I don't really have a whole lot to say. I know that sometimes at the end of a class it is appropriate to get all sentimental and such but I don't really feel that way. It's not that this class hasn't inspired strong feelings towards its' content and its' people but sometimes the best end to something good is sweet, short and memorable.
I guess what I really want to say in my last moments of text is that I've enjoyed this class immensely. During the middle of the semester I kind of fell of board for a while. Things were just too much with class, work, "the future" and all of that fun stuff. But I think I came back strong and will have finished off with strong devotion and commitment to the class. My favorite book of this semester in class was The Following Story by Cees Nooteboom. Although I was skeptical of it in the beginning I fell into the boat ride at the end and felt pulled away by the wonderful prose at the novels conclusion. Next time Dr. Sexson teaches this class I would like him to use If On A Winters Night A Traveler by Italo Calvino or at least Invisible Cities or something like that. Calvino is fantastic and I feel robbed that NONE of my college classes taught anything by him. Oh well, you don't have time for everything I guess.
All of the presentations were fantastic. I don't really think I have a typical "favorite" or anything like that. Just being able to see how everybody approached their individual paper topic and paper presentation made the whole experience wonderful. Groups also did a good job. It seems that everyone had a solid presentation put together somehow or another with Rio's help.
Also it was nice to hear what awards/ scholarships people received. Hearing of everyone's achievments really pushes me towards doing all I can in order to better myself. Competitiveness isn't bad if it yields progression. Anyway, knowing that I am in the presence of such a group of people dedicated to intellectualism up here in Montana is great. I couldn't ask for a better group of peers or professors and I will miss all of you even if I never said anything to you. You were a part of the milieu that made the MSU English Dept. a great place to study literature.
How to conclude... well, I guess if we learned anything this year it has been that the myth of the eternal return depicts that in fact we have done this all before-- 15 weeks, reading, presentations, final blogs and everything. If that is the case than I'm looking forward to seeing you all on the next go round.
Yesterday I finished reading Mr. Palomar by Italo Calvino. It was a really enjoyable book and did some excellent work exploring various ways of "seeing" the world. For those of you who don't know Italo Calvino borrowed the name from the observatory in Spain. The choice of name was perfect because Mr. Palomar is much like this telescope, or rather, he could be interpreted as the eye and even the "mind's eye" looking through the telescope. This work deals mostly with the ways to view things- in both the simple sense of viewing and the complex, meaning-filled sense of viewing.
The work is set up in three overall sections of setting-- Mr. Palomar on Vacation, Mr. Palomar in the City, and The Silences of Mr. Palomar. Within each of these settings are three more sets of three narratives. In the index Calvino even broke down the work further to explain that the sections of each subset are ordered purposefully to depict progression from strict observance into philosophical narrative. For example sections denoted with 1. are typically written with Mr. Palomar observing the topical sense of what he is observing. Sections marked 2. deal with his observance of something taken in a cultural or anthropological sense. Sections marked 3. take his observations and apply them internally to Mr. Palomar himself.
This was a really nice work to read after Under the Jaguar Sun. While Under the Jaguar Sun dealt with three of the five senses (touch and sight missing) Mr. Palomar focused almost completely on sight filling the gap left in one of the missing senses. It was interesting to consider how Calvino may have completed his novel of the senses had he had the chance to finish it-- I assume that he would have taken many of the themes from Mr. Palomar if not direct lines. Now that I've read a couple of Calvino stories I think I might move on to something else... most likely Fury by Salman Rushdie or Collected Novellas by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I'm kind of thinking Collected Novellas because I haven't read any Marquez since Christmas and it's kind of nice to read shorter narratives when the end of the semester is here. But If you are really interested in reading some Calvino for yourself here is a link for the full textMr. Palomar online!
I must say that I felt my two most influential bloggers in the class were Rio and Sam. This is pretty simple really. Having two Dr. Sexson classes with two sets of blogs and such has made me really confused at times trying to remember who was talking about what when and why. Sam, acting master blogger in BOTH, kept me straight and focused on what was coming up in each class and what I had to prep for.
Rio, with his attention to media, cannot be forgotten in this discussion of memorable blogs. Although much of my appreciation of his talents comes through the class it has been largely influential to watch him work thus making his service to the class indispensable. It think that most of us would agree that every class needs a Rio running the magic Apple displaying fantastic images and relevant information within seconds of hearing about it; Visual learners rejoice! His smartpen is also incredible. To be able to record all of the lectures and post them just shows how cool school is becoming!
He heard the cackling of the partridge, the tickling and creaking inside the bolted chamber, heard the old woman at the door load her grate with live crabs, which then hopped onto the coals. This is Paradise, he meditated… ‘Prince of India, what does your God have to say about all this?’ ‘That everything is a dream’… The son of Mary looked around him, terrified. Could the Indian nobleman really be right? Could all this—yard, pomegranate, grate, partridge, men—be a dream? Perhaps he was still under the cedar, dreaming”— The Last Temptation of Christ
Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel The Last Temptation of Christ was first translated into English in 1960 and from that time on the book was surrounded with controversy and would be banned from many reading lists for Kazantzakis’ portrayal of the life of Jesus. Those who challenged the book cited various moments in the work where Jesus questions his role of being the savior of mankind, the seeming defense of Judas’ betrayal, and the sexual attraction that Jesus has for Mary Magdalene. Unfortunately, those who criticize the work on those grounds missed the point that Kazantzakis made in his prologue that, after closer examination, seems to anticipate these claims and offers a defense of his work. Kazantzakis begs the reader to remember “in order to mount to the Cross, the summit of sacrifice, and to God, the summit of immateriality, Christ passed through all the stages which the man who struggles passes through” (Kazantzakis 2). Kazantzakis furthers his argument to include the necessity of his embrace of that which accompanies humanity by saying that “if he had not within him this warm human element, he would never be able to touch our hearts with such assurance and tenderness; he would not be able to become a model for our lives” (Kazantzakis 3). Thus, part of the essence of being ‘Christ-like’ is to experience the pushes and pulls of being human.
The road for Jesus is not easy— in neither the Gospels or in The Last Temptation of Christ— but the difficulty of the road is different in each. In the Gospels the difficulty of Christ’s path is typically considered in the Passion where Jesus experienced his most physical suffering whereas in The Last Temptation the difficulty of being the Messiah lies in Jesus’ discovery of his role as Messiah and in his ability to remain firmly on that road; in comparison, the passion of The Last Temptation tends to focus on the most spiritual suffering. Jesus in the Gospels his role as Messiah, although cryptic at times, never seems to be in doubt. The Last Temptation however offers a complex portrayal of Jesus’ realization of his role and his understanding of how to follow the road correctly. In the book, dreams assume the role of being the language of the divine and are the catalyst to both lead Jesus toward his place on the cross and also into the depths of temptation.
The novel opens with a dream. Jesus dreams of the Readbeard coming down into to Nazareth with a mob to capture him. He blockades his door with everything he has—saws, hammers, nails, a huge cross—tools of the carpenter who makes crosses for the crucifixions. He wakes with a start and asks, “was this sleep? Or death, immortality, God?” (Kazantzakis 11). While the meaning of this dream is fairly transparent to the modern reader who knows the end of Jesus’ story it is important to consider the dream from the perspective of Kazantzakis’ character—a man who does not know the end to his story and has only glimpses of the future revealed to him. In this vision Jesus’ end is revealed to him at the beginning of his journey echoing those lines opening T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets “East Coker”, “In my beginning is my end” (Eliot 23). During this first revelation, this pivotal moment, Jesus begins to move on the path that will undoubtedly lead towards his eventual end.
It should be understood that dreams are more to Jesus than a passive revealing of his eventual fate. When talking to his Uncle Jesus asks “’do you believe in dreams, Uncle Simeon? I do; I believe in nothing else” (Kazantzakis 147). We see that his belief runs so far beyond the simple understanding of dreams as knowledge to actually prompt Jesus to act. Asked why he came to the monastery in the desert Jesus replies “I’ve come because of the dream” (Kazantzakis 136). We see that the dream actually serves as the reason for Jesus to act and further himself along his road. Jesus understands dreams as more than what will happen—he understands them as what should happen and thus he will make efforts to realize the images of those dreams, set like landmarks, along his path.
Meaning is also coupled with the directions sent through the dreams. After saying that he had come to the monastery because of the dream he mentions “God sent it in order to show me my road, and the Abbot is going to untangle it for me’” (Kazantzakis 136). Not only is the direction he must take communicated there is also something to untangle, some deeper meaning, adding to the richness and wonder. Key to understanding this concept is another line in the book where Jesus thinks, “everything is of God… everything has two meanings, one manifest, one hidden. The common people comprehend only what is manifest. They say, ‘This is a snake,’ and their minds go no further; but the mind which dwells in God sees what lies beyond the visible, sees the hidden meaning” (Kazantzakis 150). This statement is rooted in the understanding that everything has or is an aspect of the divine. For the thing itself to be fully known the one considering it must be able to find this hidden meaning. When that thing is fully known the way in which the essence of the thing was understood could be considered language, and, in the case of dreams, the language of the divine.
While dreams appear as the language of the divine, with immense complexities and troubles to make meaning for the unpracticed, it must be considered that the divine encompasses both godlike figures— omnipotent God and the tempter Satan. After a dream that he experienced Jesus says “’someone came last night in my sleep… someone came. Surely it was God, God… or was it the devil? Who can tell them apart? They exchange faces; God sometimes becomes all darkness, the devil all light, and the mind of man is left in a muddle’” (Kazantzakis 15).To the dreamer, the dream is a mixed muddle of images and meaning and, adding the most basic yet important complexity, whose voice, God or Satan, is speaking the divine language? While this creates a complex problem for the dreamer it establishes dreams as a form of communication that is used by both powers and in much of the same way as evident by the dreamers inability to distinguish between the two. Because of the reliance of each to use this form of revelation the power of the dream as a method of persuasion towards action does not go unnoticed. Used effectively this dream-language should be understood as one of the most potent and most convincing methods of revelation. It is fitting then that God used a dream as a catalyst to prompt Jesus to begin his journey and also that Satan used a dream to try and tempt Jesus from his journey.
Finally, as Jesus faints upon the cross, we are transported to the last temptation of Jesus for which the novel is named. After he faints Jesus’ “eyelids fluttered with joy and surprise. This was not a cross; it was a huge tree reaching from earth to heaven” (Kazantzakis 444). Jesus is bewildered and asks his supposed guardian angel “’wasn’t I crucified… was the cross, then, a dream—and the nails, the pain, he sun which became dark’” to which the angel replies “’yes, a dream. You lived your entire Passion in a dream. You mounted the cross and were nailed to it in a dream. The five wounds in your hands, feet and heart were inflicted in a dream, but with such force that, look!, the blood is still flowing’” (Kazantzakis 446). As we later find out the garden Jesus has been transported to is actually the dream. But, as followers of the story, we too suppose that Jesus has lived his Passion in a dream and that the life lying before him, the life he utters about earlier when he says, “I don’t care about the kingdom of heaven. I like the earth. I want to marry”, is the life he will finally be able to live (Kazantzakis 28). Little do we suspect when Kazantzakis claims that “every moment of Christ’s life is a conflict” that he has filled one of the last moments in Christ’s life with the most tortuous test of all—the man’s desired lifestyle, dripping with possibility before him, appearing in it’s whole in a flash quick as lightning. The clue should remind us of Eliot’s Four Quartets in which he claims “the time of death is every moment” and that there is “a lifetime burning in every moment” (Eliot 42, 31). Satan himself even relates this concept when, in the form of Jesus’ guardian angel, he preaches “Here is eternity: each moment, Jesus of Nazareth, each moment that passes” (Kazantzakis 466). For Satan to uncover Jesus’ deepest desires and place him in the center of the illusion is the most potent application, and most potent temptation, of the dream that Jesus has felt.
For the reader, who experiences time most likely in its “normal” flow the concept of the momentary lifetime may be misunderstood. This life that Jesus lives is practically complete spanning from his early 30’s to old age. We learn that Jesus weds both sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha. Although not Jesus’ ideal woman Mary Magdalene Satan gives Jesus solace by saying “only one woman exists in the world, one woman with countless faces. This one falls; the next rises. Mary Magdalene died, Mary sister of Lazarus lives… she is Magdalene herself, but with another face” (Kazantzakis 457). Ironically, this statement evokes a passage from Cees Nooteboom’s work The Following Story (another momentary lifetime story in which the characters’ story takes place in the two seconds of his death much like Jesus in The Last Temptation) where the main character, Herman Mussert, says, “the world is a never ending cross-reference” (Nooteboom 98). It is as if Jesus has seen these women in another woman at another time… or maybe in another lifetime. What is so confounding to the subject of this experience is the duration of time that passes. Jesus has children and eventually becomes a grandfather. The experience is not the usual experience of a moment— it is experienced over days, months and years creating the most real illusion possible by adhering to the supposed constant, time, that governs our lives.
However, for as realistic as the craft has been, it is not without it’s cracks. Like the moment of déjà vu in the film The Matrix Jesus’ unreality has been infiltrated by truth like light through the chinks. One night a nervous Mary wakes Jesus and tells him of a dream she had where “you {Jesus}, me, Martha, our embraces at night, the children… All, all—all lies! Lies created by the tempter to deceive us! He took sleep, death and air and fashioned them…” (Kazantzakis 468). Jesus is confronted with the knowledge that the life he is living, what seems to be his reality, is actually something otherworldly. However, the most rupturing of this illusion occurs when she refers to his “other” life and says to Jesus “that you, Rabbi… were crucified” (Kazantzakis 469). By alluding to Jesus’ supposed “dream” of long ago, something that we can assume he has not told to Mary, the truthfulness of this statement is overwhelming and brings the tension to a high. Even Satan, weaver of this alternate reality, feels panic and tells Jesus “this is a difficult moment. Your mind might waver” (Kazantzakis 469). Interestingly, this dream of Mary’s occurs within the larger dream created by Satan. With no small stretch of the mind we can assume that the dream of Mary was instigated by God in order to guide Jesus as God has done throughout the novel. So, in this moment of conflict, we can see the two opposing forces using the same language almost identically to communicate each wish Jesus creating a cacophony of truth and lies. By using the dream as a revelation of truth God is attempting to undermine the appearance of Satan. However, Satan ironically appeals to Jesus’ logical understanding of the world and challenges the vision of Mary saying to Jesus “are you a woman? Do you believe in dreams?” (Kazantzakis 469). As we learned earlier Jesus does in fact believe in dreams and sees the power they hold. Jesus belief has become so powerful in fact that there is a switch between the meaning of dream and reality with dream now appearing as actual reality and actual reality appearing as dream. The mind is left to reel.
Eventually Jesus pushes aside the dream of Mary and further assimilates into the dream world. This is not a world of Satan with fire and brimstone. This world appears as sweet as honey—the ideal existence for a man who wants to fully be a man. He exalts much of the same joys that we experience in our lives. At one point he says “to fly, skimming over the earth just as we do in our dreams! Life has become a dream. Can this be the meaning of Paradise?” (Kazantzakis 458). Perhaps this momentary lifetime is so attractive to Jesus (and to us) because, as we’ve demonstrated earlier, the dream is a language spoken by both God and Satan where the dialects of Satan almost pass imperceptibly as the utterance of God. Satan’s craft takes the appearance of light and goodness especially juxtaposed against God’s reality of the crucifixion; we only wish the best for this man who has suffered so much. Our feelings towards echo in the speech of Caliban from Shakespeare’s’ The Tempest:
“Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again” (III.ii 137-145).
However, despite his and our temptation to remain the dream world, Jesus eventually awakes from this allusion to a reality of hanging on the cross. It is in this moment of waking that he realizes his feat and gloriously exclaims, “it is accomplished!” before giving up his spirit (Kazantzakis 496). The temptation of the momentary lifetime was necessary for Jesus to conquer to rise to the highest heavens; as the epigraph states in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets “the way up is the way down” (Eliot 10). The glory of Jesus accomplishment thus lies in his ability to go down to experience the most powerful sorcery of Satan— a luscious momentary lifetime— and to reject the temptation and instead provide his followers with the ultimate example of attaining the divine through sacrifice.
Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt Inc., 1943. Print.
Kazantzakis, Nikos. The Last Temptation of Christ. Trans. P.A. Bien. New York:
Scribner, 1960. Print.
Nooteboom, Cees. The Following Story. Trans. Ina Rilke. New York: Harvest, 1991.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Eds. David Bevington & Scott Kastan. New York:
Well, it looks like it's going to be another glorious day outside and I have the feeling that I'm going to be inside writing my papers/ preparing for group projects! Ugh. I'm excited to get my paper done so I can move on to other papers/projects and get back to some of the personal reading that I'm doing and, eventually, get out to ride my bike before the weather takes another turn for the worse. By the way, this brings up two good questions I have-- Do we have a final in this class? and What is the schedule for presenting papers? I'm not going to be able to go on Friday of this week because I'm going to be out of town visiting my girlfriend's parents.
On another note I'm extremely excited for the English Dept. reception in the Habit restaurant this Thursday! After 4 long years of taking classes from the English Dept. and having had classes from so many of the professors it will be great to have some sort of appropriate send-off. I know that Justin will be there as he said on his blog but I hope to see many more of you there also. I'm not sure about the dress... Formal? Casual? Togas?
I guess this blog basically comes to this point-- while I am extremely excited to be finishing up school soon I know that in the fall I will really miss coming back and seeing many of you in classes. I've had a great run of things at MSU and the English Dept. has treated me wonderfully (except all the problems with the writing minor. Get that fixed English Dept.) and I don't believe that I would have enjoyed my time more anywhere else. Of course I have regrets about things done and things left undone-- going to NCUR this year for example. I wish I had put a paper together to present but, alas, time was just terrible in the fall and I wasted some of the time I had this last summer.
So, with two weeks left before finals week, or, for an English major, the "real" dead-week, let's all remember that college is a great place where things are pretty enjoyable. Even though at times being busy with papers and projects seems like a hell of a lot for us to be paying for we should appreciate the opportunity to be involved in an academic community of our peers, the likes of which many others around the world would love to have.
The other day I watched the children's animation film "Fantastic Mr. Fox" directed by Wes Anderson. Before I begin let me say that I love "The Royal Tennenbaums" and really enjoyed "The Darjelling Limited", "Bottle Rocket", and "The Life Aquatic" although I do have an interesting paper topic in mind about how Anderson's scripts portray minorities (God I'm a nerd). Anyway, to the movie "Fantastic Mr. Fox". I felt that Anderson's style of film making really made an interesting movie. Also, the voices used for the characters was fantastic. George Clooney as Mr. Fox was perfect as well as the rest of the cast. Also, the music was great.
I don't know if you would call "Fantastic Mr. Fox" a highbrow film or not. I guess that calls into question whether the rest of Anderson's films are highbrow. The film was definitely quirky and witty which gives it some points towards being highbrow. I guess I would settle on the film being middle-brow or even highish-brow... especially by today's standards. For any of the rest of you who have seen the film I would be curious to hear what your opinion on the matter is.
On a final note Wes Anderson appears on the list of "Stuff that White People Like". For those of you who are white and aren't particularly offended by race humor (although white people like being offended) check out the list and see how many of the things that you like. If you're not white check out the list to find out how to impress your white friends and potentially get help when moving!
Do I need to offer a defense of our project? Should I offer apologies? Man, you guys were a tough crowd. It was kind of brutal standing up after the presentation was over. Perhaps our focus was too much on the lowbrow? Too demotic? The connection to the highbrow not obvious enough as a character from Samuel Beckett (who most everyone seems to admire & "get") walking across the stage counting his farts? Maybe everyone was too embarrassed to laugh while at the university where we feel the need to act like rigid intellectuals? I don't know.
Typically people don't like to admit it when things don't go the way they thought it would. When we were practicing this skit I was thinking "we're probably going to have to pause here for laughs to die down". Nope. Didn't have to pause ever. Maybe we took to lowbrow, the "lowest of the lowbrow", and portrayed it as highbrow making some scoff with distaste. Not obviously "artsy" enough? Did you think that this humor was too sophomoric? Too pre-teen? Well, if some of you have "grown up" to much to laugh at a good fart but outside of class find Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow scripts consistently humorous then sucks to be you.
Here is a copy of the poem that I was talking about earlier in the semester. The only reason I hadn't published it on here yet was because of the Poetry contest the English Dept. sponsors. I didn't want to post it and cause a conflict of interest... Anyway see if you can spot some of the themes from this class (especially some of the Wakeian language!)
Wow! I was super impressed with the two group presentations that went today! Sometimes, on 1st days of presentations especially, the presentations just don't quite live up to the billing. However what we saw today would be an exceptional presentation in any class I've taken.
The first group's dictation of Jon's dream was great. I loved some of the moves that they made during their production and they did a great job of employing some props that were pretty funny and useful. I enjoyed the whole play on the dream-state requiring some action for Jon to have to attempt to accomplish. I noticed that it followed the heroes journey well. One of the moves that really stood out was the reappearance of the rose after Jon woke back up. It was really reminiscent of the Star Trek episode with the reappearance of the flute.
Even though the first group set a pretty high bar the movie lived up to the level for sure. I was extremely surprised by the effectiveness of the surreal aspect that the film had. Sometimes those type of films can just have a cheesy art-house feel to them without really working except on a "that's weird" level. Perhaps this class has helped me pass the "that's weird" level... anyways Kudos to Thomas' film abilities for sure! It had echoes of many of the texts we viewed/read for the class. By far my favorite part of the film was the the sucking stones on the bottom half while the recitations of the memorized Finnegans Wake was occurring on the top half of the screen. I can't remember what the music was at this part but it too was extremely effective. It had a certain emotional appeal that isn't often achieved without being too lowbrow and, as we've learned, the FW words aren't lowbrow at all!
After seeing these presentations I certainly have some anxiety of influence. The groups today did awesome and I'm excited to see what everybody else has cooked up.
I would talk about the project for this class but I don't want to give anything away so I'll discuss a project for a different class. For my Mythologies class we too are doing group projects. Obviously we are doing a much different project than the type for this class but some of the themes are overarching (as they should be). Our text that we are focusing on is the Mesopotamian story the Epic of Gilgamesh-- a text rich in some themes that would become highbrow. Our presentation style is going to include the lowest of lowbrow presentations-- the sock puppet theatre. We are doing some really interesting moves that should make it a memorable and informational presentation though.
To place our presentation in a larger frame I plan on acting as a narrator who is telling the story to the class in ancient times. We will have the class come around and use some lighting effects for more dramatic appeal. Hell, we even have a kid playing a keyboard! Obviously, despite the lowbrow humorous overtone, we plan on depicting the story to try and give the class a feel of what it would have been like to hear the story. Often when reading these stories we forget that they extend from the heart of oral relation and then came into writing much later. To give these stories a more accurate (somewhat) contextualization through a more accurate medium is to experience them in a way that is possibly more true than it is otherwise.
One of our more entertaining gimmicks includes a sacrifice of a goat (pinata) at the beginning to bless our production. Then we will proceed to pass around some cookies and some liquid drink like kool-aid-- not the bad kind but the good kool-aid. While this is funny and off-the-wall it will give some setting to our presentation that others may have lacked.
It's been really fun to think how I can integrate some highbrow themes with the overall lowbrow quality of our production. It should be pretty fun and it is kind of a relief that we are going first and have the whole hour and a half to do a 20 minute presentation. I have a feeling that we might run over a bit!
So I guess the class has come to the point where Dr. Sexson goes into hiding and we take the class over. In a way, even with the group presentations and individual presentations left, this time of the semester feels like the end... or at least reminds us that the end is upon us. For some of us graduating Seniors the end is so close that we can see it on the horizon of the month!
I have enjoyed this class immensely! At one point in the semester I didn't come to class a couple times and kind of fell off the face of the earth. I think at that point I was deeply infected with the senioritis bug and just couldn't get motivated for what we were doing. In the last couple of weeks I have returned to motivation and once again feel as if I'm doing my work the way it should be done and the way I've come to expect of myself... also I think it's been fun again!
Starting of with Haroun and the Sea of Stories was a fantastic beginning. It's just a good, enjoyable lowbrow book. I had read it before the class and found that it was just a fun read. It also did a good job of persuading me that I had made a good choice in the study of stories and avoided being a sniveling clerk. For me, one of the favorite things about reading the book was finding the many references-- from 1001 Arabian Nights to the Beatles.
I would have to say that my favorite book of this class to read was The Alchemist. It was just fun. At the end of my time here at MSU I needed some positive, easy to read book. It was fun. Probably the best book we read was Finnegans Wake. The fact that someone could so masterfully construct a text with such depth is astonishing. Obviously the most daunting book that one could try and "read". However the daunting presence of FW doesn't diminish it's appeal to the interested reader. I constantly thought about it like Sudoku for English majors. Trying to figure out the worldplay was highly enjoyable.
Anyway, I feel that the class has been a really good influence on the way I consider literature and hope to apply many of the lessons learned in the future!
So I think I'm going to have to scrap the whole If on a Winter's Night a Traveler paper idea. I think I'm just in too much of a time crunch to read the book again, do some quality research, and write a good paper... especially considering the Capstone class and various group projects across the classes. Could I do it if I had to?... probably. Do I want to?... not so much. So this is where I abandon ship. Goodbye If on a Winter's Night a Traveler paper-- yet again I push you off into the future.
Don't despair, my new paper topic isn't bad. It's just different and my focus is changing. With Traveler I was going to focus on the theme of 'life as fiction' but now I'm headed towards '20 minute lifetime' and 'life as dream'. The text I will view through these lenses is actually the same as the work I have chosen for my capstone paper The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. On my other blog for capstone I've done a little discussion about the work and I will avoid repeating myself about some of the lower level stuff... go check it out if you feel that's necessary.
Anyway I'm sure my paper will end up by needing to me to give a spoiler alert for those of you who haven't read the book or seen the Scorsese film by the same name. The reason I say that my paper may need a spoiler alert is because I will mainly be discussing the "last" temptation that Jesus experiences in the novel, in other words, the end of the book. For those of you who have seen the movie, or preferably read the book, you should be able to guess how I'm going to approach discussing the novel but for those of you who haven't experienced this magnificent story before it may be enlightening and spur you on to reading the book for yourself.
Perhaps I will address the "controversial" nature of the work but I feel like in a college literature course I should be able to gloss over that without too much trouble. If you're offended by the work just plug your ears and think about chocolate bars and sunshine while I'm presenting:)
Mythology is highbrow stuff. "Clash of the Titans" was painfully lowbrow. It opened up with some attempt at explaining who was who and what was going on but after the summation it really went downhill. The script was so poorly written that it seemed like the people making the movie decided to just give it up, get it finished, and rake in some 3-D action/adventure dollars. I mean I enjoy a good action movie but this was just bad. I kept on asking myself "was there a contest for 8th graders to write a script and then hollywood would produce it for the winner or what?". But even that didn't make sense because how could something this bad win an 8th grade contest?
For a little bit I was upset that I had paid the movie fee and the obscene 3-D fees to attend such a poor output. Acting? Bad. Effects? Meh. Script? Awful. Then I had a turn of mind. This movie was SO bad that I was enjoying it. I don't know if it was the guys behind me going "dude" every time some thing got crushed by a scorpion claw or someone was killed by a sword, the complete lack of a promising script, or the abrupt climaxes of action scenes that the whole movie was building up towards. Taking my mythologies class this semester I have an inkling about some mythology but seeing it portrayed like this made it void of all intellectual value. Knowing highbrow material made this film all the more enjoyable because it was so transparently bad that it made it funny. At times I think that knowing highbrow material doesn't make one a "snob" but it helps that person to enjoy the lowbrow stuff even more because.
Do any of you remember when the Procrastinator was in Linfield and would show those obscure movies that more often than not were hilariously awful? That would have been a perfect premier for this movie. I feel that "Clash of the Titans" will end up being on the council of a Valhalla of terrible movies that are entertainingly bad.
Favorite Quote: (Perseus talking about Medussa) "Don't look that bitch in the eyes." At this point I was about ready to throw chocolate covered almonds at the screen.
I noticed a couple of quotes from The Following Story that I will probably end up using in my paper about Italo Calvino's work If on a Winter's Night a Traveler.
pg. 67-- "You knew where we were going, and it was enough to know you knew. But I can't talk to you like this: you can't be both in the story and not in it."
pg. 70-- "To a large extent, you already existed before you had anything to do with it at all."
Any reader of Calvino's work will notice that both of these texts are linked to Traveler by their use of the second person narrative style. I really enjoy the second quote because of the notion that the story "you" take part in has been written long before you read it and you eventually came to reading it. It is interesting for me to consider how Calvino wrote a book presupposing the reader before the reader had read the book or perhaps even been born!
In the first quote it is interesting how Nooteboom uses Mussert to confront the reader and address the two roles as reader and narrator/author. Calvino also does much of that by acting as an internal narrator, someone within you but also without you (Beatles reference), who is dictating what you are doing... and that person is correct.
Here's my bike that I will tour on! It came in yesterday and it would have made it real hard to study for the test and read if it wasn't blowing and snowing out... Look at my last post about pilgrimage if you haven't yet. This post will make a lot more sense!
Today in class we mentioned pilgrimages. I was really impressed to hear that a couple of classmates had done some very impressive treks. For Doug to have hiked the AT (Doug, did you hike the whole trail?) and biked from Virginia to Montana is awesome. Also, Rio walking to Austin Texas was very fun to hear of. I would think that walking is perhaps the most authentic experience you could get when going to a place-- refer to Emerson's essay on "Walking". I'm sure that these two learned some valuable experiences on their journeys.
Hopefully I will be joining the ranks of these men soon. Today my touring bike finally arrived and, at the first sight of it, I saw so many possibilities open up it was incredible. I was so stoked that I took it on a little ride up to campus and back down. It felt great. I imagined myself riding across the Rockies, the plains, settling down by the Yellowstone river, camping under the stars and all the glorious imagery of the American tourist.
Before I continue I think it is necessary to provide a defense of tourists. At its core the word tourist is someone who tours. At its heart touring is not the picture-happy fanny pack and visor experience we all know it as. Touring should be considered as getting to know a place by delicately experiencing it... not being boisterous and a nuisance.
With this in mind, I plan on being a tourist of America. Exploring all the backroads that get glossed over by interstate highways, biking past little farms, and finding my way through the cities. Walt Whitman will be my companion on my pilgrimage through America as I try to find where he has been waiting. I'm supremely excited and cannot wait until May 15th when the world will open up as far as my legs can take me.
I believe that I've already come up with my paper topic for the class. I'm actually going to deal with a book that was not assigned for the class but most definitely deals with many of the themes-- most specifically 'life as fiction'. The book is If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. Any of you who have been in class with me before know that this book is one of my favorites. I consistently blog about it and probably have mentioned it without illuminating too much to the point of annoyance. Well prepare to be informed!
At this point (early on) I'm mostly just planning on dealing with the work through the lens of this class and the various themes we've talked about. I would really enjoy putting special privilege on the theme of 'life as fiction' and rouse an appreciation of the topic by deploying some interesting style in my piece. I have a really intriguing way of writing my paper in mind so keep an eye out for that when I present my piece... you should catch it.
Also I have a pretty good plan in place for the performance of my presentation. Any of you who have read the book will get my approach right away and should appreciate how I'm treating it. It should be a solid effort and I'm looking forward to hammering away on it this weekend. Look out for it. It's going to be fun!
One of the worst/best things about this class is I am a lot more conscious about what I'm reading and constantly trying to figure out if it belongs in the lowbrow camp or the highbrow camp. Before this class it was really simple. Any airport store thriller, story my mom would read, or Stephanie Meyer book was lowbrow and anything that I read for a literature class was... well... higher-brow than what my mom would read. Books fell pretty easily into these two categories. I was proud that I considered to be reading highbrow books. But after taking this class I no longer feel confident about my choices and my tendencies to think I'm reading highbrow stuff.
Two of the books in question now that I'm a little more acclimated to the highbrow (Finnegans Wake was like throwing a child into a pool with no water-wings) are the Sherlock Holmes series by Conan Doyle and The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. First under inspection is Sherlock. Well, originally I would have considered Sherlock Holmes highbrow. Not ultra highbrow or anything but decently highbrow. I mean it's from the Victorian era! That just sounds highbrow right?! It does... to the reader unfamiliar with highbrow literature. Simply being old does not make a book highbrow. Therefore I'm really tempted to say it is lowbrow. I mean the genre is detective/mystery and not like Lolita or anything. It was sensational lit. Even Sherlock himself notes that Watson's biographies of the stories tends to be sensational. It is very accessible. However, simply being accessible, which all the Sherlock Holmes stories are, does not damn them to the confines of being lowbrow.
Now that I have some knowledge on what is lowbrow and highbrow I'm at an impasse where to place my current reading venture The Last Temptation of Christ. I feel that some of the subject matter is definitely not lowbrow. However, I can't help but feel that it isn't all that highbrow. It seems like that is what my definition of lowbrow is-- something that isn't highbrow. While highbrow is simply something that is highbrow. These definitions would force me to place many works like The Last Temptation of Christ in a category where they probably don't fully belong. After some reflection perhaps this book is neither.
I conclude that the books we read are on a scale. When it comes to books and stories it is rather inaccurate to generalize. Some books are lowbrow definitely and some are highbrow definitely but many occupy the gray space. We shouldn't feel the need to group them into a category to which they don't fully belong to. Even with the term middlebrow the scale doesn't seem to be complete. New exploration is needed. Perhaps it isn't practical but it seems the right way to treat the stories we love without being embarrassed by them.
POST USEFUL BLOG RANT: Often I'm amazed at the low standards many of my contemporaries hold on various artistic things. One needs to look no further than music to glean that information. Bands like Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, Nickelback, 50 Cent and the like consistently are pushed across radios and earbuds. It's incredible to think that albums like "Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Beatles (White Album)" used to top the charts and be considered "popular music". Our standards of lowbrow has dropped to the depths. This is not to say that there aren't quality productions out there. Of course there are. It's just when you listen to them, read them, see them, etc. people think you're way too weird and "artsy" with negative connotation.
This is not to say that people can't enjoy these lowbrow things. Of course they can. I enjoy various lowbrow things as much as the next person. But a life without some balance, some taste of the highbrow or at least higher-brow than Seth Rogen, is a life that ends up being lowbrow.
Wow. It has been WAY too long since I have blogged for this class. Not a good thing. Well, I guess I haven't really been blogging in the other class so at least I'm pulling consistency:)
I believe that in my last blog post, way, way, way back in the past, I was discussing a poem that I was writing. Well I finished it (sort of) and finally got that monkey off my back. I would post it up here but I'm not really sure how the formatting would work. It's kind of in a complex format/structure so It can't really be written on the blog. It turned out being really cool and I would love it if someone with some techie know-how could comment and tell me how to post it as a photo, pdf, or something like that.
So I haven't composed a blog for a long time. In fact it's been 13 days. On my other blog it's been since Jan. 25th. Even in my classes I've noticed that I just haven't been devoting the same strong effort that I have in the past. Sometimes in the middle of class my mind wanders away. This is pretty embarrassing. In my last semester here at MSU I was hoping to stay motivated and avoid that dreaded senioritis that plagues so many students. It seems that I may be infected...
Wait! Don't give up hope for me yet! There has been a silver lining to the dark cloud of my motivation. I have recently diagnosed the site of my microscopic infection-- and I believe it is stemming from Eliot's Four Quartets. Ever since we began to look at the poems I have felt an overwhelming inspiration take over my mind. I began a poem largely inspired/stolen from Eliot and now it has taken over my life. Whether or not the poem is going to be "good" doesn't matter. It's just important to know that it is a life-drain.
The premises of the poem is rather simple. Two people, you and I, began in a garden hedged by two rivers (I won't tell you which two but leave it to you to figure out) and each walks in an opposite direction around the world. You walk east and I walk west. The length of the trip takes approximately 24 hours-- they leave at noon on one day and arrive back at the same place at noon the next day. However to put the poem in such a simple box would, I think, damn it to a simplicity that it seeks to go beyond. You'll see what I mean when it's done and you have read it.
This blog doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the topics of either class (I'm posting this blog on each class blog). I have mentioned that I'm inspired by Eliot's Four Quartets. Maybe that's where the thoughtfulness is-- tying my experience in writing to Eliot's. However, I don't really want to do that. I want this post to stand on it's own legs whatever they may be, I'm not really sure. I can even know that it won't come to some tidy conclusion after this (it's a little messy). I can look over the whole apology/justification/self-pity/thing because this is the paragraph I'm writing last even though there are two that follow it (have you ever wondered what authors composed first and last and in the middle or have you always thought they were writing the book as you read it?) In fact these are the last words I'm typing; the last period of the author falls in the middle.
In my past experiences with writing poetry that I really devoted time to it has been a trying process. It isn't even that I want to be writing but that I feel I HAVE to. I don't feel inspired to write all the time but when I do feel inspired, like in class, the poem just takes over. It's like having selective mono towards other literature pursuits. Another way to think of it is like a big sponge-- it just sucks up all the motivation that comes along when it comes along. This poem is no different... perhaps it is even worse.
I hope to finish writing it soon or, at least, get it to a point where the changes are so precise that I'm no longer under the burden of the large construction. Recently I finished one of the poems four sections-- a relatively large achievement considering it totals about 1/3 of the poem. When I get it done I will try to post it on the blog (the structure might be kind of hard to format in the blog... I'll probably have to give it some sort of preface). Odds are some of you won't like it or think it's all that poetic or whatever. Hell, I'm not sure whether or not I will like it. But, when it's done, at least I will be able to move on my life.
I found a short passage, only one sentence, that really spoke to me. Eerily enough, I just opened the book and turned to page 125. The first sentence that I saw (about midway through the page) really caught my eye. It goes "And uses noclass billiardhalls with an upandown ladder?" Instantly I thought about my job as manager of the Rec. Center in the SUB basement. Between this class and my capstone class which gets over an hour earlier I will often run over there to try and get some stuff done before returning to Wilson. Aha! The "noclass" refers to this time when I literally have no class and the billiardhall is a reference to the Rec. Center.
It gets even creepier though. Recently (about in November of last semester) I have been complaining to my parents and my girlfriend about how tough it is going from the highbrow world of literature classes directly to managing a billiard hall with all it's petty, paper-pushing concerns. It seems that right when I'm getting into a fascinating discussion of lit. I have to vacate my pursuits and go fix something over there. This HAS TO refer to the "upandown ladder". Literature is a way of elevating my intellect while managing the billiard hall really degrades it. This doubles the "noclass" meaning too. It adds a layer, in my context, of meaning "without refinement". Basically, I am on this ladder between here and the SUB where I move in between highbrow and lowbrow within minutes!
Perhaps I'm crazy. But it really doesn't feel like it. I read the passage and for an instant everything made sense. I felt the "meaning" of the passage and it spoke to me. Needless to say, today I'm staying in Wilson and writing this blog!... THEN it's off to climb the downladder into the noclass billiardhalls.
It seems very fitting to me that a story about the Ocean of Stories would contain many literary allusions. However, for the supposed "low-brow" nature of this book I was really surprised on how saturated it is with allusions, and, I was even more surprised how many I missed the first time around! Here is a list of some of the allusions and their pagination that I found throughout the book! Notice that some appear very frequently... :)
*Undoubtedly there are many more allusions in this wonderful book that I've missed or forgot to include. I would love for others to find allusions and post them in the comments page! We could work up an annotated Haroun pretty fast!*
One of the most interesting themes that I've ran across in Haroun and the Sea of Stories is the importance of stories as an ecological feature. It seems Rushdie found the natural environment of earth, specifically the focus on water, as the best way to metaphorically display the nature of stories. Not only does he create an intimate relationship between the environment and stories he also draws upon the contemporary fear of destroying the planet through pollution. Rushdie notes "and if the source itself is poisoned, what will happen to the Ocean-- to us all?" (Rushdie 87). He continues this argument when the characters look to "the thick, dark poison was everywhere now, obliterating the colours of the Streams of Story, which Haroun could no longer tell apart... 'It's our own fault,' he wept. 'We are the Guardians of the Ocean, look at it... No colour, no life, no nothing. Spoilt!" (Rushdie 146). While we are the "Guardians" of our earth/stories we also are the ones who are causing the damage.
Surprisingly this theme does not only appear in this appealing children's novel but in the theories of noteworthy author/historian/theorist Karen Armstrong. In her book A Short History of Myth (which I talk about in length on my other blog) Armstrong states "we need myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead of merely using it as a 'resource'. This is crucial, because unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet" (Armstrong 137). Furthermore, it seems if we do not re-establish stories as "important", an argument against the extermination of stories in what Armstong calls The Great Western Transformation, it appears that we will not save our humanity. With the rise of ecological criticism in literary criticism we must see how these two works are both excellent examples of this rising trend.
The lesson (if you want to call it that) is that there is one great similarity between the nature of earth and the nature of stories-- as Rushdie puts it through the mind of Haroun "It was not dead but alive" (Rushdie 72). This living nature of each appear to be the greatest similarity and makes their existence tied inseparably in each other.
This semester I am doing 2 Sexson lit. blogs-- one for this class and then another for Capstone (the theme is Epiphanies in that class). While this prospect sounds very exciting it also sounds EXTREMELY fatiguing to my graduating-senior mind! I tend to write very long, involved blogs that take quite a bit of time and devotion to compose. However, I don't know if I can manage to keep up on doing two, super-involved blogs for two classes. This blog will be more of quick thoughts, brief postings, and things of that nature while I've designated my capstone blog as the space allotted for deeper ruminations. Some of my blogs may come on the same day as one another in order to play "catch up" but I will try and avoid that because it can mean that the updates will get buried beneath each other.
At times the themes of each class blog will overlap (even more than each classes focus on Toilest's "Four Quartets"). Please note that this does not mean this blog will be fluff. It will retain much of the high standards of discourse that students in Sexson classes expect (perhaps some of you will enjoy it even more for it's lack of "stuffy academic" tone). Anyway reader, I hope that you will cut me some slack and allow me a lot of room for play in this blog... that is probably the best purpose of the blog anyway!
This is my first blog for the emergent lit. class (yay! yay! cheers abound!) The theme in emergent lit. this semester, as chosen by Dr. Sexson, is "highbrow" lit. vs. "lowbrow" lit. This theme should spark some interesting... *ahem*, debate in the class. Hopefully, people won't have their favorite book shown as lowbrow and get defensive-- this is definitely the risk of this class. Also, we run the risk of showing ourselves to be "elitist" in the contemporary, negative sense of the word. I think with careful deliberation and discussion we should avoid most of the pitfalls for this subject and have illuminating discussions on the subject!
For this introductory blog, I will mostly dictate my personal feelings towards the differences between highbrow and lowbrow literature. I would definitely say that the main difference between between highbrow and lowbrow, to me, is intended reading audience. For highbrow lit. the audience is a rather small, elite group of knowledgeable readers. Often times the readers of highbrow lit. would include people like professors, and other highly "cultured" people. The obvious criticism of this group is that it is "elitist" (in the negative sense) and is noninclusive of all readerships.
The other group is the lowbrow lit. It seems that this group is intended for a more broad readership which often lends it to a "dumbing" down of themes that appear in highbrow lit. While this style of lit. is more democratic it doesn't provide the same depth that highbrow readers look for. This is for the "common reader" (negative connotation).
So often we set the two against each other like it's some sort of competition as to which is "better" (what a stupid pursuit). I would like to think that this semester will be an exploration of the benefits and characteristics of each. I hope we will learn that they do not hold each other down but lift each other up!
