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...

Style

I find it difficult to comment on Kindred for some reason. I think it's because Octavia Butler's style is so different from the other authors we have read this year. It's true that with books written in different or unique styles, I have a lot more to comment on in terms of images in Mumbo Jumbo or the seemingly random use of historical figures and whether or not that's entirely ethical in Ragtime, whereas with Kindred I read it more to enjoy the story than I did for any other reason. Personally, I really like her style. It's a very conventional novel, I think, and I don't mean it in a bad way.

Unlike Doctorow, Butler writes as though she is very invested in the story. There isn't as much reflection back on herself, and I feel very connected to Dana throughout the whole book. She doesn't write in a tone of detached irony, instead it's very attached, powerful, and in a lot of ways, painfully straightforward. I like it better that way. While Doctorow's writing was funny in its irony, Butler's is more emotional, and I like coming away from a book feeling like I know the characters.

Butler's story has a very linear progression. Unlike Mumbo Jumbo, where everything is so mixed up that I had no way of making logical assumptions about where the story would go, Kindred was more gripping in that I had all these different possibilities of where the story could go. It allowed me to hope and feel sad when something didn't happen the way I wanted it to, which, in the end, made me more emotionally invested in the story.

I also liked that Kindred was linear in that Butler didn't skip around in time. Well, technically she did, with all of Dana's time traveling, but it wasn't as disorienting as reading Slaughterhouse Five. There were clear causes and effects for why Dana was traveling the way she was, whereas Billy Pilgrim's time travel didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Overall, I think it's going to be more difficult for me to come up with a response paper topic for Kindred than the other books we've read. All I can really think to talk about are plot movements and character development, or how much I hate Rufus. Oh well. Hopefully inspiration will strike.

Ending

I liked Kindred, I liked it a lot -- I forgot how nice it was to read books that I actually, truly was interested in. I'm not saying that the other books we've read haven't been good or even that I didn't like them, I'm just saying that if I was walking through a bookstore, Kindred would have been a book I would have picked out on my own.

That being said, I'm conflicted about the ending. Dana killed Rufus, which was some closure for me, but she comes away permanently scarred by her "adventures." The ending is happy, sure, but there isn't a sense that everything is going to return to normal after the danger has passed -- and I'm not sure if I like that or not. It's certainly atypical, I think, in some ways. It kind of annoys me how when she and Kevin take their trip to what used to be the Weylin plantation and they can't find the house, or very many records, really. But at the same time, I think that's really neat of Butler to do.

Kevin and Dana often find themselves thinking of the plantation as "home," even though they don't really like that association. By leaving barely any trace of the plantation, maybe Butler is trying to say something along the lines of, well, maybe Kevin and Dana don't have a home anymore? That, after what they've seen, they can no longer fully integrate themselves into the 1970s society that used to be their home, and that the home they made for themselves in the 19th century has disappeared.

And then there's Dana's arm. It's gone, she left it in the past -- well, they cut it off, but metaphorically speaking, she left it in the past. Her arm is still being crushed by Rufus, in a way, but it's detached from her body. Is that good or bad? There is a part of her that's still being controlled by her ancestor, but she no longer has it with her.... I realize I just repeated the same sentence, but the way I said it in my head emphasized its importance somehow.

Maybe the idea of losing her arm is simply Butler's way of showing us that after looking at the past in great detail, you can never really be whole again. Maybe she's saying that you leave a part of you in that time and you never really get it back. Especially when examining history as gruesome and as horrible as antebellum south -- no one comes away from human atrocity unscathed.

So, maybe it's just that I don't like that message. Why don't I like that message? Perhaps it's just not the happy, hopeful message that I'm used to -- the idea that everything's going to be okay. But even though I don't like it, I think it's a really refreshing idea somehow -- it's not boring and simple and cathartic, it's unsettling and disturbing, and that's probably how we should feel after reading something about slavery.

Rufus

I HATE RUFUS. No really, I do. Never, not once, in the entire book have I felt even an ounce of sympathy for Rufus' character. Okay, maybe that's a little harsh. When he was a little boy drowning in the river, or maybe when he set the curtains on fire, I felt for him because he was little and cute. When he was Alice's friend he was okay, too, but when he grows up I wish I could stop knowing him as a character.

I know he's just a victim of his time, and that there were probably guys way worse than him, and that by making him monstrous, Butler is showing us how the system corrupts everyone, even the people who you think are going to be good. But I hate him, I hate everything he does. To quote Nikita, reading about the things Rufus does is like "an affront to my humanity." I just can't stand it. Is it because I'm a woman? Is it because I feel some gender based connection to these characters as Rufus tries to rape them or beat them, or even simply justify their beatings? Maybe it's all the political heat around issues concerning women these days that is making me so sensitive, but I don't care. He makes me sick.

In a way, it makes me hate Dana a little bit, too. Perhaps it's just me being a reader, looking at the situation from the safety of my couch, just thinking, "If that was me, he'd be dead in a second," even if it wasn't really true. But so what? It makes me hate her, the way she puts up with him, the way she was willing to "forgive him even this," at the end of the book, the way she sees herself starting to mold into the time and accept human atrocities and be a victim of them herself like it's no big deal.

Anyway, back to Rufus. He's just a child in a man's body. Maybe that's the point of the antebellum system -- he never really matures, because if he had matured, maybe he would have seen he flaws. You can sort of see him start to mature when he finally allows Joe to call him daddy, but that's far too late in the game for him to get any sort of forgiveness out of me.

He's pathetic -- all slave owners were, and don't tell me that's why I should sympathize with him, because he's a victim, and he's trying, and he's not as bad as he could be, save it, please! I don't agree. I don't think, in anyway, I could sympathize for Rufus ever. Pity him, maybe on a good day. But sympathy? Never.

Dresden

I thought the article for last night's reading was exceptionally interesting, even though it made me kind of angry. In particular, the sentence, "There was nothing exceptional about the bombing of Dresden," kind of made me want to stop reading immediately. In a way, I kind of feel like this article moved to discredit Vonnegut's account, to make the bombing of Dresden seem like nothing.

I don't see why we have to belittle the bombing of Dresden, just because it wasn't "exceptional" -- (What does exceptional mean, anyway? What about a bombing makes it "exceptional"?) -- doesn't mean it's not important. Vonnegut says 135,000 people died, a number he got from the author of a bestselling book by David Irving, but I feel like Packer is using the fact that Irving has now been discredited as a Nazi-sympathizer and anti-Semite to also discredit Vonnegut's book, and I don't really think that's fair. So what if the bombing of Dresden killed only 20-40,000 people instead of 135,000, and how can anyone have the nerve to use "only" in that sentence? 20,000 people is not worthy of an "only."

For one thing, it doesn't matter how many people the bombing killed, and for another, I don't even think the number is important to Vonnegut's argument. Vonnegut could have started using 20,000 in the beginning of the book and I still would have been shocked. Vonnegut is trying to write an anti-war novel, not a Nazi-sympathizer novel. He is, in no way, saying that by bombing Dresden, the Allies are on equal playing field with the Nazis. He's saying that war isn't a battle of good and evil, and he's saying that war gives people an excuse to do morally questionable things no matter what side they're on.

It also says somewhere in there that the Allies were carpet bombing civilians all over Germany -- why not write about those? Well, for a simple answer, it's Vonnegut's experiences, not just a book about bombings on Germany. He's giving it a personal edge, an effective personal edge, which makes me, anyway, see all those other bombings in a new light. 

So, I don't know. I kind of feel like this article is unnecessary. I didn't even think of taking Slaughterhouse Five in a Nazi-sympathizer direction until I read this article -- and I think it's kind of horrifying that someone would suggest that. Maybe that's naive of me to say, but I don't really care. I think Vonnegut treats the war in a very realistic light, which is something we don't get very often. He's not tarnishing the "good, angelic" Ally appearance, he's bringing them to a human level, which I think is really important when we talk about war.

I like your style.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm having a good time reading this book. From his irony to his odd repetitions, Vonnegut has a very unique writing style. The writing itself is very simple and unadorned, yet he somehow is able to remain attached. Unlike Doctorow, who is completely out of the picture in Ragtime, Vonnegut still has a very clear presence in his novel. 

The first chapter kind of set us up for it, even though I half expected his narration to be very distant because he called it a "failure." He includes himself in a lot of scenes, and even says things like, "I was there," kind of like how Ishmael Reed inserted himself into Mumbo Jumbo. Admittedly, it does kind of pull me out of the story for a moment, but I think for a war novel, it brings a whole new dimension to the story knowing that the person writing the story actually lived similar moments, too. 

I also sort of like Vonnegut's repetition of "So it goes." It kind of draws your attention to the deaths in the novel because it marks them with a catch phrase that you notice instead of simply glossing over them, which we are sometimes guilty of doing while reading other war novels. At the same time, when he says "So it goes," he's saying that life goes on without those people. It's almost as if he's saying, "These people died, and it's important, but at the same time no one cares, because no one can care." Life goes on no matter how you died. 

Finally, we were talking in class on Friday on how weird it was that Vonnegut gave up his climax in the first chapter. I think that's a really interesting way of writing a war novel, because we're not constantly focused on whether or not the characters are going to make it out alive, but instead we're thinking more about what they do when they're alive. Personally, I think that's a very unique and refreshing way to read a war novel. I like being able to focus on the characters more than constantly stressing over what's going to happen to them -- because believe me, I do. 

So I suppose it's a little bit late for a "First Impressions" blog post, seeing as how we're more than halfway through Slaughterhouse Five, but I feel like rather than things you only take in at the beginning of the novel, these elements of Vonnegut's style stay with us throughout the book. 

Slaughterhouse

I don't know, I guess I really like war stories. That's kind of a weird way to begin a blog entry, but I do. I like watching war movies, I like reading war books, I like listening to people telling war stories. Real war stories, though. My grandpa fought in World War II, so I often find myself in St. Louis or Chicago at reunions of his regiment. They don't really swap stories though, they just kind of sit together, remembering together, but not out loud.

That's kind of what I was reminded of, I guess, when Vonnegut and O'Hare were sitting at the table trying to remember the "good stuff," but they couldn't. My grandpa doesn't have "good stuff" to tell me. He always laughs when he says, "In the prison camp, I lost 45 pounds in 45 days." But that's not really that funny. Or when he tells me about the day of the prisoner exchange, and how he was the last one picked, and how the only thing he could do when he got to the other side was eat pancakes, and how they made him sick. He never really tells me how nervous he was, or how horrible it was.

But I mean, I can hear it in his words in other ways. He tells me about the Battle of the Bulge, and all he says is, "A lot of people froze in that battle." It's pretty simple, but it carries so much weight for him. How else do you describe something with so much death and destruction? He almost froze, he spent 30 days flat on his back in a field hospital as his legs cracked open and oozed. Doctors talked about amputation, but in the end he made it okay. He talks about his friends, points to them in pictures and says, "That's Hodges, he's dead now," in a simple way, yet one that is so powerful and sad.

This isn't really a blog post about the novel, which I kind of realize now. But I can't really think about this book without thinking about the things my grandfather's said to me. We talk a lot in class about how war is so glorified for everyone in America, but I've never really had a glorified view of war. Well, maybe, when I was very small, when I looked at the medals on the wall. A French Legion of Honor, Purple Heart, Silver Star, Prisoner of War -- I can go on, but I won't. Kids in elementary school would ask me if my grandpa fought in Vietnam, but I was proud to say no, that he'd fought the Nazis instead. It gave me more street cred on the playground.

But really, though, our family doesn't gather to listen to grandpa's wartime stories. He doesn't really like to talk about it, unless he's doing a presentation. It's more a silent presence looming over the glass boxes that held the ribbons, or over the trunk in the corner of the living room that still holds his knife and helmet, coat and boots. I only know so much because I've been to a few presentations and because I wrote a paper on him for Non-Fiction Writing last year.

So I guess, to make this related to class, I appreciate what Vonnegut is doing in writing an more accurate portrayal of the things that happen in wartime. My grandpa was only 18 when he got off the boats on Utah Beach, D+94, and I think he would very much agree that it was just a children's crusade. Vonnegut does a really good job of making me hate war more than I already do, but I can only see his memories in black and white. It'd be interesting, I think, to hear my grandfather's take on the novel -- to hear from someone who shares the memories in color.