Jack's perspective

One of the things I really liked about Room was Jack's perspective -- this is obviously a vital aspect of the book but it really made it stand out. I feel like the novel could have been a lot more depressing if it were from Ma's perspective -- obviously it's still quite dark but something about Jack's childhood innocence kept the edge off, because although he'd describe things like scenes with Old Nick, he'd often quickly switch to a fun game with Ma or something, and his innocence makes it a bit more bearable.

His unique way of describing things also added a lot to the book, in both halves of the novel -- from the way he knows the furniture in Room as kind of friends to all his attempts to describe the new things he encounters in the outside. It adds a lot of interest to what could just be sort of bland descriptions and it's always fun to hear familiar things described in new ways. It also makes readers think twice about parts of society we kind of take for granted (for example, the media stuff).

Having Jack narrate also makes the novel more subtle -- I feel like Donoghue drops a lot of little things that Jack just notices in one sentence. This goes back to not dwelling on things a bit but it makes it more rewarding for the reader to pick up on these little things -- I like that Donoghue doesn't draw things out or belabor them too much.

Jack's perspective also emphasized Ma's heroism for me -- the fact that he's developing pretty normally and seems pretty happy speaks to all the Ma has been able to do as a mother in these circumstances.

Emma Donoghue sums a lot of this up herself in the short interview with her at the end of the book. She said she "never considered any other perspective," although she did worry that "the prospect of being stuck in a little kid's head might turn some readers off." For me, I think it did the opposite.

Tennis Magazine Presents... The Heroes Issue

You know, sometimes, in the middle of tech weeks and college applications and general business, the universe throws you a bone. This time, it was my dad's magazine subscription. For those who don't have family members obsessed with tennis and didn't come home to see the Tennis Magazine's "Heroes Issue" on the kitchen table, here's an overview.

For some context, here's a quote the edition uses to describe itself:
"In the world of tennis, the heroes are not just the Grand Slam champions and the game's biggest stars. There are heroes who come from the most unexpected places. They are the pioneers of wheelchair tennis, local leaders who use the sport to give back to the community and players who find a way to enjoy the game no matter their age or ability. Our special annual issue salutes those who inspire us to achieve more than we thought we were capable of. These extraordinary individuals show us that the game is a place where anyone can be a champion and a hero."
And here's a quote the magazine uses on its cover:
"The definition of the hero in American culture is the one who by accident or destiny gets knocked down, and gets up again." - Jean-Pierre Limborg

So it's interesting to see who gets written about. The edition starts off with some one-page pieces about family members (grandparents who introduced their grandchildren to tennis, parents who coach and encourage but never push, etc.), but this is only an appetizer to the real meat of the issue. The first cluster of articles highlights various people involved in the wheelchair tennis community (the inventors, the top athletes, etc.). The theme of this is overcoming, exemplified in this quote (which goes back to the Limborg quote):

"My life was at a standstill as my MS worsened exponentially by the day. I barely left the house. I had to stop all sports; I couldn't stand up without a walker. I had turned 50 and I was considering throwing in the towel. I confided in my family that this way my intention. Not in a jump-off-the-Brooklyn Bridge way, but in a final-party, say-farewell, down-some-pills-and-end-my-misery way. All I wanted was to be involved in a sport; my mind and my soul thrive on it. I hadn't even heard of wheelchair tennis. I didn't care if I had to learn a new sport, I needed something to help me choose to live." -- Terri Ferraro

The edition also includes an article about a woman who won a "Deaflympics" medal. "I hope people understand that they can do anything they put their mind to. Don't let anyone say, 'You can't do that,'" she says. Other people are working to "grow the remarkable sport of blind tennis -- and show how tennis is truly a game anyone can play." Disabilities aren't the only obstacles, though -- the magazine also highlights the struggles and successes of minorities and seniors.

Another subject is a man who began programs to help underprivileged kids through tennis. An interesting part of this is the way he's described -- the article begins with, "To hear Arthur Goldblatt modestly tell it..." before describing all the things he's achieved as "serendipitous." "Art Goldblatt is a Connecticut saint," someone else says. "He's a very humble, elegant guy who never wants credit. He's inspired all of us." I think we've talked about this a bit before -- the idea that heroes are supposed to downplay their role & be very modest -- and this exemplifies that.

There are a lot of other articles about spreading tennis, including several other programs for kids as well as veterans sharing the sport with other veterans and a program that pairs up disabled and able-bodied athletes to play. 92-year-old Dick Walther is described as "[personifying] everything that's great about our sport. He is generous, fair, positive and energetic. He turns himself inside out to give back to the community." Someone else says, "Dick truly embodies what it means to be an advocate for our sport. Thanks to his efforts on and off the court, thousands of players of all ages and abilities have been able to enjoy the sport of a lifetime."

So, that's the hero issue of the Tennis Magazine. I did think it was interesting the way the many articles and profiles fell into the same two categories -- spreading the joy of tennis (&helping people through that) and personally overcoming adversity to play tennis. Widen the definition a bit and you get someone who either overcomes adversity to achieve something, or someone who spreads happiness (usually on a larger scale), especially to people who face adversity. Interesting to keep these examples in mind re: the hero figures we've seen in this course.

Humanity in The Memory of Running

We briefly touched on The Memory of Running's sort of "view of humanity" in class -- I know a lot of people keep bringing up Smithy getting beat up, nearly shot, actually shot, etc as shocking & terrible. Which they are -- but I do feel like Smithy's journey turns out to ultimately bring out a lot of good of humanity & ends up pretty humanist.

All of the people hurting Smithy due to misunderstandings are pretty depressing -- it sucks to think that someone saving a little boy from a blizzard could end up being shot by the police. However, as Mr Rogers so wonderfully says, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." Dr. Donna Trivitch buys Smithy a flood of new gear as a way to say sorry for hurting him, and even as Smithy is shot Kenny's father ("Red Check") is thanking him profusely. Smithy basically manages to get across the country largely because of people's kindness (whether it's because they're feeling guilty or not).

I also do like that Smithy manages to not get jaded throughout his trip -- I think this is a fairly heroic trait. It's not like he loves everyone (see the prom chapter & his hatred of Bobby, but that seems fairly justified), but he does promise in the river that he'll never live a suspicious life. He seems to appreciate everyone's stories -- I think you can see this by the way that everyone spills their stories to him -- he seems to be a very good listener. Overall, I think this book highlights humanity in a way that I find pretty humanist -- appreciating humanity in its good and not-as-good moments.

I also like this Smithy quote: "'Thank you,' I said out loud to the player and his pop. Good people were there. There were things for them to do together, and I was somehow a part of that."

Milo & Otis

Alright this isn't about my actual big essay thing but rather what could have been. When I was little my parents had a VHS tape of this movie called Milo & Otis. Basically a brief summary is that it's about a pug (Otis) and a cat (Milo) who are best friends, and then one day the Milo gets swept by a river and Otis goes after him to rescue him. They go through all these really pretty meadows and Otis fights a bear and everything. It's a live action movie and it's sort of semi-cheesy because the narrator narrates what happens but also does voices for the animals. It's like an hour and 15 minutes and it's a nice mix of exciting and calming and super cute. Otis eventually finds Milo and everything ends happily.

This movie was particularly special to me because I grew up with a pug -- my parents got Snowy as a sort of consolation present for my brother because he was about 7 when I was born and not particularly happy about having a little sister. Snowy grew up with me and so I thought it was so cool that there was a movie about a pug that was like my own pug (I was also pretty obsessed with pugs when I was young -- I remember having a collection of pug cards that once got featured at the Urbana library). I watched Milo & Otis a lot when I was sick or just when my parents wanted to entertain me and I could just relax with a cute hero's journey where cute animals save each other and everything ends happily.

The problem with Milo & Otis (and the main reason why I didn't do my paper on this) and because when you Google Milo & Otis you get things like "IT'S NEWS TO YOU: MILO & OTIS IS TORTURE PORN ..." which is a bit upsetting when it's about one of your favorite childhood movies. I read some of the accusations and things don't look good for Milo & Otis which is honestly pretty sad because I can't really look at the movie the same way again -- I want to watch it again and enjoy the childhood nostalgia but then I'll just be worrying about how many animals were harmed. Poor Milo & poor Otis.

Interview with Donna Xia

I thought it would be nice to get another perspective on heroes outside of class, so I asked my good friend Donna Xia for some of her thoughts. Thanks Donna!

ME: So Donna, what do you think of heroes?

DONNA: I think that the best kind of hero is the ones that are chaotic good and chaotic neutral. Sure they do good, but they know when to bend the laws so they can reach the highest form of good. I believe that heroes should be able to operate outside the limits in order to save the world.

ME: What are your favorite hero stories?

DONNA: I really like Greek myths. I like Orpheus, although he's not really a hero? He did go down to the underworld with his lyre to bring his wife back from the dead, but in the end he looked back. I don't know if that's really heroic -- his intentions were definitely heroic, but he looked back in the end. I also really like Theseus and the minotaur -- he gets out and escapes the minotaur. I think Ariadne is the ideal hero. Theseus did some good stuff but Ariadne helped him, and without her Theseus would have been dead.

ME: Does failing in his quest -- looking back -- make Orpheus not a hero?

DONNA: Heroes can have heroic deaths but they aren't supposed to really mess up in that way. Like -- if Orpheus was a hero, he should have gotten a happy ending. He could have turned around in the end when he's back on Earth and embrace his wife, then been shot with an arrow. That would have been a heroic death. But he couldn't resist the temptation. Chill man. He's not a hero because that's a very human thing to do. But he did do something heroic in the beginning.

ME: So in your opinion, are heroes something more than human?

DONNA: Yeah. There's definitely an element of superiority and ideal. Even today, people look up to role models and say that they're heroes. But it's like you're infatuated -- you overestimate them in your mind and make that the reality. You don't see all the good sides of someone -- you just see what they want you to see. Like if you're a fan of an athlete, then you have a perfect image of them in your mind. You don't see them just at home chilling. There are several sides to people that you don't see.

ME: Do you know of any heroes who have become villains because of scandals? If they had been "ordinary people" do you think they would have had the same problem?

DONNA: I don't really know any heroes who have suddenly become villains but I know it's quite popular. I think if they had been ordinary people they wouldn't have had the same problem. It's always big when a celebrity -- someone "good" -- messes up, but when an ordinary human makes a mistake, they wouldn't receive the media attention. I mean obviously there are cases when somebody who's not a hero messes up, like a school shooter (that's obviously a mess-up, although that feels like too nice a term), but they didn't fall from the hero status -- they were just villains. 

ME: Have you ever had any role models or hero stories as a kid that you really liked?

DONNA: I really liked this story about ants and butterflies -- maybe it was an Aesop fable? The butterfly is just goofing off in the summer and the ants are working hard and preparing for winter. In the original tale I think the ants just have a good life and the butterfly dies, but in the version I was told, the butterfly gets really cold in the winter and begs the ants for help and the ants allow the butterfly entrance into their home and give the butterfly food. The ants were my hero -- I was like, "You rock, ants."

Judgements

The discussion we had in class was really interesting -- I do feel like we started off kind of making fun of the Bundrens. I do think MacGowan is kind of an extreme example of the kind of judgement the Bundrens face, although it is a bit of an effective shock at the end of the novel. However, people like Peabody and the Tulls have been criticizing and sort of making fun of the Bundrens the whole novel -- Peabody has some particularly great lines. So why do they get more of a pass than MacGowan?

Maybe one of the reasons is that Peabody & the Tulls are both about as rural as the Bundrens. Peabody maybe travels around for his job more than Anse, who has a philosophy about not moving too much, but they both seem to be on the same side. There doesn't seem to be any particular fondness between Peabody and Anse, but Anse still calls Peabody for help, and Peabody still looks at Addie, despite the fact that there's nothing he can really do. Peabody isn't taking advantage of the family at all, just extremely critical of them. It's the same thing with the Tulls -- the couple is actually quite helpful to the Bundrens, they just criticize them a lot privately as well -- so it's easy to excuse them making fun of the family.

Another part of this is that MacGowan is specifically totally looking down on Dewey Dell in particular. The large majority of what we've talked about in class about her has been very sympathetic to her -- she really hasn't done anything wrong, and she's in a terrible predicament because she doesn't have a lot of education. I don't really remember Peabody or the Tulls really making fun of Dewey Dell in particular -- there's a lot to criticize about Anse, but really, how can you be mean to Dewey Dell? Even if Peabody and the Tulls aren't really aware of her "problem" she seems to be decently competent and not super weird like Darl.

There's also the fact that MacGowan's narration is just incredibly slimy.

Darl

Darl is a very interesting character in the novel As I Lay Dying. As we talked about in class he has a really interesting narrative style & his final chapter makes you look back on the rest of his narration in the book a bit. Darl has always seemed a bit strange -- I liked his chapters if just for the great descriptions he had. A lot of the other character have nice lines but Darl is the only one with the really poetic descriptions, which make his chapters fun to read. The writing is also maybe a bit more clear than some of the chapters where the narrators have a heavy dialect and jump around a lot, making them harder to follow.

Darl's seeming ability to narrate scenes he has no part in is something that's really hard to explain. Although a lot of Darl's narration is supported by other characters -- I don't think any characters really contradict him -- Darl might just be hearing about certain events and embellishing the details -- he does seem to have a particularly active imagination.

Darl seems relatively sane during most of the book, but setting fire to the barn and his all-over-the-place narration in his final chapter call into question whether he's really just "artistic." Is it just some kind of grief? He has that annoying habit of nagging Jewel and Dewey Dell, which is a bit of a dick move but doesn't necessarily mean anything bigger -- but could it be another manifestation of how he reacts to grief? Or is this something deeper that's coming out?

Inside Llewyn Davis

I actually hadn't seen O Brother, Where Art Thou before & I really enjoyed it. It reminded me of another Coen brothers movie (maybe because of the soundtrack?): Inside Llewyn Davis. This is kind of a tangent blog post & contains a lot of vague spoilers for the movie so my apologies in advance that this might be kind of hard to comment on if you haven't seen the movie. The basic gist of this post is possible hero's journeys that end in depressing/unsuccessful ways so if you have any examples of that, feel free to comment.

Another reason Inside Llewyn Davis came to mind besides some similarities in music is that it does involve a hero's journey of sorts (if you relax the terms...). The main character, Llewyn, starts off with a really depressing but kind of boring life -- he has no money, he's sleeping on couches, he lost someone's cat (named Ulysses!) and has to pay for another girl's abortion. He is also just overall a bit unlikable/annoying, like Odysseus and Everitt to a lesser extent. He has a sort of musician's pride -- belief that he's good -- but he also can be kind of a dick to people (see: the girl he knocked up). He eventually decides he wants to audition for some guy in Chicago and gets a ride there (from New York). This is the kind of big journey, where he has adventures and stuff (there's also a loose connection to O Brother Where Art Thou in that John Goodman is also in this movie and here he's a slightly less shady character but similarly negative).

The movie starts to diverge from the typical hero's journey here in that everything goes wrong -- Llewyn abandons John Goodman and his ride, gets turned down at the audition (and then reminded of his dead friend), hits a cat on the way home, etc. There's a point here where he could turn around -- he drives past Akron, Ohio, where he was told a girl who he thought had had an abortion but didn't lives (terrible sentence, sorry), and he seems to contemplate getting off at the exit but ultimately drives on. Later he tries to join the merchant marine union but can't find his papers so is denied -- both of these are points where he could turn his life around or at least change it but he's ultimately unable. One thing I really liked about the movie is it just ends where it began & it makes it seem like ultimately, Llewyn accomplished nothing, despite the hints of some great journey earlier in the film -- a twist on the typical journey.

Penelope

Penelope is a pretty interesting character in The Odyssey who seems to get the short end of the stick a lot, starting in the very first book when Telemachus tells her to shut up and go to bed. Both Agamemnon and Athena (although Athena is maybe tapping into Telemachus' fears more than just being bitter like Agamemnon) warn about her potential disloyalty.

However, the text frequently calls her "wise Penelope," and while her first trick of weaving and unraveling the shroud to put off the suitors isn't really appreciated, when she gets the suitors to give her gifts (although this is arguably pretty inspired by Athena... but is there a character in the epic poem who isn't manipulated by Athena in some way or another?), "staunch Odysseus glowed with joy to hear all this." Odysseus really doesn't have any terrible moments with Penelope as far as I can remember -- he doesn't call Agamemnon out, but he just seems to ignore the comments. When Penelope starts crying when Odysseus-in-disguise talks about Odysseus (of course), "Odysseus' heart went out to his grief-stricken wife."

I think it's kind of cool that Athena gets to be the featured goddess in this story and gets to be all badass etc. but I do wish Penelope had a bit more of a role in the story -- Telemachus and Odysseus have exciting travels but Penelope seems to just kind of sit around in the palace and cry. Still, it's nice that the gender politics in The Odyssey (a big example outside of Penelope is Calypso's rant about sexual double standards among the gods) are a little more complicated than one might expect from ancient Greece.

Crying

The Odyssey is surprisingly pretty fun to read for an epic poem (I didn't get along with Paradise Lost nearly as well). We've talked about a couple of the things that seem kind of weird now, like random travelers just stopping by places and getting served prime pieces of meat, but another thing I found a bit strange was the amount of crying people did. The stereotype today is that men especially don't cry, but for everyone it's a sign of weakness to do it for too long or when you're trying to make a point. Telemachus crying during his speech seems to be greeted with a bit of awkwardness -- Homer says people are afraid to respond because he's crying, but one of the suitors still shuts him down, so if it was any sort of strategy it didn't really work. If Telemachus isn't strong enough to keep his emotions in check long enough to tell the suitors off, is he really a man yet?

Telemachus's speech is maybe the worst offender but Odysseus also does a lot of random crying -- for example, in Book 5, we find him on Calypso's island "weeping there as always, wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish." Hasn't he been there for years? Yeah, it's a bad situation but did he really just spend his time sitting around and crying? I'm not sure if people actually cried a lot more then, Homer just wanted to make things dramatic, or Odysseus and his son are particularly emotional, but as Menelaus quotes Proteus when he's telling his storys: "How long must you weep? Withering tears, what good can come of tears?"

Batman

I missed the discussion on the Batman piece earlier this week but I really enjoyed reading the article. I've never really thought about it that much but I definitely would be a lot more uncomfortable with Batman in real life, and I think it has to do with the sort of shades of gray/different perspectives that reality brings. In superhero stories, the villain is very clearly the villain -- even in more recent storylines where they add some more nuance to the big bad, they're still definitely bad. There might be storylines that are different, but I can't think of any right now (if you can please comment!). Still, though, even if there are exceptions, they're pretty rare, because they make viewers uncomfortable. It's nice to know that this is what Batman is supposed to do, this guy is supposed to be killed/defeated and the world will definitely be a better place for it. The thing that happens with a lot of news stories is that in many cases it's hard to exactly tell who's good or not, and really there aren't a lot of people who are properly good or bad -- if someone robs a bank or something that doesn't mean they're evil.

We talked about this a bit on the second day of class but another difference between superheroes and the reality is that, like with Goetz, actual people tend to be much more complex than the typical superhero (and if the superhero does have flaws, they're generally picked so that the superhero remains sympathetic, whereas real life isn't always so neat). Just as it's hard to easily slot someone into the "villain" category, it's equally as difficult to put them in the "hero" category, because different facts will come to life or there will be different interpretations. The simple act may be heroic, but even if it's straight-up heroic (instead of more complicated like with Goetz) it's still hard to separate the act from the more morally ambiguous person.

I do think that people are starting to explore these subtleties a little more -- the anti-hero is something that's a little different but along the same lines -- something that I thought was interesting with a series like Breaking Bad was that a lot of people (especially in the earlier seasons) really tried to justify Walt's behavior and viewed him as something of a hero (you can see this in the vicious backlash towards Skyler, who was viewed as standing in Walt's way). Even in a show like Breaking Bad where there aren't really any "heroes" people are still looking for one, trying to flatten the issues to something less uncomfortable.

Evidence

I didn't really expect my panel presentation today to incite that much discussion but where it went was really interesting. The idea that historical events don't inherently have meaning and the meaning is only created through a constructed narrative is interesting -- there are all these searches for the one perfect thing to describe an event but we have to accept that it's never going to happen.

The Zapruder film is one example -- you'd think a film of the event would lay questions to rest but it just adds to speculation. People extrapolate, especially when the footage itself is blurry like it is in the Zapruder film. People come up with a narrative and incorporate certain pieces of evidence as they see fit, pushing the rest to the side. 

The Nicholas Branch parts of Libra seemed to me a little out of place in the rest of the book but by themselves I liked them. The amount of evidence for the JFK assassination, or for that matter, most fairly recent historical events, is overwhelming. It used to bother me a lot, that I would never know the absolute truth about an event -- even with all the newspapers and summaries I read, they're all leaving something out. This class has changed my ideas on that -- now I realize that a narrative is necessary.  The books we read in this class were really interesting and I came to appreciate the way the authors play around with history. 

Scripted

One thing Libra keeps bringing up, especially in the later chapters, is the idea that Lee's life is plotted out for him, and there are outside forces influencing him. "Who arranged the life of Lee Harvey Oswald?" his mother wonders in the final chapter.

David Ferries talks about this a lot. "You see what this means," he says to Lee when he's trying to convince him to shoot the JFK. "How it shows what you've got to do. We didn't arrange your job in that building or set up the motorcade route. We don't have that kind of reach or power. There's something else that's generating this event. A pattern outside experience."

I think this kind of thinking is appealing -- maybe Lee has the potential to assassinate the president but it's not really his decision... this has a lot of parallels with the Tralfamadorian philosophy -- the moment is structured that way and we are all merely bugs in amber. 

It's interesting, then, what Lee thinks in the jail cell later -- he finally comes to terms with his fate and begins to kind of emabrace it. Before, he wanted to tell everyone that he was only a pawn in a much larger game, but then he decides to kind of relent and buy into the story, even embellishing it further. This is like the character in Everitt's script coming to life. 

Beryl

On Wednesday we brought up the fact that the women in Libra seem to be kind of on the sidelines. One of the female characters who doesn't get a lot of time but who I think is really interesting is Beryl, Larry Parmenter's wife.

From her introduction I liked DeLillo's description of her on page 124, especially: "She had a dry way of delivering friendly insults directly into people's chests. She walked softly swaying into a room and you could sense anticipation in the group. They began preparing their laughter before she said a word."

My favorite part, though, was the description of her pastime: "She said the news clippings she sent to friends were a perfectly reasonable way to correspond. There were a thousand things to clip and they all said something about the way she felt. He watched her read and cut. She wore half-glasses and worked the scissors grimly. She believed these were personal forms of expression. She believed no message she could send a friend was more intimate and telling than a story in the paper about a violent act, a crazed man, a bombed Negro home, a Buddhist monk who sets himself on fire. Because they were the things that tell us how to live."

At first I thought this was kind of sad, that this is what she spends her time doing, but after this paragraph I realized this is kind of like what people do on social media now -- sharing news stories and links (like clippings) as communication, and it made me like Beryl even more.

Conspiracies

I was thinking about conspiracy theories a little bit trying to get ideas for a blog post and I remembered this story (I wonder if there is some theory that says that all topics have some This American Life story related to them, because I would believe that). It aired a few weeks ago and basically, it's about a guy who was shot seven times in his living room by the FBI in May 2013. Supposedly right before he was shot, he confessed to having committed a triple murder in Waltham, MA (a little weird because I was there a few weeks ago -- it's this small, sort of rundown looking suburb of Boston) with one of the Boston bombers. The story is super weird and I'd really recommend listening to the episode or reading the article. There aren't a lot of solid facts and that + fishy government activities obviously leads to conspiracy theories.

I was thinking a little bit about how I don't find conspiracy theories intrinsically interesting -- personally I like Occam's Razor because it keeps things simple -- but I will concede that a particularly interesting one can be pretty fun. I also got pretty caught up in the This American Life episode -- just the unanswered questions themselves sucked me in. Right now I'm just finding Libra a little confusing but I'm hoping I'll get more sucked into it as I get further into the book.

Racism & Sexism

We talked a little at the beginning of class about how in the beginning of the novel, Butler doesn't outright mention the race of either Dana or Kevin. If you're at all familiar with the plot, you'll know that Dana is black, but lots of people didn't realize Kevin was white until a couple of chapters in. The relationship starts out very normal. However, I thought it was interesting the way Butler, in between Dana's trips back in time, filled in the back story behind Dana and Kevin's relationship, showing that the race and gender divides that were so apparent in the 19th century were still very much present in Dana's time.

The most obvious example of racism in Dana's time is the reaction both Dana and Kevin's families have to their marriage. Kevin seems optimistic that his sister will be okay with it, but Dana, who has more experience with this kind of thing, is a little more pessimistic. However, it turns out that Dana is right -- Kevin comes back from visiting his sister disappointed. This is the first real mention of racism (aside from the "chocolate and vanilla" comment). We also get a couple references to gender inequality -- for example, Kevin wanting Dana to type his stuff up (my uncle said that at MIT that they just all had "the women" type their things up). Even though Kevin totally seems like a nice guy, the effects of the time are shown on him just as the effects of Rufus's time are shown through him. Casual sexism embedded in the times tends to permeate everything.

It's interesting that Butler puts it after a couple of Dana's trips back in time. The times are such a contrast at first -- Rufus is totally in awe that Dana and Kevin are in an interracial relationship -- but Butler clearly shows that the blatant racism and sexism in the 19th century definitely isn't erased all those years later. One of the things that's most interesting about Kindred is the way Butler portrays the long-reaching effects of tradition, even though they may not be immediately obvious. 

We are what we pretend to be

Kurt Vonnegut — 'We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.'

Once again, Vonnegut says it best. This has been a theme that we've talked about a lot in class with regards to Kindred. Dana and Kevin come into the antebellum slavery world expecting to only stay a little bit and still be themselves, but in playing their respective roles, they are obviously changed. We talked about the effects of pretending to be a slave on Dana in class, but the book hints at the effects on Kevin after he has spent five years by himself (presumably fully immersed in a part after he leaves the Weylin plantation, as there would be no one with him who knows who he truly is), and the scenes after he comes back really illustrate both actually effects and feared ones of spending long periods of time in that world.

When Kevin finally comes back to the Weylin plantation to pick Dana up, she doesn't recognize him at first, thinking that he might be a minister or something. It's only after she gets a good look at his face that she realizes who he is.

Kevin recognizes her too. "'Dana?' he said softly. The question mark in his voice scared me. Didn't he know me? Had I changed so much? He hadn't, beard or no beard." According to Dana, there's no immediate real difference in Kevin despite cosmetic changes, even after five years. Kevin, on the other hand, isn't sure about Dana -- she's already spent months there, and Kevin doesn't know exactly when she came back, since her letters didn't immediately reach him. He definitely has a lot of reasons to be concerned.

However, Dana begins to have doubts about Kevin, when he starts asking her who whipped her. "His face was lined and grim where it wasn't hidden by the beard. He looked more than ten years older than when I had last seen him. There was a jagged scar across his forehead -- the remnant of what must have been a bad wound. This place, this time, hadn't been any kinder to him than it had been to me. But what had it made of him? What might he be willing to do now that he would not have done before?"

Later, Dana does notice a few differences: "He had a slight accent, I realized. Nothing really noticeable, but he did sound a little like Rufus and Tom Weylin. Just a little."
"The expression on his face was like something I'd seen, something I was used to seeing on Tom Weylin."
Despite the fact that we learn Kevin has spent most of his five years helping slaves escape, the time has still left its mark on him through little mannerisms. Later, however, Kevin seems to resolve his earlier question mark about Dana, despite all the little ways she, too, has changed: "He looked at me. 'Well. I got half of what I wanted. You're still you.'"

Vonnegut appreciation post

I really got into Vonnegut a couple years ago -- it was one of those phases where you read a book and say "Yes, I like this" then embark on a spree of reading one book after another by the same author until you get burned out. I made my way through maybe five Vonnegut books this way before I either moved onto something else or just lost the free time required to read books outside of school, but in re-reading Slaughterhouse Five for class, I kind of got back into Vonnegut all over again.

For one, Vonnegut just reminds me of the perfect grandpa -- maybe it's because of how many pictures there are of him as an older man on the Internet, or because he has such a great grandfatherly voice. He writes great letters (I read about half of a book of his collected letters before the 464-page book was due back at the library). I'm always amazed at how many quotes his books include where you read them and think "God, that is such a good way of putting things." His books feel like he's laughing along with you. His books sometimes feel like bedtime stories -- a lot of wry humor interspersed with "be kind to everyone."

For all we've talked about how Slaughterhouse Five can provoke a feeling of hopelessness, I honestly find his books pretty warm and comforting. Vonnegut is obviously angry about some things -- for example, God Bless You Mr Rosewater includes a quote which scathingly sums up a large problem in America: "Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun." On the other hand, it laters includes a quote from a baptismal speech the main character is asked to give: "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind." He shows this kind of hope for humans despite how much they've failed.

Vonnegut, a humanist, particularly shines with his character descriptions. He writes in the first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five, "Another thing they [University of Chicago anthropology department] taught me was that nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, 'You know -- you never wrote a story with a villain in it.'" Yes, not everyone in his books is a paragon of virtue, but that's the point. Vonnegut seems to have a kind of compassion towards all of his characters -- even if someone's kind of a dick, I feel like they're very human, and his succinct, honest character descriptions show this. His novels have a feeling of connectedness -- a quote from Timequake shows this: "Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'"

Anti-glacier

In the first chapter of Slaughterhouse Five, Vonnegut presents one of the difficulties of writing a war book:

"Over the years, people I've met have often asked me what I'm working on, and I've usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden.

I said that to Harrison Starr, the movie-maker, one time, and he raised his eyebrows and inquired, 'Is it an anti-war book?'

'Yes,' I said. 'I guess.'

'You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?'

'No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?'

'I say, "Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?"'

What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too."

Re-reading this book, I was struck by this quote because it seems to sum up Slaughterhouse Five's attitude towards war. Vonnegut writes a strange anti-war book. We talked a little about how lots of war movies will try to shock you with the brutality of war -- gore, atrocities, death, etc, and Slaughterhouse Five sort of does the opposite. In the first chapter, Vonnegut writes, "Another thing they [University of Chicago anthropology department] taught me was that nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, 'You know -- you never wrote a story with a villain in it.'" Slaughterhouse Five includes no raving-mad general, and while some characters may take the war a little more seriously than others, they never seem particularly dangerous. The English POWs are friends with the Germans, and the Germans are really just a ragtag group of old farmers and babies (referring to them as babies is another way Vonnegut takes the glamour out of war: you'd have to be particularly sick to get excited about babies stumbling around in the snow trying to kill each other). Everyone is stuck in the amber of the moment.

Honestly, Vonnegut just makes war sort of boring. It seems like a glacier -- related to the free will question. It's not exciting but it's got to happen -- there's no glory for anyone. His war descriptions reflect this -- as we discussed in class, there's no real suspense in the book. Yeah, we don't exactly know what's going to happen, but we know Billy survives without major injury, we know the climax, and of course we know what's going to happen in Dresden (the German assurances that no one would bomb Dresden as it produces nothing war-related only create a sick sort of irony), as Vonnegut sets all this out in the first few chapters. Yes, we don't know what happens to some of the minor characters (and Vonnegut even goes ahead and spoils some of their fates, such as the high school teacher, much like Doctorow did in Ragtime), but there's a sense that it doesn't really matter in the end, evidenced by the "so it goes" refrain. It's not exciting, and so, really, why wage it?

Mumbo Jumbo style

I'm not sure Mumbo Jumbo was my favorite book ever, but I did enjoy reading it, especially with the help of the class discussions. I liked the plot and ideas but probably my favorite part was just the way the book was written. I really like television and movies so the cold open was really cool (actually, I read the first few chapters online due to my inevitable failure to never take my English books home on the first day of readings, so the effect didn't work as well as when the book was in my hands). It makes me think about the traditions that TV and movies have developed that are so different from books -- television & movies involving so many more people and so much more money whereas books seem more free. The pictures were also pretty cool -- I liked the sort of non sequitur of having a random picture that.... maybe has some relation to the book?

On the other hand I know that kind of stuff annoyed a lot of my friends. I'm not sure I would have pushed through to the end of the book without English class, but as with a lot of books in a class, I come to appreciate them more after hearing other people's insights, and it was fun hearing people's thoughts on the style. Also, I like books that play around with the style (to an extent -- I guess it's a fine line between a cool effect and super annoying). It makes it seem like the author is having fun writing the book and I feel the effects of that. The playfulness reminds me a bit of Jes Grew with its bucking of literary traditions.

News

Talking about what kind of forms a postmodern history might take reminded me of a trend I've been seeing lately -- oral history books. Honestly I haven't read any of the books (think World War Z -- it also seems to be a popular trend when writing about musical trends such as punk, metal etc) but a while ago I read an article on the Chicago Tylenol murders. The article obviously uses snippets of the interviews to piece together a narrative but I definitely thought of this when Kathryn mentioned doing interviews for a Uni history in class -- it seems like the only way to really put together a history of something past basics stats and figures, and just showing the raw quotes without a lot of the author writing around it definitely gives more of a showcase to the people involved.

I also think a postmodern history would put contradictory facts more at the core -- often I read essays that detail a whole story then put at the end "so-and-so denies this ever happening," or just straight-up put two conflicting stories side-by-side. This article about a mass shooter was disturbing for a number of reasons (and I would highly recommend reading it), but for one (as I remember from reading it months ago), it basically laid out stories from two different sides, poked some holes in both... then ended. I'm used to something feeding me "this is the way things happened" so ambiguity is both interesting and unsettling.

Ragtime on the Big Screen

When I saw Ragtime on the syllabus, it brought back vague memories of the movie version we watched in freshman year. What I remembered: a burning library building (whoops, there goes the dramatic ending -- also, I may have made up a fire) and a story about poor old James Cagney and the director's desperation to cast him that my dad has told literally every time I've brought up the movie. During the novel I recognized a few more elements -- a ball, Stanford White being shot, finding the baby in the garden -- but the beginning of the novel was a little disorienting.

However, I found that I liked the novel much better than the film. Obviously I probably would have remembered a little more of the movie if I'd actually liked it (the memory loss may have something to do with the entire freshman year being a blur and watching the movie in little 45 minute chunks). On the other hand the novel immediately hooked me and I can't see completely forgetting it anytime soon. The novel just seems way more interesting and adventurous than the movie, which was nothing extraordinary, due both to the expanded plot and the writing style.

One of the things about history is that it's really hard to get all the sides of something, especially as you get bigger and bigger in scope. People have made all sorts of attempts at summing up various time periods -- decades seem to be particularly popular. In Race Class Gender Mr. Leff made a point at the beginning of almost every unit to say that the stereotypes we have of periods -- flappers in the 20s, Mad Men-esque in the 50s, etc -- aren't necessarily very accurate. To me Ragtime seemed like a more interesting attempt to portray an era -- including little stories from all sorts of different classes -- the little family, the black man, the rich men, the immigrants, etc. Obviously you can never really totally represent something that big but I liked how Doctorow tried to tie everything together.

After reading the novel I was also a little disappointed that the film was nothing special -- I felt like they could have done something much cooler. We talked in class about how Doctorow has all these sweeping paragraphs that feel like movie montages and I really enjoyed his treatment of the characters and his use of irony -- I don't remember any of these from the movie, but loved them in the book.

Ford & Coalhouse

I've been really enjoying Ragtime so far, and one of my favorite parts is the writing style. We've had some discussions in class about how Doctorow's attitudes to various characters differ -- who does he treat with a lot of irony, who does he seem to like, etc. I haven't read a lot of books where the author seems to have such a big unseen presence but I really like it.

A lot of the story threads are kind of coming back together at the end of the book, but even before the plots have collided it's interesting to think about how the characters are similar and different, and two that are interesting to compare are Ford and Coalhouse. Ford appears fairly briefly -- he has his own mini portrait then has an interaction with Morgan... then his only real presence are his cars. I really liked the chapters with Ford and Morgan, though. The Ford chapter seemed to paint a (surprisingly) positive picture of the man: "Part of his genius consisted of seeming to his executives and competitors not as quick-witted as they." He chews on a piece of straw and loves animals and birds, but invents something brilliant. The scene with Morgan is really funny -- I don't know how much Ford was putting on, but I just like the idea of Ford deciding to make fun of Morgan and his weird Egyptian thing -- he wears what I'm assuming are duck boots or moccasins to Morgan's place, where he has a fireplace as tall as a man and walls covered with red silk damask. Ford uses a sort of humility and unintelligence to disarm people and achieve his goals.

Coalhouse is obviously kind of the opposite -- for example, he wears pointed black shoes -- obviously trying a lot harder than Ford with his Bean shoes. Coalhouse is polite but not deferential, and while most of the family is charmed, Father sees this as dangerous. Ford made his executives and competitors uncomfortable with his humility, but made Morgan uncomfortable -- Coalhouse seems to make everyone uncomfortable with his pride -- and while Ford achieves a lot of success with his strategy (Coalhouse, someone who probably has no idea about Ford's love of animals or anything about him, drives a Ford) Coalhouse's pride eventually leads to his downfall. The thing is Coalhouse is obviously right in being pissed about his car but to what extent -- when would humility lead to more success, and is that acceptable?