Back to School

Since I really didn't want to invite anyone to my Fullerton Graduation Ceremony, due to the fact that I will graduate from DH next spring, I invited some close friends and family to the Humanities Tea, instead. To my surprise, quite a few are planning on coming! So that should be nice. It's nice to have a little posse every once in a while.

Blythe informed me that her colleagues thought my paper belonged in 102. (I'm sincerely hoping, since I took that class, that the writing was really good, and that it was only the argument that was 102-ish.) So, I'm very curious as to how my instructor will grade it. I have a feeling that he is the type that doesn't really care about students. Poor fragile thing. It's so wimpy not to care. But, as Todd says, "Babe, he's just a state guy. I work with these guys all the time. He's in a structure with all work and no pay and he's trying to assert himself by making you squirm." And I went, "Oh, yeah. He's like Addie....you know, 'Now you will be aware of me!'" Todd didn't get that part. I don't think I'll be blowing off the handle about it again anytime soon. I'm not that upset anymore.

Well, let's go work out and write a paper for British Lit, eat eggs and read the rest of the Glass Menagerie. There's always Tennessee Williams. Sigh.

My First Attempt at A Decent Analysis of American Lit

I know some of you have heard about my struggle with this latest paper. Here's how it turned out:

Traits of Modernist Fiction: How to Be Alone

The tumultuous period in American History from 1914 – 1945, marked by events like World War I and the Great Depression, gave rise to writers using non-traditional literary techniques that they felt captured the isolation and alienation of the period. Modernist fiction, influenced by the Great War and unstable economy, uses techniques that mirror the effect on individuals as the world made and broke alliances, and leapt away from centuries-old traditions in art and economy. William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway are two writers of this period whose fiction contains examples of modernist characteristics such as stream of consciousness narrative, multiple and unreliable narrators, as well as narrative and characters that use language to commute around a topic without discussing it directly; this commonly referred to as Hemingway’s theory of omission. These writers used their special ability with these techniques to promote ideas and experiences of alienation.

Although this was a time of unprecedented change in American culture, something like stream of consciousness writing was not new entirely. However, it was unfamiliar territory for writers like Faulkner and Hemingway, who would come to master stream of consciousness writing in their careers. Modernists used stream of consciousness to alienate characters from their setting and the action occurring around them, and expose the rift in characters’ interrelatedness. It is difficult to make sense of a character’s fragmentary thoughts, due to the abrupt way that stream of consciousness writing starts and stops, often with no guiding demarcation in the text.

William Faulkner’s 1930 novel As I Lay Dying is comprised almost fully of stream of consciousness writing, and maintains the theme of isolation through the many characters unique perspectives. For instance, Dewey Dell’s narrative sharply transitions from describing the land presently around her, to an interior monologue about her dead mother, which leads up to the phrase, “It is because in the wild and outraged earth too soon too soon too soon” (1736). The text moves from a traditional style of narrative to the disjointed form that commonly comprises stream of consciousness writing. Faulkner manipulates the free form of stream of consciousness writing to include dense prose that may not show any similarity to their voice. This happens when Dewey Dell’s chapter begins to weave in and out of her inner thoughts into philosophical imagery and metaphor concerning the “womb of time” and “bones, the hard girdle in which lie in outraged entrails of events” (1736). These disconnections are flanked by lines of text that imply where the character is and what they are looking at, “The sign board comes in sight” and “We turn into Tulls lane” (1736, 37). By presenting Dewey Dell both in a distinct setting and within her own thoughts Faulkner presents a character able to move through space and time without entirely coherent transition; she is a character that is present in the plot, but also does not belong there, for in her mind she is isolated from the purpose and obvious meaning of the journey to Jefferson. Thus, the theme of isolation is served; the broken thoughts and actions alienate the reader form the plot or point of the novel.

Hemingway also used stream of consciousness narrative in his story “The Snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro,” but in his story passages that use this effect are italicized and introduced by statements that inform the reader the character is remembering a past event. More importantly, the stream of consciousness writing, which frequently interrupts the plot, defers the reader from the disaster at hand, Harry’s imminent death. The characters in “Snows” avoid much direct talk about Harry dying, and word death is mostly omitted from their dialogue. This also happens in Dying, especially when the characters are discussing Addie’s death. As Cash saws planks for her coffin outside of the room she is dying in, other characters in the novel can’t even bring themselves to use the word coffin. Early in the novel Jewel thinks of her coffin as “that goddamn box” (1699), and according to Darl, when Jewel talks about the coffin, “does not even say the word” (1700). The characters are separated from the reality of the plot through the removal of direct language to communicate about it. By not even allowing Jewel to use the word coffin in either his thoughts or dialogue, Faulkner stresses the idea of individuals detached from reality.

In addition to stream of consciousness narrative and omission, “Snows” utilizes multiple narrators to add to the theme of separation. At the end of the story, when Harry is facing death, his narrative breaks off and a new one takes it place. This new narrative contains no stream of consciousness writing, and doesn’t appear to be in the cynical voice of Harry, the original narrator. It describes Harry being rescued by someone he knows, and being airlifted out of his camp. This narrative begins to reveal a happy ending for Harry, who has been facing destruction for the entire piece. Yet something is awry, for the action dissolves into a view of the “great, high, and unbelievably white…square top of Kilimanjaro” where Harry “knew…he was going” (1863, 64). This is where the passage abruptly ends, and then returns to the African camp where Helen discovers Harry dead on the cot. The insertion of a new narrative in a different voice is disconcerting, and presents a narrator that is unreliable and deceptive. It is the phantom of the familiar convention of the happy ending, and Hemingway implies that happy endings are not the stuff of the Modernist era, and smack of the quickly fading glory of the past. The juxtaposition of the new narrator against the old also highlights Helen’s uncertain future. He confidently returns to the despair of Harry’s death and Helen’s isolation in Africa, an unfamiliar country where she will continue on alone.

Utilizing an unreliable narrator is an achievement in “Snows,” but it is Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying that provides a superlative example of using multiple narrators to tell a story. There are fifteen different narrative voices in the novel, all of which weave in and out of their thoughts and the action of the novel. In this way the same event in the plot can be retold by different narrators having a different experience of the same event, as well as prohibiting an event from having any single significance; meaning is endlessly deferred through the host of narrators. A good example of this is when Darl and Jewel must take the wagon to procure three dollars. The decision to take the wagon and get the money is told through three different perspectives, Darl’s narration has him conversing with Anse pragmatically; he reminds Anse that the trip “means three dollars” and that Anse needs to make a decision quickly, so that they “can get there and get a load on before dark” (1700). Darl describes Jewel as emotionally distraught by the thought of leaving Addie at death’s door, and upset by the events that are surrounding her death, such as Cash’s obnoxious construction of Addie’s coffin. In Darl’s narrative Jewel declares that Addie wouldn’t be declining so rapidly to her death if “everybody wasn’t burning hell to get her there” (1701). When they decide to go ahead with the trip to get the three dollars, Darl tells that “Jewel…goes on around the house” while Darl proceeds to “enter the hall” (1701). So according to Darl, he himself convinces Anse that they should make the trip to get the money while Jewel protests, and that Darl enters the house before they leave.

The story changes significantly when retold by Cora. Cora’s narration tells that the event is Jewel’s idea, and that Jewel leaves Addie behind because he is not going to “miss a chance to make that extra three dollars” (1702). She goes on to explain that “Mr. Tull says that Darl asked them to wait” and that “Darl almost begged them on his hands and knees not to force him to leave her in her condition” (1702). This is a drastic difference in perspective, as Darl mentions none of this in his previous narrative. Cora justifies Darl’s actions by saying he’s unlike his lazy, money-grubbing father and brother, and perceiving that there is “true love” between Darl and Addie (1703). Cora explains that Darl came to the house to say goodbye to Addie with a “heart too full for words” (1703). Darl’s narrative mentions nothing of his having an understanding with his mother, or of his feeling true love for her, and it certainly doesn’t include him begging Jewel and Anse to let him stay behind.

Dewey Dell’s narrative concerning this event confounds the story further. She concurs with Cora’s story that Darl came to the house, but that he simply said, “she is going to die” (1704). Dewey Dell and Darl have an exchange of words, but this dialogue is questionable because just before this Dewey Dell confesses that she and Darl communicate “without the words” (1704). This implies that the conversation narrated by Dewey Dell may not have occurred at all. This conversation is left out of Darl and Cora’s chapters, but all three have discrepancies, so the validity of the plot presented is compromised.

By using three different narrators to convey the particulars of this brief event, three different stories emerge, all of which can’t be true, or have occurred in the unstable reality of the plot. Faulkner never deviates from character narrative, but leaves it up to the reader to decide which narrator to trust. Thus the characters are alienated from reality by their different perspectives, and the reader is alienated from the story, because it lacks a narrator that who tells the truth of the story. The reader can only vaguely assert that this is a novel about a family who takes a wagon trip to a neighboring city to bury their mother. Other facts of the plot hold temporary and shifting meanings, undulating as they pass through the mind of multiple narrators. When they tell their stories through an internalized stream of consciousness, they present a subjective reality that lies outside of time and coherent connection. The impression this conveys is that reality is ultimately subjective, and that individual perspectives do not make up a collective experience of verifiable truth, but form a disjointed and fragmented experience of reality which can not be relied on for accuracy, for the characters are only true to themselves.

Significant modernist writers like Faulkner and Hemingway were able to reflect the experience of estrangement and detachment in their fiction, and characters in “Snows” and Dying are left to trudge on alone in a world of deferred meaning and unreliable truth. Harry realizes, as do many characters in modern literature when they find themselves in tragic situations, that “the people are all gone” (1862); by the end of Dying Darl has been institutionalized and abandoned. Those who remain exist disaffected by their losses, and their loyalties to conventions are shaken. By using these techniques modernist writers were able to preserve the spirit of the modernist age in literature that continues to invoke a spirit of change in direction away from literary convention, and explore the outer reaches of cultural uncertainty.

Learning

Yeah, this is a "life has taught me something" kind of post. The first thing life has taught me today is that your body and mind cannot be separated. If you are upset in your mind, your body will follow, and vice versa, and so on, and so what? Really. Well, sometimes I feel like my body is reacting to something, and then my mind gets in a very reactive mode. I find something out, and I respond like, well, a small inept axe murderer. All swipes; no hits; annoyed and annoying. I am not alone when I give in to reactionary behavior -- I see the dogs on the The Dog Whisperer do this kind of thing all the time. They get tense, then aggressive, sometimes they bite, and sometimes they get hurt. A tense dog will escalate into aggression easily, especially if another dog reacts to this tension. Sometimes I feel like in my college experience I have been thrust into a pack of diverse dogs, and I'm kind of an unstable one. I'm a kind of runt, a kind of stray (oh dear, I'm just remembering that Blythe posted a blog about us all being dogs, and she categorized me as a guide dog. I'm afraid I see myself more like an unstable Border Collie -- lots of potential, but easily distracted), a kind of moderately successful head case.

And sometimes I will go into a situation, and I won't have realized that I needed to bring some sort of protective armor. Actually, that's not true, although I'd like to think it is. I really don't want to have to wear armor. I'm not going to school because I want to wear the armor of academia. I'm in love with literature, and it seems like I could make a career out of it. So when I'm poked by someone who is in this business because they like the security and helmet that art can provide, I get outraged. I totally overreact. I behave like a tense, threatened doggie -- ears down, tail tucked, teeth bared, ready to snap. I actually feel like I experience an out of control panic or something. It's nuts.

Now I'm not the kind of girl who gets road rage, or assaults people, but I can get into a mode where I won't back down, and that reminds me of canine behavior, too. Dogs struggle for one thing, and that's dominance. If a dog is tense, it's because they are scared that they do not know where they stand in the pack. When I get tense and aggressive, it's usually because I have assumed that someone has questioned my "place" in life. It's rather immature.

So what is the lesson, you wonder? Well, I don't know if the lesson is one that I can easily implement, but in order to experience more balance in my life, I have to practice balance. I have to devote time to meditation. I have to take care of body to take care of mind. I have to breathe. I have to thank God that I have instructors that don't laugh at me when I come running to them panicked that I'm not good enough -- I can imagine they are sick of hearing it. Sometimes I feel like I'm experiencing puberty all over again in college -- am I good enough? Smart enough? Quick enough? Can I really handle this? I know, it's ludicrous.

So thanks for always helping me take my lumps. I will learn from this. Discipline is necessary for any...well, any disciple. I remember when I was learning handwriting, and I had a little book that I was supposed to practice in and would go through it as fast as I could, imagining that if I just got through it fast enough I would improve. I think at some point an aide actually held my hand as I wrote the letters, pressuring me to slow down. It was almost painful -- she wasn't hurting me, of course, but sometimes it's painful for me to slow down and refine my technique. Well, I'm still learning.

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.