"Jon," and a Curious Incident

Many of the stories we've read in class stick out for me as having a particular feature that is memorable, one that isn't necessary the interesting events that occur. "The Things They Carried" has a strange, repetitive style. "Teddy" presented interesting ideas about existence, although I felt the actual plot was ultimately lacking. In this vein, the story of "Jon" is triumph of distinctive voice. Jon's naive, yet poignant voice reminded me of Mark Haddon's A Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a novel.

In Curious Incident, we also follow a first-person narrator, Christopher. Like Jon, Christopher's ability to communicate with others is different then we might consider normal, and like Jon, they often find themselves unable to express themselves to others, Jon because he lived all his life isolated in a product-testing faculty, and with chips embedded in his brain, while Christopher has some form of unspecified autism, unable to read facial expressions, lie, or interpret metaphors-- he cannot form an emotional reading of a situation. Contrast the following excerpt from Curious Incident, where Christopher has just discovered a murdered dog, to when Jon learns the truth about his parents, and note the matter-of-fact tone in both:

"Let go of the dog," she shouted. "Let go of the fucking dog for Christ's sake."
I put the dog down on the lawn and moved back 2 meters.
She bent down. I thought she was going to pick the dog up herself, but she didn't. Perhaps she noticed how much blood there was and didn't want to get dirty. Instead she started screaming again.
I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes and rolled forward till I was hunched up with my forehead pressed onto the grass. The grass was wet and cold. It was nice. 

From "Jon":

Because tell the truth that thing with my mom had freaked me out, it was like my foundation had fallen away, like at LI 83743 for Advil, where the guy’s foundation of his house falls away and he thunks his head on the floor of Hell and thus needs a Advil, which the Devil has some but won’t give him any.
As he left, Dove unhit Pause, and I had time to note many things on that video, such as that lady’s teeth were not good...

Like how Jon notices how the lady's teeth weren't good in the middle of the dramatic reveal, Christopher makes a completely out of place interpretation that the woman's actions were out of a desire for cleanliness. A smaller detail is the unconventionally spelled out "2," and in Curious Incident as a whole, the chapters are numbered to be prime. This evokes the numerical Location Indicators that Jon references; for both of these characters, these numbers are an intimate part of their lives.

For Jon and Christopher, their handicaps on communicate create obstacles for them. For Jon, he cannot even imagine conveying emotions to Carolyn without the benefit of having a shared language of the Location Indicators, and Christopher is often discriminated against and dismissed as a "spazz" because of his condition. Yet, both of these narrators exposed to me a new perspective, precisely because of the handicaps that their voices convey, and both of the fictional worlds they reside are more interesting because of their perspective. Imagine "Jon," for example, told in the stiff style of Brave New World, and for those who have read Curious Incident, imagine the book retold from the Dad's perspective. A certain amount of the conflict directly arises from these distinctive voices, which, in our conflict-ridden world, leads to the question:

Are we really that much more successful at communication than Christopher and Jon are able to be?

 

Birdman and No Face

After the reading "No Face," I was struck the parrells between it and Birdman, a recent film by Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Birdman follows the story of an actor past his prime trying to create a Broadway adaptation of a short story amidst various mishaps. The actor, Riggan Thomson, rose to fame playing Birdman, a superhero and thinly-veiled analogue to Batman, and since rejecting a reprisal of that role, has lost most of that fame. 

In "No Face," we follow Ysrael, a child that has been rejected by his community in much the same way that Riggan has been rejected from his. Ysrael, as a result of his physical disfigurement, wears a mask that marks him as different, while Riggan is rejected because he has faded from the spotlight, although he confronts the realities of his physical appearance, graying and aging, as well. The struggle to find identity is a central theme in both "No Face" and "Birdman," and although I won't leave any spoilers, both stories leave the question less than resolved.

In the very starting passages of "No Face" and the first few minutes of "Birdman," we find another parallel: they both have fantastical powers that may or may not exist. We see Ysrael, shouting "FLIGHT" and soaring above the trees, the metaphorical camera of narration following him, and we see Riggan, calmly levitating in his room with nothing but his underwear. Is any of it real? In "No Face" we get details from the narration that imply Ysrael could only have seen the things he had if he had actually flown, and the special effects show Riggan as actually having those powers. And yet, there are clues in both works that suggest the powers aren't real. When Ysrael uses the power of "INVISIBILITY" and sneaks among the people of the city, he is discovered anyway, and Riggan bears physical marks of injury on his hands after the camera has just displayed him throwing things around with telekinesis.

Regardless of whether they are actually real, superpowers are a strong conduit for emotional stress for both of these characters. Ysrael, disfigured and made to think himself worthless by the other boys, uses his powers to return agency to himself; they allow him to think he has some kind of control over his life. Riggan uses his in much the same way, although he doesn't cast himself into the role of a superhero, who goes around saving people and cats like Ysrael does, but rather a retired hero that has retained his powers. Ysrael uses his powers to compensate for his shortcomings, while Riggan's powers are an extension of his frustrations.

The surreal effect created by each of these works is entirely memorable, and even more impressive is that symbolism of the powers hold regardless of whether they are real or not real. To close, I would recommend watching Birdman if you haven't already. It is well-done and has some great music.

How to be An Other Black Box

While discussing "How to be an Other Woman" in class, I noticed some striking parallels with another short story, "Black Box" by Jennifer Egan. (For those wishing to read it, you can find it here: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/06/04/black-box-2.). On the surface, these appear to be very different stories aside from their shared use of the second person: one is about a woman in an affair, and the second is about a woman trying to seduce a man, possibly some kind of criminal or terrorist, in order to spy on him. The parallel lies in the way both stories' narrators develop. They both begin with a clear frame of mind, and as the situation grows murkier and more emotionally involved, they spiral into self-doubt about their identity and the relationship they've been pursuing.

Both of these stories opened by placing their narrators in a mission, which was how I first was reminded of "Black Box" while reading Moore's story. The narrator of "Black Box" is termed a Beauty, a volunteer undercover seductress employed to spy on enemies of the state; in other words, a secret agent. "Black Box" is framed as the narrator's field guide to Beauties like herself-- much as how "How to be an Other Woman" is framed as a guide to having an affair -- and the story begins with matter-of-fact advice on how a Beauty should seduce her target. Likewise, the opening of "How to be an Other Woman" immediately evoked the sort of secret mission vibe that "Black Box" had: "Meet in expensive beige raincoats, on a pea-soupy night. Like a detective movie," and later on, directly references the narrator as a metaphorical spy, "you are two spies glancing at watches..."

The language of the opening places the narrators on a mission, and the narrators have a focused frame of mind for that mission. The narrator of Egan's story is clearly focused on her mission of getting close to her target. Even though little fragments of her own background slip out in what is ostensibly a totally objective field guide, such as a reference to her husband ("If you love someone with dark skin, white skin looks drained of something vital,") the narrator consciously steers herself back to her task. She does this in spite of the physical violations she endures: "Resist the impulse to reconstruct what has just happened. Focus instead on gauging your Designated Mate’s reaction to the new intimacy between you." Similarly, the narrator of Moore's story, Charlene, fully settles into her role as mistress, not even acknowledging the possibility that she may merely be one of a string of women, as we later discover. To her, being a mistress has become a part of her identity. She sits in public restrooms and says to herself, "Hello, I'm Charlene. I'm a mistress."

And eventually, the cracks begin to show; these two protagonists discover repercussions of their pursuits they aren't totally ready to deal with. For the narrator of "Black Box," the emotional stresses both of being physically violated and thoughts about her relationship to her husband and father build up over the course of the story, eventually reaching a head in what I think is section 37, where she is forced to attack a woman holding a baby, commentating that "We are most reluctant to hurt those who remind us of ourselves." For Charlene, there's a nagging doubt that as a mistress, she's not good enough; we see this in Charlene's list-making, which she seems to do as a direct response to Patricia's list-making. Although it was less clear for the narrator of "Black Box," Charlene's turning point seems to be the scene where she realizes that's she's simply one of many woman: not just "An Other Woman," but "Another Woman." The narrator of Egan's story begins to doubt her mission and whether she truly had any control in her life ("Hindsight creates the illusion that your life has led you inevitably to the present moment. It’s easier to believe in a foregone conclusion than to accept that our lives are governed by chance"); Charlene's inferiority grows into a sort jealous panic, and she begins seeing potential lovers for her man in every woman she meets.

All in all, these are both intriguingly innovative stories, I would recommend readers check out "Black Box" if they haven't done so already. It's worthwhile to note that "Black Box" was published as a series of tweets, so every sentence is shorter than 140 characters.

An Artist's Struggle

"Sonny's Blues," and "This Evening, This Morning, So Soon": if I was forced to name the main theme of these two Baldwin short stories, I would probably say that Sonny's Blues is about the developing relationship between brothers, and "This Evening" is about the international effects of racism. 

Yet in both stories, the struggle of the artist is also a key aspect. Sonny, a jazz pianist, and Unnamed Narrator, a singer and actor, both seek to overcome the boundaries of their situations as well as their personal limitations. In both stories, Baldwin provides a scene where we see the artist reach a sort of maturity, not only in music or acting but also a greater personal understanding.

Sonny has always felt trapped by the limitations of his neighborhood, Harlem. "Look, brother. I don't want to stay in Harlem no more, I really don't. (127)" touches off an exchange between Sonny and the narrator that has an undercurrent of anxiety on Sonny's part as he tries to justify his decisions to join the army and become a musician to his older brother. To Sonny, Harlem is not only where there the scent of trash, but also is where drug problems can easily trap him: "I couldn't tell you when Mama died-but the reason I wanted to leave Harlem so bad was to get away  from drugs. And then, when I ran away, that's what I was running from-really," Sonny confides to his brother right after inviting him to come hear him play at a club. 

In a way, Sonny never succeeds in physically escapes his situation; his drug problems return, culminating in his arrest and imprisonment. However, Sonny can escape into his music, as seen the final scene of the story, as he plays with Creole and the band. At first, he is channeling his own suffering to create something, and his music is a lament. Sonny comments earlier on hearing the voice of a women at the revival he and the narrator stop by, saying that "While I was downstairs before, on my way here, listening to that woman sing, it struck me all of a sudden how much suffering she must have had to go through-to sing like that. " Blues, after all, could mean either the type of music or hard times.

As the song reaches its climax though, Sonny's playing no longer becomes a lament, but instead an expression of freedom: "Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did." In that moment where Sonny has "made it his," after not playing for a year, Sonny achieves a new sense of himself and narrator comes to understand his brother.

Comparing Sonny's struggle, the struggle of the Unnamed Narrator of "This Evening" resolves much faster, but it certainly isn't easy. After playing his character of Chico in a totally unconvincing way, Vidal pulls himself for a long discussion about the Narrator's empathy for Chico trying to get a job, which transitions into a discussion of race. The Narrator begins with a sort of brush-off attitude, satisfied with his own somewhat-cynical ideas about race, ("'Oh God, I said, 'please don't give me any of this equality-in-anguish business'") but Vidal shuts him down with the reality of French race ("You think that I--we--are not paying for our history?") As the Narrator is challenged to think about his own identity, he presumably develops the mindset that lets him give his star performance, just as Sonny's maturation allowed him to produce such powerful music.

What are your thoughts on the way artists are portrayed in Going to Meet the Man?

Halfway Reflection on Short Story

As the first quarter closes in Short Story, I want to comment on some of the more memorable stories we've had:

Top three most enjoyable stories to read:

1. "When Engaging Enemy Targets, Remember"- Gavin Ford Kovite 

The unique Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style of the narrator didn't seem like just a gimmick; the choices it presented gave me a new perspective on the consequences of choices in wartime. The limited number of choices, as well as actions you could took that had no consequences, such as throwing the bottle at the car, was powerful symbolism. The interactive aspect made this story both thought-provoking and fun.

2."John S's Blue Period"-J.D. Salinger
I can see how some may not like the narrator, but I found his ridiculous mannerisms and way of speaking to be quite funny, as well as possessing a degree of self-awareness of his own absurdity. The strange non-plot of pursuing an artistically talented nun was a refreshing break from some of the heavier subject matter we've had in this class. Not to mention that the narrator's tongue-in-cheek of the student's bad art are some of the funniest passages in the book.

3. "The Things They Carried"-Tim O' Brien
I won't be able to forget the first encounter with The Things They Carried. While it wasn't as funny or entertaining like the previous two, O'Brien's oddly hypnotic and tightly-crafted prose drew me in and set expectations high for the rest of the collection. Favorite sentence:

 I'm sorry, motherfuckers, but I'm out of it, I'm goofed, I'm on a space cruise, I'm gone!—and it was a restful, unencumbered sensation, just riding the light waves, sailing that big silver freedom bird over the mountains and oceans, over America, over the farms and great sleeping cities and cemeteries and highways and the golden arches of McDonald's, it was flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the earth and beyond the sun and through the vast, silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where everything weighed exactly nothing—Gone! they screamed. 

Top three stories I learned the most from

1. "Teddy"-J.D. Salinger

Since this was the story I was in a discussion leading group for, it's isn't really surprising that I feel I got to know this story best. For me, though, analyzing "Teddy" was the key that tied Nine Stories together. I think many of you'll agree, based on the number posts commenting on the connections between "Teddy" and "A Perfect Day for Bananafish." "Teddy" was one of the more difficult stories, was an ambiguous ending, unclear conflict, and a complex protagonist in Teddy, but that made it ultimately more rewarding.

2. "How to Tell a True War Story"-Tim O' Brien

As "Teddy" tied many themes of Nine Stories together (including Zen Buddhism), "How to Tell a True War Story" brought O' Brien's collection together. It was even more wildly experimental than "When Engaging Targets" that we read earlier; it didn't have as much a cohesive plot than small anecdotes all connected by commentary on war stories. Discussing this story set the groundwork for a lot of the later metafictional sections in The Things They Carried, and showed me a versatility in the genre that extended past beginning, middle, and end.

3. "Previous Condition"-James Baldwin

Having not taken African-American Lit before, "Previous Condition" was one of my few exposures to reading and discussion of black-white race issues. Although some of the Native Son comments in class go over my head, I thought getting this exposure was valuable just like reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian in Sophomore English was, even before taking Native American and Chicano Lit-- it stretched me to think about settings strange to me.

Favorite author: J. D Salinger

It was certainly a close contest between O' Brien and Salinger. O' Brien is smoother to read and digest than Salinger, but Salinger's stories portrayed more interesting characters in my opinion and edged out in that regard.

O' Brien's characterization is quite explicit; and character traits, like Dobbin's large, friendly manner and Rat Kiley's sentimentalism are pretty clear and sometimes stated outright. In The Things They Carried, I always felt I got to know the characters pretty well quickly, which was part of the appeal. Meanwhile in Salinger, we're allowed more interpretation of the characters. For example, what kind of person is Ginny really in "Just Before the War with the Eskimo," and what is the nature of her relationship with the sandwich? 

Least favorite author: Ernest Hemingway

I had already written a blog post earlier on Hemingway's style, but reiterating, I just felt like it didn't mesh with me. There's something to be said for letting the reader do some of the heavy-lifting, but I felt like other short story authors we read accomplished that without the excessively dry effect that Hemingway created. I understand that later authors were greatly influenced by him, but considering them all at once I felt Hemingway was the least compelling. Who knows: in the future, I may come to appreciate his writing more.

Zen and Teddy

After our class discussion on Teddy, there was one point that we didn't get to mention: the relationship of Nine Stories epigraph to the rest of the book and Teddy in particular. The epigraph reads, "What is the sound of one hand clapping? -Zen Koan." A koan in Zen Buddhism is an often illogical anecdote or parable that demonstrates some aspect of Zen teaching or tests a student's understanding of Zen. The full koan from which the epigraph is taken can be read at the following link: http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/21thesoundofonehand.html and is an excellent demonstration of the genre's rejection of logic.

In Teddy, we see many themes that relate to the ideas of Zen Buddhism, such as rebirth, enlightenment, prediction and the rejection of logic and materialism, that can be recognized in the context of Zen koans. For example, both Teddy and Seymour's rejection of materialism is seen in koan called "No Attachment to Dust":"Living in the world yet not forming attachments to the dust of the world is the way of a true Zen student."

Another striking example is Teddy's seeming ability to predict his own death, which appears in the koan called "The Last Poem of Hoshin" about a Zen master named Hoshin. The effect of the ending, with its suddenness and absolute lack of explanation, had the same effect upon me as the ending in Teddy. The latter part is reproduced here, but you can read the whole thing at http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/10thelastpoemofhoshin.html.

Hoshin, who related this story, told his disciples: "It is not necessary for a Zen master to predict his passing, but if he really wishes to do so, he can."

"Can you?" someone asked.

"Yes," answered Hoshin. "I will show you what I can do seven days from now."

None of the disciples believed him, and most of them had even forgotten the conversation when Hoshin called them together.

"Seven days ago," he remarked, "I said I was going to leave you. It is customary to write a farewell poem, but I am neither a poet or a calligrapher. Let one of you inscribe my last words."

His followers thought he was joking, but one of them started to write.

"Are you ready?" Hoshin asked.

"Yes sir," replied the writer.

Then Hoshin dictated:

I came from brillancy
And return to brillancy.
What is this?

This line was one line short of the customary four, so the disciple said: "Master, we are one line short." Hoshin, with the roar of a conquering lion, shouted "Kaa!" and was gone.

In another example, Teddy's idea of clearing away all what children are taught, when asked how he would change the educational system, is seen in a Zen koan called "A Cup of Tea" that mirrors Teddy's idea that we have to reject all preconceived notions, even of basic concepts like what we think an arm is, to achieve spirituality:

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"

Although many of Teddy's ideas are similar to Zen's, a final question is Teddy's own relationship to Zen. He often references the capital G God, and also relates his spirituality back to the Christian tradition by discussing Adam in the Garden of Eden as if it were a historical fact. His idea of enlightenment is more the reaching of heaven, and becoming able to spend eternity with God, rather than becoming a greater spiritual being, a Buddha. In this way, Teddy represents an odd mixture of two Eastern and Western spirituality.

A criticism of Icebergs in In Our Time

Is Hemingway's style effective in the short stories of In Our Time? 

Hemingway certainly does not make it easy for readers. With his sparse sentences and lack of internal descriptions, we are forced to consider the subtext of every interaction just to make sense of the words on the page. Most of the stories in In Our Time, when taken at face-level, seems to be missing something vital, like a very pale person. If I should skim through one beginning to end, I have no further curiosity, contemplation, or empathy.

It is only after some reflection is done can we sift out the emotions that Hemingway is attempting to highlight. Iceberg Theory, Hemingway's style, doesn't reflect on events below the surface. It creates a narrative distance that readers must bridge themselves.

I can see how this makes Hemingway's work thoughtful and literary. But while achieving artistic elevation, he sacrifices as much of his accessibility as does a writer using overly long sentences and words. I've read somewhere that Hemingway is comprehensible by fifth graders, and there's even a writing tool called Hemingway that deletes extraneous words. I've also read a quote that Hemingway's sentences began as spindly things, and he gradually had to build them up to full strength.

Take this example, from the story The End of Something:

"There's going to be a moon tonight," said Nick. He looked across the bay to the hills that were beginning to sharpen against the sky. Beyond the hills he knew the moon was coming up.
"I know it," Marjorie said happily.
"You know everything," Nick said.
"Oh, Nick, please cut it out! Please, please don't be that way!"

Presumably, readers should deduce that Nick and Marjorie have some kind of long-running "knowledge" conflict that somehow triggers an outburst from Marjorie. Iceberg Theory at work: we only see the iceberg of Nick and Marjorie's relationship. I don't feel any satisfaction from trying to deduce the details of their relationship with Hemingway's clues throughout the End of Something, though. By forcing me to bridge the narrative distance, I've lost empathy for the characters along the way. If he had given just a little bit about why I should care if either of these characters, or Bill, should live die or be happy, I would like this story more.

From this story, I've come to realize how Hemingway's style, which depends on Iceberg Theory, the theory of omission, never really grabbed my interest.

If I could describe narrative quality with temperature, I would say that it's cold. Icebergs are cold, after all. In Our Time is a cold book, in this way. It starts cold and stays cold. The Things They Carried, which took influence from Hemingway, also utilizes sparse descriptions. But it sometimes dives into the minds of characters or even the author. It is a cold and hot book, it has variety.