Big Bird has Snuffleupagus. D.W. has Naydeen (kids show Arthur). Harper has Mr. Lies. In Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, we meet Harper, a sweet, innocent, Valium-addicted agoraphobic Mormon. She is married to Joe, a closet homosexual, also Mormon. She knows this and yet has not been able to face the reality. The struggle within their marriage lies not in Harper’s mental illness, and not in their complicated Mormonism, but in Joe’s sexuality.
Mr. Lies, her imaginary friend, is a travel agent. According to the description of his character, he resembles a jazz musician; African-American, suave, cool, deep resounding voice. He wears a large lapel badge emblazoned with “IOTA” (The International Order of Travel Agents). He is, in fact, the ultimate travel agent. Harper needs escape, frequently. She spends her days at home, popping pills, obsessing about knife-wielding men under her bed and the ever-looming ozone layer. All of her day-to-day problems seem to be symbolic of a much larger reality that she is unable to wrap her head around. Mr. Lies serves as her escape hatch.
Act 2, Scene 9 is a climax in the play. Harper and Joe and Louis and Prior are hashing out their respective relationships in split scenes. Joe is on the path to accepting his homosexuality and must convey this to Harper, while convincing himself further in the process. He is faced with the passionate wanting of another man. Harper is in denial, and yet she is not. The reader is never really sure how much she has accepted and how much she is simply putting off to avoid change. What she wants and what she knows blend together to create a chaotic mindset. During this hash session, the realization surfaces that Joe is the man under the bed with the knives. Joe is her biggest fear. Harper needs to escape, immediately. She cries out in desperation to Mr. Lies who appears ready to whisk her away, far away. In the film, Mr. Lies appears from out of the refrigerator in a frozen-over kitchen, complete with parka and ice pick. Harper follows him into the fridge, away from her life.
Mr. Lies has taken her to Antarctica. Harper wants to build a dream city, plant trees, have a relationship with an Eskimo, have a baby. Mr. Lies explains that there are no trees in Antarctica. No Eskimos either. And we all know that Harper was faking her pregnancy. “This is a retreat,” says Mr. Lies, “a vacuum. Its virtue is that it lacks everything; deep freeze for feelings. You can be numb and safe here, that’s what you came for. Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.” (p102) And then an Eskimo walks towards her. And then she feels the baby kick. Ah, to be delusional with an imaginary friend who can whisk us far away from life's difficulties at a moment’s notice. Or, at the very least, have a really good travel agent. Does it get better than that?
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
Formal #4: Gay in the Deep South
In the fourth grade, young Dorothy Allison had a class project to do. She was to gather information to form a Family Tree. This was a completely foreign concept to the family elders, all raised in the Deep South of South Carolina. She begins by asking her mother and grandmother if she can see the family Bible, only to be told that they don’t own one. “We don’t have a family Bible?” young Dorothy asks. “Child,” her grandmother replies, “Some days we don’t even have a family!” The humor that Allison is able to convey to the reader while describing her horrid upbringing is refreshing and amazing. Painful and mean, but never bitter. It is amazing to read what the young Allison endured and to see the final product in her 40’s emerge assured and confident of who she is and where she is going. Dorothy Allison is full of piss and vinegar. She’s got a lot to say and she’s certainly not afraid to say it. This is the attitude that literally jumps off the pages of her memoir, Two or Three Things I Know For Sure.
Allison says that the early Feminist movement changed her life. "It was like opening your eyes under water. It hurt, but suddenly everything that had been dark and mysterious became visible and open to change." However, she admits, she would never have begun to publish her stories if she hadn't gotten over her prejudices, and started talking to her mother and sisters again. (http://www.dorothyallison.net/) The caption under her photograph on her website says: “Understand me. What I am here for is to tell you stories you may not want to hear. What I am here for is to rescue my dead. And to scare the hell out of you now and then. I was raised Baptist, I know how to do that.” Allison is a storyteller, as is Tony Kushner.
It is interesting to note that Two Things I Know For Sure and Angels in America, by Tony Kushner, both deal with the prominent topic of homosexuality. Allison gives us the details of some of her early relationships in which she explores her sexuality in the context of her upbringing, education and the time in which she is discovering herself (1970’s). Free love abounds and free expression of the sexual self is widespread and somewhat accepted in the looser 70’s. Angels, however, deals with the onslaught of HIV/AIDS in the homosexual community in the early 1980’s and the stigma that this creates in society. In the early years of the epidemic, ignorance and fear resulted in widespread discrimination against AIDS patients, in the early days mostly gay males, fueled by the sensationalistic manner in which the media reported it. Kushner, himself a gay Jew who grew up in the Deep South, chose to tell his story in the form of a play, a 'Gay Fantasia on National Themes', where Allison chose to tell her story in memoir form.
The phrase “a gay Jew who grew up in the Deep South” makes me wish Kushner would write a memoir.
Allison says that the early Feminist movement changed her life. "It was like opening your eyes under water. It hurt, but suddenly everything that had been dark and mysterious became visible and open to change." However, she admits, she would never have begun to publish her stories if she hadn't gotten over her prejudices, and started talking to her mother and sisters again. (http://www.dorothyallison.net/) The caption under her photograph on her website says: “Understand me. What I am here for is to tell you stories you may not want to hear. What I am here for is to rescue my dead. And to scare the hell out of you now and then. I was raised Baptist, I know how to do that.” Allison is a storyteller, as is Tony Kushner.
It is interesting to note that Two Things I Know For Sure and Angels in America, by Tony Kushner, both deal with the prominent topic of homosexuality. Allison gives us the details of some of her early relationships in which she explores her sexuality in the context of her upbringing, education and the time in which she is discovering herself (1970’s). Free love abounds and free expression of the sexual self is widespread and somewhat accepted in the looser 70’s. Angels, however, deals with the onslaught of HIV/AIDS in the homosexual community in the early 1980’s and the stigma that this creates in society. In the early years of the epidemic, ignorance and fear resulted in widespread discrimination against AIDS patients, in the early days mostly gay males, fueled by the sensationalistic manner in which the media reported it. Kushner, himself a gay Jew who grew up in the Deep South, chose to tell his story in the form of a play, a 'Gay Fantasia on National Themes', where Allison chose to tell her story in memoir form.
The phrase “a gay Jew who grew up in the Deep South” makes me wish Kushner would write a memoir.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Formal #3: Cooking for Schizophrenics
Choosing a topic to analyze in Fight Club is not an easy task. As I sit here, I am confronted with 218 pages of hard-core material that could be analyzed for an entire semester; materialism, support groups as therapy, terminal illness and identity, the connection between sex and violence, search for identity, self-actualization, self-destruction, how to retain your masculinity with bitch tits, to name just a few. We could analyze how under-paid banquet workers defile food (see chapter 10). One could even spend an entire semester focusing on Palahniuk’s writing style alone; blunt.
Upon researching background information on Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, I came across an interview on dvdtalk.com (see link below). Because I was only reading this for my own enlightenment and entertainment, I did not go through the necessary steps to validate the interviewer or the web site, but in it, Palahniuk talks about his thought process while writing the novel. So, in an effort to get inside his mind a little and possibly gain some insight into where Fight Club might have come from, I read on.
I am told that Palahniuk is unassuming and soft spoken, not the type of guy you would expect to create a fight club, or be in the midst of researching material for his next book about sex addicts (Choke). His fiction is filled with personal material, gathered throughout his own life and experiences. His work as a hospice volunteer, for example, transporting terminally ill patients to their support groups, provided the impetus for the characters we meet; Big Bob, Marla, and Chloe. He would sit in on the meetings, waiting to drive his patient back to the hospice center, and he would feel guilty sitting amidst the group, healthy. This led to the idea that someone could conceivably “fake it.” What if someone just sat in on the meeting for the intimacy and the honesty that it provides? It could provide a sort of cathartic emotional outlet, which is precisely what it does for the narrator and Marla. This is part of what they are seeking; honesty and intimacy.
The article goes on to give us a glimpse of Palahniuk’s life experiences and how he translates them into his work. What I found most amusing, however, was how we spend so much time and energy analyzing a piece of work, cover to cover. We assume, after all this analyzing and dissecting, that we know what the author is trying to tell us by the style they use, the words they chose, the events that take place. Sometimes, it’s a personal feeling that becomes a bit of a comical twist that just works in the story. Simple.
On page 12, we are given a “recipe” for nitroglycerin. This is what was cooked up as Tyler/narrator prepared to blow up the Parker-Morris Building. On page 13, we are told how we can make napalm. On pages 68-71, we are taken through the process of making soap. Lye, we are instructed, is the perfect ingredient in a self-destructive breakfast, as it burns nicely on the skin. We could spend a semester dissecting and analyzing these violent, unstable men, apparently raised in a home without a male father figure, creating recipes that cause massive destruction. Palahniuk gives some insight: “In Fight Club I used the bomb recipes because so much cute fiction was being written with food recipes in it, like Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, Like Water for Chocolate. It got to be so you couldn’t pick up a novel anymore without feeling like you were reading a cookbook. So I thought, why not a novel with like, guy recipes? So that’s why I started doing that.” Go figure. I think Palahniuk could take Emeril in the basement.
http://www.dvdtalk.com/interviews/chuck_palahniuk.html
Upon researching background information on Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, I came across an interview on dvdtalk.com (see link below). Because I was only reading this for my own enlightenment and entertainment, I did not go through the necessary steps to validate the interviewer or the web site, but in it, Palahniuk talks about his thought process while writing the novel. So, in an effort to get inside his mind a little and possibly gain some insight into where Fight Club might have come from, I read on.
I am told that Palahniuk is unassuming and soft spoken, not the type of guy you would expect to create a fight club, or be in the midst of researching material for his next book about sex addicts (Choke). His fiction is filled with personal material, gathered throughout his own life and experiences. His work as a hospice volunteer, for example, transporting terminally ill patients to their support groups, provided the impetus for the characters we meet; Big Bob, Marla, and Chloe. He would sit in on the meetings, waiting to drive his patient back to the hospice center, and he would feel guilty sitting amidst the group, healthy. This led to the idea that someone could conceivably “fake it.” What if someone just sat in on the meeting for the intimacy and the honesty that it provides? It could provide a sort of cathartic emotional outlet, which is precisely what it does for the narrator and Marla. This is part of what they are seeking; honesty and intimacy.
The article goes on to give us a glimpse of Palahniuk’s life experiences and how he translates them into his work. What I found most amusing, however, was how we spend so much time and energy analyzing a piece of work, cover to cover. We assume, after all this analyzing and dissecting, that we know what the author is trying to tell us by the style they use, the words they chose, the events that take place. Sometimes, it’s a personal feeling that becomes a bit of a comical twist that just works in the story. Simple.
On page 12, we are given a “recipe” for nitroglycerin. This is what was cooked up as Tyler/narrator prepared to blow up the Parker-Morris Building. On page 13, we are told how we can make napalm. On pages 68-71, we are taken through the process of making soap. Lye, we are instructed, is the perfect ingredient in a self-destructive breakfast, as it burns nicely on the skin. We could spend a semester dissecting and analyzing these violent, unstable men, apparently raised in a home without a male father figure, creating recipes that cause massive destruction. Palahniuk gives some insight: “In Fight Club I used the bomb recipes because so much cute fiction was being written with food recipes in it, like Nora Ephron’s Heartburn, Like Water for Chocolate. It got to be so you couldn’t pick up a novel anymore without feeling like you were reading a cookbook. So I thought, why not a novel with like, guy recipes? So that’s why I started doing that.” Go figure. I think Palahniuk could take Emeril in the basement.
http://www.dvdtalk.com/interviews/chuck_palahniuk.html
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Formal #2: Grief as Mental Illness
In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion spends a great deal of time pondering the idea that grief is a form of mental illness, manifested as temporary insanity. She rejects the idea that grief is simply intense sadness by demonstrating how grief leads to extreme denial, delusional wishful thinking, the belief in individual ability to control outcomes, reduced functioning, and a shaken sense of self. She believes that magical thinking, the central theme of the memoir, is the childlike belief that we are able to control outcomes and change the world around us through the intensity of our wishes and desires.
Didion begins her memoir with the first thoughts that came to mind as she sat down at the computer for the first time, five months following her husband’s very sudden death; Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. On December 30, 2003, Didion and her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, were about to sit down to dinner after spending the day visiting their only child, daughter Quintana, who lie in a hospital in a clinically-induced coma due to septic shock, when John, in mid-sentence, with hand in the air making a point in conversation, fell dead over the table. He suffered a “sudden massive coronary event”, a heart attack. This book, she wrote, was “my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself” (p7).
Once the initial shock wore off, and she was able to resume caring for her daughter, she realized that her grieving mental state resembled that of the clinically insane. She recognized that through the winter (John died in late December) and spring, there had been occasions on which “I was incapable of thinking rationally. I was thinking as small children think, as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the outcome” (p35). She was unable to read the obituaries as they came out, just as she was unable a few months later to view John’s picture as it flashed across the television screen during the 2004 Academy Awards “In Memoriam” montage. These disturbed her because they proved John was dead, and she did not yet believe this. She let other people believe it, but if she herself believed it, he might not come back. While packing up his clothes to give away to charities, she was unable to give away all of his shoes. “I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return” (p37). She comes to believe, in her state of grief/mental illness, that if she controlled certain aspects of her circumstance, she could bring John back.
She was unable to focus on topics of conversation with friends. She was unaware of day or time. Sights, scents, street corners; everything seemed to bring on memories of the past, of her time spent with John and Quintana. Didion quoted Melanie Klein’s 1940 Mourning and it’s Relation to Manic-Depressive States. “The mourner is in fact ill, but because this state of mind is common and seems so natural to us, we do not call mourning an illness. . .to put my conclusion more precisely: I should say that in mourning the subject goes through a modified and transitory manic-depressive state and overcomes it” (p34). Obviously, the overcoming it was what Didion was striving for and could not seem to achieve. Following John’s memorial service, a few months following his death so that Quintana could take part, Didion noted the feeling of emptiness following it. After all, she had gone through the motions, did what she was expected to do to mourn, and he did not come back.
After a year of waiting for John to return, enduring floods of memories that overwhelmed her and removed her from her surroundings, avoiding places and situations that reminded her of life with John and Quintana, she was able to come to some resolution. “I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves, there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead. Let them become the photograph on the table. Let them become the name on the trust accounts. Let go of them in the water” (p226).
Just 18 months following John’s death, as Didion began to live life again and let John be dead, Quintana died.
Didion begins her memoir with the first thoughts that came to mind as she sat down at the computer for the first time, five months following her husband’s very sudden death; Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. On December 30, 2003, Didion and her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, were about to sit down to dinner after spending the day visiting their only child, daughter Quintana, who lie in a hospital in a clinically-induced coma due to septic shock, when John, in mid-sentence, with hand in the air making a point in conversation, fell dead over the table. He suffered a “sudden massive coronary event”, a heart attack. This book, she wrote, was “my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself” (p7).
Once the initial shock wore off, and she was able to resume caring for her daughter, she realized that her grieving mental state resembled that of the clinically insane. She recognized that through the winter (John died in late December) and spring, there had been occasions on which “I was incapable of thinking rationally. I was thinking as small children think, as if my thoughts or wishes had the power to reverse the narrative, change the outcome” (p35). She was unable to read the obituaries as they came out, just as she was unable a few months later to view John’s picture as it flashed across the television screen during the 2004 Academy Awards “In Memoriam” montage. These disturbed her because they proved John was dead, and she did not yet believe this. She let other people believe it, but if she herself believed it, he might not come back. While packing up his clothes to give away to charities, she was unable to give away all of his shoes. “I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return” (p37). She comes to believe, in her state of grief/mental illness, that if she controlled certain aspects of her circumstance, she could bring John back.
She was unable to focus on topics of conversation with friends. She was unaware of day or time. Sights, scents, street corners; everything seemed to bring on memories of the past, of her time spent with John and Quintana. Didion quoted Melanie Klein’s 1940 Mourning and it’s Relation to Manic-Depressive States. “The mourner is in fact ill, but because this state of mind is common and seems so natural to us, we do not call mourning an illness. . .to put my conclusion more precisely: I should say that in mourning the subject goes through a modified and transitory manic-depressive state and overcomes it” (p34). Obviously, the overcoming it was what Didion was striving for and could not seem to achieve. Following John’s memorial service, a few months following his death so that Quintana could take part, Didion noted the feeling of emptiness following it. After all, she had gone through the motions, did what she was expected to do to mourn, and he did not come back.
After a year of waiting for John to return, enduring floods of memories that overwhelmed her and removed her from her surroundings, avoiding places and situations that reminded her of life with John and Quintana, she was able to come to some resolution. “I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves, there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead. Let them become the photograph on the table. Let them become the name on the trust accounts. Let go of them in the water” (p226).
Just 18 months following John’s death, as Didion began to live life again and let John be dead, Quintana died.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Didion's Year of Magical Thinking
This is the first and last audio book I will ever indulge in! No pages to dog-ear. No highlighting or underlining worthy phrases. No circling unknown words to look up. It takes forever to find a reference point. What was I thinking? Audio books are not the least bit suitable for the hardcore bibliophile! Regardless, once I was able to get past the whole lack of highlighting thing (or rather, .once 95 South bored me enough!) and I really listened to Didion attempt to mourn for and understand the death of her husband and severe illness of her daughter, I was able to get into it.
I didn't like the first part of the story; the husband dying part. Didion seemed rather removed from the situation, devoid of any emotional attachment whatsoever. At times, I wondered if she was talking about the death of someone she even knew. She seemed stoic and clinical about the whole thing. At this point, I identified more with the narrator, as though a fictional story were being told to me by a third party. As she progressed, however, more emotion surfaced. Her initial coolness was probably due to the shock she felt at the time, and if so, she conveyed this perfectly.
The story bounces around quite a bit. As one would convey one's life story in a face-to-face conversation, she tells the tale of their 40-year marriage in a broken fashion, jumping around time as memories surface. If this story were a film, for instance, it would be constant flashbacks. I'm curious now to see the video of the stage production starring Vanessa Redgrave, who tragically lost her daughter just yesterday to a freak skiing accident. I couldn't help but think how ironic it was that I had just finished this book about a woman who lost her husband and daughter and the star of the stage production just lost her daughter. There was a strange sense of connectedness. . .like I felt when I came across that autobiography of Simone DeBeauvoir, whom we just read about in my Jan intersession class, The Second Sex: French Women in Film and Literature. I had never heard of her before, and here we were, on vacation, a thousand miles from home, in a remote out-of-the-way used book store and there she was. . .but I digress. . .
I actually didn't know until further researching Didion's life that her daughter died 18 months after her father, just two months before this book was released. Didion considered revising it prior to release, but could not bring herself to complete the task. She stated that mourning for her daughter, in actuality a grown child with a husband of her own, is different than that of mourning a husband. The book, she felt, was complete as was.
The most touching and poignant parts of her story centered on their nuclear family. The traditions, the special phrases they shared (John always said to Quintana upon departing, "I love you more than one more day."), the intimate look inside a 40-year relationship, its quirks and rhythms. They were well-traveled and this proved the most challenging part of Didion's mourning process. Everywhere she went after John's death, there was a memory. Her mind, easily prompted by a place or object, would drift back in time to experiences, vacations, shared work, homes established and cared for. This kept John alive, but at the same time kept her stuck. She could not bring herself to get rid of his shoes because he might need them when he came back. By the end of the book, I felt I had journeyed with her through a trying and emotional year, hoping towards the end that she was able to let go, or as she stated, "let John stay dead."
Despite the beginning, the novel was filled with much emotion. I cannot imagine getting through this ordeal only to turn around and have to repeat it 18 months later through the loss of your only child. Unfathomable. Throughout the book, Didion, while visiting her daughter in various medical facilities, would whisper to her daughter, "You are safe. I am here." She works through this statement in a portion of the book, realizing that no mother can truly keep her child safe from all danger. I am sure that this thought process factored heavily in her mourning Quintana.
Overall, a good read. It is a thought-provoking look at the mourning process by a woman who must write to work through emotion. You can't read it without envisioning yourself in a similar situation and wondering how would I manage that? Would I be able to write about it? Would I be able to get up each day and breathe?
I didn't like the first part of the story; the husband dying part. Didion seemed rather removed from the situation, devoid of any emotional attachment whatsoever. At times, I wondered if she was talking about the death of someone she even knew. She seemed stoic and clinical about the whole thing. At this point, I identified more with the narrator, as though a fictional story were being told to me by a third party. As she progressed, however, more emotion surfaced. Her initial coolness was probably due to the shock she felt at the time, and if so, she conveyed this perfectly.
The story bounces around quite a bit. As one would convey one's life story in a face-to-face conversation, she tells the tale of their 40-year marriage in a broken fashion, jumping around time as memories surface. If this story were a film, for instance, it would be constant flashbacks. I'm curious now to see the video of the stage production starring Vanessa Redgrave, who tragically lost her daughter just yesterday to a freak skiing accident. I couldn't help but think how ironic it was that I had just finished this book about a woman who lost her husband and daughter and the star of the stage production just lost her daughter. There was a strange sense of connectedness. . .like I felt when I came across that autobiography of Simone DeBeauvoir, whom we just read about in my Jan intersession class, The Second Sex: French Women in Film and Literature. I had never heard of her before, and here we were, on vacation, a thousand miles from home, in a remote out-of-the-way used book store and there she was. . .but I digress. . .
I actually didn't know until further researching Didion's life that her daughter died 18 months after her father, just two months before this book was released. Didion considered revising it prior to release, but could not bring herself to complete the task. She stated that mourning for her daughter, in actuality a grown child with a husband of her own, is different than that of mourning a husband. The book, she felt, was complete as was.
The most touching and poignant parts of her story centered on their nuclear family. The traditions, the special phrases they shared (John always said to Quintana upon departing, "I love you more than one more day."), the intimate look inside a 40-year relationship, its quirks and rhythms. They were well-traveled and this proved the most challenging part of Didion's mourning process. Everywhere she went after John's death, there was a memory. Her mind, easily prompted by a place or object, would drift back in time to experiences, vacations, shared work, homes established and cared for. This kept John alive, but at the same time kept her stuck. She could not bring herself to get rid of his shoes because he might need them when he came back. By the end of the book, I felt I had journeyed with her through a trying and emotional year, hoping towards the end that she was able to let go, or as she stated, "let John stay dead."
Despite the beginning, the novel was filled with much emotion. I cannot imagine getting through this ordeal only to turn around and have to repeat it 18 months later through the loss of your only child. Unfathomable. Throughout the book, Didion, while visiting her daughter in various medical facilities, would whisper to her daughter, "You are safe. I am here." She works through this statement in a portion of the book, realizing that no mother can truly keep her child safe from all danger. I am sure that this thought process factored heavily in her mourning Quintana.
Overall, a good read. It is a thought-provoking look at the mourning process by a woman who must write to work through emotion. You can't read it without envisioning yourself in a similar situation and wondering how would I manage that? Would I be able to write about it? Would I be able to get up each day and breathe?
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Ready to Move On. . .
This morning, I was going over in my head what I have to do today. Work, errands, set up the pet steps in my bedroom before we leave for FL, and continue with Week #4 of In Cold Blood. I sighed at that thought. I'm sick of it. I'm tired of thinking about this book and I'm ready to move on. I'm sick of talking about it and analyzing it. And then it hit me. If I'm sick of it, imagine how Alvin Dewey must have felt investigating every angle of it for four years. Imagine how the townspeople must have felt living with the uncertainty of the murders and the knowledge that the killers had not been caught. Imagine how Capote must have felt by the time of the hanging. It was a new angle for me. The novel doesn't do justice to the fact that it took years to solve this case and bring justice to the people. Just a thought. . . . .
Monday, March 2, 2009
Formal #1: Strange Connections
Through our discussions, we’ve surmised that the New Journalism took fact-reporting, blended it with some human emotion, and provided society with a form of non-fiction that invokes a response from the reader. There are probably as many different responses as there are personalities and values reading the story. There are some facts, however, that stand out when looking at the individual relationships that are formed in the book. You have the duo of Perry and Dick as murderers. You have Alvin Dewey and his team of KBI investigators, as well as his wife, Marie’s, responses to the murders. You have the townspeople and their speculations and resultant actions. Capote chose to elaborate more on certain individuals than others, which is not surprising; every novel, no matter the style, needs main characters to follow. Perry was the murderer he draws the reader closer to.
It is evident throughout the novel that Capote has a closer relationship to Perry than he does to Dick. The extensive background/childhood information that the reader is given regarding Perry (scattered throughout the novel, but primarily seen from pages 123 through 147) imply that Capote had a “special interest” in Perry, some sort of “connection,” or perhaps a combination of both. The reader is given details about Perry’s childhood through letters from this sister and testimony of his father that make the reader feel at times that Capote is trying to get the reader to sympathize with Perry, feel sorry for this lost boy who was never loved, who lost his abused mother, and had a heartless father.
It is Perry’s confession that we read, not Dick’s. We are simply told that they corroborate. The reader sees the murder occur, towards the end of the book, through Perry’s mind's eye. We are told that he “didn’t realize what I’d done till I heard the sound. Like somebody drowning. Screaming under water. I handed the knife to Dick” (244). In the movie, In Cold Blood, Perry, played by Robert Blake, is shown in the murder scene as having flashbacks to happy times shared with his mother and his father’s abuse of him and his mother, in the presence of Perry and his siblings. It is during these flashbacks that Perry cuts Mr. Clutter’s throat. At this point in the book, I think Capote had done all he could to evoke compassion for Perry. All that was left were the details of the murder and subsequent sentencing. The emotions of the reader, as well as Alvin Dewey, are raw and exhausted.
We know that Capote initiated this New Journalism, this form of Creative Nonfiction that combined facts and fiction that was knew to this audience at this time, 1965. At this time in history, while personal feelings were not knew, the social discussion of them was, to some degree. I’d be willing to bet that tying a murderer to human emotions was rare. I personally want to know exactly what it was that drew Capote to Perry. What was it that he felt connected them? I understand that New Journalism, written in a fictional context, cannot elaborate these minute details. And this served Capote well. The suspense, the creepy inside-out look at this hideous murder drew the readers in. And still does.
It is evident throughout the novel that Capote has a closer relationship to Perry than he does to Dick. The extensive background/childhood information that the reader is given regarding Perry (scattered throughout the novel, but primarily seen from pages 123 through 147) imply that Capote had a “special interest” in Perry, some sort of “connection,” or perhaps a combination of both. The reader is given details about Perry’s childhood through letters from this sister and testimony of his father that make the reader feel at times that Capote is trying to get the reader to sympathize with Perry, feel sorry for this lost boy who was never loved, who lost his abused mother, and had a heartless father.
It is Perry’s confession that we read, not Dick’s. We are simply told that they corroborate. The reader sees the murder occur, towards the end of the book, through Perry’s mind's eye. We are told that he “didn’t realize what I’d done till I heard the sound. Like somebody drowning. Screaming under water. I handed the knife to Dick” (244). In the movie, In Cold Blood, Perry, played by Robert Blake, is shown in the murder scene as having flashbacks to happy times shared with his mother and his father’s abuse of him and his mother, in the presence of Perry and his siblings. It is during these flashbacks that Perry cuts Mr. Clutter’s throat. At this point in the book, I think Capote had done all he could to evoke compassion for Perry. All that was left were the details of the murder and subsequent sentencing. The emotions of the reader, as well as Alvin Dewey, are raw and exhausted.
We know that Capote initiated this New Journalism, this form of Creative Nonfiction that combined facts and fiction that was knew to this audience at this time, 1965. At this time in history, while personal feelings were not knew, the social discussion of them was, to some degree. I’d be willing to bet that tying a murderer to human emotions was rare. I personally want to know exactly what it was that drew Capote to Perry. What was it that he felt connected them? I understand that New Journalism, written in a fictional context, cannot elaborate these minute details. And this served Capote well. The suspense, the creepy inside-out look at this hideous murder drew the readers in. And still does.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Virgin Blog Post
There aren't many virgin experiences left at the age of 41, so I'm going to enjoy the honeymoon here. Apparently, in a few weeks, I'll be a pro and will be blogging daily. . .safely, of course! My 16-year-old daughter has given me a tutorial and I think I'm ready. I have a few topics I'd like to discuss regarding the depth of Capote's emotional involvement with Perry. This is the part of the novel which has grabbed and intrigued me. It is what prompted me to watch the movies In Cold Blood and Capote. It is also what prompted me to sit in Barnes and Noble reading the book Capote (which I did not buy because I refuse to pay full price for anything, let alone a book I can purchase used on amazon.com. Of course, I just spent $75 on pet steps on e-bay so my almost-21-year-old arthritic cat can get up and down from my bed easier. I also tend to spend a bit more than I should on my wine hobby - a new vine every weekend! - but I digress. . .). Tonight, I plan to tackle this topic here in Blogland and hopefully, someone will be interested in exploring it with me. . .Capote. . .not the wine! Anna
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