Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

So this book is really, really awesome.  It ends a little suddenly, and it has a weird needless interlude, but other than that it is so good.  So it starts off with Catherine, our heroine (as Austen never forgets to remind us), visiting Bath for the first time (WATCH OUT FOR WICKHAM!).  She makes friends with a girl named Isabella, who I had a great dislike for from the start--I'm just saying, she seemed like bad news to me from the get-go.  Female intuition?  Sure, why not?  So she meets this fellow, Henry Tilney (I find it interesting that he's referred to by his first name, when Mr Darcy hardly ever is.  I wonder why that's so... Change of time and customs, maybe?  Though I believe they were only written ten years apart, if that...) and instantly falls for him, though Isabella seems quite interested in pushing her stupid brother on her.  Isabella's family does everything in their power to keep Catherine away from the Tilneys, which leads to several scenes where if I could blue skiddoo into books, punching would have occurred.  Meanwhile, Isabella starts flirting with Henry's brother and basically becomes the female Willoughby (I could kill her, I really could!).  Catherine visits the Tilneys and the weird interlude is when Catherine imagines that Henry's father killed his wife because he seems unaffected when people mention her.  It makes sense in that Austen warns us that she enjoys Gothic novels and scary stories but at the same time it's kind of distracting and from Jane Austen, it feels like it's coming straight out of left field.  And then a little while later Catherine goes home and the end magically occurs.  Awesome!  Now let's get to this...


First of all, instead of saying etc. or et cetera, people back in the day just used &c.  That's awesome because one, it's an ampersand (though I don't really like it touching the c.  It's a little too awesome for the c, but okay, fine) and it makes sense.  'Et' means 'and' in Latin, and I think it may mean that in Spanish too.  Maybe.  Yes, I thought it was worthwhile to mention this.  Please stop judging me.

There's a biographical note from the 1818 edition included within this edition.  Here is a section from its first paragraph: "And when the public, which has not been insensible to the merits of 'Sense and Sensibility,' 'Pride and Prejudice,' 'Mansfield Park,' and 'Emma,' shall be informed that the hand which guided that pen is now mouldering in the grave, perhaps a brief account of Jane Austen will be read with a kindlier sentiment than simple curiosity" (3).  Those... Those Victorians sure have a way with words... Talk about tact.

"No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine" (13).  All right, comma splice and weird improper use of language aside, Jane Austen once again creates a great (and somewhat backhanded) opening sentence.

"Mrs Allen was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them" (20). MRS BENNET?  This kind of makes me wonder if Jane's mother or one of her aunts was like this...

Oh, when they first meet Mr Tilney, he tells them that he buys his own cravats.  Boy knows his cravats?  SNAP THAT MAN UP.

"'Thank you; for now we shall soon be acquainted, as I am authorized to tease you on this subject whenever we meet, and nothing in the world advances intimacy so much'" (29).

Jane Austen also interjects a lot too, in a Kurt Vonnegut-ish manner.  I've been reading the Hipster Disney Tumblr, so I'm tempted to make a joke, but I'm going to resist.  I think what may be more interesting is though this is one of the first books she wrote, I believe it wasn't published until after her death.  I thought that this way of hers had developed in her later books (it comes through a little in Mansfield Park), but I guess not.  Maybe that's why it wasn't published when it was originally submitted to the publisher...?  The fact that she's a she probably didn't hurt either.  But maybe that's why it tones down a little later on.  (There will be more on this later...)

"Mr Tilney was no fonder of the play than the Pump-room" (35).  A pump room, according to Google, is a microbrewery of sorts.  (Perhaps a pub?) This is the only time I've seen her mention it, and she mentions it at least three times every fifteen pages.  Before I looked it up (IE, before two minutes ago) I thought it was a sort of boiler-engine room sort of place (which doesn't even really make much sense in the story since it talks about men going there to smoke, but my brain is always keyed for steampunk, okay?), which made this really, really funny... Like Oscar Wilde if steampunk had actually happened when it should have... But now it's not.  Sigh... I just want everything to be steampunk!  And as long as I'm dreaming, I would also like to be dating Ben Barnes.  Cool, thanks, bye.

Isabella starts talking about how partial she is to the profession of the clergyman (cough cough Catherine's brother) and she sighs a little dramatically when she tells Catherine about this.  "Perhaps Catherine was wrong in not demanding the cause of that gentle emotion--but she was not experienced enough in the fineness of love, or the duties of friendship, to know when delicate raillery was properly called for, or when confidence should be forced" (36).  Spoiler alert: nobody actually does.  Even when they think they do and seem pretty confident, refrain from believing it.  Trust me.

Anyways, here is a (long) example of what I mean by Jane Austen's little interludes:
"They... shut themselves up, to read novels together.  Yes, novels;--for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are in themselves adding--joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such work, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust" (37).  Okay, you know what, I can't put this all down here.  She goes on for about two pages and starts lecturing the entire world because they honour authors such as Milton or Pope but then bash contemporary novelists and their novels and treat bookreading with shame. Et cetera, et cetera--it boils down to the fact that Jane Austen is not subtle.  (Though I do agree with her.)  This thought process will be echoed later in Pride and Prejudice, when someone degrades the importance of reading (when Elizabeth is teased for preferring reading to cardplaying?) and Mr Darcy says that he respects and agrees with that (or whatever it is exactly he says, all I know is that he's got Elizabeth's back) and earlier when he's talking about his library at Pemberly and someone is complimenting it and Mr Darcy's just like, psh, yeah, "'I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these'".
Oh, and Wilde complains about the same thing, possibly in his essay "The Critic as Artist" (don't quote me on that one, though...).  He says that people should not use classics as bludgeons with which to beat new novels into shape.  It's really well-written, though, I'm not doing it any credit at all... Then again, of course it's well written.  Look who wrote it!
"Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body" (37).  This actually does not occur in the story's context, this occurs in Jane Austen's little lecture.  Authors of contemporary novels insult each other and put each other down (especially if their heroine picks up a book that is contemporary and puts it down with disgust) in an attempt to make themselves stand out and seem better or more moral or what have you, thus deserting each other when they really should be standing together and supporting each other under the public eye, and so on.
By the way, on page forty-eight we get an illustration of the stupidity of Mr Thorpe (Isabella's father), who is just as foolish as his daughter is a flighty scoundrel.  Mr Thorpe is almost as stupid as the headmaster (or whoever it is Humbert Humbert speaks to at the girls' school) in Lolita.  Catherine asks him if he has ever read Udolpho and he says that he never reads novels, for he always has something else to do.  He then says that novels are "'all so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones, except the Monk; I read that t'other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation'" (49).  Later he admits to liking the writing of "Mrs Radcliff"--the author of the book Catherine has suggested that Mr Thorpe read.  He then attempts to cover for himself by saying he confused it with a French book named Camilla--a book which, despite my never reading it, he has clearly misunderstood its point and deeper meaning.  Though I have never read anything of Tom Jones (though the name sounds familiar) or "the Monk", it's clear that he's exactly what Jane Austen has just railed against, and that he is a fool.

Isabella's brother attempts to attract Catherine--the whole family tries to pull them together in very annoying ways--and at one point he attempts to distract her from Mr Tilney by way of another dance.  But how does he ask?  "'I suppose you and I are to stand up and jig it together again'" (59).  LINES THAT WOULD WORK ON ME.  Well, if they were from someone other than John Thorpe.  But still.  I pretty much died laughing.  I know it was probably normal slang for the time, but still.  Best.  Thing.  Ever.

Also, like Mr Darcy, Catherine has an awesome "bugger off" scene.  Mr Darcy's "bugger off" scene is when he's writing a letter to his sister and one of the girls who so desperately want to win his attention are continuously up in his grills, talking incessantly, and he shuts her down continuously.  I'm not doing the scene any credit.  (It's in the first half of the book, in case if you're so curious... One of my posts about Pride and Prejudice specifically probably include it, but you'll have to find that yourself.)  Catherine's scene comes with Isabella--"'Do you know I get so immoderately sick of Bath; your brother and I were agreeing this morning that, though it is vastly well to be here for a few weeks, we would not live here for millions.  We soon found out that our tastes were exactly alike in preferring the country to every other place; really, our opinions were so exactly the same, it was quite ridiculous!  There was not a single point in which we differed; I would not have had you by for the world; you are such a sly thing, I am sure you would have made some droll remark or other about it.'  'No, indeed I should not.'  'Oh, yes you would indeed; I know you better than you know yourself.  You would have told us that we seemed born for each other, or some nonsense of that kind, which would have distressed me beyond conception... I would not have had you by for the world.' 'Indeed you do me injustice; I would not have made so improper a remark upon any account; and besides, I am sure it would have never entered my head.'  Isabella smiled incredulously, and talked the rest of the evening to James'" (70-71).  SHUT DOWN, ISABELLA, SHUT DOWN LIKE A BITCH.  OOOOH.  Haha, awesome.  I hate Isabella so much.  Does it show?  (Good job, Catherine, even if I'm not sure if you were intentionally shutting her down, but I'm pretty sure you were!)

"And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine's portion; to a pillow strewn with thorns and wet with tears.  And lucky may she think herself, if she get another good night's rest in the course of the next three months" (90).  Okay, so Jane Austen's being a little bit of an intense romantic.  But this is after the Thorpes attempt to separate Catherine from the Tilneys so that John Thorpe may be able to snap her up... UGH IT MAKES ME SO MAD.  The Thorpes suck.  Hey, I have an idea.  Isabella can marry Mr Murdstone.  Regret being a gold digger now!?  Well, it's too damn late.
The means they do it by is forcing Catherine to break dates with the Tilneys (sometimes by actually using physical force) and then they make deceitful reasons up for Catherine.  Is this high school right now, Thorpes?  Your kid is a slovenly mess, your daughter is a gold digger, and you guys aren't exactly the plastics.  I will fight all of you.

"'If I am wrong, I am doing what I believe to be right'" (100).  Again, the Thorpes are trying to screw up Catherine's relationship with the Tilneys.  Isabella and her brother literally grab her by the arms and hold her back.  UGH, they make me so mad.  While I was reading the book I wanted to hurt somebody.  And I know Victorian women were supposed to be restrained and whatever, but I hate being manhandled.  I would have seriously punched them both in the face.  Or at least struggled.  Maybe I would have kicked them.  It would probably a little different from wrestling with my brother, in that they wouldn't be expecting it and I would have defeated ALL OF THE THORPES.  Yeeeees.  And the crowd goes wild!  Can't you hear them cheering?  Ah, my public!  Don't dream it, be i--Oh, sorry.  I'm confusing myself with Tim Curry again.  My bad, sorry.

"'Young men and women driving about the country in open carriages!'" (104).  NO!  Anything but that!  Say it isn't so, Jane!  Next they'll be showing off their--dare I say it?  Their ankles, and maybe even their shoulders! The very thought of it makes me faint...

"'A monstrous deal of good nature, and it is not only good nature, but you have so much, so much of every thing; and then you have such--upon my soul I do not know any body like you.'  'Oh! dear, there are a great many people like me, I dare say, only a great deal better'" (123).  I love Catherine's cute little naive response to the compliments being placed upon her.  Also, I love it when Jane Austen uses the adjective 'monstrous'.  How much?  I consider it equatable to my love of Colin Firth yelling...

So by the time volume II starts, Isabella starts growing distant because it's becoming clear that the Thorpes' plan isn't going to work out, and also because Isabella is a scheming manipulative little Willoughby.  Man, Isabella is even worse than Susan!  Catherine also takes a time at the Tilneys' where because of her love of Gothic horror novels becomes convinced that she will uncover some crazy mystery.  She also becomes convinced that father Tilney poisoned his wife or something, because he didn't seem very upset when talking about his late wife (to be fair, she died nine years prior).  This part of the book is kind of arduous to stick to--if it was any other author, it probably wouldn't be so bad, but from Jane Austen it was kind of like, uh... What the hell are you doing, Jane?   The end is, like I must have mentioned but don't care to actually check, wraps things up sort of suddenly while playing off of this as well, so this bit is kind of what keeps it from being next to Emma on the 'classics' shelf.  (Also: it's really bothering me that I can't think of what book would be on its other side.  I'm pretty sure it would be The Martian Chronicles, but...)  Anyways.  This is kind of putting my 'final thoughts' paragraph first, but whatever.  Let's continue, shall we...?

Oh, and Isabella tries to convince Catherine that she's always been in love with or eventually fell in love with the brother Thorpe.  No, Isabella, your brother sucks.  Then she attempts to make Catherine agree to an engagement and Catherine is just like no... And then Catherine's beloved's brother appears and the two of them start flirting and I could kill Isabella, for serious.  I'm not going to blame the Tilney brother for being seduced by her, for clearly he's an idiot.
"'Circumstances change, opinions alter'" (146).
"'I wish your heart were independent.  That would be enough for me.'  'My heart, indeed!  What can you have to do with hearts?  You men have none of you any hearts.'  'If we have not hearts, we have eyes; and they give us torment enough'" (147).  This actually occurs between Isabella and her Frederick Tilney.  This bit is okay, but then it becomes clear that he means it as a flirtation, not as a "I hate to look upon you because if you were a man your name would be Willoughby", it's a "It tortures me to see you if I can't be having sex with you an open carriage ride with you.

"'No man is offended by another man's admiration of the women he loves; it is the women only who can make it a torment'" (151).

"'I understand; she is in love with James and flirts with Frederick.'  'Oh! no, not flirts.  A woman in love with one man cannot flirt with another'" (151).  This--especially the second bit, the first bit is just there for sort of context--seems like it could exist in one of Wilde's plays easily.  (Speaking of which, I really need to reread those...)

So when Catherine is still convinced that father Tilney murdered his wife, she asks son that she's in love with about it.  He gives the most backhanded description of him: "'You have erred in supposing him not attached to her.  He loved her, I am persuaded, as well as it was possible for him to--We have not all, you know, the same tenderness of disposition--and I will not pretend to say that while lived, she might not often have had much to bear, but though his temper injured her, his judgment never did.  His value of her was sincere; and, if not permanently, he was truly afflicted by her death'" (197).  IE, "He loved her, probably, but he never showed it--I'm pretty sure he loved her though.  Yeah.  Really."  Okay, snarkiness aside, I did like this passage, even as unsure as it is.

And theeeeeen I skip about another forty pages.  Upon discovering that Isabella and Frederick Tilney have practically eloped, Catherine begs to go home and of course the Tilneys grant that wish.  So...
"Catherine was too wretched to be fearful" (230).

"In the embrace [of her family], as she stepped from the carriage, she found herself soothed beyond any thing that she had believed possible... In the joyfulness of family love every thing for a short time was subdued" (233).

"For soon were all her thinking powers swallowed up in the reflection of her own change of feelings and spirits since last she had trodden that well-known road.  It was not three months ago since, wild with joyful expectation, she had there run backwards and forwards some ten times a-day, with an heart light, gay, and independent; looking forward to pleasures untasted and unalloyed, and free from the apprehension from evil as from the knowledge of it.  Three months ago had seen her all this; and now, how altered a being did she return!" (237).

"She was assured of [Henry's] affection; and that heart in return was solicited, which... they pretty equally knew was already entirely his own; for, though Henry was now sincerely attached to her, though he felt and delighted in all the excellencies of her character and truly loved her society, I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or... that a persuasion of partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought.  It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine's dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own" (243).  First of all, why the hell can't Jane Austen seem to understand the proper use of 'an'?  My guess is that she must 'ave 'ad an accent that cut out the 'h' like so.  Thus, she was right for applying the 'an' rule... I guess.  Well, whatever.  I'm still trying to figure out what exactly Jane means by this passage.  At first I thought that it was a sort of bitterness--then I was like nope, not possible.  But then, I realized that yeah, it's possible.  I definitely sense some bitterness, or at the very least biting sarcasm.  I imagine that she liked somebody, but they could have cared less because she never did anything about it, or not enough to suggest anything more (this would also explain that line in Pride and Prejudice when someone--possibly Elizabeth's mother--says that women must show more than they actually feel).  It could also be just Jane Austen complaining about novels of the time making overdramatic love stories (et tu, Jane Austen?) that are completely unrealistic and what Jane has described as an alternative is much more real, thus creating irony because her idea is not so wild or unusual at all.  But funny story Jane Austen, your little love stories ARE unusual and wild.  Life is not that nice!  (Now who's being bitter?)  Way to accidentally create your own standard that can't be lived up to, cough cough Mr Darcy cough that entire book cough.

So, father Tilney isn't ecstatic with Henry and Catherine's union, probably because Catherine was convinced that he murdered his wife.  Okay, no.  The real reason is that Isabella's brother got mad at Catherine for turning him down so he told the senior Tilney that Catherine's family was destitute.  Henry doesn't even care, and he goes to marry anyways, and at that point papa Tilney is just like, whatever.  I guess you're not as poor as I thought.  Sure.  I'm not even kidding you.  Let me spoil the end real quick: "On the strength of this [discovery that they do have some money], the General, soon after Eleanor's marriage, permitted his son to return to Northanger, and thence made him the bearer of his consent, very courteously worded in a page full of empty professions to Mr. Morland.  The event which it authorized soon followed: Henry and Catherine were married, the bells rang and every body smiled... It will not appear, after all the dreadful delays occasioned by the General's cruelty, that they were essentially hurt by it.  To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the General's unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience" (252).  Although Jane wraps it all up nicely (I must admit) it's just like, ummmm, I'm done writing now.  Peace!  The problem solves itself in less than two pages, and this whole conclusion of happy marriage I've just quoted for you is literally back-to-back with the General realizing that they weren't exactly beggars.  Maybe the in-between stuff would have been a tad boring, but at least it would have seemed a little more fleshed out than the General just shrugging and saying, "Well, I guess this isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to the family."  Lazy writing, Jane!  (I guess this post did turn out kind of bipolar, though not as bad as Mansfield Park, of course.  I fully intended to go into this praising Jane to the heavens.)  Oh well.  I still like her a whole lot.  I love Jane Austen--I guess it's kind of like my abuse of Jeff Goldblum.  I love him, but I guess it's hard to tell some most all of the time.
Either way, this is definitely an Austen book I'd suggest to people.  It may be a little sloppy, but that's probably just because that this is probably her actual first book (or at least the second).
Speaking of it being sloppy, I'm pretty sure I was praising her for writing her own straight-up commentary into the book, like Kurt Vonnegut is wont to.  I've since decided that she didn't do it out of genius or novelty (well, maybe a little out of novelty), but that she didn't do it with finesse--because she didn't really know... how to write, if you know what I mean.  Still, not half-bad at all.

Also, she seriously abuses semicolons.  Like, I feel like I need to go through semicolon detox.  Jeez, Jane.  I should go reread Lord of the Rings.  When you find a semicolon in there you know you've got something special... Even though there are pretty much a million places where semicolons would be appropriate and preferred, TOLKIEN.

Oh, and there was a page I marked but couldn't remember why I marked till I lost it--it is mentioned, while Catherine is riding home, that she must stop to change the horses.  That's so weird!  I mean, I guess it makes sense--you can't just run the horse till it dies, and I mean you can't just fill it with gas or give it an oil change and it be good for another fifty miles... But what of the horses?  How do you get your horses back?  Was all of Regency England just forever trading horses across the country?  How did these things work?

Also, I finished this book while I was the mic runner for the school musical, Working.  It was pretty fun to see people rushing in and out of boiler room trying to get their outfits on in time or picking up mics or what have you while I was very placidly just reading Jane Austen by flashlight.


MLA Citation Information: Austen, Jane.  Northanger Abbey.  Oxford University Press: London, 1975.



What else?  Lately my brain has just been shutting down.  I've been spelling wild "Wilde" and further "Furthur".  The first one is my own fault, and the second one is usually accompanied with me silently cursing Robby D.

Also, does anybody remember Animorphs?  Can anybody believe that it's been ten years since it ended?  I sure can't... How did life go on?  I thought I would die when it ended, for real.  But here I am... Watching Doctor Who... Oh my God.  Animorphs/Doctor crossover.  How hard would it be!?  (Well, the Andalites would probably have some trouble with the Doctor.  Christopher Eccleston would probably Marco out, David would have been more of a Jake, and Matt... Matt would be funny Marco, not paranoid, kind of crazy Marco.)  But yeah.  The world should think about this.  Or maybe the BBC could make a good Animorphs TV series?  I'd trust them with it.



Last post's cryptic song lyrics: Technologic by Daft Punk (By the way, this is just the radio edit of it; the music video was made for that version of it)
This post's cryptic song lyrics: C-c-c-cinnamon lips and candy kisses on my tongue--fu-un.  B-b-b-buttery eyes, if only cries could come from those eyes.  Oh!  Have you landed and if so, would you let me know?  I'm tired of looking up into those starry eyes--

PS. Spellcheck decided to completely peace out this time around.  Sorry!  I've tried to weed out errors best I could.

Splice

I'm writing about a movie that came out a few years ago!  It was really, really cool.  From what it seemed to me, it got a bum rap and wasn't in theatres too long.  I can't seem to find the trailer that was originally on IMDB, the one they have when you click watch trailer plays it up more as a horror film.  That's too bad--but the trailer I saw split between--or spliced you may say--scenes of "Oh my God, what the hell is that?  It looks like it's about to kill somebody!" and the girl being clearly emotional distressed in an ET-ish fashion--like her holding Dren (the creature) while shouting something like "We need to protect her!" et cetera.  Our joke was wondering whether it was going to be a romantic film or horror movie.
It actually turned out really well.  And... not entirely wrong in either department.  (The creature ends up looking very humanoid, and the guy, Clive, has sex with it.  Clive, bro, if it's not human, don't have sex with it.  Rule of thumb, there.  It actually wasn't that weird because it was being shot from the solar plexuses up--until Dren bends her freaky legs and pulls his shirt off with her gecko-grippy feet.  Ewwweeeekkkk.)

If it started out looking like THAT, A) It's not human.  B) Don't have sex with it.

The film, like I said, doesn't really start becoming a horror movie till the last twenty minutes.  And the conclusion is actually the scariest moment of all.  Anyways, it starts off with your usual scientists trying to create a genetic anomaly blah blah blah.  It lives, of course, and starts as a very nonhuman icky little thing and grows eventually into this big (and apparently sexy) human creature.  It's incredibly intelligent, though.  I'm not the sort of person who looks for metaphors and social commentary or what have you in film.  But this movie is definitely meant to be attempting to raise a child.  That may seem obvious, but it's really, REALLY that.  Like all the little things you can do that will ruin or mess with a kid (like, Dren gets embarrassed when the girl finds her drawings, she has temper tantrums, and so on--) only it's ten times worse because no matter how human it looks at its most mature stage, it is not human. It's partially human, but it cannot be treated as human.  Plus, Dren is reaching sexual maturity.  Anyways, it's to the point where they'd yell at Dren or take something away from her and I'd be like OH GOD SHE IS GOING TO KILL YOU.  Did I mention that she has a freaky stinger tail and can apparently fly?  This is a bad combination.
Anyways, here spoilers appear: Dren starts becoming more and more unstable.  The girl takes a cat away from Dren because it might get Dren sick, but she feels guilty and gives it back.  When it is returned, Dren kills it.  The girl slaps Dren for it, and Dren almost kills her.  Later, again, she has sex with Clive, and as Clive is, uh, coming, you see Dren's tail rise behind him with the spike sticking out, implying that she was going to kill him and eat him afterwards?  Sure, why not.  She definitely would have killed him had they not been walked in on.  Yup, the girlfriend walks in on them!  Clive rushes after her, and the already unstable creature apparently can't handle it and dies.  When they come back they find her shell (apparently) left in a tub of water.
This is what I can't fathom.  Apparently her aggressive tendencies were roused by lifestyle changes and stress being placed on her life, which caused a hormonal change--which made her start changing into a male.  Now, I'm no zoologist.  I don't even know if that's the right term to use.  However, almost all creatures (like 99%) that can change sex do so because there are a lack of partners to mate with.  Clearly Dren is not lacking in sexual partners.  Stress wouldn't affect that, unless if it was stress over not being able to find a mate.  Also, she would have conceivably (ha ha) conceived--later (more spoilers, fun times) the girl is raped by the male Dren and the end of the film shows her with a very large, almost due-sized belly.  If the human body wouldn't eliminate the only partially-human sperm as a disease or what have you (as a human body is wont to) then it doesn't make sense that it wouldn't have any affect on Dren.  It also doesn't seem to make sense that the pregnancy wouldn't mess up her hormones or prevent it from happening or something.  I refuse to accept that she could just fully develop male genitalia and working mechanics in the five or so hours that they were gone. I know that she had started taking on male characteristics for a while and that she ages and changes much faster than a human (almost on a rodent or dog level) but that's a little much.
Anyway, it doesn't become a real horror movie till she has changed into a he.  I actually was a little distracted from the preceding part of the film where you get attached and start liking Dren and so on because I was scared it would change from an intelligent and novel to a cruddy, all-too-familiar horror plot.  I figured it had to happen, I saw absolutely no way Dren would get cutely inducted into society or that it would turn into some sort of ET plot (I would have made a personal pilgrimage to the director's house to punch him if that had been the case).  I was impressed though--although it's got an entirely different film, it was handled well.  It didn't quite fill my "raising a child metaphor", but most children aren't six foot tall human-animal hybrids that can fly and are homicidal maniacs and rapists (also, they can't change gender at will through completely biological means)... Most kids also don't have sex with what should be their father figures...?  Okay, maybe it doesn't quite hold up, but you watch it and get back to me on that.
Anyways, it's kind of hackneyed, but the beast goes on a rampage and then gets killed.  There's actually one trailer that's pretty much just clips from when Dren is first born and clips from those last twenty minutes when Dren is killing everybody.  The horror fans were probably really disappointed... (I'd mention that I'm a huge horror fan and I wasn't, but I watched it expecting it to be pretty much recorded vomit, not an Alien-ish movie.)  Then it ends with the most alarming idea of all: the girl pregnant--you see, when they started the experiment, the girl kind of shrugs off Clive's worries by asking "What's the worst thing that could happen?"  The movie ends with her in the office of their head.  The head tells her that no-one will blame her if she aborts the fetus, and then the camera goes over the girl so you can see her fully and she repeats that question.  Chills, man.  I got the worst chills.  The ending could not have been more perfect.

Oh, and the director has said that he will most likely not be making a sequel.  That's good because, again, I'd have to make a pilgrimage to rough up his face.

So... All in all.... It's the best sci-fi film I've seen--well, since... I don't know.  It seems so different from most other sci-fi movies I've seen.  It's done so well, and it has such a cool concept... It's like if you made a sequel to Michael Crichton's Next and had it star a less scary version of the Alien... No, but it's really, really good.  I wouldn't have written this post if it wasn't.  Seriously, go see it.  It's good, unsettling, and crazy.  Also it makes me feel intelligent for being incredible to recognize a scientific fallacy.  (One that I'd never know without Jurassic Park, speaking of Michael Crichton.)

Oh, and I just want to point out, one, the guy who plays Clive is cute, but not like cute-cute.  Like how Alexander Kapranos is good-looking, but... not really.  He is but he isn't.  I can't explain it.  The other thing I want to point out is what a good actor the girl who plays Dren is.  She is fantastic!  She got being an unhuman humanoid down pat.  Very animalistic.  Watch it and you'll understand.  She's crazy good.


Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: The World at Large by Modest Mouse
This post's cryptic song lyrics: Buy it, use it, break it, fix it, trash it, change it, mail--upgrade it



EDIT: I forgot to mention that the girl has sex with Clive before she's raped by Dren, so there's extra ambiguity because there's a chance that it's Clive's.  They don't let you know how much time has passed between her rape and her at the very end of the movie, though, and there's no scene where she tells Clive that she's pregnant (only a few weeks pass from the point where they have sex to the point where she is raped, so she might not have even been sure), so it could be anything.  Soo... Yeah.  Awesome movie!  Watch it now!  If you like sci-fi.

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

So, for world religions we had to read a book related to religion and write an essay on it.  I wrote rather extensively about The Dharma Bums in the first essay we had to do for the class (a sort of pre-class assignment to describe our personal beliefs) and Mr Stoloff suggested I just straight-up do this essay on it.  So yeah, haven't written that essay yet.  But I figured this would help me sort my thoughts, or prolong my productivity.  Look, it's a little better than saying that I couldn't get my work done because I was playing Pokemon all day--well, that's not all I did.  I read Ray Bradbury stories and watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and took like three naps.  So there!
Also, this book is awesome.  At first I was all, oh no, what if this ruins my taste for Jack Kerouac ahhh, maybe I should do The Screwtape Letters instead, eeeeek... But then I started rereading it and I was like THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD.  Seriously.  Fabrizzles always says that if he could pick any book/series to read all over again without prior knowledge so he could feel how it felt to read it all fresh and new like the first time, he'd pick Lord of the Rings.  This is the book I'd pick, without any shred of a doubt.  I didn't really even get the religious aspects and the full importance of it either back then, I probably didn't really get it until reading it this time, but I recognized that it was important and it still was gripping and revelation-causing regardless, which is pretty darned impressive.  But still.  Getting those things finally was probably the closest I'll get to reading it like new again.  But yeaaaah.  That was meant as a testament to how awesome this book is.

So first of all--what the book is about.  Well, the book is another pretty much autobiographical deal.  This is less of the partying or drinking or depression than it is hiking, and as one would expect from the title, it was written when Kerouac was most enthralled by Buddhism.  I say that because he was raised Christian, and in his later works he seems to go back to mainly being Christian with just wisps of Buddhism melded into his personal views.  Sooo yeah.  I guess I'll be just as plot-vague as usual.  AWESOME.
Also, this is the first time I ever read Anne Douglas's introduction to the book.  That... That was kind of a useful thing to do.  Some things made more sense, and some things were made a lot more confusing.

So my first note is on page two.  Kerouac touts some ideas regarding charity, "'Practice charity without holding mind any conceptions about charity, for charity after all is just a word'" (2), and goes on to say that he's become a little jaded and hypocritical, but then he was very devout.  I never noticed this retrospective bit before, and it's pretty important, especially when thinking of Big Sur... His retrospective is actually kind of sad, but the fact that he only gives a paragraph keeps it from being as crushing as Big Sur.  


On page nine Kerouac declares it would be impossible to compute all the grains of sand on the beach, even if IBM or Burroughs tried.  I always thought that this was kind of cute, you know, he thought so highly of Burroughs that he thought he was such magnitudes of genius--but Burroughs was heir to the Burroughs adding machine fortune.  So... probably just a reference to that.  Aw.

"I sat crosslegged on the sand and contemplated my life.  Well, there, and what difference did it make?" (4).

Oh, and Japhy--based on Gary Snyder, sort of the Neal Cassady of this book--is, according to Kerouac, from Oregon.  I only mention this because in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, we are informed that this is also true of Ken Kesey, with the note of "Who the hell is ever from Oregon?" (Or something like that.)  I don't know, it always makes me chuckle.  That and the fact that one of the first people I made friends with in college is actually from Oregon originally.

Thanks to reading Ann Douglas's introduction, I know that the poetry reading on page nine is actually the one that Ginsberg first read "Howl" at.  Also, at the very end of the book, when he kind of skims over his stay in the shack at Desolation peak--apparently that stay is the one described in Desolation Angels.  Apparently.  Anyways, he refers to "Howl" as "Wail" and refers to the night of the reading as "the birth of the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance" (9).

"'It's only through form that we can realize emptiness'" (17).  Though I may be taking the statement the wrong way, I imagine it's sort of a you can't understand something or something can't be until its opposite exists.  For example, you can't be happy--or at least understand being happy--without knowing what it's like to be sad.  Otherwise, you're just being, you're not being anything.  Or, you don't get light until you get dark.  Moreover, you can't have light without dark.  They are necessary--both of them--for either to exist.

Japhy tries to ask Ginsberg about his tastes in poetry, Kerouac gets agitated and butts in, saying he knows way more about poetry than anybody in the room (of course, Kerouac was also drinking at the time of this exchange...).  It's actually kind of funny, because Japhy proceeds to quote one of Kerouac's poems from Mexico City Blues to demonstrate Kerouac's talent and Kerouac gets even more agitated and claims that Japhy is quoting a poem that's not his.  (Because remember, Kerouac is never actually himself in his earlier books.  In this his alias is Ray Smith.) Also, if you have the really cool edition with the drawings by Jason (no last name?  If anybody has information on the fellow, let me know) on the covers, this scene is drawn on the inside page holder flap thing.  Yeeeeep. Eloquence is what I have.  I... I feel like I had another point here, but it's gone.  So... Let's... continue...
(Maybe it was for a confession time: I think Ginsberg is better poet hands down.)

"'Pretty girls make graves,' was my saying, whenever I'd had to turn my head around involuntarily to stare at the incomparable pretties of Indian Mexico" (21).

"'Smith, I distrust any kind of Buddhism or any kinda philosophy or social system that puts down sex'" (21).  Just kind of made me chuckle is all.  The context for this is that there's a young, pretty girl at the cabin and they're about to have an orgy and apparently Kerouac--yes, Kerouac--has been practicing celibacy and has been at it for almost a year.

"'Everybody's tearful and trying to live with what what they got'" (25).

There's a bit where they're buying food for the hiking trip up Matterhorn, and Jack insists on buying alcohol.  Japhy gets annoyed, he says he's just drinking down the money they worked so hard to save--think of Slim in Pic, using their last dollar to buy a record and not food.

"'Comparisons are odious, Smith,' he sent sailing back to me, quoting Cervantes and making a Zen Buddhist observation to boot.  'It doesn't make a damn frigging difference whether you're in The Place or hiking up Matterhorn, it's all the same old void, boy.'  And I mused about that and realized he was right, comparisons are odious, it's all the same, but it sure felt great and suddenly I realized this (in spite of my swollen foot veins) would do me a lot of good and get me away from drinking and maybe make me appreciate perhaps a whole new way of living" (41).  What he means by 'this' is not what Japhy said, but the climb up Matterhorn itself.

"...There was something in my heart as though I'd lived before and walked this trail, under similar circumstances with a fellow Bodhisattva, but maybe on a more important journey... The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling" (45-46).

So the best scene in the book is probably when Japhy and Kerouac come back down from the mountain--they go jumping and hopping down the side of the mountain because "it's impossible to fall of mountains you fool" (64).  It pretty much summarizes the feeling that Buddhism gives Kerouac, and instead of most books that only tell you how you should be acting if you're of this or that religion, it tells you how you should be feeling.  The impressive bit is that Kerouac actually does a good job of displaying the feeling.  If you're not planning on ever reading this book, at least read this page... Though if you weren't planning on reading it, I guess it wouldn't mean as much to you/you wouldn't have any interest in it anyways.

"In fact I realized I had no guts anyway, which I've long known.  But I have joy" (68).

"'You're just an old anarchist scared of society" (70).

"'You can't live in this world but there's nowhere else to go'" (76).

"Only one thing I'll say for the people watching television, the millions and millions of the One Eye: they're not hurting anyone while they're sitting in front of that Eye" (79).

Okay, so Japhy and Jack come across this woman just preaching about Jesus and Kerouac is amazed by her.  Japhy disagrees: "'...But boy have you ever heard a greater preacher?'  'Yeah,' says Japhy.  'But I don't like all that Jesus stuff she's talking about.'  'What's wrong with Jesus?  Didn't Jesus speak of Heaven?  Isn't Heaven Buddha's nirvana?'  'According to your own interpretation, Smith.'  'Japhy, there were things I wanted to tell Rosie and I felt suppressed by this schism we have about separating Buddhism from Christianity, Eas from West, what the hell difference does it make?  We're all in Heaven now, ain't we?'  'Who said so?'  'Is this nirvana and samsara we're in now.'  'Words, words, what's in a word?  Nirvana by any other name'" (86).  Maybe this only means something to me, but this produced a jaw-dropping revelation for me the first time I read it.  I remember reading it for the first time, and it's a big part of the reason why it's this book I wish I could reread for the very first time.  I mean--like any teenager I thought I knew what nobody else seemed to get--that if there was a god (if one didn't exist organically, yes, I thought that man would have made one) everybody was worshiping pretty much the same fellow, they just saw him in a different way and had different ways of honouring him.  But this--that was just what I thought--it wasn't an infallible truth!  Talk about rattling me out of foolishness!  Wow.  Uh... Yeah.  I guess you had to be there.

"All my tears weren't in vain.  It'll all work out finally" (95).

"People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums.  Compassion is the heart of Buddhism" (100).

"'All living and dying things like these dogs and me coming and going without any duration or self substance, O God, and therefore we can't possibly exist.  How strange, how worthy, how good for us!  What a horror it would have been if the world was real, because if the world was here, it would be immortal'" (102).

"'Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall bring to naught both it and them.'  'Yep,' I thought, 'you pay through the nose for shortlived shows...'" (103).

"I felt free and therefore I was free" (104).

"I was nutty as a fruitcake and happier" (108).  I just think that this is really, really cute.  Like this makes me want to just give him a huge hug.  So adorable!

Kerouac also attempts to explain Buddhism to his mother and his sister and brother-in-law: "'It's simple, let me lay it out as simple and concise as I can.  All things are empty, ain't they?'  'Whattayou mean, empty, I'm holdin' this orange in my hand, ain't I?'  'It's empty, everythin's empty, things come but to go, all things made have to be unmade, and they'll have to be unmade simply because they were made!'" (109).  His family doesn't understand and think it's downright ridiculous, his sister and mother tell him to stick with the religion he was raised with, Christianity.  Kerouac tries to explain some more: "'Everything's gone, already gone, already come and gone... And when things are empty because they appear, don't they, you see them, but they're made up of atoms that can't be measured or weighed or taken hold of... things are just empty arrangements of something that seems solid appearing in the space, they ain't either big or small, near or far, true or false, they're ghosts pure and simple'" (110).  This is pretty mind-blowing too, but it makes sense--I mean, things exist, but things disappear.  You know?  An orange you eat is absorbed by your body, its skin rots away to nothing, same is true for people and animals.  Plants die and are reabsorbed back into the earth.  Even solid inorganic things break down to nothing--rocks get pounded into sand, etc.  (This is going to sound stupid and random, but where do shells come from?  Like hermit crab shells and stuff.)

"All dogs love God.  They're wiser than their masters" (110).

""I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted" (112).

So he decides that because his rucksack is full and that is spring, he should go to Texas and then through to Mexico.  A couple picks him up and "I'd explained a little Buddhism to them, specifically karma, reincarnation, and they seemed pleased to hear the news.  'You mean other chance to come back and try again?' asked the poor little Mexican, who was all bandaged from a fight in Juarez the night before.  'That's what they say.'  'Well goddammit next time I be born I hope I ain't who I am now'" (120).  This is sweet in such a painful way.

"'This world is the movie of what everything is, it is one movie, made of the same stuff throughout, belonging to nobody, which is what everything is'" (138).  I only include this because it makes me think of Ken Kesey.  During the Merry Pranksters' escapades through America in Furthur they had several videocameras recording their 'movie'.  (I feel like there's a larger significance to that, but to be completely honest I can't remember.)  Anyways, I'm just going to pretend that this influenced Ken Kesey in some way to that end.  Ken Kesey definitely read Kerouac and was inspired by him... So yeah, let's say that's how the Pranksters' concept of the movie came to be.  Yaaaay.

"'We'll write poems, we'll get a printing press and print our own poems, the Dharma Press, we'll poetize the lot and make a fat book of icy bombs for the booby public.'  'Ah the public ain't so bad, they suffer too'" (153).

"'Japhy, do you think God made the world to amuse himself because he was bored?  Because if so he would have to be mean'" (153).

"'I appreciate your sadness about the world'" (154).  Japhy says this to Kerouac.  I think it's beautiful--and also very curious--a statement.

"'It'll all come out in the wash'" (154).

"'Bad karma automatically produces good karma,' said Japhy, 'Don't cuss so much and come on, we'll soon be sitting pretty on a flat hill'" (161).  This another bit of the book I remember reading for the first time with crystal clarity.  What originally amazed me was the first bit about just karma itself--I had never thought of it in such a manner, had never drawn the really very obvious connection, and the flash of illuminated (it may sound clichéd, but that's really what it felt like) was amazing.  When I first read it, I really only got the first bit, but after rereading it I realized that the second half of Japhy's words is just as applicable and important to the whole.  It also sort of reminds me of the headlights quote from Factotum by Charles Bukowski... "''Don't worry, baby,' I'd say, 'the next hard bump we hit will turn the lights on.' ... Jan would bounce up and down, trying to hold on to her bottle of port. I'd grip the wheel and look for a bit of light on the road ahead. Hitting those bumps would always turn the lights on. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, but we'd always get the lights on" (96).  You know?  You hit a bump--it jostles you around and may even hurt you--but eventually something good would happen thanks to it.  Bad karma to good karma.  You see?    

Oh, and while Japhy and Kerouac are meditating under the stars they imagine cavemen from eons before huddled around their own campfire doing the same as "'enlightened monkey men'" (163), as Japhy puts it.  Kerouac is awed by this thought and says, "'The stars were the same then as they are tonight'" (163). The astronomer in me has to ruin this beautiful scene for everybody.  The stars weren't the same.  They're constantly moving in the sky, and in a thousand years constellations will be absolute gibberish.  Sorry to ruin that and depress everybody.  Moving right along-- 

"'It all ends in tears anyway'" (164).  Japhy leaves for Japan and Coughlin says that he'll be so enamoured with the place he'll never come back, and Kerouac says he won't, and that there was Ginsberg's response.

"But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious" (182).  This sounds like something Kurt Vonnegut would say--something with that exact wording, too.  

"Are we fallen angels who didn't want to believe that nothing is nothing and so we were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?" (183). After reading that the time in the cabin that's sort of glossed over is apparently the same time that is described in much greater detail in Desolation Angels, this makes a lot more sense.  There are about a million passages of Desolation Angels I could connect this one to... If I had the book on me.  Just look at the title though!  If you're not seeing the obvious connection being drawn you're not even trying.

"Down on the lake, rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, 'God, I love you' and looked up to the sky and really meant it.  'I have fallen in love with you, God.  Take care of us all, one way or the other'" (186).

"To the children and innocent it's all the same" (186).  

Wow!  There we go.  I kind of wanted to add the very end of the book, but it didn't feel quite right to--though I really do love that conclusion.  Anyways.  Wow.  I can't believe it took me this long.  It took me like three weeks to finish this post, mein gott.  Hmm... I guess I don't have to describe my feelings about this book any more extensively, though.  I think you get the picture.  Oh!  But you know what happened that was really awesome?  The Thursday before spring break it was ridiculously nice out, so I went out on one of the benches outside of my dorm and laid out on it to read.  One guy (I think his name is Zack?) walked by me with his roommates and they walked right by me, and he stopped and ran back to me and was like "Jack Kerouac--that's that guy that went on that crazy road trip and did mad drugs, right!?"  And being that that's a pretty good summary of On the Road, I didn't even say that that doesn't really go down in this book, I was just like yeah, that's him.  We talked a little bit about the book and then he realized that his roommates were already at the door to Burr and he ended it with, "Well, I think this is awesome and it's awesome that you're reading this!"  It was a really cool moment.


Also, we were supposed to connect the book with class in our essay on it... I did, but what's weird is that I didn't seem to include what made me further connect Kerouac and people like him to religion in general.  Um... that doesn't make much sense.  Wait, keep on reading!  I'll make sense soon, I promise.  
So, our last World Religions class before break featured a presentation on Mormonism.  In the class we have set questions that we're supposed to ask the presenters or look up after class, and one of the questions is "What is the religion's view on the end of time?", which is meant to probe at when it is thought it will occur, and how it will occur.  I don't remember exactly what they said regarding how it will occur (though I picked up The Book of Mormon so maybe I'll be letting you know fairly soon) but they started describing the first signs that the end is coming, and in doing so he quoted Amos 8:11-12:  “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord, when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.”  I was kind of startled (hence why I don't remember what they said about the end of times itself, I guess.) by that.  I'm not saying I believe that Judgment day is nigh or anything like that--but you can understand why it caught my attention, right?  I mean--that was what Kerouac was doing.  That's what Christopher Johnston McCandless was doing, or at least it seems to have been.  That's what I'd even daresay the Merry Pranksters were doing.  They had different names for it--but it was still--'it'.  There were searching for meaning and something... But yeah.  My connection to class--the better connection to class.  


MLA citation information: Bukowski, Charles.  Factotum.  Black Sparrow Press: Los Angeles, 1975.  
Kerouac, Jack.  The Dharma Bums.  Penguin Classics: New York, 2006.  




Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: We Intertwined by The Hush Sound
This post's cryptic song lyrics: I pack up my belongings and I head for the coast, it might not be a lot but I feel like I'm making the most.  The days get longer and the nights smell green, I guess it's not surprising but it's spring and I should leave