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...
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, April 9, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
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.
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.
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