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One Vision, Two Women

Duality and comparison are recurring themes throughout Butler’s Kindred . Many haunting connections exist between, for example, Kevin and Weylin, Rufus and Kevin, and, perhaps most importantly, Alice and Dana. Alice and Dana were the duo that I found most interesting -- not only for their close but fraught relationship, but also for the direct action that their similitude takes in the novel. Not only does Rufus call them two “halves of the same woman”, but even they themselves acknowledge that they look very much alike. In Rufus’ mind, they’re only distinguished (according to Alice) by Alice’s presence in bed at night and Dana’s presence out of it in the day -- one half to sleep with, the other to talk to. One half for sexual “love”, the other for a more abstract, mental love.  Even these rather uncomfortable distinctions, however, are blurred by the many similarities between them. Dana and Alice look so alike that Rufus can easily overcome any qualms he has with sleeping with...
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Semester Project: Down in History

With my semester project, I wanted to dissect the motifs of the New Hollywood movement (rebirth of Hollywood in the 1970s with Scorsese, de Palma, and Francis Ford Coppola) in the aftermath of the failure of the film industry in the 50s and 60s. New Hollywood gave rise to the birth of independent filmmaking (apart from mass corporation regulation) as well as the idea of filmmaking as a creative art. Think of all the high-brow, vaguely art-house movies nominated for "Best Picture" today -- New Hollywood gave rise to modern Oscars elitism, and I wanted to examine how that standard came to be. A massive disclaimer before you start reading: every single one of my characters is connected to a real person ("Stephen Spielberg" = Steven Spielberg, "Roger Cormann" = Roger Corman, etc.). Yes, everything is misspelled on purpose, and yes, every concrete piece of work mentioned is actually something they've accomplished. Even some of their dialogue is drawn f...
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The Death of Heroism

After finishing Slaughterhouse-Five (my first Vonnegut novel! Even I’m surprised at myself, but I suppose it’s never too late to jump on the literary bandwagon), I can say that I’m thoroughly impressed. Every choice Vonnegut makes, from the bizarre Tralfamadorians to the surprisingly candid prologue, has clear driving intention towards his “thesis” (the creation of his war novel, or, shall we say, anti war novel). Mr. Mitchell put it in terms of excellent wordplay -- Vonnegut manages to write an anti-war novel within the bounds of the less-definable anti war-novel. My favorite aspect of the novel is perhaps the most obvious: the removal of free will. By simply obliterating the human concept of freedom and choice, he creates the perfect antithesis to the traditional war story.  Billy Pilgrim, firstly, is perhaps the polar opposite of the traditional Sinatra-esque war hero that Mary O’Hare so despises. He’s blissfully passive, through both his own human-level interacti...
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The Perfect Ending

Was anyone else initially unsatisfied with the ending of Mumbo Jumbo ? After the initial triumph of Chapter(s) 52 and the end of the Talking Android, the fizzling-out of Jes Grew and the burning of the Book of Thoth came across as very anticlimactic to me. Not only had Jes Grew been eradicated, but the Text -- centuries old, expressed as crucial to the movement -- had been burnt with no hope of recovery. This ending was supposed to be one of victory, the moment when PaPa LaBas would discover the Text and stabilize it, and we would see Grew’s growth increase exponentially. (Of course, it would be foolish to expect something so traditional of Ishmael Reed.) Even with Jes Grew’s return in the 1960s, as documented by PaPa LaBas’ epilogue, we’ve only managed to make it back to square one -- small stirrings of true Jes Grew and no Text. For a moment, it felt like Jes Grew would never win.  But perhaps Jes Grew’s success is not the best ending for this book. What is “success” (in the...
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Happily Ever After...?

Ah, the ending of a good novel! Reading Ragtime has been one hell of a metafictional ride, so I can only imagine what we have in store for Mumbo Jumbo .  Before we collectively move on to Ishmael Reed, however, I’d like to use this blog post to discuss the ending of Ragtime . In my opinion, the last few pages of the book were, in a word, fittingly unsatisfying. While many people in class have argued that the ending of the book (especially Tateh’s arc) points to a brighter, more equal future, I’d argue that the narrative of Ragtime is more effective with an empty ending. There’s a sense of strange, looping melancholy to the conclusion of each character’s arc -- I’m not left hoping for a “bright future” so much as lingering on the greatness of the past, which is slowly fading into obscurity.  Younger Brother, after his sudden and incredible stint as a Mexican revolutionary (which, considering his past lethargy, is likely a “good thing” for his character), is now dead. F...
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The Named and The Unnamed

So far, I've very much enjoyed reading Ragtime . The characters, in particular, are fascinating -- named historical figures like Harry Houdini to strange identities like Mother, Doctorow does it all.  We’ve discussed briefly in class about the “title”-named characters (which I’ll refer to as the “unNamed” characters from here on out, for ease of writing). Despite the stark differences in our minds between, say, a household (classroom?) name like Sigmund Freud and a nameless identity like “Mother’s Younger Brother”, Doctorow doesn’t seem to treat his two types very differently. If we get the same cheeky narration with both "Freud"-types and "Father"-types, what’s the difference? And where does Coalhouse Walker Jr, a supposedly “Named” character who didn’t fully exist in what we call “history”, fit into this narrative?  I’d argue that title-characters remain unNamed because they are figures, archetypes, just as much as they are individual characters. Tateh’s ...
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