Perelandra by CS Lewis

This book is the second in the space trilogy series, the sequel to Out of the Silent Planet.  Perelandra is the name of Venus.  In this book, Ransom goes again to space, though this time he goes there.  On Venus there is a new garden of Eden forming, complete with the first man and woman, though they have been separated at the time that Ransom lands.  The book is, to some extent, a remake of the attempt told in Genesis: though Ransom has been summoned to Venus in order to thwart the devil/his subject, who is using Weston's body as a host.  So, Ransom is a Christ-like figure.  He's sacrificing himself to defeat evil, but he's stopping it before it starts so he only gets injured and doesn't have to die.  This book is also told after the fact, as was the last one.  Let's go.

First of all, I think that I figured out what the Oyarsa are.  If you'll recall, I had some trouble getting the eldil and Oyarsa and all together.  The Oyarsa is the name of the 'patron saint' (if you will) of each planet--so the planet Mars's patron saint would be the Greco-Roman god Mars/Ares, but a pure version, having almost nothing to do with what humans made up for them.  From here, they act as archangels, I would imagine.

I got straight-up excited when Ransom refers to the partial-narrator who is recording this story for us as 'Lewis'.  Hmm, wonder who that could be?  And I wonder who Ransom is supposed to be?  CS Lewis does make a point of reminding the audience that Ransom is a philologist.  (Even though he denied that Ransom what supposed to be a caricature of Tolkien, I'm one hundred percent certain that that's who he's supposed to be.  You "borrowed characteristics"?  Yeah, all of them.  Ooh, buuuuurn.)

Oh, and apparently a common figure of speech was being 'knocked up' in the thirties-forties-sometime before today.  I've deduced that it meant looking haggard or something like that, but it's still kind of funny when someone exclaims it.  No, Tolkien, I don't think Clive is... knocked up.  ("You slut! How long has this been going on!?")  In fact, I'm going to go ahead and say that he lacks the necessary parts for that.

When Tolkien Ransom first sees the 'Eve' of Venus, she is nude and green.  In fact, she remains nude and green for the whole novel, except for a brief scene, where 'Weston' tricks her into wearing a robe.  Anyways, he panics--after he meets her he says he is too in awe to feel sexual desire, and never actually does.  (Later, when he sees her in the robe he comes to the conclusion that clothes are what created desire and perversion, because they hide something, and like children, a person tends to desire what they cannot reach, and thus... I cannot remember if I marked that page or not.  But again, he didn't actually feel sexual desire for her at that time, he was horrified, because if you'll recall, that's the first thing Adam and Eve did after they ate the apple--make clothes because they realized they were naked and felt ashamed.)  Anyyyyywaaaays... When he first sees her he gets scared, and wonders if she is not a "Circe or Alcina" (54).  Circe transformed men into creatures (most notably Odysseus's crew after they gorged themselves on the feast she set up for them) and enjoyed sleeping with men and then stealing their "manhood".  Alcina is the one I didn't know--she is apparently a sorceress from an opera by Handel (named Alcina).  Alcina seduces men and has sex with them for a while, but then gets bored and will turn them into animals or rocks.

Now, naivety is often considered cute or pure.  And although it can be beneficial, it often does more harm than good--unknowing and naive (a fool, to say harshly), the green lady would never think of wearing clothes or admiring her own reflection or murder or gluttony on her own.  When 'Weston' appears and starts entreating her to disobey orders set by God/Venus, she at first objects, but 'Weston' is a smooth talker, and she doesn't know any better.  In a few ways her naivety does protect, because she doesn't really get the point of clothing and what mirrors are, but other times it is grating.
One thing that does bother me is when 'Weston' introduces the green lady to stories and poems--descriptions of things that aren't real, but could be, or would be nice.  The lady has never heard of such a thing.  CS Lewis's point is probably that life in her Eden is so great she doesn't need any stories or diversions like that--but that paints a rather frightening picture of heaven, for me at least.  Very Brave New World-ish, if you ask me (though I'm sure Lewis didn't intend it that way at all, and probably would be disgusted if he heard that take on things...  And now I'm wondering what CS Lewis's thoughts on Aldous Huxley were.  Also, I'm starting to really like the name Aldous.)

Of course, 'Weston' and Ransom interact.  In attempting to discredit 'Weston', Ransom looks rather bad himself, and more often than not, do more harm than good.  They are rather like two siblings who are constantly trying to get the other in trouble.  This goes on until an explosive final chase and wrestle (and because this is a trilogy, I think you can figure out for yourself who wins the final fight)... But!  Eventually Ransom comes upon 'Weston' strangling a bird so that he may pluck its feathers.  ('Weston' is never seen eating, and it would be more evil just to kill for the sake of killing--plus earlier in the book 'Weston' would just rip frogs apart for the heck of it.)  'Weston' attempts to shake Ransom's faith by telling him that God will not aid Weston, and lists all the others who waited too long for God to help them and ended up dying because of it--victims of the Holocaust, madmen, Jesus--"'Could He help Himself?'" (153).  This is obviously a reference to the crucifixion, though it is twisted--it was necessary for Jesus to sacrifice himself so everyone else would be saved.  God could have helped himself/his son/however that works, but in doing so he would have abandoned his people.  He goes on to quote Jesus's wailing at the cross (in Aramic): "God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  As you can see from what I've just said (and if you actually read the book, Ransom tells you) that he's used something for his own means, twisting it perfectly.  What is chilling about is that Ransom has the idea that when 'Weston' is quoting the words perfectly--he's not just quoting because he saw them written by some scribe.  He is remembering.
Also, back to "'Could He help Himself?'" (153).  In the Stephen King book Desperation, a monster-demon named Tak attempts to mock David, an eleven-year-old boy whose overwhelming and practically unbelievable faith in God is the only thing that can save him and the people he's with.  Tak tries to make David lose his faith by saying, "'Your God isn't here, any more than he was with Jesus when Jesus hung dying on the cross with flies in his eyes'" (pages aren't listed in this online edition, but the full text appears to be online here, so I guess they aren't really needed.  I urge you to read it.  It is actually a very good book).  It's a tad grislier than Lewis's statement, but essentially the same.

Ransom and 'Weston', like I said, eventually do have a standoff, deep inside the caves of the 'fixed land' (every other piece of land is basically a literal seafoam island)... Ransom and the fake Weston beat the hell out of each other, and eventually they both collapse from exhaustion.  This makes me the maddest--not because they beat each other, although that was very unexpected and disturbing from CS Lewis, it was necessary--but because what had possessed Weston let him go so it wouldn't have to suffer.  All of a sudden Weston is in the middle of nowhere, memories from any time after Mars nonexistent, beaten to a pulp, with a broken leg.  He's crying, whimpering--he begs Ransom not to leave him, and finally explains why he is the way he is: as a child, he saw his large, strong grandmother dead and it frightened him, and he became obsessed with living, for as long as possible, no matter the cost.  During this, his speech gets twisted, and one is able to follow the same pattern that led Weston to be so open for possession.  The thing in Weston slowly returns again and attempts to drown Weston but fails and instead drowns himself.
What Ransom realizes is that fear and evil make you completely one with the devil/evil--he can work through you as if he is you and there is little to no difference, because it came on so gradually and naturally.  "What Pantheists falsely hoped of Heaven bad men really received in Hell.  They were melted down into their Master, as a lead soldier slips down and loses his shape in the ladle held over the gas ring.  The question whether Satan, or one whom Satan has digested, is acting on any given occasion, has in the long run no clear significance.  In the meantime, the great thing was not to be tricked again" (173).  This would be a reference to the ultimate goal of Hinduism, where your goal would be to attain a complete oneness with the rest of the universe.

My last note is towards the end of the book--Ransom recovers in the caves, finds food and a way out... Finalizing Ransom's position as a Christ-like figure is what he sees when he finally gets out of the cave and starts walking around: "There was something white near the water's edge.  An altar?  A patch of white lilies among the red?  A tomb?  But whose tomb?   No, it was not a tomb but a coffin, open and empty, and its lid lying beside it" (193).  What this actually is is the ship he is to return home in--it alternately represents the opened tomb left when Christ was resurrected (because Ransom was basically raised from the dead) and the tomb open yet waiting, because Ransom has yet to go back to earth and be reborn, so to speak.

The book ends with everyone reunited (including the green lady's mate), the true Venus and Mars greet everyone, and Ransom is sent back home, and we're back to the beginning.  I really hope I find the third book soon.  Although this series isn't stellar, it's pretty good.


MLA Citation Information: Lewis, CS.  Perelandra.  Collier Books: New York, 1962.

After Many A Summer Dies the Swan by Aldous Huxley

What.  The bloody hell.  Is this book?  I thought that because it made a little cameo in A Single Man it would be good.  That whole class lecture scene is incredibly intriguing.  Amazing!  But noooo.  This book couldn't hold my attention for five minutes.  I'd read twenty pages and be like... "What the hell is this?"  Not because it was terribly difficult or anything--it just wasn't interesting or amazing.  I mean, it pretty much was exactly about and representing what Isherwood had the students and George say (this may help).  It was helpful to read A Single Man first, actually, despite the fact that it gave me far too high expectations... I mean, it was like a pseudo-sparknotes deal.
So.  What the book is actually about--I trust you've peeked at the post linked above, so I need not explain what the title is referring to--though I think Huxley got his mythology confused.  Endymion, if I remember my mythology, was a sheepherder who was given immortality--but he was eternally sleeping.  This preserved his youth... On the other hand, there is another more unfortunate mortal who had won a goddess's affections.  His loving goddess, unfortunately, forgot to ask Zeus to grant her beloved eternal youth along with his eternal life. So--the man lived forever, but withered and eventually turned into a cricket.  There's a subplot--which becomes the main plot--involving a diary of a man who lived in the seventeen-hundreds.  The 'mainest' character of the book is a millionaire named Stoyte.  He is terrified of dying and has his personal physician working on the secret to immortality (apparently).  So yes, the doctor has a man's journal--an earl's, actually--who basically feared the same thing.  Noticing that the carps in the estate's pond are supposedly over one hundred years old, he decides to start eating the guts of the oldest carp to see what it will do for him.  What it does for him, is make him very, very... hmm... Long lived and fertile.  At the very end of the book, they find this man--he's holed up and locked away in a basement because he's devolved.  (He also gave a bit of the mixture to a housekeeper who was ill, and she too is locked away with him.)  So--like the cricket--he was given eternity but he withered on it--to something far more disgusting and pathetic than a cricket.  He's filthy, only wearing a shirt--a group consisting of Stoyte, the doctor, and a young woman who I will get to later watch him, stunned, for a few minutes... In that time he and the woman chatter to each other like apes. The man has blemishes and sores on him from living in such poor conditions (which aren't entirely his fault, admittedly...) But what is repulsive is that he just pees. Right where he's sitting.  Doesn't even get up, doesn't get up right away after he's sitting--and beyond being gross, it's disturbing.  The woman is just kind of there (the ex-Earl slaps her once or twice), but the man still has habits that he did so often while coherent that he just kind of does them.  He is wearing a ribbon and a medal, and he gets up and polishes them while humming a particular favourite tune of his--and every time he and his ex-housekeeper chatter at each other, their noises are described as on the verge of being understandable, echoes of coherence--and so on.  So yes, he withered like the cricket, but in a far worse way.
And--I realize I've been spoiling the ends in the very beginning of these posts quite often as of late--but now I feel that I absolutely have to tell you Stoyte's reaction to this gruesome spectacle.  Stoyte appears to be grossed out for a moment, but he can't seem to quite understand the situation: "Mr. Stoyte broke his silence.  'How long do you figure it would take before a person went like that?' he said in a slow hesitating voice.  'I mean, it wouldn't happen at once... there'd be a long time while a person... well, you know; while he wouldn't change any.  And once you get over the first shock--well, they look like they were having a pretty good time. I mean in their own way, of course.  Don't you think so...?' he insisted" (356).  The doctor just laughs at how pathetic he is.  Actually, the more I think about it, the more that this Doctor seems almost like a god figure of the novel... Beyond everyone's personal hangups and--he just seems a lot more intelligent and more powerful than everybody else.  The doctor may even be seen as a devilish figure--he is holding out powerful temptations (he seduces the young woman who saw the devolved people, and makes her feel pleasure during sex, eek), and has the key to immortality in his palms--and he's messing with everybody with utter glee.  He likes watching everybody floundering for nothing more than his own amusement.

So, the story starts out when a middleaged man named Jeremy goes to America to do some bookkeeping for Mr Stoyte.  From here we meet the doctor, Obispo, Pete (O's assistant, who falls for Virginia), Virginia, Stoyte's mistress, Stoyte himself, and a few others.
My first note has to do with Jeremy--seven pages in he writes a letter to his mother, "Oscar Wilde's old friend, the witty and cultured Mrs. Pordage" (7).  Of course I would mark that--as for the name, she is entirely fictional.  I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise, but you never know.

I also want to mention that this is Jeremy's first time in the country--and he's in California first!  He's hit with a barrage of neon marketing and superficiality, the likes of which he's never seen before.  He's very overwhelmed, he starts trying out lingo and promising himself he'll try the things advertised, like certain types of burgers or milkshakes.   It's overwhelming and strange, because he's never seen this sort of mass advertising and everything.  It all seems as it is: absurd, alien, disgusting, rotten, pointless, a mockery--because it's being looked at by a foreigner (he is not necessarily seeing things as rotten or disgusting, but through his eyes, things look that way--like the neon-lit cemetery.  He's in awe of it and I was disgusted)--it's essentially the same way Thompson and his Attorney see Las Vegas in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, except without the lizards and bats and overwhelming fear--but those few moments when Thompson is sober and disgusted, basically the same.  And even when he's tripping, all the lights and signs and flashes and all overwhelm him and seem terrifying in their own right.

Stoyte has a terrible temper--his doctor has warned him that if he gets too riled, he's likely to give himself a second stroke.  So: "'God is love,' he said again, and reflected that, if people would only stop being so exasperating, he would never have to lose his temper.  'God is love.'  It was all their fault" (37).  This cracked me up.  I hope I don't need need to point out the humour... Do I?

The grossest thing I learned from the book was, unsurprisingly, explained by Obispo.  He talks about theories of prolonging life, and untrue rumours--that sour milk will lengthen your life or what have you.  One popular surgery in the days before the first World War it was apparently popular to have sections of your colon removed--that was thought to prolong health, I guess.  Huxley is not making this up, I just looked it up.  It killed 50% of people who tried it within two years, and even if it didn't, with a quarter of a colon you have to, um, "evacuate" as the doctor puts it, quite often.  Yeah, so my point is, ew ew ew, gross gross gross, Jesus why, ew gross, vomitrocious.

As for George of A Single Man talking about what Huxley has cited as the "stupidest text in the Bible"--it is, to remind you, "They hated me without a cause".  I guess this disturbs George's students, though Huxley in his own book basically says what George says, except in a more concise manner without examples and not as expansively (though I suppose concise would imply that?).  And it's weird to think... A student raises the Holocaust in response to George's agreement with Huxley on this being the stupidest scripture.  This book was written in 1939--when the very first Jews were being taken into ghettos and camps.
"For what hope, he asked himself, what faintest glimmer of hope is there for a man who really believes that 'they hated me without a cause' and that he had no part in his own disasters?  Obviously, no hope whatever... In some measure they are directly or indirectly responsible.  Directly, by the commission of stupid or malicious acts.  Indirectly, by the omission to be as intelligent and compassionate as they might be" (107).
Later Huxley adds that the most sensible text of the Bible is "'God is not mocked; as a man sows, so shall he reap'" (256).  I agree--and if the God bit makes you uncomfortable, add 'fate' or 'destiny'--or even cutting it out altogether works.
"'As a man sows, so shall he reap.  God is not mocked.  Not mocked,' he repeated.  'but people simply refuse to believe it.  They go on thinking they can cock a snook at the nature of things and get away with it.  I've sometimes thought of writing a little treatise, like a cook-book.  "One Hundred Ways of Mocking God," I'd call it.  And I'd take a hundred examples from history and contemporary life, illustrating what happens when people undertake to do things without paying regard to the nature of reality.  And the book would be divided into sections, such as "Mocking God in Agriculture", "Mocking God in Politics", "Mocking God in Education", "Mocking God in Philosophy", "Mocking God in Economics".  It would be an instructive little book.  But a bit depressing,' Mr. Propter added" (282-283).  "'Cock a snook'"?

"'Bad art can't do so much harm as ill-considered political action'" (172).  Originally I marked this because again, Huxley mentioned Oscar Wilde, but then I realized that there was a good point--he's playing off of Wilde's "art for art's sake".  Even if the art you make is mediocre, it's not as bad as a terrible political move--et cetera.

So far as i know, the earl whose diary is found and read is not based on any real earl.  Again, I guess that probably goes without saying, but that's not the point--the point is that the earl 'wrote' a pretty bit of poetry and I was just checking if it was thieved... Anyways, the results, other than one passage, are pretty bad--"'If only the rest were silence!'" (213).  Hehe.

The doctor, although he plays as a sort of God character, he is a smug fool too--he's just stupid in different ways--he's one of the sort who would have caused Brave New World.  The doctor vaguely mentions several authors--the one he says specifically is Shelley--that he could have fixed, thanks to his modern medicines and therapies.  Because many great pieces of art and literature are created out of suffering, I believe what he (Huxley, not the doctor) is essentially saying is that modern amenities can basically end art--beauty--and so on.  Which again is exactly what is illustrated in Brave New World.  There's a scene where Jonathan asks the man who suppresses all old literature and art if he has any use for old things, and the man says no, and then Jonathan asks even if they are beautiful, and the man says "'Particularly when they're beautiful'".  (No source, but I promise that that is the exact line.)


My last note that directly corresponds to a page is the quote attached to the spiel about the silliest/most important quotes from the Bible.  My last comment is again on the earl and his immortality secret: raw carp guts.  It doesn't specify if it's just one dose or several that keeps up youth indefinitely (which bothers me greatly, the housekeeper lady is recorded to have taken it once when she was ill, but no other records of her taking it are there... Which doesn't really make sense...)
My second note is that a popular Roman condiment/dish was fermented fish paste--the exact recipe for making this... thing is unknown, though apparently historians have sought after the dish for quite some time.  My point is that Romans, judging from statues, aged really, really well.  And it's been proven that having a diet that's high in fish is about as healthy as you can get--well, it was at one point.  Now that all fish are supposedly up to their gills in mercury... So, Huxley has something!  We've found the key to immortality!  HAHAHAHA--no, that's stupid.  The reason why Huxley chose carp is because they live so incredibly long.  But yeah, a diet with fish as a staple bis very healthy, but probably won't lengthen your life to two hundred years/turn you into an ape person.  That is all, good night.


MLA Citation Information: Huxley, Aldous.  After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.  Ivan R Dee, Inc: Chicago, 1993.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Well!  You've heard of this.  You know you've heard of this.  Don't even try to tell me that you haven't heard of this.  Even if you somehow aren't aware of this movie's (everyone knows this movie; I have a feeling many people are surprised when they find out that this is a book) existence, you know these faces.  This is a book set before, during, and after the Civil war.  What makes it most interesting is that it's set in the South, and if you're not from the South at least, you don't really hear about that perspective of the war.  Then again, Mitchell could have been a Southerner and may have exemplified things--though I've no doubt Northerners looted, robbed, and burned down property.  Most of them were probably fighting just because there was fighting going on.  Actually, the book does a good job of proving that not all Northerners were saints.
The main character, Scarlett O'Hara, is your basic Southern belle.  Basically every boy her age (or of marrying age) wants to marry her.  Her world, just before the war, is shattered because she learns that one ex-beau of hers is getting married.  She is pretty convinced that she loves him, but it's actually a stupid crush that screws up a good portion of her life--even when she realizes that she never actually truly loved Ashley (about four pages from the book's end), it bites her in the butt.  And she doesn't change at all.  She almost matures and grows and learns at the end, but she ruins it all.*
Rhett Butler is a suave, smooth-talking ladies' (is that right?) man.  He's a scam artist, and he gets around.  He's a slippery, slimy thing--unfortunately, even though I hated him at the end of the book, he was the only main character I could like.

The first sentence of the novel is this: "Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charms as the Tarleton twins were" (1).  This is interesting--her eyes are sort of the hypnotizers (yes, I know that's not a word.  Roll with it), and her charm draws men in.  As the hardships of the war and its aftermath continue, her charm disappears, and her face becomes narrow and even harsher.  Her lack of beauty becomes painfully clear, and her face begins to look like her cold mind.  (To be fair, it was necessary to become that way to survive the war and all, but while she grew up mentally to survive, she never really matured, if you understand what I mean.*)
So the book starts on the day Scarlett learns Ashley is to be married.  She becomes horrified, but somewhat comforted--because she will see him at the barbecue the next day and she becomes sure that she will be able to talk Ashley out of it, or have him admit that it was just a joke, or something.  Surprise, surprise, this was not the case.  And I've lasted almost three paragraphs without complaining, and now it has to happen: Ashley 'loved' Scarlett (by the end Scarlett realizes it was just infatuation, or lust)--but at the beginning he cannot tell the difference.  He didn't propose to Scarlett even though he thought he loved her because he was cowardly.  When he reappears after the war it is excruciating, watching their "drama" unfold.  They have their dramatic soap opera "I love you and I must kiss you" moments, and I just want to keel haul them both.  They need sassy gay friends.  Scarlett, he turned you down because he wasn't man enough to make a good decision--and Ashley, you missed your chance.  You both need to write sad poems in your diaries and move on.  I practically cheered when they realized that they were just being teenagers about each other.

Anywayyys.  Scarlett gets livid, and in desperation she accepts a proposal from a certain Charles.  Of course Ashley tells Scarlett he loves her that night... Ugh.  I didn't find this dramatic or touching or anything, and as you can tell, I never found it particular touching or moving or dramatic.  If you can't man up then don't make the rest of us suffer, jeez.
Scarlett's dramatic bit is that Ashley turns the corner and walks away, Scarlett realizes that she is now stuck to Charlie when in reality her and Ashley share stupidity love, and the section reads something like "and in that moment Scarlett realized how much she loved Ashley".  (Note the "something like".)  Ughhh, cry me a river.  And in the book this failed "romance" didn't even bother me yet.  I figured it would fade.  Sure, she's living with Ashley's wife, but come on.  Five years pass!  Six!  Come on.  Ugh... They just... they just make me want to drink.  Let's just please move on, okay?

"'The man is too clever with cards to be a gentleman'" (137).  Scarlett's father on Rhett, who got him, in a word, wasted, and wrecked him in cards.

"'Once he's made up his mind to something, no one could be braver or more determined but--He lives inside his head instead of outside and he hates to come out into the world'" (142).  This is Scarlett's major revelation about Ashley.  It comes while she is secretly reading a letter from him to his wife--she realizes that he was too cowardly to marry her for fear it would "'upset his way of thinking and living'" (142).  Of course, she doesn't think of it as cowardice.  She just gets frustrated that she doesn't quite understand her revelation--what it means to be in your head and to fear coming "out into the world" and thinks that if she could figure it out she would figure out how she could have gotten him to marry her instead of Melanie.

 "'All wars are sacred,' he said. 'To those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn't make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is "Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!" Sometimes it's "Down with Popery!" and sometimes "Liberty!" and sometimes "Cotton, Slavery and States' Rights!"'" (153).  First of all, Rhett is referencing the crusades, any sect of Christianity that's not Roman Catholicism (probably the Protestant Reformation?), liberty could be anything, but my first thought was of the Revolutionary war (remember the stamp act, the sugar act, and the other unfair taxes?), and the last one is, of course, the Civil war, which is currently going on (in the story), and which Rhett clearly doesn't support or believe in.  Scarlett, idiot as she is, doesn't understand the references and gets annoyed that he is bringing up seemingly unrelated topics.
Second of all, Rhett has a very good point.  I still kind of have trouble with trying to figure out how the Crusades were more money related than trying to gain back the holy lands from 'heathens', but I'm not very familiar with the Crusades.  And it makes sense with an overwhelming amount of battles and wars that can be skimmed off the top of the head.
3.  This book certainly proves that noble reasons don't mean squat.  The Northerners are portrayed as being more racist than Southerners--after the war, one Northern lady is horrified at the suggestion to get a black nursemaid for her children.  The Northern ladies, who have all read Uncle Tom's Cabin, are also grossly interested in hearing about servants being whipped and tortured.  Now, as I said, Mitchell may be a Southerner, so she may be trying to make Northerners look stupid--though I've no doubt that there was a good percentage of Northerners that were like this.  They didn't give two pence for their noble cause--they might not even have been aware of that.  Now, let me go in another direction entirely: Scarlett and Melanie are both shocked at the idea of whipping slaves, and it's true, that only once we see a slave beaten (and that slave is beaten by her own mother) in the book, but remember--we basically are only seeing "house slaves", or "house n-----s".  Though life was still rough, their lives were considerably more posh, and probably wouldn't have been treated as harshly as field hands.  (Go read the Meet Addy American Girl Doll book for an example of how field hands were treated.)  Scarlett thinks of Mammy and Pork and the other house slaves as family, or just below family, so beatings and other harsh actions were probably rare.  (Hence why the field hands ran away and Mammy and Pork and company did not.)  I can't remember what I was trying to prove, but I hope that this off-kilter rant/long statement was at least somewhat interesting/enlightening.  Now then--I guess on to more coherent things...

So, my next note is just a quote from during the siege--when Northerners went through plantations and towns and all and burned whatever they couldn't eat or loot--they burn thousands of dollars worth of cotton at Tara (the O'Hara plantation), for example.  "It was as though, the worst having happened, they had nothing more to fear.  They had feared a siege and now they had a siege and, after all, it wasn't so bad.  Life could and did go on as usual.  They knew they were sitting on a volcano, but until that volcano erupted there was nothing they could do, so why worry now?" (218).  Or: Gone With the Wind summarizes my basic take on life entirely.

Rhett Butler, right before he took Scarlett, Melanie, and Scarlett's son by Charlie back to Tara during the siege: "'[Yankees] are pretty much like Southerners--except with worse manners, of course, and terrible accents'" (223).  This cracked me up.  At first I got annoyed (accents?  We don't have accents!)--but then I remembered Rhode Islanders, and Bostoners, and... Are New Jersey folks 'Yankees'?  And, of course, it's ironic, because Southern accents are simply awful.  They grate on my nerves (well, still not as bad as Rhode Island accents, I'll give Southerners that, but...)

Ah, my next note is on a reference to the book of Job--Scarlett manages to grab hold of a mangy horse at Tara.  It's been kicked about and is a pretty sad sight, but it's better than having no horse.  She says that if the horse was dead, she would just curse God and die--"Somebody in the Bible had done just that thing.  Cursed God and died" (261).  Of course, no-one had actually done that--while Job is suffering from boils and destroyed crops and his sons becoming ill and dying, his wife suggests that he curse God and die.  (What about her?  Seems suspicious to me.)

Oh, and of course Melanie was pregnant, and fared badly.  Actually, they thought she would die after she had the child--the second there was a worry of her death I was like, "SHE IS GOING TO DIE AND ASHLEY WILL BE ALIVE AND ASHLEY AND SCARLETT WILL GET TOGETHER!"  Eventually Melanie does die due to complications--but this is because of a second child, nearly 400 pages and five or six years later.  Of course, this is when Scarlett realizes she and Ashley didn't really love each other, but still.  I called it this early on, and at that point when she actually died, I rolled my eyes.  It's like when the girl conveniently dies in David Copperfield, except it didn't seem so stupid and overwrought then, although I did predict it.  Anyways, times are tough, there are infirm, house slaves who are useless because they aren't field hands, there is Scarlett's kid, Melanie's new baby, and Pork's wife just had a baby.  Scarlett isn't exactly rejoicing at all the mouths to feed, and to hear that there's another baby about nearly drives her mad.  "Babies, babies, babies.  Why did God make so many babies?  But no, God didn't make them.  Stupid people made them" (270).  I pretty much died laughing.

"But she could not feel.  She could only think and her thoughts were very practical" (358).

As a little bit of a summary of what has gone on--I'm sorry--the war has ended, and Scarlett took a visit back to Atlanta, Georgia.  Desperate to make some income for Tara, Scarlett married her younger sister's old beau, Frank Kennedy, and manages his store and two lumber mills.  Obviously, this is a scandal to everyone, and Frank is embarrassed, and Scarlett's younger sister hates everything that has ever lived.  I believe I've mentioned already about how all the Northern officers' wives were curious about whipping and slave mistreatment because they had all read Uncle Tom's Cabin.  Mitchell refers to this as bigotry!  Scarlett expresses disbelief at the thought of whipping slaves--but again, Scarlett has only ever been in contact with house slaves--slaves who very rarely would have been whipped.  Not only that, Mitchell, I have found out since last writing on here, was a terrible racist.  In fact, that's what she's known for more than being the author of this book.  Mitchell might not have believed whipping and such occurred.  The house slaves she portrays are "like family" (according to Scarlett), but are more often than not portrayed as being very stupid or doglike--like Dilcey.  Even if a slave is being portrayed as being intelligent, or at least smarter and cleverer than an animal, they are always brought down, for Mitchell will describe them in broad stereotypical ways.  EG, "she had that negro-like way of...", she had X look that was common to negroes such as herself", "she had the powerful glare of a...", et cetera.  Mitchell actually even presents the slave system as being necessary. Unbound field slaves being drunken degenerates and a group of them almost gang-rapes Scarlett.  Although this probably occurred now and again (just as white men will rape women, it happens), the knowledge of the author makes everything untrustworthy and suspicious.  (If the topic of the book itself didn't make the reader wary already...)  So--Mitchell was probably trying to say that the slave system was necessary, or else all hell would break loose and no-one would be safe, et cetera.

Mitchell also puts women who believe that they have the right to vote (and men who believe that women should have that right) on the same level as lunatics, alcoholic (women) and divorced women (which was quite a scandal in those days).

Frank is killed after the incident where Scarlett is almost raped--he was a member of the KKK, and upon hearing her recounting of what happened, he rallied the troops, so to speak, and killed the men who did it and lost some of their own.  Scarlett feels guilty about his death, especially since she was so nasty to him while they were married.  Anyways--Rhett goes to comfort her, and there's a funny scene: "'It's all Frank's fault for not beating you with a buggy whip... I'm surprised at you, Scarlett, for sprouting a conscience this late in life.  Opportunists like you shouldn't have them.'  'What is an oppor--what did you call it?'  'A person who takes advantages of opportunities.'  'Is that wrong?'  'It has always been held in disrepute--especially by those who had the same opportunities and didn't take them'" (552).
Rhett then immediately proposes to Scarlett.  Scarlett accepts.
"He made her play and she had almost forgotten how.  Life had been so serious and so bitter.  He knew how to play and swept her along with him" (569).

Again, another reference--really a paraphrase--to the Bible: "'It's harder for speculators' money to get into the best parlors than for the camel to go through the needle's eye" (572).  Jesus, in Matthew, says that "It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven... It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God" (Luke, Mark, Matthew--various phraseries of this).

As things usually go, Rhett and Scarlett have a child together.  The daughter began to suffer from night terrors.  After Bonnie was born, Scarlett absolutely refused to have another child and would not even let Rhett share a bed with her.  So their daughter slept in her crib in her father's room with the lights on.  Scarlett once overhears Bonnie relating one of her horrible nightmares to her father--she explains that a big "it" sat on her chest and had claws.  The claws are different, but often incubi are characterized as sitting on their victims' chests or stomachs.  (See "The Nightmare", a painting by Henry Fuseli--the 1790 version is pretty nightmare-inducing in its own right, too.)  I just thought that that was a rather curious reference, if Mitchell even intended that... (The kid is only four or five!)

Ashley is terrible and depresses the world--it kills him that Scarlett has turned so hard and money hungry, but she's had to become that way.  Though she's hard and cruel now, she has adapted, and he's become weak because he can't handle a hard life of work and money garnering.
"'I shouldn't have let him make me look back,' she thought despairingly.  'I was right when I said I'd never look back.  It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can't ever do anything but look back'" (615).

"'Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them'" (675).  Scarlett, after seeing Melanie in her deathbed, when she realizes that she would have gotten nowhere if Melanie hadn't been at her side.  As she realizes this, she realizes that she never needed Ashley at all.  Her love for him wasn't really love at all, it was hardly anything: "Out of the dullness, one thought arose.  Ashley did not love her and had never really loved her and the knowledge did not hurt.  It should hurt.  She should be desolate, broken hearted, ready to scream at fate.  She had relied upon his love for so long.  It had upheld her through so many dark places.  Yet, there the truth was.  He did not love her and she did not care.  She did not care because she did not love him.  She did not love him and so nothing he could do or say could hurt her" (675).
*So--as Scarlett has her revelation, Rhett has his own.  He was sick of playing second banana to Ashley for so long, and now that Melanie is out of the picture, he sees no point in staying on.  When Scarlett attempts to explain that she truly loved him all along and only just realized it, he explains that he fell out of love with her as easily as she did with Ashley.  Now--this disappointed me, though I understood it.  It made sense.  Now, as a backtrack, Scarlett's little anthem was "I'll think about it tomorrow, tomorrow is another day", etc--and that's how the book ends: "'I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara.  I can stand it then.  Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back.  After all, tomorrow is another day'" (689).  The last line is inspiring.  As last sentences go?  Very nearly one of the best.  But--"some way to get him back"?  Oh no.  Oh hell no.  You spent four hundred and fifty pages attempting to do this with Ashley.  You are not doing this again.  You are still an idiot.  Though she grew up--she became money-minded, could manage food and all--managed a store, two mills and Tara--but she didn't mature any.  Ughhh.


Oh, and the last time I saw the movie, I was about eleven.  Basically the only scene I remember was when Rhett and Scarlett's daughter dies--she falls off a pony while riding sidesaddle when it jumps a hedge.  The second Rhett bought her the pony I was basically like, IT IS ALL OVER, YOU HAVE SEALED YOUR DAUGHTER'S FATE.  The only other scenes I remember clearly are these two: the iconic "frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" scene, and an added scene where Scarlett gets mad that her waist is nineteen inches (because of her two children) instead of sixteen as it used to be.  I remember it because I couldn't figure out what the big deal was.


Well, there's that.  The book was rather gripping--I was completely sucked in during the war years.  Unfortunately, when Ashley showed up again and their pathetic romance played out I lost interest.  But still--if you're interested in this period, definitely read it.  Like I said, it was pretty interesting to see the war and its aftermath from a Southern perspective.  It was even more interesting because I took a history class first semester that was something like America 1650-1870, so I actually knew what the battle of Vicksburg met, who Carpetbaggers were, and so on.  I wouldn't read it if you haven't got a lot of free time, though--my edition clocks in at nearly seven hundred pages, and it's columned like a Bible.

MLA Citation Information: Mitchell, Margaret.  Gone With the Wind.  The Macmillan Company: New York, 1936.  (Is it possible that I have a first edition of this book!?  Or a close to first!?  It's in awful condition, but still, that's pretty cool...)



Unrelated Revelation Time: I was thinking about sunflowers the other day and realized something about the film adaptation of Everything is Illuminated--in The Sunflower, Wiesenthal observes that every grave of a soldier has a sunflower growing on it.  In Everything is Illuminated; however, those flowers are probably meant to represent the dead residents of Trachimbrod.  Or maybe soldiers too.  There were an awful lot of flowers.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson

Hello!  Today's book is Hunter S Thompson's famous--or maybe not so famous--book.  It's a warped version of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.  Actually, in one of the videos or excerpts or somethings we saw or read in Robby D's class actually asked, basically, "Where (or what) would Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas be without Kerouac's On the Road?"  What I mean by saying it's a warped version of Kerouac's most famous book (actually and for sure famous) is that like Kerouac, Thompson is looking for "it", or, the American Dream, which I think is fair to say could be "it", or a portion of "it".  (And now I have a sudden urge to read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test... Hm.  Strange.)  But yeah, I think it's a fair query, and a fair judgment.
So--Thompson (excuse me, Raoul Duke) and his attorney have been sent to cover a story out in Las Vegas.  They've stuffed their rented car with... Um.  Well... "We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls" (4).  So... Yeah.  Kerouac just stuck to pot.  What I should mention is--well, what I feel obliged to mention is that Thompson doesn't out rightly mention Kerouac anywhere, or not at all that I noticed, but he talks a lot about Horatio Alger.  Horatio Alger was a fictional character who was your basic "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" fellow.  I've never heard of anyone still 0reading the books he's featured in, and they're not required reading anymore, but you've probably read a description of someone that calls them a Horatio Alger.  So that's kind of who they're trying to be--kind of.  I think there's a difference between Horatio Alger representing the American dream and Kerouac.  Alger was trying to make something of himself and be successful (so I'm led to believe), while Kerouac is just trying to be--living without worries, doing whatever he wants, not being trapped in one state or another--et cetera.  (Of course, if Horatio Alger does make something of himself he wouldn't have worries and would have the money to do what he wanted... But it's obviously different.)

Anyways--the book opens with a quote by a fellow named Samuel Johnson.  The quote is "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being human".  This is the Samuel Johnson is this guy, apparently.  Although that is true of the book--the men are ruining themselves with drugs and constantly high and stoned and everything else--but they've fallen into a different kind of pain (or something) entirely.

"Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars" (18).  Thompson's reasoning for this excursion in the "red shark".

Most of these quotes are here because they were definitely on the sheet Robby D gave us.  Here we go: "Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas.  Five years later?  Six?  It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era--the kind of peak that never comes again.  San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of.  Maybe it meant something.  Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world.  Whatever it meant... It seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time--and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened" (67).

"There was madness in any direction, at any hour... You could strike sparks anywhere.  There was a fantastical sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning... And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil.  Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that.  Our energy would simply prevail.  There was no point in fighting--on our side or theirs.  We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave..." (68).  I believe this is where the quote on Robby D's paper ended.  The section, however, ends with this: "So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back" (68).  Obviously the hippies didn't work out.  There's a better quote some page later:  "But what is sane?  Especially here in 'our own country'--in this doomstruck era of Nixon.  We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. Uppers are going out of style. This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously.  After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him ... but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him. Not that they didn't deserve it: No doubt they all Got What Was Coming To Them. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too.  What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy: the desperate assumption that somebody--or at least some force--is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel" (179).  This too was on Robby D's sheet, and I think that it's interesting, implying that acid heads were desperately looking and hoping for God--Kesey's band insisted they were all anti-god, didn't need Him or any, but they worshiped Kesey fanatically--religiously.

The only tape they have is a Rolling Stones tape which has the song "Sympathy For the Devil" on it.  While listening to it: "Sympathy?  Not for me.  No mercy for a criminal freak in Las Vegas.  This place is like the Army: the shark ethic prevails-eat the wounded.  In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught.  In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity" (72).
"No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind" (89).

Thompson and his attorney end up at a drug conference.  This is filled with people who couldn't tell you the difference between a joint and a tab of LSD.  Joints are sometimes known as roaches, and a man presenting says it's because joints look like cockroaches.  Any idiot who has seen a movie, read a comic book or can use Google images can see this is not the case.  Wikipedia's theory is that the name comes from "joined", as in "joined rooms"--opium dens.  There's that mystery solved.  Anyways, Thompson goes onto further explain how idiotic and uninformed these people are, and that he can just see people like Timothy Leary making up these BS lines and feeding them to these unwitting people.  Although this sort of behaviour is natural for in groups when speaking to out groups, undoubtedly those gags caused troubles and misunderstandings that hurt the hippie/LSD/et cetera movement incredibly.  My point then, is just the fact that the disciples of acid and other drugs and such did play with people in this way, and in bigger ways, and basically screwed themselves.

Thompson and his attorney, much later, end up in a little truck stop diner, and the two, possibly strung out and possibly not, explain to the waitress and cook that they're looking for the American Dream.  The two of them--the waitress kind of an airhead and the cook kind of a grizzled older fellow--try to figure it out... The waitress asks the cook where it is, thinking it's a physical place.  He responds by asking what is that, and then says he thinks that it's the "old Psychiatrist's Club" (165).  The club is on the street/road/whatever Paradise... All that is left of the building--the American Dream--is a scorched base in an uncared-for vacant lot that's weed-choked.  "The owner of a gas station across the road said the place had 'burned down about three years ago'" (168).  In the introduction to this particular chapter it says that Thompson refused to read over this chapter or even discuss this.  I would bet that Thompson wrote that himself and it wasn't actually an editor writing.  The metaphor is so obvious I don't even feel like calling it a metaphor is quite right.  First of all, the cook, old and grizzled, is stuck in a dead-end job, and probably has been since he was the waitress's age--he doesn't know what the American Dream is.  He can only guess about what it might be.  The building is on paradise.  To achieve the American dream would, imaginably, put one in a heaven or paradise of sorts.  And the building has been burnt down.  Even its foundation is cracked and ruined and dirty.  The lot on Paradise is unattended to and ugly and filthy itself.  It burned down about three years ago--if you will recall, Thompson said that less than five years ago the hippies and acid generation ruined themselves.  That may not be exactly what he's referring to, but it seems to coincide... Either way, it's saying that the American Dream has been almost completely obliterated with barely even the memory of what it was still remaining.

"What sells, today, is whatever F---s You Up--whatever short-circuits your brain and grounds it out for the longest possible time.  The ghetto market has mushroomed into suburbia.  The Miltown man has returned, with a vengeance, to skin-popping and even mainlining... and for every ex-speed freak who drifted, for relief, into smack, there are 200 kids who went straight to the needle off Seconal.  They never even bothered to try speed" (202).
"Uppers are no longer stylish... It is worth noting, historically, that downers came in with Nixon" (202).

The book ends without Thompson finding the dream.  He boards a plane back to Denver and snorts some amyl, then shambles into the bar.  The very last sentence is, "I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger... a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident" (204).  Presumably, he will start on the same path all over again.

And, not to be overlooked--my favourite lines in the book.  The attorney will often start demands or requests or even just statements as "As your attorney, I advise..." My favourite?  "'As your attorney, I advise you to tell me where you put the goddamn mescaline'" (119).


MLA Citation Information: Thompson, Hunter S.  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  Vintage Books: New York, 1998.


I'm tempted to put this in the classics shelf just because it's such a nutty bastardization of On the Road and like books.  We'll see tomorrow, I guess.  Despite its insanity and because its subject is likely to get it written off as--um--just some junky work or something, you can tell Hunter S Thompson is a very bright fellow.  I'd recommend it.

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

So.  I can't say that I'm in love with this book.  Virginia Woolf certainly is eloquent, but I found it very difficult to get into the book.  She writes well--incredibly well--but I just wasn't feeling it, even if I could relate to the characters and all of that.  That's just the way it goes sometimes.

The book itself is about, unsurprisingly, Mrs Clarissa Dalloway.  It starts out on the morning of a day she is holding a party.  On that day her former suitor comes by from India, where he has met a woman he loves.  Seeing Clarissa kind of throws him, and he goes back over the signs that their love couldn't last or hadn't existed at all, and all of that.  (There's no dramatic reuniting scene or any of that, just for the record.)  The story is also told through Septimus, a war hero who suffers from shell shock and who only appears in the main plot a few times, his wife, and Clarissa's daughter's history teacher.  Because it only takes place on one day, it's compared to Ulysses often--a comparison I wouldn't make.  There's a world of differences between them.  It just doesn't seem right to compare the two...

The first note is mainly just a quote from Clarissa--she's reflecting on her relationship with Peter. "For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say?--some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine morning--indeed they did" (9).  The main reason why I've bothered to quote this section is because it's just a speculation on the mind and memory, an entirely accurate speculation, and that's the sort of thing that interests me.  The secondary reason is that I find the "reward of having cared for people" bit quite interesting.  The section could mean imagining that he has come back (thus her mind has brought him back) and he is no longer bitter about choosing Dalloway over himself.  It could also mean that she is thinking about him without having any bitterness recalled in herself--thus, her affection for him overcame all of that.

"She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged.  She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on.  She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day" (11).  Fun fact: this quote was the whole reason why I decided to read this book.  It popped up on my Tumblr dash.

"The world has raised its whip; where will it descend?" (20).  This sentence comes forth in introducing the reader to Septimus.  He had a look in his eyes as though he were eternally apprehensive, so strong it made others feel the same, and thus...

"To love makes one solitary, she thought" (33).  Septimus's wife fears her husband's supposed mental illness, and half drowns him under various doctors and psychologists, who never let him speak and just put forth their judgment.  Rezia, the wife, isn't terribly smart and makes things more difficult for her husband and never listens to him, just swallows everything the doctors say without thinking.  Eventually--spoiler alert--this causes him to kill himself, because he overhears a doctor recommending to Rezia that he should be placed in an institution.  This makes me wonder about Woolf's feelings about Septimus and their similarities--Woolf eventually killed herself.

"It's been a hard life, thought Mrs Dempster.  What hadn't she given to it?  Roses; figure, her feet too... Roses, she thought sardonically.  All trash, m'dear.  For really, what with eating, drinking, and mating, the bad days and good, life had been no mere matter of roses, and what was more, let me tell you, Carrie Dempster had no wish to change her lot with any woman's in Kentish Town!  But, she implored, pity.  Pity, for the loss of roses.  Pity she asked of Maisie Johnson, standing by the hyacinth beds" (40).  This just reminded me of V for Vendetta... When Evey is reading Valerie's life story and she talks about how she grew roses with her lover in the window box, and then the war came, and after that there were no more roses at all--and she begins the conclusion to her letter with "It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to no one".  


This is from when Peter first calls upon Clarissa after having been gone for so long: "Peter Walsh had got up and crossed to the window and stood with his back to her... Mastery and dry and desolate he looked, his thin shoulder-blades  lifting his coat slightly; blowing his nose violently.  Take me with you, Clarissa thought impulsively, as if he were starting directly on some great voyage; and then, next moment, it was as if the five acts of a play that had been very exciting and moving were now over and she had lived a lifetime and had run away, had lived with Peter, and it was now over" (71).  


"But to whom does the solitary traveller make reply?" (88).  Peter, of course.


When Clarissa is first introduced to Richard Dalloway, she mishears his name and thinks that he is WickhamWickham is the name of the snake-in-the-grass in Pride and Prejudice... Not that Richard shows any outward signs of villainy, just that he stole Clarissa's heart, and that really matters most to Peter.  At the end of the day, they don't, like I said, have a dramatic reconciliation--the book ends with Peter looking upon her.  Nothing big and dramatic, and I kind of liked that.  Maybe Wickham isn't the one Clarissa should have married, and that is why he received that nickname, but he does not seem particularly cold or conniving like Jane Austen's Wickham (though he is a politician).  More likely than not, though, it just happens to be a name that I just happened to recognize that just happened to be the same.  Though you never know, of course...


"The compensation of growing old, Peter Walsh thought... was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained--at last!--the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,--the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light" (119). / "'They keep telling you, when you're older, you'll have experience--and that's supposed to be so great.  What would you say about that, sir?  Is it really any use, would you say?'  'What kind of experience?'  'Well--places you've been to, people you've met.  Situations you've been through already, so you know how to handle them when they come up again.  All that stuff that's supposed to make you wise, in your later years.'  '...For other people, I can't speak--but personally, I haven't gotten wise on anything.  Certainly, I've been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, Here it is again.  But that doesn't seem to help me'... 'Then experience is no use at all?  You're saying it might just as well not have happened?'  'No.  I'm not saying that.  I only mean, you can't use it.  But if you don't try to--if you just realize it's there and you've got it--then it can be kind of marvelous'"--Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man (page one hundred sixty).


"But Proportion has a sister, less smiling, more formidable, a Goddess even now engaged--in the heat and sands of India, the mud and swamp of Africa, the purlieus of London, wherever in short climate or the devil tempts men to fall from the true belief which is her own--is even now engaged in dashing down shrines, smashing idols, and setting up in their place her own stern countenance.  Conversion is her name and she feeds on the wills of the weakly, loving to impress, to impose, adoring her own features stamped on the face of the populace... She  stands preaching; shrouds herself in white and walks penitentially disguised as brotherly love through factories and parliaments; offers help, but desires powers; smites out of her way roughly the dissentient or dissatisfied; bestows her blessing on those who, looking upward, catch submissively from her eyes the light of their own" (151).  Like I said, the lady can write.  There's absolutely no question of that. 


"The difference between one man and another does not amount to much" (157).  This is one of those things that can either crack you up--Lady Bruton, a fan of Mr Dalloway, thinks this. She likes him because he was nice to her on one occasion, but she can't remember which exactly, because it was the kindness that counted.  It could have been any man or woman or anyone.  Anyways, it either cracks you up or depresses you--because it applies to you as well. 


Oh, and Richard gets excited by the fact that Peter is in the area and impulsively buys a great bunch of roses to give to his wife to remind her that he loves her.  


"How unbelievable death was!--that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant..." (185).  Mrs Dalloway, thinking about life day by day--until, of course, the inevitable.  


I believe I have mentioned Miss Kilman already--Elizabeth's history teacher.  Miss Kilman hates Mrs Dalloway.  She thinks she doesn't work hard enough (she believes that instead of lounging around the house and throwing parties and such, she should be working in the factory) and really sees Dalloway as a worm.  "Observing [Clarissa Dalloway's] small pink face, her delicate body, her air of freshness and fashion, Miss Kilman felt, Fool!  Simpleton!  You who have known neither sorrow nor pleasure; who have trifled your life away!  And there rose in her an overmastering desire to overcome her; to unmask her... If only she could make her weep; could ruin her; humiliate her; bring her to her knees crying, You are right!  But this was God's will, not Miss Kilman's.  It was to be a religious victory.  So she glared; so she glowered" (189).  So Miss  Kilman is a little, how you say, high-strung... Why I bothered to point it out is because Mrs Dalloway feels basically exactly the way about Miss Kilman--that she is foolish and is frittering herself (at least her mind) away--though she does not necessarily want to humiliate her or anything.  "Clarissa was really shocked.  This a Christian--this woman!  This woman had taken her daughter from her!  She in touch with invisible presences!  Heavy, ugly, commonplace, without kindness or grace, she know the meaning of life!" (189-190).  It's just sort of ironic that they'd both see each other in essentially the same exact light--you know?  Neither of them believes at all that the other knows what's going on, or isn't a heathen.  Kilman appears to be a straight backed, puritanical Christian (I'm thinking of the guy in The Scarlet Letter who had a house with shards of glass in the walls or whatever it was exactly), and Dalloway appears to be more relaxed and calm--like she thinks to herself later, she'd rather just let people be what they are.  Of course that's not quite true, but still, I'd rather be in Mrs Dalloway's company than Kilman's.  Miss Kilman is a tad too intense for me. 


My next note is on the page Septimus kills himself.  It's some more irony--like I mentioned earlier, Septimus overhears his doctor suggesting an institution, and it's for that reason and because he can't bear to be poked and prodded and made frustrated again that he kills himself.  He says that he doesn't want to die, but it's his act of rebellion.  The doctor, of course, cannot figure out why Septimus would want to kill himself.


Anyways--flip to many, many pages later--Elizabeth is, of course, at her mother's party.  The book does not mention whether she has entered society yet, but Clarissa's cousin mentions it relation to Elizabeth, at the party.  I've only marked this because she complains that nowadays girls wore "straight" and "perfectly tight" frocks (I'm going to say that probably means "form-fitting" and "skirts well above the ankles" (257).  Ankles!  Curved chest pieces!  Open-top carriages!  What disgraces could possibly be next!? 


A woman named Sally was at the party as well (this woman Clarissa had romantic feelings for, very strong ones--to just think that they were under the same roof sent Mrs Dalloway--before she was a Mrs of course--all a-quiver).  She thinks about how everyone loved her even though she was quite clumsy and could be absent-minded.  She notes several mistakes of hers, smoking in her bedroom, stealing food from the larder for midnight snacks, and once she left a valuable book "in the punt" (276).  I had to look this up... It's either a small boat, a Catalan newspaper, or the indented bottom of a wine bottle. 


Anyways, the party.  It goes well--for a tad bit Mrs Dalloway thinks it's going poorly, but it all turns out well.  It ends at the party's close, with Peter: "'I shall say good night.  What does the brain matter,' said Lady Rosseter, getting up, 'compared with the heart?'  'I will come,' said Peter, but he sat on for a moment.  What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself.  What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?  It is Clarissa, he said.  For there she was" (296).  




MLA citation information: Woolf, Virginia.  Mrs. Dalloway.  Harcourt, Brace and Company: New York, 1925.  




It wasn't half-bad.  I don't think Virginia Woolf is my new favourite, but I wouldn't turn her down, yeah?  I quite liked Clarissa--I've been reading a great myriad of books and--you know what, I liked Septimus, and Peter too.  There were a lot of characters I could relate to.  That's actually odd, I've been reading a lot of books with characters I can relate to, which may or may not be a bad thing (the next book up is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).  Hmm... I don't have a lot of commentary of this.  Not half-bad, not awe-inspiring, but likable, and if I saw it at a used book store I'd pick it up.  That sounds cruel, but I'm cheap.  Sorry I didn't describe the plot more, but it is really just a day in the life.  There's not a whole lot to say... Well.  Yeah.
I guess I don't have anything more to say.  Sorry... Um... I guess I'll see you with Hunter S Thompson next!


EDIT: On page 192, Clarissa complains that when Peter visited her that afternoon, he only talked about himself and said that it was a "degrading passion"--this is of course a reference to the book of Leviticus, where it refers to sexual relations between two men (the implication is that all-women relations would be the same, but it is not specified) as such.  He loves himself; he is a man loving a man.  

The Book of Mormon: Alma-Moroni

Hey, I'm back, finally finished with the Book of Mormon!  This is going to be a quick intro--this post is about the books of Alma, Helaman, 3 Nephi, 4 Nephi, Mormon, Ether, and Moroni.  There!  Done!

My first few notes on Alma are quotes: "The law could have no power on any man for his belief" Alma 1:17.
"Now there was a strict law among the people of the church, that there should not any man, belonging to the church, arise and persecute those that did not belong to the church, and that there should be no persecution among themselves" Alma 1:21.  From what I understand, Mormons are pretty calm towards everybody.
There are a lot of timing problems and things I don't understand.  Now, this was originally recording in the mid eighteen-sixties--so of course the author knows about Jesus Christ.  Of course, the Old Testament didn't know who Jesus was, so it basically says "someone will come".  Now, there's a possibility that when this was or was not dictated, that's what it was given as, and Joseph Smith just replaced it with Jesus... But it's a weak argument and this is, what I consider to be a fatal flaw in giving the religion credibility.  I know that seems cruel, but when folks born one hundred years before Jesus are saying you have to wash your lineaments in Jesus's blood... Well, you know.  Can't cleanse it through his blood if he hasn't shed it yet!  Even if it's a metaphor, it's still incredibly bothersome.
There's also the implication that, at eighty-three BC (the Mormons date big events in their books, which is very nice), it was known that Jesus would be born of Mary.  It's probably because of my own upbringing, but I find the fact that this was known by anyone (and so early!) to be ridiculous.  Mary didn't even know what was going to happen.  Nobody else did.  It seems unfair to spread the specific word to some and  not all...
"He cannot walk in crooked paths; neither doth he vary from that which he hath said; neither hath he a shadow of turning from the right to the left, which is wrong; therefore, his course is one eternal round" Alma 7:20.  I think that the word choice is interesting--he literally cannot walk in crooked paths, cannot leave his words, or go to the left (left was considered to be evil for--actually, in some Catholic schools children are still taught to write with their rights if they're a lefty)... Knowing me, you should not be surprised that I thought of A Clockwork Orange--the point of the novel and movie is really the question of what makes a man good (or evil).  Alex's choice to act evilly is eliminated--but does that really make him good?  His free will has been eliminated so he can't choose... Well, I think you know what I'm getting at.  (And in that case, saying his path is eternally round is appropriate!) A few chapters later we are told that he cannot deny his word--unfortunately, since Mormons, when referring to God, don't capitalize he or him, this may just be pronoun trouble--Jesus may not be able to deny God's word, not his own.  (I suppose that that's most likely.)
"Now, there is a death which is called a temporal death; and the death of Christ shall loose the bands of this temporal death, that all shall be raised from this temporal death.  The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time; and we shall be brought to stand before God, knowing even as we know now, and have a bright recollection of all our guilt" Alma 11:42-43.  I thought  the bit about the body being brought back perfectly and all of that was the most interesting bit.  I also think it's a little cruel to make a person remember everything... I hope you get to forget a lot of it afterwards.  It would be pretty unbearable.
"This mortal life is a probationary state" Alma 12.
Later the garden of Eden is discussed, and it says that the redemption plan was "laid from the foundation of the world" Alma 12:25.  This is not a new idea, but it is a disappointing and curious one.  I mean, why write that fall into the very fabric of existence?  At that, it's kind of like, "What's the point at all then, if you're just dooming them from the start?", you know?  That always really bothers me.
"And now we only wait to hear the joyful news declared unto us by the mouths of angels" Alma 13:25.
Alma was also apparently in possession of the same healing powers as Christ, 81 years before.  Again, this bothers me, most likely only because of my upbringing.  One example of Alma healing is Alma helping a lame man to walk again.  But that's kind of one of the things that made Jesus so special, right?  I mean obviously there's the whole son of God thing, but I figured that's where his ability came from so, despite my unsure feelings towards Jesus/what he was/might have been, it just bothers me that Alma is doing the same thing like it's nothing.

And here's another one!  At seventy-three BC: "And those who did belong to the church were faithful; yea, all those who were true believers in Christ took upon them, gladly, the name of Christ, or Christians as they were called, because of their belief in Christ who should come" Alma 46:15.  Maybe I'm being close-minded, stupid, or skeptical--but come on!  Christianity was started after Jesus.  It was named after him.  This is literally gibberish to me.
"And we do justly ascribe it to the miraculous power of God, because of their exceeding faith in that which they had been taught to believe--that there was a just God, and whosoever did not doubt, that they should be preserved by his marvelous power" Alma 57:26.  I just thought that to use taught as the word was interesting.
I also think the use of the word should is interesting.

Here starts the notes on the next book, Helaman--Lucifer is referred to as the "author of sin" (Helaman 6) and used interchangeably with Satan and presumably the devil in chapter six on...
Those who are fooled by him begin to form their own secret groups and gangs: "And it came to pass that they did have their signs, yea, their secret signs, and their secret words" Helaman 6:22.  As my bro Ken Kesey would say: "You're either on the bus or you're off the bus!"
I don't understand this passage at all--obviously it's God talking to the people, Nephi to be specific, but... "Behold, I give unto you power, that whosoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; and thus ye shall have power among the people" Helaman 10:7.
"Behold [God] hath put it into my heart to say unto this people that the sword of justice hangeth over this people" Helaman 12:5.
"He hath given unto you that ye might know good from evil, and he hath given unto you that ye might choose life or death; and ye can do good and be restored unto that which is good, or have that which is good restored unto you; or ye can do evil, and have that which is evil restored unto you" Helaman 14:31.  My note on this was that this was very Karmic.
My last note is about the Nephites and the Lamanites.  Jesus has, presumably, just been born (the date is one BC) and they get mad that the saviour isn't being born among them.  At first I was like, he hasn't even done anything yet!  Jeez!  But then again, these people apparently knew all about Jesus one hundred, two hundred years prior, so yeah.  I guess I'd be pretty annoyed too.  "Thanks for sending the saviour among them and not us--no, I don't even want him to visit.  I don't even care.  I didn't even want to be saved anyways!"  Yeaaaah.

Next note starts in on Nephi: "And behold, that great city Moroni have I caused to be sunk in the depths of the sea, and the inhabitants thereof to be drowned" 3 Nephi 9:4.  First of all, it should be absolutely no surprise that I wrote "ATLANTIS?" next to this line.  Secondly, the 'I' speaking--yeah, that's Jesus.  Actually, this seems like it would be another huge problem for Mormons, as they use the regular Bible too--and Jesus is basically a hippie in the Bible.  He's probably the last guy in the Bible you'd say would take down a city, even if it's 34 BC (so, probably only a few months at most before he was crucified) and is a little stressed because he knows what's coming.  That was kind of weird; it felt more like the crazy storytelling in the book of Revelations than anything else.  And if we are to assume that there was a regular Jesus even if he was not the son of God--he couldn't sink a whole city.  This is definitely some over-the-top storytelling here.
Jesus also says, after he is the son of God, that he created the heaven and earth.  I'm going to say whatever to this because I have no idea how the Trinity actually works.
"Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.  A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.  Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.  Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them" 3 Nephi 14:17-20.
Later Jesus says this to the people: "Behold, my bowels are filled with compassion towards you" 3 Nephi 17:6.  I don't even...
Jesus again: "And how be it my church save it be called in my name?  For if a church be called in Moses' name then it be Moses' church; or if it be called in the name of a man then it be the church of a man; but if it be called in my name then it is my church, if it so be that they are built upon my gospel" 3 Nephi 27:8.   Makes sense, and it would explain Christianity's differences in the actual names themselves except for the reasons I've been complaining about for several paragraphs.

No notes on the fourth book of Nephi.

The next book is the actual book of Mormon.  My first note (my only note, actually) is on this passage: And they did not come unto Jesus with broken hearts and contrite spirits, but they did curse God, and wish to die.  Nevertheless they would struggle with the sword for their lives" Mormon 2:14.  My first note is on how this parallels the story of Job--Job's wife suggests to him that  he curse God and die.  And--a comparison to Isherwood's A Single Man: "Then to the mirror.  What it sees there isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament. Here's what it has done to itself, here's the mess it has somehow managed to get itself into during its fifty-eight years; expressed in terms of a dull, harassed stare, a coarsened nose, a mouth dragged down by the corners into a grimace as if at the sourness of its own toxins, cheeks sagging from their anchors of muscle, a throat hanging limp in tiny wrinkled folds.  The harassed look is that of a desperately tired swimmer or runner; yet there is no question of stopping.  The creature we are watching will struggle on and on until it drops.  Not because it is heroic.  It can imagine no alternative" (10).  George in the book isn't necessarily suicidal, of course--he can "imagine no alternative", but he isn't particularly interested in life either.

The book of Moroni describes elders naming priests and the purpose of baptism... Apparently baptizing children is considered bad as well, not because they haven't chosen, but because they're already "alive in Christ" Moroni 8.  I'm not sure if I quite understand that; I'm just going to go ahead and say that it's because it's believed that little kids aren't really responsible for themselves, or don't understand baptism or atonement or any of that yet.  I think that's what is being said... (Moroni 8:10-15.)
The book of Moroni--the whole Book of Mormon, remember--ends with a bid of farewell, and the promise that when he meets the reader it will be before "the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead" Moroni 10:34.  What does that even mean?  Wasn't that a cowboy movie?
That's my last comment on Moroni.  I have to admit that by this point I was losing interest badly, so close to the end.  Although... At least it didn't end like the New Testament.  As fun as the book of Revelations is...


Well!  That's it.  I finally completed this.  (My poor wrists...)  I should also mention that there's a handy little index in the back of the book, though I won't be going through it.  Sorry.

The Book of Mormon.  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: United States of America, 2010.
Isherwood, Christopher.  A Single Man.  University of Minnesota Press: Minnesota, 2001. 


Okay... Yep.  Next post will be on Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, which will probably occur in about a week or so, most likely.

A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce

Whoop whoop, James Joyce action all up in here.  Maybe this could be a tradition.  (It was about this time last year that I was reading Ulysses).  I mean, I did just buy The Dubliners... And there's only so much Joyce I can take in one sitting, I guess.  It's funny, I loved almost all of Ulysses, but I found a lot of this book as fairly tiresome.  Of course, it's possible that that is because Ulysses is so crazy and random and utilizes a million different techniques and spontaneous prose and all of that--actually, if I recall, I didn't like the chapters on Stephen Dedalus too much either (the first two or three).  They're damned slow compared to the rest of the book, too, and a lot tougher than most of the rest of the book.  This book was a lot easier--but the style is more the same.  That could be because they're dealing with the same fellow, but I don't know...
Anyways, this is about Stephen's early life.  Childhood through college.  First of all, there is his name.  For those of you unfamiliar with Greek mythology, Dedalus (Daedalus) was an incredible architect--he designed the labyrinth the Minotaur (a half man half bull beast--whole other tangent for that one) was trapped in.  Anyways, he had to escape imprisonment and he made wax wings to fly away.  With him was his son, Icarus.  His son flew too close to the sun and his wings melted and he fell to his death--but Daedalus lived.  This implies a somewhat optimistic outcome for Stephen.  Apparently Stephen is named after St Stephen as well--St Stephen was stoned to death after making the local Jewish community mad.

So--before I start out still, I just want to point out that apparently HG Wells really liked this book.  Or at least he thought it was great.  Also, the cruelty and unfairness described in the schools is almost exactly the same as what Roald Dahl dealt with during his school days (as described in Boy, specifically the sections on the canings and captain Hardcastle).  And lastly, while I'm thinking of it, I picked this up at my aunt's Cape house.  The last time I went was three years ago, and I remember coming across this book and thinking that it looked incredibly boring and stupid.  How foolish I was!  Anyways, let's go.

First note comes from when Stephen is most likely in his elementary years--first stint in the boarding house, I'd imagine.  (Are schools like that still the norm over there?) Oh, by the way--Joyce omits quotation marks and all of that, so I'll be adding them in on quoted conversations just to make life easier.  "'What's up?  Have you a pain or what's up with you?'  'I don't know,' Stephen said.  'Sick in your breadbasket,' Fleming said, 'because your face looks white.  It will go away.'  'O yes,' Stephen said.  But he was not sick there.  He thought he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place" (13).

Second note is on the next page--some bigger boys tease Stephen because they ask him if he kisses his mother every night before bed he says yes, then when he tries to renege so they won't make fun they continue to laugh.  Ugh, that's pretty much the worst thing ever, because he gets all confused and everything, and everybody knows how awful that situation is.  Unless if you were the sort of person who enjoyed causing those situations, in which case, you are/were a terrible person.
"Was it right to kiss his mother or wrong to kiss his mother?  What did it mean, to kiss?  You put your face up like that to say goodnight and then his mother put her face down.  That was to kiss.  His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss.  Why did people do that with their two faces?" (15).

Ah, so I marked the page that I said was like Roald Dahl's recollections of school.  Stephen, like Joyce, wears glasses (and since Stephen is supposed to be Joyce--his Kilgore Trout, if you will--there's a very good chance that this is based on an actual occurrence).  He breaks them and when explaining how he very legitimately broke his glasses he is made out for a liar and his wrists are buffeted by a pandybat.

My next note comes on many pages later--Stephen's father drags him to the bars.  Mr Dedalus gets very drunk, embarrassingly so.  That hardly matters--an old man there drinking is "tapping his forehead and raising his glass to drain it" (95).  There's something about the "raising his glass to drain it" that gets me and amazes me.  I'm not sure what it is exactly, though.

Ulysses Leopold imagines that he has been turned into a woman after he has drunken far too much in the red light district (where he's going to collect Stephen!).  This leads me to believe that Joyce was to some extent curious about what it was like to be female--or at least what it would be like to experience sex as a woman, judging from this scene.  To be completely honest, I don't remember much from Leopold's scene other than the part where he spontaneously gave birth to eight children.  (Ew ew ew ew ew ew gross EW.)  I'm also going to back Joyce and say it's natural to wonder what it's like to be a member of the opposite gender.  And if my interpretation is correct, I can't help but wonder what the significance of having Stephen being the female--or submissive--figure is.  Perhaps saying that he is a slave to his lust or passions, cannot control them...?

My second note actually plays off from the end of the last quote: "...The cry that he had strangled for so long in his throat issued from his lips.  It broke from him like a wail of despair from a hell of sufferers and died in a wail of furious entreaty, a cry for an iniquitous abandonment, a cry which was but the echo of an obscene scrawl which he had read on the oozing wall of a urinal" (100).  First, I find it impossible to find that bit about the urinal wall gross.  This is thanks to the Hash-Slinging Slasher episode of Spongebob... This would be funnier if I could find the clip on Youtube, but apparently it doesn't exist?  What?  Okay, fine--but on a more serious note, during Stephen's chapters in Ulysses, he says that God is like a shout in the street.  Perhaps it's a somewhat weak and obvious connection--but hey.  I'm trying here!

His adventures with prostitutes are cut off short after he hears a sermon about the pains and tortures of hell--he is suddenly stricken with a fear for his soul and repents.

My next note is from later still--Stephen hears his surname called and he imagines he sees someone flying over the waves of the ocean in front of him (he never makes it clear whether he is actually aware of who the original carrier of the name actually was).  He then realizes that he is in that body and he is soaring.

"Do you believe in Jesus?  I believe in man" (198).

Stephen: "I tried to love God, he said at length.  It seems now I failed.  It is very difficult" (240).
"'Did the idea ever occur to you,' Cranly asked, that Jesus was not what he pretended to be?'  'The first person to whom that idea occurred to,' Stephen answered, 'was Jesus himself' (242).

"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use--silence, exile, and cunning" (247).  This is an interesting idea--we discussed it a lot in Contemporary Lit when we were reading 1984.  Winston and Julia do a lot of rebelling (and by rebelling I mean having sex everywhere and anywhere possible).  However, they rebel silently and quietly.  Until they are sold out, no-one is aware of their rebellion.  The idea that we discussed was if such a rebellion should even be considered a real rebellion.  Sure, they are rebelling against the norms and thought police and government and all--but their rebellion has literally no effect on the rest of the world.  Obviously they can't tell anyone about what they're doing--no-one can be inspired to join them--the society doesn't even allow martyrs to happen (what I mean is, people simply disappear, they aren't made into tragic saints or any of that)--so are their acts real rebellion?  Nothing is gained, nothing real is done, and so on... They're still contributing to the world which they are trying to fight as well.  So, they might as well be doing nothing... So yeah.  Nothing occurs.

"I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world" (251).  The last few pages take on a very different form, they become entries from Stephen's diary.  This is from one of the entries.


The book doesn't end with real closure--which makes sense.  Stephen's story is continued in Ulysses, and if Stephen really is supposed to be Joyce's Kilgore Trout, there shouldn't be.
A note on the text--James Joyce's curious way of writing dialogue and speech is apparently copied from the French model.  It was the style which was common in France at the time of the writing, and might even still be popular, though I've never looked at a French novel (in French) dated past 1956.
It was also a little funny while reading this book--though I didn't remember much of the story (though there really isn't much) I remembered quotes that particularly struck me that I did write down (somewhere) almost instantly.  For example, reading the bit about being sick in his breadbasket... Immediately I thought of the end of the quote without any real trouble at all.  I don't know, I just thought that it was kind of funny.  That's not usual for me, especially if I didn't own the book the first time through.

MLA citation information: Joyce, James.  A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man.  Penguin books: Pennsylvania, 1976.


Also, since Emma is too busy to read these and because no-one else reads these, I've removed the mystery lyrics thing (unless if a song particularly jumps out at me, in which case I will simply say that it reminds me of song X).  The answer to last post is If I'm Dreaming My Life by David Bowie, by the way... Well, yeah.  I'm taking a brief break from all of this to catch up on my writing and to rest my wrist and all, so expect a much lighter load of posts this summer.  Have a good one!