I thought better of it...

I had the idea that I should keep my random thoughts about the universe and my (sometimes) focused blogs on literature separate -- but who am I kidding? I can't divide my love of literature from my fascination with life -- I think the two feed each other and maybe even should always be presented together...on an informal blog, anyway.

It just didn't feel right and I thought better of it.

Know Thyself

The narrator in Gatsby is turning out to be an endless source of fascination for me. I was talking about the scene in chapter two were Tom punches Myrtle in the face, and it occured to me that McKee and Nick leave the scene of violence in such a manner that suggests they might be next. Mrs. Wilson recieves the blow because she defiantly refuses to obey Tom's demand that she not speak his wife's name. She has overstepped the bounds of mistress (as defined by Tom), and stepped out of her role of compliant prostitute -- I think this role is played up and indicated by all the shopping she does before they go to the apartment -- into one of rival wife, in order to give her and Tom's relationship validity. Tom's violent reaction can be attributed to his state of inebriation, but since we have already encountered Tom's brutality with the presentation of Daisy's broken finger the message is one of both a brutal master and an irresponsible alcoholic. I'm also interested in the detail of these attacks. Tom only breaks Daisy's finger, while he punches Mrs. Wilson in the face, breaking her nose. It is like Mrs. Wilson was sticking her nose in Tom's business and perhaps Daisy was pointing an accusing finger at him. Whatever the case, Tom squashes these domestic rebellions with unethical violence, and neither Nick or McKee intervenes at all.

Neither Nick nor McKee intervene, console or defend Mrs. Wilson, or do anything that signifies they are apalled or concerend about what has happened. They simply are aroused from a stupor, and when they have adequately assessed the situation, they head for the door. I was thinking today that they do this, not because they are upset, but because they feel that they both rely on personas that could easily place them next on Tom's list. They leave together, slinking away from a volitile situation, and the possibility of having to confront Tom disappears. It seems that even their presence could cause them to be at the end of Tom's fist.

The tone of Nick's actions is that he needs a strong masculine presence around dictate his actions. Nick seems to sympathize with his cousin in her sorrow over Tom's affair, but his assesment of women in most other chapters is that of disdain, or apathy, or, even when it seems like he is really attracted to one, fear and weakness -- as is the case in chapter four when he is pained by the idea that Gatsby might have an eye on Jordan. This sort of blissfull surrender to a strong man's will would merely imply submissive compliance -- if we were talking about a dog. But we are talking about a human, with what I would hope are inately human desires and wants, so his consistent submission to a male seems to reflect a deeper unsung desire. The part of the novel that really drives this home for me are Carraway's remarks that he wishes he could have "unknown" affairs with the wealthy women of fifth avenue. This concept is so confusing...why unknown? Why not unknown? I mean, if he wanted to, couldn't he have an affair with anyone willing? I think it really means unknown to himself. The concept of having a valid affair with a woman is not appealing as knowledge. The fiance that he left back in the midwest has become knowledge, and we know how Carraway has danced around that one. The affair with the woman in New Jersey became knowledge to her brother, and with some unpleasant looks it was stopped. The only hook up that hasn't become knowledge is the one with McKee. It hasn't even become clear to Nick.

Alright, I know that its only chapter four and that I haven't read it all yet, but I have the feeling that Fitzgerald is asking us to discover what Nick doesn't know, or doesn't want to accept, about himself -- and I don't think its just that he wants to rich. BTW -- I searched for anything about Carraway and his sexuality on JSTOR and Gale and EBSCO, and guess what? Nothing. This novel apparently needs some dusting off.

Chapter Three of Gatsby: "I'm one of the few honest people I've ever known"

I burned through Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris, today while trying to ignore and/or forgive my grandfatherly history professor for his off color humor and confusing rhetoric concerning the superiority of "western" civilization. He actually remarked this week that some form of ancient trade movement, I forget which, was akin to a large gang of Orange County wives stampeding to the Brea Mall with charge cards in hand. The mixture of glee and disapproval in his telling of the joke(?) was troubling. He has this way about him that suggests he turned 65 and discovered that he could get away with sexism and a patronizing manner if he followed his bigotry with a silly giggle. Today he managed to offend me twice; once he declared that Plato would not have liked Snoop Doggy Dog (no reason to hate on my homie from Long Beach, plus I had no idea anyone had access to Plato's brain), and then he said that though Alexander is reported to have indiscriminately slaughtered people in villages he wasn't doing what Stalin or Hitler did, he was merely a little tired and not thinking clearly. This last bit was not followed by any sort of gesture indicating sarcasm, and left me feeling disturbed. Not too long after that, while lecturing on a Greek scientist who promoted a spherical-earth theory, a student informed the class the notion that people in Columbus' Day thought the world was flat is propaganda invented by mysterious "people" who want to discredit medieval scholars, or it could have been scholars that want to discredit medieval "people." Our instructor replied that this sounded very probable, and that it would appear he had been misinformed when taught in elementary school that Columbus had set off to prove the world was round. He then quickly told us that we should look up the website hosted by the Flat Earth Society, because we should get a good dose of, as he so delicately put it, "wackjobs" and "nutcases." I have the distinct feeling that by the end of the, thankfully, short semester, I will have had my fill.

This man also told us that the only religious Greek people were uneducated, and of the lower class. Combined with the, as a friend so aptly put it, "cake-faces" that sit in front of me (so called for their liberal application of what they must consider to be blemish-concealing make-up) who delight in making fun of another student that isn't able to control a small nodding tic (I'm barely able to refrain from taking both of these bullies by the throat and smashing their skulls together -- see fifth grade), I'm already just trying to survive the class. Reading Sedaris's work today was comforting, for he too fluctuates neurotically between feelings of inadequacy and imagining that he is surrounded by idiots and/or jerks.

Dress Your Family was both satisfying and disappointing. I enjoyed Me Talk Pretty One Day more, as it was funnier, but I suppose you only have so many hilarious stories about your family. It has been my experience that when you tell funny stories about your family there is a subsequent feeling of guilt, a feeling that lingers; it becomes apparent that you shared this story out of a sense of shame, a sense of wanting to convince someone else that you aren't like this group of people that looks like you, and raised you. I think Dress Your Family expresses itself with this feeling at its heart, but it has none of the real tragedy and hopeful humanity of Dave Eggers' work, and even then I didn't fall head over heels for Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, although I liked it. Sometimes Sedaris work is so funny, but I found this time around his usually clever tone had been replaced by a sort of quiet desperation to relay his perceived misfortunes, all the while attempting to convince you that his collection of memories is actually his fortune. It didn't work for me this time, and I was left feeling a little empty as he ended the book with the birth of "baby Sedaris." I think regret has somehow crept into his work, and I sort of miss the unflinching and deprecating humor he wielded against his family and himself. Still, I enjoy reading him, and I'm not sure if this is a compliment or not, but his work tends to give me hope that I can make it as a writer.

Reading Fizgerald, however, I get the impression that I should go back to the salon where I belong. Nick struggles so much with his identity that I'm afraid at every moment he's going to give up and commit suicide. But he is probably not courageous enough for such an act -- in fact, Nick seems to be afraid of everything, most of all the prospect of being alone. The fear of intimacy is clear enough in his rigid defense of what I've come to think of as his "withholding pattern," or his tendency to sum up others in his mind while withholding his true feelings from those who apparently trust him.

There is also the problem of the ambiguous ending of chapter two. I was so confused by it that I have gone over it several times. Here Fitzgerald has the narrator chronologically enduring a relentlessly obnoxious party which started off with Tom wanting Nick to hang around the apartment while he and his mistress have sex in another room and then have some people over. In fact, this whole chapter is rife with sexuality -- Nick describes the day in New York as "almost pastoral," which conjures up scenes of sexuality and fertility. Nick attributes his presence in this scene to the overbearing insistence from Tom that he stay as well as being drunk, there is no real evidence that he is out of his mind until the end of the chapter, when he is going down the elevator with McKee, who he has already described as "a pale, feminine man" and who is often dominated by his shrill wife. They flee the violent scene where man strikes woman, and after agreeing to a random lunch date with McKee, Nick breaks into fragments of text stared by and separated from one another by ellipses

...I was standing up beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.

"Beauty and the Beast...Lonelieness...Old Grocery Horse...Brook'n Bridge..."

Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the Morning Tribune, and waiting for the four o'clock train.

A very provocative scene. If this were a scene with a woman, it would be clearly understood that a tryst had occurred. But a quick Spark Notes scan alludes to nothing of the sort -- I haven't done any research yet, but I keep getting caught on this passage. I mean, if they left the apartment and got drunk, or got more drunk, and wanted to look at McKee's photographs, what is point of the presence of the bedroom? The bed? The underwear? Being between the sheets? There's no clear meaning, but the fact that the usually deductive Nick has nothing subjective or analytic to add to this scene tells me that it is important.

I suppose Gatsby's grand parties are supposed to represent the roaring twenties, the age where you wiped your nose with elusive thousand-dollar bills and tipped the rat who foraged through your trash. I don't know though -- however fascinated with money Fitzgerald was, and Nick is, this novel doesn't read as an excuse to discuss luxury or wealth -- it's Nick's creepy voyeuristic quality -- the fact that he can't look away from this scene of decadence, that he gobbles it up and feels insecure in the presence of it. The only time in the novel, so far, that it seems like Nick has a moment's peace, is when he admires Gatsby's smile

...It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, as assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

Aside from the obvious narcissism oozing from such a summation, there is the suggestion in this statement that hiding the true self is necessary to happiness -- or at least necessary to being happy with others, not that this is a new concept. But just what Nick is hiding remains debatable. This novel is supposed to be Nick's confession of sorts -- and it is supposed to be painfully honest. We are supposed to get the impression that we are reading something very truthful, the very experience of Nick's soul, but he blows this off when he tells in the middle of chapter three, after telling us all about the party

Reading over what I have written so far, I see I have given the impression that the events of three nights several weeks apart were all that absorbed me.

Here we get a deeper version of the truth: Nick wants us to get a particular impression of him, apparently one of self-importance, but, in a rather uncomfortable way he then goes on to tell us that he had a short affair with a woman but ended it after, get this, "her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction" -- mean looks? In your direction? It doesn't appear that it takes much to defer Nick's affections. He also tells us that in his meaningful life away from his cousin, Tom, Jordan, and Gatsby he sometimes goes to Fifth Avenue to "pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove." Disapprove of what? His income? That's makes some sense, but what about this business of no one ever knowing? I don't really understand completely yet, but I do get this sense of shame that seems to emanate from Nick wherever he goes. Then there's this line:

...most affections conceal something eventually...

This reminds me of the "repression" quote from chapter one.

Then there is his observation that Jordan Baker is "incurably dishonest." That line about reached out of the book and smacked me in the face. And what about this, "dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply"! The way he likes her -- first because she's famous, then because she's mysterious; he goes on to say that she never attaches herself to clever or shrewd men, curiously accusing himself of lacking these qualities in the process! He appreciates it when she degrades and manipulates him -- in fact after a particularly back-handed remark he goes so far as to say, "for a moment I thought I loved her," and proceeds to end the chapter by announcing his plans to formally end a relationship back home in order to pursue her. What? Didn't he say that this relationship was a rumor? He asserted his singleness back in chapter one -- "I'm not even vaguely engaged" and now he rushes through the reality of a "vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free." This, immediately followed by a declaration that his "chief virtue" is honesty. Honesty! I was on the right track, after all.

This is indeed a good book -- but I don't understand what all the fuss over Gatsby is about - yet maybe he plays a role like Sartoris, or like Supten from Absalom, Absalom!, creating a reference point. I can't wait to research this book -- maybe I'll have enough evidence to support a theory that I can send in to USC for my graduate school application. (Shhhh.)

Chapters 1 and 2 of Gatsby: Unreliable Narration

Quite quickly it becomes apparent that the narrator of this novel can't be trusted. When a narrator, a storyteller, confesses that he is "inclined to reserve all judgments" about people, the first thing that popped into my mind is that he can't be trusted. And what about this early line: "the intimate revelations of young men...are marred by obvious suppression." Is he alluding to Freud here? What credibility would that bestow upon the narrator? All I can think now is what the narrator might be hiding in this story, this "intimate revelation" that we are now privy to.

Sprinkled throughout the first chapter are little hints that Nick is, for all his pride, a little ashamed of his Midwest heritage. He even mentions in the very beginning that he never thought he would leave the East coast, for the midwest seemed so remote an meaningless to him after serving in the war. He speaks of Tom with contempt -- but can't help being impressed. When he speaks of the way Tom and Daisy entertain, he refers by way of contrast to how an evening is spent "back West" where people appear to be in a "nervous dread of the moment itself."

There is some ample self loathing going on here; I just wonder what will be become of this perspective. I'm already imagining having to map the book, sectioning off the narration from the action and the dialogue. I know that it's not a fully reliable science, but when I can isolate the mostly objective discourse (I know, impossible) from the obviously subjective, I get more of a feel for the conversation a text seems to be having with the universe.

I love the handle Fitzgerald gets on the individual who feigns modesty and humility through tight lipped restraint, but inwardly harbors an intense grudge against almost everything he meets that does not live up to his impossibly high (and often narcissistic) standards. To have an opinion about everything, but never express it, as well as pride oneself for the ability to remain silent, seems terribly dishonest. I find myself having more appreciation, as well as more disgust, for Tom, who although a cheat and a bigot, seems somehow more honest than Nick. Honesty seems to be a major concern of this novel.

The Great Gatsby: The First Read

Much has been made of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. It holds the #2 ranking on Modern Library's list of the 100 best novels, sandwiched between Joyce's Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man. And so it goes for me; rarely will my tastes rise to the levels set by professional list makers -- I almost find it insulting when they match up. I think I have only read Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned, which is such a heartbreaking story, and so beautifully written. It prompted me to read several biographies concerning Scott and Zelda's relationship, as well as Nancy Milford's biography of Zelda. I want to say I have read This Side of Paradise, but I don't think so. In any case, it's been a long enough time for me to have forgotten much of both of those novels, and it's high time I return to F. Scott, and it about time I read Gatsby.

I'm excited to read it; I'm reminded of how excited I was to read The Sound and the Fury. I am not as eager to read Fitzgerald as I was Faulkner, in fact, this current read was a toss up between rereading Sound or beginning Gatsby. I opted for Fitzgerald. I feel like I got to know him first, you know, before Hemingway and Faulkner, and then, later, got reacquainted with him through Hemingway's remarks and characterizations. I've always had a thing for Fitzgerald, and I've always been a little in love with his and Zelda's relationship. I'm sure it won't disappoint. I'm going to go over my reading notes here, so feel free to add your comments, interpretations, and criticism of my analysis.

Well, I am considered the tail end of Generation X...

Which means that I'm old enough to have seen the last Star Wars (VI) ('83 -- I was only four but I remember cheering when the sand monsters swallowed Boba Fett) and the Last Crusade ('89) in theaters. It also means that I've been tortured through three unbearable prequels and now this last (one can hope it's the last) indignity -- The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

I have tried really hard not to like Shia LaBeouf. I mean, Even Stevens was a relatively good show for Disney, but I found the popularity of Holes somewhat inexplicable, and LaBeouf's hyper-active detective teen in Disturbia almost put me off the campy enjoyability of the teen flick. However, I did think he was pretty good in his first run with SNL, and his second was even better -- more paced, and more...well...handsome. I'm really not one to be attracted to ones younger than myself -- but even in a film with Harrison Ford -- Indiana Jones -- Han Solo -- I found myself wanting to know more about Mutt, as his character is nicknamed. Well, I think I'll get my chance, since the movie is formulated to carry on the tradition through LaBeouf.

Did you know that Ford is 68?

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is, well, it's bad. It's as bad as National Treasure II. This movie plays like a nightmare that Speilberg had about making a tired, trite, and overreaching IJ4. I thought it was just awful and soul-crushing. Digital film and CGI have distorted and, in my opinion, ruined everything I love about campy 80s movies. Ford seemed like he was playing a parody of Indiana Jones, not inhabiting the character as usual. In fact, the whole film seemed like a joke on the audience; I would have been satisfied seeing this film as a two part miniseries on Pay Per View! Todd kept telling me, you know this movie is simply a vehicle for La Beouf and could be a commercial for a new ride at Disneyland...and I suppose I have to get used to the idea that I might never again get to see a movie made in the campy 80s style that I love so much.

Thoughts Whilst Soaking My Feet at Midnight

Reasons that I could lose my mind:

1. Finals. I have five finals; one take home essay (Jon's drama class), American Lit exam on Monday (good riddance, senoir!), and then three back to back exams on Tuesday: British Lit, Lit Crit, and Poetry.

2. Anniversary. It's my tenth wedding anniversary tomorrow -- well, in ten minutes, anyway. I'm so excited, but I've actually been making the plans for this one so I'm a little nervous. I mean, I'm even painting my nails. This is serious.

3. Family. My brother's fifteenth wedding anniversary is today, and his in-laws are throwing a party for him and his wife on Saturday. I have extended family coming down to visit for this "event" and I have way too many issues (let me fill your ear sometime) to begin to deal with this using any semblance of balance and normalcy. Ahhhhh, family.

4. Commencement. Yes, I'm walking in commencement. So that means that I have to go to the rehearsal on Wednesday, hopefully they have a gown left I can buy, and get my butt to the ceremony on Thursday. This commencement business is a lot of work. I'm kind of dreading it now. This stupid week!

5. Housekeepers are coming tomorrow.

Whew! Ok, reasons I have to be grateful:

1. I did really well this semester. I thought I would crack taking so many classes and being on two campuses, but overall I think it went well. I wrote one of my best essays, well, ever, this semester in Drama class (rarely do I ever get full points), and I had such a lovely day at the awards ceremony. (Pictures soon, but I cried when I saw how...I looked. So shallow! It was such a wonderful day.)

2. Anniversary! I can't believe I've been married for ten years! It goes by so fast, and it's hard to make the good times last, and yes, well, that Flaming Lips song is so pervasive, yet still hasn't lost it's appeal. I really think that being married has saved my life. Almost everything I am and have today is because of the opportunity afforded me by the love and graciousness of my husband. What can I say, I'm a true monogamist, and man! I am fortunate!

3. Family! Man, these people! There would be such a void in my life if they weren't there to keep filling it with...a necessary dose of reality. I've got to learn to take it easy with these guys; I mean, they're all I've got, really.

4. Graduation. I started out on this path (here come the waterworks), just hoping to be able to graduate high school, and now I'm going to be getting my first college degree. I'm overwhelmed. I remember my first day at Fullerton -- it was in one of those portables by the Wilshire Auditorium, Reading 142. It was the first time I had been in a real classroom since the eighth grade. What I can I say? I was hooked.

5. I have housekeepers!!

Life gets out of control so easily these days. I'm so grateful, but so stressed. Thanks for being a friend.