Contrary to the popular feeling, I was so excited to be handed the semester project assignment sheet. I made an elaborate plan, it was going to be the best thing I had ever written in my entire life. I was unbelievably thrilled to be able to re-write history and kill Hitler. It was going to be awesome, really.
Unfortunately, things did not work out as planned. Reading the posts of my peers, I realize this doesn't follow the typical project progression. Everyone else was upset with the assignment, but realized halfway through the project that it was actually unbelievably interesting and they were so excited to finish and everything came together in the end.
Me, on the other hand, was excited in the beginning, and beyond frustrated by the end. My story was large, it was too big to be squashed into a short story. My problem, I guess, was that I refused to let go. I wanted to do my characters justice, and make them as full and as fleshed out as DeLillo does with his characters. I wanted to become the writing style that I said I disliked so much, and include so many details that my reader was drowning in them.
I didn't, and I feel ashamed of what I produced. It was a shell of the brilliant, beautiful idea I had in the beginning. I wasn't happy to be done and to call it "finished." I worked for hours and hours and hours, and what I came up with was extremely lackluster. Instead of the diamond I expected, it was that really annoying rock in the park you always stub your toe on.
I learned a lot from it, though. I realized how much research it takes to pull together a beautifully detailed work of historical fiction. This project gave me new found respect for all the authors we've read this year, even the ones I didn't like as much. Finding my own balance between history and fiction was excruciatingly difficult, but I'm glad I tried it. At the very least, it'll teach me not to be so cocky next time.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
All in the Details
Libra has been a difficult book to read, to say the least. Partially because I'm not a big fan of its protagonist, and probably also because I'm not a big fan of the style it's written in. DeLillo has a very distinctive style. It's very vague, but at the same time exacting. He includes so many details, SO many details it's hard for the reader to discern what's actually important to the main flow of the story, at least in the beginning.
The beginning of Libra was pretty slow, in my opinion. I was struggling to keep up on multiple occasions. I was continually confused by the number of characters we were introduced to in the parts with Lee, and I found the chapters about the CIA plot to be much more interesting. As the plot thickened, and as DeLillo began weaving the chapters together, I found the book to be much easier to follow. The prose was still thick and difficult to sift through, but there was enough momentum from the plot to keep me interested, whereas in the beginning it was like trying to walk through glue with no end in sight.
His style was very different from that of Doctorow, who said things very matter-of-factly. Somehow, Doctorow managed to include details without overloading me with them, and I found his prose significantly easier to read and understand.
On that note, I have to say I liked DeLillo's use of historical characters much better than Doctorow's. I read Libra as something that could be taken as completely factual. Everything DeLillo wrote seemed completely plausible, and now that I've finished Libra, any other assumptions I had about the Kennedy assassination have been erased and replaced with DeLillo's account. I felt like DeLillo was very respectful of his characters somehow, whereas at some points it felt like Doctorow was just thinking up the most random situations he possibly could.
Overall, I think I wish Libra was written in Doctorow's style with DeLillo's regard for his characters. But I guess that's just my personal taste.
The beginning of Libra was pretty slow, in my opinion. I was struggling to keep up on multiple occasions. I was continually confused by the number of characters we were introduced to in the parts with Lee, and I found the chapters about the CIA plot to be much more interesting. As the plot thickened, and as DeLillo began weaving the chapters together, I found the book to be much easier to follow. The prose was still thick and difficult to sift through, but there was enough momentum from the plot to keep me interested, whereas in the beginning it was like trying to walk through glue with no end in sight.
His style was very different from that of Doctorow, who said things very matter-of-factly. Somehow, Doctorow managed to include details without overloading me with them, and I found his prose significantly easier to read and understand.
On that note, I have to say I liked DeLillo's use of historical characters much better than Doctorow's. I read Libra as something that could be taken as completely factual. Everything DeLillo wrote seemed completely plausible, and now that I've finished Libra, any other assumptions I had about the Kennedy assassination have been erased and replaced with DeLillo's account. I felt like DeLillo was very respectful of his characters somehow, whereas at some points it felt like Doctorow was just thinking up the most random situations he possibly could.
Overall, I think I wish Libra was written in Doctorow's style with DeLillo's regard for his characters. But I guess that's just my personal taste.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Oswald (redone version)
He's a bit of a poser, isn't he? Maybe that's an understatement. Regardless, I really don't like reading about him. He's one of those guys who thinks they're really cool and smart, but actually... aren't.... Everyone just lets him live in his own little warped world while at the same time getting him to do stuff for them. I can't tell what bothers me more, the fact that people take advantage of him, or the fact that he basically wants to be taken advantage of.
He's so self possessed, he thinks he's the greatest thing in the world, writing in his "historical diary" and thinking that he's able to play the US and Russian governments with his false defector in a false defector program, and I just hate it. He's an attention seeking little worm, but the way DeLillo writes about him confuses me so much. I don't know if I'm supposed to feel sympathy for him or not! That's tough for me. When I read a book, I like to be able to invest feelings in a character I like. But I don't really like Lee. He unnerves me. When he fires the shots from the window in "November 22," I inwardly groan something along the lines of, "Not this again...," because he does it all the time! He wants to get played, so he can make a big deal to the authorities of how he did get played so they'll sympathize with him and make him famous or something. He's like an old dog that's kind of cute but really dirty so you don't want to pet, and it's mean, too, so you don't really feel sorry for it.
If he actually felt bad about taking shots at the President, he probably would have done a better job of trying to hide himself. But he half assed-ly hides the gun and the clipboard, he leaves his jacket at work and runs around town doing "evasive maneuvering," and the whole time you're just thinking, "Goddamn it, go back inside," because you want him to succeed because he's the main character in the book but you hate him because he's just so annoying and arrogant and so many other things. The fact that I can't pin a "like" or a "dislike" on him is really frustrating. He creeps me out.
In short, reading about Lee makes me very uncomfortable.
(On another side note, this new layout for Blogger is really inconvenient and I keep getting lost, which is how I ended up back on this page to type this side note.)
He's so self possessed, he thinks he's the greatest thing in the world, writing in his "historical diary" and thinking that he's able to play the US and Russian governments with his false defector in a false defector program, and I just hate it. He's an attention seeking little worm, but the way DeLillo writes about him confuses me so much. I don't know if I'm supposed to feel sympathy for him or not! That's tough for me. When I read a book, I like to be able to invest feelings in a character I like. But I don't really like Lee. He unnerves me. When he fires the shots from the window in "November 22," I inwardly groan something along the lines of, "Not this again...," because he does it all the time! He wants to get played, so he can make a big deal to the authorities of how he did get played so they'll sympathize with him and make him famous or something. He's like an old dog that's kind of cute but really dirty so you don't want to pet, and it's mean, too, so you don't really feel sorry for it.
If he actually felt bad about taking shots at the President, he probably would have done a better job of trying to hide himself. But he half assed-ly hides the gun and the clipboard, he leaves his jacket at work and runs around town doing "evasive maneuvering," and the whole time you're just thinking, "Goddamn it, go back inside," because you want him to succeed because he's the main character in the book but you hate him because he's just so annoying and arrogant and so many other things. The fact that I can't pin a "like" or a "dislike" on him is really frustrating. He creeps me out.
In short, reading about Lee makes me very uncomfortable.
(On another side note, this new layout for Blogger is really inconvenient and I keep getting lost, which is how I ended up back on this page to type this side note.)
On a somewhat unrelated note...
I haven't blogged in a long time. I've been working a lot on my project,and it's kind of hard to bring myself back to the 1950s and 60s after being completely immersed in Nazi Germany for so long. In retrospect, I've been doing a lot of things that creep me out lately. I watched this really weird Ryan Gosling movie (only because it had Ryan Gosling in it, yes, I admit it, so there's no need to judge) called All Good Things and not only did it kind of ruin him as an actor for me, I made a lot of parallels between Gosling's character and Oswald.
So, first, a quick plot summary of this movie: All Good Things is based on the true story of that notorious missing person's case in New York history about that real estate tycoon who is accused but never put on trial for murdering his wife. Ryan Gosling plays David Marks, the heir to this real estate dynasty, and Kirsten Dunst plays his really cute wife. Basically, David Marks suffered some really horrible childhood experiences and so he's kind of messed up in the head, so eventually his marriage falls to pieces and probably -- but not for sure -- kills his wife. Anyway. It wasn't even that good of a movie, but it was creepy, and I ended up sleeping on my parent's floor.
Moving on. I started watching it because it was recommended for me on Netflix, which definitely should not have happened and I will be sending the Netflix team a stern letter when I get around to it. (It's also partially my fault, because the picture they put with the title was of Ryan Gosling shirtless, so how can you resist) Regardless, the movie started off well enough, and I was pretty engaged, but then things started to get weird. Gosling has this really sinister sort of emotionless way of acting that's really mysterious and probably why so many women think he's attractive, but in this movie it was definitely falling more on the sinister side and not on the attractive side. He kept doing these really weird half smiles that weren't really smiles, and I was trying to remember where I had seen or heard about someone doing that before, but I didn't make the connection until later.
But it kept on bugging me, and I was really annoyed with it -- or maybe I was just annoyed at Kirsten Dunst because she was really exhibiting any kind of girl power and Ryan Gosling was just being creepy so there was really no reason to watch the film anymore. But it was a mystery and I had to know what happened at the end so I kept watching. I continued to not make any sort of connection, until this one part, after Gosling's character had done something despicable and his wife is confused and outraged -- I don't remember what the exact event was, I've kind of blocked most of it from my memory -- but she says, "I've never been closer to anyone, and I don't know you at all." And something in my brain just clicked, and I was like, "HEY! Oswald's wife says basically the same thing about him!" And it's true, she does! We talked about it a lot!
So I was super excited for about a minute, as I subsequently made the connection about the facial expression thing as well. Then I realized it just made me feel even more uncomfortable, because I don't really like how Oswald is described in Libra, and I didn't really like Gosling in this movie. I can't really decide if I'm supposed to be pitying either of them, or feeling sympathy for them? Because I don't, none at all. Sometimes a bit of mystery can be attractive, but when you start dressing up like a woman and killing your apartment building neighbors (that actually happened, but he was acquitted because it was apparently done in "self defense"), it definitely stops. (Killing presidents can also put a bit of a damper on your overall date-ability.)
Overall, this blog post isn't really that worthwhile. But I think both those guys are pretty creepy, and I just thought I'd share. I mean, they even look eerily similar...
So, first, a quick plot summary of this movie: All Good Things is based on the true story of that notorious missing person's case in New York history about that real estate tycoon who is accused but never put on trial for murdering his wife. Ryan Gosling plays David Marks, the heir to this real estate dynasty, and Kirsten Dunst plays his really cute wife. Basically, David Marks suffered some really horrible childhood experiences and so he's kind of messed up in the head, so eventually his marriage falls to pieces and probably -- but not for sure -- kills his wife. Anyway. It wasn't even that good of a movie, but it was creepy, and I ended up sleeping on my parent's floor.
Moving on. I started watching it because it was recommended for me on Netflix, which definitely should not have happened and I will be sending the Netflix team a stern letter when I get around to it. (It's also partially my fault, because the picture they put with the title was of Ryan Gosling shirtless, so how can you resist) Regardless, the movie started off well enough, and I was pretty engaged, but then things started to get weird. Gosling has this really sinister sort of emotionless way of acting that's really mysterious and probably why so many women think he's attractive, but in this movie it was definitely falling more on the sinister side and not on the attractive side. He kept doing these really weird half smiles that weren't really smiles, and I was trying to remember where I had seen or heard about someone doing that before, but I didn't make the connection until later.
But it kept on bugging me, and I was really annoyed with it -- or maybe I was just annoyed at Kirsten Dunst because she was really exhibiting any kind of girl power and Ryan Gosling was just being creepy so there was really no reason to watch the film anymore. But it was a mystery and I had to know what happened at the end so I kept watching. I continued to not make any sort of connection, until this one part, after Gosling's character had done something despicable and his wife is confused and outraged -- I don't remember what the exact event was, I've kind of blocked most of it from my memory -- but she says, "I've never been closer to anyone, and I don't know you at all." And something in my brain just clicked, and I was like, "HEY! Oswald's wife says basically the same thing about him!" And it's true, she does! We talked about it a lot!
So I was super excited for about a minute, as I subsequently made the connection about the facial expression thing as well. Then I realized it just made me feel even more uncomfortable, because I don't really like how Oswald is described in Libra, and I didn't really like Gosling in this movie. I can't really decide if I'm supposed to be pitying either of them, or feeling sympathy for them? Because I don't, none at all. Sometimes a bit of mystery can be attractive, but when you start dressing up like a woman and killing your apartment building neighbors (that actually happened, but he was acquitted because it was apparently done in "self defense"), it definitely stops. (Killing presidents can also put a bit of a damper on your overall date-ability.)
Overall, this blog post isn't really that worthwhile. But I think both those guys are pretty creepy, and I just thought I'd share. I mean, they even look eerily similar...
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