(Note: This post includes the first two books of Nephi, the books of Jacob, Enos, Jarom, Omni, the Words of Mormon and the book of Mosiah, obviously.)
So, I came into possession of this through my World Religions class. First of all, Mormons are nice. Like really nice. Like if you were having a bad day you would call your Mormon friend up and they would make life all better again. Second of all, that class was made up of--not exactly dummkopfs, but they might as well have been zombies. I was pretty much the only one talking, seriously. So the three Mormon representatives--teenagers, Mormons have this really cool custom of taking a year or two off for mission work--loved me, and gave me a copy of the book to take. So that was cool. Anyways, I dug the friendliness and professionalism and all of that. If you put a gun to my head and told me I had to pick a religion learned about in that class and convert to it, I would definitely be a Mormon. The only big problem I have is that using contraceptives might as well be one of the seven deadly sins. You're supposed to "be fruitful and multiply"--that would not work for me. Nope.
So! Here we go. This is going to be a long post, I'm sure, but let's start with the introduction, I guess... So the story goes that this book was found inscribed on tablets. The tablet's words were copied down, as the time wasn't quite ripe for the tablets to be revealed to the world. The books are a kind of revamped version of the old and new testaments. So... Let's go! On with 1 Nephi!
So Nephi's father was a prophet that everybody thought was mad--he also claimed Jerusalem would fall and all of that. This is probably a good time to mention that I read this about three weeks ago. I guess my point for marking this was the parallels with the Bible... Maybe.
Oh yeah, so they leave the city and flee to wilderness, pretty much like Moses and his people leaving Egypt. You know, people "murmur against" him, are punished, keep on murmuring against, don't learn, except sometimes, eventually go off the beaten track... And so on. So... Yeah.
"Behold the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief" 1 Nephi 4:13.
Oh and they too have the commandments and the laws and Leviticus in their possession. They go ahead and mention that. Just an interesting note, since I don't actually have a sense of time or proportion.
God is also, again, referred to as the "God of Israel" 1 Nephi 5:9. Again, a note I think is interesting that probably no-one else would.
Oh, a response to those people rebelling against Nephi's father: "How is it that ye have forgotten what great things the Lord hath done for us...?" 1 Nephi 7:11. He actually goes on to list great things that God did help them achieve, but. I just thought it was interesting wording or what have you. Something about it struck me.
This too: "How is it that ye have forgotten that ye have seen an angel of the Lord?" 1 Nephi 7:9.
I notice that in 1 Nephi 10, God, when referred to as 'he', isn't capitalized. That's pretty intriguing...
Then 'he' is referring to a regular man: "For he that diligently seeketh shall find" (which can continue to) "and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them" 1 Nephi 10:19.
Nephi's father sees a mysterious tree in 1 Nephi 11, and an angel asks Nephi if he understands what the tree was. My note was just "the cross?" because the cross Jesus was put on is sometimes referred to as a tree.
Also, in most traditional versions of the crucifixion story, Judas hangs himself after he realizes what he has done. In Nephi's vision, he sees Jesus getting crucified, and then the "multitudes of the earth" rallying against the twelve apostles. So... Did Judas not kill himself? Did he repent? Are you... Are you allowed to repent after doing that sort of thing? I mean, I know it was necessary for Jesus to be resurrected and all, but still...
There's the repetition of the line so often occurring in the Bible: "The last shall be first, and the first shall be last" 1 Nephi 13:42.
Nephi also sees a vision that is like John's vision written in revelations of the false, poison church: "And that great pit, which hath been digged for them by that great and abominable church, which was founded by the devil and his children, that he might lead away the souls of men down to hell--yea, that great pit which hath been digged for the destruction of men shall be filled by those who digged it" 1 Nephi 14:3. Again. Good wording. Good way of bluntly getting the point across.
Also, they flash forward to a time when the name of God will become a "hiss and a byword, and be hated among all nations" 1 Nephi 19:14. Of course, I thought of Ulysses, when Stephen Daedalus says that God is like a shout in the street.
The first book of Nephi is ended with the promise that it is not just Nephi and his father proclaiming the God of Israel--others have been taught and have seen God in the same manner.
My first note on 2 Nephi is more for a particular word than anything else. You know, the phrase is God will smite thee, but it use the word 'smitten'. Now it makes sense--obviously there's the same root and same meaning--smite means being struck with the hand or hit with a hard blow. Smitten means the same thing, but it can also mean that someone is very much in love. I just thought it was interesting, especially in how appropriate it is (and a little odd that smite doesn't have that same definition).
Remember how in the Old Testament hell--or an equivalent to hell--is Sheol? If not, Sheol is all dark and nasty, unpleasant and so on. The darkness is like a blanket, and you may be able to hear other people crying out but you can't reach them or answer them (although that last bit doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but...) Anyways, this book characterizes hell as just being sleep--"the sleep of hell" 2 Nephi 1:13. That's interesting, the idea that you're not being tortured but you're just... not... there. I guess that would make it more of a purgatory than a hell then, though... Anyways, here's the full thing: "O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men; that they are carried away captive down to the gulf of misery and woe. Awake! And arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent, whose limbs ye must soon lay down in the cold and silent grave, from whence no traveler can return; a few more days and I go the way of all earth. But behold, the Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell; I have behold his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love" 2 Nephi 1:13-15. Okay... So reason number one why I marked it: Matisyahu's debut album is "Shake off the Dust... Arise". Reason two is that it says that you can't return from the grave. But you have a second life, so wouldn't that count...? Unless if it means you can't return to the earth. Yeeeeeep.
Again, later: "Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit down, O Jerusalem; loose thyselves from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion" 2 Nephi 8:25.
"Prepare your souls for that glorious day when justice shall be administered unto the righteous, even the day of judgment, that ye may not shrink with awful fear" 2 Nephi 9:46. /"'There are just some kind of men who--who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one'"--Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird.
"Seek the Lord, not peeping wizards" 2 Nephi 18. The phrase "peeping wizards" is the funniest thing ever. Let's move on!
Chapter eighteen also mentions the priest Uriah. If I'm not mistaken, that is also the name of one of the archangels.
"Hell from beneath thy feet is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee" 2 Nephi 24:9. I believe this is a reference to the final days when the dead will rise and walk the earth and so on.
So onto the next book, Jacob... My first note has to do with Jacob warning the people of Nephi against "fornication and lasciviousness" Jacob 3:12. That seems strange to me because of the be fruitful and multiply bit. I mean--you're supposed to procreate like crazy. Like I said, birth control in any form is looked down upon. And obviously to get babies you've got to have sex. (I almost said 'make'. Make sex?) Maybe it just means bestiality and pedophilia and stuff? (And since this would be Old Testament time, this would probably include homosexuality too.) That's my best guess, anyway.
"And now I, Jacob, am led on by the Spirit unto prophesying; for I perceive by the workings of the Spirit which is in me, that by the stumbling of the Jews they will reject the stone upon which they might build and have safe foundation" Jacob 4:15. I'm going to go ahead and say this refers to the crucifixion of Jesus. If that's the case, then that oft-repeated New Testament quote about the stone that was rejected being the cornerstone of faith makes a lot more sense now.
Hmm, those appear to be the only notes I've got on Jacob, and I didn't mark anything for Enos, Jarom, Omni, or The Words of Mormon. Sooo... On to the Book of Mosiah!
"Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just--But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God. For behold, are we not all beggars?" Mosiah 4:17-19. This is pretty much the exact opposite of Grecian/Roman/probably other ancient civilizations that I don't know about beliefs too--if you had a beggar or a leper or someone suffering in general, the gods were punishing them, and if you helped them, you ran the risk of pissing the gods off and making them torture you too. Yeeep. I also just really like that last line too.
"And I would that ye should remember, that whosoever among you borroweth of his neighbor should return the thing that he doth borroweth, according as he doth agree, or else thou shalt commit sin; and perhaps thou shalt cause thy neighbor to commit sin also" Mosiah 4:28. I LOVE this! One, it may supposed to be serious--in fact there is no may about it--but it seems like there's a bit of humour happening at the end there, along with the truism. Two, it is true. Three, I like the fact that it's being said that sometimes sinning isn't all one fellow's part--that there can be (and often is) a reason...
Oh, here's one thing that really, really bothered me: "And again: Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me" Mosiah 13:13. It's not that God 'says' that he's a jealous God. He does it often enough in the Old Testament. What bothers me is that in the old Testament, there is the line which follows: "Parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents; only for their own crimes may persons be put to death" Deuteronomy 24:16. I know that says put to death, but I took it to mean that they may not be punished for each other's sins either--I mean, by saying that he'll take it out on the latter generations... Well, he's not really saying death, but still... It could be potentially worse than death. I just don't like this bit with what I convinced myself was said, I guess. And saying it will come on to latter generations that the sinner probably won't even know isn't going to make them stop. They'll just be like, oh... I won't get in trouble for it then? Sweet! Guess I'll just keep on doing what I'm doing. Awesome. I mean, if they do live to see the suffering, they'll feel guilty then (probably), and regret it, but that would be what's known as locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen.
"Unrighteous kings lead their people into sin" Mosiah 29.
So those are all of my notes! I had some more, but again, it's been a while since I picked this up so I didn't remember why pages were noted, or how my scrawled-in notes related to what I thought they related to. So, I'm going to get started on the second half (Alma-Moroni, about 320 pages) but there's going to be some in-between, especially since I've also just finished Fight Club, and I've decided to take a lot of my other books down off the 'classics' self for review. Most of them are pretty short--actually the ones that are coming down for review are the two Hermann Hesse books. But yeah. They're both pretty short.
MLA Citation Information: The Book of Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: United States of America, 2010.
Ohhh, plus I'm going to be in Cape Cod for a few days in a week. I know, I know, I won't update for a whole week, eeee.
Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics: Congratulations by MGMT
This post's cryptic song lyrics: You're the son of his majesty, remember how it used to be, in the light of the day it's easy to see--Now it's nighttime, you had to leave
Monday, May 30, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
So I decided to reread this book! The last time I read it I was an angsty teenager. This time, when I started I was feeling low and I was all, "Yeah, Holden, I can so relate!" but then by the halfway point I was like, "SUCK IT UP HOLDEN, OR YOU'RE GONNA GET A PURSE-SMACK. AND DON'T BE THINKING THAT THE BEATLES PURSE IS GOING TO HURT LESS BECAUSE IT IS SMALLER. IT IS MORE COMPACT AND IT WILL HURT TWICE AS MUCH." Sooo yeah. Long story short, it's been removed from the 'classics'/'books everyone should read' shelf and will be moved down to the regular shelf. It's still a little cruel that it has to be next to a Goosebumps book, but oh well. These things happen.
So tell me you know what this is about. An angsty teenager fails out of school and goes back home and stuff. It's another twenty-four-hour deal. Fun times.
If you like South Park you've probably seen the Catcher in the Rye episode. I think it's absolutely hilarious, even if that makes me sound like a bad person. See, the Catcher in the Rye was once--and actually in some places it still is--considered a really controversial book because of the swearing and references to sex. Listen. Margaret Atwood is dirtier than Catcher in the Rye. So Mr Garrison explains that this is the book that made Mark David Chapman kill John Lennon. Butters finishes the book and he starts going crazy, like "Must... kill... John... Lennon", and he takes a knife out of the drawer. He goes to his dad and asks him where John Lennon lives, and his dad says that John Lennon is dead, of course. So he's like aww, man! and goes back to his room. ...Okay, it's funnier on the show. (And all the episodes are online, so...)
And we were discussing this one day in Intro to Lit and Mrs CF was talking about how scared she was to read it because, in her words, "Every weirdo is found with a copy of Catcher in the Rye!" She's worried that if she reads it she'll go insane or something. I can relate, I'm scared to read Nietzsche for the same reason.
Sooooo let's go.
First, people tend to put this book's opening as one of the best book openings ever. Here's the opening: "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth" (1). Excuse me? That's not best. It's new and different, but come on here. Pride and Prejudice. The Hobbit. A Tale of Two Cities. Just to name a few. I highly doubt Caulfield had a crappy David Copperfield-esque childhood. Also, Caulfield, don't compare yourself to David Copperfield, or your book to his. Call me touchy, but that book is fantastic. Let's be real with ourselves, Holden.
One of the first things--people--Holden talks about is his older brother DB. He says his brother is an author and that one of his best stories is "The Secret Goldfish"--a kid buys a goldfish but won't let people look at it because he paid for it all by himself. I wonder of JD Salinger actually wrote this story--though perhaps under a different title. (There is actually apparently a book called The Secret Goldfish, but it was written in 2004.) And I'm thinking that perhaps this story might supposed to be symbolic or something, but to be honest... I'm not sure how. I have trouble taking this book seriously.
I also wonder if DB is supposed to based off of an author JD Salinger knew, or just authors in general--DB moves up to Hollywood to presumably write scripts, and Holden says that he's become a prostitute.
Okay yeah, one of the most annoying things about Holden is when he says a fact--or what he believes to be a fact, and the next sentence is "it really does", or he'll state a belief or opinion, and say, "I really believe that." And I just want to be like, "WELL OBVIOUSLY HOLDEN, THAT'S WHY YOU SAID IT!" I get that he's supposed to be an unsure teenager and wants to be sure we don't think he's a phony too and all of that but honestly, stop. I could smack you upside the head. Upside the gray part. BAM.
"What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse" (4). He means that people are saying by, making some kind of fanfare or something to show in some way they are aware that you're going. This I agree with.
Also, that sad good-bye and bad good-bye made me think of Shel Silverstein. Sorry, it's too late to unthink it now.
"'He just kept talking about Life being a game and all. You know.' 'Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.' 'Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.' Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right--I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game" (8). / "His opponent, the big blond boy, already knows this; there is a touching gallantry in his defense. He is so sweet-naturedly beautiful, so nobly made; and yet his classical cream-marble body seems a handicap to him. The rules of the game inhibit it from functioning. He is fighting at a hopeless disadvantage. He should throw away his useless racket, vault over the net, , and force the cruel little gold cat to submit to his marble strength. No, on the contrary, the blond boy accepts the rules, binds himself by them, will suffer defeat and humiliation rather than break them... He will fight clean, a perfect sportsman, until he has lost the last game. And won't this keep happening to him all through his life? Won't he keep getting himself involved in the wrong kind of game, the kind of game he was never born to play, against an opponent who is quick and clever and merciless?" (53). This is from Isherwood's A Single Man, when George is watching the two tennis-playing teenagers. Anyways, I see where Holden is coming from. I know exactly what Holden is saying. It's not so much that I disagree with him, it's just that after a while he gets annoying. I get antsy, you know? Like, GET TO THE BLOODY POINT ALREADY! He just drags and drags after a while.
"People never notice anything" (9).
When he's leaving Mr Spencer: "After I shut the door and started back to the living room, he yelled something at me, but I couldn't exactly hear him. I'm pretty sure he yelled 'Good luck!' at me. I hope not. I hope to hell not. I'd never yell 'Good luck!' at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it" (16).
So Holden bought an orange hunting hat with the flaps and all in NYC. This kid Ackley starts ragging on him for it--saying it's a deer shooting hat. Holden responds with: "'Like hell it is... This is a people shooting hat... I shoot people in this hat'" (22). Call me crazy, but I actually saw it as a really cute scene. The way I imagined him saying it... Kind of like a little kid. It sounds little kiddish, the way he words it... Anyways, this might be why the book ends up in the possession of serial killers or inspiring them or what have you. Problem: phonies. Solution: shoot them. It's the only reference to shooting I see... And instead of just quietly getting agitated by 'phonies' and trying to ignore them and avoid them, this passage could be the "Wait! I have a better solution!" passage. I don't know. I'm not a serial killer. I'd make a pretty poor one at any rate. (PS. Aspiring serial killers out there: Holden is not being serious! He is kidding.)
"He was always asking you to do him a big favor. You take a very handsome guy, or a guy that thinks he's a real hot-shot, and they're always asking you to do them a big favor. Just because they're crazy about themself, they think that you're crazy about them, too, and that you're just dying to do them a favor" (28). Holden is talking about his roommate, who asks Holden to write him up a composition--even though Holden has failed out (though Holden is very talented in English and actually did pass that). Holden does end up writing him a very nice piece about his dead brother's baseball mitt, but the roommate thinks it's stupid--so Holden just tears it up and throws it away out of agitation.
"Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad" (52).
So Holden leaves school, but instead of going home he wanders around NYC. Eventually he goes to a club and starts talking to a lady... "The band was starting a fast one. She started jitterbugging with me--but just very nice and easy, not corny. She was really good. All you had to do was touch her. And when she turned around, her pretty little butt twitched so nice and all. She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them" (73).
He also get agitated over the people clapping over the piano player--the player was trying to be really show-offy, and in doing so, he really screws the number up, The people were stupid and not realizing he was a screw up, and were clapping and all--Holden says if he was an actor or a piano player he wouldn't want these people to think he was good. "I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet" (84).
And Holden sees a college fellow telling a girl about a fellow who committed suicide on pills while giving his girlfriend a feel. He's shocked at that behaviour, and I don't blame him--there's a bit in Factotum where Henry sees a sailor doing pretty much the same thing to his girl. I want to say that the sailor's victim was eaten by alligators or something weird like that, but yeah. Tried and true way to pick up ladies?
"People are always ruining things for you" (87).
"It's no fun to be yellow" (89).
"One of my troubles is, I never care too much when I lose something--it used to drive my mother crazy when I was a kid. Some guys spend days looking for something they lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I'd care too much" (89).
"You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn't any brains" (92). Hehe.
Also, Holden describes a book he read about a fellow named Monsieur Blanchard. Just for future reference: the book in question is (according to KGB and Amazon.com) is Warped in the Making: Crimes of Love and Hate. Hm. Seems interesting.
Holden also complains about how Catholics apparently are always trying to figure out if you're a Catholic too. He's talking about how he met a fellow at one of the schools he flunked out of who he was having a great conversation with about tennis and stuff, and the kid clumsily brings up the subject of Catholicism--he asks Holden if he knows where the local Catholic church is. Granted, the kid could have just been asking an actual question--you know, "Do you know where it is?" and so on. Holden is a little bit of the unreliable narrator, so everything is bound to be slanted by what he thinks, and he could have just laid his own take on the situation--the definition of the situation and all of that. Still, whether Holden was right or not, he says you could tell--it seemed like you could tell--that the boy would have enjoyed the conversation even more if they were both Catholic. "That kind of stuff drives me crazy. I'm not saying it ruined our conversation or anything--it didn't--but it sure as hell didn't do it any good" (113).
Holden starts driving me nuts about when he starts complaining about actors. I understand his complaints about actors who are too good--whose acting attempts to be real end up being too real and end up looking ultra-rehearsed anyways. But then he talks about how he's always worried because he's scared even good actors will do something phony in the next instant. That bothers me. Everybody has a bit of arrogance, I admit that. But jeez, chill out! He's like the super-hipster. HE IS THE ORIGINAL HIPSTER.
And Holden goes to the museum and starts talking about how he's always loved it: "The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole... and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way--I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it" (122). I totally know how he feels. There's something incredibly reassuring about going to museum you know like the back of your hand and having it be the same, even if you haven't been there for a few years. For example, I could probably go through the Peabody museum blindfolded and still be able to tell you exactly where everything is (except for that new caveman bit and the room that has monthly exhibits, of course)... But like the dinosaurs, the ancient animals, the contemporary animals, the birds... I guess the crystals and geodes too, but I never much pay attention those things... Oh, and the kid's room! But I'm too old for the kid's room. But I could describe that room in perfect detail if need be. I need to have kids so I have an excuse to go into the kid's room... Or borrow kids. I like that better. So... Yeah. (Of course, it goes both ways. When they change something it can be shocking and even devastating, though fortunately they've mainly changed the geological exhibits, and like I said, I'm not exactly invested in those.)
...He goes on and says... "I kept walking and walking, and I kept thinking about old Phoebe going to that museum on Saturdays the way I used to. I thought how she'd see the same stuff I used to see, and how she'd be different every time she saw it. It didn't exactly depress me to think of it, but it didn't make me feel gay as hell, either. Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway" (122). (Phoebe is his little sister, by the way).
"If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody" (125). Men, this goes for you too. (PS. Holden goes on a date!)
On his date, he starts attempting to explain what about society and people he's so fed up with. The girl of course doesn't get it, but it made me start thinking. I mean, they're the normal our society and culture is stupid blah blah blah that anyone can spit out, but then Holden starts talking about going off to live in the woods. Now, let me back up a little. A few months ago, the book Into the Wild happened to come up in conversation during Intro to Lit. Every kid--except me--hated it. I admit that Christopher didn't act smartly--in fact he acted the opposite of smartly--but I still liked and admired him. My teacher adequately ripped him apart, especially on the fact that it never explains why he was so agitated and had to leave. In the movie they have to make up things. She actually had a really good phrase to describe his unexplained feelings, and I can't remember what it was... It was like "cul de sac ennui", or something. I sort of thought about it, but I put it out of mind for whatever reason, probably too busy to think about it really. But, when I read this part... my first thought was automatically, oh my God, he's Holden Caulfield. Which ended up sort of ruining him in my eyes--he's not some Christ figure, he's not some big hero or idol, he was just a confused, disenchanted kid who didn't know what to do--so he did what he did. So... Yeah. I'm not saying that this book inspired Christopher--it isn't even mentioned--but I guess that maybe it proves that Salinger got the teenage brain down pat.
Anyways, the date flops because the girl is basically a phony in Holden's eyes. Truth is, she's the one doing the thinking--well, I see both sides. Yeah, it's good to do spontaneous things. It's fun. It's life-changing. But at the same time, Holden is like, let's just get up and go! Move somewhere far away, I have $180, and all of that... Which is a stupid decision. Anyways, Holden gets agitated for her thinking things through, and tells her she's a pain in the ass, and yeah. There goes the date. So Holden leaves, drinks some more, and decides to sneak into his house and visit Phoebe.
"I'm not too sure old Phoebe knew what the hell I was talking about. I mean she's only a little child and all. But she was listening, at least. If somebody at least listens, it's not too bad" (172).
Anyways, the title comes from the fact that Holden misheard that old bit, "If a Body Meet A Body"... He thought it was "If a Body Catch a Body". He tells Phoebe that that's what he wants to do--he imagines that there's a big playing field of rye on a cliff somewhere. There's thousands and thousands of kids, and if one starts veering off-track, he can catch the kid and keep them from falling off the end. I don't... I don't get it. Last time I read it I was all, "Holden's such a great guy, protecting those kids!" But now, I'm missing something maybe. I'm just like, that's great Holden... But it's stupid as hell. Maybe there's some fantastic display of humanity or symbolism or something I can't quite get. Maybe it's supposed to be symbolic of him keeping kids from veering off in life like he seems to have or something. Maybe he feels like he's fallen down a precipice. And at the same time... It's like, what makes it so great? I mean, when someone is in trouble, most people's first inclination is to help the person out. I would stop kids from falling off a cliff too. Why are we throwing Holden a big party? Everybody gets excited over this part and I just respond with what I've just written--you know? Maybe I'm just particularly obtuse today.
So Holden tells Phoebe he's going to leave, and Phoebe offers him her Christmas money. He feels guilty about it the next day and goes to her school to leave a note for Phoebe. While he's there, walking in the hallways: "I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another 'Fuck you' on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck you' signs in the world. It's impossible" (202).
"Don't tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody" (214).
So... There's the book. Like I mentioned, it's being moved to the regular shelf, but it still is worth a read so your hipster friends don't beat you up. Well, maybe not the hipsters in your life, but I'd read it at least to say you've done it. Really, you look like a dunce if you've made it out of high school without reading this. It's not half-bad, but Salinger has done better. So... Yep!
MLA citation: Salinger, JD. The Catcher in the Rye. Bantam Books: New York, 1981.
(This is actually sort of disappointing. I thought this edition was much older... Though it does look like it's from the seventies, so I guess the date makes sense...)
Actually, have I explained what phonies are? Okay, we're not done yet then. Phonies are those people that you feel better than, whether you actually are or not. They're the sort--well... Hm. They seem like they don't get 'it' or 'you'. People that maybe blindly follow society and the 'big man's' ideas without question. So, a hipster would probably say I'm a phony. Like I said, Holden Caulfield is the original hipster. I don't have a better way of putting it.
Also, on an unrelated note--I love animated shorts from film festivals and all of that. On a whim, I searched for one that scarred me for life as a child. I was both pleased and horrified, of course. Enjoy! It was nominated for something in the Sundance film festival x years ago too, I guess.
Last post's cryptic song lyrics: Blame it on the Tetons by Modest Mouse
This post's cryptic song lyrics: I save my grace with half-assed guilt and lay down the quilt upon the lawn, spread my arms and soak up congratulations
So tell me you know what this is about. An angsty teenager fails out of school and goes back home and stuff. It's another twenty-four-hour deal. Fun times.
If you like South Park you've probably seen the Catcher in the Rye episode. I think it's absolutely hilarious, even if that makes me sound like a bad person. See, the Catcher in the Rye was once--and actually in some places it still is--considered a really controversial book because of the swearing and references to sex. Listen. Margaret Atwood is dirtier than Catcher in the Rye. So Mr Garrison explains that this is the book that made Mark David Chapman kill John Lennon. Butters finishes the book and he starts going crazy, like "Must... kill... John... Lennon", and he takes a knife out of the drawer. He goes to his dad and asks him where John Lennon lives, and his dad says that John Lennon is dead, of course. So he's like aww, man! and goes back to his room. ...Okay, it's funnier on the show. (And all the episodes are online, so...)
And we were discussing this one day in Intro to Lit and Mrs CF was talking about how scared she was to read it because, in her words, "Every weirdo is found with a copy of Catcher in the Rye!" She's worried that if she reads it she'll go insane or something. I can relate, I'm scared to read Nietzsche for the same reason.
Sooooo let's go.
First, people tend to put this book's opening as one of the best book openings ever. Here's the opening: "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth" (1). Excuse me? That's not best. It's new and different, but come on here. Pride and Prejudice. The Hobbit. A Tale of Two Cities. Just to name a few. I highly doubt Caulfield had a crappy David Copperfield-esque childhood. Also, Caulfield, don't compare yourself to David Copperfield, or your book to his. Call me touchy, but that book is fantastic. Let's be real with ourselves, Holden.
One of the first things--people--Holden talks about is his older brother DB. He says his brother is an author and that one of his best stories is "The Secret Goldfish"--a kid buys a goldfish but won't let people look at it because he paid for it all by himself. I wonder of JD Salinger actually wrote this story--though perhaps under a different title. (There is actually apparently a book called The Secret Goldfish, but it was written in 2004.) And I'm thinking that perhaps this story might supposed to be symbolic or something, but to be honest... I'm not sure how. I have trouble taking this book seriously.
I also wonder if DB is supposed to based off of an author JD Salinger knew, or just authors in general--DB moves up to Hollywood to presumably write scripts, and Holden says that he's become a prostitute.
Okay yeah, one of the most annoying things about Holden is when he says a fact--or what he believes to be a fact, and the next sentence is "it really does", or he'll state a belief or opinion, and say, "I really believe that." And I just want to be like, "WELL OBVIOUSLY HOLDEN, THAT'S WHY YOU SAID IT!" I get that he's supposed to be an unsure teenager and wants to be sure we don't think he's a phony too and all of that but honestly, stop. I could smack you upside the head. Upside the gray part. BAM.
"What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse" (4). He means that people are saying by, making some kind of fanfare or something to show in some way they are aware that you're going. This I agree with.
Also, that sad good-bye and bad good-bye made me think of Shel Silverstein. Sorry, it's too late to unthink it now.
"'He just kept talking about Life being a game and all. You know.' 'Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.' 'Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it.' Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right--I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game" (8). / "His opponent, the big blond boy, already knows this; there is a touching gallantry in his defense. He is so sweet-naturedly beautiful, so nobly made; and yet his classical cream-marble body seems a handicap to him. The rules of the game inhibit it from functioning. He is fighting at a hopeless disadvantage. He should throw away his useless racket, vault over the net, , and force the cruel little gold cat to submit to his marble strength. No, on the contrary, the blond boy accepts the rules, binds himself by them, will suffer defeat and humiliation rather than break them... He will fight clean, a perfect sportsman, until he has lost the last game. And won't this keep happening to him all through his life? Won't he keep getting himself involved in the wrong kind of game, the kind of game he was never born to play, against an opponent who is quick and clever and merciless?" (53). This is from Isherwood's A Single Man, when George is watching the two tennis-playing teenagers. Anyways, I see where Holden is coming from. I know exactly what Holden is saying. It's not so much that I disagree with him, it's just that after a while he gets annoying. I get antsy, you know? Like, GET TO THE BLOODY POINT ALREADY! He just drags and drags after a while.
"People never notice anything" (9).
When he's leaving Mr Spencer: "After I shut the door and started back to the living room, he yelled something at me, but I couldn't exactly hear him. I'm pretty sure he yelled 'Good luck!' at me. I hope not. I hope to hell not. I'd never yell 'Good luck!' at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about it" (16).
So Holden bought an orange hunting hat with the flaps and all in NYC. This kid Ackley starts ragging on him for it--saying it's a deer shooting hat. Holden responds with: "'Like hell it is... This is a people shooting hat... I shoot people in this hat'" (22). Call me crazy, but I actually saw it as a really cute scene. The way I imagined him saying it... Kind of like a little kid. It sounds little kiddish, the way he words it... Anyways, this might be why the book ends up in the possession of serial killers or inspiring them or what have you. Problem: phonies. Solution: shoot them. It's the only reference to shooting I see... And instead of just quietly getting agitated by 'phonies' and trying to ignore them and avoid them, this passage could be the "Wait! I have a better solution!" passage. I don't know. I'm not a serial killer. I'd make a pretty poor one at any rate. (PS. Aspiring serial killers out there: Holden is not being serious! He is kidding.)
"He was always asking you to do him a big favor. You take a very handsome guy, or a guy that thinks he's a real hot-shot, and they're always asking you to do them a big favor. Just because they're crazy about themself, they think that you're crazy about them, too, and that you're just dying to do them a favor" (28). Holden is talking about his roommate, who asks Holden to write him up a composition--even though Holden has failed out (though Holden is very talented in English and actually did pass that). Holden does end up writing him a very nice piece about his dead brother's baseball mitt, but the roommate thinks it's stupid--so Holden just tears it up and throws it away out of agitation.
"Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad" (52).
So Holden leaves school, but instead of going home he wanders around NYC. Eventually he goes to a club and starts talking to a lady... "The band was starting a fast one. She started jitterbugging with me--but just very nice and easy, not corny. She was really good. All you had to do was touch her. And when she turned around, her pretty little butt twitched so nice and all. She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them" (73).
He also get agitated over the people clapping over the piano player--the player was trying to be really show-offy, and in doing so, he really screws the number up, The people were stupid and not realizing he was a screw up, and were clapping and all--Holden says if he was an actor or a piano player he wouldn't want these people to think he was good. "I'd hate it. I wouldn't even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. If I were a piano player, I'd play it in the goddam closet" (84).
And Holden sees a college fellow telling a girl about a fellow who committed suicide on pills while giving his girlfriend a feel. He's shocked at that behaviour, and I don't blame him--there's a bit in Factotum where Henry sees a sailor doing pretty much the same thing to his girl. I want to say that the sailor's victim was eaten by alligators or something weird like that, but yeah. Tried and true way to pick up ladies?
"People are always ruining things for you" (87).
"It's no fun to be yellow" (89).
"One of my troubles is, I never care too much when I lose something--it used to drive my mother crazy when I was a kid. Some guys spend days looking for something they lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I'd care too much" (89).
"You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn't any brains" (92). Hehe.
Also, Holden describes a book he read about a fellow named Monsieur Blanchard. Just for future reference: the book in question is (according to KGB and Amazon.com) is Warped in the Making: Crimes of Love and Hate. Hm. Seems interesting.
Holden also complains about how Catholics apparently are always trying to figure out if you're a Catholic too. He's talking about how he met a fellow at one of the schools he flunked out of who he was having a great conversation with about tennis and stuff, and the kid clumsily brings up the subject of Catholicism--he asks Holden if he knows where the local Catholic church is. Granted, the kid could have just been asking an actual question--you know, "Do you know where it is?" and so on. Holden is a little bit of the unreliable narrator, so everything is bound to be slanted by what he thinks, and he could have just laid his own take on the situation--the definition of the situation and all of that. Still, whether Holden was right or not, he says you could tell--it seemed like you could tell--that the boy would have enjoyed the conversation even more if they were both Catholic. "That kind of stuff drives me crazy. I'm not saying it ruined our conversation or anything--it didn't--but it sure as hell didn't do it any good" (113).
Holden starts driving me nuts about when he starts complaining about actors. I understand his complaints about actors who are too good--whose acting attempts to be real end up being too real and end up looking ultra-rehearsed anyways. But then he talks about how he's always worried because he's scared even good actors will do something phony in the next instant. That bothers me. Everybody has a bit of arrogance, I admit that. But jeez, chill out! He's like the super-hipster. HE IS THE ORIGINAL HIPSTER.
And Holden goes to the museum and starts talking about how he's always loved it: "The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole... and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way--I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it" (122). I totally know how he feels. There's something incredibly reassuring about going to museum you know like the back of your hand and having it be the same, even if you haven't been there for a few years. For example, I could probably go through the Peabody museum blindfolded and still be able to tell you exactly where everything is (except for that new caveman bit and the room that has monthly exhibits, of course)... But like the dinosaurs, the ancient animals, the contemporary animals, the birds... I guess the crystals and geodes too, but I never much pay attention those things... Oh, and the kid's room! But I'm too old for the kid's room. But I could describe that room in perfect detail if need be. I need to have kids so I have an excuse to go into the kid's room... Or borrow kids. I like that better. So... Yeah. (Of course, it goes both ways. When they change something it can be shocking and even devastating, though fortunately they've mainly changed the geological exhibits, and like I said, I'm not exactly invested in those.)
...He goes on and says... "I kept walking and walking, and I kept thinking about old Phoebe going to that museum on Saturdays the way I used to. I thought how she'd see the same stuff I used to see, and how she'd be different every time she saw it. It didn't exactly depress me to think of it, but it didn't make me feel gay as hell, either. Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway" (122). (Phoebe is his little sister, by the way).
"If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody" (125). Men, this goes for you too. (PS. Holden goes on a date!)
On his date, he starts attempting to explain what about society and people he's so fed up with. The girl of course doesn't get it, but it made me start thinking. I mean, they're the normal our society and culture is stupid blah blah blah that anyone can spit out, but then Holden starts talking about going off to live in the woods. Now, let me back up a little. A few months ago, the book Into the Wild happened to come up in conversation during Intro to Lit. Every kid--except me--hated it. I admit that Christopher didn't act smartly--in fact he acted the opposite of smartly--but I still liked and admired him. My teacher adequately ripped him apart, especially on the fact that it never explains why he was so agitated and had to leave. In the movie they have to make up things. She actually had a really good phrase to describe his unexplained feelings, and I can't remember what it was... It was like "cul de sac ennui", or something. I sort of thought about it, but I put it out of mind for whatever reason, probably too busy to think about it really. But, when I read this part... my first thought was automatically, oh my God, he's Holden Caulfield. Which ended up sort of ruining him in my eyes--he's not some Christ figure, he's not some big hero or idol, he was just a confused, disenchanted kid who didn't know what to do--so he did what he did. So... Yeah. I'm not saying that this book inspired Christopher--it isn't even mentioned--but I guess that maybe it proves that Salinger got the teenage brain down pat.
Anyways, the date flops because the girl is basically a phony in Holden's eyes. Truth is, she's the one doing the thinking--well, I see both sides. Yeah, it's good to do spontaneous things. It's fun. It's life-changing. But at the same time, Holden is like, let's just get up and go! Move somewhere far away, I have $180, and all of that... Which is a stupid decision. Anyways, Holden gets agitated for her thinking things through, and tells her she's a pain in the ass, and yeah. There goes the date. So Holden leaves, drinks some more, and decides to sneak into his house and visit Phoebe.
"I'm not too sure old Phoebe knew what the hell I was talking about. I mean she's only a little child and all. But she was listening, at least. If somebody at least listens, it's not too bad" (172).
Anyways, the title comes from the fact that Holden misheard that old bit, "If a Body Meet A Body"... He thought it was "If a Body Catch a Body". He tells Phoebe that that's what he wants to do--he imagines that there's a big playing field of rye on a cliff somewhere. There's thousands and thousands of kids, and if one starts veering off-track, he can catch the kid and keep them from falling off the end. I don't... I don't get it. Last time I read it I was all, "Holden's such a great guy, protecting those kids!" But now, I'm missing something maybe. I'm just like, that's great Holden... But it's stupid as hell. Maybe there's some fantastic display of humanity or symbolism or something I can't quite get. Maybe it's supposed to be symbolic of him keeping kids from veering off in life like he seems to have or something. Maybe he feels like he's fallen down a precipice. And at the same time... It's like, what makes it so great? I mean, when someone is in trouble, most people's first inclination is to help the person out. I would stop kids from falling off a cliff too. Why are we throwing Holden a big party? Everybody gets excited over this part and I just respond with what I've just written--you know? Maybe I'm just particularly obtuse today.
So Holden tells Phoebe he's going to leave, and Phoebe offers him her Christmas money. He feels guilty about it the next day and goes to her school to leave a note for Phoebe. While he's there, walking in the hallways: "I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another 'Fuck you' on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck you' signs in the world. It's impossible" (202).
"Don't tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody" (214).
So... There's the book. Like I mentioned, it's being moved to the regular shelf, but it still is worth a read so your hipster friends don't beat you up. Well, maybe not the hipsters in your life, but I'd read it at least to say you've done it. Really, you look like a dunce if you've made it out of high school without reading this. It's not half-bad, but Salinger has done better. So... Yep!
MLA citation: Salinger, JD. The Catcher in the Rye. Bantam Books: New York, 1981.
(This is actually sort of disappointing. I thought this edition was much older... Though it does look like it's from the seventies, so I guess the date makes sense...)
Actually, have I explained what phonies are? Okay, we're not done yet then. Phonies are those people that you feel better than, whether you actually are or not. They're the sort--well... Hm. They seem like they don't get 'it' or 'you'. People that maybe blindly follow society and the 'big man's' ideas without question. So, a hipster would probably say I'm a phony. Like I said, Holden Caulfield is the original hipster. I don't have a better way of putting it.
Also, on an unrelated note--I love animated shorts from film festivals and all of that. On a whim, I searched for one that scarred me for life as a child. I was both pleased and horrified, of course. Enjoy! It was nominated for something in the Sundance film festival x years ago too, I guess.
Last post's cryptic song lyrics: Blame it on the Tetons by Modest Mouse
This post's cryptic song lyrics: I save my grace with half-assed guilt and lay down the quilt upon the lawn, spread my arms and soak up congratulations
Friday, May 20, 2011
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
First of all, the first time I read this book was two or three years ago. I wasn't that impressed. I'd like to go back to sixteen (or fifteen?)-year-old me and ask what the hell was wrong with me. Then again, the first two times I read Everything is Illuminated, I was unimpressed. Can you believe it? But then the third time I read it hit me, all of a sudden and just like that. Same for this book.
Like Everything is Illuminated, this story is told through three different people--Oskar Schell, Thomas Schell SR, and Oskar's grandmother. First of all, there is Oskar, whose father died on 9/11 two years before, when Oskar was (I believe) six (or seven?). He has found a key in a blue vase hidden away in his father's closet, untouched--Mrs Schell has not touched or moved any of the things in his closet, it seems. Anyways, he finds the key in an envelope and it has Black written upon it. He then decides to find every person with that name in the city in the hopes that one of them knows what it unlocks and knew his father. Secondly there is Oskar's grandmother. She tells the story of her early life to her immigration to America. Her immigration is described, she find the man who was to marry her sister (her sister was killed in the bombing of Dresden) and marries him. She describes their courtship and marriage, and the eventual failure (or perhaps not) of their marriage. Thomas Schell SR is Oskar's grandfather, who left before Oskar's father was even born. His story is told through letters addressed to Thomas that were never actually sent. Eventually he comes back, and appears in the story and meets Oskar, though Oskar doesn't realize until later that Thomas Schell SR is his grandfather. So... let's start!
So the book is peppered with photographs. The very first thing in it is a picture of a doorknob and the surrounding door. It's got an old-fashioned keyhole--I don't know if this was the intent of Foer, but it reminds me of that quote, "People who look through keyholes are apt to get the idea that most things are keyhole shaped". It seems appropriate for the book.
"What about a teakettle?" (1). That's how book starts. It's so perfect and simple, but it's asking everything.
I love that instead of using the cliche of his boots feeling like lead or his feet feeling like lead when he's upset or sad he says that he has heavy boots or that he's getting heavy boots.
So on the way to the service for Oskar's father (it's a flashback) Oskar talks to the limousine driver--they go in a limousine on the way there--and he comes up with an idea: "'Now that I'm thinking about it... they could make an incredibly long limousine that had its backseat at your mom's VJ and its front seat at your mausoleum, and it would be as long as your life.' Gerald said, 'Yeah, but if everyone lived like that, no one would ever meet anyone, right?' I said, 'So?'" (5).
"A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but writing was the only thing that made my boots lighter. One weird thing is that instead of using normal stamps, I used stamps from my collection, including valuable ones, which sometimes made me wonder if what I was really doing was trying to get rid of things" (11). (The worst day is of course 9/11. The book is also peppered with letters from famous folk like Stephen Hawking and Jane Goodall and, most of all, Ringo Starr. I marked the page of Ringo's letter too. I don't know if Foer just made the letter up himself, but I'd like to think that it's a bona fide letter for Ringo Starr. That would be so cool!)
"'Well, what I don't get is why do we exist? I don't mean how, but why.' I watched the fireflies of his thoughts orbit his head. He said, 'We exist because we exist.' 'What the?' 'We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened'" (13). This is Oskar talking to his father, pre-death, obviously. This book obviously slants the father (I have to say it like that, I know that's harsh, but it would be foolish to deny a slant when the book has parts written from the son's point of view about his father), but I see Thomas Schell (JR, Oskar's father) as an Atticus Finch-type. I mean, not as good, that's Atticus Finch we're talking about, but still, the closest possible.
Thomas Schell SR's first letter talks about why he does not speak. The ability just kind of disappeared over time thanks to grief--the first word he lost was the name Anna, the girl he was to marry and Oskar's
"I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless" (33). Thomas SR still.
"'We're useful now, but soon we'll be interesting'" (39). Oskar goes to a locksmith to show him the key. Because electronics are coming more and more into play, soon traditional keys are going to be more of an eccentricity than anything else--the locksmith says this bit. I love that line. I went so far as to underline it in the book. There's something so lovely about it, and it's got something higher than what it signifies, but I just can't seem to wrap my head around it.
"'Why do beautiful songs make you sad?' 'Because they aren't true.' 'Never?' 'Nothing is beautiful and true'" (43). For some reason I feel like the old woman of Trachimbrod (whose name I can never seem to remember) says something like this, but I seem to be incorrect...
On page fifty-six there's a diagram of an 'intrepid flyer' paper airplane. I guess it doesn't mean much in relation to this book--I mean it does, that's why it's in here, but my note on it refers more to Chuck Palahniuk's book Survivor. The edition I have is all white, but for a drawing of a plane from above and there are roses or flowers and curlicues about it (or something alone those lines, I don't have it exactly on hand) and the title/author, et cetera. But the edition I see all the time now is all red with big sort of blocky black letters with a curious line design. It's the folding instructions for a paper airplane! Ah-ha! ...Yeeeeep...
"'It probably gets pretty lonely to be Grandma, don't you think?' I told her, 'It probably gets pretty lonely to be anyone'" (69). Thomas Schell SR finds his ex-wife after he reads that his son died in the paper, and has been living with her ever since, even though neither Oskar nor his mother see him until the book's close-to conclusion. Oskar's grandmother just refers to him as "the renter" as well--anyways, Oskar's mother imagines that it's just an imaginary friend--because the Grandma is lonely.
"I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love" (76).
Oskar's grandmother is writing about her younger life: "[My schoolmate Mary] loved to jump on her bed. She jumped on her bed for so many years that one afternoon, while I watched her jump, the seams burst. Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?" (78).
So, one of the Mrs Blacks that Oskar meets has a picture of an elephant. She tells Oskar about a study that was done on the elephants' memories--they'd record a call and play it back to see if the elephants could remember the calls, and remember they did. "'What's really fascinating is that she'd play the call of a dead elephant to its family members.' 'And?' 'They remembered... They approached the speaker.' 'I wonder what they were feeling... When they heard the calls of their dead, was it with love that they approached the jeep? Or fear? Or anger?' 'I don't remember'" (96). I wonder. I wonder what that would be like. I feel like it would be cruel. I feel like they'd hope against hope. Maybe that's too romantic--Oskar says that they were probably just confused. Though that's logical, I'd like to think that they remembered and felt hope and love and all of that--confusion too, but beyond just animal confusion.
"'Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are'" (99).
"Sometimes I wondered if she cried when no one was looking" (100).
Oskar's grandmother was pretending to be a monster once when he was littler, and he fell and cut his lip on a table and needed a stitch or two--"'You see, I was pretending to be a monster, and I became a monster'" (101).
"Only a few months into our marriage, we started marking off areas in the apartment as 'Nothing Places,' in which one could be assured of complete privacy, we agreed that we never would look at the marked-off zones, that they would be nonexistent territories in the apartment in which one could temporarily cease to exist" (110). Later, Thomas SR remembers being on a Something "island" (because eventually the apartment became just a place of Nothings) and thinking "'How did I get here... and how can I get back?'" (111). But I like this idea. I think everybody needs these places. I think everybody has these places, even if they're not aware of it. I tend to think of my basement as my Nothing place (Dante is privy to it, of course), and the floor of my bedroom too. There are certain spaces you expect to be nothing places, even if you haven't given them quite that name, I'm sure. Just think about it.
"Literature was the only religion her father practiced" (114). Thomas SR is describing Oskar's grandmother and Anna's father. Thomas also mentions that when a book fell on the ground the father would kiss it--one of the men shot by Nazis in Everything is Illuminated had this same trait. I believe this is the man who refused to spit on the Torah even when there was a gun at his daughters' heads--but I don't remember exactly.
"I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person that stays?" (114). Still Thomas SR.
"'So little happens,' she said, 'and I'm so good at remembering'" (130). Oskar's grandmother said this.
"I'm sorry for my inability to let the unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things" (132). All of Thomas SR's letters are addressed to his son--this must refer to Anna. She is dead and gone, and thus 'unimportant', at least in comparison to his wife and his son--and because he leaves them he cannot hold onto them. I guess that hardly needs an explanation, but please humour me.
"I thought about the unfinished scarf, and the rock she carried across Broadway, and how she had lived so much life but still needed imaginary friends, and the one thousand thumb wars" (144). Oskar has not met the renter--his grandfather--at this point, obviously.
"I kept wondering if what I was feeling was at all like falling" (147).
I love Mr Black. Now, Oskar meets a lot of Mr Blacks, but Oskar meets a Mr Black who lives in the apartment exactly above him. He's certainly my favourite character in the book. He's so alive. He's just bursting. I wish I knew someone like him--or could be someone like him. I think some of the reason why I marked one page of his bit is because he talks about Winston Churchill--and Americans love Winston Churchill. We really do, Americans are like Winston Churchill's little fangirls. Also, Mr Black says that he was born on January first, nineteen-hundred--So, he's "'lived every day of the twentieth century!'" (152). Wow! So that would mean--I didn't realize it until just now--that he's one hundred and three, if I've done my math correctly. But really, wow. That's amazing. I wonder what it would be like.
"'So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!'" (153).
"'[My wife] died twenty-four years ago! Long time ago! Yesterday, in my life! ... 'You don't feel bad that I asked about her? You can tell me if you do.' 'No!' he said. 'Thinking about her is the next best thing!'" (154).
"It was getting hard to keep all the things I didn't know inside me" (154).
"'It's not a horrible world,' he told me... 'But it's filled with a lot of horrible people!'" (156).
"'I've lived long enough to know I'm not one-hundred-percent anything!'" (156).
"'Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!'" (159).
So Mr Black--the one talking in all exclamations--is the veteran of both World Wars, I believe, and a few others, mayhaps--he's not quite specific with it and of course he's seen every other war of the twentieth century... He also has a bed made from a tree he cut down and carved himself. "'Which was your last war?' He said, 'Cutting down that tree was my last war!' I asked him who won, which I thought was a nice question, because it would let him say that he won, and feel proud. 'The ax won! It's always that way!'" (161).
"It made me wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about 'Eleanor Rigby'. It's true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?" (163). I tried to pay attention to the use of the words incredibly and extremely and close. Mr Black was incredibly close--one floor above--but incredibly lonely. But you don't have to be alone and isolated to be lonely, and vice versa. You can feel alone in a room of people... And so on.
And in the next heartbeat, Oskar immediately thinks of an invention. His idea is that you would absorb a chemical through your skin that would change colour depending on your mood--red would be anger, sad would be blue, pink would be pleased, and so on. The water of a special shower would automatically reset you to your base mood, if you know what I mean. It's so you would know how to treat people--you wouldn't get mad at a blue person, you wouldn't want to ruin the mood of a pink person (although it would make you incredibly guilty if you had no choice), and so on. My favourite application for this invention: "Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, I'm happy! That whole time, I was actually happy! What a relief!" (163).
"'That's the difference between heaven and hell! In hell we starve! In heaven we feed each other!'" (164).
Mr Black also reveals that he hasn't turned his hearing aids on for a long time--I just assume that it's been since his wife's death. (He's been reading Oskar's lips.) So Oskar turns them up, and it says that at that moment, a flock of birds flies by outside the window "extremely fast and incredibly close" (165). Like I said earlier, I've been paying attention to when Jonathan uses the words in the title, and in this, all but one word is the title. Was the title referring to this? I have to admit that I never thought particularly about what the title could refer to or what it truly means before just now. Could it be this? It would be loud, very loud to Mr Black. And clearly it was also incredibly close. Hm.
Oskar is upset by his mom. His mom has been seeing a person named Ron--she met him at a support group for people who had lost parts of their families. Oskar doesn't know this, and of course he doesn't understand, and he tells her that if he could have chosen who was killed in the towers, he'd have picked her. He of course instantly regrets it, and then changes his mood in his feelings book to incredibly alone. Again, the word usage.
"We spent our lives making livings" (175). Oskar's grandma, this time.
"He could have rebuilt the apartment by taping together the pictures" (175).
"I went to the guest room and pretended to write. I hit the space bar again and again and again. My life story was spaces" (176).
"It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life" (179).
"When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calender that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Is that growing world? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness" (180).
"I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live, Oskar. Because if I were able to live my life again, I would do things differently. I would change my life. I would kiss my piano teacher, even if he laughed at me. I would jump with Mary on the bed, even if I made a fool of myself. I would send out ugly photographs, thousands of them" (185). That was all Oskar's grandmother again, no surprise.
"I turned on the radio and found a station playing 'Hey Jude.' It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to take the sad song and make it better. It's just that I didn't know how" (207). Oskar again.
"You can't love anything more than something you miss" (208).
I already talked about the scene where Oskar's grandfather talks about killing the animals at the zoo. I can't be more specific. I just can't. If you're so serious, it's on page 213 in the hardcover, right next to a picture of a doorknob.
"One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second" (215). And more than that. It's like Everything is Illuminated again--such a beautiful, vibrant history, erased in a little more than one second but just the same, completely erased.
"It was her touch that saved my life" (214).
"'Life is scarier than death'" (215).
After Oskar's grandfather talks about the bombing, Oskar's grandmother talks about 9/11. She stays with Oskar before his mother gets home, but when she goes back home--"When I no longer had to be strong in front of you, I became very weak. I brought myself to the ground, which was where I belonged. I hit the floor with my fists. I wanted to break my hands, but when it hurt too much, I stopped. I was too selfish to break my hands for my only child... I didn't feel empty. I wished I'd felt empty... I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone" (231).
"'It was terrible. All the things we couldn't share. The room was filled with conversations we weren't having'" (278).
"I wish we could have wasted time" (281).
By the way, Mr Black had a lot of cards--index cards with names and one word describing the person. Ghandi is war, Marilyn Monroe is sex, et cetera. When Oskar goes back he says he left something in the apartment and looks to see if his father's card was added. Instead he finds his own name. His word is son.
And the very first--or one of the very first Mrs Blacks Oskar visits he asks to kiss. She says no, of course, but when he visits her again she offers to (what!??). He says that they were incredibly close--the word again--and he refuses. He asks to hug her instead, and he starts crying and says that he wishes he could use up all his tears because he wants to be empty--like his Grandmother said (if you'll look a few quotes up).
Also, major spoiler in a second. His mom knew the whole time. Mrs Black--the one Oskar wanted to kiss--called her and told her everything. Meg was really annoyed with that the first time she read it (she just reread it, but I don't know her opinion on it now). I don't know how I feel about it. It's funny, I kind of feel the same sort of indifference I've got with my own life. You know? It happened and there's nothing we can do with it. It is what it is. It's funny, I don't think I've ever really reacted that way to a book. Well, it kind of kills me because he starts wondering if Mr Black ever really liked him or cared about him or just hung out with him as a favour to Mrs Schell. That sucks, the poor kid.
He also describes himself as being incredibly close to Mrs Black's ex--they got divorced in the time between since they first met. I won't spoil everything (like why Mr Black is important), but I think it's an interesting parallel done for a reason. (STRUCTURALISM? Maybe? New criticism...? Damn, I definitely failed that final...) ...Crud, a little bit of spoiler coming up. Or a lot. Still, you've been warned.
Well, this different Mr Black met Oskar's father once. "'For what it's worth, your father was a good man. I only spoke with him for a few minutes, but that was long enough to see that he was good. You were lucky to have a father like that. I'd trade this key for that father.' 'You shouldn't have to choose.' 'No, you shouldn't'" (300).
Did I mention about how I wondered if that letter from Ringo was real? I wonder the same thing about the letter from Stephen Hawking on page 304-305.
Grandmother's bit again: "I tried to notice everything. I've forgotten everything important in my life... Some nights I lay awake for hours trying to remember my mother's face" (308). This scares me so much. This is so scary.
--But on a parallel note... Thomas SR says his problem was never letting go. Hers is letting go. Parallels again.
After the bombing destroyed their home: "I wanted to stay with him. But I knew he would want me to leave him. I told him, Daddy, I have to leave you. Then he said something. It was the last thing he ever said to me. I can't remember it" (307-308). Again... It scares me. It kills me. It's like in A Single Man, when George leaves Doris at the hospital and thinks that he ought to remember the moment because it could be the last time he sees her alive, but he doesn't become emotional, and in a moment he can't even fix upon the moment. (Also, in a moment of annoyance, Wikipedia erroneously lists George in the book as George Falconer. He's only Falconer in the film! Also, as of this very moment, it has been fixed in the characters section. YEAH UPPITY ISHERWOOD FAN!)
"In my dream, painters separated green into yellow and blue... Children pulled color from coloring books with crayons, and mothers who had lost children mended their black clothing with scissors..." (309).
"The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did" (309).
"Lovers pulled up each other's underwear, buttoned each other's shirts, and dressed and dressed and dressed" (311). I don't know what it is about this part, but it grabs me, it does, so much more than anything else...
"The night before I lost everything was like any other night" (313). Again, George and Doris.
"I thought we would be awake all night. Awake for the rest of our lives. The spaces between our words grew" (313). She's talking about that last night--she shared a room with her sister.
Oskar now--I won't explain the big scene with the Renter, I suddenly feel guilty about spoiling things, but...
"I kept thinking about how they were all the names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing that dead people keep" (319).
"The renter reminded me that just because you bury something, you don't really bury it" (322).
And Oskar has a photo of a man jumping from the towers as they burned: "Was it Dad? Maybe. Whoever it was, it was somebody" (325).
And the end--I love the ending. I have to have it be here:
"If I'd had more pictures, he would've flown through a window, back into the building, and the smoke would've poured inside the hole that the plane was about to come out of. Dad would've left his messages backward, until the machine was empty, and the plan would've flown backward away from him, all the way to Boston. He would've taken the elevator to the street and pressed the button for the top floor. He would've walked backward to the subway, and the subway would've gone backward through the tunnel, back to our stop. Dad would've gone backward through the turnstile, then swiped his Metrocard backward, then walked home backward as he read The New York Times from right to left. He would've spit coffee back into his mug, unbrushed his teeth, and put hair on his face with a razor. He would've gotten back into bed, the alarm would've rung backward, he would've dreamt backward. Then he would've gotten up again at the end of the night before the worst day. He would've walked backward to my room, whistling "I Am the Walrus" backward. He would've gotten into bed with me. We would've looked at the stars on my ceiling, which would've pulled their lights from our eyes. I'd have said 'Nothing' backward. He'd have said 'Yeah, buddy?' backward. I'd have said 'Dad' backward, which would have sounded the same as 'Dad' forward. He would have told me the story of the Sixth Borough, from the voice in the can at the end to the beginning, from 'I love you' to 'Once upon a time...' We would have been safe" (325-326).
Perfect ending. I also just realized: a few pages before, Oskar's grandmother talks about how she rarely ever told her sister that she loved her, because they were sisters and they knew. She ends it with how she never said that she loved her sister that night before the bombing--it didn't seem necessary because they both knew. She says that the point is is that it's always necessary. I didn't just realize what I just said. I realized what Oskar was going to say. He was going to say I love you, but he got shy and backed off.
So... Yeah. There's the book. This took me a ridiculously long time to write, but. It's such a good book. Really, you should read ittttt.
MLA Citation Information: Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Houghton Mifflin Company: New York, 2005.
Last Post's Cryptic Song Lyrics: Cinnamon Lips by OK Go
This Post's Cryptic Song Lyrics: Language is the liquid that we're all dissolved in, great for solving problems after it creates a problem
(This one is ridiculously easy, by the way. Ridiculously.)
(And spellchecker hates me as always.)
Like Everything is Illuminated, this story is told through three different people--Oskar Schell, Thomas Schell SR, and Oskar's grandmother. First of all, there is Oskar, whose father died on 9/11 two years before, when Oskar was (I believe) six (or seven?). He has found a key in a blue vase hidden away in his father's closet, untouched--Mrs Schell has not touched or moved any of the things in his closet, it seems. Anyways, he finds the key in an envelope and it has Black written upon it. He then decides to find every person with that name in the city in the hopes that one of them knows what it unlocks and knew his father. Secondly there is Oskar's grandmother. She tells the story of her early life to her immigration to America. Her immigration is described, she find the man who was to marry her sister (her sister was killed in the bombing of Dresden) and marries him. She describes their courtship and marriage, and the eventual failure (or perhaps not) of their marriage. Thomas Schell SR is Oskar's grandfather, who left before Oskar's father was even born. His story is told through letters addressed to Thomas that were never actually sent. Eventually he comes back, and appears in the story and meets Oskar, though Oskar doesn't realize until later that Thomas Schell SR is his grandfather. So... let's start!
So the book is peppered with photographs. The very first thing in it is a picture of a doorknob and the surrounding door. It's got an old-fashioned keyhole--I don't know if this was the intent of Foer, but it reminds me of that quote, "People who look through keyholes are apt to get the idea that most things are keyhole shaped". It seems appropriate for the book.
"What about a teakettle?" (1). That's how book starts. It's so perfect and simple, but it's asking everything.
I love that instead of using the cliche of his boots feeling like lead or his feet feeling like lead when he's upset or sad he says that he has heavy boots or that he's getting heavy boots.
So on the way to the service for Oskar's father (it's a flashback) Oskar talks to the limousine driver--they go in a limousine on the way there--and he comes up with an idea: "'Now that I'm thinking about it... they could make an incredibly long limousine that had its backseat at your mom's VJ and its front seat at your mausoleum, and it would be as long as your life.' Gerald said, 'Yeah, but if everyone lived like that, no one would ever meet anyone, right?' I said, 'So?'" (5).
"A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but writing was the only thing that made my boots lighter. One weird thing is that instead of using normal stamps, I used stamps from my collection, including valuable ones, which sometimes made me wonder if what I was really doing was trying to get rid of things" (11). (The worst day is of course 9/11. The book is also peppered with letters from famous folk like Stephen Hawking and Jane Goodall and, most of all, Ringo Starr. I marked the page of Ringo's letter too. I don't know if Foer just made the letter up himself, but I'd like to think that it's a bona fide letter for Ringo Starr. That would be so cool!)
"'Well, what I don't get is why do we exist? I don't mean how, but why.' I watched the fireflies of his thoughts orbit his head. He said, 'We exist because we exist.' 'What the?' 'We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened'" (13). This is Oskar talking to his father, pre-death, obviously. This book obviously slants the father (I have to say it like that, I know that's harsh, but it would be foolish to deny a slant when the book has parts written from the son's point of view about his father), but I see Thomas Schell (JR, Oskar's father) as an Atticus Finch-type. I mean, not as good, that's Atticus Finch we're talking about, but still, the closest possible.
Thomas Schell SR's first letter talks about why he does not speak. The ability just kind of disappeared over time thanks to grief--the first word he lost was the name Anna, the girl he was to marry and Oskar's
"I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless" (33). Thomas SR still.
"'We're useful now, but soon we'll be interesting'" (39). Oskar goes to a locksmith to show him the key. Because electronics are coming more and more into play, soon traditional keys are going to be more of an eccentricity than anything else--the locksmith says this bit. I love that line. I went so far as to underline it in the book. There's something so lovely about it, and it's got something higher than what it signifies, but I just can't seem to wrap my head around it.
"'Why do beautiful songs make you sad?' 'Because they aren't true.' 'Never?' 'Nothing is beautiful and true'" (43). For some reason I feel like the old woman of Trachimbrod (whose name I can never seem to remember) says something like this, but I seem to be incorrect...
On page fifty-six there's a diagram of an 'intrepid flyer' paper airplane. I guess it doesn't mean much in relation to this book--I mean it does, that's why it's in here, but my note on it refers more to Chuck Palahniuk's book Survivor. The edition I have is all white, but for a drawing of a plane from above and there are roses or flowers and curlicues about it (or something alone those lines, I don't have it exactly on hand) and the title/author, et cetera. But the edition I see all the time now is all red with big sort of blocky black letters with a curious line design. It's the folding instructions for a paper airplane! Ah-ha! ...Yeeeeep...
"'It probably gets pretty lonely to be Grandma, don't you think?' I told her, 'It probably gets pretty lonely to be anyone'" (69). Thomas Schell SR finds his ex-wife after he reads that his son died in the paper, and has been living with her ever since, even though neither Oskar nor his mother see him until the book's close-to conclusion. Oskar's grandmother just refers to him as "the renter" as well--anyways, Oskar's mother imagines that it's just an imaginary friend--because the Grandma is lonely.
"I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love" (76).
Oskar's grandmother is writing about her younger life: "[My schoolmate Mary] loved to jump on her bed. She jumped on her bed for so many years that one afternoon, while I watched her jump, the seams burst. Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?" (78).
So, one of the Mrs Blacks that Oskar meets has a picture of an elephant. She tells Oskar about a study that was done on the elephants' memories--they'd record a call and play it back to see if the elephants could remember the calls, and remember they did. "'What's really fascinating is that she'd play the call of a dead elephant to its family members.' 'And?' 'They remembered... They approached the speaker.' 'I wonder what they were feeling... When they heard the calls of their dead, was it with love that they approached the jeep? Or fear? Or anger?' 'I don't remember'" (96). I wonder. I wonder what that would be like. I feel like it would be cruel. I feel like they'd hope against hope. Maybe that's too romantic--Oskar says that they were probably just confused. Though that's logical, I'd like to think that they remembered and felt hope and love and all of that--confusion too, but beyond just animal confusion.
"'Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are'" (99).
"Sometimes I wondered if she cried when no one was looking" (100).
Oskar's grandmother was pretending to be a monster once when he was littler, and he fell and cut his lip on a table and needed a stitch or two--"'You see, I was pretending to be a monster, and I became a monster'" (101).
"Only a few months into our marriage, we started marking off areas in the apartment as 'Nothing Places,' in which one could be assured of complete privacy, we agreed that we never would look at the marked-off zones, that they would be nonexistent territories in the apartment in which one could temporarily cease to exist" (110). Later, Thomas SR remembers being on a Something "island" (because eventually the apartment became just a place of Nothings) and thinking "'How did I get here... and how can I get back?'" (111). But I like this idea. I think everybody needs these places. I think everybody has these places, even if they're not aware of it. I tend to think of my basement as my Nothing place (Dante is privy to it, of course), and the floor of my bedroom too. There are certain spaces you expect to be nothing places, even if you haven't given them quite that name, I'm sure. Just think about it.
"Literature was the only religion her father practiced" (114). Thomas SR is describing Oskar's grandmother and Anna's father. Thomas also mentions that when a book fell on the ground the father would kiss it--one of the men shot by Nazis in Everything is Illuminated had this same trait. I believe this is the man who refused to spit on the Torah even when there was a gun at his daughters' heads--but I don't remember exactly.
"I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person that stays?" (114). Still Thomas SR.
"'So little happens,' she said, 'and I'm so good at remembering'" (130). Oskar's grandmother said this.
"I'm sorry for my inability to let the unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things" (132). All of Thomas SR's letters are addressed to his son--this must refer to Anna. She is dead and gone, and thus 'unimportant', at least in comparison to his wife and his son--and because he leaves them he cannot hold onto them. I guess that hardly needs an explanation, but please humour me.
"I thought about the unfinished scarf, and the rock she carried across Broadway, and how she had lived so much life but still needed imaginary friends, and the one thousand thumb wars" (144). Oskar has not met the renter--his grandfather--at this point, obviously.
"I kept wondering if what I was feeling was at all like falling" (147).
I love Mr Black. Now, Oskar meets a lot of Mr Blacks, but Oskar meets a Mr Black who lives in the apartment exactly above him. He's certainly my favourite character in the book. He's so alive. He's just bursting. I wish I knew someone like him--or could be someone like him. I think some of the reason why I marked one page of his bit is because he talks about Winston Churchill--and Americans love Winston Churchill. We really do, Americans are like Winston Churchill's little fangirls. Also, Mr Black says that he was born on January first, nineteen-hundred--So, he's "'lived every day of the twentieth century!'" (152). Wow! So that would mean--I didn't realize it until just now--that he's one hundred and three, if I've done my math correctly. But really, wow. That's amazing. I wonder what it would be like.
"'So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!'" (153).
"'[My wife] died twenty-four years ago! Long time ago! Yesterday, in my life! ... 'You don't feel bad that I asked about her? You can tell me if you do.' 'No!' he said. 'Thinking about her is the next best thing!'" (154).
"It was getting hard to keep all the things I didn't know inside me" (154).
"'It's not a horrible world,' he told me... 'But it's filled with a lot of horrible people!'" (156).
"'I've lived long enough to know I'm not one-hundred-percent anything!'" (156).
"'Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!'" (159).
So Mr Black--the one talking in all exclamations--is the veteran of both World Wars, I believe, and a few others, mayhaps--he's not quite specific with it and of course he's seen every other war of the twentieth century... He also has a bed made from a tree he cut down and carved himself. "'Which was your last war?' He said, 'Cutting down that tree was my last war!' I asked him who won, which I thought was a nice question, because it would let him say that he won, and feel proud. 'The ax won! It's always that way!'" (161).
"It made me wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about 'Eleanor Rigby'. It's true, where do they all come from? And where do they all belong?" (163). I tried to pay attention to the use of the words incredibly and extremely and close. Mr Black was incredibly close--one floor above--but incredibly lonely. But you don't have to be alone and isolated to be lonely, and vice versa. You can feel alone in a room of people... And so on.
And in the next heartbeat, Oskar immediately thinks of an invention. His idea is that you would absorb a chemical through your skin that would change colour depending on your mood--red would be anger, sad would be blue, pink would be pleased, and so on. The water of a special shower would automatically reset you to your base mood, if you know what I mean. It's so you would know how to treat people--you wouldn't get mad at a blue person, you wouldn't want to ruin the mood of a pink person (although it would make you incredibly guilty if you had no choice), and so on. My favourite application for this invention: "Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, I'm happy! That whole time, I was actually happy! What a relief!" (163).
"'That's the difference between heaven and hell! In hell we starve! In heaven we feed each other!'" (164).
Mr Black also reveals that he hasn't turned his hearing aids on for a long time--I just assume that it's been since his wife's death. (He's been reading Oskar's lips.) So Oskar turns them up, and it says that at that moment, a flock of birds flies by outside the window "extremely fast and incredibly close" (165). Like I said earlier, I've been paying attention to when Jonathan uses the words in the title, and in this, all but one word is the title. Was the title referring to this? I have to admit that I never thought particularly about what the title could refer to or what it truly means before just now. Could it be this? It would be loud, very loud to Mr Black. And clearly it was also incredibly close. Hm.
Oskar is upset by his mom. His mom has been seeing a person named Ron--she met him at a support group for people who had lost parts of their families. Oskar doesn't know this, and of course he doesn't understand, and he tells her that if he could have chosen who was killed in the towers, he'd have picked her. He of course instantly regrets it, and then changes his mood in his feelings book to incredibly alone. Again, the word usage.
"We spent our lives making livings" (175). Oskar's grandma, this time.
"He could have rebuilt the apartment by taping together the pictures" (175).
"I went to the guest room and pretended to write. I hit the space bar again and again and again. My life story was spaces" (176).
"It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life" (179).
"When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calender that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Is that growing world? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness" (180).
"I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live, Oskar. Because if I were able to live my life again, I would do things differently. I would change my life. I would kiss my piano teacher, even if he laughed at me. I would jump with Mary on the bed, even if I made a fool of myself. I would send out ugly photographs, thousands of them" (185). That was all Oskar's grandmother again, no surprise.
"I turned on the radio and found a station playing 'Hey Jude.' It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to take the sad song and make it better. It's just that I didn't know how" (207). Oskar again.
"You can't love anything more than something you miss" (208).
I already talked about the scene where Oskar's grandfather talks about killing the animals at the zoo. I can't be more specific. I just can't. If you're so serious, it's on page 213 in the hardcover, right next to a picture of a doorknob.
"One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second" (215). And more than that. It's like Everything is Illuminated again--such a beautiful, vibrant history, erased in a little more than one second but just the same, completely erased.
"It was her touch that saved my life" (214).
"'Life is scarier than death'" (215).
After Oskar's grandfather talks about the bombing, Oskar's grandmother talks about 9/11. She stays with Oskar before his mother gets home, but when she goes back home--"When I no longer had to be strong in front of you, I became very weak. I brought myself to the ground, which was where I belonged. I hit the floor with my fists. I wanted to break my hands, but when it hurt too much, I stopped. I was too selfish to break my hands for my only child... I didn't feel empty. I wished I'd felt empty... I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone" (231).
"'It was terrible. All the things we couldn't share. The room was filled with conversations we weren't having'" (278).
"I wish we could have wasted time" (281).
By the way, Mr Black had a lot of cards--index cards with names and one word describing the person. Ghandi is war, Marilyn Monroe is sex, et cetera. When Oskar goes back he says he left something in the apartment and looks to see if his father's card was added. Instead he finds his own name. His word is son.
And the very first--or one of the very first Mrs Blacks Oskar visits he asks to kiss. She says no, of course, but when he visits her again she offers to (what!??). He says that they were incredibly close--the word again--and he refuses. He asks to hug her instead, and he starts crying and says that he wishes he could use up all his tears because he wants to be empty--like his Grandmother said (if you'll look a few quotes up).
Also, major spoiler in a second. His mom knew the whole time. Mrs Black--the one Oskar wanted to kiss--called her and told her everything. Meg was really annoyed with that the first time she read it (she just reread it, but I don't know her opinion on it now). I don't know how I feel about it. It's funny, I kind of feel the same sort of indifference I've got with my own life. You know? It happened and there's nothing we can do with it. It is what it is. It's funny, I don't think I've ever really reacted that way to a book. Well, it kind of kills me because he starts wondering if Mr Black ever really liked him or cared about him or just hung out with him as a favour to Mrs Schell. That sucks, the poor kid.
He also describes himself as being incredibly close to Mrs Black's ex--they got divorced in the time between since they first met. I won't spoil everything (like why Mr Black is important), but I think it's an interesting parallel done for a reason. (STRUCTURALISM? Maybe? New criticism...? Damn, I definitely failed that final...) ...Crud, a little bit of spoiler coming up. Or a lot. Still, you've been warned.
Well, this different Mr Black met Oskar's father once. "'For what it's worth, your father was a good man. I only spoke with him for a few minutes, but that was long enough to see that he was good. You were lucky to have a father like that. I'd trade this key for that father.' 'You shouldn't have to choose.' 'No, you shouldn't'" (300).
Did I mention about how I wondered if that letter from Ringo was real? I wonder the same thing about the letter from Stephen Hawking on page 304-305.
Grandmother's bit again: "I tried to notice everything. I've forgotten everything important in my life... Some nights I lay awake for hours trying to remember my mother's face" (308). This scares me so much. This is so scary.
--But on a parallel note... Thomas SR says his problem was never letting go. Hers is letting go. Parallels again.
After the bombing destroyed their home: "I wanted to stay with him. But I knew he would want me to leave him. I told him, Daddy, I have to leave you. Then he said something. It was the last thing he ever said to me. I can't remember it" (307-308). Again... It scares me. It kills me. It's like in A Single Man, when George leaves Doris at the hospital and thinks that he ought to remember the moment because it could be the last time he sees her alive, but he doesn't become emotional, and in a moment he can't even fix upon the moment. (Also, in a moment of annoyance, Wikipedia erroneously lists George in the book as George Falconer. He's only Falconer in the film! Also, as of this very moment, it has been fixed in the characters section. YEAH UPPITY ISHERWOOD FAN!)
"In my dream, painters separated green into yellow and blue... Children pulled color from coloring books with crayons, and mothers who had lost children mended their black clothing with scissors..." (309).
"The mistakes I've made are dead to me. But I can't take back the things I never did" (309).
"Lovers pulled up each other's underwear, buttoned each other's shirts, and dressed and dressed and dressed" (311). I don't know what it is about this part, but it grabs me, it does, so much more than anything else...
"The night before I lost everything was like any other night" (313). Again, George and Doris.
"I thought we would be awake all night. Awake for the rest of our lives. The spaces between our words grew" (313). She's talking about that last night--she shared a room with her sister.
Oskar now--I won't explain the big scene with the Renter, I suddenly feel guilty about spoiling things, but...
"I kept thinking about how they were all the names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing that dead people keep" (319).
"The renter reminded me that just because you bury something, you don't really bury it" (322).
And Oskar has a photo of a man jumping from the towers as they burned: "Was it Dad? Maybe. Whoever it was, it was somebody" (325).
And the end--I love the ending. I have to have it be here:
"If I'd had more pictures, he would've flown through a window, back into the building, and the smoke would've poured inside the hole that the plane was about to come out of. Dad would've left his messages backward, until the machine was empty, and the plan would've flown backward away from him, all the way to Boston. He would've taken the elevator to the street and pressed the button for the top floor. He would've walked backward to the subway, and the subway would've gone backward through the tunnel, back to our stop. Dad would've gone backward through the turnstile, then swiped his Metrocard backward, then walked home backward as he read The New York Times from right to left. He would've spit coffee back into his mug, unbrushed his teeth, and put hair on his face with a razor. He would've gotten back into bed, the alarm would've rung backward, he would've dreamt backward. Then he would've gotten up again at the end of the night before the worst day. He would've walked backward to my room, whistling "I Am the Walrus" backward. He would've gotten into bed with me. We would've looked at the stars on my ceiling, which would've pulled their lights from our eyes. I'd have said 'Nothing' backward. He'd have said 'Yeah, buddy?' backward. I'd have said 'Dad' backward, which would have sounded the same as 'Dad' forward. He would have told me the story of the Sixth Borough, from the voice in the can at the end to the beginning, from 'I love you' to 'Once upon a time...' We would have been safe" (325-326).
Perfect ending. I also just realized: a few pages before, Oskar's grandmother talks about how she rarely ever told her sister that she loved her, because they were sisters and they knew. She ends it with how she never said that she loved her sister that night before the bombing--it didn't seem necessary because they both knew. She says that the point is is that it's always necessary. I didn't just realize what I just said. I realized what Oskar was going to say. He was going to say I love you, but he got shy and backed off.
So... Yeah. There's the book. This took me a ridiculously long time to write, but. It's such a good book. Really, you should read ittttt.
MLA Citation Information: Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Houghton Mifflin Company: New York, 2005.
Last Post's Cryptic Song Lyrics: Cinnamon Lips by OK Go
This Post's Cryptic Song Lyrics: Language is the liquid that we're all dissolved in, great for solving problems after it creates a problem
(This one is ridiculously easy, by the way. Ridiculously.)
(And spellchecker hates me as always.)
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