The Tumblr of J. Alfred Prufrock

A pair of ragged claws scuttling across Tumblr.

[prufrockontheweb]

I hope you're at least aware of The Sound and the Fury's literary superiority over Paper Towns. Not to bash John Green. More to herald William Faulkner.

Oh, god, I see what you’re saying now. The post title “Why Paper Towns is a YA version of The Sound and the Fury” sounds like I’m putting a value judgment on Paper Towns, like if I were to say, “Such and so forth is the Citizen Kane of books!”

Did not mean to say that, I was trying to compare the two books on the basis of their plot, theme and characters, not on their literary merits— and you're right: The Sound and the Fury does have more literary merit than Paper Towns.

[prufrockontheweb]

Why Paper Towns is a YA version of The Sound and the Fury

Spoilers for The Sound and the Fury & Paper Towns will follow.

I'm going to cut out the literary analysis and just give the salient parallels:

(Paper Towns will be abridged to PT and The Sound and The Fury will be abridged to TSATF.)

(Any further edits of this post will refer to the male Quentin of The Sound and The Fury as Quentin and the female Quentin of The Sound and the Fury as She-Quentin.)

Quentins First

Both books have a central character named Quentin.

Both Quentins have similar sounding last names: Quentin Jacobsen, for PT & Quentin Compson for TSATF

Both Quentins either plan to go, or are going to a top tier university: PT's Quentin has been accepted at Duke; TSATF's Quentin is attending Harvard.

Both Quentins are southerners.

Both Quentins -- and this is where it gets good -- have sexual feelings for absent women: In TSATF, it's Quentin's sister, Caddy, in PT, it's Margo. Moreover, the plots of both books (If TSATF can really be said to have a plot) revolve around these absent women.

Caddy & Margo

Both central female characters (Caddy & Margo) 'create' a new Quentin. In Margo's case, it's non-literal: she writes about Quentin as a child and re-imagines him as a hero; In Caddy's case, it's very literal: she names her daughter Quentin.

Caddy & Margo, while both in some way 'pursued' by their respective Quentins -- PT's Quentin literally wants to find Margo, TSATF's Quentin wants Caddy not to marry and, instead, stay with him -- and in both cases, Caddy and Margo do not want to be caught.

Ben Starling & Benjy Compson

Both books have a central character named Ben: in TSATF, Ben, "Benjy" is mentally disabled, in PT, Ben Starling is also not a rocket scientist.

Both Bens ( at least, this is true of Ben Starling early in PT) have sexual longings that they're incapable of acting on, in Benjy's case, it's because his family has had him castrated; In Ben Starling's case, it's because he's really not as smooth as he thinks he is. (Though, he does manage to get a date to prom later in the novel)

Plot Parallels & Miscellaneous Connections

Both books note the 'smell' of their central female character, in TSATF, Caddy is described as smelling 'like trees', in PT, Q describes Margo as smelling like lilacs.

Both books  have really dick-ish characters named Jason: TSATF'S Jason Compson IV, and PT's Jason Worthington.

Both books have a character, (Jason Worthington in PT, Dalton Ames in TSATF) that each Quentin resents because they, (Dalton & Jason) have had sex with the woman that each Quentin obsesses over: Caddy for TSATF's Quentin, Margo for PT's Quentin

Both books deal with young women that run away: in PT, it's Margo; In TSATF, it's Caddy's daughter, Quentin. (Note: there are two Quentinss in TSATF, one is Caddy's brother, Quentin and the other is Caddy's daughter, also Quentin. 

AN: I've kept the analysis brief here to keep it as a short tumblr post -- and not an essay -- but if any of y'all would like to see more analysis of the connections between Paper Towns and The Sound and the Fury, please let me know, because there is a lot there that I couldn't get to.

EDIT: Just, as a response to an ask I got, I want to clarify that I'm not trying to hype up Paper Towns with the title; (Though, it is a good book and I suggest you read it.) I'm just trying to compare Paper Towns & The Sound and the Fury on the basis of their characters, plot and themes, not their quality.

[prufrockontheweb]

As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once -- How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

 From The Fault in Our Stars by  John Green & The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, respectively.

[prufrockontheweb]

[prufrockontheweb]

William S. Burroughs & Kurt Cobain, my two favorite heroin addicts.

[prufrockontheweb]

DARLING HEART AMBITION ENTHUSIASM AND CONFIDENCE I DECLARE EVERYTHING GLORIOUS IN THIS WORLD IS A GAME AND WHILE I FEEL SURE OF YOUR LOVE EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

F.Scott Fitzgerald, in a telegram to Zelda Fitzgerald.

Caps is Scott's, not mine. He liked the emphasis. (Or he was, you know, writing a telegram.) I like to imagine that Scott is shouting this, say, on a street corner somewhere.

[prufrockontheweb]

I love you anyway-even if there isn't any me or any love or even any life- I love you.

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, socialite, flapper, surprisingly a better author of love letters than that other Fitzgerald.

(This quote is from a letter to said 'other' Fitzgerald.)

[prufrockontheweb]

Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.

Virginia Woolf, her suicide note to her husband Leonard.

[prufrockontheweb]

October 17, 1946 D’Arline, I adore you, sweetheart. I know how much you like to hear that — but I don't only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you. It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you'll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing. But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you. I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can't I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the "idea-woman" and general instigator of all our wild adventures. When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive. I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don't want to be in my way. I'll bet you are surprised that I don't even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can't help it, darling, nor can I — I don't understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don't want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real. My darling wife, I do adore you. I love my wife. My wife is dead. Rich. PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don't know your new address.

Richard Feynman, in a letter to his wife.

I found this letter uncommonly touching. I'm going right back to the crazy love letters next time though.

[prufrockontheweb]

Don't expect me to be sane anymore.

Henry Miller, in a letter to Anaïs Nin, possibly the baddest bitch in all of early 20th century erotica.

[prufrockontheweb]

There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful -- What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous

John Green, The Fault in Our Stars & Looking For Alaska, respectively.

Thought it was cool how these two quotes interrelated.

[prufrockontheweb]

The use of the word "Holocaust" in The Great Gatsby

Today, I'm going to be schoolin' y'all on what the fuck is up with the ending of chapter eight in The Great Gatsby and more particularly, why it ends with the line, "and the holocaust was complete."

So, off the bat, it's important to note that this is not a reference to the nazi persecution of jews. That happened after the book was published, what Fitzgerald is reffering to is a type of ritual sacrifice, particularly a type of animal sacrifice.

If you were preparing to sacrifice an animal in ancient greece or judea, then there were a few ways to do it. Mostly, you just burnt a portion of the animal then ate the rest of it because, you know, that shit was expensive. But the highest form of sacrifice, the type most likely to appease whatever god or gods you were trying to appease, was where you took a whole animal and burnt it in it's entirety, untill it was ash.

This was known as a holocaust. This is also what Fitzgerald is reffering to in The Great Gatsby, so, when you're next engaged in a discussion about the novel, impress all of your friends/english teacher by knowing more about outdated forms of animal sacrifice.

[prufrockontheweb]

Bridge Over Troubled Water

So, I'm just going to riff a bit about the refrain in Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the song, the refrain is, in it's relative whole-ness :

"Like a bridge over troubled water        I will lay me down."

The really obvious question is, why lay me down? I mean, lay myself down is more correct grammatically and, "I will lay down" fits the meter better, so why that choice of words?

Probably the best answer, is that it's a reference to the wording used in line eight of psalm four, the line reads as follows :

"I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety."

The connection make between the pslam and the song is obvious : they're both about supporting/protecting someone who's in a state of distress. 

However, the point of distinction lies in the perspective of the song and the psalm. In the psalm, the sufferring person is asking for something, (asking something, might I add, from God) whereas in Bridge Over Troubled Water the speaker is offering something to the person suffering.

[prufrockontheweb]

The best place, is not a place.

Alright, it's four in the morning and I'm on my third cup of coffee ; It's time to drop some etymological knoweldge on y'all.

So, the word "Utopia" when pronounced, can mean two different things : It can either mean eutopia, "good place" or outopia, (I'm very haphazardly transliterating from greek here) which means "no place", a non-existent place.

The word "Utopia" then, as we understand it, has a very deliberate double meaning. So, when we think of utopias, it's important that we realize that they are, were, and always will be, imaginary.

[prufrockontheweb]

I just realized how profound it is that even while Augustus is much sicker than Hazel, he looks as if he isn't sick at all. Even his fake leg is hidden under his pants.

And I think that's why he finally ended up like he did, atleast on a metaphorical level. Hazel is able to show people where she's broken, and ends up not being broken all the way because of it. Gus can't, and the world breaks him.

[happyjoyfulsouls]

HERE ARE 2 EASY STEPS TO GET GIRLS TO FALL MADLY INLOVE WITH YOU

1) Read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green 2) Act EXACTLY like Augustus Waters. Girls will be running.

"Always be yourself. Unless you can be Augustus Waters. Then always be Augustus Waters.”

[prufrockontheweb]

I don't think that's fair and I don't think that people should aspire to be Augustus Waters. Gus is, fundamentally, a very broken person and his desire to be "remembered" is one of the things that drives a wedge between him and Hazel during his last days.

It's true that Hazel's attracted to Gus, but she's not attracted to Augustus, she's even put-off when he reads her that speech at the funky bones, she likes Gus for who he is, not the hyper-erudite and romantic man that he's trying to be.

And I think that's the message here : Don't let who you're trying to be get in the way of who you are.

(As a side note though, Augustus's hot-ossity is probably his most admirable feature, and if you're saying guys should copy that, then yeah, definitely. Otherwise, it's not that hard to be Augustus, you just need a capital R Romantic approach to dating and the ability to quote writers you don't quite understand.)

[malloryryan07]

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”

John Green, The Fault in Our Stars (via malloryryan07)

Hazel is actually incorrect here, the amount of numbers between 0 and 1 and 0 and 2 are actually identical. Some infinites are larger than other ones, like the infinite set of real numbers is larger than the infinite set of natural numbers.

So, yeah, Hazel Lancaster, witty, short hair haver, cancer patient, devoted girlfriend, but not especially learned in set theory.