Anne Lamott

I've been devouring Anne Lamott's essays in Traveling Mercies and Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.

Then a friend recommended her reading of her newest book, Grace (Eventually) on youtube found here:

  

About Gerard Manley Hopkins on CBC radio

CBC.ca | Ideas | Original Spare Strange

This CBC show provides a biography of Hopkins' life and why his poetry is still relevant.

If you want to learn more about the poet that I am studying for my master's thesis, check it out.

Kathy Acker's "Blood and Guts in High School"

Of course just when first flipping through the novel/modern art/pastiche, I was taken aback at the sexual sketches, the Book of the Dead images and typewritten text, the drawn maps of her dreams, handwritten translation notes, and even at the narrative fragmentation morphing from script of a play to diary entries to poetry. Kathy Acker’s work solidly fits within Fredric Jameson’s perimeters of postmodernity’s depthlessness, play, and pastiche even before we start reading it! Once we do, however, we’re immediately confronted with an ambiguous incestuous relationship. I kept questioning, perhaps optimistically, if Johnny really was Janey’s father. After the destabilizing opening sequence, the narration continues the fragmentation of Janey’s identity by referring to Janus, her namesake, the two-faced goddess looking in opposite directions. Even by the end of the work, readers could never piece together a coherent identity or personality for her. This accentuates Jameson’s claim that postmodernity shifts the “dynamics of cultural pathology” from the modernist “alienation of the subject” to the “fragmentation of the subject” (PM 63).

            I was the most interested in Acker’s plagiarism (or resurrecting and revitalizing) of Sextus Propertius’ poetry. The original’s eroticism, masochism, and themes of patriarchal sexual slavery and rape mirror Janey’s love-hate relationship with her pimp. Janey’s versions/translations are surprisingly close to other more authoritative translations, yet include snippets from her own reality: watching TV and writing poems instead of weaving and listening to a lyre, for instance. The overall effect of the poems, the narrative, the imagery, simulates the schizophrenic, incoherent attempts that Janey makes to defy her agony.

Zoe Whittall's "Bottle Rocket Hearts"

Zoe Whittall’s debut novel Bottle Rocket Hearts has sparked several stimulating conversations in our home. When discussing her nuanced treatment of the separatist debate, my husband recounted his understanding of the 1995 referendum over the question of Quebec separating from Canada as a sixteen-year-old from Lac St-Jean, the region of the province that had the highest percentage of “yes” votes. He blames both the limited information that was available to this remote region (the only television stations in the area were TVA and Radio-Canada, for instance) and the history classes given in high school that emphasized the oppression of French-Canadians for the overwhelming optimism that separation would restore the rightful balance-of-power. He had not heard the voices of those like the novel’s Rachel who cautions that giving power to the Bloc Quebecois may only shift the power to one oppressed group (French-Canadians) who would continue to oppress marginalized groups (First Nations, immigrants, homosexuals, feminists, etc). I appreciated the varied opinions related through the characters: from Seven’s comic concerns of a diminishing marijuana supply from British Columbia (which we later learn only mask his real reasons: his rights as a homosexual and his estrangement from his separatist father) to Eve’s father’s family arriving in free buses from Ontario to join pro-Canada rallies to Della’s adherence to her father’s separatist political position although her mother was/is English-Canadian to Eve’s aunt’s ironic disgust over her lover being a separatist and not because she is a woman. It is also telling that Eve’s own placement of the “x” on the ballot is never revealed, reminding readers that not all Quebeckers were polarized (as XXXX (Katherine) says “it’s really not an us-against-them thing, for most Quebeckers) (68). Portraying this and other historical events through the eyes of bilingual, bi-cultural and marginalized Montrealers provided a perspective that I would never have considered if not for this book.

            One such event is the characters’ reaction to the then-Quebec premier Parizeau’s comment that the separatists had lost their battle for independence because of the ethnic vote. Although they are not immigrants, Rachel and Eve respond with indignation. In fact, Eve calls him a “racist prick” (76). Della however tries to understand the reason behind his remark. She reasons that he is crushed by the weight of failure. My husband agrees with her. In our conversation he explained that before the referendum the Bloc Quebecois claimed that the federal government was sending immigrants and refugees to Montreal because they were likely to vote “no” out of loyalty to the government that had allowed them to come to Canada. He argues that Parizeau was criticizing this battle tactic of the federal government and not the immigrants themselves. Through Della’s perspective and then the ensuing conversation with my husband, I realized that there are other interpretations of this remark that I had always assumed was a cut-and-dry racist comment. Whittall explores these opinions and positions with insight and skill that makes for an enlightening reading experience without becoming a textbook for Quebec’s political history. Unlike Hugh MacLennan’s use of type-characters of Two Solitudes, she is able to breathe life into the debate with her complex, realistic characters. Through the perspective of the gay community, the voices of the marginalized are heard, not just those of the dominant English-French polemic.

            As in “real life,” the reactions to homosexuality in the novel are varied and nuanced, and also as in “real life,” the differences in opinion are often generational. Both Seven’s and Rachel’s parents have cut ties to their children because of their sexual orientation. Rachel’s parents blame her choice to engage in such a “lonely lifestyle” for her death and not the homophobic skinheads who murdered her (129). Perhaps the most open acknowledgment of the gay lifestyle among the parents of the characters comes from Eve’s parents who continue to develop their relationship with their daughter. Yet even they “tolerate” homosexuals and do not “accept” them as Eve desires. The society as a whole is also shown to be intolerant. Not only by Rachel’s murder, but also through Della and Seven’s recounting of the police crack-down of a warehouse party, the reader, as well as Eve, learns of the violence committed against the community. The Sex Garage raid and the ensuing police violence towards those protesting the incident also underscores the mainline position of intolerance towards gays. Whittall succeeds in providing context to the oppression of Montreal homosexuals during the 1990s.

            In fact, one of the aspects that I most enjoyed about this novel was its place in 90s culture. It is quite rare to read a book that is set in the era when I was in high school. The cultural references, well-known people and events, and concerns of the era were much more meaningful to me than books set in any other time period. Since the 90s were a period of relative stability and economic prosperity in the United States, where I grew up, I was reminded that it was not the case for Quebec. In fact it was a turbulent decade for the province. The decade began just after the Polytechnique massacre, uniting many women (including Eve) to the feminist movement. Not long afterwards, the Oka crisis revealed the prejudices of the Quebec and Canadian governments towards First Nation peoples. The Hells Angels were active in Montreal during this period, as revealed in Eve and Della’s experience of one of their bombs exploding nearby buildings. AIDS became a major concern as indicated by Seven’s involvement in the AIDS Community Care, his own status as HIV+, and his album of obituaries of those of his friends who had succumbed to the illness. On a less serious note I liked being reminded of my own experiences, such as watching O.J. Simpson’s white bronco on its slow get-away or listening to Alanis Morrisette’s album “Jagged Little Pill” on my portable CD player on my bus rides home from school.  Although I would never have chosen this book out of the thousands in a bookstore, I am glad that I was assigned it for a class. Otherwise I would have missed out on one of the most enjoyable, interesting, readable, conversation-starting, and thought-provoking books I’ve ever read.   

                    

Check out the "Globe and Mail" review/rave: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvkSBdyHayiNuqHk5712cRsZmQR3cluQTfWNBLTJwLxRn4ZKCiduASgcdhJ5JhuNsyg_zaMK0z3pIEF2-utpI7426YPQ98yn70DBBcGGeqbs23tEPhsFMrv1DxZhUmkrUWF5GTnJqAKKc/s1600-h/globereview.jpg

And check out the video the publishers made to promote the book for Canada Reads (it made it into the Top 10!)

Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon"

Morrison's interweaving of the irreal with the real in Song of Solomon reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical realism (One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera) and and also that of Gloria Naylor's Mama Day. Like Mama Day, Pilate is able to manipulate unseen forces in order to enrich others' lives or to punish them. She provides nourishment to her people in the guise of literal food (she always starts a conversation by offering food, usually peaches), pleasurable soul-food (by making wine and whiskey), the sustenance of life and regeneration (providing the lust concoction that leads to Milkman's birth), the sustenance of health (as a natural healer), providing peace (by healing the emotional wounds inflicted by arguments), providing manna as prophetess (announcing Milkman's birth through song, for instance), and protecting her people as punisher of wrongdoing (whipping Hagar because she tries to kill Milkman).

She is the Mother of her nation, a navel-less Eve ensuring the continuity of her bloodline. Pilate is the ultimate Black leader, a nonconformist who is able to balance eccentricities (the irreal) with common sense (the real). Although Milkman is the protagonist of the novel, Pilate's overwhelming presence surpasses his own. She guides him, saves him from prison, teaches him and rebukes him, so that she becomes the hero of the novel. Although her name links her to the shameful killer of the Christ, Pilate's life-giving powers and sacrificial death also connect her to the Resurrection and to immortality.

    

Maxine Hong Kingston's "The Woman Warrior"

            While reading The Woman Warrior, Hong Kingston’s word choice struck me. For example, in the recounting of “White Tigers,” after the woman warrior leads her army to Peiping and beheads the emperor, they attack Mongols “en route” to visit the Great Wall. This French expression inserted into a Chinese tale pulled me out of the narrative for a moment. My immediate reaction was to criticize such discordant language, but soon realized that this was the author’s attempt to reify the central theme of the novel: the anxiety induced by attempting to reconcile two distinct cultures. 

Specifically, Hong Kingston recounts the experience of immigrant children navigating the culture and language of their parents’ homeland and those of their surroundings. The wisdom supplied by their parents does not translate onto their new experience. For instance her incomprehension of her mother’s explanation for why she tastes sugar in her mouth when she has not eaten any (that her grandmother in China is sending her candy) emphasizes her disconnect with Chinese legends. This anecdote leads to the conclusion that to her parents, “home” meant China, a word that “suspended America." The inclusion of motherline symbols (umbilical cords, midwives, women storytellers, string, circles, loops and hoops) further emphasize the tragedy of a mother not able to teach her daughter how to live and survive. Instead of retelling the woman warrior stories to empower her daughter, she uses them to dismiss her victories. Therefore when Hong Kingston earns straight A’s, her mother retorts that it is nothing compared to a girl who saved her village. From the first line of the novel, she tells her daughter directly “you must not tell,” and symbolically has cut her tongue. In order to find her voice, Hong Kingston must break free from matriarchal control, beginning a new motherline that will provide strength to her daughters.

Slaughter-House Five

          Time travel and interplanetary travel as both narrative device and critique on Western assumptions of the absoluteness of time and space allow Kurt Vonnegut to interweave and interrelate the two World Wars to the Vietnam War. References to the painting The Spirit of ’76, the novel The Red Badge of Courage (Simon & Schuster Enriched Classic), and the battle for Hill 875 affiliate the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the Korean War to his deconstruction of political metanarratives of patriotism. Time travel allows a juxtaposition of the lies told to Pilgrim’s (and Vonnegut’s) generation about WWII to be inscribed on the war of his son’s generation, the Vietnam War. Voyages to Tralfamadore also undermine American metanarratives as the aliens provide an outsider’s perspective to the narrative.

The metanarrative of American imperialism calls for the sacrifice of its citizens (mainly young men) to expand its “much-envied” systems of capitalism and democracy to better the lives of those under the “oppressive” system of communism. Vonnegut undermines these presumptions by retelling his experience at Dresden when Americans bombed civilians under false pretences. Americans, not the enemy, are shown to be “a threat to world peace” (142). Even the disjoined paragraph structure of the novel undermines grand narratives, allowing for gaps in memory, enforced and voluntary silence, and repressed memory. These breaks in narrative emulate the absence of the Dresden raid in the Official History of the Army Air Force in World War Two, a conscious decision to keep the events “a secret from the American people” (191). Likewise, the inclusion of living people into a world of fictional characters, some of whom appear in the context of Vonnegut’s other novels, causes the reader to doubt the authenticity of the information provided, thereby calling into question the authoritative voice of historians. For instance the fictive Howard W. Campbell, Jr, the protagonist of Vonnegut’s earlier novel Mother Night, quotes an actual line attributed to the American humorist Kin Hubbard in his critique of capitalism, which he calls America’s “most destructive untruth” (129). Capitalism, he claims, has made American prisoners-of-war the “most self-pitying, least fraternal, and dirtiest of all prisoners of war...incapable of concerted action” (131), hence not the exemplars of “truth, justice, and the American way” which the metanarrative presupposes. As the narrator relates, there are almost no Supermans, almost no All-American boy heroes in this story. Throughout the narrative only Edgar Derby stands up for the American ideals of “freedom and justice and opportunities and fair play for all” (164), only to be killed for a petty crime soon afterwards. Hence, the hero does not triumph as in a Greek epic, but is doomed. Even in the commodity of ideas, the best ideas, like those of Kilgore Trout, cannot rise to the top if, like Trout’s novels, the “prose [is] frightful” (110). The packaging and marketing of ideas, heroes, ideologies, etc is shown to outweigh their inherent value, thus undermining capitalist ideals. Democracy, another component of “the American way,” is also ridiculed through Edgar Derby’s election as the leader of the American prisoners-of-war. An Englishman calls for nominations, when there are none, the Englishman nominates Derby for them, after which two or three of the hundreds of soldiers second the motion while “[m]ost of the Americans were in stupors or asleep” (144).

The Traflamadorians’ ability to observe a fourth dimension, allowing for the collapsing of chronological time, attacks the foundation of history and the causal relationships of the metanarratives (example: if you are good, you will be rewarded, if bad, you will be punished).  Their perspective of reality differs greatly from that of the metanarratives propagated by Western societies. Narratives concerning sex and reproduction (114), chronological linear time (114), war and peace (117), free will (151), the form of human bodies (87), Christianity (108-110), conceptions of beauty (113), etc are all shown to be faulty, subject to the same perspective-shifting as changing of a pair of eyeglasses, being blind, or suffering from blurred vision engenders (emphasized by Billy Pilgrim’s vocation of optometrist). In fact the Tralfamadorians’ ability to see the future as a fact already accomplished indicates that the American-centric belief of causing the destruction of the universe is completely unfounded, since a banal mistake made by a Tralfamadorian test pilot will bring its demise. Depthlessness, as Jameson suggests, reigns. Similarly both the “Three Musketeers,” as signifying to Billy Pilgrim the death of three fellow combatants, and the “Milky Way,” as a reality to him in his space travels, are both reduced to commodities: the candy bars his wife consumes.