e Hundred Years of Solitude seem to lack transitional periods, or rather the reader is not privy to they "whys" of their changes; we only see the outcome. Jose Arcadio goes away and comes back as an inked up version of "The Thing;" Aureliano goes from being a solitary, introverted scientist to the Liberal military leader. Jose Arcadio Buendia's personality is even more volatile than his sons'. This is especially difficult as a Western reader, who is used to knowing a character's intentions. In The God of Small Things, there is cause and effect. We understand that Estha's muteness is spawned from dramatic occurences in his childhood. In A Wild Sheep Chase, the narrator goes North to solve a mystery. I'm wondering whether character development is lacking for plot reasons or because Marquez is trying to assert the extreme capriciousness of a warring state; especially in the men. Something to think about.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Characterization
The characters of One Hundred Years of Solitude seem to lack transitional periods, or rather the reader is not privy to they "whys" of their changes; we only see the outcome. Jose Arcadio goes away and comes back as an inked up version of "The Thing;" Aureliano goes from being a solitary, introverted scientist to the Liberal military leader. Jose Arcadio Buendia's personality is even more volatile than his sons'. This is especially difficult as a Western reader, who is used to knowing a character's intentions. In The God of Small Things, there is cause and effect. We understand that Estha's muteness is spawned from dramatic occurences in his childhood. In A Wild Sheep Chase, the narrator goes North to solve a mystery. I'm wondering whether character development is lacking for plot reasons or because Marquez is trying to assert the extreme capriciousness of a warring state; especially in the men. Something to think about.
e Hundred Years of Solitude seem to lack transitional periods, or rather the reader is not privy to they "whys" of their changes; we only see the outcome. Jose Arcadio goes away and comes back as an inked up version of "The Thing;" Aureliano goes from being a solitary, introverted scientist to the Liberal military leader. Jose Arcadio Buendia's personality is even more volatile than his sons'. This is especially difficult as a Western reader, who is used to knowing a character's intentions. In The God of Small Things, there is cause and effect. We understand that Estha's muteness is spawned from dramatic occurences in his childhood. In A Wild Sheep Chase, the narrator goes North to solve a mystery. I'm wondering whether character development is lacking for plot reasons or because Marquez is trying to assert the extreme capriciousness of a warring state; especially in the men. Something to think about.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Observations on Marquez
Within the first 60 pages of Marquez, I'm seeing a few binaries being drawn: old technology vs. new technology or maybe technology vs. the illusion of technology, isolation vs. inclusiveness in the world, natural order vs. categorization. Also at this point, Rebeca must change before she becomes part of the family. Her character reminds me of immigrants in America, who are constantly told that they should "learn how to speak the fucking language if you're gonna live here." It is not until Rebeca has absorbed the Buendia's customs, that she is categorized as a Buendia. Also, it seems that as technology progresses, it becomes used for entertainment purposes; and in turn, the observer of the technology is more amazed by the spectacle of it than its usefulness. This leads to Melquaides' tribe being "wiped from the face of the earth because they had gone beyond the limits of human knowledge." I'm still trying to sort this out, but I'm really excited to keep reading.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Blog Self Evaluation
Michael Madden
Dr. Paul Gleason
Non-Western Lit.
9/10/2008
Blog Self Evaluation
Though I’ve always reflected on literature personally - and I surely do decide whether or not I like a book based on my aesthetic response to its style, content, visceral effectiveness, etc. – I feel that those responses are impertinent in the academic arena; so I have striven to look at books in any way that separated my personal reactions to them. This is not to say that I knew the most effective, important way to read. If anything, I’ve always been flailing in that aspect, like a bottom-feeder taking whatever I could from a text. However, I’ve always look at a text as it relates to the world, asking myself: why is this text important and to and for whom?
For example, my favorite novel growing up was My Antonia, which I loved for its poetic prose and its beautiful depiction of the American frontier. It made me want to experience Cather’s world, but that was only my personal response: I loved the book like I loved my red corduroys. I had to take it a step further to truly appreciate, to answer the questions aforementioned, and I decided that it was important, if for no other reason, because it was part of our history of becoming a nation-of-nations. Bohemians living next to Germans living next to Poles struggling through the harsh winters of an unforgiving and extreme American climate: culture, cultures clashing, death on the frontier, boys and girls becoming men and women amidst a volatile landscape; it becomes clear that these ideas are important because man has always struggled from to survive. This novel is not an allegory only pertinent to its time in history, or a dime-store mystery novel with no relevance outside of its pages, but a representation of a place in time where a people had to persevere through hardship; and that can be appreciated by world readers more richly than could the styles previously mentioned.
In my second blog I look at blind faith, as is seen in Rushdie’s character Bolo, and how it mirrors dangerous extremist views in the middle-eastern world. However, there is a marked difference about the approaches I took with Cather’s and Rushdie’s novels. After reading Cather, an American novelist, I then searched for its global significance. Whereas I was looking at Rusdie’s text as world-text from the beginning, because I knew that he was not Western. So I see Non-Western literature as innately global, but I sometimes see American literature as a box from which I have to escape to find meaning, possibly sometimes placing meaning where it does not belong (not to say that I may very well have done the same while having read Rushdie). The point is that, wherever I might start looking for that relationship, it is something that I need to explore.
As far as intertextuality is concerned, I’m not sure I ever saw that as being important. Though I compared and contrasted novels which seemed familiar, I never used those in-book references to other novels to gain a deeper understanding of the text I was reading. I think this is the one area that I have improved on. I mention in my third blog that David Lynch allows me to have a better understanding of Murakami’s work. Maybe, without Lynch’s images, I would not have been able to discern the tone of A Wild Sheep Chase as a mystery-horror-detective-mind-fuck. Again in my fourth blog, I write “…the narrator of Heart of Darkness, Marlowe, constantly refers to time as “standing still” in the jungles of Africa…Boku goes through this same struggle. Time is wiped away.” From this very subtle allusion made by Murakami, I inferred time to be a prime factor in Boku’s narrative. In the past, I may have sailed swiftly over that allusion and simply assumed it a coincidence that The Rat just happened to be reading Conrad. That is like seeing your girlfriend walk into the bedroom in the three-piece lingerie set you bought her for Christmas three years ago, which she has yet to wear, and thinking, “It must be comfortable.”
If I step back to look at reading a novel on a personal level, I can trace my dislike for indulging in that method to comic books. There is a certain type of novel and film that I can read simply for aesthetic pleasure. But this type of novel must be one or a combination of the following: dark, macabre, terribly offensive, vulgar, disgusting, hilarious or frightening. Growing up, the comic books I was exposed to had none of these qualities. Instead they were light, boring representations of good and evil, and they were my first introduction to stories. I remember the stories being flat and boring, unable to entice my imagination; and the images just seemed silly to me, that no back-story could redeem their blandness. So I grew to hate comic books. In turn, I grew to hate self indulgence, and as a result, I never understood it. This is neither good nor bad, just an observation that might explain my spot on this spectrum of reading levels.
So though I engage in all three levels of reading, I have only just begun to really look at intertextuality. Furthermore, I have trouble bringing my personal reactions to a book, because they are either irrelevant to what the book sets out to accomplish, or because I somehow hate myself for indulging in something that way. I feel most strongly about looking at texts in relation to the world and the context of the novel. The affinity to do so has always been there, but it is ineffable to me. In the future, I’d like to be competent in discussing novels on all levels. I don’t see any reason to read, with the exception of our guilty pleasures, if we are not to discuss their importance in a communal way. I think that the three stages presented, though not unequal, is an effective way of discerning our abilities as readers. I look forward to looking at more theories on the matter.
Dr. Paul Gleason
Non-Western Lit.
9/10/2008
Blog Self Evaluation
Though I’ve always reflected on literature personally - and I surely do decide whether or not I like a book based on my aesthetic response to its style, content, visceral effectiveness, etc. – I feel that those responses are impertinent in the academic arena; so I have striven to look at books in any way that separated my personal reactions to them. This is not to say that I knew the most effective, important way to read. If anything, I’ve always been flailing in that aspect, like a bottom-feeder taking whatever I could from a text. However, I’ve always look at a text as it relates to the world, asking myself: why is this text important and to and for whom?
For example, my favorite novel growing up was My Antonia, which I loved for its poetic prose and its beautiful depiction of the American frontier. It made me want to experience Cather’s world, but that was only my personal response: I loved the book like I loved my red corduroys. I had to take it a step further to truly appreciate, to answer the questions aforementioned, and I decided that it was important, if for no other reason, because it was part of our history of becoming a nation-of-nations. Bohemians living next to Germans living next to Poles struggling through the harsh winters of an unforgiving and extreme American climate: culture, cultures clashing, death on the frontier, boys and girls becoming men and women amidst a volatile landscape; it becomes clear that these ideas are important because man has always struggled from to survive. This novel is not an allegory only pertinent to its time in history, or a dime-store mystery novel with no relevance outside of its pages, but a representation of a place in time where a people had to persevere through hardship; and that can be appreciated by world readers more richly than could the styles previously mentioned.
In my second blog I look at blind faith, as is seen in Rushdie’s character Bolo, and how it mirrors dangerous extremist views in the middle-eastern world. However, there is a marked difference about the approaches I took with Cather’s and Rushdie’s novels. After reading Cather, an American novelist, I then searched for its global significance. Whereas I was looking at Rusdie’s text as world-text from the beginning, because I knew that he was not Western. So I see Non-Western literature as innately global, but I sometimes see American literature as a box from which I have to escape to find meaning, possibly sometimes placing meaning where it does not belong (not to say that I may very well have done the same while having read Rushdie). The point is that, wherever I might start looking for that relationship, it is something that I need to explore.
As far as intertextuality is concerned, I’m not sure I ever saw that as being important. Though I compared and contrasted novels which seemed familiar, I never used those in-book references to other novels to gain a deeper understanding of the text I was reading. I think this is the one area that I have improved on. I mention in my third blog that David Lynch allows me to have a better understanding of Murakami’s work. Maybe, without Lynch’s images, I would not have been able to discern the tone of A Wild Sheep Chase as a mystery-horror-detective-mind-fuck. Again in my fourth blog, I write “…the narrator of Heart of Darkness, Marlowe, constantly refers to time as “standing still” in the jungles of Africa…Boku goes through this same struggle. Time is wiped away.” From this very subtle allusion made by Murakami, I inferred time to be a prime factor in Boku’s narrative. In the past, I may have sailed swiftly over that allusion and simply assumed it a coincidence that The Rat just happened to be reading Conrad. That is like seeing your girlfriend walk into the bedroom in the three-piece lingerie set you bought her for Christmas three years ago, which she has yet to wear, and thinking, “It must be comfortable.”
If I step back to look at reading a novel on a personal level, I can trace my dislike for indulging in that method to comic books. There is a certain type of novel and film that I can read simply for aesthetic pleasure. But this type of novel must be one or a combination of the following: dark, macabre, terribly offensive, vulgar, disgusting, hilarious or frightening. Growing up, the comic books I was exposed to had none of these qualities. Instead they were light, boring representations of good and evil, and they were my first introduction to stories. I remember the stories being flat and boring, unable to entice my imagination; and the images just seemed silly to me, that no back-story could redeem their blandness. So I grew to hate comic books. In turn, I grew to hate self indulgence, and as a result, I never understood it. This is neither good nor bad, just an observation that might explain my spot on this spectrum of reading levels.
So though I engage in all three levels of reading, I have only just begun to really look at intertextuality. Furthermore, I have trouble bringing my personal reactions to a book, because they are either irrelevant to what the book sets out to accomplish, or because I somehow hate myself for indulging in something that way. I feel most strongly about looking at texts in relation to the world and the context of the novel. The affinity to do so has always been there, but it is ineffable to me. In the future, I’d like to be competent in discussing novels on all levels. I don’t see any reason to read, with the exception of our guilty pleasures, if we are not to discuss their importance in a communal way. I think that the three stages presented, though not unequal, is an effective way of discerning our abilities as readers. I look forward to looking at more theories on the matter.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Language
I'd like to defend my argument that language=intelligence. To draw a comparison, it isn't so different within our own culture, today, to classify a certain ability as the most "intelligent." For example, those who are up to date on technology are revered as being the most intelligent in our society. The reason that they are seen as such might have to do with the fact that technology makes processes easier, much like language made communication and administration easier for many countries. However, the beauty of great hand-crafted art will always be more beautiful than great graphic art, simply because there is a sense that it has remained from the beginning of time; and to be timeless is something ineffable. Similarly, old languages will always have that same effect. Language can be like an old decrepit house overgrown with weeds and foliage. Few know its secrets, but those who do have quite the story to tell. There is beauty in the unknown and even the little known, sometimes just because it is subversive; but more so because the familiar, even if objectively pleasing, doesn't always entice. There is a great beauty in something that is dying; maybe that is why things come and go in cycles, because just when we realize how great something is, it's already gone.
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