Contemporary Literature and Related Musings

[darthrisdon]

Oskar's search for what the key opens reminds me of Schrödinger's cat in regards to his dad. During the search his father is in a sense both alive and dead, because he is kept alive in Oskar's memory and that this is part of his legacy for Oskar; his final scavenger hunt. During the search the box is closed, but it is when Oskar opens the the box and discovers the cat, representative of his dad, is neither alive nor dead but not in the box at all is the greatest disappointment for him.

[kkesther]

In this past week I have begun to read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and to tell the truth, I am thoroughly enjoying it so far. I definitely understand how one would find this boring or untasteful due to the character of Oskar, but I for one find him fascinating.

As I said in class, I have a developmentally delayed brother, and I have found one of the most intriguing things about him, is learning how he thinks. Getting inside that brain of his and figuring out how it functions the way it does. How socially awkward he is while yearning for human contact at the same time. Why he gets attached to certain (what we would think of as irrelevant) subjects and learns all he can about them, but yet he cannot tie his shoe or ride a bike. How he has the mind of a 7 year old (or less depending on the day), and yet his vocabulary exceeds mine at times. (and he understand what the word means!). How little things in his routine, like getting the Sunday Paper every week just for the comics, become the most important thing to him. When you live with an Autistic child you really understand how fascinating it is.

A lot of what I have read of Oskar thus far shows signs of him being developmentally delayed in some fashion. He is socially awkward in the limo but yearns for the drivers attention all at the same time. His logic is intriguing on jewelry and inventing, but giving a stranger the key to his house makes perfect sense to him. His actions at times shows his age and at other times exceeds or diminishes his true age through simple things like crude jokes or advanced vocabulary. He refuses to wear any color except for white, and that is extremely important to him. 

All that being said, this book has already hit home with me and I’m only a few chapters in. I cannot wait to figure out the whole story line behind his family, and Oskar himself. :) 

[darthrisdon]

Part of the reason Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close has been such an enjoyable novel for me is because how deeply I identify with Oskar. I myself exhibited many of these traits, especially at a younger age and I understand Oskar's thought process. I too would become narrowly focused on a subject with no real pertinence or validity in everyday life. I once spent an entire year studying the creation of the universe to the Mesozoic era and another on The Beatles. I feel most of it was my precociousness. I simply did not identify with my peers and I still prefer seclusion and have trouble sustaining eye contact. I feel for Oskar, because if he really was anything like me, he never felt as a child but as an adult trapped in the conventions of society that he does not have the maturity or knowledge to understand and is simply waiting until he is old enough to be identified as such. Foer was criticized by the Huffington Post as writing Oskar as a child with his 28-year old mind, but I do not feel this is a fair criticism. Everyone experiences life through different eyes and it feels as if that was an objection simply because Oskar's world view was not synchronous to the Huffington Post's own. Empathy and understanding is what the world and characters like Oskar need, not ostracization.

Link to the Post article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/the-15-most-overrated-con_b_672974.html#s123751title=Jonathan_Safran_Foer

[rachellivingston21]

This was a very strange story, and it was kind of hard for me to get involved in one hundred percent. What I understood from this story was that Leroy was a depressed individual who had dreams and aspirations but chose not to go after them. Instead, Leroy smoked pot and lay on the couch most of...

[darthrisdon]

I think you are correct that Leroy had dreams, but I do not think the reason he did not pursue them is because he was depressed but rather because life got in the way as it often does. Driving a truck provided a living for himself and Norma Jean and like a favorite coat in summer, his dreams ended up in the back of the closet. When he was injured and finally had the time to actualize his dreams, it was like that favorite coat, they no longer fit, for himself or Norma Jean.

[darthrisdon]

Deriving Fulfillment From Gender Roles

Something that caught my attention while reading Shiloh is that Norma Jean has grown accustomed to Leroy's absences to the point she has taken on a more forthright and masculine persona, so when Leroy is injured there is no room for his masculinity because there can only be one alpha male, which why he resorts to sitting on the couch smoking pot and starts needlepoint and his singular focus on building a new house is his attempt to reassert his manhood by providing for Norma Jean, but if he ever were to get around to it, it is too late to save their marriage. She has moved on after her realization she does not need him anymore.

[darthrisdon]

The Velvet Underground - The Gift

I've always been a fan of the work of Lou Reed but I did not know much about his personal life, which is why I find it so fascinating that he was married to Laurie Anderson. As we discussed in class, performance art is typically on the edge of the avant-garde, (http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/11/scrotum-top-10-shocking-performance-art) so it would be fitting that such an avant-garde and experimental musician would be drawn in to that side of performance, helping to blend and merge the two, resulting in artists such as the Butthole Surfers that incorporate various art forms into their shows such as heavily edited/distorted and sometimes backwards videos playing behind them during performances, in addition to elements of black comedy.

[samablam-deactivated20160223]

I have fallen behind on reading “The Things They Carried.”For some reason, even though I love to read, I can’t seem to get interested in this book. Its terrible because I should be just about done reading this book, and I am no where close. The setting in this book is the Vietnam War. I am not a history buff in no way so I didn’t know very much about the war. Tim O’brien uses first person in his book. The main character Lt. Cross, in the very first chapter, carries a photo of his love Martha. She was his escape from the war, which ultimately ended his friends life. Lt. Cross blames himself for the death of Lavender for always daydreaming about Martha. Its time for me to get caught up with this darn book!!!

[darthrisdon]

The Vietnam War was similar to the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars in a lot of ways. It was a proxy war, or a war supported by another country for their own goals. North Vietnam was backed by the USSR and China while the United States supported South Vietnam to help prevent the spread of Communism, or as I like to call it, the first War on Terror. We entered under the pretenses of the human rights violations that were occurring but it really was a declaration of American Exceptionalism and to promote democracy, as in the Middle East right now. 

[darthrisdon]

Reading through the novel one of the things that has stuck out and stayed with me was the men's reaction to Lavender being shot. "Boom, down." and the other ways Kiowa describes it are haunting descriptions and resonates with the author's tone. My analysis is that Lavender's death is presented in a Modernist way; there is no fanfare, no valor, nor glory for him. Shot right after going to the bathroom. The Postmodernist angle comes from the other soldier's reaction and the symbolism that Lavender is now freed from his burden and must be given to his fellow troops, both physically and in the emotional turmoil they must now carry.

[nichole-haire]

I’ve got a lot if reading ahead to be honest. While I have read a couple of excerpts from this novel in other classes, I never have read it from front to back. Knowing they plot and the basics from those readings have kinda spoiled my interest in the book. I sort have the mindset of “well I know...

[darthrisdon]

Remember it's not always about the destination, but the journey it takes to get there. Elements of style can come from the type of story being told but most generally in how it's being presented. Take for example, "I, John, jumped out of a window today." "There was nothing left for John Smith of 123 Avenue as he plummeted from his second story window." "Sadness. Crash. BOOM. Sadness. John." Apart from the obvious differences between first and third-person, each of those sentences tell the same story via radically different means, so just because you know parts of the novel, don't let that discourage you from enjoying the journey. (Hopefully I don't use any more character suicides to encourage people to read.)

[darthrisdon]

Living in (post) postmodernism

Since postmodernism has no set definition, it is hard to quantify what exactly it is or what it constitutes. Most of the shock of postmoderism has worn off to the point to where it feels like we are simply upping the ante on not necessarily what it means to be 'edgy,' but simply what comprises a story and how we can present it. Take for example American Hustle, a film that opens, promising that "Some of this actually happened." Taking the traditional format of film narrative and adding in the additional tropes associated with films 'based on a true story,' we as an audience have certain expectations about how what we are being presented with should be handled. Facts being handled loosely or blended with fiction such as with In Cold Blood indicate to me that the reverberations of postmodernism are still being felt today in popular culture as we still try to pin down what postmoderism is to begin with. By the time we have hit the moving target of its definition, the next wave in response to it will be very much in motion. Or perhaps it already is and all literature from here on out with be scrutinized under some sort of meta-analysis of its place on the pendulum of postmodernism; point or counterpoint, much as postmodernism was to modernism, postmodernism will now always be in response to itself.

[snookems1007]

To me Post Modernism is confusing as all heck. I understand that there is not a clear cut definition. I also understand that that there really is little to no structure to the stories. The last two stories confused the heck out of me. This probably occurred because I like structure; I understand...

[darthrisdon]

I think the reason a lot of people have trouble understanding postmoderism is because they are too timid to draw their own conclusions about literature. Don't fret! There are no wrong answers so long as you can back up your thoughts or thesis with relevant information or examples from the text. The beautiful thing about all literature is that it can mean something different to everyone. The author may have their own reason for writing something but your interpretation is just as valid, so difficultly comprehending or not liking something that delineates from typical literary structures is just as valid as reading anything else into it. Perhaps the author's purpose for writing was subterfuge and that is why it is difficult to comprehend, or by seemingly saying a lot of nothing in a big garble of text they allow one simple truth to stand out. Therein lies the beauty of postmodernism, I think; having to deviate from standard structures to recognize how others are thinking outside the box, forcing you to stretch your own cognitive abilities instead of just absorbing the text on autopilot. (Not that I'm implying you or anyone else in the class is, it's sadly a critique on the lack of critical thinking in our culture.)

[darthrisdon]

Putting down my thoughts about postmodernism and the connotations that are associated with it, were...problematic, at best. I turned to my favorite web comic to see what the brilliant Randall Munroe had to say. I linked the xkcd comic of his I am referring to, but will quote it here. The mouse over text reads, "The fifth panel also applies to to postmoderists." The fifth panel states, "Communicating badly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness." I agree whole-heartedly with the fifth panel but I am apprehensive to apply it to postmodernism as a whole. Every method of art or communication will vary in its effectiveness, due to the content of the message and the method of the delivery. The Notebook as a video game would fail because there is no player agency, as would Mortal Kombat fail as a film (and did) because the point of something like Mortal Kombat's structure is direct player intervention. The transmission of emotion, resultant in the creation of art is the direct involvement of the participant and their experience. Postmoderism is the easiest genre of literature to fall short of art because it can be the hardest form for the participant to deconstruct and gain meaning from. Art cannot be considered art without meaning, so yes, when an author acts smug and says their work means nothing, it truly does, but if a work has no set meaning and is open to numerous interpretations than it becomes one of the highest forms of art because every observer can not only take their own interpretation of the work, but one that is unique to them. Limiting the considerations of what art and literature can be is something that is the antithesis of their foundations in human emotion; self-expression. So long as it is saying something, I consider it worthwhile, so post-modernism fits completely, because it is a style of literature that has a whole lot to say, even if it isn't always quite sure how it's saying it.