Woah, look, I live! And rather than work on anything I should be doing, I'm here, writing about Ira Levin's novel The Stepford Wives, which I only recently discovered began life as a book.
And what is this book about, you may ask? Well, its story sticks fairly closely to what I know happens in the film (which is pretty much just the stabbing scene--but of course that scene doesn't happen quite the same way in the book so probably the endings are different), but if you're unfamiliar about that too, the basic rundown is: nuclear family moves to Stepford (the film was actually shot in Connecticut, surprise surprise). All the ladies are weirdly perfect, they even stack their groceries in their shopping carts perfectly neatly, and they're trapped in like an "ideal fifties housewives Leave it to Beaver loop"--in fact, they have no outside interests other than cleaning and caring for the kids. Slowly, over the course of the novel, our protagonist's friends who also recently moved in become bubbleheads as well, and the things they took interest in are even destroyed. For example, a very outgoing friend named Carmelia becomes a bubblehead and the next day her super expensive clay court is getting ripped up. Our protagonist forms a hypothesis that the men are turning their wives into robots.
That's right, robots! And spoiler alert for those who don't know the story or film I'm giving you a ton of warning before I tell you: they are. In the film, the scene I've seen, our protagonist stabs a wife, and without missing a blink she turns around and says something like, "That was rude" and goes on, clearly not bleeding or dying. They introduce the foreshadowing to this about a third on; there's a character--a husband--nicknamed Diz. First of all, I immediately thought of the Disney, uh, "empire", because there's a character in Kingdom Hearts II named Diz. Of course, Diz reveals that he was called that because he worked at Disney, and they don't reveal it until later where he worked at Disney, but I immediately went "it's the hall of presidents, he worked in the hall of presidents", which, of course, is the truth.
And of course this totally took me out of the mood, I cracked up. But to be fair, Disney probably had the most advanced public robotics program in 1972, and if all the men were from NASA or something--first of all the message would be different (invariably more sinister), and the men wouldn't be allowed to continue with their business unchecked. Disney is, believe it or not, the most believable explanation, under analysis, for these going-ons in Stepford.
I didn't mark a lot of notes in the book, but I have a couple of recollections which of course will have no specific page numbers. Sorry. (But it's super short so like, just read it.) But, Ira Levin also wrote Rosemary's Baby, which I'll talk a little bit more about later, because knowing that kind of casts a new light on that film/book (I've just started the book, actually. But I saw the movie a few years ago, so what I'm saying could still be a little accurate!). But one thing that drives me nuts about both works is that--well, our protagonist in this book has some spunk, she seems like a more outgoing character to me. And I guess at the very end, Rosemary is ready to stab her baby, so that's pretty hardcore too. But what drives me nuts about both of them is that while they're trying to be subversive and rebellious, they're still kind of complying: "Hey Rosemary, drink this weird drink that's like bird poop for your kid. Don't read baby books. Cool"--with this book, long after our protagonist (who is named Joanna, by the way) suspects robots are a thing, she still agrees to a recording session thing. This is literally her saying every word in the dictionary. You know: "Tax. Taxation. Taxed. Taxing", etc. Wow, can't see how that might be related to the robot thing, especially after her friend who just got turned into a robot described that exact scenario right before she got transformed. I'm just saying.
The friend who got changed right before her had kids. She actually takes the younger son aside and asks him about it. Though he notes and is somewhat confused by the change, what he says implies that he's okay with it, and in fact prefers the situation with his mother now, even if it's odd for her (the kids are not aware of the process), This makes me wonder what will happen to the kids, though. Even boys can go through some pretty wild rebellious phases, and with complacent robo-moms? It's going to really suck for their dads. And the obvious question would be what about the girls--early on we meet a sixteen-year-old daughter who leaves messes and whatnot, but we never see her again, and she's a pretty flat character. There's a sequel--film only, I believe--called "The Stepford Children", but this leaves a pretty big hole, to me at least. This is the main thing that bothers me in the whole story, because you can't really rationalize that area, like with the Disney thing.
So--Rosemary's Baby, yes? Taking it with Rosemary's Baby, I'd say we can take it with feminist theory. Stepford Wives, the danger of being stuck in a role and silenced. Obviously these women are replaced by complacent robots, but... Rosemary's Baby, I would see that as a continuation of this, perhaps rather than being silenced, being too complacent in a traditional role, and clearly suffering for it. (By the way, between the time I started this post and the time I ended it, I finished that book too--the end of the film is much more effective. The end of the book is too wordy, though it comes to the same result.) We could blame her accepting the baby as just totally melting into the role completely, assuring that she'll remain trapped (and if we take it at face value, be impressed that a mother-baby connection could overcome the whole Antichrist thing). I don't know much about Ira Levin's other books or life, but I'd say his novels are definitely indicative of the times and can be taken as feminist by acting as a warning to not be complacent and submissive--or... I guess even a warning for the other is possible--you know, "don't be outspoken or we will crush you with fifties values and also Satan, who hates independent women too".
So. The book was all right. Not bad, the concept is frightening, if not as "real" for someone in my particular station in life (but I certainly can understand it), but it's too... seventies, almost? There's something about certain books written in the seventies that have their own certain flavor that's almost... dreamy. It feels out of touch the way a dream kind of can be. It's certainly much more frank than modern books. I definitely liked Rosemary's Baby more, but this wasn't bad either. I'm definitely looking forward to watching the film now, in any case.
(And sorry if this post is a little disjointed or more out of touch than usual! If you look at the dates, you wouldn't be surprised if I told you I was rusty... Right?)
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
Woah, weird how I haven't died. Nope, I'm still around, I've just been super busy with school. Even over my break I was really busy with schoolwork! That's no good.
Hm... life updates? Well, I got a Kindle Fire, so that's pretty sweet. I started reading The Tale of Genji but it's incredibly boring and super repetitive. Summary: Genji wants to get it. He does 95% of the time. Has an illegitimate child. Worries if anyone will figure it out, but still gets with every woman he possibly can. There. I just saved you from 700 miserable pages (I only made it to 216). Oh, also there's one part where he kidnaps an underage girl because she looks like this other lady who died or turned him down or something so, you know, that's cool too.
Anyways, I wasn't feeling Steppenwolf too much either. It's funny how Demian had such a gigantic impact on me and Hesse's other books for me are always just kind of like, "eh". (Oh, and before I explain the plot--yes, the band Steppenwolf is named after this book. They were the Peace Doves or something silly like that originally, but the story goes that Jim Morrison [of The Doors] suggested they name themselves after this book instead. And they did, obviously.)
So, the book starts out with the pretense that the whole thing is a manuscript written by Harry, the titular Steppenwolf, a wolf of the steppes--that is, he was kind of living the hermit life in the wild. And he's slowly becoming reacquainted to society, there are some intense psychological struggles... He wants to kill himself for a long time because he's in his fifties and he's just starting to feel the real aches and pangs of his old age and he thinks it would be better to just end it--actually, in the intro, Hesse said this book appealed particularly to younger (like 14-22, I assume) readers because of this idea, which means they missed the point. And he meets this woman, Hermine (who looks like a childhood friend named Herman, hm. Oh, and pair that with the fact that the main character in Demian begins an affair with Demian's mother and she is described as looking like her son. Someone find me a good queer theory essay on Hesse! I want it. I need it. Now.) who teaches him to dance and enjoy music (jazz) and modern things and romance and sex and even cocaine because it's the twenties. The book ends with a huge scene in the "magic theater" where films become real with observers becoming players and people they know as others figments in the scenes... But it falls flat and the fantasy is confusing and just kind of out of place. It's supposed to be mystical I'm sure, but it feels kind of like it came out of left field and is almost too strong, too late. I could accept some of the mysticism in, say, Journey to the East, as the whole book permeates that kind of mysticism... But not here.
Honestly, in the beginning there wasn't much I liked. Just a few quotes here and there.
So, there is the idea of course that every man has good and evil in him, an angel and a devil. I think we can agree on that. Or that many people have ideas of who/what they are, like a persona. And they want to stick to that no matter what, which is why, sometimes, people can be resistant or hide new interests or new ways of thought or what have you (in my experience). The best example I can think of is that post that went around Tumblr for a while--you know, some days I want to dress like a princess but other days I want to wear red lipstick and be a rad biker chick (or something like that). People who hadn't realized yet that you don't have to be married to a persona loved that. But people past that point just kind of said, "There's no reason why you can't do that. Do that." I personally think it's a pretty important step in growing up to realize that you don't have to married to that idea you've got in your head about that... So... Anyways... the Steppenwolf has the idea that he is just animal and man, refusing to admit, perhaps, that there's a lover in him, there's a tender side, etc: "The Steppenwolf, too, believes that he bears two souls (wolf and man) in his breast and even so finds his breast disagreeably cramped because of them. The breast and body are indeed one, but the souls that dwell in it are not two, nor five, but countless in number. Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads" (Hesse 73). Hesse goes on in a bit that's not really worth typing all out that although the Steppenwolf feels as though these two souls are too many, the real problem is that they are really too few.
Also, if you need help with Hesse's quote, try the later Shrek version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZhAhuknUho. I'm sorry, Hesse legitimately said men were onions. You're lying to me if your first thought wasn't of Shrek either.
"That man is not yet a finished creation but rather a challenge of the spirit; a distant possibility dreaded as much as it is desired; that the way towards it has only been covered for a very short distance and with terrible agonies and ecstasies even by those few for whom it is the scaffold today and the monument tomorrow--all this the Steppenwolf, too, suspected" (Hesse 75).
"The wolf, too, has his abysses. The wolf, too, suffers... Harry can never turn back again and become wholly wolf, and could he do so he would find that even the wolf is not of primeval simplicity, but already a creature of manifold complexity. Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in the wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as a man who sings: 'If I could be a child once more!' He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset with conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering. There is, in fact, no way back to the wolf or the child" (Hesse 77).
Anyways. Don't think I mentioned. I like these quotes because, as I'm sure I've mentioned a million times by now, I love deconstructionism. Also, rose-tinting that occurs makes me really uncomfortable, especially on the level that Hesse is talking about. (The wolf or child he refers to would of course be that idealized one-dimensional picture we have in our heads of the wolf or the child.)
"'God is good and has the span of all our days in his hands and that of every waltz and fox-trot too'" (Hesse 157).
Honestly... I don't have much to say about this book other than that. There were parts that really excited me, but a lot of it was pretty flat, or just confusing. Like I said, the end has this weird mystic feel that totally breaks away from the drab realism that permeates all but one other scene of the book (and even that's not really "mystical", it's just that Harry is so fascinated by Hermine in drag that it seems that way). The end would be cool in a book that gave hints that this strange world existed in some way, but it doesn't--so when people start shrinking into chess pieces and being given physical representations of their personalities and are suddenly immersed in the middle of the great war between man and machine with a childhood friend they haven't seen in over a decade--the reader just kind of steps back. The chess bit came first so I was kind of thinking, okay, this is kind of cool... but then all the weird stuff builds to a crescendo, and as it's building I just want to leave because it's just too much with not even the slightest hint.
Oh, and I was also disappointed by the bit of chess pieces as personality--I took it to mean, until that point on page 223, that it meant, like... Well, I don't know. There's a part of you that's a goody two-shoes, but you can be tough too. You can be a singer, an artist, an athlete, all at once, someone who is passionate about silent movies while only liking, say, Kanye West. It's possible to be all those different kinds of people. Or like how you act differently around friends, your parents, professors, etc. That's how I have described it above, too. But on page 223, the character who gives Harry the pieces says that modern science has diagnosed people who try to live their multi-personalitied lives as schizophrenics. Though having multiple facets of self can mean what I described or schizophrenic--the two things are very different, and it disappointed me that that sort of thing was what Hesse meant all along.
Hm... I really don't have much else to say. I guess I'm out of practice... (Sorry.) I wouldn't read this book again if--well, if you paid me I definitely would. ...But, on my Kindle I downloaded a lot of books we were forced to read in high school that I hated with a fiery passion to see if I still hate them. (Actually, I really liked A Streetcar Named Desire, I just hated my teacher). Early prediction: I'm still going to. That darn American lit. Oh well. I'm even going to try some of F Scott Fitzgerald's other work, so that's cool (I'll probably still hate The Great Gatsby). Anyways, I'll see you guys around! Sorry that this post was so lame!
Works Cited: Hesse, Hermann. Steppenwolf. Penguin: London, 2001.
Hm... life updates? Well, I got a Kindle Fire, so that's pretty sweet. I started reading The Tale of Genji but it's incredibly boring and super repetitive. Summary: Genji wants to get it. He does 95% of the time. Has an illegitimate child. Worries if anyone will figure it out, but still gets with every woman he possibly can. There. I just saved you from 700 miserable pages (I only made it to 216). Oh, also there's one part where he kidnaps an underage girl because she looks like this other lady who died or turned him down or something so, you know, that's cool too.
Anyways, I wasn't feeling Steppenwolf too much either. It's funny how Demian had such a gigantic impact on me and Hesse's other books for me are always just kind of like, "eh". (Oh, and before I explain the plot--yes, the band Steppenwolf is named after this book. They were the Peace Doves or something silly like that originally, but the story goes that Jim Morrison [of The Doors] suggested they name themselves after this book instead. And they did, obviously.)
So, the book starts out with the pretense that the whole thing is a manuscript written by Harry, the titular Steppenwolf, a wolf of the steppes--that is, he was kind of living the hermit life in the wild. And he's slowly becoming reacquainted to society, there are some intense psychological struggles... He wants to kill himself for a long time because he's in his fifties and he's just starting to feel the real aches and pangs of his old age and he thinks it would be better to just end it--actually, in the intro, Hesse said this book appealed particularly to younger (like 14-22, I assume) readers because of this idea, which means they missed the point. And he meets this woman, Hermine (who looks like a childhood friend named Herman, hm. Oh, and pair that with the fact that the main character in Demian begins an affair with Demian's mother and she is described as looking like her son. Someone find me a good queer theory essay on Hesse! I want it. I need it. Now.) who teaches him to dance and enjoy music (jazz) and modern things and romance and sex and even cocaine because it's the twenties. The book ends with a huge scene in the "magic theater" where films become real with observers becoming players and people they know as others figments in the scenes... But it falls flat and the fantasy is confusing and just kind of out of place. It's supposed to be mystical I'm sure, but it feels kind of like it came out of left field and is almost too strong, too late. I could accept some of the mysticism in, say, Journey to the East, as the whole book permeates that kind of mysticism... But not here.
Honestly, in the beginning there wasn't much I liked. Just a few quotes here and there.
So, there is the idea of course that every man has good and evil in him, an angel and a devil. I think we can agree on that. Or that many people have ideas of who/what they are, like a persona. And they want to stick to that no matter what, which is why, sometimes, people can be resistant or hide new interests or new ways of thought or what have you (in my experience). The best example I can think of is that post that went around Tumblr for a while--you know, some days I want to dress like a princess but other days I want to wear red lipstick and be a rad biker chick (or something like that). People who hadn't realized yet that you don't have to be married to a persona loved that. But people past that point just kind of said, "There's no reason why you can't do that. Do that." I personally think it's a pretty important step in growing up to realize that you don't have to married to that idea you've got in your head about that... So... Anyways... the Steppenwolf has the idea that he is just animal and man, refusing to admit, perhaps, that there's a lover in him, there's a tender side, etc: "The Steppenwolf, too, believes that he bears two souls (wolf and man) in his breast and even so finds his breast disagreeably cramped because of them. The breast and body are indeed one, but the souls that dwell in it are not two, nor five, but countless in number. Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads" (Hesse 73). Hesse goes on in a bit that's not really worth typing all out that although the Steppenwolf feels as though these two souls are too many, the real problem is that they are really too few.
Also, if you need help with Hesse's quote, try the later Shrek version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZhAhuknUho. I'm sorry, Hesse legitimately said men were onions. You're lying to me if your first thought wasn't of Shrek either.
"That man is not yet a finished creation but rather a challenge of the spirit; a distant possibility dreaded as much as it is desired; that the way towards it has only been covered for a very short distance and with terrible agonies and ecstasies even by those few for whom it is the scaffold today and the monument tomorrow--all this the Steppenwolf, too, suspected" (Hesse 75).
"The wolf, too, has his abysses. The wolf, too, suffers... Harry can never turn back again and become wholly wolf, and could he do so he would find that even the wolf is not of primeval simplicity, but already a creature of manifold complexity. Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in the wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as a man who sings: 'If I could be a child once more!' He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset with conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering. There is, in fact, no way back to the wolf or the child" (Hesse 77).
Anyways. Don't think I mentioned. I like these quotes because, as I'm sure I've mentioned a million times by now, I love deconstructionism. Also, rose-tinting that occurs makes me really uncomfortable, especially on the level that Hesse is talking about. (The wolf or child he refers to would of course be that idealized one-dimensional picture we have in our heads of the wolf or the child.)
"'God is good and has the span of all our days in his hands and that of every waltz and fox-trot too'" (Hesse 157).
Honestly... I don't have much to say about this book other than that. There were parts that really excited me, but a lot of it was pretty flat, or just confusing. Like I said, the end has this weird mystic feel that totally breaks away from the drab realism that permeates all but one other scene of the book (and even that's not really "mystical", it's just that Harry is so fascinated by Hermine in drag that it seems that way). The end would be cool in a book that gave hints that this strange world existed in some way, but it doesn't--so when people start shrinking into chess pieces and being given physical representations of their personalities and are suddenly immersed in the middle of the great war between man and machine with a childhood friend they haven't seen in over a decade--the reader just kind of steps back. The chess bit came first so I was kind of thinking, okay, this is kind of cool... but then all the weird stuff builds to a crescendo, and as it's building I just want to leave because it's just too much with not even the slightest hint.
Oh, and I was also disappointed by the bit of chess pieces as personality--I took it to mean, until that point on page 223, that it meant, like... Well, I don't know. There's a part of you that's a goody two-shoes, but you can be tough too. You can be a singer, an artist, an athlete, all at once, someone who is passionate about silent movies while only liking, say, Kanye West. It's possible to be all those different kinds of people. Or like how you act differently around friends, your parents, professors, etc. That's how I have described it above, too. But on page 223, the character who gives Harry the pieces says that modern science has diagnosed people who try to live their multi-personalitied lives as schizophrenics. Though having multiple facets of self can mean what I described or schizophrenic--the two things are very different, and it disappointed me that that sort of thing was what Hesse meant all along.
Hm... I really don't have much else to say. I guess I'm out of practice... (Sorry.) I wouldn't read this book again if--well, if you paid me I definitely would. ...But, on my Kindle I downloaded a lot of books we were forced to read in high school that I hated with a fiery passion to see if I still hate them. (Actually, I really liked A Streetcar Named Desire, I just hated my teacher). Early prediction: I'm still going to. That darn American lit. Oh well. I'm even going to try some of F Scott Fitzgerald's other work, so that's cool (I'll probably still hate The Great Gatsby). Anyways, I'll see you guys around! Sorry that this post was so lame!
Works Cited: Hesse, Hermann. Steppenwolf. Penguin: London, 2001.
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