinite layers of life set the foundations for a good thriller.
A good place to start when talking about identity is names. Many of the characters in Libra have aliases and false names. One reason for this could be an attempt to dissociate with what they do in their jobs and differentiate that from their home lives. This desire for dissociation and differentiation probably stems from a desire to protect their loved ones and their family lives. The CIA guys that do a bunch of high level intelligence work and then go home to their families and they don't want to lose that. They want that life to be a part of them too.
Which brings me to my next idea, lifestyle and its affect on a person's sense of identity. Each name sort of corresponds to a life, thus the people in the book employ different aliases at different times depending on what they need to do. Lee has one hitch in his transformation from one guy to another, he has his wife and his children. I would speculate that he hates needing and loving her is because it frustrates him that she forces him to keep that familial side of him and he can't completely disappear into the world of lives he created for himself. He doesn't want to have connections, yet, Marina keeps him connected. I also think that this association between her and his emotional side is the reason he beats her. He beats her out of frustration and ultimately, to try and beat down the side of him that she represents.
Appearance too has an affect on identity and how someone is perceived. For example, David Ferrie makes himself have a striking appearance and he quickly becomes recognizable to the reader as "the guy with no hair" or the "kinda creepy looking one." He owns his disease and consciously makes an effort to make his appearance part of his identity. Lee too exhibits many changes in appearance. When we looked at pictures of him in class, I was commenting to someone about how he looked different in every picture. I think it's Marina or maybe his mother at the end that notes how different he looks in jail.
This wishy-washy changing identity stuff is the stuff that conspiracy theories are made of. Theorists take these small discrepancies in identity, particularly in Lee, and make the leap to suggesting that there were multiple "Lee"s . Double, triple, or seemingly infinite layers of life set the foundations for a good thriller.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Miscellaneous Closing Thoughts on "Kindred"
Metaphor of the Limb: So one of the panel presentations brought up the idea that there was significance in Dana losing specifically her arm. I was thinking about the construct of slavery in relation to limbs but what seemed more significant was limbs in relation to a family tree. When Dana kills her ancestor Rufus, she breaks a limb of her family tree and she loses a limb herself. Along these lines, I was thinking about how the fact that they are related means that he is a part of her and with his death she loses that part of her. Though this is not usually not literal, it is for Dana.
Another explanation is that she loses part of herself in the era she visits. A few ideas: She literally loses time in her life because she spends months in the past. The physical manifestation is her lost arm, a relatively small portion of the body but a really important part... She loses an emotional part of herself because of the wildly twisted relationships she forms on the plantation and the emotional hardships. Again, a physical manifestation in the form of an arm... It shows Rufus' control over her physical body... Alice, Dana's metaphorical physical half, dies and anyways Dana is leaving her behind for good so Dana loses a physical part of her body with the loss of Alice... Dana spent enough time there that she created a life for herself and when she leaves that life for good she loses a part of herself...
How/who can judge other cultures?: Some of the panel presentations asked for judgements on Rufus' actions. This made me start thinking about how we judge other cultures. Is it legit to judge other cultures based on today's cultural standard? We want to think that we are uber moral or whatever but in Rufus's time, by what his surroundings taught him, he was just as moral. Just a weird thought I guess.
Another explanation is that she loses part of herself in the era she visits. A few ideas: She literally loses time in her life because she spends months in the past. The physical manifestation is her lost arm, a relatively small portion of the body but a really important part... She loses an emotional part of herself because of the wildly twisted relationships she forms on the plantation and the emotional hardships. Again, a physical manifestation in the form of an arm... It shows Rufus' control over her physical body... Alice, Dana's metaphorical physical half, dies and anyways Dana is leaving her behind for good so Dana loses a physical part of her body with the loss of Alice... Dana spent enough time there that she created a life for herself and when she leaves that life for good she loses a part of herself...
How/who can judge other cultures?: Some of the panel presentations asked for judgements on Rufus' actions. This made me start thinking about how we judge other cultures. Is it legit to judge other cultures based on today's cultural standard? We want to think that we are uber moral or whatever but in Rufus's time, by what his surroundings taught him, he was just as moral. Just a weird thought I guess.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
(a bit about) The Control dynamic in "Kindred": Physical vs Emotional/Spiritual
I am using this post to just get my ideas out on a really big idea from the book: the power dynamic in slave culture that is portrayed in Octavia Bulter's Kindred. Butler seeks to deepen and expand on the traditionally taught power dynamic of slave culture, all powerful slaveholder and completely helpless slave, and expand this simplistic model of power distribution into a dynamic rather than a one sided thing. Butler's claim seems to be that the distinction between power over physical things and freewill/religious freedom is extremely important in slave culture. Throughout the book, especially through the interactions between Dana, Alice and Rufus, Butler explores the limits to the extreme power of a slaveholder.
I started considering this concept when Rufus tells Dana to burn history book that she brought. Rufus goes in his usual cycle of approaches he uses to get people to obey him. Dana burns the book and the map but in the end she says she can get along without it and Rufus can't take the knowledge she has already away from her. He can only take the book.
The epitome of the power dynamic analysis in Kindred is the relationships between Dana, Alice, and Rufus. As mentioned in some of the panel presentations, Rufus sees Alice and Dana as two halves of the same woman thus leading the reader to the realization that this is a very interesting perspective. In regards to power and control, Alice and Dana can be seen as two halves of one person. Alice is the physical half, property of Rufus and totally used by him. Dana, on the other hand, represents the freer emotional/spiritual half. Rufus never actually bought Dana, even though she appears under his control. She, the emotional half, has a greater deal of freedom than Alice, the physical. Still, she is not completely free. She is tied to Rufus but not owned by him.
This explains the difference in his relations with both halves. With Alice, he is very physical which is what he knows works with physical property. His relationship with Dana is less physical because that seems not to work. The comparison is beating the body versus beating an emotion. One works and one does not. Also the fact that Dana is more educated than he is helps make her less material and more untouchable. Oh, and the fact that she just poofs away sometimes. With this comparison in mind, maybe the dynamic is between familiar and unfamiliar or controllable and un-controllable...
I think it is significant that Dana, Alice and Rufus all recognize that Rufus's power can't truly affect Alice emotionally. Limited power is what sets Rufus off and causes him to lash out.
Alice's suicide shows the difference between the physical and emotional/spiritual sides of herself. When Alice kills herself, Rufus is left with the body he bought but he can no longer have the other half. This also gets into the whole power dynamic of choices for slaves.
Choices for slaves often had no desirable options but still, any choice represents a degree of freedom. The ultimate choice was suicide. Dana tried it and Alice succeeded. Dana also tries to make commands from Rufus seem like choices she makes and she eventually learns to lie to preserve some ounce of freedom.
Well, I feel as if I've lost my focus and I have lots of other work to do so I'm leaving this topic for now and may revisit it in my paper or another post.
I started considering this concept when Rufus tells Dana to burn history book that she brought. Rufus goes in his usual cycle of approaches he uses to get people to obey him. Dana burns the book and the map but in the end she says she can get along without it and Rufus can't take the knowledge she has already away from her. He can only take the book.
The epitome of the power dynamic analysis in Kindred is the relationships between Dana, Alice, and Rufus. As mentioned in some of the panel presentations, Rufus sees Alice and Dana as two halves of the same woman thus leading the reader to the realization that this is a very interesting perspective. In regards to power and control, Alice and Dana can be seen as two halves of one person. Alice is the physical half, property of Rufus and totally used by him. Dana, on the other hand, represents the freer emotional/spiritual half. Rufus never actually bought Dana, even though she appears under his control. She, the emotional half, has a greater deal of freedom than Alice, the physical. Still, she is not completely free. She is tied to Rufus but not owned by him.
This explains the difference in his relations with both halves. With Alice, he is very physical which is what he knows works with physical property. His relationship with Dana is less physical because that seems not to work. The comparison is beating the body versus beating an emotion. One works and one does not. Also the fact that Dana is more educated than he is helps make her less material and more untouchable. Oh, and the fact that she just poofs away sometimes. With this comparison in mind, maybe the dynamic is between familiar and unfamiliar or controllable and un-controllable...
I think it is significant that Dana, Alice and Rufus all recognize that Rufus's power can't truly affect Alice emotionally. Limited power is what sets Rufus off and causes him to lash out.
Alice's suicide shows the difference between the physical and emotional/spiritual sides of herself. When Alice kills herself, Rufus is left with the body he bought but he can no longer have the other half. This also gets into the whole power dynamic of choices for slaves.
Choices for slaves often had no desirable options but still, any choice represents a degree of freedom. The ultimate choice was suicide. Dana tried it and Alice succeeded. Dana also tries to make commands from Rufus seem like choices she makes and she eventually learns to lie to preserve some ounce of freedom.
Well, I feel as if I've lost my focus and I have lots of other work to do so I'm leaving this topic for now and may revisit it in my paper or another post.
Kabuki theatre and Trafalmadorian novels
This will be brief but I think it is still a relevant interesting comparison:
Some brief background info:
So, Shozo Sato is a really famous Japanese playwright, director, and artist. He worked at the U of I for many years until his retirement. He now lives on Hawaii. He was one of the people that brought kabuki to America and adapted it to make it more appealing to the new audience. This weekend he did a kabuki version of Lady Macbeth in the Studio Theater at Krannert Center. It was his last show.
A quick lesson on Japanese theatre for those of you who are unfamiliar. Kabuki theater derives its name from the verb kabuku meaning "to be out of the ordinary". Unlike "normal", American theatre, the focus of kabuki is not the plot line but rather the overall beauty of each scene. The actors have completely painted faces and dramatic attire. Extreme choreographing is also an important aspect of the art form. Every movement on stage is carefully planned and practiced, from each step to gesture to blink. The intonation of the voice is also manipulated creating the slow, singsong voices of typical actors. A koken is a person hooded and robed in black that manipulates the props during a scene in the full view of the audience. Also a percussionist sits on stage throughout the play opening and closing scenes using his or her wooden blocks. The end result of the kabuki show is a sensory experience, not a mental diversion by escaping into another world.
The comparison:
Kabuki theatre is comparable to the Tralfalmadorian novels in Slaughterhouse-Five and Shozo Sato's role in kabuki theatre is similar to Kurt Vonnegut's role in relation to Tralfalmadorian fiction.
Although the kabuki in the USA often has a plot line and identifiable characters, traditional kabuki is almost devoid of plot. The thinking is that is diverts attention from the overall beauty. Tralfalmadorian fiction is similar. It takes scenes that are completely random and compiles them into one piece that shows a picture of life that is beautiful. Both art forms are sensory experiences as well.
That was about the extent of my comparison until I realized how similar Shozo Sato and Kurt Vonnegut are in relation to their art forms. Both authors take a foreign art form and bring it to America. In the case of kabuki, the art form is too different and the American public is unreceptive. Sato then got the idea to take Western literature, mostly Shakespeare, and transpose it into the kabuki style to give the US something they could understand as a medium of translation for something unfamiliar. Thus, Sato produced plays in the style of kabuki much as Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is "in the style of" a piece of Tralfalmadorian fiction because Earthlings would be unable to read like the Tralfalmadorians. It is interesting to see how similar the things they added seem to be. Both authors added plot because the new audience feels that the sheer beauty of the original work isn't enough. Both authors draw from familiar sources (Vonnegut from WWII and Sato from Shakespeare) and provide a new look at it, exploring different facets of the known concept. The things like koken and the percussionist are similar to when Vonnegut acknowledges that Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel too. Finally, the overall aim of both works is not scene to scene coherency or plot tension but rather the big picture and its beauty.
It's really interesting when you can see these similarities because at least to me, it deepens the significance of themes or plot devices. Seeing a writing technique applied once is just a taste, you get the general idea. When you see it again, you notice different aspects and your understanding deepens. I don't know if this is totally lame but it's like those bars at Great Harvest that have like loads of different things in them. When you first take a bite you notice like chocolate and then as you eat more you taste more things. I think it's cool.
Some brief background info:
So, Shozo Sato is a really famous Japanese playwright, director, and artist. He worked at the U of I for many years until his retirement. He now lives on Hawaii. He was one of the people that brought kabuki to America and adapted it to make it more appealing to the new audience. This weekend he did a kabuki version of Lady Macbeth in the Studio Theater at Krannert Center. It was his last show.
A quick lesson on Japanese theatre for those of you who are unfamiliar. Kabuki theater derives its name from the verb kabuku meaning "to be out of the ordinary". Unlike "normal", American theatre, the focus of kabuki is not the plot line but rather the overall beauty of each scene. The actors have completely painted faces and dramatic attire. Extreme choreographing is also an important aspect of the art form. Every movement on stage is carefully planned and practiced, from each step to gesture to blink. The intonation of the voice is also manipulated creating the slow, singsong voices of typical actors. A koken is a person hooded and robed in black that manipulates the props during a scene in the full view of the audience. Also a percussionist sits on stage throughout the play opening and closing scenes using his or her wooden blocks. The end result of the kabuki show is a sensory experience, not a mental diversion by escaping into another world.
The comparison:
Kabuki theatre is comparable to the Tralfalmadorian novels in Slaughterhouse-Five and Shozo Sato's role in kabuki theatre is similar to Kurt Vonnegut's role in relation to Tralfalmadorian fiction.
Although the kabuki in the USA often has a plot line and identifiable characters, traditional kabuki is almost devoid of plot. The thinking is that is diverts attention from the overall beauty. Tralfalmadorian fiction is similar. It takes scenes that are completely random and compiles them into one piece that shows a picture of life that is beautiful. Both art forms are sensory experiences as well.
That was about the extent of my comparison until I realized how similar Shozo Sato and Kurt Vonnegut are in relation to their art forms. Both authors take a foreign art form and bring it to America. In the case of kabuki, the art form is too different and the American public is unreceptive. Sato then got the idea to take Western literature, mostly Shakespeare, and transpose it into the kabuki style to give the US something they could understand as a medium of translation for something unfamiliar. Thus, Sato produced plays in the style of kabuki much as Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is "in the style of" a piece of Tralfalmadorian fiction because Earthlings would be unable to read like the Tralfalmadorians. It is interesting to see how similar the things they added seem to be. Both authors added plot because the new audience feels that the sheer beauty of the original work isn't enough. Both authors draw from familiar sources (Vonnegut from WWII and Sato from Shakespeare) and provide a new look at it, exploring different facets of the known concept. The things like koken and the percussionist are similar to when Vonnegut acknowledges that Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel too. Finally, the overall aim of both works is not scene to scene coherency or plot tension but rather the big picture and its beauty.
It's really interesting when you can see these similarities because at least to me, it deepens the significance of themes or plot devices. Seeing a writing technique applied once is just a taste, you get the general idea. When you see it again, you notice different aspects and your understanding deepens. I don't know if this is totally lame but it's like those bars at Great Harvest that have like loads of different things in them. When you first take a bite you notice like chocolate and then as you eat more you taste more things. I think it's cool.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Cover letter for response paper
Dear Blog Reader,
I feel the need to write a cover letter about this paper as the story behind is so utterly enthralling. So here it goes.
So, before spring break, after we finished Slaughterhouse-Five, Mr. Mitchell wisely advised us to jot down some notes about the book so that we would be able to write about the book after a whole, wonderful week away. I, being the conscientious student that I am, did jot down a couple ideas in my notebook. Unfortunately, when I returned from the sun and sand of Costa Rica to the cold, clouds of Champaign, I revisited my notes only to find that I had completely forgotten all points supporting the theses in my notebook. (The relaxation of the week had a poor effect on my mind.) So that was pretty frustrating because I had a bunch of ideas that had remained incomplete and useless.
I decided to revisit the book to try and refresh my memory and look at passages I had marked and notes I had scrawled that could aid me in my quest for a topic. I needed a starting point for my search and cleverly chose the first chapter because it is first and because it is a really unique way to start a book. I marked a few passages and jotted down some observations but nothing struck me. I continued through different sections of the book that stood out in my mind and proceeded similarly. When I was done, I had four passages marked and a bunch of scattered notes, but one passage that I hadn't even marked continued to stand out to me.
I read and re-read that passage in question but I was unable to articulate what it was about the passage that made it seem significant to me. Then the idea hit me: I would do a passage explication. Thinking back to the days of Sophomore English, I remembered my Paradise Lost paper that explicated a section of the epic poem. That paper not being my best work, I was hesitant to start writing this paper in the fear that I wouldn't be able to come up with enough interesting, relevant observations about my extremely short passage to fill accomplish the page requirement. My other fear was that a passage any longer would lead to an lengthy paper with little focus. Finally, I concluded that I was a year more experienced and much more interested and, though explicating passages has not been my forte in the past, I wanted to just go for it. One gets bored of continuously producing response papers of the same style.
The paper is finished and the ordeal over.
Sincerely,
Juliana Trach
I feel the need to write a cover letter about this paper as the story behind is so utterly enthralling. So here it goes.
So, before spring break, after we finished Slaughterhouse-Five, Mr. Mitchell wisely advised us to jot down some notes about the book so that we would be able to write about the book after a whole, wonderful week away. I, being the conscientious student that I am, did jot down a couple ideas in my notebook. Unfortunately, when I returned from the sun and sand of Costa Rica to the cold, clouds of Champaign, I revisited my notes only to find that I had completely forgotten all points supporting the theses in my notebook. (The relaxation of the week had a poor effect on my mind.) So that was pretty frustrating because I had a bunch of ideas that had remained incomplete and useless.
I decided to revisit the book to try and refresh my memory and look at passages I had marked and notes I had scrawled that could aid me in my quest for a topic. I needed a starting point for my search and cleverly chose the first chapter because it is first and because it is a really unique way to start a book. I marked a few passages and jotted down some observations but nothing struck me. I continued through different sections of the book that stood out in my mind and proceeded similarly. When I was done, I had four passages marked and a bunch of scattered notes, but one passage that I hadn't even marked continued to stand out to me.
I read and re-read that passage in question but I was unable to articulate what it was about the passage that made it seem significant to me. Then the idea hit me: I would do a passage explication. Thinking back to the days of Sophomore English, I remembered my Paradise Lost paper that explicated a section of the epic poem. That paper not being my best work, I was hesitant to start writing this paper in the fear that I wouldn't be able to come up with enough interesting, relevant observations about my extremely short passage to fill accomplish the page requirement. My other fear was that a passage any longer would lead to an lengthy paper with little focus. Finally, I concluded that I was a year more experienced and much more interested and, though explicating passages has not been my forte in the past, I wanted to just go for it. One gets bored of continuously producing response papers of the same style.
The paper is finished and the ordeal over.
Sincerely,
Juliana Trach
Friday, March 9, 2012
"Slaughterhouse Five" and "The Stranger"
After the discussion we were having on Tuesday(?) I kept thinking about the comparison that I started about Slaughterhouse Five and Camus' The Stranger and I felt like I needed to talk about it a little on the blog. For me, comparing two novels, especially one that I analyzed as thoroughly as The Stranger, helps me come to a deeper understanding of the books. Seeing similarities in two different books is like having different perspectives on an idea. So, here it goes:
The first similarity I want to look at is the protagonists from the two novels. Billy and Meursault exhibit many of the same character traits. What comes to mind first for me is the discussion of their innocence. In both novels, the protagonist acts strangely in the situation they are in and we, in class as readers, excused both of them because we were sympathetic to their "innocence" as we called it. So both books have men that we label as "innocence" in similar ways. Their innocence stems from the idea that they don't understand their situations or specifically the consequences that could arise as a result of their actions. They're innocence presents itself in a similar way too, passivity in life and naivete of consequence. Both of them are sort of infuriating, yet endearing.
Second, they both are "unstuck from time", so to speak. Billy's story in Slaughterhouse Five literally skips around in time but Meursault also has difficulty with keeping track of time. A couple examples of Meursault's unstuck-ness stand out in my mind. First, when he is sitting on his balcony watching life go by him for an undetermined period of time he seems unstuck and when he is in his jail cell and loses track of the days. Maybe Meursault is not as blatantly unstuck in time but if I had my book (which I don't because I'm in a hotel room in Fort Wayne, IN using my only free minutes to write this) I could find the passage that I'm thinking of that made me make the comparison. I'll find it when I get home. Basically, the way Camus writes the book makes the reader lose track of time. Time is not measured by days or clocks but rather when Meursault is hungry because really nothing else matters.
Anyways, along with being unstuck in time, both protagonists seem thoroughly disconnected with reality. They both operate under a unique set of ideas. Billy's life philosophy is deeply connected with what he learned from the Trafalmadorians rather than on earth and who knows where Meursault's moral thinking came from. Through their different life philosophies, they both come to be more resigned to the facts of life and death and passive in the way that they live their lives. Billy's mantra that emphasizes this idea is "So it goes." He learned from the Trafalmadorians that all moments are already structured and unchangable. He understand cruelty, tragedy, and death as awful but as things that he cannot change. Billy passively exists, knowing what he does is not his own choice. Meursault has a similar feeling of helplessness. His mantra is "it didn't matter". Like Billy, Meursault feels like his life makes no impression on the world and thus he has no ambition to act. Meursault follows Raymond's plan because he feels it doesn't matter what he does. So for a quick comparison: Billy is resigned that moments are structure already; Meursault thinks his actions bare no consequence but the result is the same. Both characters live passively as a result of their assertion that what they do is of absolutely no consequence.
My reactions to the two characters are different. I like Meursault. I find him endearing. I loved writing my research paper about how Stewart Gilbert made him look like a meanie. Billy, on the other hand, I find much less sympathetic. I don't dislike him however, I just occasionally become extremely annoyed with him. I think I was talking about this in class and I couldn't pin-point exactly why I found Meursault so much more compelling than Billy. First, I do think doing a really in-depth paper about Meursault kind of bound me to him but also I think that Meursault's "innocence" is more compelling. I really wouldn't call Billy's weirdness "innocence" and I think that why I turned off to him because in class we were so off base with why he acts so oddly. Rather than innocence being his excuse, I think a cultural difference is a more fitting comparison. He doesn't fit in because he subscribes to the Trafalmadorian world view whereas we are not told that Meursault was taught his world view, he presumably created it by observing the world. He looked around and drew a conclusion, right or wrong, and stuck to it, much like a child who just bases all his or her ideas on what it immediately before them.
I think the comparison between The Stranger and Slaughterhouse Five is really interesting and could even be taken farther than what I've done here-- moving into an analysis of themes-- even though some people in class didn't quite agree with my points. Personally, textual comparison is helpful in understanding why an author might make the choices that they do. I briefly compared Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo in my last essay to clarify a point. You can use one novel to enhance another.
The first similarity I want to look at is the protagonists from the two novels. Billy and Meursault exhibit many of the same character traits. What comes to mind first for me is the discussion of their innocence. In both novels, the protagonist acts strangely in the situation they are in and we, in class as readers, excused both of them because we were sympathetic to their "innocence" as we called it. So both books have men that we label as "innocence" in similar ways. Their innocence stems from the idea that they don't understand their situations or specifically the consequences that could arise as a result of their actions. They're innocence presents itself in a similar way too, passivity in life and naivete of consequence. Both of them are sort of infuriating, yet endearing.
Second, they both are "unstuck from time", so to speak. Billy's story in Slaughterhouse Five literally skips around in time but Meursault also has difficulty with keeping track of time. A couple examples of Meursault's unstuck-ness stand out in my mind. First, when he is sitting on his balcony watching life go by him for an undetermined period of time he seems unstuck and when he is in his jail cell and loses track of the days. Maybe Meursault is not as blatantly unstuck in time but if I had my book (which I don't because I'm in a hotel room in Fort Wayne, IN using my only free minutes to write this) I could find the passage that I'm thinking of that made me make the comparison. I'll find it when I get home. Basically, the way Camus writes the book makes the reader lose track of time. Time is not measured by days or clocks but rather when Meursault is hungry because really nothing else matters.
Anyways, along with being unstuck in time, both protagonists seem thoroughly disconnected with reality. They both operate under a unique set of ideas. Billy's life philosophy is deeply connected with what he learned from the Trafalmadorians rather than on earth and who knows where Meursault's moral thinking came from. Through their different life philosophies, they both come to be more resigned to the facts of life and death and passive in the way that they live their lives. Billy's mantra that emphasizes this idea is "So it goes." He learned from the Trafalmadorians that all moments are already structured and unchangable. He understand cruelty, tragedy, and death as awful but as things that he cannot change. Billy passively exists, knowing what he does is not his own choice. Meursault has a similar feeling of helplessness. His mantra is "it didn't matter". Like Billy, Meursault feels like his life makes no impression on the world and thus he has no ambition to act. Meursault follows Raymond's plan because he feels it doesn't matter what he does. So for a quick comparison: Billy is resigned that moments are structure already; Meursault thinks his actions bare no consequence but the result is the same. Both characters live passively as a result of their assertion that what they do is of absolutely no consequence.
My reactions to the two characters are different. I like Meursault. I find him endearing. I loved writing my research paper about how Stewart Gilbert made him look like a meanie. Billy, on the other hand, I find much less sympathetic. I don't dislike him however, I just occasionally become extremely annoyed with him. I think I was talking about this in class and I couldn't pin-point exactly why I found Meursault so much more compelling than Billy. First, I do think doing a really in-depth paper about Meursault kind of bound me to him but also I think that Meursault's "innocence" is more compelling. I really wouldn't call Billy's weirdness "innocence" and I think that why I turned off to him because in class we were so off base with why he acts so oddly. Rather than innocence being his excuse, I think a cultural difference is a more fitting comparison. He doesn't fit in because he subscribes to the Trafalmadorian world view whereas we are not told that Meursault was taught his world view, he presumably created it by observing the world. He looked around and drew a conclusion, right or wrong, and stuck to it, much like a child who just bases all his or her ideas on what it immediately before them.
I think the comparison between The Stranger and Slaughterhouse Five is really interesting and could even be taken farther than what I've done here-- moving into an analysis of themes-- even though some people in class didn't quite agree with my points. Personally, textual comparison is helpful in understanding why an author might make the choices that they do. I briefly compared Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo in my last essay to clarify a point. You can use one novel to enhance another.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Defining Jes' Grew....
So this is another post are I started right before Agora days and just finished off.
Jes' Grew is obviously a central issue and plot engine in Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed but it is also one of the more ambiguous and unfamiliar concepts that the book introduces. So, how is a reader to understand a book at all when they don't understand what the main theme is? And, why would an author ever want to write a book whose central theme is so unclear? These are questions that I was thinking about while reading. Through class discussion and mulling over readings in my head, I have come up with a few speculations and ideas about Jes' Grew that I find satisfactory. Since we are just finishing the book now, I think that a blog post discussing all the clues about Jes' Grew is in order to round off my thoughts and bring the novel completely to a close. With that I begin:
Jes' Grew is introduced in the first chapter of the book as an epidemic disease that is rapidly consuming the nation. The reader is now intrigued but soon the intrigue turns to confusion when the reader begins to realize that the "victims" of Jes' Grew are suffering from symptoms that make them sing and dance. Slowly, the reader realizes that Jes' Grew is not an actual "disease" but on the contrary, somehow related to music, specifically the newer "race music" like jazz that was sweeping the country amongst young people despite the efforts of the older generation to stop it.
In class, we equated Jes' Grew to jazz culture and music but, by the end of the book it is obvious that this equation is not quite correct. Jes' Grew dies out but Jazz does not. So the question is: if Jes' Grew does not equal jazz (although they are related) what is it? We almost must add one more idea to our analysis, the fact that the supporters of Jes' Grew feel that Jes' Grew is more alive and effective without a text. So add that to the question.
I want to propose that Jes' Grew is the feeling related to the act of taking part in a counterculture specifically having to do with art. It is almost a feeling of rebellion. This also goes back to the idea of art "dying" in museums and cultures becoming museum pieces. What evokes the wild responses from the public is not just the music but the novelty of it and that slight feeling that maybe someone infected with Jazz is getting away with something. Jazz music is still played and popular but yet there are no "epidemics" of jazz where the nation can't resist the music. Why? because the Jes' Grew is gone. Jazz has museums, festivals, and a hall of fame now. It is not novel. It is not counter-cultural. It's just a genre of music now and as it became a genre, more and more criteria were imposed upon it to keep it within the confines of the newly created genre. The jazz musicians from the first generations wanted to be recognized as a legitimate style of music but with recognition came standardization and the music is turned into a concept. Jes' Grew dies and its a museum piece.
I just want to briefly mention an example I brought up in class: graffiti culture. In America, graffiti is seen as vandalism. It seems to just grow overnight and the government wants to stop it. In some cities in Europe, on the other hand, graffiti is seen as an art form and a way for the city to make money so the city rents walls and garage doors to artists who paint only their rented space. The art form has really developed there as a result but not without a casualty, Jes' Grew. There are two effects of Jes' Grew's death. First, the statements that the graffiti make tend to be less radical because the government knows exactly who painted what. Second, paying the government to do their art seems like selling out to the more extreme artists.
So, my conclusion is that Jes' Grew is not jazz music or culture, or anything material for that matter. Jes' Grew is a feeling. A feeling that inspires people and incites the creation of art. A Jes' Grew text is not significant because a text could just compromise the idea of Jes' Grew completely. Mumbo Jumbo is not the only example of Jes' Grew either. As PaPa LaBas says, it has popped up many times and will always continue to arise.
Jes' Grew is obviously a central issue and plot engine in Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed but it is also one of the more ambiguous and unfamiliar concepts that the book introduces. So, how is a reader to understand a book at all when they don't understand what the main theme is? And, why would an author ever want to write a book whose central theme is so unclear? These are questions that I was thinking about while reading. Through class discussion and mulling over readings in my head, I have come up with a few speculations and ideas about Jes' Grew that I find satisfactory. Since we are just finishing the book now, I think that a blog post discussing all the clues about Jes' Grew is in order to round off my thoughts and bring the novel completely to a close. With that I begin:
Jes' Grew is introduced in the first chapter of the book as an epidemic disease that is rapidly consuming the nation. The reader is now intrigued but soon the intrigue turns to confusion when the reader begins to realize that the "victims" of Jes' Grew are suffering from symptoms that make them sing and dance. Slowly, the reader realizes that Jes' Grew is not an actual "disease" but on the contrary, somehow related to music, specifically the newer "race music" like jazz that was sweeping the country amongst young people despite the efforts of the older generation to stop it.
In class, we equated Jes' Grew to jazz culture and music but, by the end of the book it is obvious that this equation is not quite correct. Jes' Grew dies out but Jazz does not. So the question is: if Jes' Grew does not equal jazz (although they are related) what is it? We almost must add one more idea to our analysis, the fact that the supporters of Jes' Grew feel that Jes' Grew is more alive and effective without a text. So add that to the question.
I want to propose that Jes' Grew is the feeling related to the act of taking part in a counterculture specifically having to do with art. It is almost a feeling of rebellion. This also goes back to the idea of art "dying" in museums and cultures becoming museum pieces. What evokes the wild responses from the public is not just the music but the novelty of it and that slight feeling that maybe someone infected with Jazz is getting away with something. Jazz music is still played and popular but yet there are no "epidemics" of jazz where the nation can't resist the music. Why? because the Jes' Grew is gone. Jazz has museums, festivals, and a hall of fame now. It is not novel. It is not counter-cultural. It's just a genre of music now and as it became a genre, more and more criteria were imposed upon it to keep it within the confines of the newly created genre. The jazz musicians from the first generations wanted to be recognized as a legitimate style of music but with recognition came standardization and the music is turned into a concept. Jes' Grew dies and its a museum piece.
I just want to briefly mention an example I brought up in class: graffiti culture. In America, graffiti is seen as vandalism. It seems to just grow overnight and the government wants to stop it. In some cities in Europe, on the other hand, graffiti is seen as an art form and a way for the city to make money so the city rents walls and garage doors to artists who paint only their rented space. The art form has really developed there as a result but not without a casualty, Jes' Grew. There are two effects of Jes' Grew's death. First, the statements that the graffiti make tend to be less radical because the government knows exactly who painted what. Second, paying the government to do their art seems like selling out to the more extreme artists.
So, my conclusion is that Jes' Grew is not jazz music or culture, or anything material for that matter. Jes' Grew is a feeling. A feeling that inspires people and incites the creation of art. A Jes' Grew text is not significant because a text could just compromise the idea of Jes' Grew completely. Mumbo Jumbo is not the only example of Jes' Grew either. As PaPa LaBas says, it has popped up many times and will always continue to arise.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Mumbo Jumbo and Mythology
In this blog post I intend to expand on a comparison that was just briefly outlined in our discussion yesterday: the comparison of the style of Mumbo Jumbo to the genre of mythology. As I revisited this comparison that I hadn't thought much about at first, I began to flesh out the idea immensely and jot a ton of pertinent points down in my notebook. So, here it is:
First of all, on the most basic level, both Mumbo Jumbo and myths are similar in that they combine known or observed fact and fiction conceived by an author. For example, during the time period covered in Mumbo Jumbo the president was, in fact, William Harding but, it is not exactly fact that he attended the "chitterling switch" mentioned in the novel. In Norse mythology, there is thunder and lightening but whether or not their existence has to do with gods that live in the sky is debatable. Both genres not only use elements of fact and fiction but combine and blur the line between the two as well, almost creating alternate realities that only resemble the real world (the world that the Wallflower order controls in Mumbo Jumbo and a world intermingled with the gods in most mythologies). The factual side of the story provides structure and credibility while the fictional side lends the author an artistic license to bend the truth as they like to accomplish their goal.
The tone of the two cases is also similar. The acknowledgement of some fictionality in the work in both cases inclines the authors to employ a more storyteller-esque tone over a more serious lecturer-esque tone. Of course I am generalizing, but I think the comparison is still valid. Lecturers tend to be more prepared and straightforward whereas storytellers often ramble, not knowing exactly where they are going next. I think the idea of rambling-storyteller fits extremely well with Ishmael Reed's style of narration; at the beginning he seems to start a million different story lines with no goal but by the end he has it all wrapped up nice and neat even if there were some bumps along the way. To me the tone with which Reed's story is told makes me feel like the story is organic, more similar to the oral tradition of myths than a traditional novel. (This is going to be part of another post about music that I am almost finished with.) His tone helps the story gain life or maybe more like a loa, but even if that is taking the comparison too far, it at least keeps the story from going stale.
Their purpose is similar as well. Like myths, the semi-factual story presented by Ishmael Reed is used to explain an actual set of events. Reed takes a couple years of American culture and explicates them using a story. Mythology is primarily used to interpret and elucidate natural or social phenomena that seem otherwise inexplicable. Usually, some type of pantheon of gods is used to explain events that seem supernatural. Reed has the Wallflower Order fill this role. Like the traditional role of gods in myths, the Wallflower Order can easily float about figurative in a world above the heads of the normal people or mingle with the plebes without being called out. The fight amongst themselves like gods and control everything. They try to punish those who don't do their will and, like when gods punish those who don't worship them, the Wallflower order hurts those who don't worship their God. The multiple religious undertones in Mumbo Jumbo, the Atonist, Voodoo practitioners, and the discussion of Egyptian religion, also coincide with the conventional religious preoccupation in mythology.
Two more somewhat related observations:
It is significant that Mumbo Jumbo resembles mythology because the written myths gave a text to the cultures that they represented. They saved culture for thousands of years but also kind of turned the cultures into museum pieces. In Reed's novel, a primary concern is finding a text and whether that compromises the culture.
Second, resembling an established culturally distinct genre like mythology gives Mumbo Jumbo cultural credibility. He creates the mythology for a time that had none and since his book is not purely fiction, like mythology, there is justification to study in a way similar to the way a historian studies a source. Mythology adds to a culture and with it and the historical context, a careful reader can extrapolate unwritten social nuances of a past time by analyzing how the author uses fiction.
First of all, on the most basic level, both Mumbo Jumbo and myths are similar in that they combine known or observed fact and fiction conceived by an author. For example, during the time period covered in Mumbo Jumbo the president was, in fact, William Harding but, it is not exactly fact that he attended the "chitterling switch" mentioned in the novel. In Norse mythology, there is thunder and lightening but whether or not their existence has to do with gods that live in the sky is debatable. Both genres not only use elements of fact and fiction but combine and blur the line between the two as well, almost creating alternate realities that only resemble the real world (the world that the Wallflower order controls in Mumbo Jumbo and a world intermingled with the gods in most mythologies). The factual side of the story provides structure and credibility while the fictional side lends the author an artistic license to bend the truth as they like to accomplish their goal.
The tone of the two cases is also similar. The acknowledgement of some fictionality in the work in both cases inclines the authors to employ a more storyteller-esque tone over a more serious lecturer-esque tone. Of course I am generalizing, but I think the comparison is still valid. Lecturers tend to be more prepared and straightforward whereas storytellers often ramble, not knowing exactly where they are going next. I think the idea of rambling-storyteller fits extremely well with Ishmael Reed's style of narration; at the beginning he seems to start a million different story lines with no goal but by the end he has it all wrapped up nice and neat even if there were some bumps along the way. To me the tone with which Reed's story is told makes me feel like the story is organic, more similar to the oral tradition of myths than a traditional novel. (This is going to be part of another post about music that I am almost finished with.) His tone helps the story gain life or maybe more like a loa, but even if that is taking the comparison too far, it at least keeps the story from going stale.
Their purpose is similar as well. Like myths, the semi-factual story presented by Ishmael Reed is used to explain an actual set of events. Reed takes a couple years of American culture and explicates them using a story. Mythology is primarily used to interpret and elucidate natural or social phenomena that seem otherwise inexplicable. Usually, some type of pantheon of gods is used to explain events that seem supernatural. Reed has the Wallflower Order fill this role. Like the traditional role of gods in myths, the Wallflower Order can easily float about figurative in a world above the heads of the normal people or mingle with the plebes without being called out. The fight amongst themselves like gods and control everything. They try to punish those who don't do their will and, like when gods punish those who don't worship them, the Wallflower order hurts those who don't worship their God. The multiple religious undertones in Mumbo Jumbo, the Atonist, Voodoo practitioners, and the discussion of Egyptian religion, also coincide with the conventional religious preoccupation in mythology.
Two more somewhat related observations:
It is significant that Mumbo Jumbo resembles mythology because the written myths gave a text to the cultures that they represented. They saved culture for thousands of years but also kind of turned the cultures into museum pieces. In Reed's novel, a primary concern is finding a text and whether that compromises the culture.
Second, resembling an established culturally distinct genre like mythology gives Mumbo Jumbo cultural credibility. He creates the mythology for a time that had none and since his book is not purely fiction, like mythology, there is justification to study in a way similar to the way a historian studies a source. Mythology adds to a culture and with it and the historical context, a careful reader can extrapolate unwritten social nuances of a past time by analyzing how the author uses fiction.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
I really must finish some thoughts....
Ok. So as many of you know, our discussion in class today became a bit excited over history and fiction and how they relate. Though I communicated most of what I had to say today in class, I would like to revisit some of the ideas that have been floating around our room during class. I anticipate a varied, scattered post. You should too.
Let's start with some conclusions. First off, history is very like fiction and vice versa --they have plot, characters, setting, and (maybe most importantly) narrative. Before opening our first reading I could have written that down though. When stated, initially the comparison seems easy, but being the smart kids that we are at Uni, we have to make the simple complicated. We read Doctorow and now we have an issue: namely, that in his novel, the historical and the fictitious meet, mingle, and are practically indistinguishable. This deepens the initial comparison to the question: what delineates history from fiction?
Again, the question seems simple enough and the answer plain as day: one is true and factual, the other is false and contrived. But how is one to define fact or fiction? From whose perspective is it judged? and the question deepens. The clear line that separates historical truth from imaginative stories is now blurring in your own mind as you try desperately to define what is true and false for yourself. The threat of human bias causes this a paranoia that subsequently forces you to ask if there is any truth. The stories told in textbooks are severed from the real world as they morph into mere representations of truth. This sequence causes a sense of panic. History and truth are being turned into stories and fiction. It's disorienting. But why? Why do we care so much about events that we had no part in?
We care because it gives us context. It gives us a reason to act the way we do, to like certain people and fight others, to care about this and not that etc. We are built upon it and thinking that our foundation may crumble because it lacks truth is a scary thought. We want to be an extension of something substantial and undeniable, not something created and influence-able. At the same time, we are thinking about the future, when we are the history (if that makes sense...). How does it feel to think that we merely exist and then are replaced by mutable shells of our once factual being? It's creepy. So if fiction and history are so inseparable, is this concluding that truth is nonexistent or at least, extremely difficult to identify?
If this is what you deduce (as this is what I originally got from all of this foolishness), this debate seems thoroughly depressing and annoying. Those who are backing this belief that there is no truth are SO ANNOYING. Much like Doctorow's political stance, these people are able to deconstruct and tear down the long established monoliths of truth, fact, and history, but unable to reconstruct anything to fill their spot, leaving an unsightly void in the world. When I realized that they would have to leave some such void in order to champion the there-is-no-truth-in-the-world and, in a discussion with such educated and intelligent individuals, this hole produces a problem. YOU JUST CAN'T DO THAT. It's like you don't like the design on a shirt, so you just cut it off the front of the shirt but you don't resew in anything to fill the whole so you are left with a obvious problem. Thus, I determined that my conclusion from their observations was incorrect so I began to explore other avenues that the evidence could open. I came up with a much more suitable solution.
These writers aren't saying that there is no truth but rather that there is SO much truth. Using fiction, they show that distinct perspectives are true; rather that there being one real truth there are practically infinitely many and they are constantly changing. Or, in other words, the fiction deepens and expands the truth rather that discrediting it. (Man this is really falling into place.) Doctorow tries to show that history is dynamic and changing. Using the truth of perspective, it is! All the time. The analogy to witnesses to a car crash was brought up in class today, if you ask witness A what happened the day of the crime, then wait a week after he/she has seen all the media about the accident and tell me that the story won't have changed.
So, I know this is long and winded but let me make like a few more significant points as to WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Well, this means that though historical writers use these perspectives, they can't quite use them the way fiction writers can. A historian can't just make up a character to reinforce a argument or a point of view while a novelist can. This gives a novelist a whole extra bag of tricks to enhance their writing. It's hard to convey meaning through facts and dates but emotion can be communicated easily. If writing history is like playing soccer, then writing historical fiction is like playing soccer... and being able to use your hands --it is often discredited as cheating but is way more effective than kicking the darn thing. Historians and novelists have similar jobs for similar purposes but everyone must recognize that there is a difference. It exists; there is no way around it. Still, even though I have come to some conclusions, the question is still out there and I definitely plan to revisit it later in the semester.
Let's start with some conclusions. First off, history is very like fiction and vice versa --they have plot, characters, setting, and (maybe most importantly) narrative. Before opening our first reading I could have written that down though. When stated, initially the comparison seems easy, but being the smart kids that we are at Uni, we have to make the simple complicated. We read Doctorow and now we have an issue: namely, that in his novel, the historical and the fictitious meet, mingle, and are practically indistinguishable. This deepens the initial comparison to the question: what delineates history from fiction?
Again, the question seems simple enough and the answer plain as day: one is true and factual, the other is false and contrived. But how is one to define fact or fiction? From whose perspective is it judged? and the question deepens. The clear line that separates historical truth from imaginative stories is now blurring in your own mind as you try desperately to define what is true and false for yourself. The threat of human bias causes this a paranoia that subsequently forces you to ask if there is any truth. The stories told in textbooks are severed from the real world as they morph into mere representations of truth. This sequence causes a sense of panic. History and truth are being turned into stories and fiction. It's disorienting. But why? Why do we care so much about events that we had no part in?
We care because it gives us context. It gives us a reason to act the way we do, to like certain people and fight others, to care about this and not that etc. We are built upon it and thinking that our foundation may crumble because it lacks truth is a scary thought. We want to be an extension of something substantial and undeniable, not something created and influence-able. At the same time, we are thinking about the future, when we are the history (if that makes sense...). How does it feel to think that we merely exist and then are replaced by mutable shells of our once factual being? It's creepy. So if fiction and history are so inseparable, is this concluding that truth is nonexistent or at least, extremely difficult to identify?
If this is what you deduce (as this is what I originally got from all of this foolishness), this debate seems thoroughly depressing and annoying. Those who are backing this belief that there is no truth are SO ANNOYING. Much like Doctorow's political stance, these people are able to deconstruct and tear down the long established monoliths of truth, fact, and history, but unable to reconstruct anything to fill their spot, leaving an unsightly void in the world. When I realized that they would have to leave some such void in order to champion the there-is-no-truth-in-the-world and, in a discussion with such educated and intelligent individuals, this hole produces a problem. YOU JUST CAN'T DO THAT. It's like you don't like the design on a shirt, so you just cut it off the front of the shirt but you don't resew in anything to fill the whole so you are left with a obvious problem. Thus, I determined that my conclusion from their observations was incorrect so I began to explore other avenues that the evidence could open. I came up with a much more suitable solution.
These writers aren't saying that there is no truth but rather that there is SO much truth. Using fiction, they show that distinct perspectives are true; rather that there being one real truth there are practically infinitely many and they are constantly changing. Or, in other words, the fiction deepens and expands the truth rather that discrediting it. (Man this is really falling into place.) Doctorow tries to show that history is dynamic and changing. Using the truth of perspective, it is! All the time. The analogy to witnesses to a car crash was brought up in class today, if you ask witness A what happened the day of the crime, then wait a week after he/she has seen all the media about the accident and tell me that the story won't have changed.
So, I know this is long and winded but let me make like a few more significant points as to WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Well, this means that though historical writers use these perspectives, they can't quite use them the way fiction writers can. A historian can't just make up a character to reinforce a argument or a point of view while a novelist can. This gives a novelist a whole extra bag of tricks to enhance their writing. It's hard to convey meaning through facts and dates but emotion can be communicated easily. If writing history is like playing soccer, then writing historical fiction is like playing soccer... and being able to use your hands --it is often discredited as cheating but is way more effective than kicking the darn thing. Historians and novelists have similar jobs for similar purposes but everyone must recognize that there is a difference. It exists; there is no way around it. Still, even though I have come to some conclusions, the question is still out there and I definitely plan to revisit it later in the semester.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The Little Boy and the title
For the most part, the narrative position that Doctorow takes in Ragtime is a detached third person narrator, however, as I have discussed in previously posts, he sometimes slips into the perspective of one of his characters. The most significant of these characters is the little boy. Doctorow repeatedly comes back to the young child's point of view, using him to view much of the family dynamics of the New Rochelle family. But why? Why is the point of view of a child what Doctorow wants for this story?
Through Doctorow's manipulation of historical figures, Doctorow tries to change the idea of history from static to dynamic, from set in stone to theoretical, essentially from fact to fiction. Thus, he needs a narrator who is symbolic of the changing times and eager and able to perceive the changes occurring around him. A small child is perfect for this symbol because little kids grow rapidly and have visible changes in appearance over relatively short periods of time. There is a scene about him looking in the mirror and eventually he can't decide which is his real self and which is the reflection. THIS IS SO RAGTIME, both history and story are so close to reality that the reader struggles to mark fact from fiction.
The boy is also symbolic of fiction because he is young, playful, and, as all young children do, trying to create a world that he understands. History, in contrast, is more cold. One author I was reading discussed the title of the book in relation to the events in the book in a piece of literary criticism about the novel. There are two reasons for the title. First, the novel is about the ragtime era but second and more subtly, the genre of music called ragtime is comparable to the genre of writing that goes on in the book. History is the thumping, straight bass line holding the piece together while fiction is the treble/melody line with syncopated rhythms and intricate chords, sometimes harmoniously adding to the bass while at others, when the treble gets too far from the bass, clashing and eventually erupting into unorganized cacophony. Isn't that exactly like Ragtime? I think this is a wonderful comparison but there is more I need to add. (I am kind of digressing so new paragraph.)
Ragtime, the genre of music, is also a comment on the race relations of the time. Coon songs are basically happy, simple caricatures by white people for white people of older African-American music. Ragtime takes back this style of music and modernizes it, re-adding what made it interesting in the first place, the syncopation and chordal melodies. Coon songs are representative of the New Rochelle family's point of view and the lines that open the book about how there were no Negroes or immigrants: life is happy and simple. Then Colehouse Walker enters and brings with him a story, he is the complication and the rhythm. The New Rochelle family is bass, thumping calmly and steadily along and Colehouse and Sarah are the melody, sometime harmonizes and getting along, other times clashing and fighting. Colehouse embellishes the normally regular routine of the New Rochelle family.
This affect is also seen when Colehouse and the firemen meet. There interaction starts with the white firemen just chilling, minding to their daily routine of not really doing much. Enter Colehouse. Now things change. Colehouse changes encourages them to action and thus starts the story (or melody, to link this back to the metaphor). Thus another example of the ragtime metaphor in the novel.
Conclusion: The little boy is really significant and interesting. The metaphorical ragtime in Ragtime is so insanely cool and adds to reading the novel (at least for us music lovers).
Through Doctorow's manipulation of historical figures, Doctorow tries to change the idea of history from static to dynamic, from set in stone to theoretical, essentially from fact to fiction. Thus, he needs a narrator who is symbolic of the changing times and eager and able to perceive the changes occurring around him. A small child is perfect for this symbol because little kids grow rapidly and have visible changes in appearance over relatively short periods of time. There is a scene about him looking in the mirror and eventually he can't decide which is his real self and which is the reflection. THIS IS SO RAGTIME, both history and story are so close to reality that the reader struggles to mark fact from fiction.
The boy is also symbolic of fiction because he is young, playful, and, as all young children do, trying to create a world that he understands. History, in contrast, is more cold. One author I was reading discussed the title of the book in relation to the events in the book in a piece of literary criticism about the novel. There are two reasons for the title. First, the novel is about the ragtime era but second and more subtly, the genre of music called ragtime is comparable to the genre of writing that goes on in the book. History is the thumping, straight bass line holding the piece together while fiction is the treble/melody line with syncopated rhythms and intricate chords, sometimes harmoniously adding to the bass while at others, when the treble gets too far from the bass, clashing and eventually erupting into unorganized cacophony. Isn't that exactly like Ragtime? I think this is a wonderful comparison but there is more I need to add. (I am kind of digressing so new paragraph.)
Ragtime, the genre of music, is also a comment on the race relations of the time. Coon songs are basically happy, simple caricatures by white people for white people of older African-American music. Ragtime takes back this style of music and modernizes it, re-adding what made it interesting in the first place, the syncopation and chordal melodies. Coon songs are representative of the New Rochelle family's point of view and the lines that open the book about how there were no Negroes or immigrants: life is happy and simple. Then Colehouse Walker enters and brings with him a story, he is the complication and the rhythm. The New Rochelle family is bass, thumping calmly and steadily along and Colehouse and Sarah are the melody, sometime harmonizes and getting along, other times clashing and fighting. Colehouse embellishes the normally regular routine of the New Rochelle family.
This affect is also seen when Colehouse and the firemen meet. There interaction starts with the white firemen just chilling, minding to their daily routine of not really doing much. Enter Colehouse. Now things change. Colehouse changes encourages them to action and thus starts the story (or melody, to link this back to the metaphor). Thus another example of the ragtime metaphor in the novel.
Conclusion: The little boy is really significant and interesting. The metaphorical ragtime in Ragtime is so insanely cool and adds to reading the novel (at least for us music lovers).
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Narration...
Just recently in Spanish, we read a short story by a contemporary Catalunian author. In it, a detective goes to the library and falls asleep reading a book in his office and personal library. When he awakes, he is shocked to discover a woman, who appears to know him, sitting and staring at him. Startled and embarrassed that he doesn't remember the name of this woman that apparently knows him, he listens patiently as she admonishes him for his irresponsibility, his incompetence, and the wrong he did her. Eventually he loses interest in her reprimands and she becomes extremely angry. Heated words and tears come into play and, long, crazy story REALLY short, he finds out she is mad at him because she is a character in a novel and thinks he is the irresponsible author that didn't finish her story. She begs him to have an emotional investment in her story and her actions. (This is the part relevant to this blog post but if you are interested, he isn't the author, the woman shoots the detective, and the last lines are the actually author lamenting how bad this scene is.) E.L. Doctorow would really piss off this woman. Doctorow's narration is detached, uncaring, and full of irony and sarcasm. Doctorow presents his characters pretty individually and then slowly and subtly rips away at them or supports them with carefully chosen and seemingly ambiguous language. At times he is unclear about his position on an issue or character while at others he is blatantly bashing or supporting another.
Although this narration style seems to annoy many people, I like Doctorow's way of describing his characters. I think that Doctorow didn't want his book to be casually popular to the general public and he shows this through his prose. He wrote for an educated, actively engaged audience, one willing to impose different tones upon the words on the page to get the full picture. He wrote so that the whole book could easily be read with little thought in one voice without regard to any of the other voices that could communicate the work. The nuances are lost on those who don't make an effort to appreciate them and the book loses much of its significance. After the initial frustration of trying to figure out where Doctorow stands as a third party, I began to understand and look for the different ways Doctorow was communicating underlying meaning through neutral prose.
Another important part of his narration is his divergence from being a third person narrator on a few occasions. A point from an article I just read while searching for a good panel presentation article gave me a whole new argument on why Doctorow chooses to narrate from where he does. So, this article was talking about how Doctorow was showing the mutability of history and perspective and whatnot. Jesus Benito Sanchez talks about this novelist who sat in his room on a chair, continually adjusting the position of his chair trying to find the perfect angle to view life from. Doctorow too must deal with the issue of from what angle to view his story. Because he didn't want to fix the perspective, thus contradicting his idea of dynamic history, he discards this as an option. Another option would be to assume the position of omniscient narrator. Again, to avoid fixing his narrative voice, he rejects this narrative voice. Doctorow, instead, opts for an ambiguous narrator whose detachment and distance from the characters continually changes to provide different perspectives. The occasions where Doctorow does narrate through a perspective of one of his characters are, evidently, very significant, particularly the perspective of the little boy. And I could write a whole other blog post on just his perspective and what it means so I think I will.
In short, I like Doctorow's narration. He is engaging and challenges his readers to think. As I continue reading, and with the aid of some pieces of literary criticism, I see more and more significance in Doctorow's voice and I look forward to talking about it in the upcoming panel presentations and my next blog post.
Although this narration style seems to annoy many people, I like Doctorow's way of describing his characters. I think that Doctorow didn't want his book to be casually popular to the general public and he shows this through his prose. He wrote for an educated, actively engaged audience, one willing to impose different tones upon the words on the page to get the full picture. He wrote so that the whole book could easily be read with little thought in one voice without regard to any of the other voices that could communicate the work. The nuances are lost on those who don't make an effort to appreciate them and the book loses much of its significance. After the initial frustration of trying to figure out where Doctorow stands as a third party, I began to understand and look for the different ways Doctorow was communicating underlying meaning through neutral prose.
Another important part of his narration is his divergence from being a third person narrator on a few occasions. A point from an article I just read while searching for a good panel presentation article gave me a whole new argument on why Doctorow chooses to narrate from where he does. So, this article was talking about how Doctorow was showing the mutability of history and perspective and whatnot. Jesus Benito Sanchez talks about this novelist who sat in his room on a chair, continually adjusting the position of his chair trying to find the perfect angle to view life from. Doctorow too must deal with the issue of from what angle to view his story. Because he didn't want to fix the perspective, thus contradicting his idea of dynamic history, he discards this as an option. Another option would be to assume the position of omniscient narrator. Again, to avoid fixing his narrative voice, he rejects this narrative voice. Doctorow, instead, opts for an ambiguous narrator whose detachment and distance from the characters continually changes to provide different perspectives. The occasions where Doctorow does narrate through a perspective of one of his characters are, evidently, very significant, particularly the perspective of the little boy. And I could write a whole other blog post on just his perspective and what it means so I think I will.
In short, I like Doctorow's narration. He is engaging and challenges his readers to think. As I continue reading, and with the aid of some pieces of literary criticism, I see more and more significance in Doctorow's voice and I look forward to talking about it in the upcoming panel presentations and my next blog post.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Identity in the first few chapters
Everyone wants to be successful and everyone grapples with the question of who they truly are but Ragtime seems to consider these two issue side by side, evaluating how they relate. Does success shape one's identity or must the identity be manipulated in order to gain success? Either way, what does it matter? Is it really an issue if only a certain type of person is able to succeed and at what point does it become ridiculous to sacrifice personal values for success? The issue of success and how it is obtained is a recurring issue in the beginning of Ragtime. Everyone is forced to claim an identity but how one chooses their identity and values and how that contributes to their success is brought up in characters such as Tateh, Houdini, and Morgan.
Let's start with Tateh. Tateh struggles with creating a living for he and his daughter because he insists on adhering to his personal values that make him opposed to capitalist inequalities and his pride prevents him from taking the charity offered by Evelyn. His first attempt at business (his business of doing portraits) doesn't produce much profit because his identity of the proud, socialist, foreign man doesn't coincide with the characteristics that create a good business man like Morgan or Ford. When he gives up on his original business plan and up grades to the less personal, more modern practice of mass production of his goods, he becomes more successful.
Next, Harry Houdini. Like Tateh, Houdini was a Jewish immigrant from a similar background to Tateh's, that is drawn to America to find work and wealth, but somehow Houdini found success. The first difference between their two paths in America was that Tateh pursued a career in the cutthroat field of business whereas Houdini pursued a career on the much more accepting atmosphere of performance on the stage. But how do their identities play into this? Well, to start Houdini abandoned his given name of Ehrich Weisz for the more aesthetically pleasing stage name "Harry Houdini". By changing his name, he basically rid himself of his foreign past to start a new identity in the USA. Houdini also recognized how one played the game to achieve success and subsequently realized that before he was well-known he would have to take less than desirable jobs. Through this suppression of pride and deference to those in post higher than himself, Houdini changed his identity to start his career. Once famous and sought after, he again regained his pride, re-instituted high standards for work, and recreated an identity for himself that would get him recognition in the public eye and keep him on top. His desire to become successful demanded a willingness to play the game society poses that Tateh did not posses. Ehrich Weisz's transformation into Harry Houdini made him famous even today.
J.P. Morgan however comes from a completely different world. He is from a white, well-established, wealthy family and is thus perfectly set up to succeed in the business world. In his case, identity in the media or image seems more important than his substantive beliefs. He wears expensive clothes, owns expensive books and art, and he controls a great number of companies. In the media his identity stops there but don't fret because through Doctorow's lovely book we, the readers, are given a behind the scenes pass to Morgan's life. In his secret room (which symbolizes his hidden, more personal identity), we learn that he is interested in Egyptology because he identifies with the pharaohs and gods. He, according to Doctorow, thinks he is an actual god and, if not for his bulbous nose, he would have no concept of mortality. So for the public he is defined by his material possessions and his ruthless business transactions but to himself he is defined by his seemingly infinite power making him god-like and diseased nose. He too, even with his immense success, has multiple identities.
These observations seem to suggest that Doctorow is commenting on what is takes to be successful in the business climate he is writing about. Doctorow shows that the best way to gain success is to start out with it but if that's not an option, to make it big you must be willing to play into the system and allow it to manipulate your identity until you fit the mold for success or, like Houdini, create a completely new identity for yourself. A rather cynical take on success really...
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