American Literature In the Post-War Era

Nearly everything I read.

2009-12-30T12:40:00.000-08:00

In Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men” Jack Burden, the novel’s narrator and de facto protagonist, spends a lot of time driving. He works as consultant and hatchet man for Willie Stark, the governor and political boss of Louisiana; this occupation requires a lot of traveling. During one of these drives, as he heads away from is mother’s house and towards an assignment for Willie, he begins to speculate that he doesn’t exist without relating to others: that mere self reflection does not a whole person make, stands in stark contrast to the philosophical currents of the time. Sartre’s “Hell is Other People” stands in stark contrast to Warren’s novel-length treatise on the inner-connectedness of people and the need for human beings to work and relate to one another in order to do good.

Like “Kings,” Bernard Malamud’s “The Assistant” also feels like a bit Contrary Mary. Unlike Warren, Malamud’s novel feels like a specific attack. Frank Alpine and Morris Bober sit on opposite sides of the moral relativist scale.

Morris’s Judiasim keeps him in a place of moral absolution, even to the point of being cuckolded into failure. He won’t burn down his store. He allows himself to be run over by his business partner. At every possible turn, Morris does the right thing and is punished for it. But the novel still treats Morris as a moral center.

Frank Alpine, on the other hand has no fixed moral center.. But he still needs to feel good about his own life; he’s not amoral by any stretch. First, Frank tries crime, but he feels bad. Then, when he works for Morris, he steals. But he doesn’t commit; he even takes note of all the money he steals from Morris so he can pay him back. Frank’s journey in “The Assistant” is one of compromises; he’ll do something bad, then repent by trying to a “Right thing” to make up for it, or justify his bad by thinking about his good.

I assaulted Morris: But I gave him water.
I steal from Morris: But I am keeping track and I will pay him back.
I raped Helen: But I saved her from Ward.

For ever bad thing Frank does, he tries to justify it with a good thing.

Frank’s fluctuating morality only brings suffering to himself and to others. Morris’s consistent morals bring suffering to himself, but excludes most others. (His wife and daughter, it could be debated.) At novel’s end, Frank relents his journey to create a system of morality: he becomes a Jew instead.

Speaking of the Jewish people and Bernard Malamud… Philip Roth! In “The Ghost Writer” Roth’s first novel written from the perspective of Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s literary Alter Ego, Zuckerman says of E.I. Lonoff’s work, a stand in for Malamud:

In fact, my own reading through Lonoff’s cannon as an orthodox college atheist and highbrow-in-training had done more to make me realize how much I was still my family’s Jewish offspring than anything I had carried forward o the University of Chicago from childhood Hebrew lessons, or my mother’s kitchen, or the discussions I used to hear among my parents and our relatives about the perils of intermarriage, the problem of Santa Claus, and the injustice of medical-school quotas.

Malamud’s work showed Roth his Jewish origins. In other novels, Roth details a childhood in Newark that was removed from the sort of experiences that Malamud chronicles in “The Assistant.” There’s no fleeing from the gulags, no major oppressive forces that make being Jewish a statement of defiance the way it is in Russia. The experiences Malamud discusses contextualize Roth’s life in a way that reveals his heritage.

In “Defender of the Faith” Roth illustrates the conflict between American Culture and Jewish culture. Sergeant Nathan Marx, the story’s narrator and protagonist, indulges the requests of Private Sheldon Grossbart. Both are Jews. At first, Grossbart just pushes Marx into addressing the non-kosher food on base. But soon he has managed to get Marx to give him and some other Jewish privates day passes so they can go to a late Passover dinner at one of the private’s aunt’s house. They don’t go; instead they go to a Chinese restaurant. Grossbert then tries to get Marx to move out of the Pacific Theatre, appealing to their common Judiasim. Marx says no, and Grossbert goes behind Marx’s back and manages to get himself reassigned by speaking to a superior (Jewish) officer. After funding this out, he lies and gets Marx reassigned once again.

“Defender” perfectly captures the anxieties of being second generation Jewish in America. Marx doesn’t want to betray his upbringing, but a military doesn’t work without order and sacrifice to the establishment. In the beginning of the story, he bends to Grossbet’s requests as a tribute to his culture. But once he discovers that he’s being manipulated, he becomes less charitable towards Grossbert and sentimental about his upbringing.

One might say that Roth concludes that assimilation is a working solution to operating in a “Foreign Culture.” I’m certain that this isn’t the case completely; other Roth novels (Particularly “The Plot Against America”) strike against assimilative efforts. Possibly he instead wishes to write a story about resisting sentimentality about one’s culture.

Flannery O’Connor shares Roth’s lack of sentimentality and an outsider status; Roth being a Jew in America, O’Connor being a Catholic in the mostly protestant South, but not much else.* Roth is an ace novelist, O’Connor’s great work is in short stories. Roth’s novels concern themselves with sex and dying, O’Connor’s stories are about Religious salvation. Roth frequently casts variations of himself in the role or protagonist, O’Connor’s stories are usually about idiot protestants (The sort she grew up with in the south.) or arrogant atheists (The sort she encountered at college.).

But their lives as outsiders still outfit them with interesting perspectives. Roth looks inward, constantly examining how Jewishness effects himself. O’Connor, on the other hand, looks outward.

Lily and I were discussing O’Connor’s place as a Catholic in out seminar one day. At some point I said that I found it strange that O’Connor was a Catholic because her work attacks the symbolic existence of her characters, and Catholicism is such a deeply symbolic belief system and all. (In retrospect, I sound pretty dumb.)

But as we talked about it, and we decided that O’Connor’s beef isn’t with symbols. It’s with the superficial expression of faith.

O’Connor’s life as a religious minority made her Catholicism an act of cultural defiance. While everyone around her was a protestant simply because the culture at large demands it. O’Connor’s contempt for Protestantism is more like contempt for the entire southern experience; from Racism (Revelation) to the tradition of celebrating Confederate Soldiers of old (A Late Encounter With the Enemy).

*Okay, one more thing. Both are spectacularly funny when they want to be, a quality that doesn’t always find its way into literary fiction.

Just to mention something I've been saying.

2009-11-27T13:41:00.001-08:00

ALright, I have ONE nice thing to say about "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit." But this. is. it.

One of Wilson's goals in "Flannel" is to explore the life of the American Suburbanite after he had come home from the most brutal war in the history of human existence. Tom reflects on his multiple selves at the book's beginning, the one who goes to work, the one with a family, the one who killed a bunch of germans in Europe.

The novel, on one level, sets out to push these multiple selves together, to make Tom a whole people out of the parts he can identify. It doesn't really do a splendid job of this. But Wilson's attempt is noble.

As opposed to John Cheever, a whiter who is, in every other regard, Wilson's superior. Cheever's characters occationally have to go to war, but it doesn't really effect them. It's pretty weird to be reading a story, see one sentence that says "Ahh, World War Two!" and then it goes on.

Of course, if Cheever had included a paragraph to explain the toll of the war on all of his male protags, it would be annoying.

WIlson and Cheever

2009-11-16T12:45:00.001-08:00

If I had to give a compliment to Sloan Wilson’s “The Man In the Grey Flannel Suit” I would say that it isn’t the terrible, hackneyed book I expected it to be; it was, instead, a completely different terrible, hackneyed book.

For the first 200 pages or so, Wilson seems to be sending his created family, Tom and Betty Rath, into doom. Tom quits a secure job at a non-profit for a more competitive but higher paying job at a broadcasting company. They sell their house and moves into his grandmother’s estate, which might not actually belong to them. They want to devolp the estate’s acreage into a new suburb, in spite of the legal challenge and a community who isn’t necessarily into the idea! Tom might have a child in Italy, where he had a passionate affair with a local girl! Also he accidentally killed his best friend in the war! Also his new boss might hate him! Ahh! So much stress! So many opportunities for this suburban house of cards to come crashing to the ground!

For the first hundred pages, I was convinced that I was reading a doom and gloom tome about the tragedy of the suburban man. And I was bored. I had just finished reading Cheever, who does a crack job of exploring the emotional deficits of suburban family life without succumbing to the contemptuous clichés that a lot of the suburb’s critics employ in their work.

But then things start working out. That butler who had a claim on the Rath’s estate? A THEIF. The development? IT ALL WORKS OUT FINE. The job? Hell, Tom gets promoted, finds he isn’t really a fan of his new job, tells his boss, then his boss gives him a cushy job instead of the high-pressure post he’s been given just because he likes him so damn much!

Then, and this one is the kicker: he goes ahead and tells his wife about his lovechild in Italy and about the fact that he blew his friend to pieces and about the people he killed in the war and she runs outside, all full of little woman piss and vinegar she falls down and she forgives him and they all have a good laugh and support the child finically and Tom feels better about himself. The last few lines of the book are so saccharine that they are nearly unsettling.

You know how Tom fixes all these problems? Honesty. HONESTY! He tells his boss what he really thinks of his speech. He tells his lawyer and the Judge about his grandmother’s promises. He tells his neighbors that he wants to build a devolpment instead of trying to be sneaky about it. He tells his wife about his other life. Then it all works out fine. This book started out as a doom tract and then it became a pamphlet preaching the value of good honest hard work. What a boring, shallow, snooze.

The fact that everything works out in the end completely diffuses the anxiety of the early chapters. It looks at the outset like there is a system working against the Raths. Then it turns out that the system works fine as long as you’re honest.

Now, I need to clarify. I am not a ruthless cynic who reads books so that I can see nice young couples get burned alive. The first book I thought I was reading was just as distasteful as the one I ended up with, and less interesting. “Suit” was really successful and even literarily important there for a while. In spite of this, it fell out of print. The message of the novel is completely of its time. So much that the title is synonymous with the type of suburban workingman that Rath illustrates. But its reputation fell apart in forty years and left the book out of print.

John Cheever on the other hand, couldn’t “Diffuse the tension of his early chapters” if his life depended on it. Take his short story “The Summer Farmer.” Paul Hollis, the protagonist, manages a farm with his family over the summer so he can get out of the city. This summer, he has bought rabbits for his children to take care of.

One of his field hands is a soviet ex-patriot named Kasik. He tells Paul that owning pets is sentimental, and gives Paul communist pamphlets that promote the destruction of his way of life. Paul takes a sort of “Agree to disagree” attitude towards Kasik’s politics, and even jokingly asks “When are you going to have your revolution, Kasik?”

Until someone poisons Paul’s rabbits. Paul then confronts Kasik and accuses him and says that if Kasik touches his children he’ll “Split his head open.” After this, Tom’s wife says that she thinks she may have left the Rat poison in the Chicken shed where they kept the rabbits. This is, of course, enough to keep the ending ambiguous; were the rabbits killed by Virginia’s absent mindedness, or Kasik’s hard heartedness? We leave Paul on the train, “So visibly shaken by some recent loss of principle that it would have been noticed by a stranger across the aisle.”

Cheever stories take care to avoid viewing his protagonists with either too much admiration or too much distain. Paul’s “Summer Farming” is an enacted fantasy. It has little to do with Kasik’s experiences in Russia as an actual farmer where he was wiped and forced into work at the age of twelve. Once Labor day comes around, Paul doesn’t need to perform actual labors to make money to feed himself. But what’s the big deal? Paul’s family enjoy themselves and aren’t really hurting anyone. Hell, they’re paying Kasik. All he wants is for his children and wife to be happy.

The conflicts in the end of the piece, between Kasik’s brutality and Paul’s sentimentality, and the open question of how the rabbits actually died, promote a real sense of anxiety at the story’s end.

Off to Oakland

2009-11-15T10:33:00.000-08:00

Not sure what internet access will be like, but Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Revolutionary Road posts are on their way.

As promised.

2009-11-10T20:10:00.000-08:00

Part One

Part Two

Oh yeah, reading.

2009-11-10T15:33:00.000-08:00

I've spent the last two days writing what amounts to a quarter's worth of seminar responses. Thus far I've written up Malamud, Roth and a little bit on Warren (It mostly just relates to Malamud) and have started on O'Connor. So expect all that soon.

Yeah. Reading. That sounds fun. I'm also starting to think about the paper. I've more or less settled on writing about "King's" but sometimes I think about how emblematic Cheever is or how much Roth I've read in total and I think that those might be good avenues to explore as well.

Also I am going to submit my contract soon! Hooray!

Yikes

2009-11-10T06:40:00.001-08:00

Wow, it's been way too quiet around here since October 28th. I was studying like mad for my GRE subject test but that's no excuse of course: part of contracts is that you have to discipline yourself. And speaking of both posting and themes of self-discipline...I have a draft on The Assistant and the short stories from Goodbye, Columbus, which I will complete today. I have finished Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Revolutionary Road and just need to post on them. (As well as confessional poetry, although I want to add Robert Lowell to the group.) That leaves Another Country (but just the end of it) and Rabbit, Run (okay, and tons of criticism) for me to read. But otherwise it's paper writing time! No more of these nice lit blog posts where I can joke and be sarcastic or meandering or confused if I want. This is Serious Business. I'll want to keep up seminars, though. Partly because I'll probably be reading criticism throughout the writing process and partly because discussion will help me clarify my ideas in a paper and partly because I might want to read parts of my paper aloud to somebody. I know that could be boring for you, Corbin, but it's one of the best revising/editing/proofreading tricks. (Even more reasons: because I'm interested in what you're reading/writing/working on, because I would miss yooooou, and, also because I promised to "kick" you out of procrastination.)

I need to go through all of my interlibrary-loaned criticism though, because some of it isn't renewable, and prioritize accordingly. For instance The Novel of Manners in America is due this Thursday!

*This picture is the first edition cover, which is the version I have. My book has library stamps in it from May 24 1963 and so on. This is a source of endless delight and fascination for me. I'm not sure why.

Oops

2009-10-28T07:50:00.000-07:00

I was just looking at my Google Documents page and realized that my Philip Roth post was under some privacy settings. Anyway, it should be "shared" with the world now. I don't know if it was always that way or somewhere along the lines of me using Google they changed...

but if it was always that way: dirty looks to you, Corbin Smith.

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit

2009-10-27T22:14:00.000-07:00

My post on The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit - and it's about time!

Click here!

Goodbye, Columbus

2009-10-17T12:40:00.001-07:00

It's funny that you're planning to respond to my post, because my post is a response to you. But to you in seminar, not to a post you haven't written yet.

I've linked the Google Document. I think they are easier to read and they save space on the blog.

There has been a day or two delay since I wrote it, and now it's following not only our seminar but your latest entry. But I didn't notice any of today's written statements contradict Tuesday's spoken ones, so I think it works.

Some of what I say is dated, though. I've now read 139 pages of Another Country. Plot developments call for extra defense of my claim about the narration's point of view, but I stand by it and what I said about Leona is also confirmed.

But none of that makes much sense until you actually read the thing:
(Be sure to tell me if for some reason links don't work.)

Google Document: Goodbye, Columbus

Yeah, yeah.

2009-10-17T11:49:00.001-07:00

I didn't really write that much about Goodbye, Columbus. I'll reply to your post.

title.

2009-10-17T11:48:00.000-07:00

Neil Klugmam and Tommy Wilhelm both suffer from a critical lack of self knowledge. Since neither character, both situated at the center of novellas “Goodbye Columbus” and “Seize the Day,” can't really explain themselves, their creators, Phillip Roth and Saul Bellow, use alternate methods of exploring who their main characters are.

In “Seize the Day” the people who Tommy interacts with explain Tommy for us. Bellow doesn't read their minds; the author elects to observe only Tommy's thoughts, which are alternately self-pitying and self-flagellating and don't go very far to revealing who Tommy is. But in observing wow people interact with Tommy, we can see who he really is.

Maurice Venice, the All-Purpose Hollywood sleezebag who scouts Tommy and produces his screen test, sees Tommy, as an actor, playing roles where he is “Steady” and “A Good Provider.” Superficially, Tommy is decent but also completely non-exciting. Wilhelm is offended by Maurice's judgment and says that he objects “To stardom in that role.”

Throughout Wilhelm's life, he strenuously objects to the being held into any role that keeps him stationary or makes him accountable to anyone but himself. He attempts to fulfill the archetype of the lone American success story, who does whatever he wants without consequences. But whether he is looking to be an actor or a successful investor or the sort of man who leaves his wife consequence-free or even a participant in the Pacific Theater, he is a failure.

Dr. Adler, Tommy's father sees this failure, more or less, for what he is. Adler's advice to Tommy ranges from “Stop complaining” to “Concentrate on Real Things” to “Get a good, hot bath.” (They can't all be winners.) To Dr. Adler, Tommy is a spoiled disappointment, a nasty product of his successes. (Tommy's estranged wife sees him in much the same way.)

Dr. Tamkin, might actually have the best hold on who Tommy is; a rube. Everything Tamkin says is engineered to entertain Tommy's desire to be wild and free. He tells him not to be “Married to Suffering,” and encourages him to make easy money on the stock market. Tamkin plays to Tommy's desired self; of course, he doesn't really exist.

Through the eyes of all these people, we get a clear picture of Tommy. He's a “Good Provider” type who tries wants very badly to be an American Romantic, a disappointment and a rube.

Neil Klugman, the Narrator and Protagonist of Phillip Roth's “Goodbye Columbus” also lacks a sense of self. But, unlike Bellow, who opts to use “Seize the Day” as an opportunity to examine his Protagonist, Roth sets us right in Neal's head and makes him the novel's narrator.

As a narrator, Neal is almost completely sensory. He describes food, women (Even Brenda, the book's female protagonist and the object of Neal's affection.), gigantic swaths of conversation, and other things as sensory experiences instead of emotional ones. Neal is so out of touch with his feelings that his narration can't give us a picture of him as a person.

But, at the end of the book, after Neal's relationship with Brenda has fallen apart, he seems to realize this. Page 135: “I simply looked at myself in the mirror the light made out of the window. I was only that substance, I thought, those limbs, that face I saw in front of me. I looked, but the outside of me gave up little information about the inside of me.”

Meeting Minutes

2009-10-09T15:01:00.000-07:00

Not really "minutes" per se, but might as well keep some track of the things we discuss in our seminars.

O'Connor was a cartoonist in college. Makes sense - she writes like one too.
O'Connor is a Catholic, and Catholicism has its share of symbols, but Corbin read "The River" as an "attack on symbolic existence." (In my reading and response I had already thought a good deal about its warning against literal interpretations of religious metaphors, but I hadn't thought about its relationship to her Catholicism.)
We talked more about religion too. I pointed out that many of her ridiculous, condemnable characters are religious themselves. But upon further discussion, I agreed with Corbin that they were "culturally Protestant." Not only in the sense that Hopewell has a Bible and never reads it. But Corbin suggested that for a Catholic surrounded by southern Protestants, (as for a hypothetical Protestant in a predominantly Catholic area) the dominant culture might seem like... just that. Culture, habit, custom... without active religious feeling as underlying motivation.
As for me, I related mostly what I had written about over the summer. In "Good Country People," Joy/Hulga's philosophical reference to Malebranche inspired my perception of an overall theme in the collection. I uploaded my paper onto Google Documents and you can read it here: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AdXWjqmgQtKPZGZybm5jOWhfNGR0NGdqZ2t6&hl=en

Hmmm.

2009-10-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

"Urban, northern and liberal in its orientation, the contemporary Jewish novel..."
-Robert F. Kiernan, American Writing Since 1945 (1983)

“Northern in its tradition, urban, liberal or radical in politics, the postwar Jewish novel..."
-Ihab Habib Hassan, Contemporary American Literature (1972*)

Too close for comfort?

*Anne Sexton information is still discussed in 100% present tense. :(

Ralph

2009-10-01T15:45:00.000-07:00

"I know I got no room to talk, but - try not to drink so much that Mother will notice it. Drink some coffee fore you go back. Huh? Drink it black."

"Sure, Jay, and don't think I take offense so easy. I wouldn’t add a mite to her troubles, not at this time, not for this world, Jay. You know that. So Jay, I thank you. I thank you for calling it to my attention. I don’t take offense. I thank you, Jay. I thank you."

As of this, I predict a Ralph-related disaster or tragedy at some future point in the plot.

WIlky!

2009-09-30T14:59:00.001-07:00

I can't remember completely, but I might I used Jay Gatsby as my counter-example. Of course that doesn't work all the way. (No character in any literature "Doesn't move Forward" quite like he does.) But he certainly possesses the drive and intellect to be successful economically, if not in any other way.

I might have not said this at the time, but you know who's perfect as a comparison point? Willie Stark. (SPOILERS) In the beginning of "Kings" Willie is the definition of ineffectual. His speeches display an intellect for facts and figures and an unusual compassion for the "Common Man", but not really any other factor that would make him a compelling politician; he is a statue to ineffectualness. But once Sadie reveals how he's been slighted and exploited by the political machine, he drops everything. All the fats and figures of his original speeches are replaced by firebrand populism that makes him the dominant figure in his world.

Of course, Willie's success comes with a price, he becomes estranged from his family, etc., etc., but in reading the book you never have the sense that those costs are too great from where he stands. And where he stands, of course, is on top of the Louisiana political world, ready to jump into the White House when he gets the chance.

Wilhelm, on the other hand, constantly seeks to abandon his life for a better on to absolutely no avail. The only place his striving gets him is on his knees, begging his father for money.

It seems to me that the difference between Willie and Wilkie could be the fact that Willie did, at one point, feel it was necessary to understand the ins and outs of the Louisiana political system and to try to explain those ins and outs to people who didn't want to vote for him. Wilkie, on the other hand, doesn't really understand or feel the need to understand anything. He is, in a word, dumb. Willie Stark, on the other hand, is nothing short of brilliant. (Even if he plays dumb.)

Seize the Day

2009-09-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

{.........}Based on things you said in our Monday seminar and yesterday’s brief library encounter, I gathered that you (Corbin) felt that Saul Bellow was making a simple point. He drew up Tommy Wilhelm and proceeded to tear him apart by subjecting him to misery. You also said Wilhelm isn’t likable, and I agree that he is not especially likable and, more to the point, I agree that Saul Bellow intentionally wrote him that way. My memory is failing me a little here, but you also made a comparison I thought was interesting between Wilhelm and a character from another one of our readings. But which one? – Anyway, as I understood it, your idea was that Wilhelm does not benefit from “seizing the day.” Intelligent people ([The character I’ve forgotten], e.g.)can depart from the past, give it little to no thought, and move forward without constantly blundering. But Wilhelm is an example of someone who is not so sharp, and makes a mess of things.
{.........}Hopefully you’ll respond and correct that summary as needed. I know I was intrigued by it. That said, right now, I think Wilhelm behaves stupidly but is guided by a stranger, subconscious force. “Subconscious” makes it sound like I’m psychoanalyzing the character, which would be silly. But I would argue that the presence of Dr. Tamkin alone indicates Bellow was interested in psychoanalysis, Freud, etc. So although Wilhelm is character, and a character is always a character and never a human, I think Bellow did give him something like a subconscious. Namely, a compulsion to self-sabotage.
{.........}For example, in the section where Wilhelm recalls his encounter with Maurice Venice, there is a tiny summary of his life and his character.

And then, when he was best aware of the risks and new a hundred reasons against going and had made himself sick with fear, he left home. This was typical of Wilhelm. After much thought and hesitation and debate he invariably took the course he had rejected innumerable times. Ten such decisions made up the history of his life. He had decided that it would be bad mistake to go to Hollywood, and he went. He had made up his mind not to marry his wife, but ran off and got married. He had resolved not to invest money with Tamkin, and then had given him a check. (23)

In a way, recognizing the badness of these ideas and still going ahead and acting against reason is at once more and less stupid than thinking they’re brilliant plans. It’s illogical. Or as it says in the book, “Practical judgment was in abeyance.”

Practical judgment was in abeyance. He had worn himself out, and the decision was no decision. How had this happened? But how had his Hollywood career begun? It was not because of Maurice Venice who turned out to be a pimp. It was because Wilhelm himself was ripe for the mistake. And so, from the moment when he tasted the peculiar flavor of fatality in Dr. Tamkin, he could no longer keep back the money. (58)

{.........}Although, now as I review my notes and write this I’ve noticed a trend that should have been obvious. “After much thought and hesitation and debate…” and “He had worn himself out, and the decision was no decision.” Another: “[Dr. Tamkin] must have recognized in Wilhelm a man who reflected long and then made the decision he had rejected twenty separate times,” (60). It’s true his mistakes result more from over-thinking than under-thinking, but instead of the answer being psychoanalytical exploration of the subconscious and so on and so forth (more thinking), Bellow’s title is his advice. Perhaps Bellow is claiming that if Wilhelm decided once and acted, instead of deciding 20 times before acting, he would act correctly.

{.........}On the other hand, the character who explicitly praises the “here-and-now” is Dr. Tamkin (89, 90, 100), who is responsible for Wilhelm’s present misery.

{.........} Of course, Dr. Tamkin’s composition is fairly exhausting. His credibility is convincingly undermined at every turn, but his are the most interesting monologues. And Wilhelm thinks, “Even a liar might be trustworthy in some ways,” (57).

{.........}But Wilhelm is about as lucid as Tamkin is forthright, so his generosity is not necessarily an instruction to the reader.

{.........}As I said before, though, Wilhelm’s instincts are intact if the rest of him is a disaster.

{.........}But there is a lot of evidence of his self-deception, too. And Wilhelm may seize philosophizings that flatter him, while dismiss the rest – their actual cogency irrelevant.

{.........}(In which case perhaps I should be more worried about what I have in common with Wilhelm.)

{.........}For an easy read, the book is a burdensome write! It turns any would-be critic into a Wilhelm: 20 decisions and none of them right! There’s always a nagging doubt. Any unequivocal claim requires ignoring more contradictory parts than I’m willing to ignore.

{.........}The one simplification I have is to place Dr. Adler and Mr. Perls opposite Dr. Tamkin and Tommy Wilhelm. The older (I think. How hold is Tamkin, anyway?) men are “uphold tradition,” while Tamkin and Tommy are “for the new,” (14). Tamkin claims to have been everywhere. Wilhelm traveled for his sales work, tried to make it in Hollywood, and says he is uncomfortable in New York even though he is a native. Meanwhile, Dr. Adler has remained a “city boy” and is content there. Wilhelm and Tamkin are interested in money, but they distrust businessmen and downplay its importance. Adler and Perls expose their respect for money in a way that disgusts Wilhelm. A perfect example of these different views is at the trio’s lunch: “Dr. Adler thought Wilhelm was discussing his grievances much too openly and said, ‘My son’s income was up in the five figures.’ As soon as money was mentioned, Mr. Perls voice grew eagerly sharper… Uch! How they love money, thought Wilhelm,” (36). This is interesting because Wilhelm doesn’t know Mr. Perls. “How they love money,” is not in reference to any previous interaction he has had with him, and I believe the “they” implies “Jews.” This anti-Semitic stereotyping not only illustrates the conflict between these generations (wherein one sees grievances as more private than salary, the other the opposite) but is an example of Wilhelm distancing himself from his Jewishness. (“They,” not “we.”) During a later conversation, Dr. Adler explains to his son he has “learned to keep my sympathy for the real ailments,” and warns him, “‘You make too much of your problems,’…‘They ought not to be turned into a career. Concentrate on real troubles – fatal sicknesses, accidents,’” (42, 45). It’s apt advice and Wilhelm desperately needs. Particularly in (I think) his greatest moment of stupidity, where he moans, “‘The Emancipation Proclamation was only for colored people. A husband like me is a slave, with an iron collar…’” (49). (Jesus Christ, Wilky! Get some perspective!) It occurs to me that, though, if Wilhelm isn’t an expression of the awkwardness of being a Jewish American of a certain age in postwar America. He has lunch with Mr. Perls, whose wrinkles and teeth and “flight from Germany,” indicate to Wilhelm he has suffered enormously. (An assumption Dr. Adler confirms.) Wilhelm benefited from the hard work of immigrant parents without having to participate in it himself, he lived comfortably across the Atlantic from the Holocaust, and yet is supposed to have something in common with the likes of Mr. Perls. The narration alludes to Wilhelm’s secret need for suffering: “If he didn’t keep his troubles before him he risked losing them altogether, and he knew by experience this was worse,” (43). Also, the Keats reference: “Come then, Sorrow!/Sweetest Sorrow!/Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast!...of all the world I love thee best,” (89-90). But perhaps that need is not simply Wilky being Wilky. Perhaps the crisis of the big, blond man who dropped “Adler” to take the name of a German emperor, who laments the loss of his mother (by death), his father (by disappointment), and sons (by the perceived manipulation of his Gentile ex-wife) is the crisis of reconciling a Jewish identity with an American (especially happy, sunny, conservative, prosperous, optimistic, victorious postwar American) identity.

{.........}And I do mean Perhaps. I haven’t even mentioned just pure, simple death as a force in the book, which is a serious, glaring omission. I’ve also remained silent about the theme of the howling wolf. Or Wilky’s moment of transcendence, wherein he felt united to others in a “blaze of love” (84-5). Not to mention the Shakespeare and Milton references. Or the greats cited by Tamkin (W.H. Sheldon was a eugenicist?) Or all of the parts about New York.

{.........}The big question of the novel is really, what is Wilhelm’s “heart’s ultimate need?” – the closing phrase.

{.........}Help a brother out, Corbin? My head is swimming.

It's Official.

2009-09-29T13:22:00.000-07:00

[ ..........]It is September 29 – the second day of Evergreen’s 2009 fall quarter. So it was as of yesterday that my lovely and esteemed partner, Corbin Smith, and I began receiving credit for this contract. – That’s a clumsy way to put it. You get credit at the end… But the idea is Now It’s Official. I managed to work on the contract respectably over the summer (although I fell predictably short of my initial, somewhat intentionally overly-ambitious schedule), but now it’s a tip top priority. My posting has been dismal, and I will force myself to get more frequent. In yesterday’s meeting, Corbin assured me that he would accept blog posts in forms however brief, crude, or unorganized. I’ve decided I’ll include posts of various tones, lengths, qualities, and purposes. What didn’t occur to me when I designed this contract was that my perpetual dissatisfaction with my own writing would make it difficult to post. They say “Writing is never done, it’s only due.” Well, when it isn’t exactly “DUE” on a specific day, to a specific authority, mine stays incomplete and secret. I’m motivated to write, just not to post. But! Look at me, here I am, just writing anyway. Hopefully this will loosen me up.

What have I been doing? I began the summer moving to a new house, took an 8 credit Latin course, studied for – eventually and took – the Graduate Records Examination, and participated in a Writing Center training retreat (as preparation for my internship as a W.C. tutor).

From our list, I read:

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
“The Enormous Radio” by John Cheever
“The Five-Forty-Eight” by John Cheever
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow

Not from-our list, I read:

The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
American Writing Since 1945 by Robert F. Kiernan
The Modern American Novel by Malcolm Bradbury
The Twilight of the Middle Class by Andrew Hobereck
Celebration in Postwar American Fiction by Richard Rupp

Not from our list, I read partially:

The Way We Never Were by Stephanie Coontz
American Dream American Nightmare: Fiction Since 1960 Kathryn Hume

I am at the library as I type, and I have just checked out:

Another Country by James Baldwin
A Death in the Family by James Agee

Books that I intend to check out, or are on their way to Evergreen’s library because I made a request via Summit:

Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction, 1945-70 by Morris Dickstein
A Concise Companion to Postwar American Literature and Culture by Josephine Hendin
The Novel of Manners in America by James W. Tuttleton
City of Words: American Fiction 1950-1970 by Tony Tanner
After Alienation American Novels Mid-Century by Marcus Klein
On Contemporary Literature by Richard Kostelanetz
Contemporary American Literature 1945-1972, an Introduction by Ihab Hassan

More importantly, however, I will have to read more fiction or poetry in order to discuss the era’s literature. I can’t possibly know what my thesis will be yet, but when I do I will add accordingly.

I must say, though, I’m a bit disturbed by my summit account. I requested these within the last 48 hours and it says most of them 1) have been shipped and 2) will be in the library on November 20. This has never taken so long before! I can’t remember if it always overestimates or if something is amiss. Time will tell.

Seize the Day

2009-09-20T17:57:00.001-07:00

Saul Bellow,

So, wait, is Wilky's hair a golden color? Is it? Because I don't think you mention that quite enough.

-Lily

P.S. Sarcasm!

I just found this picture. It doesn't really have anything to do with how I am feeling.

2009-09-03T19:13:00.000-07:00

Oh man. This Tuesday I take the GRE. Then that will be over. And there will be no more Latin, no more Princeton Reviews... I will be ALL OVER this blog. It will be such a dream to get back to what I love!

Something to Add to "Something to Add"

2009-08-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

Yeah, true. I should have been more careful. I do realize that Blanche is removed because she tells Stella that Stanley raped her.

But! Still crazy.

As for Stanley's importance:
I think Stella says herself why she's with Stanley: sex.

Stella: But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark - that sort of make everything else seem - unimportant.
Blanche: What you are talking about is brutal desire - just - Desire! - the name of that rattle-trap street-car that bangs through the Quarter...
Stella: Haven't you ever ridden on that street-car?
Blanche: It brought me here.

That Stanley has so few other winning qualities clarifies exactly why Stella is with him. There is nothing like an impressive salary or silver tongue to confuse us about Stella's motivation.

Sex is the elephant in any room Blanche and Mitch occupy simultaneously, sex is the reason for the noisy drama between Eunice and her husband's, sex ruined Blanche's reputation, and the heartbreak that sent her down that road originated from the suicide of her husband, which in its turn was prompted by her discovery of his homosexual affair. (Blanche also cites "fornications" as the reason Belle Reve is lost.)

To greater and lesser degrees, these characters risk their lives for sex.
Blanche's late husband had an affair whose discovery literally killed him.
Stella stays with a man who beats her.
Blanche herself loses her home, job... the un-medical type of "life" because of her affairs.
Stanley doesn't, but I think he is just sex personified. The end of the play might say something about desire's ultimate triumph, but mostly I think the play is about how this force is denied its power publicly, but everyone obeys it in secret.

Maybe only someone like Williams, whose sexuality was taboo, sees just how influential desire is.

A little something to add.

2009-08-16T14:33:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I can see what you're getting at. I think self deception plays a major role in "Streetcar" and in a lot of Cheever's work too.

Regarding Blanche being drug away; she was finally committed because she told Stella about the whole getting-raped thing, not because she was crazy. Which she was, and I think that Stanley's actions combined with Stella's denial drove her over the edge, so to speak.

I think Stella's not exactly free from the "Seduction of self-deception. She only denies Blanche partially from genuine suspicion. She also partially from the necessity of continued marriage and partially from blindness contracted from her love of Stanley.

One thing about the play that I'm not so sure about is how valuable Stanley actually is. At one point in the script, Stella says that he's going place because he has more drive than the other workers at the plant. But does that really hold water, or is Stella fooling herself into thinking she can procure a secure future with Stanley just because she loves him. I feel like we have ample evidence that there's no "Heart of Gold" there; rapist, nach. But as to whether or not Stanley is actually valuable in any respect, as a provider or as a loving partner, seems doubtable.

Or up to the decision of the director, if we were theater students. Which we aren't.

A Good Man is Hard to Find pre-post

2009-08-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

So I've been reviewing my notes on A Good Man is Hard To Find in preparation for my next post, and I've noticed some things.

So many hats. I know that hats were common, but O'Connor pays so much attention to them for them not to be a method of characterization. Especially because a hat worth mentioning is never a hat that just matches a suit, it is stained or ill-fitting or meant for other genders/occasions/weather. (Example: In "The Artificial Nigger" the young man whose coming-of-age is a major theme wears a hat too big for him.)

So many skies. She uses skies to frame her stories, so to speak. She often includes a description at a story's beginning and end. Perhaps she employed it as a very practical way to convey the passage of time, or a simple setting descriptor, but in most cases I felt symbolism. (Example: In "A Good Man is Hard to Find" multiple references are made to the sky's lack of both sun and cloud, which parallel The Misfit's...let's say "reluctance" to distinguish good and evil.)

The household of "Good Country People" is very similar to "A Circle in the Fire." (Example: In "A Circle," Mrs. Cope asks her bizarrely dressed 12 year old daughter, "'Why do you have to look like an idiot?' and 'When are you going to grow up?'," (148) while in "Good Country," Hulga goes "about all day" in an outfit she thinks is 'funny,' but her mother Mrs. Hopewell think is "idiotic and showed simply that she was still a child," (174).)

And speaking of those characters: there are the names, of course. "Mrs. Cope," "Mrs. Hopewell," "Manley Pointer," "Mr. Shiftlet," etc.

Something even more obvious than the names, it's almost not worth mentioning (although I've learned it's often a rather cocky and self-serving mistake to overlook something just because it's obvious) is religion, religion, religion and more religion.

The above are just a few of the many* noteworthy characteristics.

^{*A book of short stories by a Southern Gothic writer who is Catholic. So much symbolism. So much!}

"The Enormous Radio" and A Streetcar Named Desire

2009-08-10T19:17:00.000-07:00

Well believe it or not I have been doing the readings for this contract. The writing, needless to say, has fallen by the wayside. (This contract is more enjoyable than Latin, but Latin has weekly exams with big percentages at the bottom. That is to say, the result of neglecting Latin stings more than an idle blog. Well, I imagine it would sting more. I wouldn’t know I’ve – ahem – been getting all As.) The good news is: Reading the last few works back-to-back, instead of separated by a written response, makes them easier to compare and to connect. Under other circumstances, the details of setting and characterization in “The Enormous Radio” and A Streetcar Named Desire probably would have distracted me from their similarities. But, fortunately, I’ve noticed that although Irene Westcott and Blanche DuBois would make a highly unlikely pair of friends, were they real people, as characters they have a primary function in common.

Irene and Blanche begin as unwitting voyeurs. In Cheever’s story, Irene is initially disturbed by the private moments the new radio broadcasts into her home. Blanche likewise complains of her sister’s situation in Elysian Fields, “There’s no privacy here. There’s just these portieres between the two rooms at night. [Stanley] stalks through the rooms in his underwear at night. And I have to ask him to close the bathroom door,” (Williams 111). Although the women have not sought their insights into others’ lives, they do little restore boundaries and indulge in judgment. Irene returns to the radio, despite being “astonished and troubled” by its information. Her relationships with friends suffer because she is distracted by constant mental speculations about their private lives (“Enormous” 46-7). Blanche increases the strain of close quarters by criticizing them to her sister, Stella, and comparing her brother-in-law to an ape.

The women base an unhappy conception of the world on what they witness in their neighbors. With “a look of radiant melancholy,” Irene observes “the spring stars,” saying, “How far that little candle throws its beams. So shines a good deed in a naughty world,” (“Enormous” 48). Stella says of cathedral bells, “They’re the only clean thing in the Quarter,” (Williams 170). Both women identify goodness or cleanness is an exception to a rule of badness or filth. The way they cling to their respective beacons suggests that they either fear the frailties they know they share with the humans in their midsts; or they consider themselves similar to those beacons – superior and unlike other people. The men in their lives are convinced the latter is the case. Outrage at unfounded pride motivates Jim Westcott to disgrace Irene and Stanley Kowalski to disgrace Blanche. Jim shouts at Irene, “Why are you so Christly all of a sudden? What’s turned you overnight into a convent girl?” before he shames her with a list of past transgressions. Stanley has an entire play in which to work, so his retaliation is a process with multiple parts. But of those, the most vital to Streetcar’s plot is Stanley’s exposure of Blanche’s sordid past. Stanley employs language the same way Jim does – mocking Blanche’s facade while destroying it, calling her “Dame Blanche,” “Queen of the Nile,” and “lily-white.”

So I’m left wondering what, if anything, these parallels mean. “The Enormous Radio” practically insists you read it as a behind-the-closed-doors-of-the-middle-class, nothing-is-as-perfect-as-it-looks-in-postwar-America, etc. etc. fable, but that doesn’t fit A Streetcar Named Desire because Elysian Fields is working class, messy, diverse and tumultuous. And the one outsider, Blanche, went from white pillars to ruins – but she was never bourgeois. Perhaps the theme of these works is a variation upon the cliché I so clumsily described as a fable of sorts at the beginning of this paragraph: not of a society deceiving itself, but the seduction of self-deception. After all, Blanche is finally carried off by asylum employees in the end… I don’t know. I think I might be close to a legitimate point here, but I can’t quite sort it all out. I hate posting this in its awkward state, but I just have to move on before I’m even further backlogged.

Do you know what I mean at all, Corbin? What are your thoughts?

The Enormous Radio

2009-07-15T23:10:00.001-07:00

What is a "look of radiant melancholy"?

Hate to piggyback so early...

2009-07-11T19:34:00.000-07:00

...but you pretty much robbed me of most of what I had to say concerning the primary theme of the book; personal alienation. Francis's plight is one of being disconnected from everything around herself and wishing to be a part of something else; a "We of me." Since you pretty thoroughly attacked that and I wouldn't want to be redundant, Here's some stray observations and one mild disagreement.

-When I fist started reading "Member" I was struck with how different it was from "King's." "King's" is a book of ideas, a through and through commentary on morality, and "Member's" first 50 pages or so feel like a study of character. Of course, I was wrong about this more or less; "Member" is actually a study in personal alienation and not just a character piece.

But, it it also a character piece. Although I am more or less inclined to agree with the sentiment that "Member" is "about a twelve year-old, but it is not about being twelve years old." I would be wary of going too far in the sentiment. Frances's age is a device for the reasons you sited. But McCullers creates a completely believable character who operates inside those devices. If blurb writers, most of whom know just as much about books as we do, are misdirecting their criticisms its only because the character is so fleshed out and plausible that she cries out for recognition as an accomplishment in and of herself.

-"Spiritual Alienation" is one of McCullers's recurring themes, and though it sings loudest here, it shows up elsewhere. In "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" McCullers takes her attitude towards human relationships to the love relationship. On Page 26 of that novel, McCullers writes: "Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the love to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world- a world intense and strange, compete in himself." McCullers's attitude towards people's natural state being alien and internal, that even love; generally seen as a similar experience between two people, becomes another alienating experience.

I also wrote something about "The Heart if a Lonely Hunter" but I wasn't sure if you had read it.

-"Member" really drives home how frustrating that alienation can be by engaging completely with a character with no fixed Identity. The best specific example of Frances's shifting perspective of herself is the name with which she and the author use. First it's Frankie, a childish name, then F. Jasmine a "Sophisticated" name, then Frances, her actual name. This shifting identity is partly self-imposed, changing so she can become a part of something. But the shift also comes because Frankie is 12 and pubescent and changing biologically; that Frances is growing awkwardly tall is referred to repeatedly.

-Neither of have written about John Henry or the fact that John Henry dies at the end of the book. I haven't written about the latter because, to be honest, it sort of blindsided me in a bad, "Why exactly is this happening" kind of way. I'm curious about what you think McCullers was going for insofar as the book's attitude towards death is, because I've got nothing specific.

Hope that all makes sense.

Members of the Wedding

2009-07-11T13:53:00.000-07:00

The front cover of my copy of The Member of the Wedding includes a one-sentence excerpt of a New York Times review below the novel’s title:

“Entirely winning…A probing novel about a youngster with an unlimited gift for creating fantasies in a Southern town.”

The back synopsis, as well as other lines of review, emphasize a theme of youth: “probing into a child’s deepest thoughts,” (Chicago Daily News), “Carson McCuller’s language has the freshness, quaintness, and gentleness of a sensitive child,” (New York Times again), “A superb understanding of the bewilderment of adolescents,” (Charlotte Observer), “A marvelous study of the agony of adolescence,” (Detroit Free Press), and “An unusual story of a very sensitive child,” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).

Skimming these tiny particles of reviews isn’t the way to analyze a novel’s contemporary criticism. But whatever else these newspapers said in the rest of their reviews, or whatever more reviews this book received, it’s at least clear that Houghton-Mifflin is selling this as a book about childhood and/or adolescence. And although I’m not interested in discussing its historical reception, or the publishing company’s pitch, this popular angle clarified – through contrast – my own perceptions.

The Member of the Wedding is about a twelve year-old, but it is not about being twelve years old.

Frankie’s age is a device: She is a character who is old enough to be aware of painful human limitations, but young enough to mourn them or rage against them as fresh losses.
Focusing on her youth as something other than a device misleads readers to see Frankie as someone “with an unlimited gift for creating fantasies.” Perhaps the most problematic part of that perspective is the word “fantasies.” It is true that Frankie imagines unattainable situations. However – outside of her belief that she will join her brother’s honeymoon – she recognizes the elusiveness of her dearest wishes.

The book opens:
It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old. This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member. She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world. Frankie had become an unjoined person who hung around in doorways, and she was afraid. (3)

And so, for the rest of the book, she hunts for a joining. If she cannot find it in her town, she longs to leave (7). Her brother is in Alaska, so she sends him fudge and imagines him eating something she made herself, miles away (7). She observes that her brother and his fiancée both have names that begin with “Ja” and decides she should be called “F. Jasmine,” so that she can join in on the bond (17).

When Berenice accuses Frankie of jealousy, she replies, “I couldn’t be jealous of one of them without being jealous of them both. I sociate the two of them together,” (17). But that is exactly why Frankie is jealous: Jarvis and Janice are thoroughly joined in a way Frankie wishes for herself. She does not fall in love with her brother or her sister-in-law, but she falls in love with their love. Or, as Berenice says, she falls in love with the wedding (35).

This wish for connection manifests itself in childlike ways: the naïveté of assuming she would be invited along on the honeymoon, imagining she could donate a quart a week to the Red Cross until she had a family of soldiers from all over the world filled with her blood (24), the “Woodmen of the World Club,” (65), climbing a glacier literally tied to Janice and Jarvis (72). But the pain of insurmountable aloneness is not something McCullers writes as unique to children.

The presence of the engaged couple is almost exclusively confined to Frankie’s imagination.
Prominent adults in reality include:

Her father
A “widowman” who is “set in his ways,” and who Frankie feels he does not listen to her (52). He is “a public person in the town, well known to all by sight and name,” but one who “did not even look up at those who stopped and gazed at him,” (64).

The red headed soldier.
Frankie first speaks to him about an exchange she observed in which the soldier drunkenly harassed the “monkey-man” – apparently because he wanted to purchase the monkey. She says, “I’ve always wanted a monkey too,” and he tells her to “hook on,” after a brief exchange in which neither party seems to understand the other, (68). The misunderstanding never corrects itself (one can only hope that he doesn’t realize Frankie is 12!) and explodes in a sleazy hotel room when Frankie bludgeons him with a pitcher.

Berenice.
Like Frankie’s father, she too lost a spouse. In addition to being a widow, she is a multiple divorcee. She sometimes wishes she had never met her beloved Ludie, and regrets all the “no-good men” she’s bothered with since (92-3). The attractiveness of those “no-good men” was based on parts of them that reminded her of her deceased husband: “What I did was to marry off little pieces of Ludie when I come across them,” (107).

Although her father appears to be withdrawn and oblivious, the soldier and Berenice participate in fantastic thinking to assuage their own loneliness. These similarities, in addition to the symbolism in Frankie’s wishes, indicate that the themes of alienation and loneliness in Member are ones McCullers applies to people, not only young people.

The author further relates Frankie’s angst to larger human problems in conversations between the girl and her caretaker, Berenice.

“What I’ve been trying to say is this. Doesn’t it strike you as strange that I am I, and you are you? I am F. Jasmine Addams. And you are Berenice Sadie Brown. And we can look at each other, and touch each other, and stay together year in and year out in the same room. Yet I am always I, and you are you. And I can’t ever be anything else but me, and you can’t ever be anything else but you. Have you ever thought of that? And does it seem to you strange?"
…. “I have thought of it occasionally." (115)

Not only do these evening conversations in the kitchen allow Frankie to articulate her dissatisfaction more specifically than any other part in the book, but Berenice’s occasional recognition lets Frankie and the reader know that these separations are not the imagined problems of a child.

Berenice describes people as being caught: “We each one of us somehow caught all by ourself,” while Frankie sees people as loose: “You don’t see what joins them up together. You don’t know where they came from, or where they’re going to,” and so she decides people are caught and loose at the same time, (120-1). Not only do Berenice and Frankie relate and incorporate the other’s description of loneliness, the conversation occurs while Frankie sitting in Berenice’s lap:

F. Jasmine rolled her head and rested her face against Berenice’s shoulder. She could feel Berenice’s soft big ninnas against her back, and her soft wide stomach, her warm solid legs. She had been breathing very fast, but after a minute her breath slowed down so that she breathed in time with Berenice; the two of them were close together as one body, and Berenice’s stiffened hands were clasped around F. Jasmine’s chest. Their backs were to the window, and before them the kitchen was now almost dark. (119)

It’s at this time, when they can feel their bodies connected, and hear their breathing synchronized, and cannot see their differences in the dark, that they begin to cry “at exactly the same moment, in the way that often on these summer evenings they would start a song,” (121).

Sadly, it’s possible that there were readers in 1946 who would not see a black caretaker as an adequate example of complicated, developed, experienced adult whose understanding (at least of this part) of Frankie, proves that the girl’s pain is part of a universal human pain. And there were certainly writers who wouldn’t have written her to be such.

However, McCullers did employ Berenice as that example, to prove that point. The shape she takes is useful practically: What adult would hang out with a moody twelve year-old day and night for free? With what other character could their exist the unique tension: Berenice weathers and handles bad behavior that anyone with another job could just ignore and abandon. With a caretaker, Frankie can be ruder and more volatile than with either a parent or a friend, and she can also be more honest, which allows McCullers to write fits and monologues that develop Frankie’s character.

But Berenice is not only a sounding board for Frankie. McCullers includes information about Berenice’s past, and current relationships with TeeTee and Honey, that establish Berenice’s possession of and residence in a personal world with which Frankie has nothing to do. Her race, or rather, her acknowledgment of its impact on her life, move her conversations with Frankie beyond simply relating the girl’s hunt for belonging to adult loneliness, to a global and political yearning:

Everyone is caught one way or another. But they done drawn completely extra bounds around all colored people. They done squeezed us off in a corner by ourself. So we caught that firstway I was telling you, as all human beings is caught. And we caught as colored people also. (119)

In Berenice's perfect world:
"There would be no separate colored people in the world, but all human beings would be light brown color with blue eyes and black hair. No war, said Berenice. No stiff corpses hanging from the Europe trees and no Jews murdered anywhere. No war, and the young boys leaving home in army suits, and no wild cruel Germans and Japanese. No war in the whole world, but peace in all countries, but peace in all countries everywhere. Also, no starving. To begin with, the real Lord God had made free air and free rain and free dirt for the benefit of all." (120)

Berenice’s ideal legitimizes Frankie’s fantasy of “a world club with certificates and badges,” by paralleling the child’s whim with a dream that renounces racism, war and the Holocaust.

“[They] would sit there at the kitchen table and criticize the Creator and the work of God. Sometimes their voices crossed and the […] worlds twisted,” (98).

The Member of the Wedding is a criticism of the work of God, in its claim that the divides between human beings are both insurmountable and intolerable. But it contains some hope in the paradoxical idea of shared loneliness. That this is a claim about the lot of all people, and not just children or adolescents, is – I feel – apparent in McCuller’s language from the beginning. For those who feel otherwise, the instances where voices cross and worlds twist prove that Frankie isn’t the only “member of the wedding.”

Très Désolée

2009-07-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

Alas, I have not finished All the King's Men yet! With moving and my Latin class I've been so busy. I decided to let it go unfinished for awhile so I can make it through The Member of the Wedding and A Streetcar Named Desire. Otherwise, I fear, I'm going to be two steps behind forever. Today is my last day in my old apartment and I won't have internet in my new house until the afternoon or evening of July 8th. However, I will be on campus for Latin a few times this coming week so I should be able to post just the same.

(I can't wait for my life to get under control. We're still moving three people's furniture and general belongings, so even though I'm sharing the job with Julien it's quite the process - exhausting, chaotic, and glacial in terms of how long it takes before I feel I've accomplished anything. Looking around this room you'd never know how much we've cleared out already. I'm always driving between houses and hardware stores, making phone calls and visiting web sites to transfer services and update my mailing address... And then there's the cleaning of my current hell hole - that was disgusting when we moved in! - with no roommates around to help. I've been positively on the verge of tears for days. Streetcar is in some box, but I forget which! I've read it, but I'd like the copy for reference. It'd also be nice to put my black and white postcards of Carson McCullers and Tennessee Williams on a wall for inspiration! But I really don't know where those ended up. Blerrrrrg.)

Anyway, thanks for not giving too much away and a million apologies for not being able to engage fully in this discussion.

Hey

2009-07-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

Hey, Lily, it's Corbin. The nice boy you're doing the contract with? I just finished All The King's Men a few hours ago. It's fairly wonderful, and I can honestly say that Warren has a lot more on his mind than politics: it's primarily a book about the human condition.

But insofar as Palin is concerned, I'm not sure that Warren's words don't apply. The type of person that Willie Stark makes himself in public is strikingly similar to Palin and many other politicians. He poses himself as an outside force, dumbs down his message (That dumbing down can be seen as a sort of compromise to ingratiate himself into the world, an element that becomes more and more important as the book goes on.), and appeals to rednecks.

But then again, I think there's a powerful difference between Palin and Stark: Stark really does help common people. Whatever his reasons might be unimportant: after all, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the diddie to the stench of the shroud." As the book goes on, it makes intresting hay of what a person's motivations are: But I don't want to talk about that without knowing is you've finished the book.

Hear Me Out

2009-06-30T21:19:00.000-07:00

Corbin,

One of the major reasons for our immediate in-class (English Romantics) camaraderie was our mutual (perhaps, sometimes, unfairly absolute?*) intolerance for conversations that related non-literature to literature.

Some examples that attract the most self-indulgence: religion, politics, psychological problems, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, bad movies… These topics have their places. Seminar is almost never among those places. Yet, have we ever had a seminar absent of some irrelevant supposed-connection that derailed a discussion? “Derailed” conjuring a mostly-apt comparison: Are these occasions trainwreck-like in their gruesomeness? Often. In the existential despair I feel watching them occur? Oh yes. In their inevitability? Apparently. However these strayings from the righteous path of focused discussions are utterly without the fascination that would keep us gawking instead of playing Boggle solitaire, so there is a limit to my metaphor.

It turns out, for all that trainwreck business, there is also a limit to my dogmatism. We aren’t confined to a two-hour seminar, and a post of mine will not circumscribe another’s ability to contribute to a discussion. Even if it did – there’s only one other person.

So, although I am the same prickly Lily with the same values as before, (as the above statement has assured you, I hope) I’m going to bend my own rules a little. I won’t compromise in proper posts, but I see no harm in a little note here and there to say, “Hey, I’m still reading” or, “Hey, I’m thinking about what I read even though that’s not the only thing I’m reading.”

This is far too big an introduction for the little sticky note of an entry I’m about to make but my prediction that this will not be the last post of its kind and my personal embarrassment over this lapse in form drove me to a lengthy explanation/justification.

Sincerely,
Lily

*If you are asking yourself, “Would Lily include a qualification like this if she were not concerned about positioning herself as a hypocrite within a number sentences?” The answer is, “Of course not.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But Palin's lack of knowledge turned out not to hurt her. Andrew Halcro later remembered that he and Palin once compared notes about their many encounters, and she said, "Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I'm amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, Does any of this really matter?"

Regarding the career of Willie Stark: Familiar, non?

Yeah, that's it.

June 21st - October 10th Reading Schedule

2009-06-03T17:07:00.000-07:00

Here is our reading list and summer calendar at its official-est thus far:

Week 1 (21-27 June):
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

Week 2 (28 June - 4 July):
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Week 3 (5-11 July):
"The Enormous Radio," etc. by John Cheever
Chapters of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Week 4 (12-18 July):
Selected Stories by Eudora Welty
"The Five-Forty-Eight" by John Cheever, etc.

Week 5 (19-25 July):
A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

Week 6 (26 July - 1 August):
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by Sloan Wilson

Week 7 (2-8 August):
Another Country by James Baldwin

Week 8 (9-15 August):
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow

Week 9 (16-22 August):
The Assistant by Bernard Malamud

Week 10 (23-29 August):
A Death in the Family by James Agee

Week 11 (30 August - 5 September)
Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

Week 12 (6-12 September):
The Colossus and Other Poems by Sylvia Plath
To Bedlam and Part Way Back by Anne Sexton

Week 13 (13-19 September):
Rabbit, Run by John Updike

Week 14 (20-26 September):
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

Week 15 (27 September - 3 October):
Ariel by Sylvia Plath
Stories by John Cheever

Week 16 (4 October - 10 October):
Live or Die by Anne Sexton