Today was the first day I actually rode my new "city" bike, a Schwinn Sprint, in the city. It's incredibly cute, but oh my dear goodness, what a pain to ride. If pain equals success, I think riding this thing will turn me into a champion.
In other news, I am going to submit my paper on The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to a conference in Texas. I'll let you know.
Chapter Two
Chapter two opens with Mersault having returned home from his mother's funeral. Is the novel therefore primarily about grief? Or is Camus simply using grief as an emotion or a state of being within which the reader expects a greater show of emotion from Mersualt? No matter what, the loss of the mother will affect the tone of the novel. In the introduction, Matthew Ward declares that the opening line of Chapter one is a "sacred cow" of French literature in English translation. Ward keeps his comments limited to translation, but I can't help wondering if the intention of the first sentence important also in the sense that it is a demand for all of our expectations about grief and loss to be pulled up the front lines of the battlefield that is reading.
I have thought of different categories in which to divide the contents of the novel. There are:
1. Mersualt's daily actions and mundane activities
2. Goings on outside of Mersault, or, things he can't control, things he experiences
3. Ceremonies or activities in which he feels he must act or say things out of an obligation to social expectations
4. Mersault's random ideas, thoughts
In line with Stanley Fish's ideas about reader response, I think also present are the readers' expectations and reactions, in between the lines and all that.
So, to begin the novel, Camus presents the death of the mother. This has a lot of meaning, because it falls under daily activities, things M can't control, and then her death begets ceremonies, ideas, and most important, is a highly reactive topic that dives headlong into existence.
Chapter two investigates Mersualt's sexuality a bit. The style of writing is very mechanical, with each sentence advancing the plot forward like clockwork. But there are bits where we discover a little about Mersault's personality. He has some pretty interesting ideas about his boss. He thinks his boss was annoyed about his asking for vacation time for his mother's funeral because he'd "be getting four days vacation that way, including Sunday, and he couldn't have been happy about that." So his boss was jealous? This seems really odd, because it suggests his boss was so indifferent about Mersault's mother's death, so devoid of compassion, that he let his annoyance and jealously come through in his dealings with Mersault. I think that whatever reaction the boss had to the request for time off, it wasn't annoyance, or that if it was, it was annoyance at the discomfort aroused by awkwardness associated with death. Maybe Mersualt cannot even recognize compassion? Does he mistake it for annoyance?
His interaction with Marie is more personable. Yet, the only time he really feels anything is when she recognizes that he's in mourning, and then he feels defensive, wanting to say, "it wasn't my fault." He admits, "you always feel a little guilty." Who always feels guilty? People? Has Mersault lost a mother previous to this one? Is guilt just a common emotion to him?
Also, he tells Marie that Maman died "yesterday," when in fact she had died maybe two or three days before. This adds to my theory that his mother isn't "really" dead until the ceremony completes it.
In chapter two we also learn that Mersault used to live with his mother, but since her removal to the old folk's home, he has moved into one room, and has "let the rest go." Does this mean that he has let the rest out to rent, or simply abandoned the extra space? Has he "let go" of the idea of mother? He also collects advertisements, and tells us when he washes his hands. This seems to be either in accordance with an already popular stereotype of, or creates, the portrait of a sociopath. I mean, he sits and looks out of the window for five hours, right? Watching people with M is tiring. We get tired of Sunday with him, not in the least because he sees people and really has no feelings about them. It's only as he's going to bed that he senses his feelings, well, one feeling, really, and it's apathetic, "Maman was buried now...nothing had changed." I don't think this feeling, or lack thereof, is really all that shocking. It's all of the other things that he doesn't feel, like sadness, or anger, that make this disturbing. It's not like M has feelings that he is trying to escape, or shove down. He simply doesn't have them. He even almost seems to wait to have them, and then doesn't. The only one he acknowledges in this chapter is guilt. Now, that is odd, because you think that if he were a sociopath, he wouldn't have any remorse, or wouldn't acknowledge it if he did.
I also don't know why Mersault dislikes Sundays. If he doesn't desire companionship, why does he stare out of the window all day? Acknowledge the social groups he sees? He says that several girls wave to him...hmmmmm. I wonder if he is only social enough to fulfill his sexual desire, and has no other contact with people? He doesn't seem to like people asking him questions. It's kind of becoming clear that relationships are kind of troubling to M. His mother's presence in his life was awkward enough that the had her live away from him, and then her absence was also uncomfortable, but only physically; Marie seems to be a relief from loneliness, but she also appears to emote too much -- she's always laughing, and seems "very surprised." Her enjoyment of life gives her an almost childlike and innocent appearance, especially compared to Mersault's stoicism and isolation.
There is a relatable truth to Mersault's life and ideas. Of course the actions are normal, but when the constant barrage of ideas, thoughts, and emotions, the cacaophony that seems to plague humans, are removed from the narrative, it seems like so much of Mersault's humanity is lost. It's like Camus is employing an strategy opposite of stream of consciousness. I mean, what would we think of Dewy Dell if we didn't have her thoughts? Yet, there would still be her dialogue to give us access to her emotions. Mersault is silent most of the time. There's so much nothingness in this novel. The reader brings all of the emotional and mental chaos to the novel. Plus, we still haven't gotten a face.
There's more I want to talk about -- especially about gender. Next time.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
The Strange The Stranger Chapter 1
Oh, a post about literature? Welly, well, well, well. Astonishing. Right before I started college, I read Camus,' The Stranger. I had gone to Australia and met a great guy there who shared my love of The Cure, and discussions about their music led to him asking me if I had read The Stranger, for one of The Cure's early songs is heavily influenced by it. I had heard of Camus, through popular culture and all of that, but had not tried French literature beyond some of Rimbaud's translated poetry, and Lautremont's "Chants de Maldoror." My Australian friend said I should read the novel, commenting that it is a short little thing, and very good. I ended up reading Matthew Ward's "American" translation, not for any real reason. Just coincidence.
So I read it, and I liked the style. I ended up also reading The Plague, which I liked immensely. Then, right after I started college, I picked up The Rebel, Camus' ideas about the rebel and revolution. I tried to read it then, which was, I would say, in 2003 or 2004. I liked the beginning, but as it got more difficult, I put it aside. I don't think I had really read enough theory to understand it well enough to enjoy it.
I haven't actually picked it back up with the intention of reading it all the way through, yet. I was skimming it the other day, and noticed that it has a section on the rebel in novels. I read a little bit of that, and I really liked it. I had pulled The Stranger off of the shelf at the same time that I yanked The Rebel, also by coincidence, because The Stranger is so skinny, and they were sort of stuck together. I knew what a brief read it was, so I decided that I should read it again, as a graduate.
I'm always a little nervous reading translated work, and even more when analyzing it. Oh, well. I will do this as usual:
Part 1
Chapter 1
This novel has a Part 1, so this is presumably the beginning of something that will happen in stages. Something, it seems, will build.
The opening sentence is great: Maman died today. The death of the mother, the creator, the collapse of the cave from whence we all came, is an excellent setting. It is a reminder of that long since forbidden intimacy that Meursault later seems to both crave and abhor. It's a sentence which reminds of that particular intimacy, and is also a renewal of the loss of it, or the extinguishing of the hope of ever having it again. It is Freud that postulated that we all want to get back into the womb? I don't know. I should really read more philosophy. Anyway, we are dealing with the death of a mother -- kind of like in As I Lay Dying. I wonder if Camus was a fan of Faulkner.
I guess you could say that this novel is written in the first person. I wonder, though, who the speaker is talking to, and if we are in what I can only think to describe as "real time." Are we experiencing a story past tense or present tense? We seem to be in the speaker's mind, but also floating at times outside of him, looking either at him or away from him. I don't get the feeling that the narrator is really aware of us. When he says things like, "I don't have anything to apologize for," referring to needing time off from work, and feeling guilty for asking for it, I'm not sure if he's telling us, or trying to convince himself.
I think Camus wants us to believe that what we are reading is all that goes on in Meursault's head. There is such a lack of any kind of judgement, but perhaps this is because, as he tells us, he's been influenced by the fact that Maman had never in her life given a thought to religion. It's interesting that instead of saying that his mother wasn't religious, he uses the phrase, "never given a thought." This implies that thoughts are not intrusive, but extrusive. They could just be sitting there, with no subject, no predicate, simply waiting for you to choose what to give them to. That means that there is another consciousness deciding, or thinking, what to think about. In that case, there is another consciousness that Meursault is not disclosing, or perhaps cannot disclose to us. The one that chooses what he is going to give his thoughts to. Or at least that is his experience -- so he's not acknowledging the super-ego? Alas, there I go again, quoting that which I'm not familiar enough with.
The action at the funeral and the senior home is probably what initially establishes the novel's reputation as concerning a "detached" man. Yet, I didn't find it hard to identify with Meursault as he finds the home a virtual prison for the elderly, and the behavior of the attendants there absurd. What I noticed about this episode was the various systems that he has to deal with to get this ceremony over with in order for Maman's death to "have a more official feel to it." Until these systems are dealt with and used, "it's almost as if Maman isn't dead." The structures, the systems, are what pronounce her dead, for Meursault doesn't even glimpse her dead body. It's an experience made up of bare nerves and intolerable foreignness.
I suppose Camus begins with this because it is one of the more absurd moments in life that we construct. We don't usually personally bury our loved ones; others, strangers, bury our dead. Others do all of the work for us, so that we do not really have the experience. When Meursault arrives at the "old people's home," he wants to "see Maman right away," but he must see the director first. He is a little old man of some distinction, wearing a ribbon from the French Legion of Honor. It's been over 140 years since the Legion was established, and the director is described as little and old. Camus could be commenting on the futility of newness, and new orders. I do think that in The Rebel, he notes that every rebellion is only a rebellion until order is restored again. Then rebells cease to be in revolt, and they are either policemen or tyrants. So which is the director? I guess since the director holds Meursault's hand until he "didn't know how to get it loose," he seems like more of a gentle tyrant, overpowering, but only just enough to make the Meursault uncomfortable. But there isn't a clear connotation. The director uses modified language to keep from "criticizing" Meursault, while simultaneously justifying the existence of the old people's home, and acts as the authority on the matter.
There's a slight refrain in this novel, that begins in chapter one. It's something like, "that doesn't mean anything." The meaningless that Meursault is referring to seems like a relief from the forced meaning involved in the old folks' home, and even involved in his job and relationship with his boss, and even in his later relationship with Marie. Meaninglessness becomes the answer to confusion, or the option for freedom from feeling. Thus, the compulsion to find meaning, or to make meaning, becomes uncomfortable for the reader.
A good friend and reader explained the feeling I was having about setting and space as dislocation. Dislocation came up a lot for me in Faulkner. I find it very interesting that Camus has achieved a similar sense of dislocation, but uses more subtle literary techniques than say, stream of consciousness. It's almost as if the realm of ideas is a location that both Faulkner and Camus take us to, some psychological personality place where the self is detached from the present, but not entirely unaware of it. Is this the attempt to know the unknowable? Fittingly, I don't know.
So I read it, and I liked the style. I ended up also reading The Plague, which I liked immensely. Then, right after I started college, I picked up The Rebel, Camus' ideas about the rebel and revolution. I tried to read it then, which was, I would say, in 2003 or 2004. I liked the beginning, but as it got more difficult, I put it aside. I don't think I had really read enough theory to understand it well enough to enjoy it.
I haven't actually picked it back up with the intention of reading it all the way through, yet. I was skimming it the other day, and noticed that it has a section on the rebel in novels. I read a little bit of that, and I really liked it. I had pulled The Stranger off of the shelf at the same time that I yanked The Rebel, also by coincidence, because The Stranger is so skinny, and they were sort of stuck together. I knew what a brief read it was, so I decided that I should read it again, as a graduate.
I'm always a little nervous reading translated work, and even more when analyzing it. Oh, well. I will do this as usual:
Part 1
Chapter 1
This novel has a Part 1, so this is presumably the beginning of something that will happen in stages. Something, it seems, will build.
The opening sentence is great: Maman died today. The death of the mother, the creator, the collapse of the cave from whence we all came, is an excellent setting. It is a reminder of that long since forbidden intimacy that Meursault later seems to both crave and abhor. It's a sentence which reminds of that particular intimacy, and is also a renewal of the loss of it, or the extinguishing of the hope of ever having it again. It is Freud that postulated that we all want to get back into the womb? I don't know. I should really read more philosophy. Anyway, we are dealing with the death of a mother -- kind of like in As I Lay Dying. I wonder if Camus was a fan of Faulkner.
I guess you could say that this novel is written in the first person. I wonder, though, who the speaker is talking to, and if we are in what I can only think to describe as "real time." Are we experiencing a story past tense or present tense? We seem to be in the speaker's mind, but also floating at times outside of him, looking either at him or away from him. I don't get the feeling that the narrator is really aware of us. When he says things like, "I don't have anything to apologize for," referring to needing time off from work, and feeling guilty for asking for it, I'm not sure if he's telling us, or trying to convince himself.
I think Camus wants us to believe that what we are reading is all that goes on in Meursault's head. There is such a lack of any kind of judgement, but perhaps this is because, as he tells us, he's been influenced by the fact that Maman had never in her life given a thought to religion. It's interesting that instead of saying that his mother wasn't religious, he uses the phrase, "never given a thought." This implies that thoughts are not intrusive, but extrusive. They could just be sitting there, with no subject, no predicate, simply waiting for you to choose what to give them to. That means that there is another consciousness deciding, or thinking, what to think about. In that case, there is another consciousness that Meursault is not disclosing, or perhaps cannot disclose to us. The one that chooses what he is going to give his thoughts to. Or at least that is his experience -- so he's not acknowledging the super-ego? Alas, there I go again, quoting that which I'm not familiar enough with.
The action at the funeral and the senior home is probably what initially establishes the novel's reputation as concerning a "detached" man. Yet, I didn't find it hard to identify with Meursault as he finds the home a virtual prison for the elderly, and the behavior of the attendants there absurd. What I noticed about this episode was the various systems that he has to deal with to get this ceremony over with in order for Maman's death to "have a more official feel to it." Until these systems are dealt with and used, "it's almost as if Maman isn't dead." The structures, the systems, are what pronounce her dead, for Meursault doesn't even glimpse her dead body. It's an experience made up of bare nerves and intolerable foreignness.
I suppose Camus begins with this because it is one of the more absurd moments in life that we construct. We don't usually personally bury our loved ones; others, strangers, bury our dead. Others do all of the work for us, so that we do not really have the experience. When Meursault arrives at the "old people's home," he wants to "see Maman right away," but he must see the director first. He is a little old man of some distinction, wearing a ribbon from the French Legion of Honor. It's been over 140 years since the Legion was established, and the director is described as little and old. Camus could be commenting on the futility of newness, and new orders. I do think that in The Rebel, he notes that every rebellion is only a rebellion until order is restored again. Then rebells cease to be in revolt, and they are either policemen or tyrants. So which is the director? I guess since the director holds Meursault's hand until he "didn't know how to get it loose," he seems like more of a gentle tyrant, overpowering, but only just enough to make the Meursault uncomfortable. But there isn't a clear connotation. The director uses modified language to keep from "criticizing" Meursault, while simultaneously justifying the existence of the old people's home, and acts as the authority on the matter.
There's a slight refrain in this novel, that begins in chapter one. It's something like, "that doesn't mean anything." The meaningless that Meursault is referring to seems like a relief from the forced meaning involved in the old folks' home, and even involved in his job and relationship with his boss, and even in his later relationship with Marie. Meaninglessness becomes the answer to confusion, or the option for freedom from feeling. Thus, the compulsion to find meaning, or to make meaning, becomes uncomfortable for the reader.
A good friend and reader explained the feeling I was having about setting and space as dislocation. Dislocation came up a lot for me in Faulkner. I find it very interesting that Camus has achieved a similar sense of dislocation, but uses more subtle literary techniques than say, stream of consciousness. It's almost as if the realm of ideas is a location that both Faulkner and Camus take us to, some psychological personality place where the self is detached from the present, but not entirely unaware of it. Is this the attempt to know the unknowable? Fittingly, I don't know.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Theater Rage
Being as it's probably the most interesting thing I've been doing lately, besides having a job, and planning European vacations, going to the movies will have to be the subject of yet another post. I wrote about Bright Star, and I'm sticking with my notion that it's simply the best film this year. I'm seeing it again on Monday. It's brilliant.
Tonight Todd and I went to see Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It. The film isn't extraordinary, but I suppose it is mildly amusing. The best thing in it by leaps and bounds is Andrew Wilson's performance as the derby girl's coach. I love those Wilson brothers. They have a genuineness about them that I can't help but admire. What is it? A vulnerability? Charm? Confidence? Coolness? They are just a wildly talented, if a bit limited, trio of men.
The movie was alright, but there's something else I have to tell you. There's something I have to admit to. I have a problem. Let's call it theatre rage. I find myself unconscionably angry when people around me incessantly talk, chomp on popcorn, and open loud candy during films. I mean it really gets me mad. Mutant comic book character mad, where I don't care about getting my butt kicked. This happens to me at concerts, too, but it is never more annoying then when I'm at a movie theater. I have a terribly unreasonable expectation that people watching a film together will be quiet. I mean, before most movies there is actually a message from the theater telling you to be quiet. I mean, I understand that sometimes you have to whisper something, like, I have to pee, or you say, oh, that's Andrew Wilson, but there's this technique called whispering that I don't know people learn anymore.
And I think to myself, am I just getting old and cranky? Am I going to the wrong theater? Apparently not, because when I saw Appaloosa at the Arclight in a 21+ screening with assigned seating, there was a douchebag sitting behind us that wouldn't shut up until we got an usher to remind him. And even then we had to shush him several times. I think -- do I have to see movies at midnight? Especially in movies where the sound is actually kind of important, almost a character unto itself, is the unbecoming knowledge that you "just can't believe that she would do that" -- which is an actual quote from a woman sitting behind me blurting out random statements during that quiet, dialogue heavy movie with Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio. When Todd and I saw Bright Star together, there was a row of popcorn chompers behind us, at least three of them, who must have been trying to win some kind of contest for loudness.
Tonight, there was a highschool-aged couple behind us who talked throughout the trailers, and then continued to talk for the first five minutes of the movie, making comments through every line like they were reactionary robots with no control over their impulse to respond. I glared, I shushed. The guy looked like a total bro douche bag, so I finally decided I needed to change seats. Todd tends to kind of panic when I get theater rage, because he feels like I'm going to say something really nasty (like that time I told someone that they had the decorum of a junkyard dog) that will cause him to have to get into a fight, but mostly I think my snobbery and confrontational nature simply embarrass him. I got up in my rage, and spilled all my Junior Mints. Dad blam it. I booked it angrily to some upper seats on the aisle, and we watched the rest of the film a little askew, but it's so much better to be away, away, away from the noise.
I don't know what to do. Anger shaves time off of lives. I love going to the movies. Remember when theaters used to have one screen, and there were ushers inside the auditorium who ensured that no one was disrupting the movie? Sigh.
Tonight Todd and I went to see Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It. The film isn't extraordinary, but I suppose it is mildly amusing. The best thing in it by leaps and bounds is Andrew Wilson's performance as the derby girl's coach. I love those Wilson brothers. They have a genuineness about them that I can't help but admire. What is it? A vulnerability? Charm? Confidence? Coolness? They are just a wildly talented, if a bit limited, trio of men.
The movie was alright, but there's something else I have to tell you. There's something I have to admit to. I have a problem. Let's call it theatre rage. I find myself unconscionably angry when people around me incessantly talk, chomp on popcorn, and open loud candy during films. I mean it really gets me mad. Mutant comic book character mad, where I don't care about getting my butt kicked. This happens to me at concerts, too, but it is never more annoying then when I'm at a movie theater. I have a terribly unreasonable expectation that people watching a film together will be quiet. I mean, before most movies there is actually a message from the theater telling you to be quiet. I mean, I understand that sometimes you have to whisper something, like, I have to pee, or you say, oh, that's Andrew Wilson, but there's this technique called whispering that I don't know people learn anymore.
And I think to myself, am I just getting old and cranky? Am I going to the wrong theater? Apparently not, because when I saw Appaloosa at the Arclight in a 21+ screening with assigned seating, there was a douchebag sitting behind us that wouldn't shut up until we got an usher to remind him. And even then we had to shush him several times. I think -- do I have to see movies at midnight? Especially in movies where the sound is actually kind of important, almost a character unto itself, is the unbecoming knowledge that you "just can't believe that she would do that" -- which is an actual quote from a woman sitting behind me blurting out random statements during that quiet, dialogue heavy movie with Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio. When Todd and I saw Bright Star together, there was a row of popcorn chompers behind us, at least three of them, who must have been trying to win some kind of contest for loudness.
Tonight, there was a highschool-aged couple behind us who talked throughout the trailers, and then continued to talk for the first five minutes of the movie, making comments through every line like they were reactionary robots with no control over their impulse to respond. I glared, I shushed. The guy looked like a total bro douche bag, so I finally decided I needed to change seats. Todd tends to kind of panic when I get theater rage, because he feels like I'm going to say something really nasty (like that time I told someone that they had the decorum of a junkyard dog) that will cause him to have to get into a fight, but mostly I think my snobbery and confrontational nature simply embarrass him. I got up in my rage, and spilled all my Junior Mints. Dad blam it. I booked it angrily to some upper seats on the aisle, and we watched the rest of the film a little askew, but it's so much better to be away, away, away from the noise.
I don't know what to do. Anger shaves time off of lives. I love going to the movies. Remember when theaters used to have one screen, and there were ushers inside the auditorium who ensured that no one was disrupting the movie? Sigh.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Bright Star
My excellent friend Willow and I went to see Jane Campion's new film, Bright Star. I noticed that it was playing at the Arclight in Hollywood on the midnight of its opening day, and thought it would be fun to see a late movie, for it's been ever so long since I've done anything like that. Well, you know, at least since Star Wars III. I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I also knew that people who are in films often see their film or their "friends" in films at midnight showings at the Arclight in Hollywood, so I quietly hoped we might catch a glimpse of Paul Schneider, Abbie Cornish, or Ben Wishaw. I'm not afraid to admit that it would have been exciting, anyway. But, no matter, there were just four of us in the theater.
I have to admit, it's been a long time since I've seen any of Campion's films. There are even a few I haven't seen, like Holy Smoke, In the Cut, An Angel at my Table, or A Girl's Own Story. I didn't even really like Portrait of a Lady, except I thought it was beautiful. In spite of my lack of experience with Campion, I was very excited for Bright Star. I'm not really a huge fan of really long poems, but I love Keats's sonnets and shorter poems. I'd read a few of his letters included in the Longman Anthology of British Literature, but was unaware that he wrote love letters to anyone. Therefore, the subject matter intrigued me.
The film focuses mostly on Cornish's character Fanny Brawne. I love the way Campion does this. We identify with her as she becomes aware of her self as a creature who loves the beauty of words and human hearts, and not just fashion, and we also get to fall in love with her as Keats does, entering the world of romance alongside the utmost Romantic. Brilliant. As an interpretation of British literature that includes biographical material, I think this film is on par with The Hours. I am in awe of Campion; she investigates the idea of their affair exploring how it must have felt to be the being with whom the greatest, youngest Romantic poet is madly in love. What is that creature like? What is their relationship like? Campion makes it so simple; they are, it is, like us -- only imagined, so, more beautiful, and more accessible. The film rides the perilous line of fantasy and reality at exhilarating speed, and with unending amounts of grace.
The acting is so generous. Perhaps that is due to Campion's script, which is perfect, but I really felt that the silent bits were played with such vulnerability that I felt the players were truly opening up to us, and allowing themselves to let us witness the purity of the most intimate moments of our lives. I know it is going to sound awfully silly and selfish, but I often wish I could see myself at different moments in my life. The moment I first knew I was in love with a man, and he me. The moment I first felt my heart crack. I can remember these moments, but I wonder what they looked like. I know not half as beautiful as a Campion film set in the English countryside, but those moments are just as beautiful, and that is what this film does. It reminds you through utterly romantic artifice that those moments in your life were ideal. And she helps you not burst into a thousand pieces by only showing you a story about first love, and first loss. And maybe those are the most beautiful. This movie can convince you of that.
I think I'll see it again this week, by myself. Perhaps, as it so often occurs with love, the second time around will be different.
I have to admit, it's been a long time since I've seen any of Campion's films. There are even a few I haven't seen, like Holy Smoke, In the Cut, An Angel at my Table, or A Girl's Own Story. I didn't even really like Portrait of a Lady, except I thought it was beautiful. In spite of my lack of experience with Campion, I was very excited for Bright Star. I'm not really a huge fan of really long poems, but I love Keats's sonnets and shorter poems. I'd read a few of his letters included in the Longman Anthology of British Literature, but was unaware that he wrote love letters to anyone. Therefore, the subject matter intrigued me.
The film focuses mostly on Cornish's character Fanny Brawne. I love the way Campion does this. We identify with her as she becomes aware of her self as a creature who loves the beauty of words and human hearts, and not just fashion, and we also get to fall in love with her as Keats does, entering the world of romance alongside the utmost Romantic. Brilliant. As an interpretation of British literature that includes biographical material, I think this film is on par with The Hours. I am in awe of Campion; she investigates the idea of their affair exploring how it must have felt to be the being with whom the greatest, youngest Romantic poet is madly in love. What is that creature like? What is their relationship like? Campion makes it so simple; they are, it is, like us -- only imagined, so, more beautiful, and more accessible. The film rides the perilous line of fantasy and reality at exhilarating speed, and with unending amounts of grace.
The acting is so generous. Perhaps that is due to Campion's script, which is perfect, but I really felt that the silent bits were played with such vulnerability that I felt the players were truly opening up to us, and allowing themselves to let us witness the purity of the most intimate moments of our lives. I know it is going to sound awfully silly and selfish, but I often wish I could see myself at different moments in my life. The moment I first knew I was in love with a man, and he me. The moment I first felt my heart crack. I can remember these moments, but I wonder what they looked like. I know not half as beautiful as a Campion film set in the English countryside, but those moments are just as beautiful, and that is what this film does. It reminds you through utterly romantic artifice that those moments in your life were ideal. And she helps you not burst into a thousand pieces by only showing you a story about first love, and first loss. And maybe those are the most beautiful. This movie can convince you of that.
I think I'll see it again this week, by myself. Perhaps, as it so often occurs with love, the second time around will be different.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
What's so Great about it?
I suppose the title of this blog is still relevant; I am still in college. I am enrolled at Cypress for fall, and I am currently registered in a one unit P.E. class. We played ultimate Frisbee today. My team lost, which means we had to do 50 jumping jacks, 30 lunges, and 25 body builders, which are some sort of torturous things where you jump back and forth between a crouch and a plank position. Our team was made up of a lot of small people who tended to shy away from the Frisbee instead of catch it, plus the other team had a defender who is 6'3. I hate losing.
I should be working very hard to get into graduate school, but for some reason I keep letting things get in the way. The New Not-So-Great Depression is actually depressing. I feel really uncreative and unmotivated. I'm being really...I don't know. Whiny. Pathetic. Weenieish. Grouchy. Lazy. Scared. I feel so tired. I know that I go through waves of depression, especially when I don't have any imposed structure in my life. I've been thinking about returning to hair for the mean time, but I would hate to have to leave it again if I got accepted into a program. Not that I would overly miss the work, it's just that I would hate letting people down. People get very attached to their hairdressers, and it's a pain having to say goodbye. But money is money. It's so obscene.
Depression is, among other things, frightening. The psychological kind, I mean. There are so many things that I feel so very passionate about, but when I'm depressed it's as if they all lose their meaning and vibrancy. I get scared to return to an essay I've been working on when I'm depressed. What if I edit it according to my terrible mood? What if I decide to change direction on a whim? I have to hope that the evidence supporting my original ideas is strong enough to override my emotional flights of fancy. Maybe I just need to read something new. Sometimes that does the trick.
I did watch Chinatown and Easy Rider recently. Not exactly pick me ups, but so good. Chinatown is the finer film, if you ask me, but Easy Rider has its charms. I think I like Jack Nicholson's acting better in Easy Rider. I don't think Nicholson has a great range, and I don't know if I believe that he truly inhabits a character as much as takes you on thrill ride through that character's possibility, but he is glorious onscreen. I wish I had more to say about either film, but, if you couldn't tell, I'm kind of short on words these days. I loved seeing John Huston in Chinatown, and was reminded that I love film noir set in Los Angeles, like in Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, and L.A. Confidential. With Easy Rider, well, I guess I had a harder time enjoying the film, as it is kind of a sad commentary on America. I suppose I enjoyed Peter Fonda the most, and his ridiculous but charming character, Captain America. His crying scene on the lap of that giant Madonna is pretty intense, made even more so when I watched the DVD's documentary and found out that Denis Hopper made him do that scene, even though Fonda had lost his own mother to suicide at the age of ten.
Powerful.
As I was watching the opening to Easy Rider, Todd wandered into the living room and said, over the now familiar Steppenwolf biker song, "Born to be Wild": Well. That's really all you need to see.
Looks like unhealthy cynicism is catching.
I should be working very hard to get into graduate school, but for some reason I keep letting things get in the way. The New Not-So-Great Depression is actually depressing. I feel really uncreative and unmotivated. I'm being really...I don't know. Whiny. Pathetic. Weenieish. Grouchy. Lazy. Scared. I feel so tired. I know that I go through waves of depression, especially when I don't have any imposed structure in my life. I've been thinking about returning to hair for the mean time, but I would hate to have to leave it again if I got accepted into a program. Not that I would overly miss the work, it's just that I would hate letting people down. People get very attached to their hairdressers, and it's a pain having to say goodbye. But money is money. It's so obscene.
Depression is, among other things, frightening. The psychological kind, I mean. There are so many things that I feel so very passionate about, but when I'm depressed it's as if they all lose their meaning and vibrancy. I get scared to return to an essay I've been working on when I'm depressed. What if I edit it according to my terrible mood? What if I decide to change direction on a whim? I have to hope that the evidence supporting my original ideas is strong enough to override my emotional flights of fancy. Maybe I just need to read something new. Sometimes that does the trick.
I did watch Chinatown and Easy Rider recently. Not exactly pick me ups, but so good. Chinatown is the finer film, if you ask me, but Easy Rider has its charms. I think I like Jack Nicholson's acting better in Easy Rider. I don't think Nicholson has a great range, and I don't know if I believe that he truly inhabits a character as much as takes you on thrill ride through that character's possibility, but he is glorious onscreen. I wish I had more to say about either film, but, if you couldn't tell, I'm kind of short on words these days. I loved seeing John Huston in Chinatown, and was reminded that I love film noir set in Los Angeles, like in Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, and L.A. Confidential. With Easy Rider, well, I guess I had a harder time enjoying the film, as it is kind of a sad commentary on America. I suppose I enjoyed Peter Fonda the most, and his ridiculous but charming character, Captain America. His crying scene on the lap of that giant Madonna is pretty intense, made even more so when I watched the DVD's documentary and found out that Denis Hopper made him do that scene, even though Fonda had lost his own mother to suicide at the age of ten.
Powerful.
As I was watching the opening to Easy Rider, Todd wandered into the living room and said, over the now familiar Steppenwolf biker song, "Born to be Wild": Well. That's really all you need to see.
Looks like unhealthy cynicism is catching.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
(500) Days of Sughmmer
Listen, you. You took it all -- Say Anything, Better Off Dead, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and even other relevant later films, like Reality Bites, and High Fidelity, and you barfed your stupid movie all over their precious memory. Using The Smiths and Joy Division and the Pixies? Shame on you! Pretending L.A. is New York? Ridiculous. Your stupid, stupid, stupid sacrilegious movie. I can't think of one original moment in this film. And that actor? What, was Shia LaBeouf too expensive? While I liked these actors in other, less pretentious films, like Ten Things I Hate About You (yes, that actually was a pretty decent kids film), and Elf (she was pretty good in that one, but I really doubt she's worth all the attention she gets), their work here is sub-par, at best.
I actually think that this movie was my own personal "Summer." Lured in by the promise of an unusual kind of love story, I find myself biting down on the most phony "indie" sanctimonious bullcrap. No, the girl is the not the bad guy! You, you stupid movie, you are the bad guy. I hate you, movie.
I actually think that this movie was my own personal "Summer." Lured in by the promise of an unusual kind of love story, I find myself biting down on the most phony "indie" sanctimonious bullcrap. No, the girl is the not the bad guy! You, you stupid movie, you are the bad guy. I hate you, movie.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Back of the Line, Lady!
Guess who's thirty. Actually, don't.
The summer class went well. Sometimes I felt a little outnumbered, a sort of lunatics are taking over the asylum thing, but overall I liked the practice, and think my writing is better than ever. I'm enrolled in the P.E. class that will give me the unit I need to officially graduate, and now I have about a week to decide how many programs I'm going to apply to for Fall 2010. I'm still very confused. I don't know if I want to apply to Master's programs or Ph.D. programs, or both. I'm back in that uncomfortable position of starting over, moving to the back of the line, you know. I'm always fighting the voice in my head that warns me I might be accepted and then be the dumbest person in the room. That might sound as pathetic as it is, but I do have to worry a little, a consequence of departing from CSUDH where I've often been the smartest student in the room. Maybe that is what this college business has really been about. If I have a Ph.D., maybe I'll be able to say, hey! I'm kind of smart...or something.
So I'll be researching and applying to the usual: USC, UCLA, UCR, UCI, Claremont...maybe less, maybe more. I have to proof my submittals to death. I'm so terrible when it comes to the details. I'm going to update/redo my statement of purpose. I think I have a bit more confidence now. I have to be more Shakti-like, able to destroy and give birth to worlds, and less pick me! Pick me! Pick me! It's challenging.
I'm also going to write a paper about the 80's British band The Smiths, and the solo work of its frontman, Morrissey. When I went to London in May, I had to study maps of the Underground in order to know how to get around. What I discovered was that I knew a ton of the names of the underground stations. I had never been serious about a map on London before the trip; the familiarity was due to listening to The Smiths and Morrissey, and the several references to these locations that are in their albums. I realized that I already had a relationship with these places, simply because I was a loyal fan of the music. So I'd like to write a paper -- a kind of "thought experiment" in which I discuss the implications of place in popular music, or maybe what it means to have expectations of a place, based on a mental landscape arranged according to a composite sketch implied in lyrics. I'm also curious about the limitations of fan loyalty. Did I let myself create my own experiences in London? Or was I overly influenced by sentiment created through lines like, "Here is London, giddy London; is it home of the free or what?," "And if a double-decker bus crashes into us, to die by your side, such a heavenly way to die," "Piccadilly palare was just silly slang, between me and the boys in my gang." It is going to take some research, but I think by the time I'm through I might have something kind of interesting and novel to shop around.
I also need to work more on my ideas about Benito Cereno and Moby-Dick. I've got to be more persistent, or I'll be one of those terrible ABD professors, demanding that students turn papers in on time, but too chicken to self-impose a deadline.
And it's still summer! More surfing! More beer! More happy hours!
The summer class went well. Sometimes I felt a little outnumbered, a sort of lunatics are taking over the asylum thing, but overall I liked the practice, and think my writing is better than ever. I'm enrolled in the P.E. class that will give me the unit I need to officially graduate, and now I have about a week to decide how many programs I'm going to apply to for Fall 2010. I'm still very confused. I don't know if I want to apply to Master's programs or Ph.D. programs, or both. I'm back in that uncomfortable position of starting over, moving to the back of the line, you know. I'm always fighting the voice in my head that warns me I might be accepted and then be the dumbest person in the room. That might sound as pathetic as it is, but I do have to worry a little, a consequence of departing from CSUDH where I've often been the smartest student in the room. Maybe that is what this college business has really been about. If I have a Ph.D., maybe I'll be able to say, hey! I'm kind of smart...or something.
So I'll be researching and applying to the usual: USC, UCLA, UCR, UCI, Claremont...maybe less, maybe more. I have to proof my submittals to death. I'm so terrible when it comes to the details. I'm going to update/redo my statement of purpose. I think I have a bit more confidence now. I have to be more Shakti-like, able to destroy and give birth to worlds, and less pick me! Pick me! Pick me! It's challenging.
I'm also going to write a paper about the 80's British band The Smiths, and the solo work of its frontman, Morrissey. When I went to London in May, I had to study maps of the Underground in order to know how to get around. What I discovered was that I knew a ton of the names of the underground stations. I had never been serious about a map on London before the trip; the familiarity was due to listening to The Smiths and Morrissey, and the several references to these locations that are in their albums. I realized that I already had a relationship with these places, simply because I was a loyal fan of the music. So I'd like to write a paper -- a kind of "thought experiment" in which I discuss the implications of place in popular music, or maybe what it means to have expectations of a place, based on a mental landscape arranged according to a composite sketch implied in lyrics. I'm also curious about the limitations of fan loyalty. Did I let myself create my own experiences in London? Or was I overly influenced by sentiment created through lines like, "Here is London, giddy London; is it home of the free or what?," "And if a double-decker bus crashes into us, to die by your side, such a heavenly way to die," "Piccadilly palare was just silly slang, between me and the boys in my gang." It is going to take some research, but I think by the time I'm through I might have something kind of interesting and novel to shop around.
I also need to work more on my ideas about Benito Cereno and Moby-Dick. I've got to be more persistent, or I'll be one of those terrible ABD professors, demanding that students turn papers in on time, but too chicken to self-impose a deadline.
And it's still summer! More surfing! More beer! More happy hours!
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Rodney Dangerfield and I
My degree. It just never came in the mail. So I went to university advisement -- as opposed to major advisement, which is the only advisement I've been to, or been advised to go to -- and they informed me that I am four credits short of the units required for a bachelor's degree. Panic. Registering in Fall for four units would cost me $2000. I quickly scanned the university website for the second summer session class schedule. Two courses in advanced composition -- one taught by a dreaded, loathed instructor (by me, anyway), the infamous ponytail man who caused me so much distress in my first semester at DH, but there! The other section presented by the greatly admired Dr. H, who taught last semester's senior seminar. The one who sweetly told me I'd better ask him for a letter of recommendation or he'd be insulted. Ah, sigh. A late night email went out, begging him for late admission. A sincere acceptance followed, including the melodious phrase, you are one of the best students I've had in a class. Oh, tell me more! (This experience is doing nothing for my appreciation of Virginia Woolf's note about the ability to write without praise -- that I read...in her own hand...at the British Library...where I cried...and had to hide my face.)
So I'm in class for the summer. As usual, my classmates are...well, they act and speak as if they are in a sort of academic halfway house. As if they can't quite manage to get by in a real university, and the class is some kind of gateway to real life. Of course, it is a real university. And Dr. H is very forgiving and tolerant of insanely off the mark student comments, which I appreciate, even though I know that my face is scrunched up in cerebral pain at the ignorance and insolence. Even though composition is hard for me. Argument is so...logical. I'm not worried about the class, but I am a little but worried about my writing, so this class is good practice, good reminders, you know.
And don't think I wasn't mad as a hornet when I found out that I had never been advised about those four units. But there comes a time when you just can't waste your breath on things that you can't really change. So it's back to school.
So I'm in class for the summer. As usual, my classmates are...well, they act and speak as if they are in a sort of academic halfway house. As if they can't quite manage to get by in a real university, and the class is some kind of gateway to real life. Of course, it is a real university. And Dr. H is very forgiving and tolerant of insanely off the mark student comments, which I appreciate, even though I know that my face is scrunched up in cerebral pain at the ignorance and insolence. Even though composition is hard for me. Argument is so...logical. I'm not worried about the class, but I am a little but worried about my writing, so this class is good practice, good reminders, you know.
And don't think I wasn't mad as a hornet when I found out that I had never been advised about those four units. But there comes a time when you just can't waste your breath on things that you can't really change. So it's back to school.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
A Strangely Moving Costume
Well, hello. Just in case you were wondering, I graduated.
I really don't think anyone looks good in this getup:
Celebratory mimosas, with lots of family and friends.
Three days later we were on a plane to London, and then a week later we took a train to Paris. Happy Graduation to me, and happy eleventh anniversary to us. I loved Europe, and will share those photos in a future post.
I really don't think anyone looks good in this getup:
Celebratory mimosas, with lots of family and friends.
Three days later we were on a plane to London, and then a week later we took a train to Paris. Happy Graduation to me, and happy eleventh anniversary to us. I loved Europe, and will share those photos in a future post.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
He Kind of Looked Like My Grandpa Lyle
It was just a little while ago that I was writing how much I adore the film Baby Doll. The greatness of this film is undoubtably due to a number of things, like the writing, photography, and, of course, the acting. Karl Malden plays Archie Lee, and the film couldn't have been as good without him. Malden's acting is superb, no matter what role he's playing. He won an Oscar for his performance in A Streetcar Named Desire, and seemed to have a special talent for capturing the tortured and disillusioned American in all of us. Malden died yesterday, and the Los Angeles Times generously gave him a small square near the bottom of the front page which announced his passing. Malden was able to hold his own while acting alongside the likes of Marlon Brando, Charleton Heston, and Montgomery Clift.
I was delighted to see Eli Wallach on a recent episode of Nurse Jackie, and I think Carroll Baker is still alive, and maybe even living in Los Angeles, although the Times seems not to have been able or willing to reach her for comment.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Beginning Tomorrow
So it's supposed to be a beginning. That's why they call it commencement. I wonder if the speaker tomorrow will mention that. I'm sure it get mentioned all the time.
I can barely believe I survived this semester. I took on five classes, and all five of them were demanding. I have never read nor written so much in such a short period of time. I wrote around fifteen papers, I think. I read about thirteen novels, plus other miscellaneous stories and stuff. Today, when I realized I was done writing the last paper, I got a little emotional. It was such hard work. This semester more than all the previous ones made me really self-conscious about my writing. I had one professor who kept writing comments on my essays like, "baffling," "confusing," and "wordy." I got so nervous about this one professor (I had him for two classes) that I became really blocked creatively. I had to keep reminding myself that I have good ideas, and if I can just begin to articulate them I can always revise them in the future. He was just sort of...rude. I wonder what he really thought of me. He is this really great, brilliant guy who is known for being really witty, understanding, and the object of academic crushes galore. He is known for hanging out with students, bumming a cigarette, going to the bar. It really sounded like someone that I could get along with. He taught a graduate course this semester on Melville, and so I wanted his feedback on my Moby Dick paper. He never got back to me about it, although he had me email it to him twice. When we would sit down together in his office, he would give me a little bit of advice, like one time he told me this gem: read the MLA Little Brown Handbook. I don't think he was ever, I don't know, bad to me, I just had really high expectations of him going into the semester, and aside from some fun times, he almost always seemed to relish, just a little bit, shutting me down.
Everything else went great. My senior seminar was the best. The instructor was probably my favorite at DH, ever. I gave awesome presentations, and had the best discussions in that class. We read some incredible books, like Everything is Illuminated, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. And I had fun with a lot of people in that seminar. We laughed a lot.
Commencement is tomorrow, and for the first time in my life I'm going to participate in a formal graduation ceremony. I'm overwhelmed at the thought of being the first person in my family to graduate from college. And I'm thrilled to have the summer off.
On Monday Todd and I leave for London and Paris. We've never been, and it will be an awesome way to celebrate my success, and our 11th anniversary. So, next time I'll have some photos, and hopefully some great stories to tell.
I can barely believe I survived this semester. I took on five classes, and all five of them were demanding. I have never read nor written so much in such a short period of time. I wrote around fifteen papers, I think. I read about thirteen novels, plus other miscellaneous stories and stuff. Today, when I realized I was done writing the last paper, I got a little emotional. It was such hard work. This semester more than all the previous ones made me really self-conscious about my writing. I had one professor who kept writing comments on my essays like, "baffling," "confusing," and "wordy." I got so nervous about this one professor (I had him for two classes) that I became really blocked creatively. I had to keep reminding myself that I have good ideas, and if I can just begin to articulate them I can always revise them in the future. He was just sort of...rude. I wonder what he really thought of me. He is this really great, brilliant guy who is known for being really witty, understanding, and the object of academic crushes galore. He is known for hanging out with students, bumming a cigarette, going to the bar. It really sounded like someone that I could get along with. He taught a graduate course this semester on Melville, and so I wanted his feedback on my Moby Dick paper. He never got back to me about it, although he had me email it to him twice. When we would sit down together in his office, he would give me a little bit of advice, like one time he told me this gem: read the MLA Little Brown Handbook. I don't think he was ever, I don't know, bad to me, I just had really high expectations of him going into the semester, and aside from some fun times, he almost always seemed to relish, just a little bit, shutting me down.
Everything else went great. My senior seminar was the best. The instructor was probably my favorite at DH, ever. I gave awesome presentations, and had the best discussions in that class. We read some incredible books, like Everything is Illuminated, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. And I had fun with a lot of people in that seminar. We laughed a lot.
Commencement is tomorrow, and for the first time in my life I'm going to participate in a formal graduation ceremony. I'm overwhelmed at the thought of being the first person in my family to graduate from college. And I'm thrilled to have the summer off.
On Monday Todd and I leave for London and Paris. We've never been, and it will be an awesome way to celebrate my success, and our 11th anniversary. So, next time I'll have some photos, and hopefully some great stories to tell.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Writing at the Café
Of course I would be an idiot, one not fit to write anything about anything, if I didn't observe and give homange to the great café writers of the twentieth century. Especially do I have to look at, admire, and kiss the hand and foot of Ernest Hemingway, a man (yes, just a man! Imagine!) who had reached nearly one-named status through writing about writing, and writing at cafés. And writing about writing at cafés, at cafés. So yes, I'm not doing anything new or revolutionary, except, perhaps, that I'm writing about writing at cafés, at a café, in America. And as I'm writing about writing in cafés, at a café, in America, I'm acutally at what is called a diner. Everyone here, as far as I can hear, is American, and most likely is a local. I can't walk here, I live on the other side of town, but I'm still a local, in a sort of sweeping urban sense of the word.
I guess there are other writers who wrote about writing in American diners. What's his name did that painting of the lonely man in the coffee shop in the early twentieth century. Maybe hard-boiled detctive and noir fiction gave its first mucusy cough in an American diner. Interaction with the usual features of a diner is certainly inspirational. Some people are forced to be here, forced to make wages. Some are enjoying being waited on. I certainly enjoy having my coffee cup refulled without asking. The food is actually excellent here. French influenced, west coast, psuedo-soul fare. Great shiny onyx coffee and unusual cucumber infused still. Aside from the dark sage and white linoleum checkered floor, dark sage wainscot, and baby lemon curd walls, everything else in ways of decor is a carefully arranged mix and match of antiques and strangely iconographic configurations of kitsch. The radio from the nineteen tens on the counter masking the modern cash register, the patina green metal scale which holds drink menus, the blackboards on walls hanging out with mounted children's chairs and old serving trays, plates, and a colorful vintage Chinese checkers board, a few do-it-yourself paintings ranging from a nude feminine bust to a fogged-in Golden Gate. The seating is French bistro style, with chairs made of bamboo and woven plastic. Everything together making it hard to imagine just one person arranging things.
Does the diner want to acknowledge France? Yes, but it wants to look only so long, then it says, thank you so much for these great chairs, goodbye. It doesn't linger on France like a voyeur with a pocket busting with quarters for the empire's cultural peep show. Are the baguettes perfection? I wouldn't know, but they are good enough that I always save my hunk of airy and crusty bread for last. I wait until all other breakfast foods are consumed, and then I spread butter on each slice and eat them like exquisite desserts.
I think more than many other locations, cafés give you the impresison that you're being watched, and therefore you really should be doing something. Writers are solitary people in my experience. And even if they are socialites, they are elitist, and imagine themselves isolated. That stupidly talented writer Jonathan Franzen says that if you truly want to be alone, read a book. I can't remember if he extends his theory to writing, but I think it might be just as true. If you write like the narrator of Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground, alone in some dank uninhabitable basement, projecting your voice out of the obscure darkness, you eventually lose touch with the point, the desire, the means. Well, if you want to use a deranged Poe narrator, someone who exhibits unabashed self-destruction like reality T.V. characters before reality T.V., then perhaps you do need to lock yourself up in an attic like that father character from Absalom, Absalom!, finally refusing the hoisted up buckets of bread crusts. It just doesn't work that way for me.
When trying to look at and understand Toni Morrison's arguments in Playing in the Dark, I do better when I'm out. When I'm alone in my home, with the T.V. begging me to stop thinking critically, I can't help but have to read her over and over until I have to look up every other word, and I just end up napping. If I'm at the café, three coffees in, being asked intermittently by the wait staff about things like the local college baseball team, or how I'm doing in school, I feel just the right amount of self-imposed, self-conscious pressure that seems ultimately necessary in keeping up with Morrison. Here, I get just enough outer stimulation that the sabotaging images of my instructors, who have dubbed my writing "unclear," "wordy," and "confusing"; dubbed it so through glaring marginal repetition; just enough white noise (there's a reference Morrison would be interested in), to quiet the doubter within. How am I doing in school? Barely. Barely staying above average. Barely crossing finishing lines. Barely getting any kinds of attention. Barely ever having to say, oh no, I'm married, but thank God you asked because I've been internalizing all this "average" criticism and feel like I have no wares left. Nothing to flash. Nothing to tantalize you with.
Being out, being a member of the diner microcosm, helps to facilitate the understanding of lines like this:
Of course, Morrison is talking about her term Africanism, and the other here is defined by marked or markable racial difference. But I'm in the café, it's not black and white here. Yet, I'm surrounded by others, through the very processes that Morrison describes, and I have been influenced to see things in the context of me/others/else through the way of structuring my self and the world that her work describes. I'm a universal consumer, and the other is everything outside of the voices in my head and impulses in my body. I think she is right, we know ourselves through others. And not just racially, but in all kinds of ways. What is it that Derrida calls it? Differà nce? Differánce? It's how we know ourselves. But something escapes. The soul, maybe.
I think the diner worked its voodoo today, and I've been able to formulate something about Benito Cereno that will make my previous essays look concise, sparse even. I mean what's not wordy if Playing in the Dark is not wordy, and confusing, and ambiguous, and unclear? That's what the café does. It gives you just the right amount of hope that maybe you are unclear because you are a genius, or that maybe even if you are an idiot you can write about something, which is more than most dare to dream to do. It's the kind of stimulus that helps the writer to skate the edge of brilliance, or at least to resort to nice chit chat when the glare is too painful. It's the tightening of the mind at the bottom of a mimosa. The possibility of sharing an insight, and keeping it all to your greedy obese self, alone with everyone.
I guess there are other writers who wrote about writing in American diners. What's his name did that painting of the lonely man in the coffee shop in the early twentieth century. Maybe hard-boiled detctive and noir fiction gave its first mucusy cough in an American diner. Interaction with the usual features of a diner is certainly inspirational. Some people are forced to be here, forced to make wages. Some are enjoying being waited on. I certainly enjoy having my coffee cup refulled without asking. The food is actually excellent here. French influenced, west coast, psuedo-soul fare. Great shiny onyx coffee and unusual cucumber infused still. Aside from the dark sage and white linoleum checkered floor, dark sage wainscot, and baby lemon curd walls, everything else in ways of decor is a carefully arranged mix and match of antiques and strangely iconographic configurations of kitsch. The radio from the nineteen tens on the counter masking the modern cash register, the patina green metal scale which holds drink menus, the blackboards on walls hanging out with mounted children's chairs and old serving trays, plates, and a colorful vintage Chinese checkers board, a few do-it-yourself paintings ranging from a nude feminine bust to a fogged-in Golden Gate. The seating is French bistro style, with chairs made of bamboo and woven plastic. Everything together making it hard to imagine just one person arranging things.
Does the diner want to acknowledge France? Yes, but it wants to look only so long, then it says, thank you so much for these great chairs, goodbye. It doesn't linger on France like a voyeur with a pocket busting with quarters for the empire's cultural peep show. Are the baguettes perfection? I wouldn't know, but they are good enough that I always save my hunk of airy and crusty bread for last. I wait until all other breakfast foods are consumed, and then I spread butter on each slice and eat them like exquisite desserts.
I think more than many other locations, cafés give you the impresison that you're being watched, and therefore you really should be doing something. Writers are solitary people in my experience. And even if they are socialites, they are elitist, and imagine themselves isolated. That stupidly talented writer Jonathan Franzen says that if you truly want to be alone, read a book. I can't remember if he extends his theory to writing, but I think it might be just as true. If you write like the narrator of Dostoyevsky's Notes From Underground, alone in some dank uninhabitable basement, projecting your voice out of the obscure darkness, you eventually lose touch with the point, the desire, the means. Well, if you want to use a deranged Poe narrator, someone who exhibits unabashed self-destruction like reality T.V. characters before reality T.V., then perhaps you do need to lock yourself up in an attic like that father character from Absalom, Absalom!, finally refusing the hoisted up buckets of bread crusts. It just doesn't work that way for me.
When trying to look at and understand Toni Morrison's arguments in Playing in the Dark, I do better when I'm out. When I'm alone in my home, with the T.V. begging me to stop thinking critically, I can't help but have to read her over and over until I have to look up every other word, and I just end up napping. If I'm at the café, three coffees in, being asked intermittently by the wait staff about things like the local college baseball team, or how I'm doing in school, I feel just the right amount of self-imposed, self-conscious pressure that seems ultimately necessary in keeping up with Morrison. Here, I get just enough outer stimulation that the sabotaging images of my instructors, who have dubbed my writing "unclear," "wordy," and "confusing"; dubbed it so through glaring marginal repetition; just enough white noise (there's a reference Morrison would be interested in), to quiet the doubter within. How am I doing in school? Barely. Barely staying above average. Barely crossing finishing lines. Barely getting any kinds of attention. Barely ever having to say, oh no, I'm married, but thank God you asked because I've been internalizing all this "average" criticism and feel like I have no wares left. Nothing to flash. Nothing to tantalize you with.
Being out, being a member of the diner microcosm, helps to facilitate the understanding of lines like this:
Such studies will reveal the process of establishing others in order to know them, to display knowledge of the other so as to ease and order external and internal chaos.
Of course, Morrison is talking about her term Africanism, and the other here is defined by marked or markable racial difference. But I'm in the café, it's not black and white here. Yet, I'm surrounded by others, through the very processes that Morrison describes, and I have been influenced to see things in the context of me/others/else through the way of structuring my self and the world that her work describes. I'm a universal consumer, and the other is everything outside of the voices in my head and impulses in my body. I think she is right, we know ourselves through others. And not just racially, but in all kinds of ways. What is it that Derrida calls it? Differà nce? Differánce? It's how we know ourselves. But something escapes. The soul, maybe.
I think the diner worked its voodoo today, and I've been able to formulate something about Benito Cereno that will make my previous essays look concise, sparse even. I mean what's not wordy if Playing in the Dark is not wordy, and confusing, and ambiguous, and unclear? That's what the café does. It gives you just the right amount of hope that maybe you are unclear because you are a genius, or that maybe even if you are an idiot you can write about something, which is more than most dare to dream to do. It's the kind of stimulus that helps the writer to skate the edge of brilliance, or at least to resort to nice chit chat when the glare is too painful. It's the tightening of the mind at the bottom of a mimosa. The possibility of sharing an insight, and keeping it all to your greedy obese self, alone with everyone.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
They Have Faith
The University is recognizing exemplary students on Friday night, and yours truly happens to be one of them. I am apparently slated to graduate Cum Laude, I think, in my major only. Still, I have worked really hard to always get good grades, and not just to get high grades, but because I actually believed that if I did all the assignments, and put a lot of heart into them, I would come out of the system having taken full advantage of my education. In other words, I didn't want to miss a thing. Throughout this experience I have wanted to take the path that would push me, that would make me grow. It has definitely been worth it.
I'm not sure what my grades are going to be for my final semester. Things appear to be going well, but one of my instructors just doesn't seem to get my writing. I'm not clear enough, I'm too wordy, etc. I'm going to talk to him tomorrow, and hopefully we will be able to communicate better in person, and I can get some helpful feedback in order to fulfill the assignments to his and my liking. Which of course means As. I got a B+ on my Medieval Lit Midterm -- no big surprise, it's not my thing. The final is on poetry explication, which I'm fairly good at. I'm almost sure that I can pull an A- in that class. The seminar in lit class is going swimmingly, all As, and the Studies in Lit and Comp. Class is also going well. That just leaves the two American Lit classes with The Professor That Doesn't Understand Me. I don't dislike him, but I'm sad that we aren't communicating well.
I don't know where my grade point average will end up, so maybe this convocation will be just be a glimmer of the dream of graduating with honors, but even then, I still enjoy a party that celebrates my academic achievement. Which, by the way, has certainly been something to behold!
Graduation is very close, and my future is uncertain at the moment. I'm probably going to spend the next "semester" researching on my own, and sending a horde of applications out to various schools. I just don't know where the money is going to come from, and then, when I'm finished with graduate school, what the education system will look like. I can always do hair, but after all this hard work, it seems a little depressing to think of the future of education in this state. But we'll see. The University seems to have faith that I'll keep my grade point average up, so perhaps I should have a little faith in the University.
I'm not sure what my grades are going to be for my final semester. Things appear to be going well, but one of my instructors just doesn't seem to get my writing. I'm not clear enough, I'm too wordy, etc. I'm going to talk to him tomorrow, and hopefully we will be able to communicate better in person, and I can get some helpful feedback in order to fulfill the assignments to his and my liking. Which of course means As. I got a B+ on my Medieval Lit Midterm -- no big surprise, it's not my thing. The final is on poetry explication, which I'm fairly good at. I'm almost sure that I can pull an A- in that class. The seminar in lit class is going swimmingly, all As, and the Studies in Lit and Comp. Class is also going well. That just leaves the two American Lit classes with The Professor That Doesn't Understand Me. I don't dislike him, but I'm sad that we aren't communicating well.
I don't know where my grade point average will end up, so maybe this convocation will be just be a glimmer of the dream of graduating with honors, but even then, I still enjoy a party that celebrates my academic achievement. Which, by the way, has certainly been something to behold!
Graduation is very close, and my future is uncertain at the moment. I'm probably going to spend the next "semester" researching on my own, and sending a horde of applications out to various schools. I just don't know where the money is going to come from, and then, when I'm finished with graduate school, what the education system will look like. I can always do hair, but after all this hard work, it seems a little depressing to think of the future of education in this state. But we'll see. The University seems to have faith that I'll keep my grade point average up, so perhaps I should have a little faith in the University.
Friday, March 20, 2009
The Scarlet Letter -- Chapter 2 - End
I hate to say it, but I just don't have time to get As and read for myself. My American Literature instructor seems to be an expert on all theory EXCEPT Jung, so I don't really get a chance to discuss my ideas about gender with a specialist in the concepts of male and female unity/equality, at least not the ones that I imagine are driving American Gothic in the nineteenth century. So, just to kind of generalize about the concepts I see in this novel, I think I will say that I see Hester as a sort of Mother type who gives birth to a female Messiah. I love the ambiguity of the novel, the way it second, and third, and fourth guesses itself. I'm more of a Melvillian cynic at heart, but there is a beauty in Hawthorne's criticism of idealism -- a reverence for the worst possible fear to be just as true as the best possible comfort--a dismantling of the whole idea of paradox--well. I think the Emerson is getting to me.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
A Return to the Scarlet Letter -- Ch. 1
I love this book. Not only is it a study of the strictly ordered communities in our national history, but it is also an examination of signs and signifiers, those pesky things through which we try to make sense of the universal chaos we seem unable to tolerate. What I'm noticing this read is how much Hawthorne seems to be commenting on the arbitrary nature of signs, and how close to the edge of reason he takes the reader, without letting them fall into the void.
I used to think that the opening chapter of The Scarlet Letter was to orient the reader using a man v. nature construction. I saw the prison and the cemetery as emblematic of societies' struggle to control the natural instincts of humans, which stretch even to how they order their burial -- death and decay being the last triumph of the forces of the universe. Yet, the last paragraph of the chapter "The Prison Door" causes me to wonder just how much Hawthorne is playing with our sentiments concerning signifiers. It reads
First, I am struck by Hawthorne's narrator's tone. I am almost convinced that this entire paragraph is meant to be satirical. The narrator comments that the appearance of the rosebush "has been kept alive in history." What is this "history"? Is it the historical texts of the 1600s that Hawthorne was so fond of pouring over? Is it the oral tradition, the folkloric tradition, the mythological rendition? Or does the narrator suggest that it still exists, is still alive? And what of this "old wilderness"? Is the narrator referring to the original clearing of the forest where the colony now sits? The next aside, about Anne Hutchinson, contributes heavily to the passages satirical tone. To suggest that the rosebush magically sprouted from under the feet of Anne Hutchinson is to either put a stake in, or sarcastically undermine, the feminist movement of the 1800s. Which is it? I think for Hawthorne, it has to be both.
The novel is ultimately feminist, and critical of the ways in which feminist arguments digress due to sentiment and nostalgia. If you want to argue that Anne Hutchinson is a feminist icon, a legend concerning a rose bush springing up under her feet as she marched to prison to await trial for her feminist heresy would only serve to genderize a rosebush. It's the act of using gender as a signifier that Hawthorne is ridiculing. I don't think the narrator is as neutral as he claims to be. The narrator says that "we shall not take upon us to determine," but giving the comparison between the story about a strong thriving rosebush surviving the "rape" of the wilderness by the colonists, and a fable concerning its association with Anne Hutchinson, allows the reader to focus on the significance of a rosebush in the first place. I usually like to go on about the rose as the old chivalric symbol of feminine purity, and gnostic symbolism, which uses the rose to symbolize the divine feminine. I don't think this information is lost on Hawthorne. I do think that when the narrator "plucks" a rose for us, it is not, as it says, to "serve to symbolize some sweet moral blossom." I think it is handed to us so that we can examine what we think the rose, and by extension, gender, means.
I used to think that the opening chapter of The Scarlet Letter was to orient the reader using a man v. nature construction. I saw the prison and the cemetery as emblematic of societies' struggle to control the natural instincts of humans, which stretch even to how they order their burial -- death and decay being the last triumph of the forces of the universe. Yet, the last paragraph of the chapter "The Prison Door" causes me to wonder just how much Hawthorne is playing with our sentiments concerning signifiers. It reads
The rose bush, by strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it,--or whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Anne Hutchinson, as she entered the prison-door,--we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about the issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.
First, I am struck by Hawthorne's narrator's tone. I am almost convinced that this entire paragraph is meant to be satirical. The narrator comments that the appearance of the rosebush "has been kept alive in history." What is this "history"? Is it the historical texts of the 1600s that Hawthorne was so fond of pouring over? Is it the oral tradition, the folkloric tradition, the mythological rendition? Or does the narrator suggest that it still exists, is still alive? And what of this "old wilderness"? Is the narrator referring to the original clearing of the forest where the colony now sits? The next aside, about Anne Hutchinson, contributes heavily to the passages satirical tone. To suggest that the rosebush magically sprouted from under the feet of Anne Hutchinson is to either put a stake in, or sarcastically undermine, the feminist movement of the 1800s. Which is it? I think for Hawthorne, it has to be both.
The novel is ultimately feminist, and critical of the ways in which feminist arguments digress due to sentiment and nostalgia. If you want to argue that Anne Hutchinson is a feminist icon, a legend concerning a rose bush springing up under her feet as she marched to prison to await trial for her feminist heresy would only serve to genderize a rosebush. It's the act of using gender as a signifier that Hawthorne is ridiculing. I don't think the narrator is as neutral as he claims to be. The narrator says that "we shall not take upon us to determine," but giving the comparison between the story about a strong thriving rosebush surviving the "rape" of the wilderness by the colonists, and a fable concerning its association with Anne Hutchinson, allows the reader to focus on the significance of a rosebush in the first place. I usually like to go on about the rose as the old chivalric symbol of feminine purity, and gnostic symbolism, which uses the rose to symbolize the divine feminine. I don't think this information is lost on Hawthorne. I do think that when the narrator "plucks" a rose for us, it is not, as it says, to "serve to symbolize some sweet moral blossom." I think it is handed to us so that we can examine what we think the rose, and by extension, gender, means.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Individual and Collective Fate
If you haven't seen The Reader, I highly suggest that you do. It is a movie that I think will go down as one of the best movies, at least, of this decade. Upon the second viewing, I agreed with my friend Joe that the actor David Kross gives one of the best performances I've seen that deal with the themes of the film. Stephen Daldry is amazing. I can't recommend it enough, and recommend that you really contemplate the reasons why Michael is so deeply affected by Hanna's treatment. It's my choice for best film.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Cheerio
I know that for the last couple of years I have been using this blog to, well, complain. I've often come here to complain about things that no one in their right mind would give an ear to. I've also used this forum to discuss literature, film, and art, but, let's face it, not as often as I've come here to rant and moan. So to make it up to you, and me, dear reader, I've planned to make the next few posts about some of the better experiences I've had in the past couple of months, and as soon as I have access to the hard drive with some pictures, some images to go along with.
I promise I'm not always an ungrateful wretch. In fact, just today I thought that my life has been a boon of blessings, and I can't imagine that I've ever done anything to deserve it.
Just on an evil sidenote, today in American Gothic we discussed the fabulous Hawthorne story "Roger Malvin's Burial," and guess what, I commented, "You know, it seems like Malvin has no problem with Bourne leaving him, but he doesn't respect that Bourne wants to stay -- Bourne should have stuck with his gut feeling that he should stay." And the instructor kind of blew me off, then went on to discuss that Bourne is actually suffering from a horrible guilt that Freud says results from committing an act that everyone tells you is okay, but that you have a personal issue with. Am I the only one that sees that I was pretty much alluding to this?
Happy post next time, I promise.
I promise I'm not always an ungrateful wretch. In fact, just today I thought that my life has been a boon of blessings, and I can't imagine that I've ever done anything to deserve it.
Just on an evil sidenote, today in American Gothic we discussed the fabulous Hawthorne story "Roger Malvin's Burial," and guess what, I commented, "You know, it seems like Malvin has no problem with Bourne leaving him, but he doesn't respect that Bourne wants to stay -- Bourne should have stuck with his gut feeling that he should stay." And the instructor kind of blew me off, then went on to discuss that Bourne is actually suffering from a horrible guilt that Freud says results from committing an act that everyone tells you is okay, but that you have a personal issue with. Am I the only one that sees that I was pretty much alluding to this?
Happy post next time, I promise.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
New Template
Time for a change. I also thought I would share this poem I came across in one of my notebooks. I don't know when I wrote it, but it's nestled between note on Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Mother":
I would not really
want to
rip your clothes from
your work-weary body
and climb aboard
like so many
disillusioned tourists
I would want to take
your tireless hands
and hold them to my lips
I would want to lay you down
on a divan with seven veils
I would want to
explore the map of your face
and understand the reasons
for obscurities
I would want to
feel your pulse
like the ancient auyervedics
procure the herbal physic
to ease the injury
that is why
it cannot be
you would end up
needing me
I would not really
want to
rip your clothes from
your work-weary body
and climb aboard
like so many
disillusioned tourists
I would want to take
your tireless hands
and hold them to my lips
I would want to lay you down
on a divan with seven veils
I would want to
explore the map of your face
and understand the reasons
for obscurities
I would want to
feel your pulse
like the ancient auyervedics
procure the herbal physic
to ease the injury
that is why
it cannot be
you would end up
needing me
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Audiences
I went to see Revolutionary Road last week. I found the movie fascinating, everything I thought it would be, and more. I want to see it again, simply for its complexity and beauty, but I also want to see it again at the theater, for the audience I watched it with was so appalling that I want to rid myself of their memory. Talking, rustling popcorn and candy, this audience wouldn't quit making noise for the entirety of this dialogue-focused film. To make matters worse, they laughed at the most inappropriate moments. When John, the supposedly mentally ill neighbor, fantastically played by Michael Shannon, is consistently violent and vengeful towards his mother, this audience laughs. When April Wheeler tells her husband that if he comes any closer to her she will scream, and then does scream, the audience laughs. When John says one of the most satisfying lines in the film, regarding his gratitude that he's not April's unborn child, the audience expresses it's horror at this statement, recoiling with astonishment that anyone could be so cruel.
I felt like I was watching this film with an audience of Helen Givings (John's mother), individuals who cannot bring themselves to deviate from social norms (violence toward mother good, violence toward fetus bad). I felt connected to my friend Joe, who has been irritated by the viewing population for some time now.
My annoyance doesn't stop there. I have oft complained about my classmates at Dominguez Hills, and an incident yesterday in my Studies in Composition class rekindled some of my old grievances.
This class is basically taught from the point of view of the high school instructor, offering ways to look at teaching secondary English. The class is mostly English majors, with perhaps a few liberal studies/philosophy majors thrown in. Right know we are studying the notion of using visual art, such as works of art on postcards, to teach composition. We are engaging in the process ourselves, as well as trying to understand why this approach may work well in the classroom, engaging students to think at deeper analytical levels, as well as inspire them to learn English syntax,as well as literary terms and concepts. Doing group work yesterday, we were asked to pull a couple of quotes from the assigned reading, and relate them to our personal experience. I offered one, which had to do with "seeing" as an activity requiring creative effort, and my group-mate offered a quote in which the author of the article related that the group of students she was teaching were adolescents who were already living with what we conceive as adult issues, like drug addiction and pregnancy, and that this activity seems to open them up to express themselves through writing. Determined to learn from group work, and not simply obey, I asked her what she thought the visual aspect of the exercised contributed to the students participation. She got incredibly defensive, and said that it makes them think deeper. I again asked her what it was about visual stimulation that appeals to students more than language alone, because it seems like you could assign a topic, like "write about an issue you are dealing with at home," and not get the same results. I knew there were a myriad ways to answer this question, and I was genuinely interested in her thoughts on the matter. Yet, somehow she didn't understand what I was saying, because she told me, point blank, "I disagree with you completely." At this point the instructor interrupted us and asked the class to share. Her hand went up immediately, and she proceeded to claim, "Well, we are having an argument in my group, because I liked this quote [she then went on to read the quote about the issues students are facing and how this exercise opened them up, which, incidentally, is in the second introductory paragraph of the eight-page article], because I want to teach inner-city kids and I think this project would help them, but one person in my group disagrees with this." I mutter that I didn't disagree with it, but really to no avail. Our instructor, then asked if we found anything else, and I went on to discuss the quote about seeing being a creative effort, and how my experience forced me to experience the art I examined, and search my experience for ideas that I had created as a reaction to it.
There were other, more political aspects of this conversation that I have left out, but it is very clear to me that asking questions, attempting to make people think, can be understood as an attack, or a disagreement. Maybe that is why the audience during Revolutionary Road tried so hard to make light of the more uncomfortable aspects of the film -- people often try hard to not have to think. One of the greatest moments in that film was when April begs Frank to leave her alone, so that she can think, she needs to think! I'd like to see it again soon, so that I can think, too.
As far as schoolmates go, if I can just stifle my ego and my sense of justice for a few moments, maybe I can make some real good out of the situation. For instance, if I really work on being clear, and perhaps less intimidating, I can actually accomplish my objective, which is to learn from other people's ideas. I still think rustling wrapper and chomping on popcorn is rude.
I felt like I was watching this film with an audience of Helen Givings (John's mother), individuals who cannot bring themselves to deviate from social norms (violence toward mother good, violence toward fetus bad). I felt connected to my friend Joe, who has been irritated by the viewing population for some time now.
My annoyance doesn't stop there. I have oft complained about my classmates at Dominguez Hills, and an incident yesterday in my Studies in Composition class rekindled some of my old grievances.
This class is basically taught from the point of view of the high school instructor, offering ways to look at teaching secondary English. The class is mostly English majors, with perhaps a few liberal studies/philosophy majors thrown in. Right know we are studying the notion of using visual art, such as works of art on postcards, to teach composition. We are engaging in the process ourselves, as well as trying to understand why this approach may work well in the classroom, engaging students to think at deeper analytical levels, as well as inspire them to learn English syntax,as well as literary terms and concepts. Doing group work yesterday, we were asked to pull a couple of quotes from the assigned reading, and relate them to our personal experience. I offered one, which had to do with "seeing" as an activity requiring creative effort, and my group-mate offered a quote in which the author of the article related that the group of students she was teaching were adolescents who were already living with what we conceive as adult issues, like drug addiction and pregnancy, and that this activity seems to open them up to express themselves through writing. Determined to learn from group work, and not simply obey, I asked her what she thought the visual aspect of the exercised contributed to the students participation. She got incredibly defensive, and said that it makes them think deeper. I again asked her what it was about visual stimulation that appeals to students more than language alone, because it seems like you could assign a topic, like "write about an issue you are dealing with at home," and not get the same results. I knew there were a myriad ways to answer this question, and I was genuinely interested in her thoughts on the matter. Yet, somehow she didn't understand what I was saying, because she told me, point blank, "I disagree with you completely." At this point the instructor interrupted us and asked the class to share. Her hand went up immediately, and she proceeded to claim, "Well, we are having an argument in my group, because I liked this quote [she then went on to read the quote about the issues students are facing and how this exercise opened them up, which, incidentally, is in the second introductory paragraph of the eight-page article], because I want to teach inner-city kids and I think this project would help them, but one person in my group disagrees with this." I mutter that I didn't disagree with it, but really to no avail. Our instructor, then asked if we found anything else, and I went on to discuss the quote about seeing being a creative effort, and how my experience forced me to experience the art I examined, and search my experience for ideas that I had created as a reaction to it.
There were other, more political aspects of this conversation that I have left out, but it is very clear to me that asking questions, attempting to make people think, can be understood as an attack, or a disagreement. Maybe that is why the audience during Revolutionary Road tried so hard to make light of the more uncomfortable aspects of the film -- people often try hard to not have to think. One of the greatest moments in that film was when April begs Frank to leave her alone, so that she can think, she needs to think! I'd like to see it again soon, so that I can think, too.
As far as schoolmates go, if I can just stifle my ego and my sense of justice for a few moments, maybe I can make some real good out of the situation. For instance, if I really work on being clear, and perhaps less intimidating, I can actually accomplish my objective, which is to learn from other people's ideas. I still think rustling wrapper and chomping on popcorn is rude.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
My Final Weeks as an Undergarduate (With Cute Instructors!)
At this point I've become acquainted with all the professors and classes that I am going to be interacting with this semester, and I'm rather pleased with what and who I'll be working with. I am taking two early American Literature classes with the same professor, one is just the standard survey course, and the other is narrowed down to 19th century American gothic literature, which will be dealing with many of the authors that I love and want to study in graduate school. The professor is Jon Hauss, who has a fabulous reputation as one of Dominguez Hills finest literature professors, and after just one day with him, I can already see why. He's insanely personable, gracious, and smart as all get out, without any off putting pretentiousness. A friend of mine at school confessed had confessed to me a couple semesters ago that she had a massive academic crush on him, and I'm amused to be discovering the aspects of his ability that warrant so much affection for him from his students. On a side note, while I was studying in the campus bar (without a drink, by the way; darn you, phase one of the South Beach Diet!), Dr. Hauss came in with another of my new professors, Dr. Sherman (more on him later), and my old dreaded American Lit professor, Giannotti. It was priceless, Dr. Giannotti wouldn't stop yammering away for forty-five minutes while the other professors patiently waited to get a word or two in. Then, during the opening comments of my class with Dr. Hauss, later that evening, he mentioned something about evil academics who get tenure and then never do anything worthwhile for the remainder of their career, but simply orchestrate their lives as if they are doing some great committee work that means anything. His teeth were wine-stained, and he was hilarious. He's also a Melville expert. I sent him my Moby-Dick paper, and I'm eager to hear what he thinks about it.
I'm taking three other classes besides the two already mentioned. One is a Medieval Lit survey with Dr. Best, who I have already described on this blog as a sweet, quirky instructor who makes things very easy. I think this class will be much less intimidating with Dr. Best at the helm; she tends to be an excellent sport. I really appreciate her patience and her dedication, which are qualities I could work on, you know. Another class I'm taking is Studies in Composition in Literature and Reading, which turns out to be a class about teaching English (I know I could have looked at the course description in the catalog, but who does that?) to secondary students. I can only describe the class as an easy A, kind of a relief what with my schedule, and while the instructor is kind of dry and geeky (in sort of a Miguel Powers kind of way), he is very cute. It doesn't hurt.
Finally, there is my senior seminar. Dr. Hernandez, DH's primary Latino/Hispanic/Chicano Studies and Literature professor, is teaching the course, which has as its primary focus transnational American literature. It seems that we will be looking at American literature as an immigrant narrative, very interesting. We read the prologue to The New Americans, by Ruben Martinez, which is a great introduction to what we will be covering in this course. Dr. Hernandez seems to have it together, and he isn't terrible to look at, either.
What with all of my instructors under the age of fifty this semester, I feel like I have stumbled upon some fresh ideas, enthusiasm, passion, and good looks. I'm eerily contented with my lot this semester. I haven't often felt satisfied at DH, but this semester shows real promise.
I'm taking three other classes besides the two already mentioned. One is a Medieval Lit survey with Dr. Best, who I have already described on this blog as a sweet, quirky instructor who makes things very easy. I think this class will be much less intimidating with Dr. Best at the helm; she tends to be an excellent sport. I really appreciate her patience and her dedication, which are qualities I could work on, you know. Another class I'm taking is Studies in Composition in Literature and Reading, which turns out to be a class about teaching English (I know I could have looked at the course description in the catalog, but who does that?) to secondary students. I can only describe the class as an easy A, kind of a relief what with my schedule, and while the instructor is kind of dry and geeky (in sort of a Miguel Powers kind of way), he is very cute. It doesn't hurt.
Finally, there is my senior seminar. Dr. Hernandez, DH's primary Latino/Hispanic/Chicano Studies and Literature professor, is teaching the course, which has as its primary focus transnational American literature. It seems that we will be looking at American literature as an immigrant narrative, very interesting. We read the prologue to The New Americans, by Ruben Martinez, which is a great introduction to what we will be covering in this course. Dr. Hernandez seems to have it together, and he isn't terrible to look at, either.
What with all of my instructors under the age of fifty this semester, I feel like I have stumbled upon some fresh ideas, enthusiasm, passion, and good looks. I'm eerily contented with my lot this semester. I haven't often felt satisfied at DH, but this semester shows real promise.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Wuthering Heights Chapters 11-Fin: Look at MY Baby!
As the clock ticks off the final sixteen hours until I have to sit in a classroom and most likely listen to an already weary professor read the syllabus (to English majors!) I couldn't help but notice that I never finished discussing Wuthering Heights. I don't think I will blather more about it here. Instead, I think I will start drafting a paper. It will have something to do with possession, and how the word "mine" is used in the novel. Included, of course, are thoughts about reproduction, to add to my "Look at the Baby" thesis.
I thought I would work on Moby Dick this semester, but I never got over Wuthering Heights. Reading this novel as a grown up, I find it fascinating that it ever got published. It's so odd. Bronte turns the Bildungsroman into a never ending saga. I imagine this novel and Catcher in the Rye to be at opposite ends of the coming-of-age spectrum. I have a lot of questions about this novel. Why don't we ever get to hear Heathcliff or Cathy I's side of the story? Why is Lockwood even important? No one seems to have sex in this novel, yet babies everywhere! This novel trudges through religion, sex, classism, property, racism, sexism, incest, horror, and never once does it really tell you anything. It's quite possibly the most obsessive novel I've ever read. We're so insanely focused on these half-dozen people that it's like no one else exists. Yet, everyone just mopes around, except Heathcliff, who hits women and dogs and is always out doing something very important. It's very...emo.
Well, let's hope I get something together about it.
I thought I would work on Moby Dick this semester, but I never got over Wuthering Heights. Reading this novel as a grown up, I find it fascinating that it ever got published. It's so odd. Bronte turns the Bildungsroman into a never ending saga. I imagine this novel and Catcher in the Rye to be at opposite ends of the coming-of-age spectrum. I have a lot of questions about this novel. Why don't we ever get to hear Heathcliff or Cathy I's side of the story? Why is Lockwood even important? No one seems to have sex in this novel, yet babies everywhere! This novel trudges through religion, sex, classism, property, racism, sexism, incest, horror, and never once does it really tell you anything. It's quite possibly the most obsessive novel I've ever read. We're so insanely focused on these half-dozen people that it's like no one else exists. Yet, everyone just mopes around, except Heathcliff, who hits women and dogs and is always out doing something very important. It's very...emo.
Well, let's hope I get something together about it.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The Art of Seduction
I have, I don't know, a feeling about the south. I feel like there is a beating heart there that I owe some allegiance to. Not in a confederate-type way, but in a very quiet and demanding way, a way that I feel Tennessee Williams captures in his over-the-top characters, within their heart-stopping dialogue. I recently watched Baby Doll again, and I can't tell you how much this film impresses me.
Carroll Baker plays the hastily married off title role, still a virgin at nineteen, after a year of marriage to Archie Lee, who has made shady promises to shower his young bride in wealth, but has not delivered. Archie Lee's cotton gin is not an efficient machine, and Archie Lee doesn't seem cut out for managerial/owner positions, as his house and business is beset with poverty stricken shades of disrepair and wood rot. Yet, this man promised a rather influential man in town that we would lavish a royal existence on Baby Doll, who is caught between the life she was raised to have, and her current state of bankruptcy.
Everything changes when Archie Lee, distraught at the prospects of never consummating his marriage with Baby Doll, due to his financial failures, burns down the cotton gin of the prosperous Sicilian business man, Silva Vacarro, a "foreigner" who has beat out all the town's local cotton gin competition, including Archie Lee. After Archie Lee's wild night of arson, he ends up the only suspect, yet the good-ol'-boy aspect of the town's government won't allow Vacarro to accuse Archie Lee outright. He must set a trap for Archie Lee in which the suspect will hang himself.
Inexperienced Baby Doll is Vacarro's chance to gain a witness who will testify that Archie Lee wasn't home the night of the fire (as Archie Lee contests), but came home later smelling heavily of smoke. Baby Doll, who seems to despise her ne'er do well husband, needs some persuading to sign a statement fingering Archie Lee. This is where the seduction of Baby Doll begins, and the most enjoyable scenes of the movie take place. Vacarro is tireless as he leads naive Baby Doll through her southern hospitality traditions and manipulates her senses in order to put her in a vulnerable mental state. He seduces her with questions, baiting her with soft, silky chiding, arousing her curiosity, and her untapped sexual desire. Vacarro never appears desperate, like the constantly floundering Archie Lee, as he dances Baby into a corner, like a scared rabbit. Caroll Baker makes these scenes unforgettable; she is so beautiful, and so sexy -- she puts Lolita to shame. She is the real reason to see this movie, and her scenes with Eli Wallach are the most provocative performances I've seen from a 1950's film.
I think the messages are more socio-political than anything else. Poverty and slavery are presented as aspects of existence that lead to sexual repression and delaying of gratification. Baby Doll speaks often of her "five complete sets of furniture" which make her feel more of a lady. Baby Doll has the idea that when she has the accessories of the middle class around her things will fall into place for her and she can make the step from childhood into adulthood. She has a vague notion that her predicament has something to do with her fourth grade education, but Vacarro quickly convinces her that this is not the only way she can "grow up." He does this by seducing her, arousing her repressed sexuality with statements that affirm her worth and value as a southern woman. We watch as Baby Doll becomes a woman, through the acquisition of a man (who then becomes her possession, as seen by Vacarro's stint in the crib) who psychologically manipulates her in almost an animalistic way -- the way you would cajole and manipulate a frightened dog. Baby Doll learns to trust, but, tragically, Vacarro is not looking for a woman, he is merely looking for her signature on a piece of paper, which will probably make him owner of all of Archie Lee's property. The film leaves us with the possibility that Vacarro may return to claim Baby Doll as part of the package, but what with his ability to deceive, we are not certain that he will make good on the promises he's made to her and Aunt Rose. Yet, even Vacarro has to admit that since Baby Doll has made the transition from laying in her crib/bed to putting her love interest in the baby's bed, and that this shift has caused a change in her countenance. She now has poise, and she can control her voice and anger at Archie Lee. Perhaps this change has a leveling effect on her and Vacarro's relationship -- now she is able to say what it is she wants. She doesn't have to "stand at the chalk board...and cry...and cry..."
There is so much more to this film, but I will have to discuss it further some other time. As I look at the stack of novels I have to read this semester (thirteen at last count), I don't know if I will have time to watch films until June. I would like to see The Reader, and Revolutionary Road, and I might be able to this first light week of class. Also, I should be finding out in the next couple of weeks whether or not I made it into the Ph.D. program at USC. Maybe, in this year of hopes and dreams coming true, I'll get a little residual good fortune! We'll see.
Carroll Baker plays the hastily married off title role, still a virgin at nineteen, after a year of marriage to Archie Lee, who has made shady promises to shower his young bride in wealth, but has not delivered. Archie Lee's cotton gin is not an efficient machine, and Archie Lee doesn't seem cut out for managerial/owner positions, as his house and business is beset with poverty stricken shades of disrepair and wood rot. Yet, this man promised a rather influential man in town that we would lavish a royal existence on Baby Doll, who is caught between the life she was raised to have, and her current state of bankruptcy.
Everything changes when Archie Lee, distraught at the prospects of never consummating his marriage with Baby Doll, due to his financial failures, burns down the cotton gin of the prosperous Sicilian business man, Silva Vacarro, a "foreigner" who has beat out all the town's local cotton gin competition, including Archie Lee. After Archie Lee's wild night of arson, he ends up the only suspect, yet the good-ol'-boy aspect of the town's government won't allow Vacarro to accuse Archie Lee outright. He must set a trap for Archie Lee in which the suspect will hang himself.
Inexperienced Baby Doll is Vacarro's chance to gain a witness who will testify that Archie Lee wasn't home the night of the fire (as Archie Lee contests), but came home later smelling heavily of smoke. Baby Doll, who seems to despise her ne'er do well husband, needs some persuading to sign a statement fingering Archie Lee. This is where the seduction of Baby Doll begins, and the most enjoyable scenes of the movie take place. Vacarro is tireless as he leads naive Baby Doll through her southern hospitality traditions and manipulates her senses in order to put her in a vulnerable mental state. He seduces her with questions, baiting her with soft, silky chiding, arousing her curiosity, and her untapped sexual desire. Vacarro never appears desperate, like the constantly floundering Archie Lee, as he dances Baby into a corner, like a scared rabbit. Caroll Baker makes these scenes unforgettable; she is so beautiful, and so sexy -- she puts Lolita to shame. She is the real reason to see this movie, and her scenes with Eli Wallach are the most provocative performances I've seen from a 1950's film.
I think the messages are more socio-political than anything else. Poverty and slavery are presented as aspects of existence that lead to sexual repression and delaying of gratification. Baby Doll speaks often of her "five complete sets of furniture" which make her feel more of a lady. Baby Doll has the idea that when she has the accessories of the middle class around her things will fall into place for her and she can make the step from childhood into adulthood. She has a vague notion that her predicament has something to do with her fourth grade education, but Vacarro quickly convinces her that this is not the only way she can "grow up." He does this by seducing her, arousing her repressed sexuality with statements that affirm her worth and value as a southern woman. We watch as Baby Doll becomes a woman, through the acquisition of a man (who then becomes her possession, as seen by Vacarro's stint in the crib) who psychologically manipulates her in almost an animalistic way -- the way you would cajole and manipulate a frightened dog. Baby Doll learns to trust, but, tragically, Vacarro is not looking for a woman, he is merely looking for her signature on a piece of paper, which will probably make him owner of all of Archie Lee's property. The film leaves us with the possibility that Vacarro may return to claim Baby Doll as part of the package, but what with his ability to deceive, we are not certain that he will make good on the promises he's made to her and Aunt Rose. Yet, even Vacarro has to admit that since Baby Doll has made the transition from laying in her crib/bed to putting her love interest in the baby's bed, and that this shift has caused a change in her countenance. She now has poise, and she can control her voice and anger at Archie Lee. Perhaps this change has a leveling effect on her and Vacarro's relationship -- now she is able to say what it is she wants. She doesn't have to "stand at the chalk board...and cry...and cry..."
There is so much more to this film, but I will have to discuss it further some other time. As I look at the stack of novels I have to read this semester (thirteen at last count), I don't know if I will have time to watch films until June. I would like to see The Reader, and Revolutionary Road, and I might be able to this first light week of class. Also, I should be finding out in the next couple of weeks whether or not I made it into the Ph.D. program at USC. Maybe, in this year of hopes and dreams coming true, I'll get a little residual good fortune! We'll see.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Easily Disturbed
I just viewed The Dark Knight. I attempted to see it in theaters, in IMAX, actually, but the movie shut off about thirty minutes into it due to a power surge that shut down the projector. I know this isn't a popular response, but my experience of the film was dreadful. I thought the performances by Bale, Ledger, Oldman (did I ever tell you about the time Todd met Gary Oldman?), and Eckhart were really good, but I thought the movie was simply too hopeless. I thought it ended badly, and wondered if maybe they redid the ending so that we wouldn't have to see Ledger's character die.
There were some things that the movie got right, especially about the Joker. He was horrifying, yet all you wanted was for him to give up and be the sort of anti-hero that doesn't really like to cut people to death, so that he could be more entertaining and less frightening. Yet, for the entire film Batman is trying to give up being Batman. I think the film tried way to hard to push the whole there is no good without evil concept, constantly spelling it out for us instead of letting us see it for ourselves. I thought there were some beautiful scenes, like when Batman is riding the motorcycle and the cape is flowing behind him, or even when the Joker visits Dent in the hospital and is in the nurse uniform -- there is something really great about the color and the framing of those shots that made the movie very provocative. I thought the film was dreadful because I was filled with dread watching it. I am getting to be very sensitive to violence on screen, and there is just something about the city scenes in this film that felt way too close to home. I experience films, and some novels, very viscerally, and I may have to just quit seeing action-type films altogether.
From a slightly more critical perspective, I don't think this film should win Best Picture. I saw that Slumdog Millionaire won the Golden Globe for best picture, and I hope it does just as well with the Academy. I can't wait to see Revolutionary Road.
There were some things that the movie got right, especially about the Joker. He was horrifying, yet all you wanted was for him to give up and be the sort of anti-hero that doesn't really like to cut people to death, so that he could be more entertaining and less frightening. Yet, for the entire film Batman is trying to give up being Batman. I think the film tried way to hard to push the whole there is no good without evil concept, constantly spelling it out for us instead of letting us see it for ourselves. I thought there were some beautiful scenes, like when Batman is riding the motorcycle and the cape is flowing behind him, or even when the Joker visits Dent in the hospital and is in the nurse uniform -- there is something really great about the color and the framing of those shots that made the movie very provocative. I thought the film was dreadful because I was filled with dread watching it. I am getting to be very sensitive to violence on screen, and there is just something about the city scenes in this film that felt way too close to home. I experience films, and some novels, very viscerally, and I may have to just quit seeing action-type films altogether.
From a slightly more critical perspective, I don't think this film should win Best Picture. I saw that Slumdog Millionaire won the Golden Globe for best picture, and I hope it does just as well with the Academy. I can't wait to see Revolutionary Road.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Wuthering Heights Chapters 3-11
I know eight chapters seems like I'm going a little fast, but everything was going along rather blandly, until I got to chapter 11, when things became very complicated and interesting. First of all, there are several narrators in this novel. There is Lockwood, the tenant at the Grange, Nelly, the Earnshaw's nanny/housekeeper/soulkeeper, and Catherine I, who speaks from her notebooks (there may be more, I'm not sure yet). They tell the tale in an out of order fashion -- I believe only Nelly tells the story chronologically. Before Nelly starts telling the family history to Lockwood, we hear Catherine tell a version of the story from her journal, in chapter three. This is a very curious chapter. We have heard what Joseph, the groundskeeper, sounds like from his dealings with Lockwood. His charater is written in a sort of English country vernacular, which never changes, whether Lockwood is hearing him speak in the moment, or Cathy is writing in a journal, or Nelly is relating an account of him to Lockwood; Joseph is always written in the same nearly indecipherable vernacular, full of outrageously old (maybe olde) fashioned words and pronunciations that I can scarcely make out. It seems a little strange to me that Bronte always chose to represent Joseph using this vernacular, no matter who is speaking. I mean, would ten year-old Cathy really record Joseph's language in the vernacular form? Nelly, although also a servant, is not recorded in this way, so are we to assume that she doesn't sound abnormal? Heathcliff couldn't speak English before he came to Wuthering Heights and his language doesn't differ from the other normalized characters who do not speak in a dialect. Yet, he and Cathy do speak in a sort of argot, don't they? We never really get to hear their private conversations, and they are always being interrupted. Also, did you notice that quite early, we think of the Earnshaws and Lintons as ORPHANS? I'm getting ahead of myself.
Much like in Moby-Dick we come upon a chapel and sermon scene. Although Bronte's is in a dream sequence, and the experience of Lockwood in Jabes Branderham's congregation is much more personal, and dangerous. There are some ideas in this dream-sermon that I don't really understand, but whether that is because I don't have a critical edition which would tell me if I'm simply not recognizing Anglican jargon, or if in fact this is deliberately confusing dream talk, I'm not sure. After listening an excruciatingly long time to a seemingly endless sermon, Lockwood says he "was moved to rise and denounce Jabes Branderham as the sinner of the sin that no Christian need pardon." Now what in the world is this referring to? An unpardonable sin? Or a sin that simply doesn't warrant pardon? I don't clearly understand. Next the chapter describes Lockwood as telling the reverend that the "sin" he has committed is carrying on too long -- but the catch is that he tells his fellow listeners, "have at him! Drag him down and crush him to atoms, that the place which knows him may know him no more!" I think Lockwood is trying to say that he doesn't have to forgive the Reverend his overlong sermon -- they call it the "first of the seventy-first" which I'm taking to be a reference to the limits of forgiveness -- the first of the seventy first is the final straw upon which afterward it is righteous to carry out retribution against another. It is as if Lockwood, who is kind of a smart aleck, gets exasperated and then gives this clever good-day to the reverend, who then eerily replies that "Thou art the Man!" (who has burned through his chances for forgiveness, and is now up for judgement), and sets the whole assembly on him, saying that "all His saints" have the honour of executing judgement on those who's chances for salvation have run out. Yet I'm left wondering, what is the crime? I think that is a question that the novel consistently asks -- what are these crimes that we are so guilty of that our inmost moral fiber is compromised and we end up deserving of annihilation?
I interpret Father Mapple's sermon to be a sort of warning against trying to live a life on the run, which even Father Mapple has to realize he is doing, in his impregnable pulpit. All of the characters in Wuthering Heights seem to exist on the premise that another person is their undoing. They are on the run from some judgement of their predicament -- Cathy with her two husbands, Heathcliff with his thunderbolts of retribution, Hindely plagued by the loss of his father's favor, Linton, who cannot command respect or enact the violence that would supposedly make him the king of Catherine's heart, and Nelly, who seems to feel that she is a part of everyone's sufferings, and somehow must struggle to control it all.
As the tragic romance develops over the next few chapters, some interesting ideas surfaced about what I've heretofore mentioned as the gaze, especially the returned gaze and feminity. Maybe it was Sedgewick that had a triangle theory? Anyway, as chapter ten winds down, I observed a rather startling line:
Nelly, it seems, sees all, or wants to see all, judge all, control all. She is this unwanted, undesirable, awkward thing. She is not permitted to be one of the children, who desires and is respected and looks out for herself. What does she desire? Who does she gaze at? The answer, according to chapter 11 seems to be Hindley. She actually admits her "angelic" moments of conscience are her own repressed desires finding a suitable outlet, appropriate for one who is not allowed to desire:
I just about went berserk after reading this! The summer sun shines on a sign that leads her to Hindley, who she regards as her master. She bends down to examine a hole in the stone where she and Hindley used to store things like snail shells and pebbles and perishable things, and then sees her master's son, who she claims as "my Hareton." Now, Hareton's birth mother is dead, and Nelly has been the child's nurse and nanny. But upon reading this passage it appears that Nelly imagines herself a consumater (legitimizing her and Hindley's relationship the same way Heathcliff and Cathy do, outside of the limits of Wuthering Heights and the Grange, in a liminal area like the moor; this spot -- the very line between all known worlds -- is even more provacative), a womb (the hole in the rock), and fertilization (images of nature and hard vs. soft/wet things, chambers, growth, engorgement, slime), and viola!, Nelly sees a child -- Hareton (and claims him as her own). This child, SO much like Pearl from The Scarlet Letter, does not recognize her or the kind of authority that she must think she represents, and he HURLS A ROCK AT HER. His baby features were "distorted...into a shocking expression of malignity." Everything is backwards here: the (presumably) virgin nurse goes through the figurative stages of fertilization and childbirth -- but the baby's expression is not childlike, and it's only real protector is Heathcliff, who is not exactly the mother-type. Nelly get's to remain virginal, and her sexual desire remains unsatisfied, hence by the end of the chapter she has meddled in matters that do not concern her; she is a busybody precisely because she never gets busy.
I have other ideas about this chapter that would be better served with a little more gender theory. I think Heathcliff represents a lot of physical release - he is rather violent. Nelly's physicality is seen in her housework, and she is never to imagine that she is of the same class as the Earnshaws, Lintons, or Heathcliff. She is a servant, and presumably celibate. But what a repressed sexuality! She is passionately loyal to her masters, and even rather in love with Cathy. The possibility that she can express that passion sexually is severely limited, and that energy tends to send her meddling in everyone's affairs. She describes her involvement in the drama as "put[ting] in my tongue," "I commenced a soothing speech," "it urged me to resolve further on mounting vigilant guard," "'Judas! Traitor!' I ejaculated," and when she betrays Cathy's trust to Linton, she relates how livid Cathy looks, and then says, "I made up my mind for broken bones, at least; but she only glared about her for an instant."
She expects a physical altercation -- I almost want to say that this whole chapter is about Nelly's sexual repression, and the ways in which she finds gratification through the violent acts of others (the whole divine retribution thing applies here). Yet, I cannot get over the imagery of the hole in the rock and the baby. It's just smacks of Melville and Hawthorne all over.
Much like in Moby-Dick we come upon a chapel and sermon scene. Although Bronte's is in a dream sequence, and the experience of Lockwood in Jabes Branderham's congregation is much more personal, and dangerous. There are some ideas in this dream-sermon that I don't really understand, but whether that is because I don't have a critical edition which would tell me if I'm simply not recognizing Anglican jargon, or if in fact this is deliberately confusing dream talk, I'm not sure. After listening an excruciatingly long time to a seemingly endless sermon, Lockwood says he "was moved to rise and denounce Jabes Branderham as the sinner of the sin that no Christian need pardon." Now what in the world is this referring to? An unpardonable sin? Or a sin that simply doesn't warrant pardon? I don't clearly understand. Next the chapter describes Lockwood as telling the reverend that the "sin" he has committed is carrying on too long -- but the catch is that he tells his fellow listeners, "have at him! Drag him down and crush him to atoms, that the place which knows him may know him no more!" I think Lockwood is trying to say that he doesn't have to forgive the Reverend his overlong sermon -- they call it the "first of the seventy-first" which I'm taking to be a reference to the limits of forgiveness -- the first of the seventy first is the final straw upon which afterward it is righteous to carry out retribution against another. It is as if Lockwood, who is kind of a smart aleck, gets exasperated and then gives this clever good-day to the reverend, who then eerily replies that "Thou art the Man!" (who has burned through his chances for forgiveness, and is now up for judgement), and sets the whole assembly on him, saying that "all His saints" have the honour of executing judgement on those who's chances for salvation have run out. Yet I'm left wondering, what is the crime? I think that is a question that the novel consistently asks -- what are these crimes that we are so guilty of that our inmost moral fiber is compromised and we end up deserving of annihilation?
I interpret Father Mapple's sermon to be a sort of warning against trying to live a life on the run, which even Father Mapple has to realize he is doing, in his impregnable pulpit. All of the characters in Wuthering Heights seem to exist on the premise that another person is their undoing. They are on the run from some judgement of their predicament -- Cathy with her two husbands, Heathcliff with his thunderbolts of retribution, Hindely plagued by the loss of his father's favor, Linton, who cannot command respect or enact the violence that would supposedly make him the king of Catherine's heart, and Nelly, who seems to feel that she is a part of everyone's sufferings, and somehow must struggle to control it all.
As the tragic romance develops over the next few chapters, some interesting ideas surfaced about what I've heretofore mentioned as the gaze, especially the returned gaze and feminity. Maybe it was Sedgewick that had a triangle theory? Anyway, as chapter ten winds down, I observed a rather startling line:
I determined to watch his movements.
Nelly, it seems, sees all, or wants to see all, judge all, control all. She is this unwanted, undesirable, awkward thing. She is not permitted to be one of the children, who desires and is respected and looks out for herself. What does she desire? Who does she gaze at? The answer, according to chapter 11 seems to be Hindley. She actually admits her "angelic" moments of conscience are her own repressed desires finding a suitable outlet, appropriate for one who is not allowed to desire:
I've persuaded my conscience that it was a duty to warn him how people talked regarding his ways...I came to a stone...it serves as a guidepost to...the Heights. The sun shone yellow on it's grey head, reminding me of summer, and I cannot say why, but all at once, a gush of child's sensations flowed into my heart. Hindley and I held it a favorite spot twenty years before. I gazed long at the weather-worn block, and stooping down, perceived a hole near the bottom still full of snail shells and pebbles, which we were very fond of storing there..."Poor Hindley!" I exclaimed, involuntarily...this must be Hareton, my Hareton, not altered greatly since I left him, ten months since.
I just about went berserk after reading this! The summer sun shines on a sign that leads her to Hindley, who she regards as her master. She bends down to examine a hole in the stone where she and Hindley used to store things like snail shells and pebbles and perishable things, and then sees her master's son, who she claims as "my Hareton." Now, Hareton's birth mother is dead, and Nelly has been the child's nurse and nanny. But upon reading this passage it appears that Nelly imagines herself a consumater (legitimizing her and Hindley's relationship the same way Heathcliff and Cathy do, outside of the limits of Wuthering Heights and the Grange, in a liminal area like the moor; this spot -- the very line between all known worlds -- is even more provacative), a womb (the hole in the rock), and fertilization (images of nature and hard vs. soft/wet things, chambers, growth, engorgement, slime), and viola!, Nelly sees a child -- Hareton (and claims him as her own). This child, SO much like Pearl from The Scarlet Letter, does not recognize her or the kind of authority that she must think she represents, and he HURLS A ROCK AT HER. His baby features were "distorted...into a shocking expression of malignity." Everything is backwards here: the (presumably) virgin nurse goes through the figurative stages of fertilization and childbirth -- but the baby's expression is not childlike, and it's only real protector is Heathcliff, who is not exactly the mother-type. Nelly get's to remain virginal, and her sexual desire remains unsatisfied, hence by the end of the chapter she has meddled in matters that do not concern her; she is a busybody precisely because she never gets busy.
I have other ideas about this chapter that would be better served with a little more gender theory. I think Heathcliff represents a lot of physical release - he is rather violent. Nelly's physicality is seen in her housework, and she is never to imagine that she is of the same class as the Earnshaws, Lintons, or Heathcliff. She is a servant, and presumably celibate. But what a repressed sexuality! She is passionately loyal to her masters, and even rather in love with Cathy. The possibility that she can express that passion sexually is severely limited, and that energy tends to send her meddling in everyone's affairs. She describes her involvement in the drama as "put[ting] in my tongue," "I commenced a soothing speech," "it urged me to resolve further on mounting vigilant guard," "'Judas! Traitor!' I ejaculated," and when she betrays Cathy's trust to Linton, she relates how livid Cathy looks, and then says, "I made up my mind for broken bones, at least; but she only glared about her for an instant."
She expects a physical altercation -- I almost want to say that this whole chapter is about Nelly's sexual repression, and the ways in which she finds gratification through the violent acts of others (the whole divine retribution thing applies here). Yet, I cannot get over the imagery of the hole in the rock and the baby. It's just smacks of Melville and Hawthorne all over.
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