Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

I had an inexplicable (maybe not so much) urge to reread this book because good news, it's AWESOME!  I can never decide whether this or Invisible Monsters is my favourite Palahniuk book.  I mean, Invisible Monsters is so good, but this is his first and ahhhh...

So I'm sure you've heard of this book.  More likely than not, you saw the movie.  At the very least, you've heard the first rule about Fight Club: don't talk about fight club.  Pretty much a nobody office worker meets a guy named Tyler Durden.  Tyler Durden is charismatic, interesting, rebellious--the narrator even says that Tyler is pretty much everything he wants to be.  Which makes sense--but I'll spoil that later.  And by the way, if you somehow don't know the ending, do not spoil it for yourself.  Straight up read it.  Doooo it.
So let's start!

So it starts out with the almost final scene--a lot like Invisible Monsters, actually, since if I recall that starts out with the scene that's second to last and the final scene is in the hospital... Sooo... Yeah.  Anyways, this second-to-last scene is Tyler with a gun in the narrator's mouth.  Tyler assures him that "'This isn't really death... We'll be legend.  We won't grow old'" (11).  The narrator tells Tyler that he's thinking of vampires.  It's just kind of funny.  Also, you're now thinking of Achilles.  HAH!

 "It's so quiet this high up, the feeling you get is that you're one of those space monkeys.  You do the little job you're trained to do.  Pull a lever.  Push a button.  You don't understand any of it, and then you just die" (12).

"That old saying, how you always kill the one you love, well, look, it works both ways" (13).

"Where would Jesus be if no one had written the gospels?" (15).  I want to say Palahniuk goes into this a little more in Choke or something, but I could just be thinking of Desperation by Stephen King.  Anyways, at the time I originally read this, this just about blew my mind.

"It's easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.  On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone will drop to zero" (17).

"This is how it is with insomnia.  Everything is so far away, a copy of a copy of a copy.  The insomnia distance of everything, you can't touch anything and nothing can touch you" (21).  Okay, I'm going to back up and be a good book blogger here.  The insomnia is how it all starts out.  The narrator (who, by the way, is never named) hasn't slept for about three weeks and he begs his doctor to give him pills.  The doctor refuses, and tells him if he wants to see real suffering, he should go to support groups--cancer support group, parasite support groups, and other groups for various mostly fatal diseases support groups.  The narrator sort of... He doesn't exactly get off on it, but he starts feeling really alive afterwards.  He loves it.  He goes to all the support groups, and his insomnia seems to have cleared up, and all seems to be peaches and cream.  Like he says--"This is better than real life" (22).  Unfortunately, Marla Singer shows up. With her there he can't let go and cry with the dying people, and thus he can't sleep.  After suffering like this again, he plans to tell her to bugger off, and this is around the time Tyler shows up.
Like was said, Tyler is charismatic, handsome, all of that... And they become fast friends.  They move in together (they met on a business trip, and when the narrator came back, his apartment was quite exploded).  Tyler explains some of his feelings about the world and all of that which I'll be parroting back to you soon enough, and he came up with the idea of fight club early on.  But let's back up a bit, shall we?
So when he arrives at the airport he is first of all told that his razor went off and his bag and the bag had to be held up and checked for a bomb and all of that.  Then he is told that his apartment was blown up.  He's talking about all his Ikea furniture being blown up--"I wasn't the only slave to my nesting instinct.  The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue" (43).  "You buy furniture.  You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life.  Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled.  Then the right set of dishes.  Then the perfect bed.  The drapes.  The rug.  Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you" (44).  On a lesser note: Settling for an Ikea sofa!?  Ugh.


On the other hand, I just started thinking.  I mean--it's almost a little.... Um, I can't think of the word.  I don't think presumptuous fits.  But it's almost a little something that the narrator would want this.  Sure, who wants to be perfect, but still, then you see people sans limbs, or what have you... Then again, there's Brandy Alexander with her face blown off, and she's more than happy.  Well, maybe not happy--but content.  Satisfied.  I guess it's more funny that the 'perfect' or at least healthy/normal people would want to destroy themselves, and mutilated people want the opposite (sometimes).

"What you see in fight club is a generation of men raised by women" (50).
"My father never went to college so it was really important that I go to college.  After college, I called him long distance and said, now what?  My dad didn't know.  When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance, I said, now what?  My dad didn't know, so he said, get married.  I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering of another woman is really the answer I need" (51).

"At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves" (52).  Again, Brandy Alexander and Shannon and all of that.

Marla.  They talk.  They trade numbers.  One night the narrator calls her up and she says she's taken too many pills.  She says she doesn't exactly mean to kill herself, that it's just "one of those cry-for-help things" (59).   The narrator doesn't care.  He goes to his support group, he goes to bed early.  Tyler picks up the phone when she calls and goes to her.  The two of them are up all night having sex, and the narrator dreams about it (only it's him, not Tyler, of course) all night.  Anyway, after this night, Marla tells Tyler she wants to get pregnant and "have his abortion" (59).  There's just something about that... Not disturbing, exactly, but weird.  Unsettling, maybe?  Disconcerting.  That's the best I've got.
Oh, and Tyler called the cops before he went over to Marla's.  Marla grabs Tyler to run out while the cops are trying to talk her out of suicide through the door to her empty room.  Marla tells the police: "The girl who lives in 8G used to be a lovely charming girl, but the girl is a monster bitch monster... and she's confused and afraid to commit to the wrong thing so she won't commit to anything.  'The girl in 8G has no faith in herself,' Marla shouts, 'and she's worried that as she grows older, she'll have fewer and fewer options.'  Marla shouts, 'Good luck'" (61).

So one day at fight club, there's a 'mister angel face', who I'm pretty sure plays a bigger part in the movie, but seeing him, the narrator goes half mad.  "What Tyler says about being the crap and slaves of history, that's how I felt.  I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I'd never have.  Burn the Amazon rain forests.  Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone.  Open the dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells.  I wanted to kill all the fish I couldn't afford to eat, and smother the French beaches I'd never see.  I wanted the whole world to hit rock bottom.  Pounding that kid, I really wanted to put a bullet between the eyes of every endangered panda that wouldn't screw to save its species and every whale or dolphin that gave up and ran itself aground... For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone.  I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans.  And account for every drop of used motor oil.  And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born" (123-124).

Tyler reveals project mayhem that night to the narrator.  He wants to destroy society basically--he tells the narrator to imagine that Seattle and NYC are rotting and rusting, that they've made an ex golf green into a farm of sorts, the remainders of mankind will use zoo cages as shelters from the released animals, having to hunt elk in what were once great cities... I think it's bulls--t.  Completely.  He wants the earth to recover.  Maybe it's because the concept seems so impossible to me, but it just seems like utter crap.  I think very easily the same society would rise, and history would pretty much repeat itself.  I keep on thinking of Ayn Rand's Anthem.  People would be wiped out if nothing else.  The way I see it, people are so softened from the way we've been living for 200, 300 years, we literally can't survive out in the wild and such.  Also, as a side note, "Colours of the Wind" came up on my shuffle.  This is a really, really weird coincidence.  And... It works strangely well.  Woah.
I also think it's kind of funny in comparison to Invisible Monsters--I know, I won't shut up about that book but let it go for a second.  One of my favourite scenes is when Seth is talking about the space needle and the "future via the 1960's" (I don't remember the exact page this is said, but it really stuck out to me, so...) He's talking about how people are giving their kids biblical names, soaking lentils for dinner, making their own shoes out of leather and all of that, and "they're walking around the ruins of the future the way barbarians did when they found Grecian ruins and told themselves that God must've built them" (99).  Shannon says on the next page that "The future is just wasted on some people" (100).  I don't think she's trying to be sarcastic or ironic or anything like that, but the elevator operator doesn't get how cool the future was supposed to be--how cool the future according to the sixties is.  Maybe Tyler doesn't get it.  Maybe he's pissed that that didn't work.  Maybe he didn't even care.  Maybe they're both thinking the same thing, it's just that their futures are so different.  Either way, they were made by the same guy.

"'What you have to understand, is your father was your model for God... If you're male and you're Christian and you're living in America, your father is your model for God.  And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God? ...What you end up doing... is you spend your life looking for your father and God.  What you have to consider... Is the possibility that God doesn't like you.  Could be, God hates us.  This is not the worst thing that can happen'" (140-141).  I think this may be true even if you're female.  It seemed like an interesting concept in theory, but when I really thought about it in relation to me, it sort of held water.  It doesn't make sense in some extreme cases though...
"If you could be either God's worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose? ...Which is worse, hell or nothing?" (141).
"The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly.  The farther you run, the more God wants you back... It's not enough to be numbered with the grains of sand on the beach and the stars in the sky" (141).
EDIT: You know what I just realized?  The narrator tries so hard to break free of Tyler--and Tyler tries so hard to get him back.  He doesn't want to be a part of fight club, and he doesn't want to be a space monkey... And Tyler maybe isn't God, but whoever is doing unto something or someone else might as well be God to them... I'm not saying it's a perfect fit, I just figure that I might as well point out the parallels.

"Oh, this is bullshit.  This is a dream.  Tyler is a projection.  He's a disassociative personality disorder.  A psychogenic fugue state.  Tyler Durden is my hallucination.  'Fuck that shit,' Tyler says.  'Maybe you're my schizophrenic hallucination.'  I was here first.  Tyler says, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, well let's just see who's here last'" (168).

Ooooooops... There goes the non spoiler bit.  Yeah, Tyler Durden is the narrator's alter-ego.  The narrator describes Tyler as everything he's not--funny, charismatic, free, and so on--everything he wants to be.  Which of course makes complete sense.  He blames Marla for being the cause of Tyler's appearance--in some way he wanted her, kind of liked her.   But he's not brave enough, cool enough, handsome enough or whatever enough to make a move on her or anything--maybe the real reason why his insomnia came back, why he didn't cry in front of her.  He didn't want to seem weak in front of her, so he won't cry.  Can't sleep because he's focused on her.  Maybe?  Okay, it's kind of weak but I'm writing this right now at 1 AM.  Either way, it makes sense that he'd create his alter ego to be everything he's not and would want to be.
And while we're talking about the fact that TYLER DURDEN ISN'T REAL?  When they fought in the parking lot that first time, the narrator says that after a while men started gathered around them and started shouting.  Of course, you don't know that Tyler is a schizophrenic delusion then, so it seems like it's the normal crowd, egging two guys on.  What it really is is the narrator beating himself up--so it makes sense that they would be yelling and freaking out.  (But no-one did anything...?) And when Tyler has the gun in his mouth, the narrator explains that to anyone else it looks like he's holding the gun in his own mouth.  I'd also want to mention that in that first fight, neither he (him?) nor Tyler kick each other.  It's nearly impossible to kick yourself.
Then of course, when you realize that they're the same, all that repetition of "I know this because Tyler knows this" really makes sense.

"How everything you ever love will reject you or die.  Everything you ever create will be thrown away.  Everything you're proud of will end up as trash.  I am Ozymandias, king of kings" (201).

Anyways.  Here's me spoiling the end.  He shoots himself.  Now, I haven't seen the movie.  Well--not all of it.  I saw the first half, about.  The only thing I really remember is the scene where the narrator's boss finds the fight club rules and Eddie Norton does an amazing job at giving the narrator's description of shooting up the office.  Anyways, I believe the movie ends with the narrator actually shooting himself and the buildings exploding--keep in mind that I don't actually know.  The book, however, has the shot--but the shot just rips up the other side of the narrator's face, and the buildings don't explode.  (Well... It's implied that they didn't blow up.)  There's one more chapter, too.  It's kind of funny that it's not actually in the movie--well, if it isn't actually in the movie.  In A Clockwork Orange, there's a kind-of sort-of epilogue chapter that covers Alex's life after he's been re-educated and released.  He sees his old hellions as police men, married, grown ups--and starts wondering if it's maybe time for him to grow up too.  It kind of takes away the steam of the book, I guess, and it was cut out of the movie, and even the original American printings of the book.  This is kind of the same thing (in nature, at the very least).  Tyler is gone, and we don't know if he'll come back.  He's pretending he's dead, though really, he is in the hospital.  He's referring to people as angels, and his psychiatrist as God in an effort to fool himself, even though he really truly knows that he is still alive.
"We are not special.  We are not crap or trash, either.  We just are.  We just are, and what happens just happens.   And God says, 'No, that's not right.'  Yeah.  Well.  Whatever.  You can't teach God anything" (207).

The ending wigs me out.  Like I said, he's in the hospital, and there are orderlies who have black eyes, cut-up faces, missing teeth, shaved heads--the obvious signs of fight clubbers.  It ends with an orderly saying that he can't wait to have him (/them) back.

There's also a brief afterward by Palahniuk, sort of a reflection bit.  It makes sense, Fight Club took off--even now it's insanely popular, and this is more than ten years later.
First of all, there's a big section on people's reactions to it: a man asks what Palahniuk's takes on women's statuses in America today are, someone said the book was a failure because it didn't touch on racism, some people thought the book was actually about interpretative dance, watching gay men have sex, and so on.  You get the feeling--or maybe it's just me projecting onto Palahniuk--that he thinks this is utterly ridiculous.  I mean... Women don't come into play.  They hardly even matter in the book.  (I wrote 'anymore' originally--Freudian slip?)  As for the racism bit, Palahniuk does mention it--he (Tyler Durden) says it doesn't matter if you're black or white anymore, the only thing that matters is how much money/power you've got.
Some people got mad, saying they invented fight clubs in boot camp, Depression labour camps... "There have always been fight clubs, they say.  There will always be fight clubs.  Waiters will always pee in soup.  People will always fall in love"(217).

MLA Citation information: Palahniuk, Chuck.  Fight Club.  Norton: United States of America, 2005.


So that's Fight Club!  I guess it's easy to see that I love this book.  It really is awesome; Palahniuk is really awesome too.  I don't think this is his best book--but it's pretty amazing.  It probably has the strongest voice out of all his books (that I've read, of course).  I actually heard he published something just recently....?


Answer to last post's cryptic lyrics: Warrior by Matisyahu
This post's cryptic lyrics: I'm knitting with only one needle, unravelling fast it's true.  I'm driving only three wheels these days--but my dear, how about you?

Ulysses by James Joyce

I did it! I finally really did it! YES, I'M A MANIAC, I FINALLY BLEW IT UP! DAMN ME, DAMN ME ALL TO... Wait, what? Oh, sorry, I was possessed by Charlton Heston for a second there. My bad.

Anyway, what exactly I did was finish... well, I assume you can read if you've made it this far. Please, absorb the title. Give me my moments of joy and pride. I'm going to get all Fitzwilliam Darcy up in here. Oh yeahhhh. (Can you tell that it's one in the morning?) Anyway, this book was awesome awesome awesome. It's about a single day in Dublin, focusing on a few men here and there, mainly Leopold Bloom but also others, such as Bloom's wife and Stephen Dedalus. Any day, really. It is, as the title may have tipped you off to, a parallel to Homer's Odyssey. (Ulysses is Odysseus in Latin.) Which is a pretty cool concept, and 85% of the reason I read it... ten percent is Marky Mark explaining certain scenes that parallel or are different on purpose, and the last five percent is that Ulysses is really cool sounding and also fun to say. Well, let's get right to it, shall we? I'll try to split it section by section, or warn you about it, but I'm sure I won't do it perfectly. Oh, and as a side note: sections in the book aren't actually titled, except in guides and such, say, Wikipedia. (I admit, I used Wikipedia for help, and a little bit of SparkNotes--they afforded about the same degree of information. Even just reading the summaries of the sections on Wikipedia is pretty cool as well.) Another note: quotation marks are seldom, if ever, used, so if a conversation takes place I will throw them in there--just to reduce confusion, mind you.

I don't have much to say on the included letters in the book, except that in John M Woolsey's ruling to remove the ban on the book (this is actually one book that was banned that you read and can actually see reasons as to why it would offend/be banned) he includes a sentence--practically the conclusion--that "nowhere does [Ulysses] tend to be an aphrodisiac" (XIV). It kind of just made me giggle and especially makes me giggle now, at five to two AM.

The first section is known as Telemachus--Telemachus is Odysseus's son, who while with his father away from home must deal with these masses of suitors come for his mother's hand, but more importantly, the kingdom. The Telemachus in question is Stephen Dedalus, being bled of wealth by those around (as the suitors did in Odysseus's unmanned home). Stephen is also meant to echo Shakespeare's Hamlet.

"'Thanks', Stephen said. 'I can't wear them if they are grey'. 'He can't wear them,' Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror. Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers'" (6). This kind of made me chuckle--and no, he didn't literally murder his mother. What happened, if I understand correctly, was that his mother was moments from dying and she begged him to pray but he went into a sort of shock and wouldn't do so. She died promptly, and thus, the explanation for Mulligan's statement.

"...all there if of her but her woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's likeness, the serpent's prey" (14).

"'The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus,' he said" (18). Clearly, the drink. Mulligan thereafter starts singing a drinking tune: "I'm the queerest young fellow that you ever heard/My mother's a jew, my father's a bird. With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree/So here's to disciples and Cavalry" (19). I'm not sure who Joseph the joiner is, but I just thought I might point out that the tune is about Jesus. (The bird thing threw me off, but remember, the holy spirit came to the disciples at one point as a dove. Or the dove is just a sign of God. Look, it's been a while since Sunday school.) This passage also had me thinking of the story of Jesus as a sort of quest. I mean, it follows the quest motif. Marked for greatness, well, he's not literally marked, but his dad is the creator of the universe so that's a pretty big one on its own, his call to adventure would be about when he was thirty, which I believe was when he had his greatest revelation and began to travel... he garnered the disciples, he had tasks, like resisting the devil's temptation in the desert... His goal would be to spread the Word, I guess... Well, what brought this train of thought on was a comment from Haines, an acquaintance of Stephen Dedalus's: "'I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere... The Father and Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father'" (18). Actually, maybe that doesn't work that well, for at the end of the heroic quest is that the son must overcome the father in some way, whether it be a metaphor or actually doing so, and I don't really recall the part where Jesus beat his dad up. No, it still kind of works.

Part Two: Nestor. Nestor himself appears in both The Illiad and The Odyssey as a counsellor. Stephen Dedalus in this chapter attempts to teach a class of horribly bored children and when it is let out goes to see Mr Deasy to receive his pay. I think Nestor refers to Deasy, who tries to pass information and advice unto Stephen, a portion of which is actually anti-Semitic gabble.

"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" (34).

"Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying: 'That is God.' 'Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!' 'What?' Mr Deasy asked. 'A shout in the street,' Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders" (34).

The third section, one of my least favorites of the book to be honest, is Proteus. Proteus was a lesser sea god, appropriate because this chapter is spent on the beach, again still with Dedalus. This is the first real 'stream of consciousness' chapter as well, and according to Marky Mark one of the hardest in the book. Yeah, I can believe that.

"Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint... You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street... Sell your soul for that, do... More tell me, more still! On top of the Howth tram alone crying to the rain: naked women! What about that, eh?" (40) And then he defends himself: "What about what? What else were they invented for?" (40), which made me chuckle.

"When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once..." (40). Again, that attempt to explain that unity, that synching, when you read something so perfectly like that. This stab at it is as good as any, I think.

"Endless, would it be mine, form of my form?" (48). Dedalus means his shadow. I just think it's just a really cool quote, there is something incredibly attractive about its wording.

"Our souls, shame-wounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover clinging, the more the more" (48). Fantastic imagery.

Joyce also coins the word dislove--or perhaps not, perhaps I've just never seen it before--a very attractive (ironically enough) word. There's just something about it I like.

Joyce refers to Wilde quite a few times throughout the book, mostly in the begin but a little scattered throughout. The first reference is from part one: "'We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes'" (18). The second time is here in part three: "Staunch friend, a brother soul: Wilde's love that dare not speak its name. He will now leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all" (49). I understand the reference to Wilde--that was his defense in court when charged with being a homosexual; he mentions in a work of the love that "dare not speak its name". However, he defines it not as homosexuality but of a sort of foster father relationship or foster brother relationship with a younger man, a Greek love. (A Greek discluding Sparta love.) So it'd be a close relationship with a man, the original owner of the boots he was wearing and reflecting upon when he speaks of Wilde... Or maybe even it refers to the boots themselves, the boots in regards to his feet. But--I understand not the "He now will leave me..." bit. Taking the shoe off? His father himself leaving him? A close adult? Even perhaps a male lover? Fortunately, Sparknotes gives us nothing to explain this; Sparknotes never seems to have any information regarding the things in this book that really do confuse me.

I really have nothing much to say about the next part, other than it's when we first meet Leopold Bloom, the sort of--'mainest' character. He was sort of my anchor; from here on in, as long as Leopold is around or directly involved in whatever is going on, I have a pretty good grip of what's going on. When he disappears for periods of time I have some trouble. Anyway, Leopold is your average citizen, he's part Jewish (I feel the need to mention this because he eats pork and he has not been circumcised, which probably confused the most out of the whole book until much later when we are made privy to the fact that he is only part Jewish). Anyway, this part is called Calypso, after the sea goddess who held Odysseus captive for seven years and forced him to have sex with her and stuff (Oh no, a beautiful woman wants to have sex with me! Woe is me! Shut up, Odysseus.) We do also meet Bloom's wife this chapter, still in bed, so I can kind of see a connection there... And the missus certainly feels entrapped by the marriage (not that that feeling keeps her from indulging in, uh, outer marriage pleasures), and Bloom to an extent does--but she certainly is more agitated by it. In which case, it would be.... irony! Yay

　

Okay, next part. Chapter two of part two I guess. This is where we find out that Bloom has a secret life--he writes erotic letters to a girl, who writes back--the woman would like to meet him, at least it implies it (she asks him his wife's perfume) but he kind of skirts it off. Anyway, this is supposed to parallel the lotus-eaters, who if I recall were normal men but ate of the lotuses (loti?) and forgot their identities. (They acted as narcotics.) Leopold Bloom's false name in his letter is Henry Flowers (which also could be a joke on 'Bloom') and enclosed in the letter from his 'pen pal' is a flower. And the both are purposely ignoring their actual identities to flirt and write erotic things too, so, yeah.

"Tell him if he smokes he won't grow. O let him! His life isn't such a bed of roses!" (71). This seemed like a very Kerouac little section, which I guess to a certain extent makes sense, being that him and Joyce were both practitioners in the stream of thought writing. Still, just saying.

The next chapter is appropriately paradoxical of Odysseus's descent to Hades, as this is of Bloom, the senior Dedalus and Martin Cunningham going to Paddy Dignam's funeral.

We learn of Bloom's dead son (Rudy) on the way to the funeral, a son dead either at birth or shortly after birth. I thought this was interesting because, to be frank, Mrs Bloom is sleeping around. Actually, sleeping with her manager. Bloom knows it, though I don't believe their daughter is aware (she is away from home) and I don't believe any other person around knows. But wait, that's not the whole reason why I thought it was interesting! When Odysseus comes home, his son helps him get by the suitors so he can slaughter them. With a dead son then, can Bloom do nothing, or at least not gather the courage to confront his wife and her lover? And if the son hadn't died, would the affair be happening at all? (He would not have been old enough to send away like the daughter.)

The senior Dedalus Simon is complaining about his son, Stephen, and turns the phrase "tickle his catastrophe" (88), which is just another example of awesomeness in the wording apparent in the text.

The funeral procession passes Simon's late wife's grave and he becomes distraught, saying he'll "soon be stretched beside her" (105) and that God can take him whenever he wants because obviously he misses her. Possible irony, because while Odysseus is in hell he meets Achilles and Achilles says he'd rather be a slave than rule the place, much less be there at all.

"Daren't joke about the dead for two years at least" (109). Ah, so that's the grace period! Guys, your Michael Jackson jokes are still in really bad taste!

"The Irishman's house is his coffin" (110).

"Bam! Expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit: forget you. Don't forget to pray for him. Remember him in your prayers... Then they follow: dropping into a hole one after the other" (111). And, with that--"Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind" (111). Of course, referring to the deceased.

The next chapter is set in a newspaper office and is broken up like several articles one after another with huge headers. I had a hell of a time with this chapter. This chapter is Aeolus, who if I recall correctly gave Odysseus a bag of winds to help ease his journey.

"What was [Rome's] civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers. The Jews met in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: It is meet to be here. Let us build an altar to Jehovah. The Roman... gazed about him in his toga and said: It is meet to be here. Let us construct a watercloset" (129). Okay, yes, it made me giggle. Also, compare that with this quote from Doctor Zhivago: "'Rome was a flea market of borrowed gods and conquered peoples, a bargain basement on two floors, earth and heaven, a mass of filth convoluted in a triple knot as in an intestinal obstruction.'" It is mentioned that we still have Roman law and the retort is that Pontius Pilate is that law's prophet. (Pontius Pilate was the man who condemned Jesus to Crucifixion, though in his defense he was very reluctant to do so.)

"We were never loyal to the successful. We serve them" (133).

The next part is Lestrygonians. They were giants who ate almost the entirety of Odysseus's fleet. Appropriate, because it is lunchtime, though Bloom does not dine on miniature Grecian men. (Or does he?)

The first bit that bothers me are his thoughts of Shakespeare. Bloom says to himself that Shakespeare has no rhymes: okay, maybe not so much in plays, but what about the sonnets? I guess in his defense people don't automatically think of the sonnets when they think of Shakespeare, even if they are aware of the sonnets' existence.

"Do ptake some ptarmigan" (175). Haha, yes! (A ptarmigan is a kind of bird, by the way.) I don't know if any of you have read any Shel Silverstein, but does anybody remember that poem about that gnat? Gradually he adds the silently 'g' to every 'n' word. So. Yeah. James Joyce and I should hang out more is what I'm trying to say.

There is a conversation next chapter regarding Shankspeare and his personal life, and a man in the pub criticizing an analysis of his life in a very Wilde-ish way: "'But this is prying into the family life of a great man... I mean when we read the poetry of King Lear what is it to us how the poet lived?... Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet's drinking, the poet's debts. We have King Lear: and it is immortal'" (189). Wilde argues very much the same way in a work which I can not exactly name but I know is contained in The Collected Oscar Wilde (For some reason I'm thinking 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism'?)--I wrote about in any case, if you'd like to skim that up. But to summarize, he says biographies of the great poets, authors, et cetera doesn't really tell us about the person because maybe they had a boring life that didn't really let them live to their fullest (Cough cough, Jane Austen), they could not live as they really pleased, they were only reacting to what was laid before them, that was all they could do--and so on. Their works are most important and they are what truly show us the soul, because it shows their desires, their mannerisms, true unhidden or otherwise disguised feelings, what they would have liked to live... and so on. Which I completely agree with, for the record, and not just because Oscar Wilde wrote about it!

"There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there has not been a sundering" (195).

Oh, and James Joyce name-drops Wilde's 'Portrait of Mr WH', Wilde's story that argues that Shankspeare's sonnets were written for a man named Willie Hughes. This story also resides in Barnes & Noble's The Collected Oscar Wilde. I might add that the reason why Wilde's name peppers Ulysses is probably because James Joyce was Irish as well, and Wilde was a prominent author, scandal or no. Well, and that he works for situations he is alluded too, but I feel that his Irish background has a lot to do with it. You know? Like, of course they'd be talking about him, he's straight from their home country, and so on.

"A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary evil" (207).

Midway through there is a breakup similar to play dialogue. I assume it has to do with the fact Shankspeare is being discussed, but like I said, when in doubt, SparkNotes is actually really useless.

Next chapter does not regard Stephen and Leopold at all, so let that be the warning flag to you now that I had a lot of trouble with the chapter. There are nineteen vignettes regarding nineteen different people in the book. (As opposed to regarding those not in the book?)

In one vignette M'Coy narrowly avoids slipping on a banana peel and reflects upon how badly you could get hurt if you did. Was slipping on a banana peel already a cliche then, or did this start the trend? Has there ever been any serious research on the subject that could give me a clear answer?

Next chapter regards the Sirens, women-fish similar to mermaids (depending on the interpretation) whose lovely voice lure men to their doom, as they are so drawn to the women they drive their ships right into the rocks where they repose. Appropriately, this chapter regards lots of singing and music as Bloom sits down for dinner. In another sense it works because during this chapter Boylan, Leopold's wife's lover makes his way to the Bloom household to have his way with her. (Leopold's wife, if I have not mentioned, is a singer. Boylan is her manager. She is the siren, he is the sailor, although he is the sailor who does not suffer death.)

Joyce mentions middle earth during this chapter. The middle earth? The Hobbit wasn't published for about fifteen years after Ulysses, so you never know... (I can't find anything to support my idea.)

"He bore no hate. Hate. Love. Those are names. Rudy. Soon I am old" (285).

"...Daly's window where a mermaid, hair all streaming (but he couldn't see), blew whiffs of a mermaid (blind couldn't), mermaid coolest whiff of all" (289). Obviously, referring to the actual female sirens, not just the men (particularly Simon Dedalus) who are singing. Admittedly there are some alluring barmaids where they are dining as well.

The next chapter is Cyclops, possibly my least favorite section of the book (though it has interesting bits) and a pretty difficult section too. The cyclops was obviously a one-eyed giant who dined upon men; Odysseus escapes it by getting it drunk and then putting out its eye. Hiding under a sheepskin he escapes the Cyclops's lair. The one-eyed giant could refer to the 'Citizen' (never is he named in any other way) because he's anti-Semitic, so narrow minded, purposely blind, one-eyed for he sees but only what he wants, and so on. This chapter is told by an unnamed man whose speech was apparently modeled after James Joyce's father. The man's style of speaking, in any case, reminds me greatly of Alex from A Clockwork Orange, probably because he refers back to himself all the time, "says I" and just the way he speaks itself reads in my head with the voice of Alex from the movie. Something about the voice... Just one of those things, I guess.

There is a funny case of abusing Bloom for his patterns in this chapter. Earlier on, he's called wellrounded, well-educated, knows a tad bit of everything, yes? And this is said with honor for him. Here, though, he is berated for it. It's kind of cool to be able to see all the different opinions of him here and there, and then that coupled with his own mind (which admittedly is a little dirty and fetish-filled)--Leopold Bloom is fleshed out completely in that, more completely than any other book has ever done and could possibly do, he's more human than you or I, I'd even go sofar as to say. He's the roundest character you'll ever read, I mean, rounder than most people anyway. Anyway, Leopold being mocked: "'...If you took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom: Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? That's a straw. Declare to my aunt he'd talk about it for an hour so he would and talk steady" (316).

In this chapter we learn of the day that this is set upon, June sixteenth, commonly known nowadays--or perhaps not so commonly--as Bloomsday. In that same sentence he actually mentions "the oxeyed goddess" (322) IE Hera. Which I thought was curious because this is really the only time he refers to any Greek god/dess, and in such a Homer-ish way, too. And on a side note, wouldn't it suck to be known as the oxeyed goddess? I'd be like, nothing? There's nothing else you could refer to me as!? The hourglass shaped goddess? The eternally young goddess? The goddess of the golden hair? Anything is better than oxeyed.

"Some people, says Bloom, can see the [might] in others' eyes but they can't see the beam in their own" (326).

Ironically, the intended cyclops of this chapter, the anti-Semite is the one who says: "'There's no-one as blind as the fellow that won't see, if you know what that means'" (326). Of course, his prejudices make him the blind man--the blind man who is unaware even of his inability to see.

"'But it's no use,' says he. 'Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life.' 'What?' says Alf. 'Love,' says Bloom. 'I mean the opposite of hatred'" (333).

"'And every jew is in a tall state of excitement, I believe, till he knows if he's a father or mother.' 'Expecting every moment will be his next,' says Lenehan'" (338). Again, lovely phraseology here.

Oh, and Leopold finally sticks it to the Citizen by reminding him that Jesus was a Jew. The Citizen, filled with rage, threatens to crucify Leopold.

Next chapter is Nausicaa. Nausicaa is a young princess who comes upon Odysseus and eventually brings him to her parents to shelter him. Nausicaa has a bit of a crush on him and expresses that she'd like to marry him, or someone with his personality. Nausicaa's father is aware of this crush, or just impressed by Odysseus, and offers him her hand, but Odysseus turns it down because he's already married. Again, the parallels are clear. This chapter is mostly told through the eyes of Gerty, a girl on the beach, with a few of her friends and their kids. She thinks about marriage and sex and such while reclining on the beach (according to SparkNotes, her narrative is meant to parody early romance stories in women's magazines) till she notices Leopold watching her. While fireworks are being shot off she shows some leg and Leopold, uh, directs the pleasure toward himself. So nothing comes of that, either. (Is it bad that I'm summarizing all these chapters? This isn't really the kind of book where you can cut stuff out, you know?)

"He was too young to understand. He would not believe in love, a women's birthright" (351). Yeah, it's pretty lame, but guess what I like Jane Austen. Another example of cheap romance novel prose-cliches: "There were wounds that wanted healing with heartbalm" (358).

Oh, and, I mentioned this earlier, about his foreskin? He complains about it, you know, after. Look, the only reason why I bring it up because of any bit of the book it certainly confused me the most. He's Jewish! It bothered me every page until about one hundred pages later when they go out and say that he's only part Jewish. I mean, of all things of the book to throw me for a loop, really.

"Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we die" (381).

"O! Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will she come here tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. Must come back. Murderers do. Will I?" (381). You know, a play on that saying that murderers always come back to the scene of the crime. And... so do masturbaters? Well, not that there was any crime scene but you know. Again, I thought it was a cool little tidbit of Bloom's thinking.

The next is Cattle of the Sun, having to do with Helios's divine cattle, but honestly this chapter is too cool and much cooler than The Odyssey's parallel chapter, or a summary of it. This chapter's concept (which I only realized with the help of Wikipedia) follows a baby's growth in the womb. But get this--it's the language that follows the baby's growth. Like, it starts out in olde English and develops with each paragraph in a style further such as the King James' Bible, Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens, Carlyle, among many others. Which is a really really really REALLY cool concept! Once I learned this, I had to reread the chapter. I mean, what a genius is James Joyce to think of such a thing!
"Know all men, he said, time's ruins build eternity's mansions. What means this? Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time... In woman's womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation" (391). Conception and gestation, of course.

"I have more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh together" (409).

Oh, and again Lord of the Rings: Joyce uses the word 'bilbos'. A bilbo was apparently a kind of sword known for its flexible but not weak blade manufactured mainly in Bilbao, Spain. Knowing this I could make an interesting analysis of how that would regard Bilbo Baggins, but I guess this isn't quite the time or place to do so.

The next chapter is my favorite of the whole book, regardless of its madness and at times incredibly disturbing imagery. (Not A Clockwork Orange disturbing, just, you know, uncomfortable-like.) The chapter is Circe--Circe was a witch who turned Odysseus's men into pigs. Circe wanted to sleep with Odysseus like every other female in the book and, according to Wikipedia, would steal Odysseus's manhood unless if she explicitely swore not to. I don't quite remember that but okay. It actually kind of works because at one point Bloom imagines he is turned into a woman but I'm getting ahead of myself. Bloom, drunk as a skunk, wanders into the red light district and has many drunken hallucinations with brief moments of clearheadedness. His first delusion has him facing harsh charges from people close to him, his second involves him becoming a great leader of a new country--get ready for this--Bloomusalem. This is all fine and well till he's accused of being bisexual, virgin, being in possession of endless and violent lust and others. Well, let's get started for real I guess.

"'There is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor'" (463). Seriously, James Joyce, how are you so awesome? Please inform me as to how.

Well, okay, here's the first disturbing in an uncomfortable creepy-crawly way part: after Bloom is ripped apart for his apparent sexual abnormalities, a doctor gives a long speech about Bloom and suddenly ends it with "'He is about to have a baby'" (494). Bloom, suddenly female, confesses he wants to be a mother and while standing there bears eight children. Ugh, talk about the creepy-crawlies. Oh, and keep in mind that now you know the truth: LEOPOLD BLOOM WAS THE ORIGINAL OCTOMOM.

"'What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for'" (500).

"'From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step'" (515).

Bloom, babbling on claims that women fear "creeping things" (516) because of how their differing genitals are laid out, which is why he believes the story of Eve and the snake make no sense (along with the fact that a woman would fear a snake because of the old wives' tale that snakes will suck the milk from the breast). Well, I suppose it works at least a little--it seems to me like the snake would be a phallic symbol, no? And, with his mentioning of the wives' tale--we discover in the final chapter that he drank the milk from his wife's breast. Why his wife detests him? She certainly seems to regard the incident with disgust, even though he complemented highly on her breastmilk. (Though she clearly had no problem with it when he actually committed the act, so does she really have the right to revile it now if she permitted it?)

A reference to a Spanish fly "in his fly" (516) is made. I can't help but wonder if it's that famed aphrodisiac of legend that apparently impaled a girl on a gearshift, so horny she was without relief after being slipped some. That urban legend is relatively recent, which makes me doubt it could be that Spanish fly Joyce refers to, but it's possible. Some urban legends have existed since the 1100's with only slight variations in the story. If it is that particular Spanish fly, the play on words becomes apparent--the fly on his pants, you see, that would contain the arousal. I see what you did there, James Joyce. (The actual Spanish fly can kill really easily and if it does induce arousal-like symptoms they're very painful, so do not read this and try to obtain some, please.)

"'I stand, so to speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of the general post office of human life'" (528).

The whoremistress intrudes on Bloom's delirium, and after Bloom begs to be dominated the whoremistress turns from Bella to Bello and then s/he turns Bloom back into a permutation between coquettish female and various animals; dog, pig, sheep, deer, et cetera. Obviously, Bello is Circe. Bloom's transformations are agitating however, as although this chapter is completely set up like a play, there are very few stage directions regarding exactly what and how much of certain things Bloom is--one moment he--eh, she--is small enough to hide under the couch, rooting as a pig would, still speaking, then bleating, wearing a dress again, being ridden--literally being ridden, no metaphors here--as a horse, bearing udders as a 'hegoat', a bovinelike animal who is the victim of the most skin-crawling act of this chapter, a regular man again wearing antlers--and so on.
"’You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitah is written'" (543). Shankspeare left to his wife in his will his secondbest bed.

We discover that Bloom is only thirty-eight in this chapter. I mean, I guess that's kind of old, but the way people described him I was thinking mid-forties, maybe even early fifties. Though I guess one must take into consideration that people didn't last nearly as long back then. Mrs Bloom is only about 33 too, and in her chapter she complains of her age and losing her beauty and all.
"'You die for your country, suppose... Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my country die for me... Damn death. Long live life!'" (591). How Catch-22 of you, my good sir.

This chapter ends sweetly when all madness is dispelled, however; well, bittersweetly. We know by now that Rudy was buried in a lambskin. Bloom, carried on the last waves of illusion, as they fade away completely sees an eleven-year-old boy nearby leaning up against a wall, reading a book. Bloom calls his son's name and the boy looks up without recognizing or even really seeing Bloom. The boy makes no response, but we can see a portion of a lambskin poking out of his waistcoat's pocket.

　

The next is Eumaeus, which was a friend of Odysseus's. When Odysseus returns he takes him in, unknowing of who he is. Bloom has taken charge of Stephen who was also in the whorehouse and they have since left to find momentary repose, mainly for Stephen. Identities are thrown around; at one point Bloom lies to a drunken sailor about his.

"...Mr Bloom being handicapped by the circumstance that one of the black buttons of his trousers had, to vary the timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons" (614).

Button, oh button, where hath thou fled?

"'...Why did you leave your father's house?' 'To seek misfortune,' was Stephen's answer" (619). (There really is no good spot-on way to treat these quotes and conversations, is there? DAMN YOU JAMES JOYCE AND YOUR INABILITY TO USE QUOTATION MARKS! You too, Cormac McCarthy.)

"'But oblige me by taking away that knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history'" (635). Et tu, Stephen Dedalus?

A fellow named Pat Tobin is described as having "often painted the town tolerably pink" (639). Hehehehe.

"'We can't change the country. Let us change the subject'" (645). I feel like more people should abide by this quote...

　

The next is Ithaca, Odysseus's homeland. This is a pretty cool chapter because it's told in a style called catechism--sort of like a q-and-a session. According to Wikipedia (though it is not sourced) this was also Joyce's favorite chapter. What happens in this chapter is that Dedalus recovers enough to go home with Bloom, but refuses the offer to spend the night there.

There is an ad that appears every so often in the book about Plumtree's Potted Meat. It is "A home without Plumtree's Potted Meat is Incomplete". In this chapter, in the q-and-a style, it reads as this: "What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat? Incomplete" (684). Let me insert more chuckling here, and also have a word with my good friend Aldous Huxley.

Leopold during this chapter runs through what to do--what could be done regarding his wife's infidelity. He turns down assassination and a duel with Boylan--ironic because Odysseus slaughtered all the men after his wife.

"Womb? Weary? He rests. He has travelled" (737).

The next chapter is Penelope, regarding the Mrs Bloom. Her thoughts drift from her husband (and believing her husband has extramarital affairs) to Boylan, men and women's differences, her childhood, how her life would be different if she hadn't married Bloom, various affairs, Rudy's end and eventually back to her husband. The chapter also consists of eight sentences only, broken up by paragraphs--not even with periods--so arguably you could say that there's really only one, all in all...

"I suppose she was pious because no man would look at her twice" (738). Seems logical. Frumpy bitter woman.

At one point Mrs Bloom implies that one of her children--most likely Rudy--was not fathered by Bloom. That's cute. (Though I admit she procures a little bit of sympathy later on--though not enough to combat affection gained, for all of his oddities and strange ways many of which appear now, for Leopold.)

In regards to her affair, Mrs Bloom thinks about Boylan giving her money for this that or the other thing. "...hes not a marrying man so somebody better get it out of him" (749). Ick. Rereading this, I have trouble retaining respect for her. What a--only Emma will get this--Demos way to think! I feel my Augustus coming out and protesting that statement most vehemently. (Oh and that's funny because of Augustus's last name...)

A funny bit is when the Missus compares feminine beauty to male beauty, regarding a woman's breasts versus a man's genitalia. In the end she concludes women are much more beautiful in that argument and that it's no wonder that men "hide it with a cabbageleaf" (753). It's a rather hilarious bit, let me assure you.

"...I hate people that have always their poor story to tell everybody has their own troubles" (758). Okay, okay. At the funeral way in the beginning, Leopold becomes really human by instead of thinking what people ought at a funeral, what people are expected to, thinking about whatever, letting his mind drift completely from here and there. Thus the reader connects to them because they're the same way, as their minds are unhindered personally by social mores and norms. This is another one of those moments, when you feel yourself agreeing with the statement but feeling you ought not to so people won't think you're a jerk or what have you.

"there is a flower that bloometh" (759). Often puns are made on Leopold's name, but this is one of the last times and I thought I should point it out. She is thinking about a short-term relationship she had that she purposely messed with the boy by telling him she was engaged--she wasn't at that moment but was soon to be for "there is a flower that bloometh", that was soon to appear.

"the cat she rubs up against you for her own sake I wonder has she fleas shes as bad as a woman always licking and lecking but I hate their claws" (764).

The end seems to be--well, if not sweet in some respects at least acceptance of her situation. It's remembering the day Leopold asked her to marry him, and ends with her acceptance--and also the only period in the entire section. It's actually kind of sweet because there's at least a microscopic amount of affection for her husband there. He was a pretty romantic guy back then, he wrote her a poem (whose beginning letters spelt out POLDY, his nickname) he called her a flower, the "one true thing he said in his life" (782) and how she wanted him to marry and desperately wanted him to ask--so if not a remnant of affection (which there certainly must be) acceptance in that she wanted to marry him, and she had said yes, several times actually. The ending really is what makes me show any liking for her: "...then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes" (783). In my opinion, a perfect ending. Neat and tidy--though I admit I still wonder from time to time about Bloom. But I guess that's a great thing about the book, wondering about the future (mostly regarding Mrs Bloom's idle toying with what she'll do tomorrow and further after, though it's the tomorrow that's most curious) with no answer, who knows, do we really care, was it all worth it--of course--it's on the edge of forever, a lovely place for a book to be and even to end on.

As you can see I've come to regard the book quite highly. True, it's not my number one, but it's damned close. Unlike almost all of the books that end in my 'classics' shelf, its existence there was decided only five or six chapters in. It's just fantastic and if you'll excuse the wording--as I've thought for appropriate substitutes since those five or six chapters in--it is, dare I say it, orgasmic. No, not sexually, jeez, I'm not the one who's been drinking all night in a whorehouse. But it's just so full, so fantastic, such an altar. You understand? Mayhap? My favorite bit, as I've said already, is Bloom--you learn everything about him from every perspective. Good bad ugly human romantic sickening uncomfortable-making loving caring saddening and so on.

As for Joyce's work itself, why would he do it, make it so confusing and mad? He put it in "so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of ensuring one's immortality". (

Source

) Hah, something I can surely respect. And--well--as to reading the book. I don't want to make it come off as though I understood every tiny facet of the thing, because I didn't. It's difficult; I can't lie about it. It's a book I would like to reread in a few years and compare my understanding. It's a great experience, and worth a shot to anyone who thinks they're ready--or just feeling foolhardy or brave (I'm a little bit of both).

Well, there’s that. I think a point of interest might be that this post (to this sentence) is 7,163 words. (I hope the formatting comes off okay.)

Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Outlaw Blues by Bob Dylan (I have no idea about that video.)

This post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma (welcome to another facepalm): What's the matter there, feeling kind of anxious? That hot blood grew cold.

PS. I apologize for spelling errors, after Cyclops the spellchecker decided it had had enough apparently. Keep in mind that if it's in the quotes though the error was most likely meant to be there.

Have you heard? There's a rumor in St. Petersburg...

OH HAI I'M BACK

So. Earlier today, I finished rereading The Odyssey for the umpteenth time. (Seriously, where the hell is the underline button?) I still love it EMMA but the one thing that bothers me (and always has) is the way Homer constantly describes Clytemnestra--basically, a dirty back-stabbing bitch. For those of you who didn't spend your childhood reading Greek mythology/history I'll give you the short of it: Clytemnestra's husband goes off to fight in the Trojan war--he makes it back alive to discover his honey bun has taken a lover and oops, the two of them have been plotting, and the two new lovebirds murder him.
Now wait, before you start agreeing with Homer, here's her side: The navy tries to sail out to Troy for weeks and into months (I don't remember the exact length of time) because the winds keep blowing their boats back to port. The only way to stop this? Sacrifice a maiden. Agamemnon (the hubby) decides his daughter Iphigenia will be the perfect maiden. Naturally, Clytemnestra rejects the idea, but lovely hubby goes and takes her anyways without telling his wife. So, understandably, she's an eensy bit pissed. Now, to top that off, when he comes back, he's got a second wife. Although I think it's a little strange that wife #2 (Cassandra) could supposedly see the future... so what the hell was she thinking, hooking up with him? (She was murdered too)
But yeah. I'd say that murder was justified--maybe not the murder of Cassandra, but Agamemnon deserved it. But Homer just goes on and on about how terrible she was... failing to mention any of this with sacrificing the daughter and all... Okay, okay, "for the gods and all" but if someone sacrificed my kid to the gods I'd probably kill them. And it's a little troublesome that Aggy wasn't the least bit against the killing of his daughter... But, then again, my first introduction to this story was in The Groovy Greeks--which was very sympathetic for Clytemnestra, being that it was written from her point of view. So maybe it's just me that thinks this... well, Emma agrees too I think. We had this conversation already! lol. But yeah. If you think Clytemnestra was being an unjust faithless murderous wife, she and her lover were murdered shortly afterward by her twins, Orestes and Electra, who were pursued by the Furies until Athena pardoned them. (Athena! No!!!) Ah, those Greeks are a fun bunch, aren't they? And in conclusion, check out the Horrible Histories series--the earlier books in the series, like The Groovy Greeks or The Awesome Egyptians. Yes, I just plugged a series of books meant for fourth graders. These books are awesome.

And, while I was in France, I finished The Brothers Karamazov and Pride and Prejudice.
The Brothers K... That book... The beginning, I got very little, other than scenes where Alyosha was the focus. I rather liked Alyosha, and not just because his name is fun to say, at least how I think you pronounce it. The scenes with him were interesting, especially the thoughts on religion and such, unfortunately I cannot cite any at the moment, because I handed the book off to my brother who will most likely pull out all my bookmarks. So until about halfway through, or the point at which 'Stinking Lizaveta's' story was first told, I was just kind of treading water. After her story, I got and could follow probably every other event in the story. Not that I understood everything I could follow, for example, the interlude revolving around the 'murdered' dog--where did that come from!? So, I will have to reread it, but not any time soon. I started Demian by Hermann Hesse and after that I have a million other books--including but not limited to Middlemarch and War and Peace. That is to say, I'll probably have long since killed myself before I get around to rereading The Brothers K.

Pride and Prejudice was awesome and I loved it, which I'm sure you've gathered. Of course, I love Mr. Darcy now... Well, I liked him before (I saw the movie two or three years ago) but the book adds about a million. Especially at the end when Elizabeth asks him about his going about loving her--"I cannot fix on the hour, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun." <3 class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Mind me hopping in the TARDIS and getting you? And David Tennant? Sounds good! But yeah, I'm totally a fangirl for him now. We need to get the Twilight tweeners to read this, so they can recognize a character worth fawning over... and read an uncrappy book. Actually, forget it, they can keep being in love with Edward. More Darcy for me. But yeah, now I have no choice but to watch the movie again and take it seriously--take it seriously? Well, I actually tried rewatching the movie in... February? March? And I had a difficult time, being that Colin Firth (Mr. Darcy) is secretly my english teacher. I mean, they look similar. Only that. They're definitely not the same person. Except for the part where they are.

And now, since I'm still on France time, I believe I'll go play some Pokemon. Wow, two posts in, and it's already obvious I'm a huge dork.