Dream Catcher by Margaret A Salinger

Not to be confused with Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, though, strangely enough, I received both books at the same exact time (also a copy of Gone With the Wind and a giant book of quotes, but shush).
This is the memoir of JD Salinger's daughter.  Her memoir, though I picked it because I saw the name and was like JD SALINGER'S DAUGHTER WROTE A BOOK ABOUT HIM.  I know what a memoir is, but come on, let's be real, probably almost all of the people who bought this book bought it for that reason.  Prior to the halfway point I actually got rather agitated because she was talking so much about herself.  Sorry.  Once I remembered that the words "memoir" were on the cover though, I got over it.  Also, JD Salinger wasn't a great father, so there's a point where you kind of want to push him out of the way.  He didn't beat his kids or anything like that, but he refused to give them real medicine even when they were dangerously ill (homeopathic meds are always a good idea), let them stay with their mother who was unstable--he suspected her of burning their house down (as did Margaret herself), kind of peaced out on showing up for parental events like graduations and such (though he almost went to Woodstock--it's too bad he changed his mind.  Can you imagine??), kind of was a messianic guy (or at least his daughter likens him to a cult leader, drawing women in and kind of breaking them down.  I kept on thinking of Ken Kesey and the Mountain Girl, or whatever her name was, from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.  In any case, it was an interesting comparison.) and so on.  It wasn't--I don't like calling it neglect, but it was bad parenting.

Anyways.  It's a memoir.  Do I need to say more?  Most of my complaints/comments came early on when I was still like "TALK ABOUT YOUR DAD MORE"--or comments.  He was an interesting guy (JD Salinger died in 2010).  The bad parenting or less than pretty picture of him didn't really make me question my life or personal heroes or anything like that--he's not one of them.  That sounds mean, but what I'm trying to say is, I'm not idolizing him over Catcher in the Rye.  As you can see, the second reading of the book didn't even end up that well.  When you're fifteen or sixteen, the book is your little teen angst Bible, and when you're eighteen, after a while you just want to shut Holden up.  (Actually, this makes me want to reread Franny and Zooey really badly, because I liked that twice as much as I ever did Catcher.)  It did weird me about a little because there's something about JD Salinger's face that reminds me of Jack Kerouac.  (They have the same haircut, actually.)  So at times the image in my head of this person acting this way was Kerouac, and it was like "No, no, no--that's not right.  Not at all."

The first thing that worried me is that her introduction starts off with tons of quotes, poems, song lyrics, etc.  Immediately I got worried, because that's like rubbing it in someone's face that you're ridiculously educated (sure enough, she is--I don't even know what an M.Phil is).  Such annoying (and often seemingly unneeded) interludes became scarcer and scarcer as she moved away from the subject of her father, however.
The second thing that got me were the footnotes.  She berates a biographer of her father's very rudely--apparently her father had the nickname Sonny since childhood.  This biographer mistakenly said that he got the nickname in ninth grade, given to him by his friends.  "Ian Hamilton... claimed that it was at the McBurney school... that 'he was nicknamed "Sonny" by his chums, perhaps with a hint of sarcasm.'  Please, chums?  On the West Side of Manhattan, perhaps?  Several of my dad's army buddies in the foxholes and bloody battlefields of World War II were referred to, by the same scholar, as his colleagues.  'Let me confer with my colleagues, Rocco,' Jerry said.  'Oh, Rocco, would you be so kind as to pass the ammo?'  'Right-o, Sonny old chum,' Rocco expostulated laconically... I can't stand it" (Salinger 17).  So the guy screwed up on something!  Sorry he didn't have the advantage of being born in your family.  Hell, there's a whole year where no-one (to this day, apparently) knows where Salinger (JD) went, after Margaret's mother refused to drop out of school to marry him.  Also, sorry he uses admittedly odd phrasing like chums and colleagues.  Maybe it's a little old-fashioned, but it's not like the guy just threw HP Lovecraft call-words in there.  And what's with her little sarcastic reverie at the end there?  No need to get bitchy.  Just state that he was incorrect and move on.  Jeez.  (I don't know why this annoys me so much, but it makes me very mad.)
My next note was on another footnote that annoyed me--she explains a Hindu concept as being like excommunication, or "the WASP favorite, disowning or disinheriting, but more to the bone" (Salinger 23).  For some reason this made me mad (because I am a WASP, maybe?  That's honestly the only explanation I can make for my reaction...)--because only WASPs disinherit or disown?  Yeah okay.  She could just say "or disowning or disinheriting".  Again, I don't know why this agitated me so.  (Perhaps it would help to mention that I am PMSing and all my irrational moods and acts are ten times more so?)  In any case, the concept she's trying to describe--sitting shiva

My next bit is quick--Margaret recalls that at the time her father was writing Catcher, he told a friend that he was writing an autobiographical work at the time.  Also, this book is--before I forget--very heavy in drawing connections between Salinger and his characters, predominantly in the first half of the book.  That was very interesting, and made me wish I had bothered to read more of Salinger's works before reading this.  On the plus side, I'm all inspired to read Nine Stories now.  (If I can find a nice copy--I've never seen a library copy of any Salinger book that didn't look like it had been gnawed on.  One time Wallingford had a nice, almost-new copy of Catcher, which would have been perfect if some idiot teenage girl hadn't wrote "I [heart] Gerard Way" [with a real heart, not an HTML heart] on the cover.  Ugh.  Help.)  It's interesting because Holden is definitely autobiographical--I've never really had a doubt about that.  Franny and Zooey, however, seemed like a logical procession of thought (at least at the time), more than an illustration of the inner personal mechanisms of a mind.

Oh, I also thought that it was interesting that Salinger left his wife (Margaret's mother--apparently Salinger had a very extensive list of lady friends over the years--where/how did he meet them all!?) after he discovered she was pregnant.  Despite the fact that he loved kids, he got disturbed and... I don't want to use the phrase "grossed out", but I don't have all those fancy degrees, so I am.  This is also the popular explanation for why Oscar Wilde only had two children, and why Elvis only had one.  Also, is it too early to mention that Salinger also reminds me of a demented Atticus Finch?  Like, he seems like he would be a really good, awesome dad from certain descriptions by Margaret, and then it's like haha, just kidding.  Like if Atticus Finch was anything less than the perfection that he is.  I love Atticus Finch.

Oh yeah, apparently JD wrote a short story entitled "For Esme--with Love and Squalor".  Immediately I thought of A Series of Unfortunate Events--Remember Count Olaf's girlfriend... Esme Squalor?  What's uuuup.  And don't even be like, "but Angela, it's just simple word association!", because there's is no way it's not.  Lemony Snicket (wait, is it cool to call him Dan Handler now?  Is that cat out of the bag?  I've also seen his face before.  Do people still wonder about that?) was a smart guy and definitely did do that on purpose.  It is 100% fact now.*  Also, this led to a half-hour researching frenzy on the series, which I used to be obsessed with, but, oddly enough, did not survive rereading either.  I looked at the Wikipedia page for the first book, though, and felt the same feeling when I first picked it off the shelf and looked at the picture on the inside and everything.  Man.
(Also, my cousin met Dan Handler.  What.)

Margaret also mentions that in one of her father's stories, a boy named Seymour throws a rock at a beautiful girl, permanently destroying her beauty in the form of a scar on her forehead.  (Make your own Harry Potter joke here.)  She says that she didn't quite understand it, though all the characters in the story did.  The closest she came to understanding it is when her son was two and they would hug and cuddle and all of a sudden he would hit her.  I think I kind of understand it (in a different way).  I think it's like Fight Club, when the narrator says that he wants to destroy everything beautiful that he could never have or hope to have.  He couldn't have it, so he didn't want to be reminded of it, and he wanted to punish the people who did have it.  Of course, I haven't actually read the JD Salinger story, so take that with a grain of salt....

Oh, and Margaret related an event that again, reminded me of To Kill a Mockingbird.  They lived in the country--obviously--and at one point one of the known poor kids gets his tooth knocked out at school.  Margaret's mother took the child to the dentist, where the nurse there asked her "'Why'ja bother?  All them Courdelaines lose their teeth anyways'" (Salinger 139).  She then tells them to just go home.  It's a superficial connection, but it was kind of like how Scout knew everything about all the families.  These kids were the white trash, this family was poor but they paid back every penny given to them no matter how long it took, et cetera.

Oh, and very young (I want to say seven or eight?) Margaret broke her arm.  I thought I was going to die laughing--wait for it--: "Some idiot moved my arm to place it on the X-ray plate.  Screaming agony.  They did it an eternal hell number of times.  I had a compound fracture: one bone was splintered, the other was sticking out and covered with dirt.  A mask came over my face.  Some nurse, with a cheery stewardess voice, actually asked me to count!  Jesus.  Now?" (Salinger 169).  Obviously it was just that last part that I thought funny--the rest of it is kind of gross.  But that reaction cracked me up.
Oh, and when the parent Salingers decided to get divorced, Margaret explains it to her brother, including this: "'They both love you.  They just hate each other'" (Salinger 205).  Again, hilarious, though maybe I'm a bad person for thinking that. (But I wish someone had explained it to me like that!)

JD Salinger's advice to his daughter on marriage: "'Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do'" (Salinger 226).

I think the major change in my opinion on Margaret came when she was talking about her crush on Paul McCartney.  No, Paul isn't my favourite Beatle, but she imagined kissing, or going to kiss him, while he sang "All My Loving", which just so happens to be my favourite Beatles song.  Touche.

Oh, and Margaret went to a boarding school.  I can't say I liked this part--the only time I've ever seen a boarding school portrayed in a way that wasn't terrible was in a Mary-Kate and Ashley book--but it was familiar.  The first memoir I ever read was Roald Dahl's, then James Joyce's, and... Okay, there's basically no school ever in Running With Scissors.  But at least Margaret didn't get caned, or beaten with a pandybat!  (Or have to fag for the older children.  Ugh.)  There was some intense psychological abuse from the headmistress in Margaret's case, like Captain Hardcastle, but... Well, without the caning.  But just as scary and awful.  Her letters were also censored, which I was surprised when she found out and was surprised by that fact.  (Well, Boy wasn't even published then, to be fair.)  I was half-expecting to see examples of such letters in the following pages in the same manner as Dahl's--with the same explanation for their being there, her mother kept them and bound them all in green ribbon... But no such luck.  And yes, I did read that book about a million times as a kid, okay??

Oh, JD Salinger was also apparently invested in orgone boxes.  (Look them up for yourself.  I can't really give a good, concise explanation of what they are, but they're basically supposed to fill you with good energy or whatever.  It's super homeopathic.  [Sort of] Big in the fifties.)  The only reason why I mention it is because... So was William S Burroughs!  Yay!  Kerouac mentions it in the original version of On the Road (I can't vouch for the shorter version, though...).

Oh, and she never mentions the murder of John Lennon.  Skips right to 1982.  Granted, it's not necessarily something you would want to mention, "My dad's book caused John Lennon's murder and somebody to take potshots at Ronald Reagan!", but it's one hell of an elephant in the room.  (And it's strange too, considering the things she does choose to write about.  It couldn't be any worse than some of the other things she chronicles...) I wonder if JD Salinger even knew?  He had to have known, though, even if he was a recluse.  I mean, come on.  John Lennon.  He knew who he was, he made a vague promise to introduce John to Margaret by way of his publisher or something that never came to fruition... I never thought about it before this, but I'd really like to read up on Salinger's reaction to John Lennon's death.

Margaret eventually has a fight with her father, and her father's policy is pretty much, make me mad and we're done.  They had a few fights prior to this where he promised her that he would still love her, but he'd be done with communicating with her.  That's a harsh policy especially when applied to your daughter.  Margaret said that that was the last "real" conversation she had with her father, so I imagine they talk, but small talk, stranger talk.  That's too bad--I wonder if they reconciled at all before his death... Anyways, she talks about how students who had read the book would try to find him--one such girl interviewed said that she'd ask him "'if he'll be our catcher, our catcher in the rye'" (Salinger 427).  Margaret couples this with the fact that she felt like one of those children running alone in the rye, and that her father simply wouldn't be a catcher.  He couldn't, and his raising and treatment of her (and her brother) kind of proved that.  He'd like to save, but he simply didn't have that ability for this or that reason.  The irony makes me a little queasy.

Okay, one last comment on the book itself.  Margaret occasionally copies her father's tendency to emphasize random parts of words.  I always find myself saying such words over and over in Salinger's books, trying to figure out the point of a certain emphasis is, or even if such an emphasis could flow naturally.  I found myself doing the same thing in this.  And no, they rarely seemed to flow naturally or have a point.  If the whole word was emphasized, or even two syllables together instead of the odd one... Uuuuuugh.

I don't really have a comment on whether this book was good or bad.  I don't feel comfortable judging a memoir in such terms.  It was interesting, and at times very eerie or difficult to read--but still interesting.  It's too bad that she is nearly overshadowed by the fact that her father was JD Salinger, but she pulls through, and the information given on him is definitely cool, because prior to this I knew him as that author who was a recluse and may or may not have drunk his own pee (Margaret confirms that this is in fact true).  A bigger JD Salinger fan might have been more into it than I was--and it's an interesting sort-of companion to his works.  I liked the book, at least, and I don't regret reading it or anything like that; however, this isn't the sort of book I'd just pick up again and read for fun.  I'm probably going to end up giving it to Fabrizzles or Stubs if either of them are interested, or send it off to the Jerome Harrison book fair.  Again--no judgment on the book itself, Margaret is a very talented author and the book is interesting--but I know I'm not going to read it again, at least not in the next ten years or what have you.  (And if she wrote some sort of addendum after her father's death I would definitely read it!  And... Now that I'm thinking about it, did JD Salinger know about this book?  Did he read it?  Probably not, if he was "done with" his daughter like he said, but still.  It would be interesting, albeit impossible, to know his reaction to it if so, or the idea of the book in general.)


MLA citation information: Salinger, Margaret A.  Dream Catcher.  Washington Square Press: New York, 2000.


*No, it is not.

The Book of Mormon: 1 Nephi-Mosiah

(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 

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.)

I love Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee)

I'm not going to lie, I accidentally typed 'To Kill a Mockingboid' the first time.  'To Kill a Mockingboid by Hahpah Lee'... No?  Nobody else thinks it's funny?  Aw...
You may be wondering why this post has the first title of 'I love Atticus Finch'--it's probably because I do.  This is a fantastic book, but Atticus is the best human ever.  Seriously, sometimes it's hard for me to concentrate on what I'm reading because I'm just so filled with affection for him.  I would love to hang out with him.
So the story is about growing up.  I'm not sure if it would be exactly classified as a 'coming-of-age' story, but I hardly ever catch onto what makes a book that--so if somebody says it is, I'd accept it as such.  Our narrator is the young Scout (or Jean) Finch, Atticus's daughter.  It starts the summer before first grade and it ends when she's in middle school.  It's... well, it's about life in a Southern town known as Maycomb.  According to the back of the book, Harper Lee "always considered her book to be a simple love story".  Well!

"Lawyers, I suppose, were children once"--Charles Lamb

"People moved slowly then.  They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything.  A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer.  There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb county.  But it was a time of vague optimism for some people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself" (6).

The thing that sets off the novel is when they first meet Dill--he is from henceforth to stay with his Aunt Rachel every summer.  At first Scout and her brother Jem are hesitant to accept him until Dill says that he's seen Dracula.  I just bring that up because... I don't know, it's awesome!?  I've never made a friend like this but I should really try it out.

And there are mysteries and idiosyncrasies about the town, of course: for one, there is the mystery of Boo Radley.  he is a reclusive boogeyman who the children of the town never have seen, but it's clear he hasn't died, for his parents haven't ever had to carry him out of the house or anything.  So Boo Radley is more a myth than man, especially in the children's minds: "Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom.  People said he existed, but Jem and I had never seen him.  People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows.  When people's azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them.  Any stealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work.  Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid nocturnal events... although the culprit was Crazy Addie... people still looked at the Radley place, unwilling to disregard their initial suspicions... From the Radley chickenyard tall pecan trees shook their fruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by the children: Radley pecans would kill you.  A baseball hit into the Radley yard was a lost ball and no questions asked" (11).  The real reason I actually quote this is not to give you a better picture of the mythos surrounding Boo, but because this whole passage recalls Finsterwald from Maniac Magee.  His front steps are the only "un-sat on" front steps in the whole town, they describe his backyard as being the graveyard for not only balls but Frisbees and toy airplanes and more.  And then Maniac talks to him!  Was Finsterwald inspired by Boo Radley?  Maybe.  I'd be willing to say that that book is the kid's equivalent of To Kill A Mockingbird.

So in the twenties it became a big fad to go out and sit on flagpoles.  The 'kids' were all doing it, no lie, that was a fad.  People would compete to see how long they could stay up there, it was deemed as immoral by some people--I'm not even kidding you.  This really happened.  Anyways, Jem hears about this on the radio and decides to sit up in the treehouse all Saturday.  He has Scout bringing him food and water and blankets and books until Atticus tells her that if she paid no attention to her brother, he'd just come down.  It ends with: "Atticus was right" (42).  THERE IS A LESSON HERE.  Also, I love Atticus Finch.  Wait, wait--that's not the lesson!  Pay attention to Atticus, not me!

So one of the trees in the schoolyard that are touched by the Radleys has a little hole in it.  Scout ventures around in it one day and finds gum--she eats it.  Later they find two pennies (Indian heads), a broken pocketwatch, soap dolls...
"'Indian heads--well, they come from the Indians.  They're real strong magic, they make you have good luck.  Not like fried chicken when you're not lookin' for it, but things like long life 'n' good health, 'n' passin' six-week tests... these are real valuable to somebody.  I'm gonna put 'em in my trunk'" (47).  I love Jem, he's hilarious.  This cracks me up so much, especially the bit about the fried chicken.



"'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'" (60).

Dill eventually dares Jem to go in the Radleys' yard at night.  Dill does so, but Boo's father thinks he's a thief and takes potshots at him.  Jem escapes unharmed, but his pants get stuck in the fence and he abandons them.  There's a commotion and the townsfolk gather outside the house--Jem is stuck there.  Dill says he won Jem's pants during a game of strip poker, and Atticus asks if he was playing with cards, and Jem says just with matches.  (How would you play poker with matches?)  But Scout is all impressed, and her comment is: "Matches were dangerous, but cards were fatal" (73).  I don't know, something about it struck me--no pun intended.  (Obviously it's spiritual health over bodily health.)

"[Jem] went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me--he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one arm in back of him, putting one foot behind the other.  He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn't see how they got anything done, but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn't?  Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts" (79).

So one day it snows, obviously a rarity in a Southern town.  Scout has never seen snow before, nor does she know what it is, and she screams that the world is ending--and she does the cutest thing ever, she begs Atticus to do something.  I mean, it makes sense, Atticus is her father after all, but still.  Adorable.  If anybody can put off Judgment Day, it'd be Atticus Finch.
The kids end up playing in the snow and they make a gender ambiguous snowman.  Miss Maudie gets agitated by it and calls it a Morphodite (hermaphrodite).  Later, when talking to Miss Maudie, she refers to the snowman as "the Morphodite" and Miss Maudie cracks up.  Later, when Scout gets mad at somebody she calls them a Morphodite.  (I want to say that it's Dill...?)  I don't know.  I just think it's cute.  Adorable.  Good times with Scout.  Looooove.

Oh, and Atticus is a lawyer.  The biggest event in the book is the trial of Tom Robinson, a black man who has been accused of rape and assault.  Of course, being in the South in thirties, Atticus is ridiculed for being Tom's defense lawyer.  "'Atticus, are we going to win [the case]?'  'No, honey.'  'Then why--'  'Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win,' Atticus said" (101).  Ring ring--it's for you, Atticus.  I LOVE YOU.
And--the title is explained.  To kill a mockingbird is what Atticus deems a sin, because they don't mess up gardens or homes or anything, all they do is sing.  Because they don't do anybody harm and only please people with their music it is a sin to kill them.  What does this refer to?  Well, considering Tom was unjustly accused and other things that would be huge spoilers... I think it could even apply to Scout's mind... To kill a mockingbird--to destroy childhood's sweet innocence--is a sin.  Perhaps?

"'People in their right minds never take pride in their talents,' said Miss Maudie" (130).

Okay, back to loving Atticus.  Atticus is taking a lot of abuse for his defending of Tom--and it's not even Atticus, really.  Most people don't even have the guts to abuse him to his face about it anyways--they're mocking Scout and Jem.  Jem finally retaliates against Mrs Dubose--he destroys her prized camellia flowers.  Of course, Atticus sends him to speak to Mrs Dubose, and when Scout asks Atticus why he's staying with the case even at the hands of all this abuse, Atticus answers: "'Scout, I couldn't go to church and worship God if I didn't try to help that man'" (139).  Scout says he must be wrong, if so many people in the town disagree with him, but he says that they're entitled to their own opinions, and "'before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself.  The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience'" (140).  Um.  Atticus Finch.  I love you.  FYI.
Jem's punishment for messing with Mrs Dubose's garden is that he has to read to her six days a week--I believe six days--for the next few months.  After Mrs Dubose dies, it is revealed that she was a morphine addict and she was trying to die clean, which she succeeded in doing.  Her gift from the beyond to Jem is a camellia.  Atticus explains his reasoning for making Jem's punishment what it was: "'I wanted you to see something about her--I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.  You rarely win, but sometimes you do.  Mrs Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her" (149).  Um.  Atticus.  Stop me if this is getting old, but...

Preparing for the case, Atticus is obviously busy, so one day he has the cook Calpurnia take the kids to church.  Obviously Calpurnia can't go to the white church, so Calpurnia takes Jem and Scout to her church.  Some of the members of the church are angry because the kids--white people--have their own church.  This scene exists, I imagine, to show that racial tension existed on both sides of the fence, that black folk weren't just sambos, you know, eager to please the white man and all.  I think it's a pretty important scene for that purpose (for the kids too, to see that black folk are just regular folk, though they never seem to carry and prejudices or doubts to that fact).

...And from there I skip one hell of a chunk of pages, about fifty.  Atticus is threatened by a group of men from town because he is defending Tom.  The appearance of the Finch children make them ease up and not rough him up--and Jem gets agitated, he says his father would have died at their hand had they not shown up. Atticus's response: "'He might have hurt me a little... but son, you'll understand folks a little better when you're older.  A mob's always made up of people, no matter what.  Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man.  Every mob in every little Southern town is made up of people you know--doesn't say much for them, does it? ...So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their sense, did it? ...That proves something--that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human.  Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children... you children last night made Walter Cunningham stand in my shoes for a minute.  That was enough'" (210).  I'M NOT GOING TO SAY IT I PROMISE.

The persecutor is Bob Ewell, a snake in the grass if ever there was one.  He lives in a filthy little shack in the back of the woods near where the black people have their own sort of commune, procreating constantly and making more just as diseased and dirty children--"All the little man on the witness stand had that made him any better than his nearest neighbors was, that if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white" (229).

"'I try to give 'em a reason [to dislike me], you see.  It helps folks if they can latch onto a reason.  When I come to town, which is seldom, if I weave a little and drink out of this sack, folks can say Dolphus Raymond's in the clutches of whiskey--and that's why he won't change his ways.  He can't help himself, that's why he lives the way he does... I ain't honest but it's mighty helpful to folks'" (269).  Dolphus Raymond is a white man married to a black woman, they have kids too.  He drinks coca-cola out of a sack, the way a wino would drink wine from a bottle in a bag.

I was thinking about not doing this, but--I think I'm going to include most of Atticus's closing statement.  It's so amazing.  I can't help it.  It's revealed that Tom didn't do a thing to Mayella, she came onto him, and her father beat her up and claimed Tom did it.  So... Yeah.  I'll start a little bit down:
"'What was the evidence of her offense?  Tom Robinson, a human being... Tom Robinson was her daily reminder of what she did.  What did she do?  She tempted a Negro.  She was white, and she tempted a Negro.  She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man... A strong young Negro man.  No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards... And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigated temerity to "feel sorry" for a white woman has had to put his word against two white people's... The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption--the evil assumption--that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associates with minds of their caliber.  Which, gentlemen, is in itself a lie as black as Tom Robinson's skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you.  You know the truth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes are immoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women--black or white.  But this is a truth that applies to the human race and no particular race of men.  There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire'" (272-273).
Please look me in the eye and say honestly you were not heartened by Atticus speech, and enthralled--I'd be amazed.  You'd be the first.  This, this above all else, is why I love Atticus Finch.  He is a first-class human being.  I love Atticus Finch.


I don't think there's much more to write after this.  I could gladly end this here and post it.  I could gladly never write again and let that be my final statement forever.  But the book isn't over--and good God, it's heartbreaking, the end of this section--there's no question of what the jury says, regardless of Atticus's speech.  You must know.
"It was like watching Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoulder and pull the trigger, but watching all the time knowing that the gun was empty" (282).
And when they get home--"'Atticus--' said Jem bleakly.  He turned in the doorway.  'What, son?'  'How could they do it, how could they?'  'I don't know, but they did it.  They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it--seems that only children weep.  Good night'" (285).  Harper Lee is a damned amazing author.  She heartened me so well naught ten pages before, and has so effectively broken my heart hardly ten pages later.  Poor, poor Atticus, poor Jem, poor Tom, poor world--

Jem and Dill and Scout go to Miss Maudie's the next day, after Atticus discovers a kitchen full of food brought as thanks by Tom's friends and family.
"'It's like bein' a caterpillar in a cocoon, that's what it is,' [Jem] said.  'Like somethin' asleep wrapped up in a warm place.  I always thought Maycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that's what they seemed like.'  'We're the safest folks in the world,' said Miss Maudie.  'We're so rarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we've got men like Atticus Finch to go for us.'  Jem grinned ruefully.  'Wish the rest of the county thought that.'  'You'd be surprised how many of us do.'  'Who?' Jem's voice rose.  'Who in this town did one thing to help Tom Robinson, just who?'  'His colored friends for one thing, and people like us.  People like Judge Taylor.  People like Mr. Heck Tate.  Stop eating and start thinking, Jem.  Did it ever strike you that Judge Taylor naming Atticus to defend that boy was no accident?  That Judge Taylor might have had his reasons for naming him?'  This was a thought.  Court-appointed defenses were usually given to Maxwell Green, Maycomb's latest addition to the bar, who needed the experience.  Maxwell Green should have had Tom Robinson's case" (288-289).

"'Can't any Christian judges an' lawyers make up for heathen juries,' Jem muttered" (289).

"'As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it--whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash'" (295).  Atticus.

"'Naw, Jem, I think there's just one kind of folks.  Folks.' ...'That's what I thought, too,' he said at last, 'when I was your age.  If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other?  If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other?  Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something.  I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time... it's because he wants to stay inside'" (304).

Ooh!  And their Aunt Alexandra's missionary circle makes me so mad!  They're dirty hypocrites, they bash Atticus for what he's done in his own home--they positively enrage me.  I don't want to quote them here.  They're a sad sort.
Now one of these ladies, Miss Grit, is Scout's teacher.  A kid brings in a current event about what Hitler is doing in Germany to the Jewish people--she teaches the kids about prejudice and how it's wrong.  Hah!  A laugh!  Not at the idea that prejudice is wrong--but that she would say it's wrong.  She who is so clearly prejudiced against black folks--and the way she writes off the Holocaust gets my goat too.  She just says that Jews have been persecuted since the beginning of history without really answering the question of why they'd be so--so she makes it sound like it's okay, because it's historical!  And then she just abruptly changes the subject for the sake of math.  Ugh!  She gets me riled, she does.

And later, Halloween time, the kids go to a party at the school, then walk back home at night... Just Jem and Scout together.  Now, Bob Ewell has threatened Atticus's life several times, but is such a worm that he attacks the children--but Boo Radley saves them, and kills Bob.  After they meet him and thank him and he goes back home, Scout says that she never saw him again.
Scout imagining: "It was still summertime, and the children came closer.  A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishingpole behind him.  A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips.  Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention.  It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's.  The boy helped his sister to his feet, and they made their way home.  Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woes and triumphs on their faces.  They stopped at an old oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive.  Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house.  Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog.  Summer, and he watched the children's heart break.  Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him.  Atticus was right.  One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.  Just standing on the Radley porch was enough" (374).

MLA citation information: Lee, Harper.  To Kill a Mockingbird.  Grand Central Publishing: New York, 2010.


So.  This book.  This book is so amazing.  It's the only book Harper Lee ever wrote--but my God, what a book.  It's no surprise she never wrote another book, this book is so much.  It has the heart of twenty books--it's just so good.  There couldn't have been anything left.  I'm simultaneously gladdened and saddened that (most) schools have it as a mandatory part of the curriculum--glad because everyone should read this book at least once.  I can't imagine how somebody could ever hate another person after reading this book... But, saddened because I imagine most people are like me and hate it when they're forced into reading something, regardless of the book's quality (I'm willing to reconsider The Great Gatsby, but definitely not The Scarlet Letter).  Even the quality of your teacher can affect your perception of a book... What I mean is, some people will take this, or Sparknote it, and treat it like a raw egg swallowed.  And that's a damned shame.  I'm not going to say it's the most important piece of literature ever written, but at least of the last century.  Maybe even the last two centuries.  Read it.

Answer to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies's cryptic song lyrics: Re: Your Brains by Jonathan Coulton
This post's cryptic song lyrics: We like to watch you laughing, you pick the insects off plants, no time to think of consequences

I'll keep you warm and won't ask you where you've been

Wow. 11:30 already? Yeah, I was planning on taking a ten minute nap at eight thirty. Uhh. Oops?

But, I finished Catch-22 yesterday, in any case. Sooo. Of course, I loved the book. I'm gonna be honest here--I'm totally in love with this book. There really is nothing wrong with it, so far as I'm concerned, except for the fact that everything is catch-22 and at the end, when the Chaplain is basically tortured (verbally) falsely. It's even more frustrating when he's get verbally tossed about than the court scene in To Kill a Mockingbird because of the fact that Atticus got his say out--he still lost, but he lost with his head held high. In this case though, there was no way around the madness and surreality. No matter what, you were going in circles, and I was going a little bit insane by that point. Another part in the book I go insane a little at is around page 160, where Yossarian asks the prostitute to marry him, and she can't because he is crazy, and he is crazy because he wants to marry her. Catch-22 exists where it shouldn't. It is everything--it rides everything (not gravity!). And, as a side note, before I start including passages and quotes I favor: A teacher of mine, my psych teacher actually, had been in the air force too when he was younger. I happened to have a quote from the book as my signature and e-mailed him and the next day we were talking about it and he mentioned that the book really is what being in the air force is like. I sort of nodded it off at the time, but thinking about it while rereading it--holy God. Can you imagine? I would go mad. Really, I'd probably end up killing myself or someone around me. It's absolutely maddening! Anyways...

I love Yossarian. He's got a contradiction for everything. He's no oaf, either, so he's not just being a big, dumb... contradictor? Well. I guess you'll see what I mean when we get to my favorite passage. And I hate Orr. I detest his circular nature and he does nothing but enrage me.

"He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt..." A description of Yossarian. I love that line, and I just want to say, I do think people live forever. Well, I have a theory that I'm not sure I'd like to subscribe to, in any case, because it basically discredits the afterlife and I'm only human, and so are my readers. I think. But by saying people live forever, they live their wholes lives--they live until they die. That really is forever for a human. History and time stretch out, but they're too large for us to comprehend... 'Forever' is defined by who's saying it. So in that case, Yossarian really wouldn't be able to fail.

"'Well, maybe it is true,' Clevinger Conceded unwillingly... 'Maybe a long life has to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?' 'I do,' Dunbar told him. 'Why?' Clevinger asked. 'What else is there?'" Exactly.

"'If you're going to be shot, whose side do you expect me to be on?' ex-PFC Wintergreen retorted." As much as we'd love to have our noble heroes and martyrs, I do believe they are the minority. I think more people would love to cling to life than stand up for an idea, and a lot of the people who do stand up for an idea are maybe just people stuck in the romanticized views of dying for your cause. I know that sounds cruel while we're in the midst of a war, but I think I just can't see things from an upstanding view because I'd be like Wintergreen, most likely. Saving my own skin would be number one. I'm not sure if I'd turn on my friends, but when your own side is pointing the guns at you? Who knows.

"He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it." : )

"Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three." Any Shakespeare fans? No?

"He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed. He turned the other cheek on every condition and always did unto others exactly as he would have others do unto him. When he gave to charity, his left hand never knew what his right hand was doing. He never once took the name of the Lord his God in vain, committed adultery, or coveted his neighbor's ass. In fact, he loved his neighbor and never even bore false witness against him. Major Major's elders disliked him because he was such a flagrant nonconformist." At first that last part didn't seem quite right, but really, it makes sense. Who really lives by the Bible in this time? What worries me is that it would be unrecognized in a time where religion was more important and more a part of everyday life. But the fact that Major Major should be so out of place and thought a nonconformist for taking the Bible's teachings to heart? There's something to be said for society there.

Well, to quote the bit I like on page 170 would be too obnoxious and time-consuming, but basically a group of fliers are talking about how they have things that really belong to other people--"someone else's three hundred thousand dollars", a "dose of the clap", etc. Basically saying that I didn't deserve X, this is what happened to me--and another fighter saying yes, that certainly sounds like my [what I should have, instead of health, etc] case of X or X items. It doesn't sound too great the way I'm describing it, but it's one of my favorite sections. It's page 170 if you pick up the Simon & Schuster Paperbacks edition (with the blue cover).

"It was miraculous. Each day he faced was another dangerous mission against mortality. And he had been surviving them for twenty-eight years."

Now, to back this next bit up: Yossarian tells a woman he's sleeping with that for every good thing she can name, he can probably name two unpleasant things. This is my absolute favorite bit in the whole book. "'Be thankful you're healthy.' 'Be bitter you're not going to stay that way.' 'Be glad you're even alive.' 'Be furious you're going to die.' 'Things could be much worse,' she cried. 'They could be one hell of a lot better,' he answered heatedly."

"'Why in the world did He ever create pain?' 'Pain?' Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. 'Pain is a useful symptom. Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.' 'And who created the dangers?'" Yossarian goes on to bash God, but I think the point is gotten well enough here. The general consensus seems to be that God went quite insane (Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Chabon) and that's what made him think Earth and its contents would be a good idea. Kurt Vonnegut's take is... well, in Breakfast of Champions he describes snakes and then says "Sometimes I really wonder about the Creator of the Universe sometimes". And in Timequake while God is performing his seven-day feat, Satan starts thinking the man's gone mad--how far is this guy planning to go? As for Chabon, a character in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (I think it was Joe) says something like "I think God went insane just before He, you know. Created the universe." Anyways. I'm backing Kurt Vonnegut with this one. Sure, maybe the first humans failed some divine test, but He would have known, no? So why bother, when everything will play out exactly as you know it will? Poor Dr Manhattan. He can't even kill himself.
And aside from that, what could He have had in mind? A gladiatorial match between animals? I guess He wouldn't even make much of a shipping clerk, either. I roll mad deep with Vonnegut on this one.

Anyways, now that I've alienated the world... I guess I'll make this a two-parter. I'd like to get to bed a little early so 8:30, nine o'clock doesn't seem like too much of a stretch. There's randomly a chain of Twilight Zone episodes on from eight to eleven or so tomorrow, which is AWESOME.

If we get away, you know we might just stay away

First: Sorry if I weirded anybody out with that last post. I get like that something, and it's not even really a weird mood, or being upset or anything, it's just being too smart for my own good! (yeah, right.)

So, yesterday I finished To Kill a Mockingbird--It only gave more reason to lament on the fact that I didn't have Big Mikey for American Lit. That is to say, I quite enjoyed it! It was one of the few books that are written as 'Coming of Age' novels that I actually went "Oh! It is!" for. Actually, only one of two, and the other is Demian. (Which maybe I mentioned, but I can't remember now.) But really? Lord of the Flies is 'Coming of Age'? No! It's a good book, but really I'd say it's more showing how society degrades and perverts when no one of authority can control it. Killing a fat kid (Piggy) and a kid symbolizing Jesus (Simon) hardly seems like coming of age to me... Nor does brutally murdering pigs and then going after fellow children like they're animals, or burning an island to cinders. Just saying, is all.
But! Yes! To Kill a Mockingbird! First, Atticus is my hero. Really, he's a good man. At first I thought he was kind of harsh and distant (kind, but he had a rough edge, you know?), but at the trial I fell in love with him. That scene was so damn frustrating (which I guess it's supposed to be) I was getting visibly upset. Thank God no one stopped by while I was reading through those chapters... Honestly, I was feeling embarrassed to be white. I was sitting there going "White people are such a-holes. Goddamn white people!" I mean, the Ewells were sick, to frame poor Tom. Especially the daughter! After coming onto him and such, to make it seem like--well, I'm sure the father threatened her, or couldn't admit to himself that she'd be attracted to Tom, or maybe she really is just a sour apple. But to do that--ughh. But then Atticus came in like the hero that he is and defended Tom. I don't really know much about the South in the 30's, well, lynchings were still going on, if what I've read is to be believed... and if that's the case, and if that much racism still existed, Atticus is really a good man for all those factors. And even today, as much as it saddens me to say it, he really is a capital guy. How many people today have views like his? He truly 100% believed all men were created equal. Everyone should be like that--that capital. (Wow, 1920's lingo...) But yeah. Atticus is my hero.
I think Mr Raymond's a really good guy, too, which may sound strange. But he was kind of martyring himself for the people, you know? He acts like a drunken fool so people have something real to dislike about him and to find offensive about him--instead of, or along with, the fact that he is married to a black woman. But he does it so the people... well, really won't have to change their ways... because they wouldn't be able to comprehend his marriage or his lifestyle, and he's not... not forcing them to? ("Blame it on the al-al-alcohol?") Look, I'm not very articulate, okay? But at least humor me like you get what I'm saying.
A scene I really liked is when Scout is talking about how Jem got obsessed with Egyptians, and he tells her they "invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming" and Atticus tells her "if you get rid of the adjectives you'll have the facts". I'm not really sure why I liked that scene so much--I mean, it was funny, but not uproariously so. If I wasn't so fond of it, I probably would have forgotten it by now. But it was just cute, I guess.

Aaand. The scene towards the end where Miss Gates describes democracy and asks Scout... (DISCLAIMER: I KNOW ZERO ABOUT POLITICS OR WHATEVER THIS WOULD BE CONSIDERED. ) Scout says "'Equal rights for all, special privileges for none'". Suddenly, I feel as though I'm in Animal Farm. Now, like I said, I don't know much about about the governmental scope. Okay? You're getting a basically uneducated opinion/musing here. But that... that sounds like communism? Well, maybe more like Marxism. (Just to do away with the unpleasant associations, there) But, you know. Going back to Animal Farm (ANIMALS MAKE IT EASY TO UNDERSTAND DIFFICULT THINGS) "All animals are equal". Implying exactly what Scout said, right? Ignoring when it's bastardized (what a fun verb!) towards the end of Animal Farm... So... So I don't know. Just thought it was something worth making a note of, and speculating on more when I stop being too dumb to understand it well.
Oh good god look what you've begun. ... Socialism? What the--Why are there so many different names for this!? Isn't it, well, mostly the same? Or has the same base roots? Well, what I'm getting at is Oscar Wilde was for socialism... It's been a while since I've read 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism" but one point I remember very clearly is that it would be what Jesus lectured (is that the right word for it?) about--all men being equal (and none of them being more equal than others!). So... it would be the more 'holy' choice? More appealing to religious types? I don't know, I just thought I'd throw that out there while I'm on what I think is a similar subject. When I get The Collected Oscar Wilde back from Jenna I guess I'll reread it and respond for everyone who cares so much.

Today was a perfect day for some Jonathan Safran Foer, but darn those favorite English teachers of mine who have them for the summer. Curses! So I started rereading Catch-22, which I've already fallen in love with all over again. Really, it's a great book, and if you haven't read it yet... Shame on you!

I also went to the library and decided what my summer reading book will be... Doctor Zhivago. Yes, because of Into the Wild, okay? Sheesh. And yes, for the record, I did spell that 'Wilde' at first. I also checked out The Shining by Stephen King and Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut, as well as a few Bob Dylan CDs and a Franz Ferdinand CD.