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. 

The History of Emily Montague

      As the first novel written about and set in Canada, Frances Brooke’s 1769 epistolary novel, The History of Emily Montague, contains surprisingly little insight into the political and socioeconomic realities of post-Conquest Quebec. In fact, what we can deduce is Brooke’s prejudice of colonialization. For example she portrays the land/landscape as both “naturally rich,” thus ideal for English gentleman farmers to cultivate, and as “sublimity” itself, in order to entice their wives to accompany them (letters 22 and 131). The lives of the protagonists are shown to be full of leisure and pleasant company, completely removed from and unaffected by the “squabbling at Quebec” (letter 45). Hence, Brookes assures the English gentry that they can comfortably integrate into Canada without involvement in the inconveniences of “some dregs of old disputes” that they may be wary of encountering (letter 45). Other fears that potential colonists may have, such as of the harsh winters, uprisings by the French, or savageries by the native population, are all diffused. Thus the narrative is framed as an argument for the continued colonization of Quebec by Brooke’s audience: the English elite.

             This ideal settler resembles Ed Rivers and also his correspondent in England, John Temple: single, relatively wealthy, and healthy. Rivers provides his friend many examples as to the advantages of living in Canada which I read as Brooke’s appeal to such men. Even if most of her readers were likely women, Brooke’s narrative gives them arguments to convince their husbands to move to Canada. One such enticement is financial and social betterment. Rivers tells Temple that he “cannot live in England on [his] present income, though it enables [him] to live en prince in Canada” (letter 36, italics in original). Female readers could use this anecdotal evidence to prod their husbands into making the move. If these potential colonists were resistant to the hardships of cultivating the land of Canada, Brooke responds to this argument by emphasizing the fertility and availability of the land; one can be a gentleman farmer even in the New World. In fact, Rivers tells his sister that “the pleasure of cultivating lands here is ... much superior to what can be found in the same employment in England” (letter 7). This is partly due to the “extreme fertility” of the “naturally rich” soil which makes growing crops possible even for the most lazy (letter 22). Furthermore Rivers points out that the land is available to those that come to settle it; again to his sister, Rivers writes that the “far greater part [of the land] remains unpossest, and courts the hand of labour for cultivation” (letter 2). The “wilds” of Canada are thus presented as tameable, even by the least experienced.

            The land beyond the farms and gardens and outside of the city limits is shown to be formidable, yet safe even for young single women to venture into. Here Brooke seems to be directly addressing her educated, leisurely female reading audience. She relieves their fears of the harsh wilderness so that they will not be resistant to their husbands’ plans to immigrate to America and may even encourage them to become colonists. To do so, Brooke has the character Arabella (Bell) Fermor emphasize the awe-inducing aspects of nature and minimize its dangers and hardships when addressing her friend, Ed Rivers’ sister Lucy. The comparison of the landscape and natural phenomena with that of England is one method of making this argument. For instance, s­he claims that the “thousand wild graces” of “bold, picturesque, romantic nature” that “reigns in all her wanton luxuriance” in Quebec “mock[s] the cultivated beauties of Europe” (letter 10). Thus “the thunder is more magnificent and aweful than in Europe, and the lightening brighter and more beautiful than in Europe” (letter 10). Note that here “aweful” takes on its significance of “inspiring awe” (Random House Dictionary 2011). Again describing the “wild magnificence” of Montmorenci Falls, she writes that “you are struck with an awe...from the grandeur of a scene, which is one of the noblest works of nature” (letter 81). Another hardship of Canadian life, that of the long, harsh winters, is also shown to be rather agreeable. Bell assures Lucy that “the season of which you seem to entertain such terrible ideas, is that of the utmost chearfulness and festivity” to such a degree that she considers a winter in Quebec to be “pleasanter ... than that of England” (letter 80 and 52). Winter is not to be dreaded, but rather enjoyed as the “season of general dissipation” in which “amusement is the study of every body” (letter 52). She estimates that there are only a dozen severely cold days in a winter (letter 80), but even these days are bearable because of furs and their “uncommonly warm” houses and carriages (letter 52). These fears are thus dissipated.

            Brooke realizes that others may be wary of entering a hostile political environment. To this end she portrays the French as lazy and ineffectual (See Letter 6 for example). In fact, the English protagonists rarely have to interact with the French so there is no cause for conflict. The C anadians are never shown to be a threat, but rather in need of English influence to overcome their superstitious, backwards religion and their inferior government structures (See Letter 117). As for the natives, although Rivers declares that war is “the business of their lives,” Bell passes an agreeable afternoon with several native women (letter 4 and 16). Anecdotal evidence shows the natives to engage in death dances and drinking the blood of Englishmen (letter 152 and letter 4) leading to the natural conclusion that increased English influence over these “savages” is needed (See letter 152). Thus, the French and the natives alike must be ruled by the English for their own good. 

Nausicaa episode of Ulysses

The narrative arc of this episode corresponds to the Alexandrine school of thought for the composition of dramatic plays. In fact, Stephen Dedalus makes mention of this schema in relation to Shakespeare’s plays (in the Scylla and Charybdis episode). Like Hamlet, "Nausicaa" also starts with an introduction of the scene and protagonist, the “protasis,” followed by a continuation of the main action, the “epitasis,” after which the action meets its climax, the “catastasis,” before attaining its final event, the “catastrophe,” such as a death in a tragedy or a marriage in a comedy. The climax of this episode is obviously the orgasm accompanied by fireworks. The protasis (the introduction of Gerty to the narrative) and epitasis (the flirtation) lead up to this moment from which the catastrophe acts as a refractory period.  An analysis of the structure of Nausicaa’s narrative arc expounds Bloom’s response to Citizen’s assumptions of Irishness as presented in "Cyclops" as well furthering the opinion of the impotence of Irish revivalism as Stephen Dedalus projects in his parable A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable of the Plums (in the "Aeolus" episode). 

In the epitasis, Gerty is presented as a Nausicaa-figure, a Mary-figure, and a personification of Ireland. Sitting on the shore with the Mary, Star of the Sea cathedral behind her, remark the similarities in her stance to these portrayals of Mary, Star of the Sea.

                     

1.St. Mary Star of the Sea, Houston, TX  

3.Mary, Star of the Sea portrayed on a card from Slovenia

These two latter roles suggest Gerty undermines the three “nets” Stephen Dedalus vows to “fly by”: religion, nationalism, and language (from Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man). Then, as Citizen’s granddaughter (from the "Cyclops" episode), Gerty again subverts the nationalist argument. She is also related to her fictional counterpart Gerty Flint, the heroine of Maria Cummin’s sentimental novel The Lamplighter (of which Gerty makes mention). Lastly, Gerty can be seen as a representative Nora Barnacle, Joyce’s lifelong partner with whom he had his first date on June 16, 1904. The explicit passage from a letter from Joyce to Barnacle on December 3, 1909, adds credence to my position. Because of its explicit nature, read it here if you desire. Like Nora, Gerty “leads the way” near Ringsend. Also Nora's “saintlike eyes” echo Gerty’s association to the Virgin.

            After introducing Gerty to the narrative, the action rises when Bloom becomes aware of Gerty’s presence on the beach. The epitasis begins when the twins, whom Gerty and her two companions are baby-sitting, kick a ball towards Bloom. The adman comes in contact with the consumer. Gerty, as consumer, has been influenced by the beauty standards projected in the London magazines she consults, The Princess’s Novellettes and Lady’s Pictorial, from which she decides to purchase English products such as Beetham’s Larola, Widow Welch’s female pills, and Dolly Dyes. By packaging herself as a feminine woman, Garry Leonard argues that “Gerty has a better understanding of sexuality than Bloom does”. Based on Lacan’s theory of “The Woman,” he contends that Gerty has realized that women must masquerade as what they are not in order to capture the attention of men who want to imagine that they are who they believe themselves to be. Of course, her masquerade hides the fact that she has a limp. Bloom is glad that he didn’t know of this “defect” until after she put herself “on show”. Although Bloom thinks of her as a commodity for whom “[n]o reasonable offer [is] refused”, Gerty voluntarily offers herself to satisfy his sexual appetite. In fact Gerty considers Bloom in terms of the colonizer, her “new conquest”. Both feminist critical theory and political readings of the scene interpret Gerty as a commodity; as a woman, Gerty tries to attain a “male-defined standard” (Leonard) and as Ireland, she is subject to England not by force, but by choice. Neither Gerty nor Ireland are portrayed as “raped” but rather “whoring” themselves. 

            Although the catastasis, the ejaculation, is the climax of the episode, it is in fact an anti-climax. Bloom’s spermatozoid are useless, like the plumstones the “[t]wo Dublin vestals” spit out of their mouths from Nelson’s Pillar in Dedalus’s Parable of the Plums (from the "Aeolus" episode). As an Irishman, as Bloom insists he is, Bloom’s failure to produce a male heir forebodes the downfall of the Irish nationalist movement. Without a new generation to “grasp the baton,” its efforts will also be ineffectual and vain. This national impotence can be seen apart from his ejaculation and may also suggest the irrelevance of the Catholic faith. For example, he notices that his watch has stopped which is immediately linked to his reproductive abilities as Cissy remarks that “his waterworks [are] out of order”. This is followed by a reference to the second verse of the hymn they hear coming from the church. The hymn, the Tantum ergo, finishes with the lyric “omnipotence”, which paired with the imagery of the candles setting fire to the flowers at the altar bring to mind Bloom’s “languid floating flower,” “the limp father of thousands”. In this context then, consider the phrase “the memory of the past”. Of itself the line seems insignificant until reconnected to its origin as a lyric in the song “There is a Flower that Bloometh,” at which time the pun becomes clear. 

            Lastly, the action falls to a catastrophe, which in the Alexandrine use of the term may refer to a tragic ending, but may just as well refer to a joyous occasion. In the case of “Nausicaa” both readings are possible, although I find that the evidence for a tragic conclusion is more compelling. One symbolic example is the bat which flies above both Gerty and Bloom. As archetype, the bat is the primordial enemy and portent of peril or torment. As vampire, it recalls man feeding on woman in sexual frenzy, such as in Dedalus’ poem in which “he comes, pale vampire...his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth’s kiss” (in the "Proteus" episode), then as he develops the poem the mouth heads south. In Finno-Urgic tradition, the bat is one of the forms the soul takes when it leaves the body during sleep. Similarly, “ba,” the expression Bloom repeats in reference to the bat, is “the soul,” pictured by ancient Egyptians as a bird with a human head, which was thought to leave the body at death. Lastly, the nine “cuckoos” which complete the episode could foretell Bloom and Gerty’s marriage in nine years after its traditional connotation, but “nine” in the numerological chart refers to eternity, which would mean Gerty never marries.  As a tragedy, Bloom’s association of the sunset with Home Rule’s “sun setting in the southeast”, as opposed to the northwestern sunrise of Home Rule represented on the headpiece of the Freeman’s Journal  predicts the downfall of the movement. 

My main sources and references for this essay are:

Gifford, Don and Robert J. Seidman. Ulysses Annotated. Berkeley: University of California

Press, 2008. Print.

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Oxford University Press,

2008. Print.

---. Selected Letters of James Joyce. New York: Viking Press, 1976. Print.

---. Ulysses. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Leonard, Garry. Advertising and Commodity Culture in Joyce. Gainesville: University Press of

Florida, 1998. Print.

The Crying of Lot 49

         After studying White Noise, I was able to identify similar marks of postmodern thought in Thomas Pyn The Crying of Lot 49. For example in both television is pervasive, as in the homes of many Americans at the time. Like Jack Gladney who tries to “[f]ind the codes and messages” in television, Oedipa Maas tries to unravel the significance of Metzger’s/Baby Igor’s film Cashiered and later that of W.A.S.T.E. and The Tristero. Neither is able to make the necessary connections that would make sense of these perceived codes and messages, a reflection of postmodern thought which insists on the absence of absolutes. If even science is suspect, religion a conspiracy to numb/dumb the population, and government to be feared, only paranoia remains. All authorities, such as historians and sacred texts are shown to have no founding. For instance, the recounting of the skirmish between the Confederate man-of-war “Disgruntled” and Russian cruisers is “not too clear”: “One of them may have fired, if it did then the other responded; but both were out of range”. Here authoritative text is also deemed unreliable: “If you believe an excerpt from the “Bogatir” or “Gaidamak”’s log ... now somewhere in the Krasnyi Arkhiv” the “Disgruntled” vanished during the attack. Similarly Maas is never able to find the definitive version of the Courier’s Tragedy. There is no original, only copies of copies like Metzger’s analysis of an actor playing a lawyer who, in front of a jury, “becomes an actor”. In the bio-pic of Metzger’s life, a one-time lawyer plays “an actor become a lawyer reverting periodically to being an actor”. Although the pilot to the film is in a climate-controlled vault in a Hollywood studio so that it is indestructible, the version they are watching has the reels out of order. Likewise nature is imitated as an “artificial windstorm” blowing a statue’s dress in front of the hotel and the artificial island surrounded by the fake Lake Inverarity.  

Birthday cards

Yeah, most cards are rather corny, of the "Hope lovely surprises are coming your way / To make your Birthday a wonderful day" sort.  Yet, this year, I've received so many beautiful, smart, and funny cards for my birthday.

A quote written in one of them by Thoreau: Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think there is nothing, not even a crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

This one reads: birthdays...what a perfect time to get down with your bad self.

 
My friend Lizz sent me one that reminds us that "With each passing year, we need to accept and appreciate ourselves for who we are....Smart, special, super, amazing, awesome, wonderful women!"  It reminds me of a song we learned as 5th graders: I like myself, I'm worth a lot, don't say I'm not, 'cause you can't see inside of me, huh!

Another funny one from my sis:

Thank you my dear friends for making me laugh and making me think as well as making me feel so loved...as always.  You're great!  -Sarah

Imagism

Imagism, a school of modern poetry founded by Ezra Pound, seeks to portray an image with words, hence its name. The goal is also to use the exact word and to employ as few words as possible to portray the image. For example the title of Pound's poem "In a Station of the Metro," is almost half the length of the poem itself.  Originally the poem was 30 lines long, but Pound destroyed it because it was the work "of second intensity."  To condense the impact, he rewrote the poem, this time half of its original length.  Then a year later he rewrote the poem to the form we know it today:

In a Station of the Metro


The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals, on a wet, black bough.

Pound tells the story of the inspiration for this Imagist poem in the memoir he wrote about the artist Gaudier-Brzeska (pages 86-89). While in a station of the Paris metro, he saw "a beautiful face, and then another and another, and then a beautiful child's face, and then another beautiful woman, and I tried all that day to find words for what this had meant to me, and I could not find any words that seemed to me worthy, or as lovely as that sudden emotion."

The goal of an imagist poem is to recreate a visual image with verbal utterances using the most exact words possible.

My friend, Nathalie Le Beller, wrote a poem in the imagist form for a class we had together.  I feel the image as well as the emotion is well captured.

With No Ink


with no ink
left

the empty pen
scratches

invisible words and
drawings

against the used
paper.


This one my friend Lysandre wrote...which I just love for its imagery and feeling.

Carnival


Faces
Round unseeing
Eyes twisted frozen;
Pushed piled grotesque
Lifeless, carnivalesque.

Another friend from my class, Alisa, wrote this one.  The rhyme scheme emphasizes perfection and also the motion of waves.

The Ocean Touching You
Waves glide through one another
Admirable in perfection
When they leave the weave and wander
Perfect meets interruption.

Read aloud you can almost hear the waves crashing.

Cadence

Cadence is often neglected when constructing a poem. For Ezra Pound, one of the initiators of the Imagist school of poetry, cadence was essential to the form.

Think of it like this...a runner has 2 minutes to run 2 laps. If the first lap takes 1 ½ minutes, the second must only take 30 seconds. The distance is the same for both laps, but the cadence is greatly varied.

I kept this point in mind while writing a poem in the Imagist model for a British poetry class.



Being



Groggy...      morning...      waking...      slowly....

Yawn...       long...

Fist to eye and foot to floor

"Being": noun to verb

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

This is also a summary of a presentation given by classmates in a 19th century British novel class.

Wuthering Heights is the only novel written by Charlotte Brontë's (the author of Jane Eyre) sister, Emily.

A summary of the novel's characters can be found here.

Family Trees:
                                                                      Wuthering Heights
                                                                  Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw
Hindley m. Frances      Catherine m. Edgar Linton   Heathcliff (adopted) m. Isabella Linton
Hareton Earnshaw       Catherine Linton

                                                                   Thrushcross Grange
                                                                    Mr. and Mrs. Linton
          Edgar m. Catherine Earnshaw           Isabella m. Heathcliff (adopted by Earnshaw)
          Catherine Linton                               Linton Heathcliff    
                            
 Catherine and Linton marry.  After he dies, at the book's end, she is planning on marrying Hareton Earnshaw.

Time-line:
1771: The owner of the manor Wuthering Heights Mr. Earnshaw, adopts an orphan, Heathcliff.
1773: Mrs. Earnshaw dies.
1774: Their son, Hindley, is sent to college.
1777: Hindley Earnshaw marries Frances; Mr. Earnshaw dies.
1778: Hareton is born to Hindley and Frances; Frances dies.
1780: Heathcliff runs away; the owner of the manor Thrushcross Grange Mr. Linton dies.
1783: Edgar Linton and Catherine Earnshaw marry, uniting the two families
1784: Heathcliff and Isabella Linton marry; Edgar and Catherine Earnshaw Linton have a daughter, Catherine; Catherine Earnshaw dies; Heathcliff and Isabella have a son, Linton Heathcliff; Hindley Earnshaw dies.
1797: Isabella dies.
1801: Catherine Linton and Linton Heathcliff marry; Edgar and Linton die.
1802: Heathcliff dies.
1803: Catherine and Hareton are to be married.

Themes:
Love: destructive love, marriages based on social advancement vs. passionate love, weakness and manipulation, successful/hopeful love, familial love.
Social Class: can be seen in the architecture of the manors, within the characters
Revenge

The trailer for the 1992 film:

Buy the book here:

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Based on a summary by some of my classmates in a 19th century British novel class.

Plot Summary:
When the creature that Victor Frankenstein comes to life, Victor is so frightened he leaves but so does the monster. Victor becomes depressed thinking about the monster's possible return. When he hears of his five-year-old brother's death he goes to the scene of the murder in Geneva where he discovers that the creature he made has killed his brother. Eventually the two speak, the creation sharing with the creator stories of his bouts of loneliness. He asks Frankenstein to create a female creature to accompany him, an "Eve." Although Victor initially agrees, under the condition that his creature will stay far from him and his family afterwards, apprehension over the mayhem that two creatures could cause to humankind, he destroys the second creation before she comes to life. His creature is so angry that he kills Victor's fiancée in revenge. Victor is charged with the murder and imprisoned although he is later acquitted of the crime. He marries his cousin, Elizabeth, but she too is murdered by the creature. Victor thus pursues the creature in an attempt to destroy it, keeping it from causing further harm. He follows him to the Arctic where Victor meets Walton, a ship captain, and shares his unbelievable story with him. The novel is composed of letters that Walton writes to a Mrs. Saville to convey the account. Frankenstein dies and his creature, overwhelmed by sorrow, destroys himself on a funeral pyre.

Themes:
Death: many characters die throughout the novel; an execution; murders; suicide; manhunts; cemeteries; creating the monster from bodies.
Effects of Rejection and Isolation: Victor and society rejects his creation. Victor does so out of guilt and fear. Society out of fear and prejudice. The monster feels lonely, unloved, and unwanted which leads to murder.
Reversal of the Roles and the Burden: Victor is the hunter, then the monster becomes the hunter, ending with Victor again being the hunter.

The trailer to the 1931 movie:

And that of the 2004 version:

Buy the book:

Hard Times by Charles Dickens

As the 2 past posts, this is based on a summary prepared by fellow students in a 19th century British novel class.

Like Gaskell's North and South, Dickens' novel is also an industrial/social novel which takes place during England's industrial revolution. It is also a moral tale, didactically revealing the downfalls of being overly dependent on the rational to the detriment of the enjoyable. Hence, the two main concepts of the novel are the opposing poles of fact and fancy.

Characters:
Fact:
Mr. Gradgrind: a school principal, a utilitarian. He raises his children to follow the philosophy of fact.  He adopts one of the students in his school, Sissy, when her circus performer father deserts her.
Mr. Bounderby: one of Mr. Gradgrind's friends, also a utilitarian, claims to be a safe-made man.
Louisa Gradgrind: Mr. Gradgrind's eldest child. She marries Mr. Bounderby based on rational evidence. She falls prey to a seducer.
Tom Gradgrind: Mr. Gradgrind's second child. He works with Mr. Bounderby to escape his father's influence. He does not have the necessary tools to manage his life.

Fancy:
Sissy Jupe: Represents the balance between fact and fancy.
Stephen Blackpool: the embodiment of the working class.

Themes:
Utilitarian education: be efficient to achieve the greatest amount of happiness for the most people. Children are therefore raised to be machines that will please their future industrialist employers.
Economic laissez-faire: capitalism without limits
Social mobility and humanism.

Buy the novel here:

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

This summary is also based on presentations made by fellow students in a 19th century English novel class.

North and South was first published as a serial in Charles Dickens' weekly, Household Words from September 1854 to January, 1855. In it, Gaskell presents the industrial life of Manchester, England by portraying the fictitious Milton. She had settled with her husband in Manchester so she had a first-hand account of this massive industrial city (based mostly on the cotton industry), using it as a backdrop of her industrial novels.  In 1847 trade slowed causing wage reduction and generated a strike.

Plot Summary:
Margaret Hale is an emotionally-strong young middle-classed woman. Her family moves from the prosperous south of England to the industrial north. There she meets John Thorton, the wealthy owner of the local mill. He exposes the struggles of industrialization from a businessman's perspective. She also makes friends with Bessy Higgins, from the working class, and from her learns of the harsh realities of the mill workers that are on strike. A love/hate relationship develops between John Thorton and Margaret as she attempts to make him aware of the strikers' needs and of their miserable living conditions.

Themes:
North of England vs. the South of England: The differing lifestyles of those living in northern England from those living in the south greatly caused great cultural differences among the two areas. Industrialization brings technology, factories and a burgeoning economy, but also diseases and pollution to Milton. Industrialization commoditized humans as dispensable workers.

Sickness and Death: Create a separation between the strong and the weak. Strong-minded characters (Margaret, John) survive in Milton despite the poor living conditions while weaker characters (Bessy and Mr. and Mrs. Hale) often get sick and die.

As a social/industrial novel, North and South reveals feminist concerns, addresses educational deficiencies, discusses some of the economical issues of colonialism, as well as putting the industrial revolution to the forefront.

This is a trailer of the 2004 BBC television series based on the novel:

Buy the book:

Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility

These summaries are based on presentations given by fellow students in a 19th Century British Novel class.

Pride and Prejudice (1813)
This is Austen's second of six novels. The original title was First Impressions which perhaps better captures the moral lesson of the dangers of mistaken first impressions. It is a romantic comedy of manners, but it is also a moral tale, offering biting social satire as to the superficiality of the gentry.

It has consistently rated in the most popular novels ever written: over 20 million copies have been sold. It has faux-sequels, been adapted to screen and stage, reworked with Zombies and spawned fan clubs and guides to romance.


Plot Summary:

The five unmarried Bennet sisters cannot inherit their father's manor as it is entitled to a male heir. The novel, set in turn-of-the-19th-century England, present the ups and downs of their searches for the right husbands, aided by their mother. Austen humorously portrays this "man hunt" by exposing the prejudices and vanity of aristocrats. The underlying social reality of the period is made clear: a woman's social status is directly related to that of her husband, while a man's social status is based on wealth.

Themes and Social Context:
The opening sentence of the book, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife," touches neatly on three of the principle themes.

Prejudice: Most characters harbour prejudices, both positive and negative, towards those of higher and lower social classes. The main plot is based on a negative prejudice that leads Elizabeth to abhor her suitor, Darcy, and refuse his hand in marriage

Personal Fulfilment: As demonstrated by Elizabeth, fulfilment of a married woman depends on her ability to find love, her capacity to reason well, and the freedom to make her own decisions.

Marriage: Jane Austen presents three types of marriages in the novel.
Desirable marriage: based on love, mutual compatibility, and good manners.
Practical marriage: based on financial needs and convenience
Undesirable marriage: based on poor judgement and lust

Check out the difference between the 1940 version and the 2005 version of the same scene!

 

And just for fun, the book trailer for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

Sense and Sensibility (1811)

Austen's first published novel.


Major Themes: 
Marriage: Presented as the ultimate fulfilment in a woman's life
Matriarchy vs. Patriarchy: Absence of paternal authority and controlling mothers.
Reason vs. Emotion: Finding equilibrium between them.














The book trailer for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. (It won Amazon's best book video of 2009)