Sadly I must admit that as the story went on I found the characters to become duller. Part of it I feel is that I became bored with them. Florentino continued to be pitiful, Fermina continued to be strong willed, and Urbino continued to be awesome. Interesting for the first 200 pages I just found these aspects of the primary characters to be expressed in far too many ways quite unnecessarily. Maybe this was meant to stress how much time was passing, but it just didn’t work for me. I became more interested in the secondary characters, mainly Florentino’s various women folk, as they are each incredibly different and reflect a different perspective of female life in such an interesting time and place.

Of the women Florentino encounters some are as weak minded as him and end up blending into the background as just one of the hundreds of affairs his life is made up of. There are two women specifically that stood out to me as more interesting and even slightly more realistic than Florentino’s average fling.

First, the only woman with enough respect for herself to not ever give into the sexual attraction of Florentino and in turn one of the only to have a positive affect on him, Leona Cassiani. Mistaken at first, we along with Florentino believe her to be a lady of the night, when actuality she is about as far from one as you can get. Instead she is at heart a businesswoman and ends up being a very good one at that. Because of this skill set her relationship with Florentino is formed on the basis of being associates rather than lovers and becomes much closer because of this. Leona is superior to Florentino in business in every way, but due to her love for him she helps him along so that he is able to rise in a world that he is definitely not meant for. What Florentino missed in a father I feel that Leona was able to make up for as she gave him the support structure he had never had along with being a lifelong friend.

The other woman who I find to be particularly interesting, or in her case exciting, is Olimpia Zuleta. Pigeon woman, wife, and eventually dead. Dead not because of her pigeons, what could have been a pretty awesome twist, but because of body paint, along with the whole being married thing. She was naive in a way none of Florentino’s other broads had been and she had a husband. This wouldn’t have been very exciting except for the fact that Florentino left a trace of his loving for the first time since Fermina. Expressing his love through the written word and once again being tempted by a forbidden fruit Florentino feels what he thinks is love again, but then its over. She is dead and rather than being sad he is afraid. Afraid that out of this ordeal Fermina will find out of about his life under the sheets. Another reason I don’t like the guy and a reason why I was able to enjoy this love and death affair.

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This book is funny. It may not be the point of the book, as love time and especially cholera are rarely funny, but it is certainly the most entertaining part of the novel. The comedy keeps the story rolling. Rather than bogging down in the sentimentalism that comes with a story about old people’s former love, Marquez keeps the story moving along briskly with a light humor that does not interfere with the plot.

In the first section the humor was pretty simple. Marquez focused on the always funny subjects of old age and lengthy marriages. Rather than exaggerating Marquez just states everything how it is, so the humor comes off as witty rather than contrived. He is also not afraid to resort to humor that some might consider crude. Rather than being a detriment, this is what really gave me in many cases a sense of what sort of a world the characters live in. This crudeness showed me that this Caribbean setting is one where parrots flirt, men are measured by their flow, and marriages reach the brink of disaster over a bar of soap. Through all of this, what is important is that Marquez is able to get to the point, Dr. Urbino’s death and the appearance of Florentino, and fill us in on many of the mannerisms of the main characters.

The Second section was funny in a different way. Rather than the kind of humor previously seen that got chuckles out of me, the story of Florentino’s and Fermina’s early love was more a constant satire on the subject of love struck teenagers. All of the torture Florentino put himself through, although not entirely realistic, showed how obsessed he had become with this girl. He got arrested, he drank perfume and ate flowers, he was nearly shot, and he searched for treasure all in the name of love. Then at the end of the section I had to question my own morality as I found the rejection sort of hilarious. Part of this is because it was actually realistic. Fermina did not even have to think of what to say to him. Her feelings changed in an instant and then the section was over. Marquez didn’t force 30 pages of Florentino’s sorrow. That would be unnecessary, as it is obvious how he would feel after that, and we had been told in the first section that he had loved her for fifty some odd years waiting for Urbino to die. So this abrupt ending is very funny, but also all that is needed to convey the message.

I love Dr. Urbino. He is to this point, almost done with third section, 90827389123710273 times cooler than Florentino. Urbino is chill and persistent without being annoying. Rather than doing stupid things and not recognizing it for love, Urbino knows that doing such a thing as drinking large quantities of alcohol with Lorenzo was not a great choice. Doing many of the same things as Florentino to woo Fermina, Urbino faces a new barrier. Instead of Lorenzo, this time it is Fermina’s reluctance to love again. Marquez was able to use this new attempt at love to satire young love again in a different light.

I am starting to enjoy the novel more and more as I read, especially now, having read the Quentin section and started the Jason section, as the story is actually starting to unravel. The Benjy section along with some of the Quentin section I found to be rather stagnant. Faulkner gets across the point that the family has issues, but other than that he just gives us slight hints of what might happen/have happened. With his intense style my mind skipped over the possible significance of many of these hints, which only gain meaning when you have gotten farther into the novel.

Now, onto what I actually thought of the going-ons of the Quentin section. The first half boring, depressing, and confusing; the second half interesting, depressing, and funny at times. Yes Quentin was depressed and it certainly showed, this also just happened make it excruciating to read at certain points. But, as I stated earlier, this was when I started to enjoy the novel more. Not because I enjoy Quentin’s inner pain, or even because I like Herbert, I enjoyed it because all of the new characters who weren’t just miserable Compsons.

Spoade, Shreve, Gerald, Gerald’s mom, even Dalton Ames were all pleasant surprises, as I thought all the characters would have been introduced by this point in the novel. Quentin’s classmates and classmate’s mother add a sense of humor that I believe was missing earlier in the novel. Even though the book is meant to deal with serious topics, a little humor is always nice and is executed excellently. Dalton Ames I enjoyed just because of the sincerity he spoke with. He has in Quentin’s opinion defiled Caddy and seems like an easy target to point at for many of the resulting problems, but after his conversation with Quentin I came away liking the fellow. This I think shifts the reader’s focus to Caddy as the source of the problem, with Dalton Ames just being a catalyst, where as if he was a total asshole we would place the majority of the blame on him. What made it so I could enjoy all of these characters was that the novel actually became easy to read. Many of the scenes were longer and more linear than anything before.

Some of the longer understandable scenes gave good looks into Quentin as a person. The one I really enjoyed was when he met the foreign girl in the bakery, who like Caddy had been before was young and innocent. There were parallels of course with him referring to her as sister, her getting dirty, in the end costing him and ending up in what appeared to be an unhappy situation, but that was not what I enjoyed. I liked the simple interaction between the two who could not communicate verbally. This seemed to be how Quentin wished Caddy could have been. The girl followed him and ate his buns and was unhappy to leave him.

Good results this week hopefully more next.
(502)

I like books I always have. I like math I always have. Books usually follow some sort of equation and are in a logical order even if it is not always chronological; these things please my mathematical mind. The Sound and the Fury is about as far away from these two things you can get and still call it a novel. I understand why the novel is a classic and can appreciate it as a piece of literature I just can’t enjoy it as I wish I could.

While reading the Benjy section I was able to accept to a great extent Faulkner’s chaotic style as it made sense do to the mental capabilities of the narrator. What made me lose interest was how he continued such a disjointed style into the section narrated by a highly capable person, as even if Quentin is lacking in sanity I do not find it believable that his thoughts would be even more confusing than those of Benjy. By the time the Quentin section started I was tired. What keeps me going isn’t that it’s our assignment; instead it is because, even with my struggles in reading, I find the themes and characters to be intriguing.

Of the characters we have met so far I find Benjy to be the most interesting by far. He is the perfect tool for showing the inside thoughts of any person, as with his disabilities his thoughts are all turned into actions. In times when any regular person would hold back even their strongest of emotions, in Benjy we see what everyone would like to be doing and probably should be doing in many cases. He is also in my opinion the least flawed of all the main characters we have met. Sure he has issues that come with his disability, but other than being annoying at times he does not have a negative affect on the family nearly as much as most of the others. The only other characters that I actually like much at all are the servants. Even with all the troubles of the Compson family they carry on happy lives, while trying to help the Compsons along the way. While their roles might not be too complicated, they are still very important especially to the care of Benjy. The rest of the Compson family I find to be somewhat dull. They all have issues, but in present-day all of their issues are pretty common so don’t do anything new for me.

So I guess I have enjoyed the novel to some extent, but what frustrates me is that I could not have done so on my own. I would have given up and I’m guessing many people have, including much of Oprah’s book club. I need just about everyday to have someone (Mr. Coon) explain most of what I have read. This I guess makes the novel great for the classroom and scholarly discussion, but leaves the casual reader out. I have to believe that this is done on purpose by the author, who was targeting the critics and upper class that were able to take the time to understand the novel through deep thought without the help of Wikipedia. To fully understand this book on my own I would probably have to sacrifice much of my life and become an English-major. There would be mental damage done and I don’t think I would be a happy person. Instead I will just accept that I need help to even partially understand the style and story Faulkner wrote with a target audience that is not Eric. . (604)

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
Connie is not very likeable, but what fifteen-year-old is. She is conceited, judgmental, and incredibly rude. There is very little she likes about her family, who she believes to be inferior in every way to the wonder that is Connie; so she spends as much time as she can away from them whether it is shopping and hanging with boys or just staying home when the rest of the family goes on an outing. Maybe Connie brings the trouble that is Arnold Friend upon herself, but one thing is for certain no girl of such naiveté deserves such a punishment.

Don’t befriend anyone who’s last name is “Friend”. It is not meant to be a last name and probably means they are a rapist, pedophile or both. Arnold is based off the serial killer Charles Schmid. During the 60’s Schmid, a young and well off man known to wear makeup and stuff his boots to appear taller, murdered at least three teenage girls. Arnold unlike Charles Schmid is either supernatural or not real. This is pretty obvious due to Arnold’s infinite knowledge of Connie and all of her relations. Some believe that this omniscience is because Arnold is the devil himself. To support this you can look at the fact that “one of his boots was at a strange angle, as if his foot wasn’t in it. It pointed to the left, bent at the ankle”, which can be taken to mean that Arnold has cloven hooves for feet. (118) I find this reasoning to be ridiculous. If I am going to believe that Arnold is the devil I will do so because he is pure evil.

What I find to make the most sense is that Mr. Friend, Ellie, and ugly car are all imaginary. They are created by the twisted mind of a teenager and reflect the many problems of Connie and her age group. Ellie represents the nonstop auditory stimulation needed by teenagers “to drown out the quiet.”(13) The car is a gold convertible, but still not up to the times as Connie quickly notices “up at the front fender was an expression that was familiar – MAN THE FLYING SAUCERS. It was an expression kids used the year before, but didn’t use this year.”(70) “Kids” probably refers to her age group, but when you are young a year is a long time and something that recently out of style is about as bad as it gets.

Arnold frighteningly is quite a bit like Connie and how she may be in the future. Attached to the idea of being young and beautiful, Arnold has become completely fake. He is dressed as if he is a teenager, but that is where his likeliness to one ends. His laugh, (46) eyelashes, (84) hair, (94) and even his height all appear to be false. (124) Just like Connie, Arnold resorts to putting others down to bring himself up, even using the same insults Connie used earlier calling her sister chubby, and their friends dopes. (133/102) The scariest part of Arnold is how he shows the teen desire and fear of growing up, as with this comes sexual desire, which Connie is clearly not prepared for no matter how hip she believes herself to be. To end the confrontation Arnold states any teenager’s greatest fear “The place where you came from ain’t there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out.” (152) With such a grim outcast put before her, Connie folded. She gave up on her future and herself. (607)

Not a huge fan of the stories this week. They were alright, but nothing mind blowing. I was entertained, but don’t feel as if I will remember most of them for longer than a few months. The only exception to these feelings is “Harrison Bergeron”. Now that I think of it though one is a third of the stories I have read this week as I have yet to read the last of the week. I will still stand with my judgment though, as with a title like “The Yellow Wallpaper” I do not have the highest of expectations for the story I will surely read tomorrow in one of my frees. Now I will get back to the seven foot tall dude.

A story about a seven foot tall fourteen year old trying to take down a fascist regime can’t miss; or at least not completely miss, just mostly, as five pages is not nearly enough to do such an idea justice even if Vonnegut got across the message he wanted to send. I really don’t care for Vonnegut’s message, I would rather the story be epic. It should be epic in the sense that there is more drama, more action, and a few hundred more pages. He could still stress his whole extreme uniformity vs. extraordinary selfish power idea, but he could have Harrison destroy a few more people and possibly robots, zombies, etc. in the process. This just goes back to my hate for endings and to have one come so soon with a concept this good is just painful.

How I would fix it

More about Harrison, much more. I want to know how he got to where he is in the story. How would anyone possibly get that smart and strong throughout their life with all the handicaps? Do they teach them, just to have all the knowledge made useless by the handicaps? I want to know Harrison’s goals. I have to believe that he would have some better plan and means for executing his take over of the world, than the pitiful attempt that we see at the studio. I want to see a revolution, as people remove their handicaps and have to realize their own capabilities. I want to see the rise and the fall of Harrison as he takes this new freedom so far that everyone is once again a slave, but this time to the most superior rather than to the least common denominator.

There could be a reversal of the technology making everyone as powerful as everyone else bringing about another world of the same people. Harrison and his perfect Empress could have an imperfect child, a weak heir to the throne of the world causing new strife as the old muscle is thrown the curb by the new muscle. Maybe there would be mental affects from removing handicaps, causing some to go nuts, or some to get super powers, or something else cool like that. The story would end the same way. Harrison would be killed as that is the only real way to end a story about a man of such power. He would have accomplished more, we would have loved him, we would have hated him, and he would have been a superhuman, but die like any other man. The world would be better without him, but would have been worse without him.

This probably sounds horrible as I wrote it and I am not a writer, but Vonnegut was. He should have written it. Instead of dieing he should have lived so he could take it back and fix it so I wouldn’t be so frustrated. A movie might fix some aspects of it. There is one with SAMWISE GAMGEE????? Playing Harrison; haven’t seen it doesn’t sound like it would fix much. What needs to happen is for Michael Bay to make a film trilogy out of the story. It would rock, it would have product placement, and it would rock. (666)

Women can change the face of the world, or at least the faces of the males of the world. Through the use of attitude and physique a woman can control a room, or in the case of “A&P”, a grocery store. It doesn’t matter that one of the girls who enters the store is “chunky” and another has “a chin that was too long” all that matters is that the queen was glorious with “long white prima-donna legs” and her swim suit straps “off her shoulders looped loose around the cool tops of her arms, and as a result the suit had slipped a little on her”. This queen bee character is the person who is unavoidable. The person we know it might not be proper to be staring at, but we all do anyways. She works the aisles of the grocery store as if they were a run way and works all of those around her as if they were an audience. She may not be trying to, but she may as well be. Shopping for just one 49 cent can of Kingfish Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream, Queenie doesn’t only capture the attention of all those at the A&P she captures the attention of everyone who reads this story and pictures such a woman completely out of place strutting around a grocery store.

I’m not in a place to completely understand “Revelation”. Being a non-believer in things such as God and karma, no matter how nice I think it would be if there were such powers to accomplish what no one else can, I couldn’t seem to relate to this story at all. I think Mrs. Turpin is a bitch on a pedestal. I think Mary Grace is a little bit crazy and a little bit genius. The story as a whole I find to be mean spirited even if it is meant to have a moral. When Mrs. Turpin is hit in the face with the book I enjoyed it, just Mary should not be carted off to wherever they may have taken her. They should praise her for her assault on such a judgmental evil woman. Turpin isn’t the only bad person in the story, I find the white trash woman almost as despicable as being white trash is no excuse for speaking the way she does. The only characters I actually respect at all as real people are Claud and the white trash woman’s son, who at least appear to just want to get on with life and pay little attention to the blabbering of the women, although I wish they would have knocked some sense into them. I guess none of this is really the point at all, but Ill allow someone else to write about that because I don’t feel qualified and or the need to talk about the mush that is religion in this story.

Holy %$&@ not what I was expecting. This Flannery chick has a dark side and a darker side and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is definitely darker than I would have ever supposed her to go. The family Flann-O presents to us seems well mannered enough, with the few quirks that should be expected of all families. There is foreshadowing and I even heard it was dark and there would be some deaths, but I was still no where near ready for what happened next. The BBQ joint is pretty awesome, strange however it is that they have a monkey in Georgia. Red Sam is a good man who may be slightly overly trusting as his wife points out, but just another good old southern boy. When the story turns it turns hard and rolls over a few times like the family car before getting shot to pieces like what was left of the family. We don’t even get a chance to think of how much trouble the family is in with their car being destroyed and many of them being injured when the fate of this family trip is sealed with the arrival of a gentleman without many manners. He speaks like the genteel should; he just has the little problem of killing folks without much reason to go along with his well-balanced demeanor. So he kills them all. Grandma, aka grand master *&$%-up, almost has a moment with him, but three holes in the chest is not quite considered a break through even when it is with the craziest B to ever roam the south. After reading through FlanFlan’s story I felt pretty bad for the family, but what really intrigued me was what made Mr. Misfit into the beast that kills men women and children for fun. We are given snippets of his story, but not enough to put together exactly what went wrong with this man who comes from a seemingly above average family. I would have liked more, even though nothing could justify what Misfit did, which I guess means I liked the story, which hopefully doesn’t mean I’m some part crazy. (845)

9/10-9/14

“A Rose for Emily” is awesome. Awesome, being a word that I rarely use in describing a piece of literature, is quite a compliment; especially for a story about the South, a place I’d rather not describe. It is awesome due to the fact that I was not able to tell what was going on until it was all revealed. This is not how I read. I find most stories, especially those read in English classes, to be painfully predictable. This story should have been just as predictable when I look back on it, but I was completely off. Maybe I read it too late at night or just wasn’t thinking straight. I couldn’t even put the whole story together after finishing it. With the order of events as they were, my head could not put such a puzzle together. This was humiliating, but enjoyable as I could pretend that all the wholes filled by my peers were never there to begin with and that I was just as much on top of it as anyone else. I think I was just beat by this Faulkner dude and so I must admit that A “Rose for Emily” is awesome. Faulkner got me to enjoy a period story from a period that I despise. Now I actually look forward to reading more from him I only hope to be as pleasantly surprised as I was while and after reading “A Rose for Emily”.


“Everyday Use” is pretty funny. Not Eddie Murphy funny, not Jon Stewart funny. Just the past is a funny thing funny. It may have been meant to be looked at more seriously when it was written, but with the passing of time it has become a historical piece that is now very entertaining due to the generalization in most readers’ minds that sophistication is always a good thing. Through Dee (Wangero) I saw Alice Walker showing what she thought to be a false sense of sophistication setting her even below her mother and sister who were grounded enough to accept what had become of their daughter/sister. This acceptance is an amazing thing, as Dee has in the past been rather disrespectful to the way of life that her mother and sister choose to live. It is only the persistence of this disrespect that causes her mother to decide that enough is enough and give Dee a thorough telling off. None of these events are funny. What is funny is who is doing what. The college educated woman acts as a dirt farming southern hick should, and the southern hick acts like a real woman. Thus the story is pretty funny.

“Teenage Wasteland” is sort of horrible. Not horrible in the sense that it is written badly or on subject that should be stayed away from, just horrible in the sense that no enjoyment can come out of reading this story. Now maybe I’m wrong and some people enjoy reading about extraordinary mental pain, such as how there are those who enjoy watching or reading about physical pain in the genre of horror, but what Donny and his mother go through in this story will darken just about any reader’s day. Maybe I lack something that would make me understand why this story is necessary to be read ever or it just frightens me as I know many of the events are all too real in households around the world. It’s artistic I guess. Now I’m even more suspicious of the effectiveness of counselors. The great song “Baba O’Riley” will now bring back the sour memory of this story. I guess it had an effect on me. Not a particularly good one. I hope I will soon forget this story and never have to read it again.

"Interpreter of Maladies" is quite pointless. This story of unhappy marriage and dysfunctional families has been told so many times exactly like this that I really don’t care. Yes it is a different culture this time, but the problem is exactly the same. Married man wants married woman; married woman wants her previous problems to be alleviated. Maybe I’m missing something but I don’t see at all why Mrs. Das would think that Mr. Kapasi could help her and why Mr. Kapasi would find anything attractive about this wretched woman. She is lazy, slow, and very unappreciative and he is just a translator. Why write this. The only people I feel for at all are the children and Mr. Das who have to put up with Mrs. Das’ misbehavior and untrustworthiness. Its incredibly difficult for me to believe that Mr. Kapasi would still after hearing of her misdeeds be attracted to her in the least no matter how difficult his home life has become. Kapasi hopefully figures out that unfaithfulness will only bring more agony such as that of Mrs. Das, but we will never know. (816)

The coming of age novel is about as over done as the biopic. It is rare to find any form of originality in this genre and I have generally never really been a fan of it. This book is different. It is simple. It is short. But what makes it great, is that it tells a rather ordinary story from the perspective of an extraordinary character.

This could have come off as a gimmick, having a regular man write as if he was an autistic teenager, but Mark Haddon was able to make Christopher believable and entertaining without the writing style becoming strenuous. Most importantly Haddon makes me as a reader really like Christopher and enjoy all of the quirks that make him who he is.

Who is he? He’s a boy. Not an average boy, but he likes many of the same things such as drawing aliens, and playing computer games. He is different from the others at his special school because even with all of his dysfunctions, his brain works in a way such that he can solve the most complex of mathematical equations, knows all the prime numbers up to 7,057, and wouldn’t tell a lie to save his life. With ambition, some dire needs in life, and of course some things he hates, Christopher sounds just like any other boy.

His journey is about as normal as some of his qualities of life and about as strange as others. Anyone else could be in Christopher’s place and the story would just be unremarkable. Through Christopher we feel just how difficult it is to overcome the social taboos and fears of many who are autistic in order to accomplish what he thinks is best for himself. For someone who was so dependant on his parents and teachers for all of his life, he is able to break free and shows surprising independence.

Whether it is conquering his phobias of masses of people and noise at the train station, or facing the reality that he has to live with his father, Christopher perseveres and in the process grows a lot as a person. He does this just as any other would while living through something so traumatic, even if what he found most disturbing about the whole chain of events (his dad killing Wellington) was different from what any ordinary boy would find most disturbing (his parents splitting up and mother not actually being dead).

Christopher has matured so much by the end of the novel that he decides that after he is done with his current schooling he will “go to university in another town” and then “I will get a first class honors degree and I will become a scientist.” Hearing this earlier in the book I would have thought it crazy for him to set such high hopes when he is having so many troubles functioning in a sheltered world, but at this point I was able to see that he could will himself to do, or as he says it “I solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington? And I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.”

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the url so you can see my first post

www.ericklewis.blogspot.com

think i screwed up

Set it to send to you after I posted which I think screwed up the process.

I should read more than I do. It’s not that I read a small amount, just that I could read a lot more, rather than wasting as much time as I do.

Books have been in my life for most of my life, whether I was reading them or they were being read to me. I didn’t understand some of the novels read to me when I was younger and forgot most of what I did, but this led me to reread many of the same books and get out of them what I may have missed before, while lacking what I find keeps me from reading more. This is the fear that I will be wasting my time because of my lack of confidence in authors, plots, and genres.

With millions of good books out there I find that I am narrow-minded and have trouble straying from series. Becoming attached to characters is such an important part of reading to me that it is hard for me to let go or even become attached if there is only one book and nothing to look forward to in the future. This brings me back to the idea of not wanting to waste my time reading what means nothing to me, because when I read I want to be completely engrossed.

This is how I choose to read. I don’t think it will change, but it could.

Reading can be disappointing, but only writing can cause me true mental distress. This is mostly due to me being a not very good writer. It seems to take ages and doesn’t ever quite turn out to be what I was going for. This is usually because I feel as if I am writing exactly what many others have in the past so there really is no point in putting such unoriginality down in print. I will admit that I can enjoy writing at times, and hopefully will at several times this year, it just usually only occurs when I am allowed to write what I want to write which rarely occurs in the school setting.

There isn’t much I hate, but one thing that makes the list is conclusions whether written by me or anyone else. There is always more to be said so I have never seen the point in them. They are awkward and the only joy they bring is that the end is near.

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