tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25874112765442711722024-03-13T00:37:04.844-07:00Becca's Book Blogone girl's study of great writing & quest to become a great writer<p><center><i>"The writer asks himself, 'Can I think of a plot that will parallel this? Can I take this work of literature as an example of something I might produce?' Let us, then, consider literature as a productive science."</i>--J.V. Cunningham</center></p>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.comBlogger45125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-64008219182736685252009-09-14T13:22:00.000-07:002009-09-14T15:12:46.914-07:00Genuine literary discernment is often a liability in editors.I've completely forsaken this blog. It's sad. To tide you (all 10 of you) over until my next post, an excerpt from <a href="http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Reviews-Essays/Redactor-Agonistes/ba-p/1367">this</a> interesti<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">ng article (</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(133, 104, 68); line-height: 30px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Redactor Agonistes </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); line-height: 17px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">By DANIEL MENAKER</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">):</span></span></span></span><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); line-height: 5px; font-size:48px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"></span></span></span><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 17px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">3. Genuine literary discernment is often a liability in editors. And it should be -- at least when it is unaccompanied by a broader, more popular sensibility it should be. When you are trying to acquire books that hundreds of thousands of people will buy, read, and like, you have to have some of the eclectic and demotic taste of the reading public. I have this completely unfounded theory that there are a million very good -- engaged, smart, enthusiastic -- generalist readers in America. There are five hundred thousand extremely good such readers. There are two hundred and fifty thousand excellent readers. There are a hundred and twenty-five thousand alert, active, demanding, well-educated (sometimes self-well-educated), and thoughtful -- that is, literarily superb -- readers in America. More than half of those people will happen not to have the time or taste for the book you are publishing. So, if these numbers are anything remotely like plausible, refined taste, no matter how interesting it may be, will limit your success as an acquiring editor. It's not enough for you to be willing to publish "The Long Sad Summer of Our Hot Forsaken Love," by Lachryma Duct, or "Nuke Anbar Province, and I Mean Now!," by Genralissimo Macho Picchu -- you have to actually </span><em style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">like </span></em><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">them, or somehow make yourself like them, or at least make yourself believe that you like them, in order to be able to see them through the publishing process.</span></span><div></div></blockquote><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); line-height: 17px; font-size:12px;"><br /></span></div></div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-40534695390308437442009-07-31T05:32:00.001-07:002009-09-04T23:08:26.581-07:00April Wheeler and Tessie Hutchinson<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48ZvabDaVjeleJqMqBXpkX8yYgbbnpOIZ6suChoW0cam7dPgcWqtpfZ-pRPG011ltTCk4X0brGaZGZEwFgco3dw_DAHd-6EqoBvXKSGmaf_ICAM6Ikyd81n2f33g1IPVq64VWkV5HHzoy/s1600-h/c443.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 208px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48ZvabDaVjeleJqMqBXpkX8yYgbbnpOIZ6suChoW0cam7dPgcWqtpfZ-pRPG011ltTCk4X0brGaZGZEwFgco3dw_DAHd-6EqoBvXKSGmaf_ICAM6Ikyd81n2f33g1IPVq64VWkV5HHzoy/s320/c443.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364544393064060882" border="0" /></a><br /><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-size:78%;">Read Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.americanliterature.com/Jackson/SS/TheLottery.html">HERE</a>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">I'm the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">internet's</span> least consistent blogger. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, on to this post!</span></span><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Revolutionary Road spoiler alerts ahead!</span></span><br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"><span>Almost immediately in both<span style="font-style: italic;"> Revolutionary Road</span> and "The Lottery", the reader realizes she's entered a world populated by characters wrestling indoctrinations, by people timid but eager to slough the burden of dated, sometimes dangerous, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">groupthink</span>.<br /><br />In <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Road</span>, a suburban complicity, a "tacit agreement to live in a total state of self-deception" is quickly established, especially amongst the four characters, young married couples The Wheelers and The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Campbells</span>, struggling hardest to imagine themselves as separate from the environment that defines them, "as members of an embattled, dwindling intellectual underground", "painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture". The novel opens to reveal a changing town, consolidated and newly industrialized, and a group of culturally aware young adults, The Laurel Players, to which The Wheelers and The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Campbells</span> belong, but with which they refuse to be lastingly associated. With the lips of this chasm</span></span><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;"><span>, one separating traditional expectations from new sensibilities, The Wheelers and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Campbells</span> flirt cautiously; still bound by the customs and proprieties of the community they resent, the young revolutionaries find solace in only the smallest, most private rebellions.<br /><br />Similarly, in "The Lottery", a village of people governed by habit are introduced. The villagers gather on a particular day, what the reader quickly gathers is an annual tradition, every year "of course", and fall into place almost instinctively, while we adjust our feet to their rhythm, to conduct the eponymous lottery.<br /><br />Like The Wheelers and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Campbells</span> of <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Road</span>, there are those among the villagers prepared to quietly question the status <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">quo</span>.<br /></span></span><p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> </p><blockquote style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><p><span style="font-size:100%;">"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, "that over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery." </span></p><span style="font-size:100%;"> Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young folks, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">nothing's</span> good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery," he added petulantly. "Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody."<br /><br /></span></blockquote><span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;">In both stories it is made clear, even before any consequences are explicitly defined, that dissenters will not have an easy time publicly rejecting accepted norms - which brings me to April Wheeler and Tessie Hutchinson: two women who meet tragic ends after (bravely? foolishly?) deciding to act against expectations. Each woman steps beyond her role as wife, mother, woman and pays for these <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">usurpations</span> with her life.<br /><br />April Wheeler, wife of Frank Wheeler, decides, against her husband's will, in a defiant "denial of womanhood" to abort the couple's third child, because the pregnancy hinders The Wheelers' plan to abandon suburbia in favor of Europe, the universal panacea of unsatisfied Americans in the world of Revolutionary Road, and because she realizes, from her end at least, that her marriage is truly loveless. Tessie Hutchinson, wife of Bill Hutchinson, decides to make a spectacle of herself before her entire village, by protesting the lottery's proceedings, which, as she is promptly reminded, is not how things work.<br /><br /><blockquote>"Be a good sport, Tessie." Mrs. Delacroix called, and Mrs. Graves said, "All of us took the same chance."<br /><br />"Shut up, Tessie," Bill Hutchinson said.<br /><br /></blockquote>For her noncooperation, Tessie<span style="font-style: italic;"> wins</span> the lottery... whose prize is death by stoning. The morality of this (centuries old?) practice is as resolute as is it horrific and archaic. No, the lottery isn't fixed - and Tessie is not chosen by any artful design of her peers, but her punishment, if judged against the expectations of the world she inhabits, is fitting. April too dies at the end of <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Road</span>, due to complications of her the late term abortion she secretly performs on herself. And the story couldn't have ended (as successfully) any other way. The message is that women who step out of traditional roles are exposing themselves to criticism, risking social isolation, and in <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Road</span> (1961) and "The Lottery" (1946), committing a most literal form of self-sabotage. It's important to include that, while ironic, and in the case of "The Lottery" allegorical, both of these stories provide valuable commentary on and insight into not only the historical roles of women, but the unattainable standards and unbearable pressures associated with attempting to shed blindly accepted traditions.<br /><br />Despite all of their protestations and aspirations to conquer the depths by which they're swallowed, The Wheelers, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Campbells</span>, and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Hutchinsons</span> are very much defined by, and in some cases, content to behave within (or afraid or unable to disobey) the limits assigned them.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;">Watch a short film adaptation of The Lottery and the trailer for the Revolutionary Road feature film below </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;">(I've got to see this movie eventually!)</span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;">:</span><br /></span><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tN5V8cQ2DAk&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tN5V8cQ2DAk&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-76120018584726939732009-07-31T02:19:00.000-07:002009-08-05T14:51:10.525-07:00My sole issue with Revolutionary Road<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtSMQa3BndyqQPSs4elhV_qOpLrVq7ynXBn1BLlEMC8qWZ1ZpNjxX-t5-aQ7jETDkDHLUhTExQc2WHYApaXC_eUrhCZ1i4MW7gE9npXbTyrZHXu_skvRmnFylMleX2bIkU78bwecfAqyNW/s1600-h/rr.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 260px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtSMQa3BndyqQPSs4elhV_qOpLrVq7ynXBn1BLlEMC8qWZ1ZpNjxX-t5-aQ7jETDkDHLUhTExQc2WHYApaXC_eUrhCZ1i4MW7gE9npXbTyrZHXu_skvRmnFylMleX2bIkU78bwecfAqyNW/s400/rr.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364575448512482226" border="0" /></a><br />I loved <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Road</span>, have had the paperback for 6 months and completely destroyed it; it's been written in, dog-eared, ripped, wrinkled, taped, and devoured. I'm not even the 1000<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">th</span> person to believe this, I'm sure, but, Richard Yates created a masterpiece - and Tennessee Williams agreed, according to his quote on the book's back cover.<br /><br />In my blog header, I announced that I'm making a<span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;">(n independent! thanks <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">FAFSA</span>!) </span>study of great writing in my hopes of becoming a great writer. What I can't decide, though, is if that means I'll be focusing more on the matter of the things I read, or the manner in which they're written - if it makes ANY sense to separate the two. Most of the things I have to say about <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Road </span>deal with themes, character development, correlations I discover between elements of the novel and other things I've read, etc - and very few with the intricacies of Yates' masterful prose.<br /><br />I know I like the book and there's no doubt that it's beautifully and expertly written, but it's proving difficult to dissect and understand (mechanically?) WHY I enjoy this book as much as I do. Perhaps, I've taken the J.V. Cunningham quote (also in the blog banner) too literally. Yates isn't given to syntactical or descriptive indulgences, and if I had breezed through the novel, I may have even thought that <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Road </span>was written plainly or that it read coldly - and I would have been wrong.<br /><br />I could probably fill a month's worth of posts with the things I liked about Yates' writing<span style="font-size:78%;"> (have I just <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">contradicted</span> myself?)</span>: the anthropomorphic descriptions of cars in the first chapter - "foolishly misplaced", "unnecessarily wide" that "crawled apologetically" to their destinations - illuminating character experiences, the story's setting paralleling character developments, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">synesthetic</span> descriptions and sense triggers - the "yellow smell" of sawdust causing Frank to recall the humiliation of his father's scolding, the "bright yellow pain of [Frank's] real awakening" -, the use of questions and indirect discourse to create group identities, highlight character conflicts, and act as a Greek chorus or supplementary narrator. And I could go on and on and on. And will in future posts.<br /><br />But this post is about the one thing, the sole thing, about <span style="font-style: italic;"></span>that troubled me: Yates' tendency to state, explicitly, through dialogue or narrator(/author?) interpretations, the significance of his own devices, symbols, themes, etc. At first, this absolutely thrilled me! I'd jot down a note, and pages, sometimes paragraphs or even lines later, there would be my note in the novel's very text (of course, stated infinitely more succinctly and eloquently). It assured me I was reading the book <span style="font-style: italic;">the right way</span> - whatever that means. If I came to the same conclusions as the book's <span style="font-style: italic;">author</span>/<span style="font-style: italic;">narrator</span>, my reading was on the right track... no problems, right? RIGHT?<br /><br />I thought so the first two or three times it happened and resisted becoming alarmed until the third to last chapter, page 320, where I scratched in the margins, and to my surprise - <span style="font-style: italic;">angrily</span>,<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;"> DO I LOVE OR HATE YATES' STATING HIS DEVICES THE WAY HE DOES? </span></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span>Hate??? Surely, I couldn't HATE anything about<span style="font-style: italic;"> Revolutionary Road</span>. Could I? Well, that's what I wrote. And here is the sentence that prompted my marginal scribblings:<br /><br /><blockquote>Then you discovered you were working at life the way the Laurel Players worked at <span style="font-style: italic;">The Petrified Forest</span>, or the way Steve <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Kovick</span> worked at his drums - earnest and sloppy and full of pretension and all wrong;...</blockquote><br />Maybe it's because it reminds me of what I hated most about certain academic writing - the horrid and forced repetition, the restating of the thesis - which always felt patronizing. Can we not assume the readers of our essays (most likely our teachers or professors) get the gist of the thing the first time around, or the second? Must we subject ourselves and our audience to a superficial rewording of the obviously and already stated? Now, I'm 100% sure this is not what Yates is doing, but flashbacks from my brushes with academia<span style="font-size:78%;"> (Full Disclosure: I've left two colleges so far and am headed for a third, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Shimer</span>, in the Spring)</span> sprang forward after my ninth and and tenth happenings upon these moments in <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Road</span>.<br /><br />The first instance occurred on page 45 - here, April Wheeler has just cut the grass while Frank was sleeping and hung-over from drinking the night after an argument between them:<br /><blockquote><br />Everything about her seemed determined to prove, with a new, flat-footed emphasis, that a sensible middle-class housewife was all she had ever wanted to be and that all she had ever wanted to love was a husband who would get out and cut the grass once in a while, instead of sleeping all day.<span style="font-family:Wingdings;"><span></span></span></blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS82XoVsGmPmQiLAEPaZ8U4YYXpnUEJ104mPDIcvpuMPG4kR-WpYq8gVnN6BuCorH7o_Y66KfdLGFVMmvWXAcfFmhoO3fi8a22O5dYGtgTmdqtf0JaJpUdxMVslRHU8MMaECndYaXF-3Nc/s1600-h/Snapshot_20090731.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS82XoVsGmPmQiLAEPaZ8U4YYXpnUEJ104mPDIcvpuMPG4kR-WpYq8gVnN6BuCorH7o_Y66KfdLGFVMmvWXAcfFmhoO3fi8a22O5dYGtgTmdqtf0JaJpUdxMVslRHU8MMaECndYaXF-3Nc/s400/Snapshot_20090731.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364583577143815378" border="0" /></a><br />Because earlier in the book, it's made clear that April has no interest in being a "sensible middle-class housewife" and, in fact, feels "trapped" by her environment, I made this note: <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:85%;">ex post facto modification of expectations, to minimize failures – also in this case to make Frank feel the full magnitude of her disappointment in his shortcomings. </span> </span>I'm not embarrassed to say that I was proud of myself for having come up with and noticed this, and more for fitting it into the margin legibly. Imagine how impressed with myself I was when I read this on page 54, a mere 9 pages later: "[Frank] laboriously pried the stone out again and began hacking at the root."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-size:85%;">HACKING AT THE ROOT???? (</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span><span>Frank is literally hacking at a root here to make way for a stone path he's installing on his property</span>.)</span> </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-size:85%;">Well, that kind of sounds like moving the goal posts, which parallels that note I just took. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Hmmmm</span>, I may be on to something.</span><br /><br />To confirm my suspicions that I was, indeed, the most brilliant reader of any novel of all time EVER, this on page 55: "...by now [Frank's] mind had mercifully amended the facts."<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">MERCIFULLY AMENDED THE FACTS!???! Exactly! Wow, this Yates guy really has the whole thing figured out!</span></span><br /><br />Honestly, I think this post has helped me come to terms with what was troubling me. My other examples of this, and there are at least a dozen others, are pleasant, and reassuring <span style="font-size:85%;">(I may give them a separate post)</span>. I often feel like I'm reading in some isolated wilderness or vacuum - and that I'm posting my thoughts into the infinite void that is the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">internet</span> - so for Yates to give me a little wink now and then is .... well... it's awesome!<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">And I'm vaguely aware that I'm probably inventing this entire phenomenon, so if that's the case, feel free to let me know in the comments.</span><div><span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:180%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">(</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">o</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">r</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">t</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">h</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">a</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">t</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">t</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">h</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">e</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">r</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">e</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">i</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">s</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">a</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">n</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">a</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">m</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">e</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">f</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">o</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">r</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">w</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">h</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">a</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">t</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"> I've written about - echoes, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">parallels</span>... something.)</span><br /></span></span><br />We all need a little literary therapy... occasionally. This blog can be mine.<br /><br />In other news, it's probably time I find a book club. Until I'm back in school, it's the waiting game <span style="font-size:78%;">(and blog posting game) </span>for me.<br /><br />I'll break up the Revolutionary Road stuff with thoughts on Wilfrid <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Sheed's</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Max Jamison</span>, Montaigne's Essays, a few short stories by Black authors from <span style="font-style: italic;">Black Voices: An Anthology of Afro-American Literature, African-American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology, and The Best Short Stories by Black Writers</span>, and Sherwood Anderson's <span style="font-style: italic;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Winseburg</span>, Ohio</span>.</div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-68458917708271331212009-07-02T19:43:00.000-07:002009-08-05T19:50:33.731-07:00"jolts me out of the present, for just a moment"<div>In Amateur Reader's <a href="http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/2009/07/at-end-of-sixteen-years-every-line-in.html">most recent post</a> at Wuthering Expectations, he writes of a single sentence in George Eliot's <i>Silas Marner</i> that "jolts [him] out of the present, for just a moment."</div><div><br /></div><div>Such sentences exist also in <i>Revolutionary Road</i>. The opening lines of Part 2:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">There now began a time of such joyous derangement, of such exultant carelessness, that Frank Wheeler could never afterwards remember how long it lasted. It could have been a week or two weeks or more before his life began to come into focus, with its customary concern for the passage of time and its anxious need to measure and apportion it; and by then, looking back, he was unable to tell how long it had been otherwise.</span></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Until this point, the narrative relies on events recounted chronologically by a third-person narrator, interspersed with illuminating character histories occurring before the action of the novel takes place. In the two above sentences, "afterwards" and "looking back" jolt me out of the present. </div><div><br /></div><div>This is the first time in the book the prospect of <b>any</b> future for The Wheelers is made tangible, though Yates doesn't reveal whether Frank is "looking back" on this moment from Paris - or trapped, still, in his house on Revolutionary Road. Even without this disclosure, Yates' measured inclusion of "afterwards" and "looking back" means that Frank persists at least long enough to have forgotten how long the intoxication caused by the mere IDEA of Paris lasted.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Revolutionary Road</i>'s characters are given to extended hypotheticals: planning trips that may never happen, imagining lives that may never exist, pining for, fictionalizing, and romanticizing their pasts, insinuating themselves into superior peer groups... most of their vagaries impotent. This, coupled with a looming sense of menace, a "virus of calamity" just <i>waiting</i> to be consummated, provide no guarantee of the characters' survival, emotional or otherwise. </div><div><br /></div><div>I was THRILLED, upon reading these two sentences, to find that Frank makes it to the future! AND remains lucid!<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></span></span></div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-1316061876796122052009-06-25T10:51:00.000-07:002009-06-25T11:35:13.241-07:00Nabokov on The Writing Reader vs. The Reading Writer (sort of)Again, Vladimir Nabokov expresses <a href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/writing-reader-vs-reading-writer.html">my sentiments</a> better than I ever could<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (though it's ironic I'm finding so much enjoyment in the articulation of my thoughts in his words, as just after the passage below, Nabokov writes, "minor readers like to recognize their own ideas in a pleasing disguise" - to which I must reply, in </span><a href="http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/2009/05/charmed-by-author.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">the words</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> of Marianne Moore, "I’ve always felt that if a thing has been said in the very best way, how can you say it better?")</span>:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Time and space, the colors of the seasons, the movements of muscles and minds, all these are for writers of genius (as far as we can guess and I trust we guess right) not traditional notions which may be borrowed from the circulating library of public truths but a series of unique surprises which master artists have learned to express in their own unique way. To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction."</blockquote><br />I'd <a href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/05/writing-reader-vs-reading-writer.html">tried</a> to write something to this effect last month, and naturally, Nabokov's facility of thought and expression eclipses my fumbling, groping, sometimes fatuous ramblings. Nabokov is Nabokov for a reason.<br />=)<div><br /></div><div>Also, <a href="http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/2009/04/completely-accurate-description.html">this</a> from Elizabeth Bishop, to make us all feel more foolish:<blockquote>“I do not understand the nature of the satisfaction a completely accurate description or imitation of anything at all can give, but apparently in order to produce it the description or imitation must be brief, or compact, and have at least the effect of being spontaneous.”</blockquote></div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-18984318393051369482009-06-24T01:15:00.001-07:002009-06-25T11:22:28.293-07:00Nabokov on Macro and Micro ReadingI'm aware that though I arrive at my many made-up terms independently, the concepts they attempt to describe have existed for decades (centuries?).<div><br /></div><div>Here's Vladimir Nabokov <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">(from the essay in the post below, "Good Readers and Good Writers")</span> on what I call <a href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/macro-vs-micro-reading-why-i-cant-read.html">macro and micro reading</a>:</div><div><br /></div><div><blockquote>"In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes <i>after</i> the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected."</blockquote></div><div><br /></div><div>I agree! But this has never stopped me from formulating a (hypo)thesis about a book <a href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/revolutionary-road-first-impressions.html">13 pages in</a>. It <i>has</i> prevented my posting about books before I read and reread them obsessively. </div><div><br /></div><div>My mom sees I'm reading Revolutionary Road, the book open to a page littered with marginal scribblings <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><b>(I'm a </b></span><a href="http://www.litlovers.com/blog/?p=1227"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><b>carnal, rather than a courtly</b></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><b> lover of books)</b></span>. Then: <i>Haven't you already read that, Becky?</i> Of course I have! But now I'm <b><i>READING</i></b> it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Again, Nabokov understands my actions and motives better than I or my mother - even after I try, futilely, to explain them:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation."</blockquote><blockquote><br /></blockquote>Precisely! </div><div><br /></div><div>There will be more substantive posts soon, though the beautiful Chicago summer slyly hints to me that "there are times when one is not in a disposition thoroughly to relish good writing."<br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><b>(via </b></span><a href="http://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/2009/01/excerpts-from-letters-of-charles-lamb.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><b>Laudator Temporis Acti</b></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><b> - from Charles Lamb in a 1796 letter to Coleridge)</b></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:85%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:10px;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div><div>I've not yet been afflicted with that disposition, but it's early in the season.</div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-32922539877713263632009-06-20T08:24:00.000-07:002009-06-21T05:04:36.769-07:00TESTING NEW GOOGLE BOOKS FEATURES!Am I the only person excited about the new <i><a href="http://books.google.com/"><b>Google Books</b></a></i> features?<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>This is what I'm reading:</div><div>Nabokov's "Good Readers and Good Writers" from <i>Lectures on Literature</i>.</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><b>(added the essay to my short list after </b></span><a href="http://wisdomofthewest.blogspot.com/2009/06/ur-story-death-of-meaning.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><b>THIS</b></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><b> entry @ </b></span><a href="http://wisdomofthewest.blogspot.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><b>Wisdom of the West</b></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><b>)</b></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="border:0px" src="http://books.google.com/books?id=jP5-XRoUVBgC&lpg=PA1&ots=vrt0jp0WQ6&dq=vladimir%20nabokov%20good%20readers%20and%20good%20writers&pg=PA1&output=embed" width="500" height="500"></iframe><br /><br />Feel free to read along!<br /><br />More info on <i>Google Books</i> updates <a href="http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-features-on-google-books.html">HERE</a>, <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/18/google-books-adds-new-features-and-tools/">HERE</a>, and <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_book_search_just_got_better.php">HERE</a>. <div><br /></div><div>The new features include embedding (see above), a more comprehensive search engine (to locate text within books, and the books themselves), more intuitive navigation, and a sleeker interface.</div><div><br /></div><div>I, personally, LOVE the changes.</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, <i>Google Books</i> has reached <a href="http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/"><b>a landmark legal settlement</b></a> allowing the service to provide online access to <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(potentially)</span> millions more books than it previously could!</div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-55130485773562437152009-06-15T03:18:00.000-07:002009-07-31T16:40:31.869-07:00Self-Deprecation + Blogging?I've convinced a few people I know to take a look at this book blog of mine, and some short stories I've written, and "self-deprecation" came up more than once. I apparently think more meanly of my (slender?) skills in fiction writing than do my friends and family... not that I don't value their opinions.... That said, I won't be posting my prose here in the foreseeable future.<div><br /></div><div>Self-deprecation can be tolerable if drenched in irony - and through this exercise, I've (again) discovered that conversely, if coming from a place of true uncertainly, self-deprecation can be uncomfortable( and ANNOYING!) to endure.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is, unfortunately, little affliction of false modesty when I say I'm daunted by (and in awe of) the work and my readings of great novelists. I don't write these things with any latent assurance that I may one day accomplish that which now seems so beyond what I know of my talents. Perhaps this has been my learning to keep these doubts to myself. </div><div><br /></div><div>I will have been blogging here for four months by late June and am still grappling with and groping for the right tone. The issue is, as things now stand, I have no other outlet to express or <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">exorcise</span> my thoughts, feelings, fears, and opinions about the things I read and write. </div><div><br /></div><div>This passage from Nabokov's "Good Readers and Good Writers" (<i>Lectures on Literature) </i>better articulates <i>one aspect </i>of my fear of insipidity (it has many facets):</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times;"><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';">Time and space, the colors of the seasons, the movements of muscles and minds, all these are for writers of genius (as far as we can guess and I trust we guess right) not traditional notions which may be borrowed from the circulating library of public truths but a series of unique surprises which master artists have learned to express in their own unique way. To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction. The various combinations these minor authors are able to produce within these set limits may be quite amusing in a mild ephemeral way because minor readers like to recognize their own ideas in a pleasing disguise. But the real writer, the fellow who sends planets spinning and models a man asleep and eagerly tampers with the sleeper’s rib, that kind of author has no given values at his disposal: he must create them himself. The art of writing is a very futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction.</span></span></blockquote><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'trebuchet ms';"><br /></span></span></blockquote></span>That covers what could excite or sedate upon a <a href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/macro-vs-micro-reading-why-i-cant-read.html">macro-reading</a>... Then there is the matter of writing WELL. This from a girl who feels her writing hasn't matured since she was 17 years old, when it was still novel and impressive.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'll be back to writing about reading in no time.... so ignore my venting. No comments on this one because I don't really want to know what anyone thinks of this rant - in all its sincere, more than likely inappropriate disclosure.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unrelated: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">I may be developing something of an affinity for Yates' work.</span></div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-61575949883794040072009-06-11T23:37:00.001-07:002009-06-13T08:31:44.322-07:00___________________<a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvhPSZkYhfQfCgtQMOq2UzlSKHltRLGuut8FiJi-4FMKfslKl-awsX-NP38ONseormyJFRnni1UFvl7gepI_FD2s1f1ZOHIl37XwJhZ09jDlG7Q9AC7UpxwFMNkttqvbLPvBWVQGaKluBN/s1600-h/9780312420819.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 172px; height: 258px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvhPSZkYhfQfCgtQMOq2UzlSKHltRLGuut8FiJi-4FMKfslKl-awsX-NP38ONseormyJFRnni1UFvl7gepI_FD2s1f1ZOHIl37XwJhZ09jDlG7Q9AC7UpxwFMNkttqvbLPvBWVQGaKluBN/s320/9780312420819.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5346334868317011762" border="0" /></a>There seems to be some occult providence dictating the things I happen to read. What other explanation could there be for a girl who makes reading lists, never abides them, yet constantly stumbles upon prose inexplicably supplementary to what she has last read?<div><br /><div>While reading <a href="http://gawker.com/5287265/media-jobs-09-craigslist-serfdom">an article on <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Gawker</span></a> today about shady and hastily assembled <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Craigslist</span> Writing employment postings, I came across <a href="http://gawker.com/5287265/media-jobs-09-craigslist-serfdom#c13546164">a blind link</a> under this user comment: <i>"Gosh, this is where we're heading, huh? Everyone should read this, then"</i>. I followed the blind link to what I quickly discovered was "Builders" from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Collected Short Stories of Richard Yates</span>. Naturally, because I've been reading and enjoying Yates' <i>Revolutionary Road</i>, I dove into "Builders" - and in it I discovered familiar themes, discussions of which I will save for my posts about Revolutionary Road.</div><div><br /></div><div>What struck me most was the story's male protagonist - and how, with all his misguided aggression toward his well-meaning wife, I could end the story not hating the character. I feel similarly about <i>Revolutionary Road</i>'s Frank Wheeler. And here's why:</div><div><br /></div><div>Just as Frank Wheeler resents in his wife the recognition of his own weaknesses, (the "suffering creature whose existence he tried every day of his life to deny but whom he knew as well and as painfully as he knew himself"), we as readers of Yates' work often find his characters repulsive because they amplify flaws we abhor in ourselves. From what I can tell, Yates' characters have a tendency to spin in the mud; in both stories of his I've read, the reader jumps into a mild hell <i>in media res</i> with characters who loathe themselves and their insignificance as much as we pity them for their lack of progress.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bob Prentice in "Builders" models his life after and measures his talents and evolution as a writer against Hemingway. When Prentice is conned, his shame is only magnified by his realization that "Ernest Hemingway could never in his life have known... [his] own sense of being a fool." And he was serious. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm 22-years-old (the same age as Prentice in "Builders") and understand having idols and feeling inadequate. But seeing these perceived failings in Bob Prentice and Frank Wheeler makes them seem hilarious and trivial. These yard sticks that exist only in our own minds, to which we hold ourselves strictly accountable - become prohibitive neuroses - and frankly, it's hard to witness in others, even if the <i>others</i> are fictional.</div><div><br /></div><div>So when a stumped Prentice, struggling with writer's block, reacts to his wife's suggestion that he stop trying so hard to be "literary" and "think of Irving Berlin" by saying he'd "give her Irving Berlin right in the mouth in about a minute, if she didn't lay off [him] and mind her own goddamn business," the feminist in me wants to continue the story resolved to dislike Bob Prentice - but the human in me can relate to misplaced anger and aggression, and especially hypersensitivity on the matter of others' opinions of my writing.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm finding it impossible to hate Yates' impossible characters, in short.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:large;">Update:</span></b> On the Chicago Reader's <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/literature/">Lit & Lectures homepage</a> today, <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/ourtown/090101/">an article</a> originally published by the paper in November 2003 was featured, written by J.R. Jones detailing his intimate history with Richard Yates and his interview for Blake Bailey's <i>A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Works of Richard Yates</i>. In the article is this quote: <b>"...[Yates] could be disarmingly candid and grimly funny, especially regarding himself, and the compassion for life’s losers that made his stories heartbreaking was evident every time he spoke." </b>Sounds about right.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><i>Revolutionary Road </i>posts up next....</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">=)</span></div></div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-60912522096678707792009-06-06T21:08:00.000-07:002009-06-08T03:08:21.654-07:00"suffer[ing] from a terrible inertia"I've been listening to <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/fiction">New Yorker Fiction Podcasts</a>, first selecting those whose descriptions contain names I recognize. Yesterday, I downloaded <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/07/21/080721on_audio_hemon">Aleksandar Hemon's discussion of Bernard Malamud’s “A Summer’s Reading.”</a><br /><br />I've met Hemon twice - both times in Chicago, the first when I was 17 and had just finished <span style="font-style:italic;">Nowhere Man</span>, at a local reading and discussion of the book. We crossed paths again the next year at the 2005 Chicago Public Library Carl Sandburg Awards Dinner honoring John Updike (who I also met that night. He was gracious and signed not only the two-volume <span style="font-style:italic;">Rabbit</span> series every attendee received, but the 3 other books of his I'd brought along; I later discovered my actions were inconsiderate and in terrible taste, but I had NO IDEA at the time and was simply thrilled to be in Updike's presence. Though, having reread the <span style="font-style:italic;">Rabbit, Run </span>more recently, I've found my tastes quite changed.... ).<br /><br />I was at the dinner with a friend, thanks to a kind benefactor, who understood two bright-eyed 18-year-olds with literary aspirations could have never afforded the night's price. She spotted Hemon before I did and crossed the room to accost him in the most untoward fashion. I, of course, followed, beaming. To our surprise and elation, he not only remembered meeting us both the previous year at his reading, but recalled our names. <div><br />Yesterday, as I listened to Hemon's discussion of Malamud's "A Summer's Reading", Deborah Treisman's description of the short story's protagonist as a young man who "seems to suffer from a terrible inertia" left me with a pang of guilt. Because of the timing, my present circumstances(, and youthful egotism?), and our brief (and probably, in my mind, exaggerated) history, my mind was convinced Hemon's (and Treisman's) words were a direct indictment of idleness.<div><br /></div><div>I am moved to action.</div></div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-91821699185245727842009-05-31T01:32:00.001-07:002009-05-31T01:58:03.986-07:00???Do you ever get the feeling you're reading far too aggressively? So aggressively your collected notes seems the length of a Bible? So aggressively you wonder if you'll ever finish?<br /><br />As I comb through <span style="font-style: italic;">Revolutionary Road</span> <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">again</span>, I continue to happen upon things I at first missed. I can't say whether my reading has been a journey through a mine field or treasure trove - either way, I tread attentively, so as not to, at my peril or fortune, overlook anything of great consequence.<br /><br />That's where I am.... so expect an influx of posts this week.<span style="font-weight: bold;"> THERE'S SO MUCH TO SAY</span>.Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-68480506841885161952009-05-28T10:17:00.000-07:002009-05-28T20:11:24.889-07:00!!!Forgive me, blog, for I have lapsed. It has been sixteen days since my last post, but presently I will be back with MANY things to say about Revolutionary Road, Max Jamison and all I've read during the last two and a half weeks.<br /><br />=)Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-63524054061525907612009-05-12T22:45:00.000-07:002009-05-13T13:34:03.903-07:00graphophobia!The fear of writing!<br /><br />Do first drafts always read like excerpts from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Ashford">The Young Visiters</a>? Or is it just me?<br /><br />I'm exaggerating, but by how much I'm afraid I can't yet tell.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXYUtvmJfZaKE6CyC2pniKu9ijF3W6208sW8phO-8kS2DZgqndgQzKJeKf9btm0wRDWMYk3xEOsQDEfeo6nYqUfrL5XZhXu8m-WuuF6dH6S-ifZMswJNHnN6YqTfCl-oA4bLTrHx6SJ8uA/s1600-h/the-young-visiters-or-mr-salteenas-plan.jpeg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 205px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXYUtvmJfZaKE6CyC2pniKu9ijF3W6208sW8phO-8kS2DZgqndgQzKJeKf9btm0wRDWMYk3xEOsQDEfeo6nYqUfrL5XZhXu8m-WuuF6dH6S-ifZMswJNHnN6YqTfCl-oA4bLTrHx6SJ8uA/s320/the-young-visiters-or-mr-salteenas-plan.jpeg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335182020708598338" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://books.google.com/books?id=_SAmAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+young+visiters&ei=Rl8KSr21LIe4M5WVuekD&client=firefox-a#PPA23,M1">read The Young Visiters by 9-year-old Daisy Ashford here</a></span>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-35463082346185572222009-05-07T12:17:00.000-07:002009-05-11T23:23:57.903-07:00The writing reader vs. The reading writer<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8_Yavm4lZ0RcIxBdIvgjFIGwQF6KLPkehwrqzGHMjU5fuoiPg0AYEivx4kjtMs-DcQQRi1zCmBVuHKaEMnZwSMjDYoIe7K7appeQeJliVyEL6qxKAL0IA8LUl8cg0TN7B62Qvv6Vi8Zmv/s1600-h/figure+drawing.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8_Yavm4lZ0RcIxBdIvgjFIGwQF6KLPkehwrqzGHMjU5fuoiPg0AYEivx4kjtMs-DcQQRi1zCmBVuHKaEMnZwSMjDYoIe7K7appeQeJliVyEL6qxKAL0IA8LUl8cg0TN7B62Qvv6Vi8Zmv/s320/figure+drawing.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333171168270545362" border="0" /></a><br />I'm stuck. For now, I'm a writing reader. I read great writing and write (here) about what I feel makes each piece great - in hopes that these studies will (soon) make me a reading writer, someone who can take what she has observed and apply it to her own work.<br /><br />If the writer is an artist, the writing reader draws from sight, from a model... and I'm still studying anatomy, trying to locate the bone and muscle structures under the flesh of the thing. The masters have the biology internalized and have moved forward to establish unique styles. Master writing readers can each interpret the same model brilliantly, but the resulting works remain distinctive to each writing reader's own hand.<br /><br />The reading writer draws from her imagination. She may refer to the rudiments of form when conceiving a work, and her art remains true to life, but is based on no one model. Her subjects are fictional.<br /><br />I'm struggling to find the point where figure drawing, portrait painting, interpretation end - and illustration, conception, TRUE creation begin.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Q0YepOinuqv3m94boJmezutZVZgjTfCfSb9b2xF3PsfcrYhYilmwd80cDx-9qw7E3kXIeS2rav4uqC_2d_V1XCwPOsX2Ij_pJFAmQAnJx8cj2cPG8ssZ4h5V2anMaY2zOUuPx5SsgiVO/s1600-h/loomis.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 284px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9Q0YepOinuqv3m94boJmezutZVZgjTfCfSb9b2xF3PsfcrYhYilmwd80cDx-9qw7E3kXIeS2rav4uqC_2d_V1XCwPOsX2Ij_pJFAmQAnJx8cj2cPG8ssZ4h5V2anMaY2zOUuPx5SsgiVO/s320/loomis.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333171210135709650" border="0" /></a><br />Analysis and observation are fine (and very instructing) for now. But I'm a fiction writer at heart.Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-56558764963481644052009-05-07T11:18:00.000-07:002009-05-11T23:20:15.252-07:00Literary Present TenseDoes anyone else <span style="font-style: italic;">in the world</span> have TENSE ISSUES????<br /><br />As I reread some of my posts - some from as recently as yesterday - I realize that the tense issues I've always noticed in my writing are, when I don't take care to curb them, as prevalent as they ever were.<br /><br />This 'literary present tense' doesn't come naturally to me.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">WORKING ON IT.</span></span><br /></div><br />...So if you're reading this blog, try to overlook whatever inconsistencies in tense you may encounter. I'm *fixing* them now.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">"It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present."</span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Edith 'Little Edie' Bouvier Beale<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Grey Gardens</span></span><br /></div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-87589100909484681862009-05-06T10:25:00.001-07:002009-07-31T23:11:09.614-07:00The absence of men in Kristin Hunter's An Interesting Social Study<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXOnYrrH5HIZFhulmCrDHrA5axJ19oWOITsnPYzjX0OEqTUqh0N64MBcdcFUoJ-72Rrlj4zwj1uvAaYEgA9iI19qNowCXcBooyt7d3GbpgL_SqurEe7TLbdVYUJh3aouHYYc29OlgawS1J/s1600-h/cape-may-nj025.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXOnYrrH5HIZFhulmCrDHrA5axJ19oWOITsnPYzjX0OEqTUqh0N64MBcdcFUoJ-72Rrlj4zwj1uvAaYEgA9iI19qNowCXcBooyt7d3GbpgL_SqurEe7TLbdVYUJh3aouHYYc29OlgawS1J/s320/cape-may-nj025.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332777591445735538" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;" >Read An Interesting Social Study <a href="http://beccas-book-blog-documents.blogspot.com/2009/05/interesting-social-study-short-story-by.html">HERE</a> and Susan <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Glaspell's</span> Trifles <a href="http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/trifles.htm">HERE</a>.</span><br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >"I know how things can be--for women. ...We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things--it's all just a different kind of the same thing."</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">--from Trifles by Susan <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Glaspell</span> (1916)</span><br /></div><br /><br /><br />There are only three characters in Kristin Hunter's short story - a young, African-American woman, "the new resident", approximately 30 years old, and two older Caucasian women, Mrs. Powell and Corinna - and this story of learned acceptance over evening drinks would be complicated in the presence of men.<br /><br />While talking on an open porch on the mid-1960s Cape May shore, the new and old residents find common ground and can judge each other (or learn not to) more accurately once they discover they're not so different.<br /><br />Corinna mentions to the new resident that when she “was growing up, girls <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">weren</span>’t supposed to train for careers. [They] went to school to become young ladies. The schools [she] went to, National Cathedral and Finch, were mostly finishing schools.” Upon reflection, the new resident, who had completed her undergraduate studies at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Spelman</span>, a Historically Black University for Women, realizes <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Spelman</span> is little more than the same, all three with their weekly tea parties and frivolous social engagements. The new resident, in disclosing her Bryn <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Mawr</span> graduate studies, also gains the respect of Mrs. Powell who "went to Spence" and doesn't think anyone learned "a damn thing in those young-lady schools, especially in the South".<br /><br />It's relatively simple for the three women to overlook their separating circumstances and find commonality, but among men, the new resident's approval might not have been as easily earned. Though the three women are divided (superficially) by class, race, wealth, and age, they're still, in a sense among their peers.<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The new resident said softly, almost to herself, “I wanted a quiet place to work on my thesis this summer. That’s why I picked Cape May. Besides, I heard it was a pretty town.”<br /><br />“Well, you came to the right place if you wanted quiet,” Mrs. Powell said, pouring herself another double slug of whiskey. “This town is so damn quiet it gets my nerves sometimes.”</span></blockquote>In Susan <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Glaspell's</span> 1916 drama, <a href="http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/trifles.htm">Trifles</a>, a woman is suspected of killing her husband - and when two female neighbors accompany officials to the home in search of proof, the two find all they need: proof that the suspect had been oppressed and emotionally abused by her husband (manifested in erratic sewing, a canary with a snapped neck, the cessation of the woman's singing, for which she had once been known in the community). For this, they suppress the evidence against her, secretly repairing her <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">stitchwork</span> and stealing the canary's corpse, pardoning her crime because they, a jury of her peers, understand the stagnant oppression, the "stillness" she must have had to endure.<br /><br />Similarly, the three women on the porch at Cape May during that mid-1960s summer, "a strong tide seem[<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">ing</span>] to have scattered the varicolored bodies of bathers as randomly as shells," couldn't possibly condemn one another for being of a different race, or for the sins of their forefathers. They find in each other friendship, understanding, hope - understandings that in the presence of men, would have been more difficult to achieve.<br /><br />...And male characters would have elongated and complicated the fairly simple narrative. Its 8 pages could have easily become a novel with the hurdles the women would have had to overcome in reaching the same end.<br />=)Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-87979929663215088382009-05-05T23:11:00.000-07:002009-06-27T07:28:00.457-07:00An Interesting Social Study by Kristin Hunter<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr9nryvluMnXk23L47AFL1yztRyQ0DElbf1iWv5wqm7HcA0B5iCE4UhHp1oOGEnwHMRy8mMxhvWO9sagyl9zmmBuhqgUFfE5NouqTJs8oMGZIhPmIcUucioKoVRRPFftyQ9e5sXu_Yh5DG/s1600-h/kristin-hunter.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 281px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr9nryvluMnXk23L47AFL1yztRyQ0DElbf1iWv5wqm7HcA0B5iCE4UhHp1oOGEnwHMRy8mMxhvWO9sagyl9zmmBuhqgUFfE5NouqTJs8oMGZIhPmIcUucioKoVRRPFftyQ9e5sXu_Yh5DG/s320/kristin-hunter.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332647394628605714" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">This is Becca's Book Blog's 29th post - but only its 2nd concerning a Black author, its 8th concerning the work of female authors... which is a shame - as I'm a young, Black woman.<br /><br />I'm now making a point to write about Black and female authors - with an emphasis on the intersection of the two conditions - a space in which I reside, happily.<br /><br />First is a short story published in 1967 by Kristin Hunter, "An Interesting Social Study". I couldn't find the story reproduced ANYWHERE online, so I've typed and posted it on an auxiliary blog started for this very purpose.<br /><br />Read An Interesting Social Study <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://beccas-book-blog-documents.blogspot.com/2009/05/interesting-social-study-short-story-by.html">HERE</a>.</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />A <a href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/macro-vs-micro-reading-why-i-cant-read.html">micro-reading</a> of An Interesting Social Study may turn up more than a few issues... the overuse of adjectives and adverbs and prosaic repetition of dialogue structures ("she said", "she inquired", et al, et al), but besides, there is much to love in Kristin Hunter's story of an evening drink between old and new acquaintances on a porch in a 1960's Jersey Shore town, Cape May.<br /><br />The story's young female protagonist is never named, only referred to as "the new resident", and is the only character whose thoughts are explicitly revealed to the reader. There are two other characters: Mrs. Powell, who is quickly established as the director of the story's coming action, whose "tone less of invitation than command" is not to be refuted, whose invitations are so coveted as to resemble "the instant fulfillment of a wish in childhood", whose "booming voice of authority" delivers "incontrovertible orders" to all around her. And her longtime friend Corinna who, by Mrs. Powell's declaration is "dumb", a "one hundred per cent fool", and who "accepted Mrs. Powell’s tyranny, as if [it] were divinely ordained circumstance."<br /><br />What isn't immediately obvious is that Mrs. Powell and Corinna are White and the new resident is Black. The initial physical descriptions of Mrs. Powell and Corinna are as follows:<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">[Mrs. Powell was] an unusually tall and bony woman with a magnificently lined face which depicted, clearly as a graph, a mixed history of pleasure and pain...<br /><br />[Corinna] was a plump woman of vague shape and features, with wispy dyed-red hair; like her hostess, near sixty; and dressed, like her, for a city luncheon, in a silk suit, polished straw hat, and quantities of pearls. Except that Mrs. Powell's hair was uncompromisingly short and gray, and her pearls were real.</span></blockquote><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnQnwwSwr7jChYxDSPF63i47KYkcAS92HgPRRtORDooFmSRpRWsdYNnIh1hDInzKaXlevwyl-jb8JQyAmeiDEzXY9ehUswVHmzLpBY-uWxjbOVQxnaUd0TzaxLGkJVDTlpzkY_3xf-U0yK/s1600-h/NJ-00223-D~Greetings-from-Cape-May-New-Jersey-Posters.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 222px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnQnwwSwr7jChYxDSPF63i47KYkcAS92HgPRRtORDooFmSRpRWsdYNnIh1hDInzKaXlevwyl-jb8JQyAmeiDEzXY9ehUswVHmzLpBY-uWxjbOVQxnaUd0TzaxLGkJVDTlpzkY_3xf-U0yK/s320/NJ-00223-D~Greetings-from-Cape-May-New-Jersey-Posters.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332655099459325074" border="0" /></a><br />Corinna refers to local blue collar workers as "colored" early in the story, which was not cause for alarm in 1967, when An Interesting Social Study was published, but it's clear that her referral establishes "colored" as <span style="font-style: italic;">other</span>. The new resident, once she's sufficiently inebriated by Mrs. Powell, reveals that she'd done her undergraduate studies at Spelman College - a Historically Black Women's College. When the races of the women become apparent, the story finds its footing.<br /><br />The setting, Cape May in summer, and its signs of social progression, not unlike in Yates' Revolutionary Road, mirrors the reluctantly changing attitudes of its inhabitants. In Revolutionary Road, "three swollen villages had lately been merged by a wide and clamorous highway called Route Twelve" - and along this new highway, commercial properties, "KING KONE, MOBILGAS, SHOPORAMA, EAT," spring up - all while the sly elitism of young, suburban families prompt resentment toward any lingering signs of what was once an uncouth rural town. Similarly, in An Interesting Social Study, both Cape May's new and old residents can feel a shift in the town's culture:<br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">...There was no longer any clear pattern of segregation on Cape May’s beaches. A strong tide seemed to have scattered the varicolored bodies of bathers as randomly as shells. But last night she had noticed the stately old hotels floating at the edge of the water like giant ghost ships, empty, yet lit from stem to stern. They had given her an eerie feeling, and she had turned her back on the ocean wind and hurried home, shivering.</span></blockquote>The tide of change brings integration to the historically relaxed, carefree shore town, and also, by Mrs. Powell's admission had divide it into "'two towns... the old summer people, and the new summer people. The old people... kind of wooden-headed and slow, and it takes them along time to make up their minds about new thing." The old people like Cape May's old hotels, their ghostly, stately manner, leave the new resident unsettled - her first encounter with Mrs. Powell described by the narrator as awkward, stiff, uncomfortable... understandable as Mrs. Powell herself "looked monumental and splendid as the old beach front hotels, and as lonely." Lonely because Cape May's newer, younger residents seem "to be flocking to the ugly new nightclub down on the beach instead," - Mrs. Powell because her position of near omnipotence <span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">("The new resident thought... Before this evening is over, you’ll know everything about me too. That’s probably why you invited me up here on your porch. You make it your business to know everything.... And I’ll bet you’re the one who tells all the other old people what to think. I’ll bet you run the whole town by yourself...") </span></span> in Cape May is also one of isolation.<br /><br />In this seaside town, these women, from different places, separated by decades, generations, are able to find common ground - each providing the other with what she seeks in her visit.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">In this strangely colored twilight that falls on the southernmost point on the Jersey shore, the newest resident’s hands, as they caught the arms of the rocker were tinted a soft mauve, while the faces of the older women, who had already spent a month in the sun, were deeper variations of the same shade.<br /></span></blockquote>The new resident's studies to be a social worker lend themselves to aiding Mrs. Powell's blatant alcoholism, as Mrs. Powell herself suggests. More tangibly, the shells the new resident collected on the beach the day before the action of the story began are, at the end of the story, suggested as the antidote allowing Mrs. Powell's stagnant furnishings to more accurately reflect the town's spirit. We learn that Mrs. Powell was raised in the North (explaining her progressive attitude?), that she's the great-grand daughter of her state's most profitable slave owner and trader, the daughter of a state senator, "the most important lady in Cape May." But she plays down her own attributes, her wealth, her legacy "with a deprecating wave of hands".<br /><br />We learn in Mrs. Powell's willful sloughing of legitimate claims of class, birth, and education that people, disparate in origins, can converge peacefully, meaningfully... An "old relic" and a "new resident" - Corrina, whose harmless ignorance foils Mrs. Powell's willingness to accept change - find one another, put history aside, and in a summer, on a porch, drunk, head together toward the future of their town.<br /><br />I'm reminded of <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/2009/04/of-and-from-readers.html">a recent post</a> from Patrick Kurp's Anecdotal Evidence:<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><i style="font-weight: bold;">I’m rereading a favorite family history, Bowen’s Court (1942) by Elizabeth Bowen. As she chronicles the fortunes of one Anglo-Irish family, we slowly realize we are witnessing the fall of an entire civilization into modernity:<br /><br />“And to what did our fine feelings, our regard for the arts, our intimacies, our inspiring conversations, our wish to be clear of the bonds of sex and class and nationality, our wish to try to be fair to everyone bring us? To 1939.”</i></span><br /><br /><br />In this case... To 1968.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifUxi2qqolmOQqTaJf48vpLNTr32Q0Vp4eMquKbuiXlmFSTCxozskfDzL3znIfgmZGQfkgWK3h_dh3itlvtEVMB36pDm50LufxkXU4S4qhMVuUD6pnWDtIusjrJy9YlxXzBszWO5ibRCgW/s1600-h/CapeMay.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 236px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifUxi2qqolmOQqTaJf48vpLNTr32Q0Vp4eMquKbuiXlmFSTCxozskfDzL3znIfgmZGQfkgWK3h_dh3itlvtEVMB36pDm50LufxkXU4S4qhMVuUD6pnWDtIusjrJy9YlxXzBszWO5ibRCgW/s320/CapeMay.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5332655287790444242" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Mrs. Powell's final dialogue to the new resident, the story's closing lines:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-size:100%;">“I have a lot of interesting old relics around here, if you like history, and I’m the biggest old relic of them all. Although I don’t care much for history, myself.”</span><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">What a refreshing read! I have 4 anthologies of the best short stories and poems by Black Writers and look forward to enjoying them as much as I have Kristin Hunter's An Interesting Social Study.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: normal;">But I plan to finish Revolutionary Road first!</span></span></span><br /><br />Next Post: The absence of men in An Interesting Social Study<br /></div></div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-25816746587044032272009-04-30T07:20:00.000-07:002009-05-21T04:47:17.354-07:00Maidenhood vs. Motherhood vs. ... whatever other states a woman may inhabit =(<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcKrYXzqKaQ6DJc3pHzdi0VKZhHBTCOM4aO3ZL54yIQdD5Hwj2Fad8jAzLUJIUofcso8vW2vd9rAXfDU4jMlifbC3-69YIQhGQiaytPxpV_WyQeB-SqCndXNBi8-zz6ToDNHZNwtFF8hlz/s1600-h/youngoldwoman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 227px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcKrYXzqKaQ6DJc3pHzdi0VKZhHBTCOM4aO3ZL54yIQdD5Hwj2Fad8jAzLUJIUofcso8vW2vd9rAXfDU4jMlifbC3-69YIQhGQiaytPxpV_WyQeB-SqCndXNBi8-zz6ToDNHZNwtFF8hlz/s320/youngoldwoman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330561411736401122" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;">In this optical illusion - do you see a young woman or an old woman?</span></span></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">What happens to a girl when she becomes a wife and mother?</span></span><br /></div><br />Something awful apparently... at least in the eyes of Frank Wheeler.<br /><br />In keeping with <a href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/revolutionary-road-first-impressions.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">my (hypo)thesis</span> </a>about Revolutionary Road - that "the book's characters seem to be reluctantly enduring the death of their idealism as they're bombarded with the realities of their lives" - it seems that Frank can't cope with his wife's diminishing maidenhood and dainty femininity.<br /><br />As a younger man, one still frustrated at not having met the perfect "first-rate girl", Frank meets April Johnson, “the exceptionally first-rate girl whose shining hair and splendid legs had drawn him halfway across a roomful of strangers.” Later, after they're married with 2 children, Frank watches her on stage as “she moved with the shyly sensual grace of maidenhood; anyone happening to glance at Frank Wheeler, the round-faced, intelligent-looking young man who sat biting his fist in the last row of the audience, would have said he looked more like her suitor than her husband.” Because husbands CLEARLY don't think of their wives that way - it's implicit and ingrained in the world of Revolutionary Road.<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">“Nowhere in these plans had he foreseen the weight and shock of reality; nothing had warned him that he might be overwhelmed by the swaying, shining vision of a girl he hadn’t seen in years, a girl whose every glance and gesture could make his throat fill up with longing (</span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >“Wouldn’t you like to be loved by me?”</span><span style="font-size:85%;">), and that then before his very eyes she would dissolve and chance into the graceless, suffering creature whose existence he tried every day of his life to deny but whom he knew as well and as painfully as he knew himself, a gaunt constricted woman whose red eyes flashed reproach, whose false smile in the curtain call was as homely as his own sore feet, his own damp climbing underwear and his own foul smell.”</span></blockquote><br />When April's production fails miserably, Frank's image of her dissolves as well. She quickly degrades in his regard from a "shining vision of a girl" to a "graceless, suffering creature", a "gaunt constricted woman... homely". The "first-rate girl" is suddenly <span style="font-style: italic;">merely</span> his wife and the mother of his two children - on stage in a terrible community theater troupe. Frank's stark dichotomy - this maiden vs. mother attitude is vile, but reading these sentiments at face value cheapens the book. It's easy, as a young female reader to be disgusted by this unfeeling binarism - but if I'd taken the easy route, I'd be missing Yates' larger intention.<br /><br />There's a tone of resentment in the deflation of Frank's ideals of April - I think because in her commonness, in what he perceives as her failings, he sees his own reflected.<br /><br />The standards to which she's held seem to be a bit rigid as well. She's described as being “a shade too heavy in the hips and thighs” after bearing two children and again as “a little too wide in the hips”. The interesting thing is that these assertions don't come from Frank or any other character in the story - they're the narrator's commentaries. But the narrator is not a character in the book - so to whom should these opinions be attributed? Obviously, they're meant to be ironic and illuminating - and they succeed.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">But what does a woman become after she's far into motherhood? What if she's old and unmarried? What of her then?</span></span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Frank's own mother is described vaguely as "a pair of rimless spectacles, a hair net, and a timorous smear of lipstick.” Another older woman, Mrs. Givings is, as soon as she's characterized, immediately made ridiculous - her "cosmetics seemed always to have been applied in a frenzy of haste, of impatience to get the whole silly business over and done with, and she was constantly in motion, a trim, leather-skinned woman in her fifties...”.<br /><br />Jane Austen, in all her infallibility, accurately portrays these female literary archetypes while allowing them to maintain some shred of humanity. Her Miss Bates, who was never asked to play the pianoforte <span style="font-size:78%;">(because who could think of homely, spinsterly, poor Miss Bates when Emma or Jane Fairfax were around?)</span> still lives today in women like pop culture figure <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY">Susan Boyle</a>. Austen takes the same ironic tone as Yates when she says that "it is only poverty that makes celibacy contemptible. A single woman of good fortune is always respectable." While ironic, both statements reflect the attitudes and opinions of the day.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh81HDd9K8FO6hCoqhpEJc-DUirzSZRuSe7G4hoRiBu_ZD3UM8t22NBYlD-VfgVaSfbwwruOQ8UZ6p71hHyMX4KH3ChYobXYnsVnrdm2WL5HxUHDfXOb5bHAy1vKr5yuHxbcApPLyItWV4W/s1600-h/illusion.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 265px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh81HDd9K8FO6hCoqhpEJc-DUirzSZRuSe7G4hoRiBu_ZD3UM8t22NBYlD-VfgVaSfbwwruOQ8UZ6p71hHyMX4KH3ChYobXYnsVnrdm2WL5HxUHDfXOb5bHAy1vKr5yuHxbcApPLyItWV4W/s320/illusion.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5330561448382415202" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">In this optical illusion - do you see a young woman or an old woman?</span></span><br /><br /><br /></div>This is all too <span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Virgin/Mother/Crone"</span></span> for my taste.</div></div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-61893578061116733402009-04-28T10:08:00.000-07:002009-05-29T01:26:32.702-07:00Restless Young Men<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><blockquote>“Weren’t the biographies of all great men filled with this same kind of youthful groping, this same kind of rebellion against their fathers and their fathers’ ways?”<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">--Revolutionary Road</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:78%;"></span><br /></span></span></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Paul</span> in <a href="http://www.shsu.edu/%7Eeng_wpf/authors/Cather/Pauls-Case.htm">Paul's Case</a> by Willa Cather.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Frank Wheeler</span> in <a href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/search/label/revolutionary%20road">Revolutionary Road</a> by Richard Yates.<br />The Real Life <span style="font-weight: bold;">Frank Abagnale Jr.</span> <span style="font-size:78%;">(whose story was featured in the book and movie <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_Me_If_You_Can">Catch Me If You Can</a>)</span>.<br /></div><br />All 3 restless young men fighting to escape their fathers' <span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;" >(men they at once admired and resented)</span> curses of mediocrity nearly, or completely, achieve ruin in their own lives.<br /><br />Cather's Paul steals money from his employer and flees to New York with dreams of a glamorous new life, surrounded by the arts - free of his middle-class existence and the "<a href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/yellow-wallpaper-as-propoganda.html">horrible yellow wallpaper</a>" in his room. Similarly, Frank Abagnale Jr. runs away from home once his father's trouble with the IRS plunges his family into impecuniousness. He, like Paul, lies, cheats, and steals his way to wealth. From what I've read so far, Yates' Frank Wheeler has the same begrudging respect, coupled with disgust, for his father as do Paul and Abagnale - wondering "...who wanted to be a dopey salesman in the first place, acting like a big deal with a briefcase full of boring catalogues, talking about machines all day to a bunch of dumb executives with cigars?"<br /><br />He as an adolescent also plans a trip - his on a freight train - to begin his own life: "[Frank] spent all his free time in a plan for riding rails to the West Coast. ...he had rehearsed many times the way he would handle himself." He steals his father's hat for his journey and stuffs it with newspapers so that it would fit his small head properly, just as Frank Abagnale Jr. borrowed behaviors and epigrams from his father and used them to his advantage.<br /><br />These three characters all exhibit a restless, impatient quest toward manhood - but not just any state of manliness - one that would eclipse whatever claims to greatness their fathers' may have laid, taking from them the estimable, leaving behind the execrable.<br /><br />In Revolutionary Road, it's made clear early in the book that Frank values masculinity, admiring "men who looked like they’d never been boys at all", posing to affect a more distinguished jawline, "the face he'd given himself in the mirror since boyhood and which no photograph had ever achieved", "saunter[ing] manfully" to his father's heavy briefcase as a child and "pretend[ing] it was his own". Abagnale's heroes are pilots, doctors, lawyers, James Bond, Paul's those great men of the stage - and each of these three young men pretended to their goals before they're old enough to achieve them.<br /><br />Unfortunately,<span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-size:78%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;"> (100 year old spoiler alert!!!)</span></span> Paul kills himself once he realizes he'll be returned to obscurity, Frank Abagnale Jr. is caught forging checks and imprisoned (though he eventually begins work as an FBI fraud specialist) and I don't yet know what comes of Frank Wheeler. I haven't finished the book.<br />=)<br /><br />There seems to be a recurring theme in literature (and movies) of Restless Young Men. Freud's Oedipus Complex, perhaps? Except without the creepy part about marrying one's own mother.... I'll keep a keen eye out as I continue Revolutionary Road.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">TRIVIA - Leonardo DiCaprio played both Frank Abagnale Jr. AND Frank Wheeler in the film adaptations of Catch Me If You Can and Revolutionary Road. Coincidence? I think he has that earnest, Restless Young Man Look about him.</span></span><br /></div><br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hFj3OXVL_wQ&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hFj3OXVL_wQ&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;" >"We became drivers and garbage men, so that our children could become doctors and lawyers, so that our grandchildren could become artists and writers, so that our great grandchildren could become models and socialites."</span>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-49096379434198604322009-04-27T19:27:00.001-07:002009-04-27T19:52:06.839-07:00"The finder of his theme will be at no loss for words."The quote in the subject line is one of <a href="http://dgmyers.blogspot.com/2009/03/cunninghams-history-of-criticism.html">J.V. Cunningham</a>'s.<br /><br />In Yates' Revolutionary Road, Cunningham's assertion is proven on every page and in every word. I can't say whether or not Yates had a difficult time writing his masterpiece, but nowhere in Revolutionary Road is<span style="font-weight: bold;"> </span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/revolutionary-road-first-impressions.html">his theme</a> forgotten or absent, either from the writer's intention or the active reader's interpretation.<br /><br />I've been doing far more reading than writing lately, <span style="font-size:78%;">(the only writing I've done has been on this and my other blogs)</span> but when I <span style="font-size:78%;">(finally)</span> decide to <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/professional-appreciators-fear-of.html">create</a>, the instructions I've gleaned from all I've read will be invaluable.Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-20971092288496431432009-04-23T00:56:00.000-07:002009-05-18T00:38:24.216-07:00Gus von A. - The Fallen Dandy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK9H_tx00HNbJUib2Z9aBorMT-fUJwdalWt9sBlSkw9-X9t1a42hXq-mamVZAND-TR5xykOy60DYxzu5s6bRtkaG8PClVIFsG-m42sIN2-_yDiUlvuFTP2favMF-YBtYLMifk9oTJvjh_1/s1600-h/200px-death_venice.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 303px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK9H_tx00HNbJUib2Z9aBorMT-fUJwdalWt9sBlSkw9-X9t1a42hXq-mamVZAND-TR5xykOy60DYxzu5s6bRtkaG8PClVIFsG-m42sIN2-_yDiUlvuFTP2favMF-YBtYLMifk9oTJvjh_1/s320/200px-death_venice.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327909839194764322" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;">" 'You see, Aschenbach has always lived liked this' -- here the speaker closed the fingers of his left hand to a fist -- 'never like this'--and he let his open hand hang relaxed from the back of his chair. It was apt."<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br />Thomas Mann, at the outset of his novella Death in Venice, takes great care to establish his protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach as a disciplined man and respected poet - only to have the character's admirable qualities, by the story's end, disintegrate - replaced by ruinous obsession and capricious, irresponsible whim. Though the tenets of dandyism <span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">(as defined by </span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.dandyism.net/?page_id=428">dandyism.net</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span></span> may not have been explicitly stated and assembled at the time of Death in Venice's publication, it is clear that Thomas Mann wrote Gus von A with strict parameters in mind so as to make his descent into chaos and madness that much more shocking than if such misfortune had befallen a more mediocre man. When evaluated against the 12 points of comparison outlined in '<a href="http://www.dandyism.net/?page_id=428">The Anatomy of a Dandy</a>', von Aschenbach's heights appear at their highest and his lows seem beneath what would be thought capable of such a man. The loss of his physical distinction, elegance, self-mastery, aplomb, independence, wit, skepticism, endearing egotism, reserve, discriminating taste, and caprice - all of the things that make a dandy a dandy - is disturbing for the reader to *witness*, to endure - and I believe this theme of humbling and self-destruction is a large part of why this story persists as a classic.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkicihq2RnM">Let's start at the very beginning - a very good place to start</a></span>:<br /><br /><span style="line-height: 115%;font-size:10;" > </span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-weight: bold;font-size:100%;" ><span>“Dandyism is the result of an artistic temperament working upon a fine body within the wide limits of fashion.” - Max Beerbohm</span></span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">By this definition, Gus von A was a textbook dandy: "The union of dry, conscientious officialdom and ardent, obscure impulse, produced an artist..."<br /><br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Physical distinction</span><br /><br />Dandyism can only be painted on a suitable canvas. It is impossible to cut a dandy figure without being tall, slender and handsome, or having at least one of those characteristics to a high degree while remaining at least average in the other two. Fred Astaire was neither tall nor handsome, but he was “so thin you could spit through him.”<br /><br />Count D’Orsay, of course, had all three qualities to the highest degree.<br /><br />“To appear well dressed, be skinny and tall.” — Mason<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. Elegance</span><br /><br />Elegance, of course, as defined by the standards of a dandy’s particular era.<br /><br />“[The dandy’s] independence, assurance, originality, self-control and refinement should all be visible in the cut of his clothes.” — Ellen Moers<br /><br />Dandies must love contemporary costume, says Beerbohm, and their dress should be “free from folly or affectation.”<br /><br /></span></blockquote>Gus von A's initial physical description is as follows: "somewhat below middle height, dark and smooth-shaven, with... his almost delicate figure... rimless gold spectacles... , aristocratically hooked nose... yet it was art, not the stern discipline of an active career, that had taken over the office of modeling these features." By the final pages of the story, von Aschenbach was sickly, "worn quite out and unnerved... his head burned, his body was wet with clammy sweat, he was plagued by intolerable thirst." There was no sign, physically, of the man with whom we first became acquainted.<br /><br />On his boat ride to Venice, Gus von A encounters an old man he considers foolish in his attempts to mimic the look and mannerisms of youth <span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;" >("Could they not see he was old, that he had no right to wear the clothes they wore or pretend to be one of them?")</span>. This ridiculous old man in all his buffoonery becomes a foil for von Aschenbach's own conscious decision, once deluded by obsession with his young muse Tadzio, to don the facade of youth in his old age: "A delicate carmine glowed on his cheeks where the skin had been so brown and leathery. The dry, anæmic lips grew full, they turned the colour of ripe strawberries, the lines round eyes and mouth were treated with a facial cream and gave place to youthful bloom." Disregarding how ridiculous he must have looked with stark hair dye, his face covered and caked in rouge, Gus von A, by the story's end loses any claims he held on admirable physical distinction or elegance.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:180%;" >2 down. 10 to go.</span><br /></div><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Self-mastery</span><br /><br />Barbey speaks of the dandy’s staunch determination to remain unmoved, while Baudelaire says that should a dandy suffer pain, he will “keep smiling.”<br /><br />“Manage yourself well and you may manage all the world.” — Bulwer-Lytton<br /><br />“Immense calm with your heart pounding.” — Noel Coward<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">4. Aplomb</span><br /><br />While self-mastery is the internal practice of keeping emotions in check, aplomb is how it is expressed to the dandy’s audience.<br /><br />“Dandyism introduces antique calm among our modern agitations.” — Barbey d’Aurevilly</span></blockquote><br />Gus von A and the characters he as a writer created possessed " 'the conception of an intellectual and virginal manliness, which clenches its teeth and stands in modest defiance of the swords and spears that pierce its side.'... there was the aristocratic self-command that is eaten out within and for as long as it can conceals its biologic decline from the eyes of the world". Not unlike Elliot Templeton in Maugham's The Razor's Edge, who ignores his own imminent mortality in favor of honoring a party invitation, the dandy never betrays any sign of inner conflict - a tenet to which Gus von A at first adhered. He knew that "almost everything conspicuously great is great in despite: has come into being in defiance of affliction and pain; poverty, destitution, bodily weakness, vice, passion, and a thousand other obstructions. And that was more than observation—it was the fruit of experience, it was precisely the formula of his life and fame, it was the key to his work."<br /><br />So bizarre, then, was his eventual loss of any sense of propriety or concept of how he would be perceived in his madness. Caught in what should have been embarrassing, reproachable situations, the new Aschenbach "remained there long, in utter drunkenness, powerless to tear himself away, blind to the danger of being caught in so mad an attitude." The power of intoxicating obsession over the learned life-long practice of self-mastery and aplomb becomes apparent in these words.<br /><br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">5. Independence</span><br /><br />Ideally financial independence, but if the dandy is forced to work, a spirit of independence will be expressed through his work, as with Tom Wolfe. Independence — often to the point of aloofness — will also characterize the dandy’s dealings with the world.<br /><br />“The epitome of selfish irresponsibility, he was ideally free of all human commitments that conflict with taste: passions, moralities, ambitions, politics or occupations.” — Moers<br /><br />“Independence makes the dandy.” — Barbey d’Aurevilly</span></blockquote><br />Gus von A was born rich, remained rich throughout life, lived by his pen and maintained independently wealthy until his death. He had no dependents and therefore no human commitments other than his own strict expectations of his life and career. Nothing to see here. 11/12 isn't bad lol.<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">6. Wit</span><br /><br />Especially a paradoxical way of talking lightly of the serious and seriously of the light that carries philosophical implications.<br /><br />(See Oscar Wilde, his characters such as Lord Henry and Lord Goring, and to a lesser degree every other notable dandy.)<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">7. A skeptical, world-weary, sophisticated, bored or blasé demeanor</span><br /><br />“The dandy is blasé, or feigns to be.” — Baudelaire<br /><br />“A spirit of gay misanthropy, a cynical, depreciating view of society.” — Lister<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">8. A self-mocking and ultimately endearing egotism</span><br /><br />“Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.” — Wilde, “The Ideal Husband”<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9. Dignity/Reserve</span><br /><br />Pelham keeps “the darker and stormier emotions” to himself — Bulwer-Lytton<br /><br />“A flawless dandy, he would be annoyed if he were considered romantic.” — Oscar Wilde, “An Ideal Husband”<br /><br /></span></blockquote>In the face of a Venitian cholera plague, one being hushed by police for the sake of tourism, Gus von A eschews all natural problem-solving and skepticism in favor of willful ignorance, so that he can extend his holiday and remain near Tadzio, his young muse.<br /><br />He also begins to think and speak gravely of love, obsession, the nature of art and the artist, the lover and the loved, in grand lofty allusions to Phaedrus and Socrates. "Such were the devotee's thoughts, such the power of his emotions." Any poetic ability he'd once had for flitting lightly over such emotions was wiped away by madness.<br /><br />"He trembled, he shrank, his will was steadfast to preserve and uphold his own god against this stranger who was sworn enemy to dignity and self-control. But.. his heart throbbed to the drums, his brain reeled, a blind rage seized him, a whirling lust... and in his very soul he tasted the bestial degradation of his fall." In a dream, his own insanity was made apparent.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVcTMxluw-rjqVYDVfmHbDJm_HAGBJ5bIrHJBVFk2Psa5_sqSKgGsXdtLf5DVP7fITAcMKww1sdzK9HlWMtfoRnfqnHtQYkbFi_42JKEIUcWontz7oET-MRPyjPA9LD8wdYUd1zgKdsLAH/s1600-h/death.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 216px; height: 168px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVcTMxluw-rjqVYDVfmHbDJm_HAGBJ5bIrHJBVFk2Psa5_sqSKgGsXdtLf5DVP7fITAcMKww1sdzK9HlWMtfoRnfqnHtQYkbFi_42JKEIUcWontz7oET-MRPyjPA9LD8wdYUd1zgKdsLAH/s320/death.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327909877368786370" border="0" /></a><blockquote></blockquote><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">10. Discriminating Taste</span><br /><br />“To resist whatever may be suitable for the vulgar but is improper for the dandy.” — Moers<br /><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" >11. A renaissance man</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br />“A complete gentleman, who, according to Sir Fopling, ought to dress well, dance well, fence well, have a genius for love letters, and an agreeable voice for a chamber.” — Etherege, quoted by Bulwer-Lytton in “Pelham”</span></blockquote><br />Gus von A was powerless to resist the improper and vulgar once blinded by passion. "The presence of the youthful beauty that had bewitched him filled him with disgust of his own aging body; the sight of his own sharp features and grey hair plunged him in hopeless mortification; he made desperate efforts to recover the appearance and freshness of his youth". He began to wear bright clothes and ostentatious jewelry; his taste was lost to foolishness.<br /><br />He remained enough of a gentleman outwardly - and the fury of his final work, inspired by Tadzio, seems to confirm that his talents for writing weren't damaged by his madness, so I don't think his status as a renaissance man was every in jeopardy. 10/12 isn't bad (lol).<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;" >12. Caprice</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br />Because dandies are an enigma wrapped in a labyrinth, and because dandyism makes its own rules, the final quality is the ability to negate all the others.<br /><br />For in the end there is not a code of dandyism, as Barbey writes. “If there were, anybody could be a dandy.”</span></blockquote><br />The 12th tenet more or less nullifies my above arguments, but that's the beauty of the thing. Even for all his missteps, in the last line of Death in Venice, we realize that Gus von A's fans and admirers are completely oblivious and, <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-size:78%;" >(100 year old spoiler alert!)</span> in death, he is restored to the position in which we first found him.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">"And before nightfall a shocked and respectful world received the news of his decease."<br /><br /></div><br /><br />His "preoccupation with [Tadzio's]form lead to intoxication and desire, they may lead the noblest among us to frightful emotional excesses, which his own stern cult of the beautiful would make him the first to condemn. So they too, they too, lead to the bottomless pit." Death in Venice remains so fascinating because of its protagonist's determination to ruin himself though every impulse advised against such lunacy.<br /><br />Basically, if it could happen to him, the most disciplined and dandiest of dandies, it could happen to any among us.<br /></div></div></div></div><br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FTP7XFVGnxQ&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FTP7XFVGnxQ&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-80653620982463111222009-04-22T14:33:00.000-07:002009-07-02T20:46:56.924-07:00Virginia Woolf's success in creating 'Modern Fiction'<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGVO5EV0qB2xGLhhoENVZgnG9KpOH3XjqZoTgB5fcX4HOVsZz_snmmHwcy_KqjCiCvBSJQ6Y271vyAZ77Nf1vHLRpTBt6bEU0mSNc1ShelsSHEtCtpUTBaHqmGerxuWT-svYGYmyaCr7Pz/s1600-h/virginia_woolf.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 241px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGVO5EV0qB2xGLhhoENVZgnG9KpOH3XjqZoTgB5fcX4HOVsZz_snmmHwcy_KqjCiCvBSJQ6Y271vyAZ77Nf1vHLRpTBt6bEU0mSNc1ShelsSHEtCtpUTBaHqmGerxuWT-svYGYmyaCr7Pz/s320/virginia_woolf.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327660548321456530" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Inspired by Amateur Reader's post - <a href="http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/2009/04/herman-melvilles-mardi-was-written-by.html">Herman Melville's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Mardi</span></span> was written by <span style="font-style: italic;">Herman Melville</span></a>:</span><br /></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:78%;">Read Virginia Woolf's essay Modern Fiction <a href="http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91c/chapter13.html">HERE</a>, The Mark on the Wall <a href="http://www.readprint.com/work-1523/Virginia-Woolf">HERE</a>, and To The Lighthouse (Chapter 6 - Starting with the words "He was safe..." to end of chapter) <a href="http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91t/part1.html">HERE</a>. Because To The Lighthouse is a novel, I figured it would make the most sense to tackle a representative except for readers not familiar with the book.</span><br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;">I love to read because the things I learn from books inform the choices I make when writing. A close reading of any great piece of literature can guide its reader through the author's processes and intentions, can influence (not define) an aspiring writer's style and motivate him or her to take care that each word tell. Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite authors for this reason. She not only provides the active reader stimulating and instructing fiction, but in her essay Modern Fiction, she outlines criteria by which modern fiction should be evaluated - and holds herself to her own standards. By her own definitions, Woolf creates, in varying degrees of success, modern fiction.<br /><br />In 1921, Virginia Woolf's The Mark on the Wall was published, in 1925, her book The Common Reader, which contained Modern Fiction, and in 1927, To the Lighthouse. In this 6 year period we see Woolf's work progress from exemplary, but aimless, to challenging and purposeful - and have her own words as the bellwether by which to measure that progress. I consider these my formative literary years, and what better example </span><span style="font-size:100%;">than Woolf</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> for taking literary matters in one's own hands can a girl have!<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhljo0a56NWhhE-P-MO7QJ1QvjiPKNFPw1Tx1GtKAj1mtANh_mLtXoLv_hqIDeFNKQ4fa3VNWNscp0QTMZxXsJWcKS6T5FsG0yr5fjejs1dwYi3LBa2SwLzsLwQsDq6et6wcYmFbJTto1iy/s1600-h/7a_common_reader.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 220px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhljo0a56NWhhE-P-MO7QJ1QvjiPKNFPw1Tx1GtKAj1mtANh_mLtXoLv_hqIDeFNKQ4fa3VNWNscp0QTMZxXsJWcKS6T5FsG0yr5fjejs1dwYi3LBa2SwLzsLwQsDq6et6wcYmFbJTto1iy/s320/7a_common_reader.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327660408102295858" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">In Modern Fiction, Woolf defines two types of fiction, that which is concerned with the body, and the most desirable - that which is concerned with the spirit. Novels concerned with the spirit, she claims, are "what it is we exact." If that is true, then we as readers get exactly what it is we exact from Woolf's To The Lighthouse - and while we come closer to the spirit, to "life" in The Mark on the Wall than in what Woolf terms as "materialist" fiction, the piece still does not satisfy the readers quest for "the essential thing" it is we search for in fiction, "whether we call it life or spirit, truth or reality." For that reason, I believe Virginia Woolf truly becomes <span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">VIRGINIA WOOLF</span></span> in To the Lighthouse - and in The Mark on the Wall, she is well on her way. Woolf assigns properties to what she considers fiction concerned with both the body and with the mind - and believes that "life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small." In that sense, both To The Light House and The Mark On The Wall contain some aspect of "life" by Woolf's own definition - but </span><span style="font-size:100%;">To The <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Lighthouse</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> succeeds in adhering to more of the properties that readers now know to be hallmarks of Woolf's best work.<br /><br />In </span><span style="font-size:100%;">To The <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Lighthouse</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;">, the character Mr. Ramsay contemplates his place in the world while in real time observing his wife read to his son. In </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The Mark On The Wall</span><span style="font-size:100%;">, Woolf's speaker chronicles random thoughts while in real time looking at the titular mark on the wall. In exploring the thoughts of their respective speakers, both pieces capture the "myriad impressions" that Woolf claims "the mind receives" in Modern Fiction. However, these impressions are to an end in </span><span style="font-size:100%;">To The Light House</span><span style="font-size:100%;">, whereas in </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The Mark On The Wall</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> they seem scattered, and to have no specific purpose.<br /><br />In being concerned with the spirit, a piece of fiction must focus on the abstract rather than the concrete and in </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The Mark On The Wall</span><span style="font-size:100%;">, the speaker's thoughts are centered on physical objects (trees, birds, wood); in </span><span style="font-size:100%;">To The Light House</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> Mr. Ramsay's abstract thoughts are only spoken of in concrete terms to make tangible abstract concepts. Just as with the literal body and spirit, both can be perceived, but only the body physically.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdMDMFCso9gzgqzlk6PnrVtcaW-OcFvOezMMa5c6lvDLJm2Os-6z1wDsBUilIRwj5ojxIuLf0WS-H-4QL57J6-YLxJnfe4C_H7ataJLwK2cevSqOiFwayavQKqwRSLyhviIBSgTP3FkdqE/s1600-h/ttlh.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 210px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdMDMFCso9gzgqzlk6PnrVtcaW-OcFvOezMMa5c6lvDLJm2Os-6z1wDsBUilIRwj5ojxIuLf0WS-H-4QL57J6-YLxJnfe4C_H7ataJLwK2cevSqOiFwayavQKqwRSLyhviIBSgTP3FkdqE/s320/ttlh.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327660297394084194" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">To The <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Lighthouse</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;">, while it employs a stream of consciousness style is less self-concerned than </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The Mark On The Wall</span><span style="font-size:100%;">. Because </span><span style="font-size:100%;">The Mark On The Wall</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> is written in first person, with phrases "I like," "I understand," "I should," "I feel," repeated as often as they are, the piece seems selfish and "never embraces or creates what is outside itself or beyond"; it has "the effect of something angular and isolated", all of which are qualities Woolf attributes to "materialist" fiction.<br /><br />In both pieces, "emphasis is laid in unexpected places." Because Mr. Ramsay in </span><span style="font-size:100%;">To The <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Lighthouse</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> grapples with his position in his own life and family, this emphasis is in unexpected, yet logical places - always keeping in mind the book's overall aim and maintaining an "obedience to vision." Historical figures of questionable importance, how a dying soldier will be remembered, the alphabet used as a concrete analogy for Mr. Ramsay's quest through his own mind - these seemingly disparate mentions all converge to illuminate Mr. Ramsay's existential musings. The emphasis in </span><span style="font-size:100%;">To The Light House</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> don't seem to achieve any greater purpose than to "record the atoms as they fall upon the mind... however disconnected and incoherent in appearance."<br /><br />Like the works of the Russian artists Woolf praises as "saintly" in Modern Fiction, </span><span style="font-size:100%;">To The <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Lighthouse</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"> appears "vague and inconclusive" only in that it asks many unanswered rhetorical questions. Similarly, Woolf states in her essay that "life presents question after question which must be left to sound on after the story is over". Mr. Ramsay's vacillating between a life dedicated to family and one to work constantly begs the question "Who shall blame him?" while suggesting his favoring the former. Of course, no one could blame a man for choosing his family over his work - though it's a question people struggle with every day.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;">The Mark On The Wall</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> asks questions as well, but they are self-involved, have no larger implications beyond the story's speaker and give the reader no incentive to want to know their answers. They do not "endeavor to reach some goal worthy of the most exacting demands of the spirit".<br /><br />To the Lighthouse is by Woolf's own definition a true work concerning the spirit in that it embodies "life" - which is what Woolf believes modern fiction should always endeavor to do. The Mark on the Wall was a valiant effort, but pales in comparison to Woolf's later work. In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf becomes <span style="font-style: italic;">VIRGINIA WOOLF</span>.<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_68Gjpvlpca9o1EAKqA_xhXpciw-LQf4YdmCa6ECcNzdMse9-ruOPPWYhUI7WGpnj5HA2zCUb_5OXRqnVTyLN7jBkq2M8GU1CInGoPL0AMh7TfcRLVI05_DHv-zJKjjOLcDuOEY48w8Uk/s1600-h/tmotw.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 211px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_68Gjpvlpca9o1EAKqA_xhXpciw-LQf4YdmCa6ECcNzdMse9-ruOPPWYhUI7WGpnj5HA2zCUb_5OXRqnVTyLN7jBkq2M8GU1CInGoPL0AMh7TfcRLVI05_DHv-zJKjjOLcDuOEY48w8Uk/s320/tmotw.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327660343153704578" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">*<a href="http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/">The Amateur Reader</a> said this would be a tricky post and it WAS! I'm not even sure I'm saying everything I mean to say, but this is my first go at explaining an author's coming into her own. I may rehash this later with more textual examples from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">TTLH</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">TMOTW</span> - because I only used quotes from Modern Fiction in the post above.<br /><br /></span></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 153, 0);font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span>IN OTHER NEWS - tomorrow is Becca's Book <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Blog's</span><br />ONE MONTH ANNIVERSARY!!! </span></span></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">So far, So good!</span><br /></div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-33745321068496913742009-04-21T14:21:00.000-07:002009-05-07T11:59:52.158-07:00Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney + Divinity in LiteratureI've already written about my <a href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-first-poem-for-you-by-kim-addonizio.html">favorite</a> and <a href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/sharold-olds-rite-of-passage-childrens.html">second favorite</a> poems on this blog; Blackberry Picking by Seamus <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Heaney</span> is my third. In this post I'll explain why.<br /><br />I grew up in church (African-American, Christian, Non-denominational) and have had fleeting spats of full devotion and engagement, but tend to feel a bit divorced from it all. I'm just as interested in the Bible as literature, apart from its larger religious implications, as I am in reading it as the literal WORD OF GOD (though I read it for guidance, instruction, and encouragement more than I do for verifying literary allusions).<br /><br />Because of my exposure from such an early age, I tend to find (or do I seek?) the Biblical, the Divine in all I read. For an entire semester of high school AP LIT, I analyzed every assigned book, poem, essay, etc through a Biblical lens. All I could see in Beloved was Morrison's allusion to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse... and any passing reference to parable or scripture in any work became, to me, the author's overarching Biblical theme. This <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">tendency</span> was at first impressive (sometimes offensive!) to my teacher and peers, and quickly became pedantic and tiresome - but I was 17 at the time. I'm 22 now... much older, much wiser.<br />:\ (if only!)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAx8Rb3hQuoDglbXM5ji0O-3Q3UJgDiyScluFePi70houvn0rqYGznnJ-C8yJABXEL1AQC0KZZ23vSdyHZOrzdUkNqKq6nFv8kKvgmgvFAJS4KRpNErbLPvmgv40qiiWXi3Sa-aK2Jmquh/s1600-h/blackberry+picking.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAx8Rb3hQuoDglbXM5ji0O-3Q3UJgDiyScluFePi70houvn0rqYGznnJ-C8yJABXEL1AQC0KZZ23vSdyHZOrzdUkNqKq6nFv8kKvgmgvFAJS4KRpNErbLPvmgv40qiiWXi3Sa-aK2Jmquh/s320/blackberry+picking.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327274123508123474" border="0" /></a><br />Sometime during that (stained glass?) window, I read Blackberry-Picking by Seamus <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Heaney</span>. Rereading it now, I don't think my initial analysis was too off the mark, or clouded by the divine fog in which I then found myself.<br /><br /><blockquote>Blackberry-picking<br /><br />Late August, given heavy rain and sun<br />For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.<br />At first, just one, a glossy purple clot<br />Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.<br />You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet<br />Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it<br />Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for<br />Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger<br />Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots<br />Where <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">briars</span> scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.<br />Round <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">hayfields</span>, cornfields and potato-drills<br />We trekked and picked until the cans were full,<br />Until the tinkling bottom had been covered<br />With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned<br />Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered<br />With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.<br /><br />We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.<br />But when the bath was filled we found a fur,<br />A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.<br />The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush<br />The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.<br />I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair<br />That all the lovely <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">canfuls</span> smelt of rot.<br />Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.<br /><br />Seamus <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Heaney</span></blockquote><br /><br />The literary critic J.V. Cunningham noted <span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" ><b>"How difficult it is to write in praise!". </b></span> Well, here's my taking a shot.<br /><br /><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Heaney</span> uses contrasting images of divinity - first allusions to Christ, communion, and the crucifixion associated with the action of picking the blackberries - then to the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Biblically</span> defined sins of gluttony, lust, and greed (peppered through the first stanza and dominating the second) - to illuminate the emotions associated with picking and eating blackberries, which are in turn used to parallel the human tendency to unwittingly self-destruct, to Fall from Grace - even when intentions are good.<br /><br />The conscious lack of agents in lines 1 & 2 ("...<span style="font-style: italic;">given</span> heavy rain and sun/ for a full week, the blackberries <span style="font-style: italic;">would ripen</span>,") suggests the influence of a higher power. The blackberries do not ripen themselves and "would ripen" only "given heavy rain and sun" - but "GIVEN" by WHOM? Sacred diction in lines 5 & 6 elevate the speaker's experience of eating blackberries to the equivalent of taking communion - "it's <span style="font-style: italic;">flesh</span> was sweet/like thickened <span style="font-style: italic;">wine</span>: summer's <span style="font-style: italic;">blood</span> was in it." In aligning the act of partaking of the body or "flesh" and blood of Christ to biting into the wine-producing blackberries, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Heaney</span> cements this act as a religious experience.<br /><br />The word "lust" is slipped in the poem to appear as an afterthought in a sentence that progresses from concrete to abstract in lines 7-9. The sentence that includes "...leaving <span style="font-style: italic;">stains</span> upon the tongue /and a <span style="font-style: italic;">lust</span> for picking" establishes "stains" and "lust" as parallels - both are nouns, but a stain is tangible, can be physically perceived; lust is not, cannot. "Hunger" is made the agent of the verb "sent" in line 8 - labeling hunger a driving force, capable of inciting action. "Lust" and "hunger" as used here are in opposition to the tone of the first stanza, but serve to hint at darker events to come.<br /><br />In lines 10-12 the speaker's trip to crate the berries is likened to a religious pilgrimage or Herculean task, one to be "round <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">hayfields</span>, cornfields, and potato-drills... trekked", one that would "bleach [their] boots" - recalling <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">Biblically</span> scarlet sins being "washed white as snow" - as is the mission of most pilgrimages. The trek was only complete once their "cans were full"; here the transition into the second stanza's theme of gluttony begins.<br /><br />The speaker and his companion's hands being "peppered with thorn pricks" is a stark allusion to Crucifixion of Christ. That the blackberries with their "big dark blobs burned/ Like a plate of eyes" are <span style="font-style: italic;">watching</span> the pickers as they <span style="font-style: italic;">red-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">handedly</span></span> stock them to be hauled away is intentional - and prepares the reader for the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">guilty</span> disappointment of the next lines.<br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br />The greed, hunger, and lust merely hinted at in the first stanza are consummated in lines 15-17. They "hoarded, were "glutting" and as a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">consequence</span>, a punishment, the once "sweet flesh.. turned sour" - the forbidden fruit from "the bush... fermented"... all was tarnished - the imagery is nearly sacrilegious. As with Adam and Even in the Biblical Garden of Eden, the speaker's innocence was purged and replaced with an undesirable knowledge - that once off the bush, a parallel to the fruit picked from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the berries they greedily hoarded and "hoped would keep", they "knew would not". The evil existed in the speaker's gluttony, which caused the surplus to rot - the knowledge of which ruined the joy of picking blueberries "every year" - yet this greed persisted annually.<br /><br />Thus is human nature - and the masterful ability of Seamus <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Heaney</span> to describe that tragic nature so beautifully.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwDBrf9CoBKRdAP6ta-fvCbomUZlmhFBVlwuo3DYZkVU3ke4vf9qR9gr01XjLJkJOvqYT-qyHDuvBILnuWj0ib8ttj4rvDOmeF05WS9PEasSaZhnjiKuPFtAtQN-BHaXLIEQDzaaxc7WwC/s1600-h/bbp.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwDBrf9CoBKRdAP6ta-fvCbomUZlmhFBVlwuo3DYZkVU3ke4vf9qR9gr01XjLJkJOvqYT-qyHDuvBILnuWj0ib8ttj4rvDOmeF05WS9PEasSaZhnjiKuPFtAtQN-BHaXLIEQDzaaxc7WwC/s320/bbp.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327293928463826178" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">It's actually not at all difficult to write in praise when you've got a poem such as this for inspiration.</span><br /><br />I will <span style="font-style: italic;">eventually</span> get to writing about Gus <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">von</span> A (Death in Venice) as a fallen dandy (as defined by <a href="http://www.dandyism.net/?page_id=428"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">dandyism</span>.net</a>) and the conclusion of my first installment of <a href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/04/hip-hop-as-literature-introduction.html">Hip Hop as Literature</a> - I'm just not sure when.<br /></div>Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-12565556279047121672009-04-19T21:48:00.000-07:002009-04-19T22:40:30.804-07:00Revolutionary Road - First Impressions<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjet6JzqEE32R3z3hog5wq1NVxdPcTZlH4PeJW837vsJHEPBsI0wOtCk74yPHzZfderNon0pr1tqhaT0_yyDp4J5gMzTNrVAohCnRQLudefIcv_oe0UudUN8Vfcg5QbG54cU_d1c8ZjVkO/s1600-h/revolutionaryroad.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 316px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjet6JzqEE32R3z3hog5wq1NVxdPcTZlH4PeJW837vsJHEPBsI0wOtCk74yPHzZfderNon0pr1tqhaT0_yyDp4J5gMzTNrVAohCnRQLudefIcv_oe0UudUN8Vfcg5QbG54cU_d1c8ZjVkO/s320/revolutionaryroad.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326638292293564738" border="0" /></a><br />In my last post, I was 6 pages into Revolutionary Road and already in awe of its density. By page 13, I'd already formed the (hypo)thesis on which I've decided to center the rest of my notes.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Many of the book's characters seem to be reluctantly enduring the death of their idealism as they're bombarded with the realities of their lives - and it's a theme I'll be on the look out for as I continue reading. There also seems to be a learned culture of silently borne misery, a group mentality of complacency. I'm only on page 15 though, so I'll see if my (hypo)thesis holds up.<br /></div><br />But my early (perhaps premature) assessment doesn't stem from any lazy transparency in Yates' writing - if anything, it's a credit to his ability to thread a tangible motif through <span style="font-style: italic;">every single word</span> in his narrative. Nothing appears to be included or mentioned incidentally - no object described that doesn't parallel or illuminate the experiences and sensations of a group of characters, no actions detailed that don't flesh out the character to whom they're ascribed, no setting chosen that doesn't add layers of context to the reader's understanding <span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">(of course, I'll give textual examples and details in my full review/analysis - these are just first impressions)</span></span>.<br /><br />When an author begins his novel with "The final, dying sounds..." it's no accident. Setting an ominous tone, one of impending doom, in the opening words of a story immediately prepares the reader for whats to come. And from what I've read so far, Yates won't be letting up any time soon.<br /><br />This is purposeful writing at its best; I would be proud to have my (eventual) fiction writing resemble Yates' in any small way.<br /><br />Can't wait to finish Revolutionary Road and post my full analysis! I've also got to get around to seeing the movie once I'm done with the book...Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2587411276544271172.post-17577487475173884272009-04-18T05:55:00.001-07:002009-04-19T10:07:50.792-07:00the PROFESSIONAL APPRECIATOR's fear of CREATING.<div style="text-align: center;">"You're making something. You - the critic, the professional appreciator - put something new into the world. And the second one of those things gets sold, you're officially a part of it."<br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">From the movie High Fidelity.</span></span><br /></div><br />I couldn't be called a professional critic by any definition - but am an active and avid reader and have a paralyzing fear of writing for that reason. I've described my reading style <span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">(</span><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://beccas-book-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/macro-vs-micro-reading-why-i-cant-read.html">macro vs micro</a><span style="font-weight: bold;">)</span></span> on this blog and why some books are frustrating to ENDURE because of it - and why, conversely, other books bring me so much pleasure.<br /><br />I'm only 6 pages into Revolutionary Road and already, I'm WOWED by its density. Could I ever write with such mastery? I feel presumptuous even typing those words. And I think most writer-readers, and anyone in love with the ART of writing, can understand that feeling.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"The trouble was that from the very beginning they had been afraid they would end by making fools of themselves, and they had compounded this fear by being afraid to admit it." </span>This quote from the opening pages of Revolutionary Road compelled me to nod my head in reluctant sympathy for the described Laurel Players and their collective fear that their seminal performance would fail. The only difference is that all I do is talk and write about that familiar fear - so at least it's not compounding upon itself, right?<br /><br />Wrong.<br /><br />It's daunting to know that you don't know much - and that knowledge of ignorance is crippling.<br /><br />I've cited this Thomas Mann quote here before, but here it is again:<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people."</span> I'd have to add that it's no cake walk for active readers either.<br /><br />Maybe it has something to do with my age and that I feel everything I write is somehow, or will be perceived as being, incorrect or foolish (I try not to betray any signs of that apprehension - but I'm writing about it now - so <span style="font-style: italic;">the cat's out the bag</span>), because I LOATHE adamant inaccuracy and steadfast incompetence. In the presence<span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;" > (even the e-presence. read: commenting on literary blogs!) </span>of those I admire, my tentativeness is amplified exponentially. I check and double check things and hope I'm making sense. But I'm in good company, Freud often fainted in the presence of scientists whose work he admired.<br /><br />Whenever I do get around to CREATING something and submitting it to the court of public approval, I only hope it stands up alongside the kind of purposely written, dynamic writing that I so enjoy. In the mean time, I plan to continue, reading, writing, BLOGGING, and <span style="font-weight: bold;">learning</span>.<br /><br />End rant.Rebecca V. O'Nealhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07920443685663707856noreply@blogger.com2