Lahiri and Culture

One of the strengths of Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" is that the American/Indian cultures are presented as multi-faceted, or as things that "cut both ways". In "Mrs. Sen's", for example, the cultures are presented quite ambivalently. It is the facet of traditional, patriarchal marriage that forces Mrs. Sen to a new country where she seems quite alone and somewhat melancholy (her mumblings and the way she zealously reads and rereads the letters from back home indicates this). However, this traditional marriage structure also provides the warm and loving home for Elliot to be exposed to. Mrs. Sen's home is presented very positively, especially compared to Elliot's home life. The freedom of American marriages, the lack of historical grit holding outdated cultural practices in place, leaves Elliot's mother and father free to divorce with relative ease (it seems inconceivable for such a situation to arise in the Sen household). However, this same freedom doesn't allow Elliot's mother to provide the warm loving household that the Sens can. She is tired and overworked from being a single parent, smoking cigarettes and drinking wine to unwind, unable to provide that same warmth and love for Elliot.

In "The Treatment of Bibi Haldar" and "A Real Durwan", our stories protagonists (sort of hermetic old ladies) are situated in an urban context far removed from the suburban context of stories like "Mrs. Sen's" and "When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine". Whereas the urban Indian context is shown as a tighter, closer-knit community that has the benefits of constant financial and emotional support, it is also shown as prattling and unstable. It's hard to imagine anyone really caring much about Bibi in the United States, but then again it's hard to imagine Mr. Pirzada's kids being threatened by war violence in the United States either.

By treating cultures in this way, Lahiri is able to do a lot of work as once. One culture isn't a foil for the other--they are both foils for each other.

Of course, Interpreter of Maladies is still a fiction collection, and shouldn't be treated as an anthropological article or fully realized cultural study (that you might find in an academic journal or such). But by injecting some of these elements into her story, she makes the fiction much more real and relevant.

welcome to the machine

Welcome my son,
Welcome, to the Machine.
Where have you been?
That's all right we know where you've been.
You've been in the pipeline, filling in time
Provided with toys and scrounging for boys.

Welcome my Son
Welcome, to the Machine
What did you dream?
That's all right we told you what to dream.


George Saunders' short story Jon is a refreshing attack on Corporate commercialism. It is primarily effective due to the structure of it's prose/narrative: It's told from the perspective of a cog (Jon), who speaks in a somewhat disjunct dialect filled with references to specific commercials. Instead of using a super omniscient voice that is able to comment on various aspects of "The Man" from a distant point of safety, the story is told by someone with a limited perspective and whose personal well being is very much tied to the system he is describing.

Though it is a refreshing read, I'm not sure how effective the story was in attacking corporate commercialism. That might be okay, because I don't think that's the only thing the story is trying to do. But it is worth noting how the story may fall short.

The reason that I don't think Jon works very well as a satire (=using exaggeration to bring certain vices to light) is because the story is almost too exaggerated. The story begins to transcend into science fiction, and this leaves less of an impact on me, because I don't feel as threatened by a world that's so different, even if that exaggeration is only being used to say something very real about our current world. I don't have chips in my head, I can go out and examine the flowers whenever I want to, I speak pretty good English. I don't really relate to Jon. Maybe that's because the Man is doing his job--if he's doing his job, I shouldn't relate to Jon, should I?--, but that can't be assumed. Assuming I don't relate to Jon because I'm in a situation similar to Jon (having the wool pulled over my eyes, so to speak) because it fits a fun narrative is bordering on paranoia.

I think Jon does do some very good things though. I think it is very funny... the prose style really lends itself to humor, and there were times that I was legitimately laughing at things Jon would say, comparisons to commercials he would make, etc. Jon also functions as a good, if somewhat predictable love story. It was interesting to see the classic "free-bird" dynamic (girl/guy "x" values the relationship but values freedom more, and ultimately has to leave even though it pains them, to chase a future somewhere else) played out in this unique setting. I also really liked the whole moral/philosophical delima... is it moral to have the baby grow up "outside", where he will be more free but also at a material risk? Or vice versa?

Finally, as I mentioned at the beginning, the story does the best thing a story can do: It's interesting. It was a breeze to read, it sucked you along. It might not leave the biggest emotional impact on me, but it was a fun read that still brought up plenty of thought-provoking questions. And that's something.

Love is living, living love

Love is real, real is love

Is Aurora a story of love, or addiction? Or both? Or neither? Or, or, or...

I take her hand and kiss it / 
Come on, I say
You aint said nothing about the last time
I can't remember no last time. I just remember you. 

Taken out of context, I'd say that's pretty romantic. It's deeply embedded in our cultural sense of romance that the concept involves sacrifice, forgiveness, traces of clemency. What was "the last time", though? The last time was bruised chests and scratched arms. Is this loving clemency, throwing memories of mutual (and highly personal) abuse overboard to service a very real and tangible love, or is this the cutter breaking into another pack of razors, a fresh page in a very old and trodden cyclical path of abuse?

Love is feeling, feeling love

Like many of the other stories in this collection, Aurora deals heavily with the feelings of nostalgia. Has there been a more powerful picture in Drown than the picture of Aurora painting lipstick figures on the walls of abandoned  houses with Yunior? It encapsulates "getting by"--the necessity to express oneself no matter the situation context, the randomness of youth, the intimacy of four walls and two individuals. It's something they shared together. It's deeply embedded in our cultural sense of romance that the concept involves the sharing of intimacy and expression with each other. Isn't that what this is?

Is the feeling of love that Yunior claims to have simply his mistaking "love" with fond recollection? Is there much of a difference?

I think the answer largely lays in how much Aurora has evolved. Is the post-juvie Aurora different from the lipstick artist? I got the sense that she has progressively fallen deeper into the pit of addiction and transience, and that Yunior is holding on to the past. Fond recollection of shared experience may be an important part of Love, but it is dependent on current-stability, which Yunior's/Aurora's relationship seems to lack.

Love is wanting to be loved

She comes around on Fridays. When they get stock.

She checks his pockets, breaks out the pipe when he sleeps.

He thinks about the other girls: The college girl with her own car, who came over right over after her games, in her uniform, mad at some other school for a bad layup or an elbow in the chin.

But then she wants him to promise her a love.

The other girls complain about the other team, Aurora complains about Yunior. Is Yunior addicted to the ridicule? To finger slamming? The property damage? It might not be what we consider love, but it IS attention. What's so different about Aurora's addiction to heroin versus Yunior addiction to a girl who breaks his shit, screams at him, and steals his money and drugs? Is there a difference?

Yunior insists that he loves her.

But how much can we trust someone who says "They're yelling because they're in love"?

How much can we trust someone who has to punch his nose to clear his head? Who wakes up bleeding in the tub after a night of Heroin and Beer in front of the TV with her, and then goes out immediately to find her again?

How much can we trust a relationship that convenes twice-a-month?

Let's think back to Sonny's Blues. Sonny says that the Heroin is just SOME PEOPLE'S way to kill the pain. The brother is against it because it's not HIS way. Am I blowing off this "love" because it's not my concept of love?

Or is making everything subjective total BS, and is this cycle of abuse a damaging addiction, and in no way "love"?

What the hell is love anyways?

Touch of Grey

A common thread that ties together various short stories in Junot Diaz's Drown is the socioeconomic position of the various narrators/main characters (excluding the scenes in the Dominican Republic which seem to be decidedly worse in regards to character wealth/income... "the only way we could have been poorer was to have lived in the campo or to have been Haitian immigrants" and "it was only by skimping on our dinners that Mami could afford to purchase the Verminox" [Aguantando]). This general economic position is somewhere between absolute poverty and middle class... somewhere firmly settled into the lower class of socioeconomic society. Characters can afford new cars (Pathfinders, Volkswagens), drugs (weed/cigarettes), college (in some cases), "a new Zenith in the living room", televisions (that the kids watched Bruce Wayne on), clothes (the narrator in Edison, New Jersey says that he used to just walk into a store with his girlfriend and tell her to buy whatever she wants), drinks/food, etc. But they still have to use a dingy bulb-lit utility rooms as intimate spaces, don't or can't transport their families to the United States for years (I'm unsure whether the father couldn't or just didn't move his family earlier), and can't realistically hope to save up for even a pool table. As the narrator of Edison says, "two and a half years if I give up buying underwear and eat only pasta but even this figure's bogus. Money's never stuck to me, ever." This economic position makes sense when we consider the various jobs in the book: chocolate factory work, drug selling, 

This financial ambiguity might be said to give rise to, or at least associate itself with, other factors/aspects of the collection. For example, financial ambiguity (along with the repeated cycle of teaching abuse) might have a heavy impact on the instability of romantic relationships in the novel. To me, it seems like a web... you can't ignore the disconnectedness of it all.

If I had to describe Drown in one phrase, though, I would say the book is about "getting by". It doesn't seem like any of the main characters have grand dreams or any realistic possibility of advancing themselves. The height of many of the main character's dreaming is over lost girls. Despite this lack of mobility (and the lack of possibility for mobility), the characters in Drown find enjoyment in their work. They take pride in the very jobs that they're practically consigned too. The narrator of cut describes his weed dealing as such: "We're reliable and easygoing and that keeps us good with the older people... We work all hours of the day... I'm good for solo work...", and the narrator of Edison, New Jersey compares his construction of pool tables to Inca Roads, Medieval Cathedrals, and Roman Bathhouses. This pride in work is in effect a way to cope and "get by". This pride has the same place in many of the main characters' lives as Christian Orthodoxy had in the lives of Russian Peasants or spirituals had in the lives of slaves. At the end of the day, at the end of the day, every silver lining has a Touch of Grey:

I know the rent is in arrears
The dog has not been fed in years
It's even worse than it appears
But it's all right

The cow is giving kerosene
Kid can't read at seventeen
The words he knows are all obscene
But it's all right

I will get by
I will get by
I will get by
I will survive

The Man Child -- Thoughts

If I were to read "The Man Child" as a short story that was completely separate from the Going to Meet the Man collection, I would probably look at it as a sort of pseudo-thriller, pseudo-biblical story. There are many elements of the story that remind me of John Steinbeck's East of Eden, such as the emphases placed on family lines (in The Man Child we get that whole scene where Eric and his dad survey the land, in East of Eden there are various generations of brothers that struggle in a Cain/Abel dynamic), essential (raw) evil (in East of Eden, Adam Trasks' wife Cathy is the embodiment of satanic evil. She is cold and calculated, she waits for her time to strike, and when she does she is ruthless and unforgiving. In The Man Child, Jamie may be said to exhibit many of these same characteristics), and prophesy (in East of Eden, Samuel, the representation of the biblical prophet "Samuel", can sense the evil in Cathy. Similarly, in The Man Child, Eric's mom has this same sense of foreboding towards Jamie--this was, to me, the most striking similarity between the two.).

My initial plan for this late-as-hell blog post was to compare the two and make an argument that they might both be based on similar biblical stories/themes (essentially, if a is based on b and c resembles a, perhaps c is based on b?). However, it quickly became apparent that this probably is not the case. First of all, there are some major discrepancies between the story structures:

(1) As Mr. Mitchell pointed out in class, Jamie and Eric's father have been friends forever. They fought in wars and stuff together. It seems much more likely that something changed between Jamie/Eric than that Jamie was an embodiment of evil the whole time and waited decades to perform his act of evil. A sort of literary Occam's razor, which is far from deductive, but is the best that we can do in cases without a ton of textual evidence.

(2) While both stories (East of Eden and The Man Child) emphasize the continence of family lines, they do so in somewhat different ways. The Man Child does this in a very Lion-King-esque, father-to-son, inheritance sort of way. East of Eden is based on the story of Cain/Abel, and thus most of the dramatic elements / conflict arise from intra-family conflict, whereas The Man Child is a bit different. Perhaps Jamie could be seen as a symbolic "brother" of Eric who is in a Cain/Abel-esque competition for Eric's father's love/inheritance. Just like Cain killed Abel out of jealousy, perhaps Jamie killed Abel out of jealousy. However, if Baldwin really wanted to make biblical allusions, I don't think he would make it such a puzzle. Suggesting anything more than that the Eric/Jamie relationship has super loose similarities to Cain/Abel would be grasping at straws. Occam's razor again.

Here was the nail-in-the-coffin for me in regards to changing the way I read "The Man Child". We've seen that Going to Meet the Man has been thematically consistent. In various forms, the collection has dealt with disenfranchisement of rights and identity: disenfranchisement within the family, within society, to the hands of drugs and to the hands of perceptions-about-drugs, to the hands of tradition, etc (the more I list the more vague and arguable they'll probably become). If we were to say that The Man Child was primarily about biblical jealousy and the battle of good versus evil (which is what East of Eden and the story of Cain & Abel is "about"), then it wouldn't be very consistent with the rest of the novel, would it? Sure, it's not impossible that Baldwin wasn't influenced by biblical stories when writing The Man Child. The story itself certainly has the gut-level prophesy-esque doom woven through it. However, this will probably forever be nothing more than conjecture.

Okay, so how is "The Man Child" about disenfranchisement? (P.S. I know I'm not really using this word correctly as it's normal usage is for suffrage rights, but I think it fits my purposes here if we can suspend strict definitions... to be disenfranchised from X in this context is to have a stronger power, whether that's a father-figure or a social class, take X away from you). Well, we have two main disenfranchisements:

(1) Jamie being disenfranchised materially (land), which brings about a sort of a mini class-war, or class resentment by Jamie towards Eric's father. Eric's father has a wife, a son, land, money, while Jamie is a lone drunk. Before the last couple pages I think most readers have a decent amount of sympathy for Jamie because of this.

(2) Eric's parent's being disenfranchised emotionally as their son is murdered. They are also disenfranchised of that "family line" discussed at the beginning of this blog post because (a) Eric, their heir, is dead and (b) Eric's mother can't have any more children.

Baldwin uses extremes to prove a point--he uses extreme cases of disenfranchisement to showcase the dangers and the pain of disenfranchisement--, which is usually what a lot of good literature does in order to highlight the kernels of truth that we might not see otherwise.

Tabling Chairs

Whats up with chairs in De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period? There are, like, four different periods of the book where chairs are of minor importance to the plot or are specifically mentioned. Don't tell me I'm reading too far into the story, there are a ton of chairs in this story and I want to know why. 

Okay, so what are the chair references? 

(1) BUS CHAIRS. Or, rather, a lack of empty bus chairs. 

(2) DENTIST CHAIRS. (When Daumier went to sharpen his teeth and such). 

(3) MUSICAL CHAIRS. (The game of musical chairs Daumier sees a week after the bus fiasco).

(4) CHAIR IN HIS ROOM. Or, rather, a lack of a chair in his room. 

Okay, so we've identified the major chair appearances. Now, what's similar about these four? 

To me, uncomfortable comes to mind. He is uncomfortable in all these situations. Firstly, he has to stand in the bus and get yelled at. Second, I don't think anyone is comfortable at the dentist. The third choice doesn't work as well, because Daumier seems more "left out" than "uncomfortable" with the musical chairs game, but feeling left out/anxious is a sort of uncomfortable feeling, so we'll let it slide. Finally, the lack of a chair in his room makes him super uncomfortable (and when he does finally get a chair, and is therefore comfortable, his productivity skyrockets). 

These scenes also seem linked to anxiety, which is something that I think Daumier experiences a lot of (which is why he's so worried about his image, which is why he lies so much). A crowded bus in a big city you just moved to? Anxiety-inducing. The dentist? Anxiety-inducing. Feeling left out of a big game of musical chairs? I guess that can be anxiety-inducing? Not having a chair in your room, wanting a chair in your room, but not wanting to appear disrespectful (and assuming that you believe that asking for a chair is disrespectful)? Anxiety-inducing. 

Anxiety and discomfort go together pretty well. 

This is about as far as I've gotten because I think going any further is venturing into the realm of light BS. Like, do they symbolize anything, or do they act as markers for other things, etcetera... anything else we try to say would probably not rest on a very strong foundation. The best we can say is that "Chairs seem to be present during scenes/experiences that make our protagonist anxious". That seems pretty defendable. 

I wouldn't really want to go further than that because what if Salinger is just messing with us? Can't let him get the last laugh by biting the hook too hard, can we? 

  

Uncle Wiggily

Uncle Wiggily is probably the saddest story we have read so far. There's a ton going on just under the surface (which happened a lot in Catcher, and I'm starting to think it's a pretty ubiquitous in Salinger's literature) which really brings the story to life. In the end, it's the awareness of Eloise of her frozen, paralyzed state that really drives home the existential upper-class asphyxiation of her situation which makes this story so dang sad. Is there anything worse than being fully aware of your desolation, and yet being completely paralyses in regards to changing your situation? 

When Ramona enters the story, things really begin to unravel (before that it was just two friends getting drunk, nothing inherently sad about that). This is because Ramona is Eloise's constant reminder of her emptiness. Ramona has innocence. Ramona love. Ramona has control (she is, after all, the one imagining her close relations... probably in an attempt to fill the void that Eloise has left by not caring about her...). Eloise wants to grab Ramona's shoulders and shake her--tell her that's it is all a lie! That life actually sucks and you'll just lose those closest to you and settle for less and be unhappy about it for the rest of your life, etcetera etcetera. But... I think Eloise also realized that things don't have to be that way. And that's what drives her crazy (I'm sure copious amounts of alcohol didn't help much...). Because if Eloise accepts the fact that life doesn't have to be that way... then, hell, why isn't she (Eloise) changing her life? 

This sits at the back of her mind. Eating at her. Until she breaks and cries at Mary Jane that she (Eloise) used to be good. But now she's not. Something changed, and instead of trying to fix things, she has only hurt those who are changing their circumstances (Ramona). 

Phony Art

When discussing the issue of fact versus truth in The Things They Carried (i.e. does it matter if O'brien "makes stuff up" if what he makes up conveys general truths about the war? Is doing so disrespectful, & c.?), a secondary question that presents itself to us is: how does the author's (artist's) background affect our perception of his or her work? 

This question seems to be particularly important when considering pieces of art that feature intense struggle, whether that's a work that involves serious depression (e.g. Plath's The Bell Jar or Waters' The Wall), addiction (Mathers' Relapse or Wallace's Infinite Jest), war (O'brien's The Things They Carried), or any other mental or physical state that is held as very painful and difficult to overcome. For most people, I think there is a much greater culture-wide sense of wrongness when, say, someone who has never stepped foot in a combat zone writes war stories or a middle-class suburban white person writes songs about racial injustice. Even if you do not view this as particularly wrong, it's hard to deny that, in general, non-vet war stories or suburban race songs are going to have a lot more people questioning their... right to make such pieces of art. Is that the right word, "right"? 


Do we read The Bell Jar or Infinite Jest differently when we know the two authors' backgrounds? (Sylvia Plath and David Foster Wallace both committed suicide.)

Are the demonic voices and intense lyrics on Relapse scarier when know that Mathers is drawing from his own personal, up-front battle with pain-killer addiction?

Do the battles and deaths in The Things They Carried hit us harder than, say, a battle scene from a historical fiction novel written by a well-researched college grad who has never been outside the country, let alone in a war zone?

I would venture that the nearly unanimous answer to the above questions would be "yes". But why? 

Is this because (1) having the experience is necessary to obtain a certain degree of truth? or because (2) only by undergoing "the experience" does one obtain the "right" to create art that depicts their experience? Both? Are there other possibilities?

The first choice is interesting because it is empirically testable (we can easily imagine a scenario in which test participants are asked to evaluate different pieces of literature written by artists from polar backgrounds), whereas the second is more of a matter of opinion (and is quite nuanced).

Right now, my opinion is that, while undergoing "the experience" can certainly help make writing about it easier and more familiar, I don't think it's impossible for someone who has never been to war to write a great and accurate portrayal of war. I also don't think that only those who have experienced "the experience" have the "right" to write (produce art) about it. That seems like a weird form of censorship. Statistically I would expect war stories written by veterans to be more accurate and "truthful" than war stories written by non-veterans, but I would never eliminate a non-veteran from contention simply based on his lack of war experience.