Time Lines and Words to Fill the Gaps Between Realities

I wrote in an earlier post that I was fascinated with the lines that seem to show up in As I Lay Dying, and after searching Hemingway's Snows of Kilimanjaro for...well, anything that isn't just there, you know, I realized that there are some interesting sentences about time in the story.

"He had seen the subtler change and he could remember how the people were at different times."

"There wasn't time, of course, although it seemed as though it telescoped so that you might put it all into one paragraph if you could get it right."

Trying to peer into this story I keep returning to idea of it being about writing. I know it's not very formal, but I imagine Hemingway writing this story as an antidote to writer's block. So much of it feels autobiographical (big shocker), and so much of feels like he was asking himself, what are you forgetting to write about? How can you write about these fragmented memories in way that makes them less aggrandizing and more, oh I don't know, manly and self-deprecating? I see the woman in the story as a metaphor for everything in life that an artist sells out to, or for. The mundane threads that keep people from being Hemingway's kind of man, or something. I was wondering if this woman was his kind of man. Probably not, because she actually admits to wondering why they appear to be having bad luck. He gives her the opportunity to man-up; he suggests that she could saw the leg off...but she is content to wait. The story of his life with her, this tragic and ironic accident in the African wilderness, is the impetus for getting all of these memories out -- memories of when he was in mostly homosocial environments. This is like a great lament for all the ways we betray ourselves by not using our talent. The narrator's talent is not his ability as a war correspondent, but as a writer, as a storyteller. Only he started weaving a new tale for himself, with a "rich bitch," (who I can't stop imagining is Kristen Scott Thomas; she simply has the most divine essence of 20s and 30s english literary feminine), and it's his slavish devotion to this "lazy" story that has taken him away from "making a living" with something other than "a pen and pencil." I think this could have well been one of Hemingway's greatest fears. Because I imagine this to be very much Hemingway's version of, "how to write a story." He actually teaches you how to write fiction by writing a story. You could read this and go off and write your own story, and there wouldn't be any mimicry involved, but it would be his thoughts in your head as you wondered how long you had to tell your own story, write your own code, and educate the world on how it has changed in your time.

I think he actually wrote book called In Our Time. I haven't read it. In fact, I've only read some short stories, A Moveable Feast, Farewell to Arms, and For Who The Bell Tolls, and The Sun Also Rises. Oh, and The Garden of Eden. I guess that's not too shabby. I don't know if there is really an argument for linear subtext in the story after all. Harry is actually sad that it will be the end of his story with her, and that it will be the end of her story with him. They're all stories. It's the most simple encouragement to write there ever was: Everything is a line -- time, life, reality. It's all a story with a point a and a point b. It's a long, painful sentence, with less words when there is happiness and so many more words when there is despair. Oh wait, maybe this story is more about parallel lines. Faulkner's lines are constantly at an intersect -- but Hemingway's lines move parallel, and do not meet -- maybe until death. What do they call that shen lines are almost, but not quite parallel? Inverted? That somewhere down the line they will meet? I wish I was better at math.

I suppose there is a really great Marxist reading in here too -- something about money and artists. But I'll leave that for another time. I'm too drawn to the idea of the broken in spirit playing much like a broken record, and that when our realities become stories our stories become the preferred reality.

Also, you know, for as much as Hemingway seems to despise Fitzgerald, he really writes about the same things. Snows is a lot about Fitzgerald, too. I know that is not very formalist of me, but I can't help wondering if Hemingway loved or hated the guy -- or maybe just couldn't make up his mind, or maybe just couldn't handle the competition very well -- or maybe I jsut project too much onto these writers and should stick to the text.

Hello, gorgeous...

I believe I saw someone say "Hello, gorgeous" in one of the numerous Oscars of the Past montage's a few weeks ago. Getting awards is a mixed bag, at least it is for me. I love to compete, and usually I am a pretty good sport. But. Sigh. What raises the stakes for me and makes me somewhat of a gloater, or a snob, or an all around grump is when I'm competing over something I feel particularly vulnerable about. I've heard that when you have a baby, you feel like your heart is walking around outside your body. That may be true for some, but what really makes me feel that emotional is when my writing takes a walk over to the hands of a critical eye. Now, writing papers for a class is one thing; being inspected for an award is quite another. A paper can reflect the success of the class, or reflect the success of a very easily identifiable collaberation; but, once that paper is returned, and revised, and then sent in to contend for an award, it is taken on the merit of its writer, usually alone, although the names of my instructor were on the first page of every essay I turned in to compete for the English Scholarship Award. I suppose it reveals me as very insecure when I got very riled up after finding out who one of my competitors was. You see, when I heard that said competitor was in the race, I got flustered. I mean I think this guy is an okay person, I guess. But his ideas are...the only word I can think of is withholding. So, this award is a little bittersweet, only because I wanted it so bad. Is that common? I mean, I feel ashamed of myself for bad mouthing my opponents, or trash talking, but only because I don't like what it reveals about me as a competitor -- that I'm very insecure, immature, and a bad sport.

But man, it sure feels good to win! I'm thrilled that I won, and I just am so grateful to have the opportunity to thank you all again for your support and influence. I can't say thank you enough, and I hope you all take individual pride in the fact that I wouldn't have believed in my ability had you not encouraged it. It's a great honor, and I'm thrilled, just thrilled. Come to the tea! I might even tear up.

Spring 2009

So far, that is my graduation date from Dominguez Hills. Brandon asked me the other day, am I loving it? And I couldn't answer. I'm not loving it, but I am loving getting it done, and reading texts and writing is of course a love of mine, so it's a tough question to answer directly. If there were even shadows of a Blythe, Joe, John, or Brandon...well, then I would be loving it. I have some good recommends for next semester, and of course even the instructors that you don't like, you learn from. I'm learning in American Lit to at least attempt to follow directions, and that drafting is a really good idea. I'm learning from my British Lit professor that one should never shrink back from students -- it's very unbecoming, and elicits a grotesque kind of frustrating sympathy. It gives me a feeling of distaste when it appears that someone is broken, or has been run over, and the response is only a flexible kind of pliant bendability; not a rigid, defensive armor, with weakness in the joints, perhaps; but this gumby-like teetering, this blowing in the breeze of discussion, and helpless referral to things apparently concrete, like a computer slide presenting the FACTS from 1762, the FACTS about Daniel DeFoe, facts which are themselves fluid and temporal, it makes one long for fire, for ice, for strength, for passion. She is the epitome of water, with her pooling blue eyes, and flat look -- I need a leader, for goodness' sake.

Or at least be funny, for crying out loud.

In order to graduate in 2009 I will have to take summer school, and four classes in the Fall and four classes (including my senior seminar) in the Spring. The Fall semester could end up being four survey classes. Sigh. It's all so good, but I should have gone to school at seventeen. I should have done this, and then got married...then had kids...it's all so backward. Ten years of marriage, but only two and half years of college. There's just not enough beer and tequila to manage it all.

Still Dying...This Time Of Myth Allusion

My American Lit professor viciously drug us across two weeks of mythological allusion within "The Wasteland." This deeply fascinated him, but after one day on this subject I was already burnt out -- especially since we spent most of out time focusing on the footnotes of the text. After two grueling weeks of the Fisher King, and the grail myth, and the Arthurian Knight myths...I was OVER IT. The information just seemed so stale.

So last Tues we started on As I Lay Dying, and guess what he wanted to talk about? Mythological allusion. But we started talking about stream of consciousness writing and that ate up a good 45 mins, and then he looks at the clock and realizes that he wants to talk about myth, and then gives me this opening -- "So is there anything else that you guys want to talk about with this book...." And I took the opportunity to bring up the presence of the omniscient narrator(s) in the novel and thank goodness he went off on that and then went into grotesque irony and humor. So that saved the day.

I can only hope I don't look too miserable in class.

As I Lay Dying

I'm so happy to be reading this novel again. This is my third time through the novel, and new things are popping up everywhere. I found in Anse's first passage where he regrets letting Darl get drafted into the military. It seems that this read around Anse is a lot more emotional, especially about his children. I'm noticing how everyone paints Anse as a bad man, but really, Addie is a little more lunatic than everyone thinks. It's not just because she gets off on whipping the kids, but it's her ideas about how the world around her should function; for her; by her. Addie is the Hebrew god of this novel, and her family runs around the land like temple robbers, devout at that. I am really into Anse's point of view this time, and what people say about him, contrasted with what Addie says about her life, and their marriage.

I'm also interested in all the lines in this novel. The image of the cross, looking like this -- + -- is everywhere, beginning with the first paragraphs, where Darl describes walking on the path (the y plane) and compares his and Jewel's height (the x axis). Jewel is taller than he, so sits higher on the plane; Darl is sub-par; his mind is beneath the surface. This could be read as Jewel having a higher sense of awareness, but I see the line, as drawn by Faulkner, the y line at least, as sanity, and the Darl will prove, by deviating from the line as much as possible that he's not sane. Cash follows the line with a gripping obsessive finality that seems devoid of emotion. Our first introduction to Cash's mind is a series of lines that follow one another, logically, and with intense purpose. Anse is overwhelmed by the thought of living next to a government line, a road; Addie insisted on it. Dewey Dell has a definite agenda, and by getting from point a to point b she feels it will be accomplished (by following that line to town). Vardaman is also somewhat deranged, but his association of the fish with his mother is based on principles of time, and that time flows in one direction. I don't know enough about theories of time to expound on this more, but it's there, like furniture in a dark room -- I bump into these ideas, but I can't tell what they are in the dark.

I hope this paper comes out clearer and shinier and A minusier than the last. Also, I just love swimming in Falkner's words. I want to go back to his house. Yeah, it's getting creepy.

Grumble

I got my Huckleberry Finn essay back and I got a B+. Pretty good, pretty good. According to his rubrick I suck at grammar, and that greatly affected my grade. Without the "D+" score for grammar I probably would have gotten an A-. All this is iced with the general boredom I experience during this guy's lectures. What I'm wondering is if he wants us to write about things like the reasons Huckleberry Finn is classified as regionalist, or something. That utterly bores me and feels like a bunch of baloney. I'm really grumpy because we've gone over "The Wasteland" for two weeks, all lecture proving that Eliot was trying to use myth and create myth and work with myth, and Joseph Campbell and the Fisher King...all fascinating, but apparently meaning that if I am going to go on my own with my own ideas I'm going to have to be as exhaustive. I mean this guy is serious about defining terms. I understand his concerns; he kept writing words like "clarify" and "explain" on my paper, so I get that I need to be more articulate...in a three page paper. I get it though, this is pressuring me to write the best essays I've ever written, and okay, that may take more than three hours. Sometimes I don't enjoy the jabs, you know? I have such a problem with pride, really. It's like -- why aren't you praising me? Why aren't you overlooking my lack of a highschool grammar education? Whine, whine. Well, I will...gulp...spend more time drafting. No getting by this one.

Back to Business: Moll Flanders: "Let Them Be Told"

Upon asking my overflowing-with-knowledge but apologetic-to-alarm Brit Lit (All my Brit Lit Instructors have been female, BTW) instructor if we were going to be writing about Moll Flanders, I discovered that no, no we probably weren't going to get an opportunity to write about the novel. I hope the poisonous dart of frustration didn't actually come out of my eyeball; I ran away too quickly to actually know whether it hit her or not.

I mean what is the point of having us BUY a novel that isn't in the anthology if we aren't going to write about it? And isn't the point of a survey class to cover several pieces within a given amount of time and then to have the scrutinize them on the own? At the 300 level? I feel like I'm being shoved back in the nest. Ugh...I feel so fragmented. First I'm on two campuses, which is not quite tearing me apart Jim Stark style, but does create some division in my mind, if only on a spacial level. Then I have a poetry class with a very sweet instructor, but there's nothing special going on there, hence I often forget about the class when preparing. I think I've already told most of you about the Lit Crit class from the bizzaro version of my life -- where the instructor is actually treating us like college juniors, only the entire class is cross eyed (myself included) after reading work that seems utterly ironic and impossible to penetrate; seriously, Derrida is somewhere looking at us laughing uncontrollably. I mean what kind of system doesn't require you to take ANY underclass literature courses to qualify for their literature program, and then approves an instructor that chooses to only give you theoretical texts to see what you make of them? Oooh, avant garde, yeah, hooray. Please, just one diagram. If he wold only give us one diagram. One definition. Seriously, I think he's afraid of the texts, and afraid to teach them. I looked at the class today, and I think I saw human cattle. The survey courses aren't nearly as vague -- but both of the instructors are overwhelming us with Old Historicism and New Historicism and History and Herstory and the PAST. These poor texts. We are waving at them from afar...and I seriously think our Brit Lit is a Anglo-Sympathizer. She is far too forgiving when she discusses Eurocentrism and Anglo-Power. She's very pretty, and she has these watery eyes that do remind of some Anglo faraway upon a time, but she is just...I don't know, silly about England. I just really can't fathom why she made us buy a text we aren't going to write about. I'm almost mad.

So I figured that since I'm not going to write about Moll Flanders I'm going to have to blog about it.

I think that there is strong suggestion in the text that language is the most powerful weapon a person of either gender can wield against another, and Moll's story is about a woman realizing that her worth is contingent on her ability to manipulate language and control others through artful conversation. I haven't read the whole novel yet, but I think that from the beginning her character only has an advantage when she can articulate her feelings clearly. I'm not sure if this theme is adequately developed all way through the novel -- we'll see.

And is it just me or is the time change evil?