Calling Out Ishmael

Our discussion on Ishmael by Daniel Quinn ranged across a myriad of topics. Personally, I was skeptical before reading it, especially when Nancy told me that the premise of an ape teaching a man. I anticipated a drudging through this like a wearied soldier through a 3 foot marsh. Yet when I finished reading, it had been less than 24 hours from when I began.

I’m very interested in worldviews, epistemologies, and how they develop, so the content intrigued me. I knew the book would provide good discussion material, but I wasn’t sure how everyone else would receive the novel.

We always look to compare the current book w/ past ones we’ve read. The discussions about captivity and man’s relationship w/ animals remind me of Life of Pi. And the theme of teaching, degrees of learning, and the sacrifice needed for education, call to mind A Lesson Before Dying. Yet Ben brought a classical comparison from a work we have not read: Plato’s dialogues.

Ishmael’s format of teacher lecturing student appealed to me, Nichole, Nancy, and Ben. But Bob felt that Quinn relied so heavily on Ishmael’s (the ape) teachings, that he neglected the elements that make for a good story. Bob’s point was that Quinn’s ideas would have been better complimented with a more intellectual active narrator. He liked Quinn’s discussion but would’ve felt the narrative would’ve been richer if Ishmael had been challenged more in his thinking. Of course, we know Quinn has a sequel, and good writers often clarify or strengthen the obtuse or weak parts of their arguments.

Speaking of arguments, the main question the book addresses concerns whether or not man is equal to or superior to other earthly beings. Are we as much part of the earth as juniper trees and warthogs or are we the crown of creation made by God to subdue the earth? Quinn makes the question more political than religious, and so any religious or mythological arguments are used as foundations for his central point, which is that we should think seriously about overpopulation and wasting of natural resources.

I don’t think we disagreed with the theoretical aspects of Quinn’s points, but we were left wanting more in terms of the ways in which he said we should enact his ideas. Controlling population sounds fine until you’re the one being controlled. Again, I’d like to see how he adjuncts these arguments in the sequel My Ishmael.

Since I love speaking for the group, I’ll do so here: we’d recommend this as a compelling read and as a good book to discuss. In fact, we decided it would work well as a text in an environmental science course or maybe even an upper division English class. But I don’t think any of us are going to check out My Ishmael. That said, I wasn’t too interested in Ishmael before I flipped through its pages and ran my eyes across its opening lines. 

What Side of Paradise are You on?

Yet another late post, this time on F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. Fitzgerald is of course best known for his examination of the American dream in The Great Gatsby, but this novel, his first, is the one that actually thrust him onto the scene of American literature. One of the things that first comes to my mind is the fact that Fitzgerald belongs to that group of American writers considered, thanks to Gertrude Stein, the "lost generation." After reading This Side of Paradise, that description seems particularly fitting as Amory acts as a representative figure of this "lost" concept given the sense of disconnect and alienation between Amory and essentially the rest of the world. In many ways Amory may be seen as representative of many of the authors of the lost generation who were well read, well educated, and yet somehow adrift in the world they lived in. Amory's life of privilege, one many readers may look at with envy, in fact seems to do little to ground him. Instead, as he flits from place to place and often woman to woman, the most overwhelming feeling of his experience is that of emptiness. While Amory often comes across as the sort of character one either wants to throttle or simply abandon his story, in fact, minus the world travels and Ivy League education, could be that of countless other youth. The novel may best be read as the struggle of a person trying to find his way, something everyone must do at some point in life. Behind his facade of false and to me often annoying bravado is the overwhelming desire to fit in, revealing a lack of self-esteem that the exterior seeks to conceal. Hhmm, imagine art imitating life here...

One of the chief topics of discussion for this book was whether or not we like Amory. In some ways this may seem oh so unscholarly, but I think back to what I try to ingrain into my students, the fact that we should have an emotional response to literature. Otherwise, what's the point? However, rather than inciting us to action by exposing some injustice in the world around us, Amory perhaps forces us to look inward rather than outward. In response to this, a couple of the questions we examined were: Not only do we like him or not but do we praise him or agree with him? As some of my earlier comments show, I often grew weary of Amory, but there are at times redeeming qualities about him, such as when he takes the blame for a friend in the hotel room scene as well as his recurring thoughts on the death of his college cohorts in the war. At the end of the novel, readers are left with two possible options for Amory's life: he will either become a Darcy or a Beatrice. One road leads to redemption and the other to destruction, or at least the equivalent of such in the emotional/psychological sense if not the physical one.

One last thing we discussed was Fitzgerald's writing style. The text mimics Amory's own world view, as illustrated by certain sections, in which life is either a poem or a play. These ideas are supported by his attempts at writing poetry as well as the references to other poets as well as the portion written as play's script would appear on paper.

A Long Time Ago in a Starbucks Not Far Away

Curious about the title? Well Books and Bucks friends, this is the ridiculously late posting for James Baldwin's Go Tell it on the Mountain. By the way, that title always makes me think of the Christmas song with those lines. You know it goes like this: "Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born." These lines somehow seem quite fitting given the fact that bulk of the novel centers around faith or sometimes a lack of faith of the characters. Arguably the central character John is most directly impacted by this struggle of religion in his life. He is expected to have a forceful religious conversion experience, the kind that knocks a person off his/her feet and causes him/her to dance, shout, and possibly even speak in tongues, all signs of the Holy Spirit at work in that person. However, as young teen, John does not yet possess the faith that his elders believe he should have. In fact, at times I felt that John was being pressured to profess to this faith in much the same way a child may be pressured to perform in sports or academics. This type of pressure can be so overwhelming that at times it seems it would be easier to "fake it" in order to eliminate the pressure and dispel the questioning nature of those around one. However, John does not submit to this easy way out. Instead, the novel follows him through this process as well as providing the background story of his mother, his step-father, and his aunt (his step-father's sister). Each of these characters has had his/her own struggles both in the faith and outside of it, bringing to mind the question of what does it really mean to have faith at work in one's life.

A prime example of this question can be found in John's step-father who the reader discovers resents John because he is not his own son, though John is unaware of this lack of blood relationship. In his early life, he lived what could be considered if not a immoral life certainly not a religious one. However, his religious conversion far from tempering him and making him a more compassionate man seems to (or at least this is the way he makes it seem) provide him with the basis by which he casts out judgment on others. If they do not measure up to his almost impossibly high standards, then they are inferior and will be treated as such. This is particularly interesting and yet extremely pathetic as it seems his version of God and faith does not include forgiveness for transgressions or the frailty of man before God. The exception to this case can be found in the form of Roy, his biological son. Young Roy is in many ways his father's son as he too is wild, rebellious, and almost certainly destined for a bad end. However, rather than send down his wrath on Roy, he shows at times an infuriating sense of love, bordering on worship, of the boy, while casting John, the "good son," to the side. The irony is not lost here as this relationship brings to mind two Biblical father/son relationships: the stories of Jacob and Esau as well as the prodigal son, though at the end of the novel, Roy has not seen the error of his ways as the prodigal son does.

To return to the principal character John, he is caught in the conflict that seems to accompany a religious conversion experience, that battle between God and the material world. While he is expected to choose God, one might wonder at this choice given the hypocritical nature of some the religious figures. It makes me think of many people's argument against organized religion because they see it as filled with hypocrites who go to church on Sunday but live another lifestyle during the week. However, at the end of the book, John does experience the filling of the Holy Spirit that marks his fulfillment of the expectations of those around him. While it seems like this experience would bring a sense of acceptance, at least temporarily, from his step-father, this is not the case. Instead, it is almost as if his step-father does not truly believe John's acceptance of the Spirit is real. This lack of support along with the fact that life for John seems contrary to such a sense of fervor brings to to mind the question as to how long this passion can be sustained. Will John be able to feed and nurture his young faith or will it wither and die? Is it possible to sustain such fervor in the world? This is something I have to admit I wonder both inside and outside the discussion of the text as the acceptance of faith into one's life is found both in other literature we have read as well as the world we live in. John's struggle and seeming desire to feel what others around him feel brings to mind both Rick Bragg's All Over but the Shoutin' and Annie Dillard's An American Childhood as this concept is addressed in each. Bragg recalls how he attended a small, cinder block church as a boy, and in this account he talks about how week after week he sat in the pew waiting to be touched by the hand that he believed was on all those around him. He desperately wanted to believe, but he says that that hand never touched him, igniting that passion of belief. Dillard too recounts the experience of attending church as a child and the shock with which she saw the boys around her in the act of prayer. To her it seemed that the possibilty of her peers actually possessing an active faith was beyond her comprehension. Baldwin leaves us as readers with this question unanswered, and perhaps this ambiguity is fitting by allowing the reader to answer this question for himself/herself by examining one's own beliefs system.

Did you live An American Childhood?

Okay, first off, I realize I've been a bit of a slacker with regard to actually posting the notes I've taken at our meetings. So, here goes with our March read Annie Dillard's An American Childhood. I had heard of Annie Dillard, but ashamedly I really knew nothing about her. That made this read which chronicles her childhood in Pittsburgh intriguing; plus, I love a good memoir. Thinking back over the book, one of the things that struck me the most with the book is that so many other books that seek to recount the author's childhood are filled with horrific accounts of abuse, poverty, deprivation, loss, etc. etc. Very rarely does this sort of book really focus on the life of for all practical purposes a functional, stable, loving family. Since Dillard came from a fairly affluent family, I don't know if I'd go so far as to say Dillard had the typical American childhood, whatever that is, but it certainly captured many elements of growing up that I think most children experience.

In fact, this ability to relate to the text was something we discussed pretty heavily, and everyone could find some experience that she documented that we had in our own growing up years. One of the things pretty much everyone had in common with the text was that feeling of discovery and all consuming interest that Dillard found in reading, rocks, her microscope, and drawing. As a child, we are creators of wonder. Things grab our attention and we want to learn about them purely for the joy of discovery and knowing. Drawing on my litany of educational terminology, we are actively engaged in the learning process. However, we also discussed the fact that as we move toward adulthood much of this wonder is lost. Dillard herself begins to address this movement in the portion of her novel that deals with her teen years. Between school, friends, and the awakening to the mysteries of the opposite sex, somehow that wonder and feverish desire to know fade into the background. In fact, as self-educated as Dillard was, she often notes that as a female growing up in the fifties there were arenas that she was not privilege to. In one discussion of her male contemporaries, she explores the inequality of the sexes, though not in those exact terms. She describe the boys as being part of a club who "knew things" and whose futures had been planned for them from the moment of their birth. These boys were the future lawyers and bank presidents and company executives; while Dillard's opportunities as a female were much more constricted.

This idea of male versus female roles lead me to another element of discussion with regard to the book. On numerous occasions she describes her mother as being different from the other women of the time, more progressive in a sense. Yet, for all her progressive sensibilities, she was still very much the stereotypical fifties American housewife whose time was primarily dedicated to taking care of her family. In the opening section of the book, Dillard actually hints at but never openly addresses the stifling nature of such a life. She talks about the atmosphere of the neighborhood after the men have left for work that seems to capture this almost stagnant quality of the days. Of course, time also seems to pass much more slowly when one is a child, so this may account for a portion of the mood this section gives off. Still, it brings up another point in our discussion, that idea of being awake and truly living in the moment that can be traced back to the Transcendentalist movement. In fact, perhaps it is this strong connection to the Transcendentalists that leads to the poetic language and nature of the book.

While we reached the consensus that perhaps this was not the most discussion provoking book we have read, it certainly has its merits, and if nothing else it made us reflect a bit back on our own childhoods and how those experiences have helped to shape us into the adults we are today.

Off With Their Heads

Now that the title has your attention, on to the latest installment of the Bucks and Books blog over Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. As children, several of us had seen the Disney adaptation of Carroll's fantastical novels, but at the age of six, one's scope of criticism usually falls under "I love it" or "I hate it." Personally, I remember enjoying the movie, but I did not find that same sense of enjoyment when reading the text. I kept thinking to myself, "What is the point of all this?" and after our meeting on Saturday, I feel safe in saying that at times in our reading we all felt a bit like Alice as she struggled to make sense of the Wonderland world. In fact, most of us came to the table with the same sense of having missed out on something critical in the text, leading once again to the question of Carroll's authorial intent.

Perhaps as educated adults, many of whom make a living out of reading and analyzing texts in one way or another, we are handicapped by our expectations that our reading contains subliminal messages or critical commentaries. Maybe the rambling narration and often nonsensical plot can best be appreciated by children, Carroll's target audience, who revel in stories and the more ridiculous the better. The introduction and annotations in the copy I read, explored Carroll's life and his friendships with children, particularly Alice Liddell, the Alice of Alice in Wonderland. Supposedly, Alice in Wonderland was the expansion of a story Carroll made up for the amusement of Alice and her two sisters while they were on a rowing trip one summer day. If this is the case, then perhaps the stories are simply glorified children's tales, and we as adults are discounting their entertainment value by looking for something more imbedded in the text.

Interestingly, if one believes these stories were solely for the entertainment of children, then years later they do in fact inadvertently provide insight into the time period in which they were written. The Victorian period brought about the concept of a true and marked childhood. Prior to this children were viewed as miniature adults. Secondly, these stories provide a departure of the norm of children's literature as instructional tool. Rather than building a story around a moral lesson or virtue, the story serves little purpose aside from enjoyment and even escape, interestingly one of the chief reasons for popular literature today. In many ways our difficulty with the text may also allow it to be cast as a satire due to way in which the disconnect between the worlds of children and adults becomes painfully obvious.

Needless to say, there is much more I could have written from our discussion, but in an attempt to create a cohesive thread, some has been omitted. Also, this seems a fitting time to mention the fact that while we did not go into a Freudian reading of Carroll's friendships with and adoration for young girls, there is plenty out there to read on the topic if one so desires. Secondly, this book really forced us to look at the way in which the introduction and the point of view expressed by that author can color a reading of the book and the reader's attitudes toward the author, yet another excuse not to read those pesky introductions.

Holiday on Trial or What We Thought of David Sedaris' Christmas Short Stories

"Ladies, you know what this is. Use it. I have scraped enough blood out from the crotches of elf knickers to last me the rest of my life. And don't tell me, 'I don't wear underpants, I'm a dancer. You're not a dancer. If you were a real dancer you wouldn't be here. You're an elf and you're going to wear panties like an elf."                             --David Sedaris, "The Santa Land Diaries"

In a letter to Richard Woodhouse, John Keats talks about the poetical Character being something that "is everything and nothing" and how it "enjoys light and shade." His point was that a true poet becomes invisible behind his (or her) writing, that the voice the reader receives is the voice of the given text. Though not poetry, David Sedaris' Holidays on Ice reflects several voices both likable and despicable, ironically humorous and slapstick humorous. And it's these voices and what they had to say that we discussed on Saturday Dec. 20th.

Since Holidays on Ice is a collection of short stories, we began our conversation by naming our favorite one (I know. I know. Very sophisticated). From there, we delved into the themes and significance of each story. Here's an abbreviated avatar of our discussion:

"Dinah, the Christmas Whore."

Here, we talked about the lesson a Young David Sedaris learned about Christmas, how it's not all about him. The beginning of the story centers around a teenage Sedaris focused on asserting his individuality while exposing the corporateness of Christmas. What Young Sedaris saw was an up-close imbuing of the Christmas spirit when his sister and later his mother feed and care for a prostitute with domestic problems. 

We discussed how the story, though not factually true, was probably based loosely on some incident that Sedaris was able to sensationalize and chronicle. We used this idea to spearhead a conversation about how writers create fiction. From there, we transitioned our discussion to how stories are constructed.

"The Santa Land Diaries."

This collection of diary entries about Sedaris' experience as a Christmas Elf for Macy's one holiday season sparked perhaps the funniest part of our get together, for it constituted us reading aloud our favorite parts from his entries. 

The amazing part of this story is the amount of topics Sedaris was able to touch on in such a short period of time (the selfishness of parents poorly disguised as love for their children, the issue of Santa Claus' race, and the juxtaposition of holiday cheer with biting anger--from the same person, and what the real Santa Claus would do if he were a mall Santa). As a group, this was our favorite entry, but we knew we had others to discuss.

"Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!"

The appeal of this story was the way in which it evolves like a CSI case. I don't want to give too much away, but our discussion turned into us analyzing evidence and coming to a conclusion about the story's conclusion. We also discussed the "WASPY tone" of the piece, and a few members of our group pointed out that being a WASP (I'm not one) can help you decode what the speaker is saying. Perhaps more than any other reading, this one had a didactic tone that is often characteristic of Christmas stories.

I don't want to make this blog too long, so I'll leave it up to y'all to add as you see fit. But "Us & Them" provided the platform for April's story of how she and her brother spent Christmas giving away their presents after they disobeyed their mom who told them not to snoop around the house hunting for them. "6 to 8 Black Men" was a story that April and Bob had a copy of, but not the rest of us. This was another text w/ a WASPy tone. "Based on a True Story" was probably Sedaris' most overtly satirical piece, which seems to be the overarching purpose of this collection. 

Okay, I've obviously missed some things here, so feel free to grab your bullhorn and speak loudly about what you thought of our get together. 

Works Mentioned:

"A Modest Proposal:

Me Talk Pretty One Day

When We're Engulfed in Flames

Anchor Man

A Christmas Carol

Four Long Roads, Two Good Friends, & One Great Book Club Discussion

“I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened…”   --Jack Kerouac, On the Road

This past get together featured Jack Kerouac’s Beat Generation classic, On the Road. Some books just pull discussion out of you like rope out of your hands in a lopsided tug-of-war match, and this book is one of them. I began our talk by mentioning how On the Road wasn’t what I expected. I thought I was going to get a hipper, updated, more accessible version of Walden. I thought the book would consist of 1/3 narration and 2/3 poetic, philosophical ruminations about post-war America. Since it wasn’t, we discussed what exactly the book was, not so much what it was about but how would we characterize it.

We wanted to separate expectations from reality. Keruouac’s intentions vs. our assumptions. Bob brought up the idea that the book is not about the literal journeys across the US but about the figurative inward one. It’s easy to get hung up on the adventurous aspects of this story, but the travels are only vehicles that Kerouac uses to get to what he’s really after: a discussion about the realization of confronting your limitations (self-imposed and otherwise) and trying to accede them. We added that the journey we have, whatever it is, must have an element of true danger. If the hazards are contrived, then the travels lack authenticity, which undercuts their effectiveness. The moments you find yourself in must be real, not manufactured, which is why Bob and his woman stopped using a safe word. But I digress…

…If I may oversimplify for a moment, the point is this: On the Road could’ve been about one journey from Nashville to Memphis if that’s all it took for him to come to the realization about who he is, who he was, and who he needed to be.

The journey motif in literature is huge, and we could’ve spent all day discussing it, but there’s more to the book than his physical and metaphysical travels. We also talked about how Sal Paradise (the Kerouac character) and Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) were opposites who balanced one another. The two needed each other even as they worked in opposition to each other. For a group who spent 2 months reading Sherlock Holmes, we couldn’t help but point out how the name Moriarty has literary significance as the nemesis of Doyle’s hero. Kerouac drew upon that nomenclature to emphasize how, despite their friendship, the Paradise and Moriary are not to be identified synonymously.

Yet we modern readers have trouble separating them simply because we must identify them together as 2 figure heads of the Beat Generation. Along with the characters of the movement, we had to discuss the characteristics of it as well. So we also talked upon the language Kerouac employs. As mentioned earlier, I loved his poetic bursts of philosophical insight and was expecting more of it. But Mandy pointed out that had the whole novel been like that, we would not have the jazzy rhythms that mark the book’s style.

 The vapid moments could be characterized by the steady thumping of a bass guitar, while the philosophic commentary would parallel the improvisation of trumpet blasts. Mandy, whose husband is a musician, would’ve been more attuned to the musicality of the novel. Several of us mentioned that we were more familiar with jazz so that we could’ve appreciated that aspect of the story.

There’s a couple of interesting points that we hit upon such as the nature of belief, the non-linearness of the story, and the satire towards society that Kerouac incorporates. Perhaps some of you could hit on those things in the comments section. But I want to end by going back to the idea of balance. Just as Paradise and Moriarty balanced one another, I like the concept of balance in our personal lives. Kerouac could not have gone on the trips nor written the book had his mom not supported him both morally and financially. I like that we talked about how no one succeeds in a vacuum. Anyone who does anything has people willing to help them in some fashion. I’m reminded of a New Yorker article by Malcolm Gladwell, “Why do we associate Genius with Precocity.” It’s still in the essay section if you want to visit to NewYorker.com and check it out (There’s your plug. Can I have my money now?). But it’s about how we think of genius in terms of prodigies and that we often overlook late bloomers who develop slowly over a long period of time, often with someone supporting them while they write or paint or build their business.

I think we’d all recommend the book, but with a caveat: the more you know about post-war America, the better. Also, don’t expect a non-stop adventure. Some parts seemed (and I’m speaking just for myself here) a little insipid. I would read this with a friend or at the very least, with the intent of discussing it.

Some works mentioned during the discussion: Pimpin’ Pimpin’ by Katt Williams, Lolita by Nabakov, Dharma Bums and Big Sur both by Kerouac, “Howl” by Allen Ginsburg, Walden by Thoreau, The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer