Rant by Chuck Palahniuk

First post from college! Yeah, I know, I should be doing homework or something, but no RAs are around, so I don't know how to log on to the computers downstairs (so important because the printer hooked up to those is free). And it's way too hot to go outside and meet people, especially since my hall is on the very outskirts of campus--as much as I'd love to walk twenty minutes in melt-your-teeth heat...

Anyway, I reread Rant by Chuck Palahniuk, which I hope you were able to deduce. Rant is your basic story about sex, rabies, car-crashing and time travel. (Sounds like a sweet tattoo...) Rant is the name of main character who is... rumored to be dead. The book is supposed to be set up like an oral history to explain Rant's life and what he caused--a hyperactive rabies virus that caused an epidemic. So there's some interviews with people who personally knew Rant, like his girlfriend Echo Lawrence, Rant's father figure, his mother, friends, and then people who happened to meet, say, Rant's father figure (for example, a car salesman), people who happened to know Echo, people whose children were affected by the epidemic, children who wanted to be affected by the epidemic, and so on. So it's a little fractured (the second reading was definitely beneficial), but still really, really good.

The book is also set in the near future. A few differences are the nighttimers and daytimers split, and ports. The nighttimers are people who can only be out at night, the daytimers for day. There's never any official reason for this, but it's mainly--I don't remember who says it exactly, probably either Nelson or Green Taylor Simms--to sweep the slave class out of sight, the working class, that is. Ports are little plug-ins, I imagine not dissimilar from the cords you use to plug in say, your Xbox or N64 into the TV. They've taken over TV and books and done away with them--because it's pretty much like virtual reality. Why read a book about Jack Kerouac, say, when you can 'live' in exactly the same way as he did? One way to tell if you have rabies is that your port will stop working because the rabies messes with your brain functions.

First off, the dedication: "For my father, Fred Leander Palahniuk. Look up from the sidewalk. Please."

The first interviewed fellow is the car salesman who meets Chester Casey, Rant's... father. In a way. (It's very, very complicated.) Well, like with any book, when you reread it you notice more hints and clues, yes? The first clue I noticed was Wallace's revulsion upon seeing Chet's hands, all cut up and scarred and swollen. Rant would often get bitten by wild animals because it gave him a sort of high (in the case of spider venom, it gave him an erection), so his whole body was cut up and scarred. Other hints include--but are not limited to--Chester's indifferent reaction to learning of Rant's death and his yelling at his son as a young boy after he (Rant) was bitten by a black widow to go back to whatever he was doing, ignore it, and so on.

"'This how fast your life can turn around. How the future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday" (4).

"Any Warhol was wrong. In the future, people won't be famous for fifteen minutes. No, in the future, everyone will sit next to someone famous for at least fifteen minutes" (5).

"'The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason why they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.' Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere" (12). Rant himself came from a hole-in-the-wall midwest nowhere nothing town (I imagine it to be something like the decrepit town in Gummo, though it's not nearly as disturbing).

"Rant always went on about leaving home, getting out and hand-picking himself a new family, but... If you don't accept your folks for all their worst ways, no stranger can ever measure up. All Rant learned himself is how to leave people behind" (44). Rant's statement, if we are to believe it, is ironic--well, it must have been ironic to Rant when he realized who exactly made up one-half of his family...

"You get everybody telling the same lie if they got a stake in it. You get everybody telling the same lie and it ain't a lie, not no more" (51). We just went over this in sociology, actually: It matters not what is actually the truth, but what people think is the truth. I'm going to sound like a Johnny-Come-Lately for saying this now, but ever since I read this book the first time, I've been mulling over it. I doubt I said much about this the first time I wrote about the book, mostly because I wasn't sure how to express it. But my sociology professor expressed it with such an example: You're at a party with your boyfriend. You go to the bathroom or whatever, and come back, and your boyfriend is having an intimate conversation with an unknown other girl. Immediately, you're pissed. Maybe the girl is just some childhood friend or a cousin or something, but you don't know that and won't know it till later, so you're pissed off. You see? Or when you read about some great political action in a history book. It did amazing things for who it affected, got the area off the ground (figuratively, of course), pumped up the economy, and so on and so forth, but it was unpopular as hell when first introduced to the average citizen. The truth is, the idea was revolutionary, but what people thought the truth was was that it would be a waste of money, time, effort, resources, et cetera.

Anyway, this line between reality and lies is what drives Rant bonkers--at least drove him bonkers as a kid. He hated that their was so much fakeness, right down to Santa and the Tooth Fairy. What he does is... well, thanks to information given to him by a stranger, Rant comes into money, specifically 19th-century and early twentieth-century gold and silver coins. So he's pretty loaded. What he does is wait for the next local Halloween party. You remember that game, "This is the dead man's heart/liver/brain/eyeballs/teeth/etc" where you're blindfolded and you feel in the bowl for the peeled grapes and macaroni and stuff? Rant buys real organs and puts them into the bowl, unbeknownst to the kids and adults in the dim lighting. He just wanted to be real, for once. Here, a better quote: "It wasn't only the boosted experiences that bothered Rant. It was dips--t kids done up as soldiers and princesses and witches. Eating cake flavored with artificial vanilla. Celebrating a harvest that didn't occur anymore. Fruit punch that came from a factory. A ritual to placate ghosts, or whatever bulls--t Halloween does, practiced by people who had no awareness of that. What bothered Rant was the fake, bulls--t nature of everything" (61). "That night, even as a little boy, Rant Casey just wanted one thing to be real. Even if that real thing was stinking blood and guts" (62). Incidentally, Rant earns his nickname that night--'rant' was the noise the kids vomiting sounded like.

Rant, as I've said, often would purposely get bit by various bugs for the high of it, and because it's the only way he could properly, you know, 'work' in bed. Well, having grown up in the midwest, there were plenty of burrows and holes and ponds and dark places to stick his hand or foot into, places that could be home from anything to skunks to coyotes. Rant would get high off these bites as well--he called them vaccinations from fear. "No matter the future, any terrible job or marriage or military service, it had to be an improvement over a coyote chomping on your foot" (72). Of course, he often caught rabies from these bites... Which he had no qualms about passing on to any and every girl. Forty-five fellow classmates, two teachers is the recorded amount. "Mistakes like kissing Buster, most times it's a worst mistake if you don't make them. After a good-looking boy gives you rabies two, three times, you'll settle down and marry somebody less exciting for the rest of your life" (75). That's probably my favorite quote from this book. I love Chuck Palahniuk!

Another thing they mention about Rant... Well, like I said he gets high off the bites he receives. He gets elated, shock probably has a pleasant numbing effect... Anyway, Bodie--a friend from his childhood--talks about a time after Rant got bit and is kind of reflecting on it, bleeding a little from the various holes in his body and says "'This hear... far as I'm concerned, this is how church should feel'" (76). Echo later on says he said the same thing after sex sometimes. And that I can understand, I guess. I mean, from what I understand either feeling would be somewhat the same, cushioned on endorphins and fading ecstasy... okay, maybe I don't really get it, but I can lie and say I do. He wants to feel that same utter elation.

"Rant used to say, 'Every family is a regular little cult'" (90).

This book, written in 2007, mentions Smart Boards. Just pointing this out so the entire world (specifically Emma and Jenna) can get an idea of how far behind our town school system is...

Have I explained Party Crashing? It's basically Fight Club for cars. You just ram each other on the front bumpers and there are certain 'flags' to wave to show you're in, say, a coffee cup bolted or taped to the top of your car, to a full Thanksgiving meal bolted up there. This was done by nighttimers, a little counterculture whose roots probably came from agitation and anger at being damned to the dark. (Nighttimers caught out during the day were shot on sight.) Anyway, the way it's described when some Party Crashers were interviewed--it's for the feeling after you're tagged. When you realize you're still alive, and you feel great and new like a baby just born. Not too dissimilar from why Rant did as he did with the skunks and the coyotes and jackrabbits, no?

"The poet Oscar Wilde wrote, 'Each man kills the thing he loves...' Each man except the smart ones. The ones who don't want to serve time in prison, the smart men used to hire Karl Waxman" (134). I just thought it was a funny little passage. It's better until they explain that the things Karl 'kills' are cars, brand-new cars of exes or soon to be exes, or Party Crashers who were embarrassed about new, untouched vehicles.

"'Really truly with her whole entire heart, does Echo hate somebody?' I go, doesn't Rant mean 'love'? And Rant shrugs and says, 'Ain't it same thing?'" (153). I think the two emotions--if you can even really call them two different emotions--are two heads of the same coin, if not one face and then the other being the edge there. Either way, I've got Rant's back here.

Echo made money by hiring herself out to couples on the brink of settling down and having kids. She would be their last chance to try a threesome or any kinky stuff before the hectic baby issues came in and ruled out any chances for that sort of thing. The thing is, when the folks would see her withered arm and her half-paralyzed face, they'd feel badly for her and be shocked that this is what she had to do to make money. So they'd end up taking her in for themselves all the while paying her as though they had been having sex with her every session. I bring this up because she also made up stories about a liberal and strange sex life. (She was actually a virgin before Rant came along.) This made me think of... I don't remember which grandfather it was exactly in Everything is Illuminated, but one too had a withered arm, and he was popular as hell with the ladies. Just a connection there. Attraction to the exotic? I mean, if she really had had all those boyfriends and stuff. (Though the couples saw the arm and pitied her, so who knows?)

"It's comforting to know, after all the Party Crash accidents I've survived, that, the day I finally meet Death, the two of us will be old, long-lost friends. Me and Death, separated at birth" (198).

"'What if reality is nothing but some disease?'" (215). A Rant-ism, recorded right before his--eh--death. He called into a traffic radio station and said it.

Another clue to Rant and Chester's relationship, the paternity test of Irene's baby: "We ran your standard paternity test, and every genetic marker pointed to the baby being his. In hindsight, every genetic marker pointed at the baby being him. His genes and the child's were so close, the two were indistinguishable" (237). They also say that Rant and Chester look like the same person, only ten years apart. What we have here is a twisted up Oedipus complex, if you count Green Taylor Simms into the equation.

Another Rant-ism: "'No matter what happens, it's always now'" (246). Shot Dunyan, a friend of Rant's, takes it to mean that "we live in the present" (246). Which is possible, very much so. At the same time, what he could be driving at is... well, a Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five-ish concept of time, you know, everything happening at the same exact second. So it always is now, even if it looks and feels different. You dig?

Possibly the coolest character in the book is Nelson. He brings up great points, great facts, that yeah, seem conspiracy theory-ish. He brings up the point that, if someone monkeyed with time, how would we know? Like... You know how in Fairly Odd Parents when Timmy screws up time by 'borrowing' the founding fathers, or when the monkey gets the wish and everything becomes ape-controlled? Nobody in those episodes (save Timmy and Cosmo and Wanda) is ever like "Gee, life sure was better when monkeys didn't rule" or "I hate being a British colony!" Because they don't have any recollection of any other sort of life, for them that is what life has been and will always be, until time is changed back to what it should be--and hence why when it is changed, they don't remember being British or ruled by apes. This is an interesting concept in its own right. But Nelson doesn't stop there! He continues and says okay yeah, these people in positions of power tell us not to screw around with the past or try to, you'll screw everything up, your grandparents won't meet, you won't get born, et cetera. But he rejoins his own statement with: "I mean, could the people who control all the money and politics ever invent a scarier warning? Didn't these same science experts say the earth was flat? Wasn't it really important we should stay at home and be peasants and slaves or we'd fall off the edge?" (250). Oh s--t.

Nelson again: "All I'm saying is: What if time is not the fragile butterfly wing that science experts keep saying? What if time is more like a chain-link fence you can't hardly f--k up? I mean, even if you f--ked it up, even ten hundred times--how would you ever know? Any present moment, and 'right now,' we get what we get. You know?" (252). And again: "Didn't Rant used to say, 'The future you have tomorrow won't be the same future you had yesterday'? You got all that?" (253). Oh, s--t, Chuck Palahniuk. I mean, seriously, damn girl!

"In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display" (263).

Nelson: "You wonder why we always have war and famine? Can you accept the fact that the people, the Historians who run everything, they get off on watching our mortality?" (268). The Historians are people who have stepped out of the stream of time. Immortals. Practically gods. Here: "How can you expect Historians to feel anything for the suffering of the rest of us? Do you cry when a flower wilts? When a carton of milk goes sour? Don't you think they've seen so many people die that their sympathy or empathy or whatever is pretty much wore out?" (269).

Oh, fun random fact in the book: Once upon the time, the Brits called Napoleon Bonaparte 'Boney. This turned into 'boneyman' and became, later, 'bogeyman', and was always from the very start of the line used a threat to keep British children obedient. I find that kind of funny--"CLEAN YOUR ROOM OR NAPOLEON BONAPARTE IS GOING TO GET YOU!" Nooooooo!

Regarding the ideas about Historians and stepping out of time and time-travel and so on: "Nothing says you have to believe this. Nothing says you have to even listen, but consider that plenty of smart, rich, powerful folks in history went to their graves swearing that the sun went around us. Also consider that someday, when you're dead and rotted, kids with their baby teeth will sit in their time-geography class and laugh about how stupid you were" (307).

"You could argue that we constantly change the past, whether or not we actually go back. I close my eyes, and the Rant Casey I picture isn't the real person. The Rant I tell you about is filtered and colored and distorted through me... And all these ways I change the past--I don't even know I'm doing most of them. You could say I constantly f--k up the past, the present, and the future" (313). Corruption of memory changes the past. What's not important isn't always what actually happened; it can be what people only think happened, or what what happened became inflated to.

"Ask yourself: What did I eat for breakfast today? What did I eat for dinner last night? You see how fast reality fades away?" (314).

I love this book. It's so cool! It's not my favorite Palahniuk book, but it's much meatier and requires, ironically enough, time to read, whereas Invisible Monsters can be brushed through just like that. The concepts in this are so cool and crazy too... (Emma is probably recognizing something from a certain Travesty....) Unghhh Chuck Palahniuk is so awesome! No surprise that I was excited to learn that he's planning on making a trilogy out of this here. I assume the other two will be more in-depth about Chester and Green Taylor Simms. Yesss!

MLA citation information: Palahniuk, Chuck. Rant. Anchor Books: New York, 2008. Print.

Let's see, I finally read the first volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. For an Alan Moore work (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), it was kind of underwhelming. The art puts me off, the story doesn't particularly intrigue me... (Though the concept of a league of storybook characters is pretty cool.) But I enjoyed the fact that they talk, well, like they're in the Victorian era (which they are). Which is how Emma and I talk/text. Which makes me want to recommend it to her, till I remember it's not actually too great, other than that. Oh, and there's one funny scene where Quartermain gets a full view of Mina Harker's bloomers and is all enthralled. Bloomers are so SEXY!

I also hate how large breasts are drawn in this. Like, seriously. Ladies in the Victorian era certainly wouldn't be throwing that around, and if there's that much available, then why wouldn't Quartermain be more attracted to Mina Harker's cleava... Oh, yeah, it's because bloomers are so... Oh goodness, can we change the subject? This is getting quite uncomfortable. (Mm, bloomers...)

Another thing I liked is--well, it is rather amusing, great one-liners and such. And there's a fake 'paint by numbers' by an artist going by the name of Basil Halward. The painting is of a young, handsome fellow. On the first page, before it gives you the color list it says something to the effect of, the painting on the next page is Basil's work; you can see how yours compares. You turn the page, and the picture is of a rotted corpse in the same pose. Because, of course, the man is no other than Dorian Gray.

I suppose I'll read the next one in the series if the library has that too, in any case. They imply that HG Wells' War of the Worlds is soon to happen...

Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Rocket Man (I think it's Going to Be a Long Time by Elton John

This post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: I'll stick with you baby for a thousand years, nothing's gonna touch you in these golden years

Dreamcatcher by Stephen King

Whoo! Last post before I'm off to college! Yayyyy.

Let's get down to this. First off, I admit at first glance this book looked like it was going to be a cross between Tommyknockers and It, which are pretty much my two least favorite Stephen King books. It doesn't end up that way, thank goodness--it's actually more like... well, aliens are involved, but it has more of a feel like The Thing (the eighties remake) or Alien than anything else. Kind of like a Derry version of The Thing I guess, with some of the Yeerks thrown in. He lucked out actually, because that's probably my favorite sort of horror movie--they're there, but where and anyone could be them--a little less of that, but still it had that nice flavor to it.

Quick summary: Four friends, best buds through middle and high school. One day they meet and befriend a boy with Down's syndrome, Duddits (Douglas), and have a really great rest of school experience. Fast forward twenty or so years. All of the boys have gone their separate ways, all of them face separate problems. However, once a weekend in November they go on a hunting trip together. So this time is no different except a stranger with severe gas and strange mannerisms comes into the cabin they stay in. All is kind of fine till an alien creature claws its way out of his body via his butt and kills Beaver (one of the four friends). A different alien takes over another friend's body--Jonesy's--much like a Yeerk would, that is, drives him like you would a car, only a car that is still alive and functioning but trapped. (However, Jonesy has more freedom than a human-controller would.) And Duddits is the key to making everything right again too--that is, stop the alien in Jonesy's body from spreading his parasitic aliens across the tri-state area! I mean, the world. He is the dreamcatcher of the title, because he drew all four even closer and kind of made those years with him their greatest. I... guess. I'd be lying if I said I ever completely understand whatever Stephen King is trying to make me understand.

"To say that Beaver's marriage didn't work would be like saying that the launch of the Challenger space shuttle went a little bit wrong" (15).

A semi-interesting note: Stephen King apparently wrote this book while being laid up as a result of a car crash. Jonesy, very early on, before the start of the story really, is hit by a car and breaks his hip. Yeeeep.

The animals in the forest instinctively try to get away from the aliens and they go walking through the woods a la Fantasia during the Rite of Spring segment to do so. Beaver tries to scare off one of the deer by telling it to get "'Make like an amoeba and split!'" (111), which is a phrase I'm totally going to use more often. By the way, I totally pictured Beaver as Jeff Goldblum. They described him as a nerdy looking guy who you think would be a math whiz, has shoulder-length hair, kind of dorky, even the way he talks... I refuse to believe that Stephen King was doing anything other than taking a poke at Jeff Goldblum when he was writing about Beaver.

"Henry put his head down and jogged a little faster" (136). Oh shit, Henry--the mummy's after us.

A lot of the things in the book that would remind me of something else are discussed later on--Peter and Henry run into a lady while Beaver and Jonesy are dealing with their gassy guest who looks at the sky and yells "They're back, they're back!" Of course I thought of Poltergeist. This connection is made later on. The aliens that are parasites aren't dissimilar to the aliens from the Alien series either--at least when they've just broken from their human hosts--and the fungus that the aliens spread (think of Creepshow!) is referred to as the 'Ripley' after Sigourney Weaver's character from that series.

Duddits is a huge fan of Scooby-Doo. He has the little lunchbox, and when Henry first sees it his only comment is: "'I hate that f---in show... They never change their clothes, did you ever notice that? Wear the same f---in thing, show in and show out'" (140). I don't know... I just thought it was sort of funny....

So the little parasites--well, Beaver traps the thing in a toilet, but it breaks loose. It kills him, and before it can attack Jonesy he slams the bathroom door on it. Immediately he gets worried about if it can figure out the mechanics of the doorknob and it says "as if it had read his mind" (179) it starts trying to turn the doorknob. Of course, it's revealed later that the creatures are telepathic, but still... They can open doors. That is bad news.

Stephen King makes a Pokemon joke, too. I really think there's no better way but an 'lol' to express my amusement at this fact.

"Did they think that maybe he wouldn't be interested, that maybe he'd just go Ho-hum, been there, done that, got the tee-shirt?" (275). This is probably a very common saying, but I'd like to think that Stephen King is making a reference to Space Jam.

Stephen King name drops War of the Worlds--no huge surprise, it's another book about an alien invasion. But, I should just say that these aliens spread via a fungus that if ingested are what cause the parasites to form and be incubated. In War of the Worlds, HG Wells kind of has this foreshadowing about a 'red weed' that withers and dies, meant to be a hint that the martians eventually fall. (Actually, to be honest, it works so well that I always get a little confused when I read that part and think the martians have been killed already.) The fungus the aliens in Dreamcatcher spread is red--ohhhh! You see what Stephen King might have possibly done there?

Jonesy compares the alien controlling his body to what Gollum said of Bilbo--oh, forget it. This is worth a quote. "'...Reminding himself to be wary... because, as Gollum had said of Bilbo Baggins, it was tricksy, precious, aye, very tricksy" (382). Hahaha what. Talk about unexpected.

Because this book is set in the same fictional town as It, it would be a surprise if there are no references to It... Of course there are. Jonesy--the alien in Jonesy--goes to the standpipe in the hopes of releasing a parasite into the water, however, the book is set after the events in It--so the standpipe is destroyed. There is a memorial dedicated by the 'Losers' Club' in its place (they were the kids who eventually defeated It) and across it "PENNYWISE LIVES" (386) is spray-painted on it. Interesting, mostly because it implies at the end of It that even though It has been destroyed, It laid eggs shortly before its destruction, that the 'Losers' club' don't know about. (Fight to the death between Pennywise and the Ripley!?)

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it--remember the HP Lovecraft story, 'The Colour Out of Space'? Well, there was a well in the farm it was set on, and the area was to be opened for a reservoir. If that was done, the disease or whatever the alien matter was would be integrated into the water--it already was--and whomever drank it would be infected as well. Like if the parasite in this book.... Hey, it's not impossible. We know King is a huge Lovecraft fan...

Stephen King name drops another book of his, The Dead Zone. I don't remember much about it, other than that I didn't really understand it and that it appeared to be a post apocalyptic sort of deal.

One last note on the book itself--I have the hardcover version, and the author's photo looks suspiciously similar to the set from Creepshow. (The one involving the meteorite; see the HP Lovecraft post for more information regarding this.) In that story, the alien matter made a horrendous fungus grow over and eat away at everything, kind of like the Ripley. (The fungus didn't cause any alien impregnation, however.)

As for my feelings regarding the book: I really enjoyed this. It feels very different from a lot of his other books, less... less shaped, I guess, kind of like he just spit it out, but not in a bad way. Parts of it are confusing--like I said, I understand about 1/10th of why Duddits was so important, exactly and how he fit into it at the end especially--but Stephen King has his own logic that I've learned to just accept instead of try to figure it out rationally. It's better wrought than Pet Sematary, and I'm okay with the fact that I read this instead of that even though I was really in the mood to reread that*. But okay.

While we're talking about Stephen King books, apparently he's thinking of making a sequel to The Shining. That's pretty cool, I guess. And, let's see.... They might remake the Pet Sematary movie, and the It movie. Cool. And a movie adaptation of this book exists as well, though I've yet to see it.

MLA citation information: King, Stephen. Dreamcatcher. New York: Scribner, 2001. Print.

Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Live to Tell the Tale by Passion Pit

This post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids... In fact, it's cold as hell

*The local library doesn't have much, but they do have quite a bountiful collection of Stephen King books--yup, just about everything but Pet Sematary. That's cool, I guess. So I took out A Man Without A Country instead and went back home to this.

Visions of Gerard by Jack Kerouac

Whooooo. Here we go! Hopefully this post won't take too long, because I just bought the Two Towers videogame, and I'm really excited about hitting that up. Well, it was a short book, so...

This book regards Gerard, Jack Kerouac's older brother, whom he saw as nothing less than a saint--the book is written with all the admiration and awe and love of his childhood under Gerard. The book begins with some anecdotes about the elder brother, sort of to get an idea of him I suppose at times other than his dying days, which makes up the bulk of the book. I should probably mention that Gerard died at age nine (Jack was four at the time). So yeah, lots of hero worship, which is completely understandable, and maybe some indulgence and fantasies on the facts--again, not surprising, and even if there was, would Jack himself even have known? So I guess it can be argued that there's an unreliable narrator thing going on, but even if it is is it really... Does that make sense? Because maybe it's not the truth but it's what Kerouac remembers so for him it's the truth even though in actuality it's not... Yeah...

Well, like I said: hero worship. An early anecdote regards Plourdes, an always-hungry boy from a family too poor to properly feed him. Gerard fed him--Kerouac then claims that on a recent visit back to his hometown (Lowell, MA) he saw Plourdes again, fat and full and healthy--thanks to Gerard? is Kerouac's musing. He then adds "Without Gerard what would have happened to Ti Jean?" (5). (Ti Jean was how he sometimes referred to himself in his books.) And more: "[Gerard's] heart under the little shirt as big as the sacred heart of thorns and blood depicted in all the humble homes of French-Canadian Lowell" (7). I've never really understood the heart of thorns thing (I assume it's more of a Catholic thing) but I assume it's intended to be Jesus's heart--so, there we go, it's clear what Kerouac means to say about Gerard.

Another comparison drawn between Gerard and Jesus: Gerard found a hurt baby mouse and made him a little basket and bed to nurse him back to health. The cat of the Kerouac household found the basket and of course ate it--Gerard and Jack cry over the incident, and Mrs Kerouac attempts to explain that the cat couldn't help it, it was simply its nature, et cetera--even though Gerard (according to Jack) understands all of this, he takes the cat and holds it by the jowls and yells and lectures at her. Kerouac, frightened by this unprecedented outburst, connects the feelings he had witnessing this to what one would have thought when Jesus in the Temple turns over the moneychanger tables in a rage. (The story commonly being called the 'Cleansing of the Temple'; you can look it up.)

Often in the anecdotes and even when the descent to Gerard's death begins, Gerard often laments upon the fact that he is not in heaven, for their he will have birds, people will not harm mice or each other, he will have a wagon pulled by lambs, and so on--it's kind of... chilling, I suppose is the best word, because he does die, he does end up in heaven. His wish was granted. Jack, actually, so excited that his brother will finally receive all of these great things (and will no longer suffer in the mortal coil), runs and dances down the street when his brother dies, shouting such gleefully--because he understands: it's sad his brother has died, of course, but he is receiving his award. Her didn't seem to even be aware that there was any ill meaning attached to it. (Of course, he is only four so he probably wouldn't have really understood the concept of death in regards to a human anyway.)

"We are baptized in water for no unsanitary reason, that is to say, a well-needed bath is implied--Praise a woman's legs, her golden thighs only produce black nights of death, face it--Sin is sin and there's no erasing it--We are spiders. We sting one another. No man exempt from sin any more than he can avoid a trip to the toilet" (31). Regarding the women--a double-meaning possibly, in that sex is supposed to be considered a sin (Right? Someone help me on this one) or at least lust, and that from what is produced from between those thighs--a baby, who continues the chain of suffering and sin in another facet, and so on... I point out his condemnation--it's a little too strong of a word but unfortunately I can't think of a more appropriate one--of women yet again. In... Dharma Bums? Desolation Angels? ...He says the "girls here make shadows taller than the shadow of death" (or essentially that) and tends to generally view women as... well, unnecessary, a cause of unnecessary suffering and such (no surprise, considering his take into Buddha and such), though of course that never really stops him from pursuing them, even when they're clearly mad, like whatserface (Elliot's mother) in Big Sur.

Jack, imagining Gerard's thoughts as he runs through an icy winter rendition of Lowell: "--Not a soul in sight, a few cruds of old snow stuck in the gutters--A fine world for icebergs and stones--A world not made for men--A world, if made for anything, made for something dead to sympathy--Since sympathizing there'll not be in it ever--He runs to warm up--" (42).

At one point Jack remembers a Halloween where his mother dressed him up as "a little Chinaman" (47). I was going to make some joke about HP Lovecraft being freaked out, until I remembered that though he was a New Englander, he lived in Providence, RI. Aww. Then I got weirded out, because it's kind of strange to think they were alive at the same time, you know? Obviously they weren't working at the same time, but still.

Gerard was a sickly child, I guess, and it wasn't unusual for him to get a bad dose of the flu in the winter. So when he got so ill he had to leave school, the nuns kind of knew the drill. Anyway, according to Jack, on the day of his final day of school, he had fallen asleep in class because breathing trouble at night kept him from sleeping well. Sister Marie wakes him up and he tells her dreamed of the Virgin Mary and adds, "'dont be afraid my good sister, we're all in Heaven--but we dont know it!'" (54). A doctrine easily recognized from Kerouac, from his other books. Projected by Kerouac or what actually happened, I don't know. Kerouac says most of his ideas came from Gerard--and I trust this, even if in this case he could be considered an 'unreliable narrator'.

"God made us for His glory, not our own" (59).

Kerouac writes about how even though his brother his sick and dying, he still teases, plays with and loves his brother and how he (Jack) took it all for granted, of course, and was "going to be made to appreciate it, like a Fallen Angel" (67). That is, basically, "You don't know what you've got till it's gone". Or that he had always been made, like from the beginning in his form to appreciate it eventually--not that it would come as though something new. Or it just seems new, even though it was always there, because he was never actually aware of it...

"An old dream too I've had of me glooping, that night in the parlor by Gerard's coffin, I dont see him in the coffin but he's there, his ghost, brown ghost, and I'm grown sick in my papers (my writing papers, my bloody 'literary career' ladies and gentlemen) and the whole reason why I ever wrote at all... [is] because of Gerard, the idealism, Gerard the religious hero..." (112). So by 1956 he was already getting fed up with it all... Big Sur wouldn't even be due for another five years... (He died in '69, victim of alcoholism and exhaustion and depression all playing off one another.) Might I also add that his little aside in parenthesis sounds like anyone of Stephen King's washed-up author characters' asides.

Like I said earlier, he doesn't quite understand death or why anyone would be upset at it. At Gerard's funeral he can't understand why anyone would cry, but cannot express the reasons why he wouldn't cry, why anyone wouldn't cry, because he is only four--but he's not upset because Gerard has gained his divine gift, "it has come, has always been with us, the formalities of the tomb are ignorant irrelevancies most befittingly gravely conducted by proper qualified doers and actors and Latin singers" (127). And, an odd thought just came into my head... In Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, he says time as the aliens see it (Tralfamadorians) is everything happens at the exact same second, even if what is happening is being performed by the same person doing something else... but wouldn't what Kerouac has said properly describe that too? The divine reward is forever because it is eternal life and if everything is happening forever in that one moment... You see? Could it work?

Well, there you have it. I quite enjoyed the book--I'd be surprised if anyone put it down and said they didn't, or at least said that they weren't touched by it. As for recommending--I would--but it would probably mean more to a person who's read some of Kerouac's other works first, and not just his best-known, On the Road.

MLA citation information: Kerouac, Jack. Visions of Gerard. New York: Penguin, 1991. Print.

Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Kids with Guns by the Gorillaz

This post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Whatever happens to you, whatever happens to me, I hope that I'll fall asleep knowing that you'll always be the story with no ending

A Man Without A Country by Kurt Vonnegut

This is Kurt Vonnegut's final book--well, it was intended to be, though in 2008 they published an as-yet unpublished work of his. The book is mainly an observation on life in all forms, past, current, similarities and differences. There's no real particular story other than the usual anecdotes; I guess it could be said that it's pretty much a series of short essays. It's a great book, one that led me to question why I haven't really read any Vonnegut in almost two years' time. (True, I've read Slaughterhouse Five twice in that time, but it's nowhere close to being my favorite Vonnegut book.) It also made me realize that Vonnegut is not a genius. What? No, he thinks the way everybody thinks, he's just not scared to admit it. He's braver than most is all. Not to say that's a bad thing, it's a good feeling when you discover you're not the only one thinking that way.

Each chapter opens with 'illustrations' which are actually colored prints of Vonnegut's quotes. The picture that opens the book reads: "There is no reason good can't triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia."

"I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy. There is terrible tragedy in there somehow. These men are too sweet to survive in the world and are in terrible danger all the time. They could be so easily killed" (4).

"I wanted all things to seem to make some sense, so we could all be happy, yes, instead of tense. And I made up lies, so they all fit nice, and I made this sad world a paradise" (6).

Vonnegut writes, at the beginning of chapter two, that he considers anyone who hasn't read Ambrose Bierce's story "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" a twerp. I was thinking, maybe I'd read it, but the only place I could imagine having done so was in creative writing. None of my classmates recognized it though, and I thought for sure I was going mad (I also imagined ray Bradbury could have mentioned it, he was a huge fan of Bierce and mentions him a lot in his stories). After pacing a gibbering to myself for about a half hour (I was spending self-imposed solitary confinement at work) it occurred to me: that's also the name of a Twilight Zone! Actually, it looks the episode was very close to the original story. (The episode was originally the winner of a short film festival.) Anyway, I guess there's not much to it other than... Well, that I'm a huge dork obsessed with The Twilight Zone. Oh well.

"Do you realize that all great literature--Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, A Farewell to Arms, The Scarlet Letter, The Red Badge of Courage, The Illiad and The Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, The Bible, and 'The Charge of the Light Brigade"--are all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? (Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?" (9). First of all, this goes with what I said at the beginning of this post, no? (Even he appears to be aware on some level of the idea that I described himself.) And, though I don't know all of these books intimately, from what I do know about the others, yes, I'd say that his observation is accurate. Though The Red Badge of Courage and The Scarlet Letter made me realize more what a bummer it is to be a human who has to read either of those books than how much a bummer being a human is in general.

Ah, I think he makes a good point about Marx's famous quote, "Religion is the opiate of the people". That quote tends to be seen by many, myself included, as a negative thing. It gets you high, gets you lazy, dulls your senses, but Vonnegut translates it kindly into a better thing, probably what Marx actually intended to say when he said as he did: Not a condemnation but an admittance of the fact that it is comforting and can give relief (Much like the opium painkillers Marx needed himself). Not even admittance, just Marx "simply noticing" (12) that fact. "It was a casual truism, not a dictum" (12).

"I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent lives as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex" (17).

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college" (23). ....

"If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something" (24).

Kurt Vonnegut has a section where he draws the story lines of your generic short or long story, then the story lines of specific stories that have generically the same as other story lines. If you happen to be thumbing through the book, look on page 32 for his treatment of Kafka's Metamorphosis.

"But there's a reason we recognize Hamlet as a masterpiece: it's that Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely tell us the truth in this rise and fall here... The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is. And if I die--God forbid--I would like to go to heaven and ask somebody in charge up there, 'Hey, what was the good news and what was the bad news?'" (37). This is part of the story line section, the conclusion of it. Probably one of the most intriguing sections of the book...

Ah, Vonnegut's complaint that for all his years of smoking (all but twelve) he still lives--well, at the time--in complete health: "But I am now eighty-two. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick, and Colon" (40). Have I mentioned quite how much I love Kurt Vonnegut? Has it been properly conveyed?

"Evolution is so creative. That's how we got giraffes" (46).

Vonnegut's "Big Question" is, "What is life all about?" "I put my big question about life to my son the pediatrician. Dr Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: 'Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is'" (66).

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC" (66). This, unfortunately, does not seem to be his actual epitaph. But anyway, in this bit he talks about music with his high regards--I believe it is in Breakfast of Champions that a line occurs that reads something as follows: "What else is sacred? Romeo and Juliet, for instance. Oh, and all music, too."

"How do humanists feel about Jesus? I say of Jesus, as all humanists do, 'If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?' But if Christ hadn't delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I'd just as soon be a rattlesnake" (81).

"Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?" (88).

"As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I'm of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free"--Eugene Debs

"While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, their powerful political connections or great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out their titles... The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries" (103).

"And still on the subject of books: Our daily news sources, newspapers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books do we learn what's really going on" (103). I have definitely written about this on here before. And you know what, I'm willing to say that this isn't recent and by no means an American invention. For example: Dickens' works were cited as an example for this concept by Fabrizzles when he explained it to us in... Contemporary Lit? Creative Writing? Well, it matters not what class in particular. The basic idea, though, is that reading a book in a certain era gives you a better image of that era because it explains how the book was written, why it was written, how the idea came up and so on--because the time and breeding would have a direct affect on all of that. For example, when HG Wells wrote his books--things were being discovered. Breakthroughs were being made ten times a day. Someone famously declared (wrongly) that by the 1930's (or something like that) that all that there was to be discovered in the world would be. Space was big--people would have 'comet' parties to celebrate when comets were predicted to be sighted (not kidding about this either, unless if Carl Sagan would dare lie to me). You see what I mean? Maybe?

"The good Earth--we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy" (122).

"Life is no way to treat an animal" (123).

"All I wanted to do was give people the relief of laughing. Humor can be a relief, like an aspirin tablet. If a hundred years from now people are still laughing, I'll be pleased" (130).

"When I got home from the Second World War, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back and said, 'You're a man now.' So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it" (131). This scene is regaled in I believe Slaughterhouse-Five, only instead it ends with "I almost killed my first German." (Vonnegut was of German ancestry.)

Oooookay. So I know I've been cheaping out on summaries as of late, but this really is just Kurt Vonnegut being awesome. So so so awesome! A longtime Vonnegut fan surely won't be disappointed, and someone who has never read him before will certainly be intrigued--well, if that someone is AWESOME. Kurt Vonnegut is so awesome.... Seriously. Go read all of his books right now, except for Hocus Pocus and Cat's Cradle. Well... at least not Hocus Pocus. Bleghhhhfgffffhhhhjjhhhh.

PS. This book is fantastic.

MLA Citation Information: Vonnegut, Kurt. A Man Without A Country. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005. Print.

Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Cuddle Fuddle by Passion Pit

This post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Kids with guns, taking over, but it won't be long, they're mesmerized skeletons

100TH POST! (Also, David Copperfield by Chas Dickens Part Two)

Oh look, I've read one hundred books! (Actually, it's probably either a little more or a little less, blogwise--in actuality wise, there were a lot more that never made it to a post.) Anyway, if you told me a month ago that I would be happy to honor my hundredth post with a Dickens book, I'd be all "NO CHAS SUCKS! Also, let me just see that time machine of you--yoink!" (Bzeeep.) But no, this I can live with. Because David Copperfield is awesome. Que!? Did you just read what you think you did??? Why yes, yes you did. Your eyesight isn't failing you (probably).

Let's see, we left off on page 578, David renouncing his friendship to Steerforth (though the reason why has yet to 'happen'). Let's see, the very first chapter chronicle's Peggotty's husband's death. I have mentioned (or implied) that David is older than 7 at this point, right? I seem to have trouble following time changing in this and pretty much any book, so I'm going to say he's probably maybe like eighteen at this point? Well, Mr Barkis was a cabby, in fact David had known him from childhood. If not for David, he and Peggotty never would have wed--you see, Peggotty had made David pastries for his trip away from home to school. David gave a pastry to Barkis, who loved it and was surprised to learn that Peggotty did all the cooking--good cooking!--other domestic matters as well, and enjoyed them, and had no man in her life. Barkis was too shy to explain to young David that he would like to marry her, so he told David to tell her that he was "'willin'", as in, "'Barkis is willin'". On his death bed, when he is told David is there, he manages to look up and say "'Barkis is willin'!'" (11) before he dies. I don't know, I thought it was kind of cute. Oh, and by the way, each parts are numbered as though they're two separate books. Just letting you know.

"'Money's of no use to me no more, except to live'" (38).

"If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through. Enough love might be wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking, to drown anybody in: and yet there would have remained enough within me, and all over me, to pervade my entire existence... I, the moonstruck slave of Dora... romantically calling on the night at intervals, to shield my Dora--I don't know exactly what from, I suppose from fire. Perhaps from mice, to which she had a great objection" (49). So. Damn. Adorable! Also, might I note what he says--"over head and ears in love" not "head over heels". Oh look, so once upon a time that saying made sense! (FYI, heads are always over heels unless you're in a Kurt Vonnegut story.) I can only assume the saying changed because someone heard it wrong. Or was dyslexic or something.

"'We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out'" (82).

"Mrs Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn't a room to swing a cat there; but, as Mr Dick justly observed to me... 'You know, Trotwood, I don't want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to me?'" (83). It's nice to know that even then people didn't know what the hell was up with that saying. Who came up with it? Who swings cats!?

David relates to us some incident of his going on and on about Dora to his childhood friend, Agnes. He finishes the paragraph with "Oh, Agnes, sister of my boyhood, if I had known then, what I knew long afterwards!--" (109). That of course made me jump, knowing that Dora is based on the girl Chas didn't marry. (Insert a "No, Chas, nooooooo!" here.)

Dora--well, like I said, Dickens is cute when he writes about love, even if the object of affection is someone that I would have trouble putting up with. She's not... really... uh, that bright. Being that Dora is based off an early love of Dickens', I'm not sure whether he portrayed her this way because that's how the real girl actually was, or it's kind of his 'sour grapes' attitude to her, because he and the real girl were never able to marry. I mean, I don't mean to sound cruel, it's just... uh. She's very... childish. Let me make something up on the spot and say that's just to show how puppy-love-ish this affection really is. She even insists on him to call her his "child-wife"! Humbert Humbert is going mad with desire over here. Anyway, a more legitimate sign that Dickens is saying that the love was immature is that no children come out of their union, and they're married for a time. Oh, and that part where I said "legitimate"? I am making up my own interpretations. I have no idea if anyone in their right mind would back me on this. But anywayyyy, why I was complaining about Dora--well, there are several situations that I could bring up for example, but this one sticks out because it reminds me of the lead female character--either lead female character--in a certain Irish author's most well-known play. "'My own! May I mention something?' 'Oh, please don't be practical!' said Dora coaxingly. 'Because it frightens me so!'" (138). HELP.

Also, Dora's pet name for David is 'Doady'. What the hell is that? That's even worse than Calvin O'Keefe's "Charlibus" for Charles Wallace. Where did 'Doady' even come from!? Oh and this is as good a time as any to mention that Dora has a small spaniel named Jip that I imagined as Dante (him being a cocker spaniel) which means Jip was pretty much a LOLcat for me. LOLdog. Whatever.

Oh God I hate Uriah Heep. I revile him. Uriah is a scheming, plotting, obnoxious bastard, forever informing the world of how "umble" he is. I don't particularly want to go into details as to how he is a scheming bastard--it boils down to him eventually marrying Agnes and thus gaining the family fortune--but godammit he's a two-face and he enrages me. He's one of those fellows who turns things on their heads so he always always looks like the better man. One of my favorite scenes is when David slaps him so far he had to have a tooth out, which later, when he... Oh what the hell. Eventually he is found out and is sent to jail, where he is known to be one of the best and most obedient inmates or whatever. He brings this incident up to make David look bad for abusing such a great guy. Uriah, you were lucky all David did was slap you. If it was me, I would have invented curb-stomping to properly convey my rage towards you onto you. I don't care if the scene was inside. I would have built a curb indoors and made him bite it. He is so INFURIATING! So... much... rage in me... Ughhhh Uriah Heep! I'm going to draw and quarter you! RAGGGGGHHHHHHH---

(Ahem). Apparently Uriah is based physically upon Hans Christian Anderson, who up to this point I always believed for some reason was female. As for his personality and schemes, Dickens apparently had a servant who embezzled 10,000 pounds. Might .I mention that David has a lot of trouble with thieving servants when he is with Dora.

"There was another thing I could have wished; namely, that Jip had never been encouraged to walk about the tablecloth during dinner. I began to think there was something disorderly in his being there at all, even if he had not been in the habit of putting his foot in the salt or the melted-butter... and he barked at my old friend, and made short runs at his plate" (273). You began to think!? Dogs don't go on the table ever, David. That's just plain unsanitary.

"Early in the morning, I sauntered through the dear old tranquil streets, and again mingled with the shadows of the venerable gateways and churches. The rooks were sailing about the cathedral towers; and the towers themselves, overlooking many a long unaltered mile of the rich country and its pleasant streams, were cutting the bright morning air, as if there were no such thing as change on earth. Yet the bells, when they sounded, told me sorrowfully of change in everything; told me of their own age, and my pretty Dora's youth; and of the many, never old, who had lived and loved and died, while the reverberations of the bells had hummed up through the rusty armour of the Black Prince hanging up within, and, motes upon the deep of Time, had lost themselves in air, as circles do in water" (406).

Ah yes, remember Steerforth? The reason why he is no longer a friend of David's is because he ran off with his young childhood friend, Eml'y, when she was to be married. (Eml'y is a cousin or niece to Peggotty; the relationships in the Peggotty home are hard to follow, at least for me.) Steerforth, however, is killed--and David must do the work of informing his infirm mother and insane servant of what has transpired. I call Rosa Dartle insane because--well, first of all, she has a scar going across her lips and chin because as a child Steerforth grew agitated with her and threw a hammer at her face. Now, you'd hate a kid that had done that to you, right? Apparently not. Rosa's rage turned into a twisted, obsessive and rather frightening love, or some strange perversion that could be mistaken for love. Rosa, yelling at Mrs Steerforth: "'No power on earth should stop me, while I was standing here! Have I been silent all these years, and shall I not speak now? I loved him better than you loved him! ...I could have loved him, and asked no return. If I had been his wife, I could have been the slave of his caprices for a word of love a year. I should have been. Who knows it better than I? ...My love would have been devoted--would have trod your paltry whimpering underfoot!'" (483). This builds for another page and a quarter (getting more and more frightening--I know unrequited love can be tough but jeez!), till David steps in and says basically he wasn't perfect and if you don't love his mother you couldn't have truly loved him (because they're flesh and blood). She flips out (more), bursts into hysterical tears, tears at her hair, and finally curses David and tells him to get out. Rosa Dartle really, really, really unnerves me.

Copperfield knew a boy named Traddles during his school years--if you'll recall, he was the boy who was caned for crying when Mr Mell was fired. Anyway, they keep on coming into contact with each other over the course of their lives, and at one point, upon reuniting, Traddles' delighted expression is as such: "'Dear me... What a delightful union this is! You are so extremely brown, my dear Copperfield! God bless my soul, how happy I am!'" (513). Where did that comment come from? If I was David Copperfield: Traddles: "You are so extremely brown!" Copperfield: "You are so extremely skinny!" (He was a chubby kid; his arms and legs sticking out of his ill-fitting suit are described as something akin to sausages.

Okay, I happened to overlook a passage about the Murdstones--after Mrs Copperfield, Mr Murdstone has continued to wed and ruin women. The 'current' one that is discussed on page 526 is broken by the time she is discussed, but it is mentioned that in the beginning she put up a violent fight--which I can totally respect her for. Okay, she's "'quite a shadow now'" (526), but at least she struggled around. Anyway, my theory on this--Mr and Ms Murdstone, the siblings, are secret incestuous lovers. They break women together, they reap the fiscal benefits, and they're always together. Always. They actually kind of remind me of... Oh God, I can't believe I'm about to reference this.... That 'High Voltage' video by Electric Six? Like them, only being gaunt unpleasant dastardly Brits.

So, as you may or may have gathered--actually, I guess I didn't bring it up, but welcome spoilers: Dora eventually takes ill and dies. I find this curious because Dora is supposed to be based on a girl Dickens was engaged to, but the family broke off the marriage because they believed nothing would ever come of him. Anyway, with that in mind, pushing the story aside completely--why would he have done that? Well, I suppose it was a fantasy he must have entertained, but he couldn't have imagined where it would have gone in real life because clearly it did not go anywhere, so he just... killed... her? Wow, that sounds mean. But, you see what I'm trying to get at? Of course, I don't know much about the woman Dickens actually did marry, so I can't say how much David's second marriage and relationship with Agnes (his second wife) is in relation with Dickens' actual wife. David and Agnes were close childhood friends, always confided in one another, practically family--so, Emma? Does this sound familiar? Well, anyway, his confession of love to Agnes is super cute. Not quite Mr Darcy material, but it's pretty damn hard to ascend to that level. "'I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!'" (564). So! Ugh, David Copperfield, marry me. Anyway, more happiness: Agnes reveals to David that Dora asked her, on her deathbed, that only she would be the one to "'occupy this vacant place'" (567)--a double-meaning, I suppose--David's home, and David's heart. The ending, the very very ending, also regards Agnes and also is just as sweet. David Copperfield, two-penny post me!

My only qualm really with the book was going to be that we never learn of what happened to Mr Mell, the poor school teacher horribly abused by Steerforth. I'm near the end thinking, "There are fifteen, twenty pages left. I guess that's it then; I guess I should assume he died penniless in the streets." And I was planning on writing a long section complaining about it. Well! Less then ten pages from the book's conclusion, David is given a newspaper article about Mr Mell and the Micawbers--so things worked out for them, eh? I was glad for that, especially for poor Mr Mell. (Though it seems like hardly anyone else cares about him--after checking out Wikipedia's sparse summary of him, I went to see what SparkNotes said about him--in their summary of this second-to-last chapter, they don't even mention him!) Yes, I was worried about him all the way from page 132 to page 1,157. Anyway, yeah, was really relieved that his end was closed--there were literally zero loose ends in this book, which was pretty neat.

Well! This book, although it had a strange numbering system, was graciously edited by a reader's hand so that on the final page it informs you that on the whole it is 1,161 pages. Wow. Also, a particular note on this edition: there's no publication date, but there's a stamp-mark on the back that says 'Sep 22 1970'. However, there's also a pocket in there--a pocket with a card in it, a card with dates and numbers on it... The earliest date is from '67. Oh, and that pocket and card bit? Yeah, it's a library card. There's no 'Discarded' stamp in here or anything either, so... Yeah. Well, that explains why I can't recall a single time of ever going to the North Haven library, I suppose. (Though most likely the records were lost when the system switched to computers--still, I wouldn't like to take this back and risk it.) This edition was pretty nice. The only thing that really disappointed me was that this copy doesn't have all of Hablot Knight Browne's (AKA 'Phiz) illustrations. If you buy this book, you're kind of doing yourself a disservice if you don't get one with his illustrations, even if it's only a few. They're really nice. (Though publishers in 1895 apparently don't agree with me!)

As for the book itself: I admit it, Dickens. I loved it. Fine. There. Happy, Emma? (I've actually already chided her for not having read this yet, if you can believe that!) I was actually quite sad I wouldn't be able to put this into my 'Classics' shelf, as it certainly deserves a spot there--the only reason I can't is because I already lifted my mother's copy of this book from the nineties--eighteen-nineties--to put with my antique books. I feel guilty about taking both of her copies, even though she said I could take whatever book I wanted out of the secretary shelf. Actually, speaking of my mom, this is her favorite book. (Way to steal from the library, mom!) The reason why she owns two copies is just because of aesthetics--the antique copy is burgundy, her second favorite color. I was going to say something else here, something more interesting, but I can't remember now. Oh well, you should read this book right now. This book is awesome. Great expectations for this book won't go unfounded, unlike those had for another book...

Publishing MLA information stuff: Dickens, Charles. David Copperfield. New York: Walter J Black, Inc, ?. Print. (Note--This is the information copied from whatever copy they copied this edition off of. Copy that? I assume it's the 'Charles Dickens' edition, which my other copy is clearly not. Yes, I am going to brag about that copy all the time. Heck, I was proud of it before I read it--it's the oldest book I own, after all. It's just convenient as hell that it was a good book, too! [Ahem]. Anyway...)

Because the cryptic song lyrics last post regard the same book, you'll have to check the last post to see them so you can have a go at them. Go!

David Copperfield by Chas Dickens (Book one)

Yup, in the sixties they apparently split books up like they did in the--well, the eighteen-sixties. A most curious thing is, that while this book is in one piece it is split--that is, the break in volumes is clearly marked and each 'separate' volume is numbered separately. The book itself looks like it's been made in imitation of some earlier edition--perhaps the 'Charles Dickens' edition. (I couldn't tell you what that means either--I assumed they were all Charles Dickens editions...) Anyway, because the book is long as all hell I figured I would split it up like they did back then.

Background on the book: this is supposed to be the most autobiographical of Dickens' books--a fact which makes me more than a little nervous, especially after what Emma has explained to me of his love life. I'll rely on her to provide any particular parallels, as I'm sure she knows leaps and bounds more of Dickens' life than I do. Well, anyway, our main character is clearly David Copperfield. His father died before his birth, and his mother remains single until he is about seven whereupon she marries a perfectly horrid man named Mr Murdstone. From there, he has a brief stint at a boarding school, than as a tenant in the home of a family who eventually is sent to debtor's prison, from which he hitchhikes to his aunt's home. His aunt raises him into a respectable (though very naive) young man.

Though the book only goes by David Copperfield, the book's full title on the front page reads as follows: "The Personal History Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the younger of Blunderstone Rookery which he never meant to be published on any account". Hehe.

Charles Dickens' prefaces are rather touching, both, but especially that which was included in the 'Charles Dickens' edition. (Seriously, what makes it more 'Charles Dickens' than the others?) Anyway, it concludes as such: "But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is DAVID COPPERFIELD."

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show" (1). It is not on the top tier of opening lines, in my opinion, but it must be given credit as it's the line that drew me to the book in the first place.

The first proof in this book of Chas's awesome abilities of naming characters is in Mr Chillips, who gets so agitated by the dismissive noises of David's aunt that he "could not bear it" (15), as they were clearly "calculated to break his spirit" (14), and he turns to drink. Of course!

What I like is that it appeared that Dickens made sure people wouldn't misinterpret him. Young, young Copperfield sees a stray sheep outside of the church--and takes care to add that he didn't mean a sinner--he meant mutton. Good thing he felt the need to clarify, or certainly this would be a passage that high school kids are tortured over. Plus, it's hilarious--he actually says he means mutton.

One of the most agitating things about Mrs Copperfield's second marriage is that Murdstone is CLEARLY A VILLAIN. He has a beard! (That's not the only reason!) David, unaffected by false romances that wouldn't be directed at him gives a very unattractive picture of the man. A scene in which he has only David he refers to him as an unfavourable creature to his "projected business" (30), that is what boils down to ruining the family. Plus, the name!? Someone told me--since it is Dickens-related, I assume Emma--Dickens tended to give names to characters that referred in some ways to their personalities. Now let's try that with Murdstone. Murder. And... stones. Because he's cold as stone? Well, he's a bad guy and I would totally love to have a round of fisticuffs with him, and by a round of fisticuffs I mean carry a concealed dagger and use it. And, kind of funny story--I reread Edward Eager's Half Magic right before reading this. The mother is going to get remarried and Jane is all "What if he's another Murdstone!?" and I never knew what's up. I always assumed their mom just had a relationship with some guy who was a jerk named Murdstone sometime before that book. But now I know! Methinks I chuckled most heartily when I figured it out! And then I was like, Murdstone, you're a jerk. Jeez. (David's aunt even calls him 'Murderer' later on in lieu of his name, as she can't remember it exactly.)

Murdstone thrusts David from his home and David spends two weeks in his nurse Peggotty's childhood home, which is pretty much an overturned boat furnished like a home, which is totally awesome. Anyway, David is so enamored with it he says he couldn't have loved it more if it was Aladdin's palace complete with Roc's egg. Not to look like a jerk, but I don't believe Aladdin ever came in contact with any form of Roc, egg or otherwise. He's probably thinking of Sinbad.

I love Mr Peggotty! Upon introduction you automatically see that he is the exact opposite of Murdstone--he is completely, purely, 100% a good person. "'Glad to see you, sir,' said Mr Peggotty. 'You'll find us rough, sir, but you'll find us ready'" (41). This, so far, is his natural and automatic introduction of himself and his family.

"'Dead, Mr Peggotty?'... 'Drowndead'" (43). Hehe, wordplay. Mr Peggotty also refers to himself as a 'bacheldore' in this chapter. Yeah, I know this other guy who was a bacheldore, but he pronounced the first part 'dumble'...

One thing that super-makes me mad about Clara (David's mother) is that she never tells David that she's going to get married, WHICH IS REALLY AWESOME. Then she asks David why he's all upset and crying all the time. UM GEE. The other things are that she's fallen into a totally abusive and controlling relationship which should make me feel bad for her which I do, but only a little. I'm kind of in the Big Mikey school of thought--if you don't escape while you have the chance, it's only your own fault that your husband murdered you and buried you in the basement. Oh! Sorry, wrong story. And the fact that she lets Murdstone beat her son. I mean, he goes to cane the boy. And there is absolutely no question of his intention--Clara says she's feeling sick, but when Murdstone goes to take the boy away she doesn't do a damned thing to stop him. That, that is what is sick. Utterly disgusting. I don't care how futile it would have been, at least try to fight them--ugh. Well. There is a semi-satisfying note, as though David is in fact harmed, he bites Murdstone in the hand quite deeply, drawing much blood. I was hoping Murdstone would then get an infection from it and die, but, like Great Expectations, that hope went unfounded.

"I never shall forget the waking next morning; the being cheerful and fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed down by the stale and dismal oppression of remembrance" (77). Very attractive turn of phrase, that.

In short time Murdstone sends Copperfield off to boarding school, where Copperfield first meets Steerforth, a fellow who is clearly a conman who Copperfield naively loves respects and never questions. Steerforth, from what I've so far come to understand, cons the ladies as well--when Copperfield first meets Steerforth, he is seeing the headmaster's daughter. Because of this, he is protected from any wrath, particularly that from the poor teacher Mr Mell. Mr Mell is a shoddily-dressed, clearly poor and in wretched conditions man--honestly, everything about him, including the picture of him (that by Hablot Knight Browne) makes me associate him with Severus Snape, even to a certain extent his visage. Seriously, they're really, really alike! (Except for relations to the main character, and Snape can't play flute--though I'm sure he'd play it just as dolefully as Mr Mell.) Anyway, Steerforth causes the poor man his job. He entices his fellow students to make fun of the poor man, and Steerforth eventually bursts out with an early your mother joke (lies; Shankspeare's used those jokes a few times) and says that she "lives on charity in an almshouse" (131). Mr Creakle--the headmaster--embarrasses Mr Mell in front of everyone by having him confess that this is the truth and scolds him for scolding Steerforth for lying! Then Creakle praises Steerforth for raising a rally and so abusing Mr Mell. Mr Mell then resigns. Traddles cries for Mr Mell's leaving and is caned for it. Chas Dickens gets an award for his incredible ability to enrage me. I would mess Creakle up bad if I had the chance. And Steerforth. DAMMIT DAVID STOP BEING SO NAIVE LISTEN TO AGNES GODDDDDDD. I'm going to punch Steerforth and Creakle's teeth in, BRB.

"'But fashions are like human beings. They come in, nobody knows when, why, or how; and they go out, nobody knows when, why, or how. Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you look at it in that point of view'" (166). This is kind of interesting because it looks more like he's saying life is a metaphor for these things--and not vice versa.

"I went into the outhouse to look about me; and the very same lobsters, crabs, and crawfish, possessed by the same desire to pinch the world in general..." (185). Again, the chuckles have been induced.

"'At present, and until something turns up... I have nothing to bestow but advice. Still my advice is so far worth taking that--in short, that I have never taken it myself, and am the... miserable wretch you behold'" (231/232). / "I always pass on good advice... It is never any use to oneself"--Oscar Wilde. As for the speaker of the quote, it is Mr Micawber, a man forever tangled in the law, always twenty pounds too short but never wanting in food and hardly ever wanting in comfort. Continually promising to clean up his act and continually squandering what little money he has. The second he gains a pound, he's known to spend it on an expensive meal at the local inn. Nonetheless, he's a sympathetic and funny fellow--even in his bouts where he threatens to kill himself. (He offhandedly mentions at one point that no man is ever without a friend who doesn't have a razor.) Eventually he is put into debtor's prison, but gets out--and when we meet him again it is clear he shall be visiting the place again. Or should be, at least. Mr Micawber's plight appears to be based off of Dickens' father's, who also had money troubles in the same fashion.

When Copperfield makes his way to his aunt's, he does it completely on his own on foot and pawning his possessions. He sells his coat to a creepy old man who punctuates all of his statements with "goroo, goroo". He also has patterns of speaking similar to a certain 500-year-old hobbit... IE, Gollum. He's very repetitive, talks to himself--Example: "'Oh, what do you want?... Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo, goroo!'" (244). And he just does this over and over and over. Copperfield says he was never so scared in all his life (not even when Murdstone threatened to cane him!?) and I would certainly be terrified too. (Actually, that guy had probably just been driven mad by his inability to get past Darunia in Ocarina of Time--David just has bad ears is all.)

There's a word edited that begins with a G. Because the G is capitalized, I assume it was God, and it would have been considered obscene or rude or whatever to write his name... but they say God in other areas... so maybe it's gum. By Gum.

"'The twins no longer derive their sustenance from Nature's founts--in short,' said Mr Micawber... 'they are weaned'" (342). Why couldn't he have just said weaned to begin with!? That's just uncomfortable. And more than a little gross.

Chas is incredibly cute when writing about being in love. Though I'm not particularly fond of the love interest--Dora--it's still cute. (I think Dora's head is as empty as a flowerpot!) Anyway, I'm just saying it. Too much cuteness to completely quote it all!

"The pigeon-pie was not bad, but it was a delusive pie; the crust being like disappointing head, phrenologically speaking: full of lumps and bumps, with nothing particular underneath" (546). Hehe.

Well.... Yeah. For part one--I'd rather not judge it till I'm done with the whole thing. But admittedly I, yes, I, unlover of Dickens am enjoying it. This is all I shall say till I'm complete.

Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: The Time Warp from Rocky Horror Picture Show

This post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Oh my God, just don't ever let me go--yeah, sometimes we're high and sometimes we're low, put up with me and I'll make you see that things are better when you're with me

PS. Awesome news! I have a job that is to talk about Lord of the Rings. Not only am I getting paid, I will also be taught how to use a bow and arrow... Oh, sorry, can't hear you over the sound of how AWESOME my life is.