This cursed relationship

“A larger-than-life-sized water color poster of Christ, weeping translucent tears the size of peanut shells…” I can’t imagine a more obtrusive or a funnier illustration of what makes these two totally dysfunctional as a couple. The sheer oddity of the situation made the story especially captivating to read for me. It made me think of something Monti Python might come up with–a serious, stuck-up traditional man, totally unequipped to psychologically deal with his goofy, sarcastic wife’s newfound obsession for filling their house with christian knickknacks

From Sanjeev’s perspective, the whole thing is nightmarish and frustrating–which is in some ways understandable. It’s not totally impossible to imagine an upstanding person NOT wanting to adorn their mantel with a bunch of gaudy trinkets from a religion they don’t even practice. However, he’s a little too unyielding as far as I’m concerned. Moreover, I became increasingly doubtful throughout the story that he actually had any respect for Twinkle beyond appreciating her physical appearance and the soup she made.

His patronizing tone was irritating from the beginning, as he shuffled after Twinkle, picking up after her and mandating what would and would not be placed “in HIS house.” When he described her as childish in appearance, my impression, that he sees her more as a kid he has to care for than as a mental equal, was enforced. He doesn’t ever confront Twinkle with a rationale for why the objects bother him, and he gives in to her tears without trying to find out if she (a grown woman crying over a poster her husband doesn’t want her to hang up) might actually be upset about something more nuanced than simply the materialistic issues he believes occupy her consciousness. All of these behaviors seem more reminiscent of the actions of an inexperienced babysitter than a spouse who respects his wife.

I think his refusal to engage with Twinkle at the very end of the story, when she hands him the silver statue–his choice to go along with her whim, even though it seems to profoundly upset him–was the most troubling aspect of his behavior in the relationship. He’s clearly resentful of Twinkle, but his failure to express himself to her shows a lack of optimism on his part that any of their differences could be solved.

As for Twinkle, she seemed a little goofy, lighthearted, maybe too blasé–but she didn’t’ strike me as malicious or unreasonable during the story. Contributing to the discomfort with Sanjeev’s intense anger at the end is the reader’s knowledge of the fact that Twinkle is completely oblivious to it. She strolls right by, unaware that he is thinking about how much he hates all the things Twinkle loves. I can’t imagine her character taking vindictive pleasure in causing Sanjeev distress, but if he doesn’t respect her enough to talk to her about it, what can she really do to improve the situation?

I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t see this relationship going very far.

Love (actually?)

When asked “are Lucero and Aurora good material for a love story,” I had to stop and contemplate “what is a love story.” Predictably, my mind snapped to the quintessential societal examples on which we base our concept of love–the romcom, the fairytale, the 19th century opera, the American musical, etc. I pictured stock photos of a couple holding hands in the sunset, a couple getting married, and so on, and with all of these associations came the predictable twinge of skepticism that accompanies things one might consider cliche. So, in the traditional, soulmate-y sense, I don’t think ‘Aurora’ fits the love story bill at all.

However.

On further contemplation, I realized that the reason I wasn’t considering the story a “love story” wasn’t because of the two lovebirds’ less than picture perfect relationship, but because the story itself seemed too worldly–too honest. Unlike some of the classic love stories, this one doesn’t exclusively zero-in on the couple in question but also their entire world and the impact the world has on the relationship, as well as the impact the relationship has on the community.

Obviously, few of us have to contend with the type of difficulties that Lucero and Aurora are up against in their everyday lives; but that isn’t to say that each of our relationships isn’t just as dependent on our situation as Lucerora’s. Though many love stories show the couple in a light that dims the influences of community and economics in favor of the idealism of the star-crossed lovers, ‘Aurora’ is blunt, practical, and honest about the many aspects of the relationship that make it challenging.

Hesitant as I am to describe any relationship entailing physical abuse as “loving,” I have to conclude that, inasmuch as the facts of Lucero and Aurora’s life are shared with the reader, and given that the arc of the story follows their relationship as it morphs around and comes up against their individual lifestyles, this is a love story. If you can critique Romeo and Juliet for being impulsive teenagers not yet evolved to interpret and handle their sexualities who end up paying the ultimate price, you can definitely call Lucero and Aurora two young people trying to pursue an inevitably dysfunctional relationship that neither of them are well suited to tackle.

Sympathy for other-women, cold men and everything in between

I think more than any other book we’ve read thus far (with the exception of the Tim O’Brien maybe), understanding Self Help is really dependent on the condition that the reader reads each story.

In every chapter, Moore takes a perspective in its entirety, seeing through one pair of eyes only. For example, in “What is Seized,” we get only the child’s perspective. Though we can imagine the pain that the mother seems to undergo, this is because the child is generally more sympathetic toward her mother than her father (whose perspective we don’t share at all). Similarly, in “How to be an Other Woman,” we get no reference to the man’s perspective, sharing only Charlene’s POV. When we are able to sympathize with characters aside from the protagonist in any given story, this is because the protagonist feels empathy for that specific character.

Moore’s subject matter so far has been entirely centered on interpersonal and familial relationships–the relationships that tend to be the most sensitive and formative to a character. She deals with common scenarios–a one-sided romance, a child living with divorced parents separately, adultery, etc–the kinds of situations that generate strong opinions from readers before they have read the content (you may have preconceptions about “How to be an Other Woman” simply from reading the title, for instance).

Because of these two factors–the controversial subject matter, and Moore’s intention of going right to the heart of each narrator’s perspective–it’s crucial that she explores so many different kinds of characters. She sympathizes with the mother in “What is Seized,” but takes the perspective of the ‘cold partner’ in “How.” The end-result is a collection who’s thesis is not “these actions are good, while these are bad” but “every person in every given situation has a perspective to share.”

Side note: I was wondering about the contrast between “What is Seized” and “How,” and I was wondering if, for all of her efforts to portray each perspective fairly, Moore had sort of taken sides in a scenario in which one partner is “cold” while the other seems “clingy”–the fact that “What is Seized” is narrated by a third party, while “How” is narrated from the perspective of the cold person, could show that Moore considers the “clingy” partner to be universally more sympathetic, because their case could appear pitiful to outside parties as well as to themselves. Just an idea though.

A dry explanation of why I like Baldwin’s stories better than Salinger’s.

I noticed some recurring themes as I made my way through Nine Stories. In one way or another–through reincarnation, or recovery from trauma–Salinger seems to enjoy exactly what Esme enjoys–love and squalor. Or maybe more accurately, squalor and redemption. I became aware of this common thread after reading Teddy, at which point I looked back through the stories and could see their congruence to the finale. However, though these concepts are very emotionally stimulating, their presentation in Salinger’s stories seemed dry to me and very detached, almost preachy. His descriptions of enlightenment or formative life experience didn’t sweep me off my feet and I thought the children he invented were farfetched. I was more struck by his snarky mannerisms and his fascination with the macabre than the underlying meaning of his stories.

Actually, I didn’t realize how little Salinger’s stories resonated with me until I started reading Going to Meet the Man, which as far as I could see, was a totally different animal. Baldwin’s central themes overlap quite a bit with Salinger’s. He discusses pain, suffering and hardship as well as religiosity, spirituality and childhood. But, for some reason, Baldwin’s stories seemed much more raw to me. It wasn’t that I could relate to his stories more–I just found them more human and less obscure than I did Salinger’s.

A lot of Baldwin’s writing is, at least somewhat, biographical. Growing up, Baldwin was in a very similar situation to his character ‘Johnny,’ and thus had experience with a religious community, a neighborhood, and a family dynamic similar to the one he describes in his stories. So with stories like The Rockpile, The Outing, and even Sonny’s Blues, Baldwin is very acquainted with the scenarios he is describing and able to translate the thoughts, feelings and emotions to his readers. Salinger, on the other hand, is philosophical and experimental with his characters, drawing more on their ideology and the way they think than on the circumstances that brought them to that way of thinking. While this makes Salinger’s stories more moralistic, I think it makes Baldwin’s more moving because it’s easier to empathize with a person than with an abstract idea, however interesting the author considers that idea to be.

Salinger’s For Esme was the one outlier in Nine Stories for me, to which I felt emotionally attached. Reading a bit about Salinger, and I think this may have been because it was closer emotionally to the author’s experience than the other stories, given that he himself was a WWII veteran.

Because of his ease with conveying specific experiences to drive home a point or paint a scenario, Baldwin is able to discuss the same themes that Salinger discusses in a much more riveting (IMO) way. It’s not to say that Salinger’s perspectives and morals and thought experiments are unsubstantial–but when dealing with heavy emotional topics like fate, death, rebirth and hope, waxing philosophical before your audience can only get you so far. I think sometimes it takes the application of human experiences–rather than speculations of experiences that hypothetically could happen–to really drive home a message. For this reason, I find Baldwin to be the more compelling writer. Dr

The scream

Salinger clearly isn’t a fan of the conventional conclusion–on the contrary he seems to enjoy leaving us with a final line, void of any interpretive assistance, to make of the story what we will. This is the case in both ‘Just Before the War with the Eskimos’ and ‘Teddy’–but I found the latter more disturbing.

Right before Nicholson hears a scream coming from “within four tiled walls,” he is deep in conversation with Teddy about fate and the difference between prediction and predetermination. Teddy, a proponent of reincarnation, tries to explain to Nicholson that his death (which he, significantly, characterizes as being pushed into a pool by his sister and dying “instantaneously”) would not be of much consequence in the grand scheme of things.

Nicholson also accuses Teddy of telling professors at a conference Teddy has just returned from exactly when and how they are going to die, which Teddy denies openly, stating that he gave them pointers about where they should be careful but gave no indication that these events were predetermined.

We don’t know exactly what happens in the final scene, in which Nicholson goes to find Teddy to continue his conversation and hears a scream coming from the pool, presumably from Teddy’s younger sister who is the only small female child referenced in the story.

Though it seems that we could draw conclusions based on the hints Salinger gives us, he seems to be toying with exactly the topics that Teddy discusses with his ambiguous final line. We don’t know for a fact that the scream is coming from the pool. We also don’t know that it was Teddy’s sister who screamed, or what that scream would imply if it was.   But, in reference to the philosophy and religion professors, Teddy mentions that he “could have” told them exactly when and how they would die but chose not to because they “didn’t want to know.” Similarly, Teddy presents a hypothetical situation to Nicholson in which his death is the result, but doesn’t come right out and say he’s going to die momentarily, when his sister pushes him into the pool–perhaps for the same reason that he’s not completely candid with the theologians and philosophers he talks to; Nicholson wouldn’t be able to handle it.

So in spite of the fact that the final sentence is jarring and surprising, it concludes Teddy’s arguments neatly. And according to Teddy, if the implications are true to the events, we’re not supposed to care all that much if he’s actually dead.

I also think it’s significant that Salinger ends the collection of nine stories on this note. Considering that he’s been dealing with themes of fatality throughout the collection, it is interesting that his final statement seems to be (admittedly in a sort of weird way) about second chances. Is it comforting to think that, although some people live terrible lives, it doesn’t really matter because we’re all going to die and end up living different ones?

A safe distance from the war with the eskimos

Why do people find suffering so magnetic? It’s kind of awkward (or deeply disturbing depending on your degree of investment) that we derive such enjoyment from watching other people suffer or hearing stories about how they suffered once upon a time. No one gets pumped to hear stories about some people going to the beach and having fun the end–stories about veterans of war, hardship, abuse, and so on are the kind that really grab our attention.

On the one hand, this could speak volumes to our sympathetic nature. Hearing recounts of terrible events in peoples lives not only gives the story-teller the opportunity to share something that may be weighing on their mind, but it also gives the audience important information in the ilk of “don’t be like this guy,” or “maybe we should fix this very screwed up political system.” It can be constructive.

But lets face it, our interest in the obscene and traumatic seems to go a little beyond pragmatism or sympathy. For some reason, we like to feel repulsed. Look at the genre of the horror film. Public executions. Gladiator fights (a bit dated, but same idea). We like the intensity of feeling associated with danger. We’re cortisol junkies–but only under the condition that we ourselves remain physically safe. And we really like to challenge ourselves with the level of disgust, terror or sorrow that we can handle. The best way to do this? Taking down as many walls between ourselves and the danger as we can without exposing ourselves to it, and living vicariously through the sufferers.

I think we see a bit of this dark-side-fascination in Ginnie’s character. Her attitude toward Selena at the beginning is disdainful disinterest, and I think a lot of this stems from Selena’s apparently comfortable existence and a lack of drama that makes her not only irritating to Ginnie but boring. When Ginnie meets Franklin, she’s suddenly confronted by a person who has been through some stuff. He dropped out of college, he has heart problems, and he’s literally waving his bloody hand in her face. He also has a lot of bitter and informed-sounding things to say about the government, which Ginnie doesn’t really understand, except that they sound bitter and informed. Ultimately, Ginnie requests to come back to hang out with Selena (even though Franklin isn’t going to be there) because she’s discovered that Selena’s family could be the shield behind which she is able to live vicariously and experience the kinds of things she has never accessed in her sheltered life It doesn’t matter that Franklin won’t be home–she’ll still be a step closer to the real-life hardship.

As for the dead chick line, one could read it as a metaphor for the separation between someone like Ginnie and someone like Franklin. (a) The chick died because Ginnie was hypothetically interested but not invested in a long-term pet-owner role (just as horror-film viewers aren’t interested in actually having their heads cut off by serial killers), but she kept it because the idea of being the owner of a pet chick was compelling to her. (b) the chick died of Ginnie’s neglect and she kept it because it was dead, and she was fascinated by the macabre implications. Probably not that one but it’s a thought experiment and tbh we don’t know all that much about Ginnie so who knows.

Thirteen Ways of Looking At Tim O’Brien/Jackson Pollock

Tim O’brien has everyone pretty worked up. Is he telling the truth? How authentic is his truth? What is he really trying to say? Is he successful? Why does he permit himself to be so incredibly irritating?

As we’ve repeatedly iterated, Tim O’Brien is a proponent of “truth” not “facts.” He describes his goal to be sharing emotions rather than actions–and in some of his stories emotional magnitude was definitely conveyed. And while I can’t speak for anyone else, Kiowa’s death hit me pretty hard even knowing that the details of each character in the novel were invented.

But more than O’Brien’s deviance from the hard facts, he is taking criticism about the depth and consistency of the “truth” he conveys. We’ve accused him of making it difficult for us to understand, of dangling the stories in our face, and of alternating between more “true” truths and more “embellished” ones. The story about Linda was particularly unpalatable. Linda didn’t “feel real.” How can a nine-year-old fall in love? How can a child dying of a brain tumor be compared to the corpse of a fallen soldier? Why does he play around with his audience if his goal is to make them understand?

This isn’t really even an argument–more of an observation–but I thought the perspective of the book as an album or an anthology helped me to appreciate it more. It brought to mind “Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Black Bird” for me, because instead of viewing each of Tim O’Brien’s sentiments as attempting to clarify the others, I imagined that each was expressing a feeling at a different time and place in O’Brien’s life, when he was of varying mindsets. He wasn’t trying to express one thing, he was casting lenses on a number of emotional things–just as Vietnam obviously wasn’t just one thing, but a conglomerate of people and places and events and atrocities.

I guess if I was going to make one critique on Tim O’Brien, it would be more of a critique of my own reading and reasoning. As I read, I first tried to pick out the biographical information about the author and struggled with the concept of “meaning without facts.” When we had established that O’Brien was factually unreliable, I switched my perspective and I tried to equate O’Brien’s stories with a complete and “true” depiction of the emotional atmosphere of the war. That’s a lot of responsibility for me to place on a single Vietnam veteran. O’Brien is not omniscient. He’s a guy with a set of traumatic experiences, trying to convey his frustrations and obsessions with the audience. What O-Brien chose to include in The Things They Carried was both his depiction of the war and his expression of his own reaction, jumbled up so that it’s really hard to distinguish them.

What Linda added to the story for me wasn’t a cute emotional anecdote to which I could relate–but more of a reminder of the periodic nature of O-Brien as a storyteller and the idea that one person’s depiction of the truth and what preoccupies their mind isn’t necessarily consistent throughout the course of their life. You can evaluate and then reevaluate and come up with something slightly different. You can hit on something fundamental and add an afterthought. If this collection is a portrait of O’Brien (his emotional state rather than his physical one) and a portrait of the war, why shouldn’t he add a story he feels deals with the subject matter, even if it isn’t Vietnam-related? Can’t he feel both like himself sometimes and changed by the war at other times? Isn’t the collection itself a testament to his being changed by the war, because he felt the need to set the record straight (as perplexing as his method of record-straightening may be)?

So in that capacity–as a collection of emotional responses and mental confessions centralizing on the larger collection of traumatic events that was the war–these stories are true. Maybe O’Brien doesn’t have it all spelled out into the perfect strategy to get his readers to understand the nuances of the war. No, the stories aren’t palatable, but neither was the war to the best of my knowledge, and this collection seems more like a collection of artwork than a narrative. His stories are in part explication and in part expression. It’s largely inexplicable except to the artist but we can still appreciate it and try to connect to the emotions O’Brien conveys.

Concerning Witches

Apparently, 20th century novelists really enjoy the witch trope. We’ve seen stereotypically witchy characters in Hemingway, Rhys–and now in Tony Morrison’s Song of Solomon.

The witch archetype has many variations but several indispensable characteristics. These are as follows: the character is female, she’s in a position of influence (that may seem a little too powerful to be totally natural) and, generally, she’s also a rule-breaker and a system challenger. The witch character is distinct from the ‘hero’ archetype by virtue of her status as a woman (the traditionally less powerful sex) and her amorphous moral ground (we’re never sure whether she’s “good,” “bad,” or simply self-interested). However, you certainly don’t want to be on her bad side–as she’s the puppeteer behind the larger operation.

It’s not hard to spot the witch archetype in Wide Sargasso Sea–because it’s handed to the reader on a platter along with a love potion and a a (supposed) dead chicken. Christophine fills the role of witch easily–an old lady, an outsider to her residence, who wears all black and possesses some inexplicable deeper knowledge about the way the world works. In Cristophine’s case, this ‘secret to the universe’ is her knowledge of Obeah, which even the cynical Rochester has sense enough to fear.

In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway takes a more modern approach to the witch archetype. Brett may not be old and wrinkly, but she holds the male character’s mesmerized in the palm of her hand like any traditional sorceress–and her control and her passions drive the plot of the novel. She is both a force to contend with and a deep-seated love for the protagonist, persistently in an ethical gray area.

In Song of Solomon, Morrison presents us with a pretty traditional witch figure, right down to supernatural conception. She even gives the character of Pilate her own witchy coven comprising herself, her daughter and her granddaughter; far-removed from the tempestuous nuclear family that is Milkman’s household. Pilate’s sharp way with words, her absence of a navel, and particularly the fact that she’s forbidden to Milkman make her seem all the more mysterious and fascinating. She demonstrates her power when she chases off Reba’s abuser, and even the fact that she sells wine places her in an elevated (and traditionally masculine) role. Just as Rhys referenced an ancient text to empower Christophine, so too does Morrison: the Bible. We’re not exactly sure what connection Pilate feels to her name. All we know is that she awards her naming verse a place of honor in a gold box dangling from her ear…

Bertha’s check-mate

Today in class we discussed the pitiableness of Antoinette and Rochester respectively, and whose side we felt was the most sympathetic. Nearly everyone sympathized with Antoinette — and I can’t deny that I found myself very much on her side by the end of the novel. I think, nonetheless, it’s important to distinguish between the emotional and the physical battles that ‘Bertha’ and Rochester engage in throughout their relationship–as looking at both of these may show Rochester–not in a more sympathetic light–but as a man who has in many ways met his match.

My pity for Antoinette comes mostly from her physical and situational disadvantages in relation to Rochester. She’s a naive young woman financially dependent on her older and more experienced husband. She has also had a traumatic past, which leaves her scarred and wanting Rochester’s attention. When Rochester shuts her away, he makes use of his own situational advantage as her guardian. Physically, he holds the power in the relationship, and abuses it.

However there’s a more subtle war going on between the two of them, in which the playing ground seems much more even. This is the psychological battle that leads Antoinette to behave emotionlessly to deny Rochester power over her. We know from Jane Are that the toll this takes on Rochester is huge; evident through his broken, depressed ‘moodiness’. It could easily be argued that, by the end, both parties are insane–Rochester just seems to be at an advantage because of his status and situational power.

Bertha’s final act–setting fire to her husband’s house and committing suicide–could be seen as a desperate escape–a surrender to the physical battle; but it could also be the ultimate winning move for the emotional one. Burning Rochester’s house and killing herself not only deprives him of his physical possessions but also of his control over her.

Reader Court

There’s something ‘off’ about Meursault. At the beginning of The Stranger, it’s easy to convince yourself it’s you–the–reader, and your innate need to cling to social norms and societal constructs, that puts Meursault’s apathy in a bizarre light. After all, why should he cry at his mother’s funeral? Standing on mourning-ceremony doesn’t have a profound impact on anyone, least of all Meursault’s mother, so why bother? Similarly, is there really anything morally wrong with his attending a comedy with Marie afterward? He states that “mother was in the ground…and nothing had changed.” And we can’t really argue with him.

This is an uncomfortable position to be in as a reader–when you think something is odd, but all of the other characters in the novel treat it as if it’s ordinary. It’s “Kafka-esc” (I think) because Meursault certainly doesn’t think he’s odd and he seems to have fairly normal interactions with his friends and neighbors, implying their general acceptance of him as well. Initially, he seems like a parody; but it’s unclear what exactly he’s mocking.

Ultimately, things get even murkier. While reading a satirization, you generally expect allusions to what’s “normal” to compare and contrast with the spoof, in all its ridiculousness. But there’s no clear higher ground when Meursault is pitted against the court system. At this point, it’s pretty clear that the narrator is a loose canon and “higher moral ground” isn’t even in his vocabulary. It’s almost a relief when the other characters in the story start to notice that he’s kind of whack. The courts criticize him for what we, as readers, initially cast judgement upon–his failure to meet the standards of behavior at his mother’s funeral. But then the court goes crazy too, focusing almost exclusively on his ‘inappropriate behavior’ instead of the relevant crime information. Whose side are we supposed to take? The side of a guy who shot a man because some sunlight got in his eyes? The side of a court that never once mentions the name of the murder victim in its proceedings?

It seems as though Camus is going to meta-route here and satirizing us–the audience–for our pathological need to dissect a character’s thoughts and feelings and our outrage when we find neither present. Much like the court, what we find the most interesting is the nature of Meursault’s personality, his motives, and all his inner complexities. The Arab he shot is of little consequence. If this is the case, Meursault is a bit like Camus’s experiment–which he presents not only before his fictitious court, but before the court of readers of his novel–to see if the way we react mirrors the reaction he composed.