Reading: Uwem Akpan

Akpan's story is about a Catholic priest on his way to see his brother in Nigeria. After suffering great loss while living on the rivers edge, believes himself to be used to the tribulations of this country: "After an oil fire killed hundreds of my fellow swamp-dwellers in the Niger Delta, after the mass burials, after negotiating with the leaders of the scores of tribes that make up our church." As a priest, he is compelled to follow ritual and deal every woman, man and child their due respect. Lagos is going through great turmoil as the OPC (Oodua People's Congress) is striking, expecting they have the right to the land. In near every part of the world, a group of people will use a sort of squatter's rights ideal to demand land. "We were here first, we deserve the land." As history has shown, however, it is not who was there first, but rather who was the most convincing and most powerful.

Based on what the priest said, we are to assume this is a common occurrence. They are currently low on fuel and low on peace. With any scarcity of a major resource, anger runs rampant. This certainly is the case in Nigeria. The priest hopes his status as a priest will give him some slack with the Nigerians. However, it becomes pretty evident this is not the case when his first of a series of unfortunate events lands him a dead VW Beetle. "So? You Nigerian clerics just want everything free! You flash your status at every chance" says the Lagosian who had come to help him.

He is stuck with the very same Lagosian guiding him through the city. Runs over a corpse. Mugged by some policemen. Fears being kidnapped. Car, of course, dies again. Accused of highway pooping. More or less, everytime his car dies, something bad happens.

The most interesting part of this story, and likely the most important, is the well phrased setting images. Each description of setting so clearly constructs itself into the reader's mind.

My car dies again, in spite of my revs, at a roundabout. Half a mile down the road, there’s a petrol station. Cars are lined up in pairs, bumper to bumper, coated with a week-old layer of dust. Drivers lounge around, with no idea when fuel will come. The queue has formed a tightening noose around the roundabout, reducing three lanes of traffic to the one that contains my dead Beetle.

It leaves very little up to the imagination in one way, but makes load more room for the imagination in another. Rather than force our minds to draw our pictures of the scene, we can now clearly reenact it with such force that it pulls out our emotions, immersing ourselves in each changing scene.

-Mark

Reading: Bolano

The Eye is the story of Mauricio Silva, known as "The Eye", but is narrated by a non-omniscient third party. I never actually caught the name of the narrator, just that he became good friends with "The Eye" while they lived in Mexico. As you would imagine, when The Eye tells the narrator he is gay, their conversation remains on the topic for quite some time.

That night he confessed to me that he was a homosexual...and that he was leaving Mexico. For a moment I thought he was leaving because he was a homosexual. But no, a friend had found him a job with a photographic agency in Paris...He said that for years he had felt guilty and hidden his sexuality, mainly because he [was] a socialist and there was a certain degree of prejudice among his friend on the Left. (p 108)

Instantly the narrator fears that The Eye's decision to leave was not for gain but rather for prevention of ridicule. I think we always assume the negatives and fear prejudice causes decisions rather than acceptance. I found it quite interesting that the narrator has no prior reservations when it comes to The Eye's sexuality. No emotional distraught or disdain. Nothing. This may be due to Bolano focusing on The Eye rather than the narrator, who's emotions and thoughts are rarely revealing.
"Do you understand what I'm saying? Sort of, I said. We fell silent again. When I was finally able to speak I said, No, I have no idea. Neither do I, said the Eye. No one can have any idea. Not the victim. Not the people who did it to him. Not the people who watched" (p 115). They speak after The Eye tells the story of a child who is emasculated by festival priests to become a Eunuch. Rejected by his family, he is left to a Brothel. None can understand fully the events that occurred. No one will get the full story, or clearly read all sides, points of view. The awful event cannot be accurately portrayed.

In The Vagabond, the story is of a gentleman bt the name of B. Reading a story full of names, it is so unnerving that the protagonist has but a singular letter. Bolano chose also to name those he meets with singulars as well. I am left in bewilderment to the meaning.
Halfway through the story, B heads to a topless bar. He picked up a black girl, presumably at the bar. "Her voice, which B remembers as soft and musical, has become hoarse and querulous, as if at some point during the night...her vocal cords had undergone a transformation...her voice wakes him with the effect of a hammer blow" (p 182). I love the quips thrown throughout pieces like this, certainly adding a spell of cheerfulness amidst plains of uncertainty and confusion.

-Mark

Reading: Nam Le

Nam Le's Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice is about a Vietnamese boy with the same title as the author. The name and origin of the protagonist lead us to draw parallels between both Nam Les (character and author). Nam Le however stated:

A lot of people presume if I'm writing a narrator who has clear parallels to me, that's just sheer inertia; that there's a natural adaptation from so-called life to so-called text. But any careful reader or writer would understand how much artifice and contrivance go into making this self-standing and self-contained

Basically, even though the story has similarities, it isn't about him. It is self-contained, standalone, as if written by anyone.
Nam Le (the character) is in Iowa with his sick dad attending a writing workshop. On page 18, Nam Le sees Linda at a coffee shop while he is going over his paper. He notices she is "unmaking a smile". A phrase not found anywhere else and has an interesting connotation. As she began speaking to him, I belief this unmade smile to be a precursor to a very well made frown.

"You know what I think?...I think you're making excuses for him...You're romanticizing his past to make sense of the things you said he did to you." (Linda speaking to Nam Le about his paper, pg 18)

Unmaking a smile leave uncertainty as to the true emotion left both on the face and beneath.
Several times throughout the story Nam Le mentions tips for writing. "The thing is not to write what no one else could have written but to write what only you could have written" (p 23). I've been told that write only what what I know. This statement could not be more true. While many could write about the same experience, the same story, none of their tellings would be the same. Each affected by location, past experiences, personalities, morals, even what they were doing when the event began. The past so vastly affects our thoughts but we tend to oversee that, believing everyone else so very biased in their stories not realizing we are just as bad.
Shortly after, Nam Le tells his father "If I write a true story...I'll have a better chance of selling it" (pg 24). Most readers want to read for entertainment rather than for gaining knowledge, not to say that isn't an added bonus or that some reading is done specifically for that purpose. Fiction sells easier than nonfiction. Our society is far less fond of long-prose in age. The largest generation buying books today are still in school, many looking for a adventurous escape. Fiction draws on our imaginations, allowing us to go where no one ever could, do what could never be done. There is a great appeal to just sit down in the afternoon after school and imagine yourself away to Hogwarts or the USS Enterprise.

-Mark

Reading: Aleksandar Hemon 4

Aleksander Hemon seems to have an odd fixation on dreams. I say odd simply because he focuses not on the meaning of the dreams, what stories they tell, who people become because of them, but rather on the forgetting of dreams. "I normally remembered only fragments of my dreams; I forgot a lot of them, too, though I could often abstractly recall their intensity" (p 257). The chapter immediately following starts out with a similar statement: "Unsettling dreams have been swarming in Isador's head, but when he snaps out of slumber he cannot remember them" (p 268). These come after a very focused dream forgetfulness on 126-7. Brik basically repeats himself and Hemon adds a new character with forgetful dreaming. This kind of metaphor repetition weakens the more its use. Especially if the repetition isn't actually for a new character but rather just a recapitulation.

On 255, Rora spoke of how during the war, Miller (his boss) demanded he take pictures of fleeing children and actually paid some to run back and forth from sniper fire. Rora clearly found the man despicable, putting the value of the picture over the value of the life. "Still, I felt bad when Rambo clipped Miller. He deserved a good beating, but not death. Nobody deserves death, yet everybody gets it." The idea of deserving one the or another is interesting and brings up far too many questions. Do we deserve the lives we are given? Do we deserve fair treatment? What power sets out who is deserving and what is to be deserved? Are we somehow born with innate knowledge of the "inalienable rights" or do they come from society? If it is societal, how did it start?

I found this statement quite clever and got a chuckle out of the pure bluntness of it. "Seryozha was packing at least a knife, probably a gun, and I did not want to get stabbed or take a bullet in the head" (p 260). With this is quite simply referring to the top reason why they could not do anything to help Elena (the woman that was to be sold).

-Mark

Reading: Aleksandar Hemon 3

Page 126 and 127 presents an interesting (if not entirely new) idea of dreaming. Brik talks of his nights with his animate mind.

It often got out of hand: possible stories sprouted from the recalled instants and images...many of those stories turned unnoticeably into a dream, whereby the narrative went completely haywire and I became but a confused character within it.

I once read within a book the story of a painter's fretful after a dream. In this dream he saw some of the most amazing paintings he had ever seen and the next day went to speak to his friend. "Why is it I can't create such masterpieces as those?" To which he friend aptly responds, "Those are your masterpieces, every one of those your creation. "*

Brik handles his dreams differently. Rather than having his mind as a playground, it's his cemetery. "My dreams were but a means of forgetting...the emptying of the garbarge so that tomorrow could be filled up with new life...I woke up after the nap , the dream, naturally, vanishing without a trace." I found it quite odd that his dream vanished after a nap for those are the dreams I find so easy to recall. Without the hole of NREM to halt my mind's attention.

Brik mentioned:

And if I cared about God, I would be tempted to think that remembering was sinful. For what else could it be, what could remembering all those gorgeous moments when this world was fully present at your fingertips be but a beautiful sin?

I mention this simply because it follows one of my beliefs that with Christianity/Judaism, anything worldly is sinful. The most beautiful part of our existence gets caught up searching for something more important. What makes our life so wonderfully propitious is the sights right before our eyes. Our loveable past and our effervescent present, not our unforgiving future. Not what can't be known. The life "between the two trees" is far too good to be derided by the seeking of "something better" after we leave this.
And as Tim Minchin so wonderfully semi-quoted Shakespeare's King John:

“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet… is just fucking silly” (Storm)

-Mark T
*Note: Quotes likely misquoted but in such a slighted way that it still retain original meaning. If I can find where from they come, I will correct.

Reading: Aleksandar Hemon 2

Olga's thoughts in the irst chapter were very interesting. She imagine's writing a letter back to her mum several times throughout, and to the best of my knowledge, she never actually does. She thinks: "Dear Mother, Our Lazarus is asleep, but out of that sleep we may not awake him." (p. 89) Seemingly afraid to write to herself that Lazarus is dead. But then anger takes over: "It seems we can never escape grief. We have lost Lazarus. What have we done to deserve so much suffering?" (p. 89) This progresses through the chapter, morphing with her experience.

The hhatred these men seemed to have for Jews is overwhelmingly odd. I guess as asimilar as many to homosexuals in recent years, there has just been this complete lack of understanding to draw fear and anger from. They were different and different is wrong. As the doctor autopsies the body, he finishes writing his notes to hear the Assisstant Chief say "They are creatures of a different world" (p 88). Creatures...Creatures. While it is very true that they are from a completely different world, they are just as human, just as capable of emotional fear and just as deserving of proper respect.

Brik mentions something quite interesting that I have always found true in America but never thought it to be different elsewhere. "The incessant perpetuation of collective fantasies makes people crave the truth and nothing but the truth -- reality is the fastest American commodity." The television and computer have only strengthened the truth of this statement. As more and more lies are thrown at is in shows and movies, news and sports, we turn to others for our fill of truth, honest story of heroism or terror. Unless our technology, we are not capable of such lability. We need some grounding in the stories of our friends or bar mates.

Reading: Aleksandar Hemon

The Lazarus Project takes place in two complete timeframes. The first, in 1908, where the story is of a foreigner trying to fit in. "The young man says nothing; He doesn't want them to know he is a foreigner." (pg 4) However, because of his silence (and his probable visual differences), a shop owner and his wife draw discomfort from his presence. His name is Lazarus Averbuch, but I know that only from looking at the back cover, as his name is left a mystery within the pages. His story is of interest because of what happens to him when he goes to visit the home of Chief Shippy.

He walks up to the Chief's house at promptly at 9:00 because his attendant told him, "Teresa advises him that iti is much too early [when he first visits] and that Chief Shippy never wishes to see anybody before nine." (pg 1) She immediately assumes negativity from Lazarus simply because she cannot place his accent. When he arrives at 9, from what seems purely out of fear and assumptive suspicion, Chief Shippy concludes that Lazarus must have a gun and in confusion, murders the man, the Chief's own driver and Henry, a visitor in the home. The Papers report the triple homicide as that of the "Anarchist" [Lazarus] likely due to Shippy's quick thinking and self-defense.

The second story is that of Brik, a Bosnian immigrant who at first is visiting Bosnia for their Independence Day. The connection between these two stories is presented on page 15, "I am hoping to write about a Jewish immigrant shot by the Chicago police a hundred years ago." It is odd that Brik's story is in first person, Brik as the narrator and the story of Lazarus is in third person by a possibly "non-psychic" 3rd person, where actions are told rather than thoughts. I am going to assume the story of the past is actually the story as written by Brik, which would provide a very interesting twist as his own plot thickens, discovering more of this quite obvious cover-up.

-Mark

Ha Jin: The Bridesgroom

The Bridesgroom by Ha Jin is a story of three main characters: "Old Cheng", Beina, and Huang Baowen. Cheng is Beina's Father's close friend and caretaker after her father's death. Throughout the story, she is referred to as his daughter. Beina is not a pretty girl and remains an unmarried woman in China until Huang Baowen proposes to her, out of the blue. He works in the same factory as her and although surprised, she agrees knowing she is unlikely to have another.

However, Huang Baowen is caught with a group of homosexuals that meet on Tuesday nights and is arrested for Indecent Activity. Homosexuality is illegal and Huang would likely be sent to jail. Through Cheng's connections, the police send him to a hospital to be cured. After many months, Cheng still wonders when Huang will be cured so that he will not have to live in shame. Huang is caught at the end in homosexual behavior with his nurse. Cheng expects Beina to divorce him and search for another but she refuses. It ends with Cheng storming out telling Beina never to speak with him again.

This story is very much about the conservative culture of China. I couldn't help but chuckle when a man from a Middle School asked "What do homosexuals do?" (pg 95). With such a culture, the immoral and incurable tend to be hidden from the main population, ignorance is bliss. It was up until Dr. Mai reveals "Homosexuality isn't an illness, so how can it have a cure?" (pg 111) that Cheng had hope for Beina and Huang. This revelation brought great trouble to the man, uncertain of Huang's motives. Rather than look at society as the blame for Baowen's struggle to cure what needs no cure, he wonders whether Baowen is just a shammer. Close-mindedness is a natural trait among humans. Without a desire to see outside our beliefs, we ignore any other possibility for truth or right over our own.

Further thought brings new light on Cheng, curious how something so seemingly unnatural could be natural in the world, desiring someone to consult but afraid and uncertain.

"Compared to most men, Baowen isn't that bad. Beina isn't a fool." Cheng's wife explains on page 101. Beina likes Baowen even though he won't sleep with her because she doesn't have to "worry about those shameless bitches at the factory" (pg 101). It reminds me of a song by Garfunkel and Oates "Gay Boyfriend". The stereotypical gay man thinks and acts womanly, putting emotions before physical, being a sissy. Beina likely sees him this way. Free from the worry of him having sex with other women, cheating on her.

Like all stereotypes, it's wrong. The differences between gay men are just as vast as between straight men. Some romantic, some sex driven, some are Catholic priests. Because homosexuality seems so different from what we experience, it brings with it belief of immoral and unnatural. Many ignore how natural it really is. Wikipedia provides many great external cited sources, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals .

-Mark Todd

Reading: Chris Offutt Day 2

As the book went on, I liked less and less him writing about his present with his pregnant wife but realize that it is the only way to get out the good bits of interesting thoughts he has on things. For example, without the story for backing, this quote would seem silly and not necessary.

If childbearing were left to men, our species would have moldered because males could never accommodate the pain. We can barely get through hangovers and football games. (pg 75)

I couldn't help but laugh and agree with this quote.
As the story continued, it became extremely apparent not only his lack of belief in Christianity but strong disbelief.

Mother Earth became Papa Sun. Jesus performed the dream of many men--he broke the hymen from the inside out and took up with a hooker. (pg 75)

As I am reading this book, I am also reading another book from the same time period, another memoir of sorts by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine: Last Chance to See. In this book, Douglas mentions, "It's so bloody hard not to anthromorphise...I tried to imagine instead how [the gorilla] saw us, but of course that's almost impossible to do, because the assumptions you end up making as you try to bridge the imaginative gap are, of course, your own, and the most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making." (pg 81). And this is exactly what Chris Offutt and the rest of the Animal Taming crew in the circus do. They antromorphize Gabe, the circus gorilla, assuming it feels and shows emotion the same way we do, and reacting due to these assumptions. "He glanced at us with an expression of terrible humiliation, then hid his face." (pg 101)
My favorite quote from this section is another from his present tense writings.

Taking life is as biologically grounded as giving life. Every animal kills to live. Eating fruit, vegetables, and grain is no escape; plants are living things. They have gender and home, suffer when hurt, and attempt to heal themselves. (pg 89)

It is a very interesting concept to believe the plants suffer when hurt, though he may mean suffer differently then the way animals do. When an animal loses a finger, (s)he will suffer with pain, while a plant will suffer with the loss of energy contributed by what ever is injured or torn apart. "I believe that like an amputee whose missing limb aches, the tree knows when a branch is gone." The tree notices the missing source of energy, the missing piece of the whole, regardless of how small.

-Mark

(The Real) Reading: Chris Offutt Day 1

Well, I can say that I have really enjoyed the start of this book. I have always loved nature and the appeal of solidarity in the wilderness so I may be a bit biased, but we all suffer undeniable biases.

I couldn't help but notice a grammatical error on the first page, "I don't belong, none of us does." That could just be his southern-ness coming through but it nonetheless nagged me. He word choice throughout has so far been beyond exceptional, more than likely due to one thing most successful artists have in their arsenal...practice. He did so without the intention. He didn't practice writing because he wanted to be a successful writer, he wrote because writing in his journal "began to supersede every aspect of his life." (pg 49)

He also suffered the typically symptoms of an artist, uncertainty and inability to accept his own quality:

"Come on, Jahi. I don't even write good letters."
"You don't know it but you will. You'll reach a point where you will have no choice."
"Yeah, and I can be president too." (pg 34)

I also enjoyed the little quips he threw in throughout the book. "Another guide, less technical, informed me that male orgasm fired an armada of three hundred million soldiers upriver to invade the cervix."(pg 15) I would love to read this guide, though based on the rest of his writings, I doubt such a book exists. I'm lead to believe it is actually of his own mind. I couldn't help but laugh when he said: "I began making outlandish statements passersby simply to provoke a response worthy of logging." (pg 49) I imagine Texts From Last Night to have appealed to the same mindset on many an occasion.

Finally, my favorite examples of exceptional word choice:

• This flood is nothing compared to the coming deluge. (pg 43)


• The Minnesota winter lingered deep into spring, encasing the sky in a sunless gray. (pg 48)

I also found this quite compelling: "I have to accept that a baby's in there. As with God or black holes, one goes by the surrounding evidence." It consequently implies that he believes in God, but previous evidence suggest he is not of the common monotheisms found today but rather seems more in tune with the Deism of Thomas Paine.

-Mark

GO YIELD STOP Analysis

GO (I like this):
I really like the idea of blogging about the books we read. I think writing about them forces us to actually read the literature rather than stare at words until it is time to flip the page. It is like hearing someone talk without listening to what they say for there is no reason to pay attention.

I really liked both plays we read: Glengarry Glen Ross and The Glass Menagerie. The complexness in simplicity was enjoyable. Forcing me to think deep about something with a meaningless surface was atypical and intriguing.

I wanted to start Chris Offutt's Memoir before I passed off judgement because I have not once read a memoir without putting it down after the first page, but his first page forced me to read his second, which convinced me to read his third.


YIELD (things we should do more often):

I really feel a lack of necessity to be present in the classroom. I find my mind wondering and roaming more often then it should as it does in most lecture-based classes. As I have the mind of a typical human, I have an inability to focus on the constant speech for an extended period of time. At the beginning we did such like write our own poems and answer questions and such, requiring active participation and acuity to the material at hand.

The humor you bring to the classroom brings a nice breeze that cools a rather lukewarm interest to a topic. The humor garners attention that little else could. However, as subjects switch to topics either more serious or thought-provoking, the humor ceases and interest dwindles.

STOP (please, no more!):

I really didn't enjoy Lolita and it takes up the largest percentage of the class's reading time, I feel like I have missed a good bit of credit.

Recent poetry has never been a favorite of mine, favoring order over chaos. Poetry such as Allen Ginsberg's is wasted on me. Its effect lost in the experimentalism.

I really would have liked Music of Chance to have been kept on the list. It looked like an interesting book and, being written in recent times, would far more appeal to my thoughts.

Reading: David Mamet

Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet

This is play is written dissimilar to every other play I've read. The scenes aren't set up descriptively, leaving much up to the imagination of the reader (or director).

A booth at the [Chinese] restaurant. Moss and Aaronow seated. After the meal. (p28)

Even individual actors positioning, expressions, and directions are mostly left up to the imagination. Throughout the play, characters will just stop in the middle of their rant and say "You hear me? I'm talking to you." (p 97) Each character has their own agenda and they all want to be heard. They have to keep stopping themselves when they see another look away or even just open his mouth.

The end of this play was rather confusing. In the beginning with see a conversation between Moss and Aaronow implying that Aaronow will steal the contracts and leads needed by the sales company to make money. Leads are a list of names, addresses and phone numbers of people who would possibly buy what is being sold. Without this list, it is extremely difficult to find people to haggle with. However, in the end Levene admits to the theft, quoting the same price Moss was offering Aaronow.

LeveneI sold them to Jerry Graff
Williamson: Who kept the other half?
Levene: Do I have to tell you? Moss. (p100-1)

I can't seem to figure out how this exchange occurred, how Moss deciding on Levene after Aaronow was forced into agreeing to do the crime. Unfortunately, this must be left up to the imagination.

This play seems to really be about the struggle to maintain a job throughout low times. I see it as this: As times change, people who resist change fail. Throughout the story, the characters refer to their past successes and others' past successes. They mention Jerry Graff, who decided to go against the norm, start out his own, and go after who he goes after differently. He is successful even in the changing times.

Mark Todd

PS. I'm not sure how to handle ellipses when quoting Plays. How do I show a skip in the conversation?

Reading: Dorothy Alison and Raymond Carver

I'm sorry, I accidentally hit post by mistake.

Raymond Carver's Cathedral
This short story is about a blind man coming to visit a good friend of many years and her husband. Initially, the narrator (husband) is completely ignorant of the ways of the blind, knowing only what the movies put forth. The blind man needed a worker one summer to read him the papers for his job. During that summer, the wife became very good friends with the man. They kept in contact for a great many years and when the mans wife died, he came to visit.

During the story, the narrator chooses not to mention his or his wife's name. The narrator puts all the focus on Robert. Except the real story isn't about the blind man at all, its about the narrator himself and his coming to terms and education. When they sat down to talk, he was nervous, uncertain.

"I started to say something about the old sofa. I'd liked that old sofa. But I didn't say anything. Then I wanted to say something else, small-talk, about the scenic ride along the Hudson. How going to New York, you should sit on the right-hand side of the train, and coming from New York, the left-hand side." (p 113)

The wife is very scared (for lack of a better term) throughout the story for what her husband will say to Robert. This is due to his uncertainty and fear at the beginning. "I wasn't enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me."(p 108) However, as the story progresses, the wife relaxes and goes to sleep leaving Robert and the narrator to talk and watch TV.
The narrator asks if Robert can imagine a cathedral, what exactly it is.
"Maybe you could describe one to me? I wish you'd do it. I'd like that." (p 120) After a failed attempt to verbally describe, the narrator is asked to get paper and pencil and draw it. Robert holds onto his hands while he draws so as feel the paper moving across. After they finished, "My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything."


Dorothy Allison's River of Names

The title is a great metaphor for the story. Effectively captivating the mind. Not people, just names, stories, flowing through, passing just long enough to be noticed, recognized. Touching be never holding. However, when she uses the title at the end of the story, it weakens its power, almost as if she is out of other words, pushing a metaphor that doesn't need pushing. It works too well to necessitate repetition.

I can't figure out if the narrator is male or female. Jesse, the narrator's lover, could very well be lesbian, since the narrator mentions "my aunt, the one I'm named for" (pg 10), implying at least femininity in name.

The story is really a progression of stories going through the narrators mind as she spends time with Jesse, playing them off like nothing is wrong. "I wake up in the night screaming, 'No, no, I won't!'" and after feeling Jesse's warmth "'Did I fool you?'" (p 10).

She pretends even at her most vulnerable that everything is okay. After all the stories told to us, about the death of cousings, aunts, sisters, the rapes of the children, thievery, suicides, the story ends with two interesting quotes.
1."I can't have children. I never wanted children." (pg 12)
2. Jesse says, "You tell the funniest story" ... "Yeah," I tell her. "But I lie."

Jesse wants to know what the narrators children would be like, implying that she knows little of the real familry. I believe that narrator hides the truth out of fear. Fear of losing her lover. So much tragedy is terrifying and terror has too many unpredictable circumstances.

Reading: Dorothy Alison and Raymond Carver

Reading 7: Allen Ginsberg

Howl

I know I probably shouldn't this say but it needs to be said. I struggled through this poem. Not because I thought it particular difficult, but rather because I found it terribly repetitive. The need for this repetition was not lost on me, but 11 pages of it was. Interest was quickly lost and I had to keep rereading portions due to a growing lack of focus.

As for the poem itself, I will now attempt to decipher what I think it was about. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by/ madness, starving hysterical naked..." This is how the poem starts off. Instantly putting us into a negative mood progressively worsened throughout the poem., He goes on to describe his generation of great minds in what he sees they have become: "who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York" (p 11), "who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts" (p 12), and "who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music" (p 15). Ginsberg seems to be talking of what he saw traveling through the United States, watching all the people in the streets wasting away their greatness on drugs and sex. People who didn't fit in. Despair might be a proper word to describe this Part I.

In Part II, Ginsberg uses Moloch, a Philistine God to describe the cause of the misery and disconnectedness. Moloch was the Sun god of the Ammonites and was all together malevolent. They sacrificed first-borns in order to keep on his good side. "Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!" (p 21). He uses the very negative worship of Moloch to describe the very negative worship of all things wrong in the US. Talk of sobbing army boys and weeping old men caused by a worship of the wrongs.

In Part III, Ginsberg addresses Carl Solomon, a friend who is also a writer. "Where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter" (p 24). This part takes a slight turn. Despair is also combined not with hope, but with a sort of plea. "We hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won't let us sleep" (p 26). I think he is trying to say that we will keep trying to fix a sick nation, willing it to get better, and trying to relax it in its time of illness.

A Supermarket in California

This poem I found slightly more interesting. Maybe for its use of metaphor, or simply because it was shorter and less forgettable. This poem was apparently written while Ginsberg was high on peyote (as he was in Part II of HOWL). "What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon" (p 29). This poem is both of his adoration for Walt Whitman and an excellent metaphor of the US as a supermarket. It could have been a real hallucination brought on by the peyote, what he saw within these lines. "I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?" (p 29). He sees Walt Whitman as a companion, almost a friend. "Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?" (p 30). He is following Whitman, allowing Whitman to lead him to wherever it is Whitman thinks he should go. Sort of like a father might do for his son.

The last paragraph/sentence changing from this adoration of Whitman and description of US to a more grim desperation once more. "What America did you have..." (p 30), Ginsberg asks Whitman. Was Whitman's America any better than Ginsberg? Was it the America Ginsberg wishes his could now be?

-Mark

Reading 6: Tennessee Williams

The Glass Menagerie: Scene 7

The story ends in a way unexpected. Rather than the typical, guy and girl happily ever after, it ends in a way neither extremely depressing nor terribly happy. The last scene starts right after the lights went out (because Tom chose not to pay the bill). "Shakespeare probably wrote a poem on that light bill, Mrs. Wingfield... Maybe the poem will win a ten-dollar prize", Jim says (page 68) shortly after candles are lit. Quipster, he is, with a sharp tongue hidden with knives. Showing negativity towards his friend from the warehouse.

This scene is really about discovering who Jim really is and further defining Laura through their conversation. Likely popular in high school due to his ability to sing and his self-confidence (and well defined sense of self, whether real or false) that tend to draw in youth. It really comes out in the way he speaks to Laura within this scene. Alone in the living room, the two beginning to talk about each other's lives. "You know what I judge to be the trouble with you? Inferiority complex! Know what that is?...Now I've never made a regular study of it, but I have a friend who says I can analyze people better than doctors that make a profession of it." (page 80-1). He spends the majority of the chapter telling Laura what he believes and that she should believe similarly. While not necessarily bad, it does show Jim's character as high on who he is and how right his opinions are.

Page 88 is the climax of the story, all the build-up for this moment, when Jim kisses Laura, showing the possibility of Laura not being an old maid, but wait! "Stumblejohn...Stumblejohn! I shouldn't have done that -- that was way off the beam. You don't smoke, do you?" John yells afterwards. He reveals his engagement to another women. Something he didn't mention at work because he was worried about what they would call him... about getting married. "The cat's not out of the bag at the warehouse yet. You know how they are. They call you Romeo and stuff like that."(page 93) ROMEO!! Rather than tell anyone that he is marrying the love of his life, he would rather keep his appearance and reputation at the warehouse.

As for the ending, after Jim leaves, Tom walks out, continuing his life without a home or family. He wanders the world but with a hole created by the absence of Laura. Amanda speaks to Laura of what we know not, but knowing that it somehow managed to make Laura smile.

-Mark Todd

PS. The word I was looking for previously to describe Jim was self-righteous.

Reading 5: Tennessee Williams

The Glass Menagerie: Scenes 1-6

Bear in mind that I did start reading some of scene 7 as I got caught up, lost track of pages and kept reading into the next scene without even reading it. I am actually really enjoying this play for what it is, a play. Reading books means getting descriptions of scenes and characters as they happen. Reading plays is quite a bit different. You 'see' everything in a play, so the playwright must be very descriptive in his setting, and he must do so and the earliest possible moment. This means that at the beginning of the scene, the setting is thoroughly described and images take perfect shape in your mind (well, that's the hope anyway). The playwright must be as descriptive as a chemist may be with his experiment, and for the very same reason, so that it is repeatable. Unlike in many of Shakespeare's play, setting is much more of a presence because it can be. The play is in an enclosed space (typically) with props galore.

What surprises me more about this story is that there are only a mere four characters in the entirety of the story and one doesn't even come in until act six. The story is a memory (more described as a dream, but I'll consider a memory), with unrealistic scenery, blurry areas and dims places because of their insignificance. The story takes place completely inside the confines of an apartment (I believe?) and its outside portieres. The story is of a family of three -- mother, Amanda, daughter, Laura, and son, Tom. There are two different conflicts within the story. One for each sibling. Tom works at a warehouse but spends his nights at the Movies, presumably with a bottle of alcohol at his side. He wants to escape to live a life roaming the earth. His sister, Laura, is a cripple (has a leg in a brace) and is very shy, getting sick a lot. She is single and spends her time collecting glass and walking. Her mother, Amanda, fear she will be an Old Maid.

The first five scene set up these two conflicts. They also mention the missing Father, who fled to adventure the world. He was a drunkard and listless. The last note they got from him was a postcard saying "Hello, Goodbye". Scene Six presents the fourth character (actor?), Jim Delaney O'Connor. He was a friend of Tom's in high school and works at the warehouse with him. He is invited to the house for a seemingly innocent dinner. Laura, in scene two, mentions her only love was a boy names Jim, who in high school, called her Blue Roses. When she fell ill, she said she had pleurosis (apparently actually called pleurisy or pleuritis) but Jim though she said Blue Roses. The name stuck.

Jim meets Laura but seems not to recognize her throughout Scene six. She acts very odd towards him, very shy and nervous. The scene concludes after the lights go out. Tom neglected the light bill this month, choosing instead to pay due for the Merchant Marines.

-Mark Todd

Reading 4: Delmore Schwartz

In Dreams Begin Responsibility

The title help explain this almost cryptic story. This story is of an unnamed man at age 21 dreaming on eve of his birthday. In his dream, he is sitting in a theatre watching a old silent film. Throughout the entire story, we know not that it is a dream at all. For the majority of the story, it is also unknown that the narrator is even a male. I believe Schwartz did this intentionally to take focus away from the narrator and rather his actions and that of his parents. For me, I was unsure why he was referring to the two main characters, a young couple, as mother and father. I thought initially that he was drawn into the film like the "drug" he had related it to.

The third paragraph begins "My father walks from street to street..." The second sentence starts "the motorman, who has a handlebar mustache..." The significance of the change is to support that the narrator is being very observant, noticing every part of the surroundings, in contrasts to his father. In the first sentence, he uses a very intense imagery, "street-car skates and gnaws, progressing slowly" futher adding to this very clear view of the scenery. However, in opposition, the father "takes the long walk because he likes to walk and think". While he is doing so, he completely ignores the people in their Sunday clothes, the trees and houses.

The majority of this story takes place in Coney Island. The couple is on a date walking around the island. Near the beginning of Chapter 3, the narrator watches her mother and father stare out at the ocean as it "is becoming rough." The narrator seems to see the very negative side of everything that is occuring, probably because he is looking from a point in the future where he knows how he parents turned out. This becomes more obvious when he screams out to the audience "Don't do it. It's not too late to change your mind... Nothing good will come of this, only remourse, hatred, scandal, and two children whose characters are monstrous" near the end of page 5. However, this belief may stem from his own insecurity and ill feelings with who he is.

The dreams ends as the usher who is pulling him out of the movie saying "you will be sorry if you don't do what you should do...everything you do matters too much." He then wakes up from his dream on his 21st birthday, somewhat of a coming of age. This dream may have been his own subconscious screaming at him to wake up and do what he knows he must because he can't dwell on the past and who he was but rather who he could and should become.

Reading 3: Alice Walker and Jamaice Kincaid

Authors Note: I accidentally posted without actually type anything. Here is the fix.

"The Flowers" By Alice Walker:

This is the short story about a girl named Myop. She likely lives at a farm due to her ability to have "worked out the beat of a song on the fence around the pigpen". Her family is a sharecropper family, which means a tenant (the family) is allowed to farm land so long as the share a portion of the crops with the owner of the land. She walks throw the wilderness beyond the property to pick flowers. As she makes her way back to the house she finds the dead body of a tall, hanged man on the ground with his head separated. Near the body a wild pink rose grows in a raised ring mound (the noose) and the rest of the rope hanging from the tree.

Repetition is found throughout this story, whether its in the structure, like "the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash" or in the way Walker starts her sentences, as in the second paragraph. In paragraph 2, She or the antecedent Myop start every sentence followed directly by a verb. Alliteration was very popular in the piece as well (repetition of the starting consonants) such as "sweet suds", "brown ... buds", "big bones", "raised .. ring...rose's root...rotted remains" and "blending benignly". She finished off the last paragraph with four participles (verbs ending in -ed used as noun modifiers).

The amount of repition in the last paragraph show the significance Walker places on it. The last paragraph is really the climax and conclusion of the story. The seven previous paragraph set up the setting, character development, and action so that the climax and conclusion could happen so quickly. She finds a dead body of a man while picking flowers with a beautiful flower beside. However, she places the rose back down upon discovery of its location (within a noose). Possibly a sign of reverence toward the dead man or a fear of him. The negative participles used to describe the rope still attached to the tree adds to the haunting emotions.

In paragraph five she uses an odd word choice: "strangeness of the land made it not as pleasant as her usual haunts." Haunt simply means a place commonly visited but is usually associated with ghosts. The odd choice is where strangeness is associated oppositely with haunts, as if possibly ghosts were a familiarity.

Reading 1: Ezra Pound and Raymond Carver

Photograph of My Father In His Twenty Second Year, by Carver, is a poem of three "Quintrains" (sets of five lines rather than four, quatrain). It is much harder to describe this than Pound's because it is longer and seemingly more obvious. The poem is in the first-person, in October in a kitchen that he describes as unfamiliar probably to contrast his familiarity with the way his father is in the picture that makes up the rest of the poem. He goes on to describe the look on his fathers face, what is in the hands and what he is wearing. The setting of the scene is of little importance, mentioning only the Ford that Carver's father is posing with. The setting isn't important, it is only the feeling invoked by seeing his father that matter. He mentions alcohol twice in the poem, the first time in his dad's hands, the second, comparing to his own trouble with the liquid. He loves his father but realizes that he was only human back then, making mistakes and struggling.

You can find the poem at http://www.agonia.net/index.php/poetry/67809/

In a Station of the Metro, written by Pound in 1913, is a mere 2 lines of 14 letters (not counting the title, which adds as much to the explanation as the two lines). With no rhyme scheme or rhythm of note, is known as a "imagist" poem (thanks Wikipedia).

The apparition of these faces in the crowd ;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

The first line, to me, is about the focus his eyes put on the faces flying by him inside the overcrowded station. The second line goes on to metaphorically describe these faces, describing how he feels about each individual, a mere leaf on the black branch of a tree. I'm not sure how wet metaphors but the black, a typically negative color, is used to describe the uncomfort or the darkness caused by the flood of people.

Letter of Introduction

Past:

High School
In high school, I read quite a few books for school. Well, actually, for most of them it was I should say I "read" them (meaning Spark Notes was my friend). I struggled through A Picture of Dorian Gray because it was too slow for too long, so by the time it got into the exciting bits, I had already resorted to Sparky to finish it.

However, one book I was required to read for class I thoroughly enjoyed and have moved on to another book because of it. The book wasn't for English, it was for math and is over 100 years old, Flatland. The book was completed in 1884 Edwin Abbott Abbott, a school teacher. It focused on two points:

1. Satirically attacked the practices of the Victorian England.
2. Put out thoughts about higher spatial dimensions.

I am now reading Hyperspace by Michio Kaku.

My most fond books however have nothing at all to do with math or science. The series that most affected me throughout my secondary education was pretty much the exact opposite of science. It followed story of a group of teenagers who were seemingly growing as I was, of similar age throughout the entire series. They experienced similar troubles in school as I did, except with a few unique to them. The story of Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley is not just a simple children's tale. It is much more than that, it was (and is) the start of a whole culture that I am happy to be apart of.

Beyond these tales I read the short stories of James Thurber, my favorite American author, with his unique and humorous takes on ancient proverbs. I also followed the adventure of a certain Arthur Dent throughout the galaxy in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and its "Trilogy of Five" along with Douglas Adams other detective type novel with humor throughout. I also read most of the Ancient Myths of Greece during my high school years. I spent sometime studying the bible and the differences in translations. I've also read books about Hinduism and Buddhism and plan to read more in the coming years, because they are intensely interesting religions (Buddhism is much for philosophical then religious).


College
As a Freshman, I've only been through one semester so far. So little has been done so far. However, my first English teacher, a Mr. Anthony Collamati, was probably one of the best teachers I'd ever had. His unique teaching style really entrenched in me ideas about writing and reading and expression of ideas in general. Our final project included a remix video. Within that video, I had to chop up several different audio tracks all about completely different subjects into one singular theme, the one I wanted to put across.

Since my senior year of high school, I have been writing music and expanding the way I think about transmitting my thoughts to others. Struggling through metaphors, leitwortstil, and twists to go beyond the obvious truth.

Present:

Reasons for Taking this Course

• It satisfies the Literary English Requirement for graduation
• Never been a fan of structure-writing courses
• Prefer 20th and 21st Century lit over previous centuries because it is much easier to identify with the author.

Mark Todd