oskarschelll@hotmail.com

Oskar tells some of the Blacks his email address. If you were to send Oskar an email, what would you tell him? Alternate option: if you were applying for J.S. Foer's NYU writing class, "Writing the Impossible," what would you tell him about your experience reading Extremely Loud?

Nobody pointed at I love you...

For this post, I want you to write about whatever interests you with respect to the novel.

Here's what interests me at the moment: I find that I have a hard time talking about this book sometimes. I can analyze Oskar & his psychological makeup, and how the hurt and pain and confusion and guilt result in his endearing idiosyncrasies, crazy outbursts, and the obsessive quality of his lock-and-key search. I can talk about the things that make me laugh, like the Hamlet scene and the session with Dr. Fein. But I have a hard time talking about the things that really move me, and there are a lot of them, because I don’t know what else to say except that they move me. The chapter from the grandmother’s perspective, My Feelings (p. 174), is like this. Thomas and grandma have such opposite responses to the tragic losses of their lives, one drawing an iron curtain around himself (nothing), the other become a moth flying toward a light (something). One lacks courage, the other confidence. Grandma can certainly be frustrating in her lack of independence and confidence. On the other hand, though, I understand her. I understand why she would give a trick-or-treater dressed as a ghost two $100 bills because she was paying the ghost of Anna to go away. (It’s like Holden Caulfield paying the nuns $10, as if money can buy back your innocence.) I understand why she would be willing to compromise a lot, practically everything, to feel the security and comfort and warmth that comes with basic human connection. And while Thomas’s inability/unwillingness to live is also frustrating, it makes more sense after hearing his account of the firebombing of Dresden. How could he live after that? After losing not only the love of his life, but his unborn child, his family, everything. Add to that the guilt of leaving his family to look for Anna. I won’t even mention having to shoot an ape, twice, who looked at him with “understanding” but not “forgiveness.” The two of them are like magnets pushed apart by some repellent force (something, nothing; something, nothing). The conversation in the airport, played out by pointing to phrases already written in the notebook, is heartbreaking. Nobody pointed at, I love you — because nobody could. It is a very sad thing, in real life not just books, to hear older people look back at their life with wistful regret. If I were able to live my life again, she says, I would kiss my piano teacher. And send ugly photographs. Makes you want to do things — listen to the voice that speaks to the beating of your heart.

What interests you?

Guts ball?

So... no lifeguard, no gas station scene, no Chief on the fishing trip, no Doctor on the fishing trip, no Combine, no shower scene, no over-the-top Christ symbolism, no fog, no broken glass, no ripped uniform, no exposing of Nurse Ratched's breasts, no Harding's wife, no sexist themes whatsoever, no Chief getting EST, no guts ball, no geese, no moon, no dog ... and, yet, somehow still a powerful film. I'd like you to write about whatever you like here about the movie, the book, and how the two are similar and different. Here are a few questions to get you going:
1) Kesey started as a consultant on the film but left two weeks into production because, apparently, he didn't like the direction it was going. Can you see why?
2) Screenwriters and filmmakers have to make huge cuts from a novel to get it to fit into a two-hour movie. Do you think they made any mistakes in the editing process in writing this screenplay? In other words, did they leave out any scenes from the book that would have given the film more weight? Any tactical mistakes?
3) Budding screenwriters/directors: can you think of any way that Kesey's larger message about society could have been included in the film? Clearly they didn't want to go the route of the voice over -- probably a good choice.

I believe we skipped that section...

Or so says Cameron, in explaining how Keating passed over the Realism section in the "Pritchard" textbook. Perhaps it makes sense to you now after reading stories like Bartleby, The Yellow Wallpaper, Paul's Case, and The Second Choice. I'm reminded of the exchange of verse between Keating and the Latin teacher:

Latin teacher: Show me a man unfettered by foolish dreams, and I'll show you a happy man.
Keating: But only in his dreams can a man truly be free; twas always thus and always will be.
Latin teacher: Tennyson?
Keating: No, Keating (with a wink).

So what I'm wondering is, what do you think of these realist stories? Do you think they are more relevant because they are more realistic? I sometimes think of American Literature as reaching a peak of liberation and unadulterated transcendental freedom with Walt Whitman... then everything that has followed has served to complicate the idea, to show how it's not as easy as it seems to get through the mud and muck to reach the hard bottom and say, This is. "Paul's Case" is complicated, but one thing I think it's about is how easy it is to fall into a trap where you think you are some kind of romantic individualist, but in the end you really just think you're better than "common" people. That's a dangerous trap. And while everyone would like to think they would make the brave choice and stand up against the heavy wave of social expectation, don't you think that the vast majority of people would, like Shirley, choose the easier, safer path of least resistance?

To Prefer or Not to Prefer

Hi everyone. The story "Bartleby the Scrivener" is one of the most famous in all of American literature. Much of the discussion of the meaning of the story centers around the character of Bartleby himself. The big question is: What's wrong with him? If you can think and write on this question, it will help us get at some of the bigger ideas of the story during the doubles on Tuesday and Wednesday. Here are a couple of thoughts to get you started:

- Is Bartleby merely a lazy person who decides he no longer wants to work? And in this way does the story show what happens to people who isolate themselves from the world? (a variation on the theme present in "The Fall of the House of Usher").

- Is Bartleby a kind of victim? Is he someone who, through years of dehumanizing and monotonous work, has been turned into a human machine, and the story shows what happens when such a machine malfunctions?

- Is Bartleby a kind of failed industrial, modernized romantic hero? In this sense, his romantic self has been so battered and oppressed by years and years of dehumanizing labor that the only thing left is a tiny, mouse-like "I'd prefer not to." At some point he is described as being "like the last column of some ruined temple." Maybe Bartleby's "I'd prefer not to" functions as the last death rattle of romantic expression, Whitman's "Yawp" reduced to a faint cry of self-assertion just before the grave. Yeah? Maybe???

All food for thought. You might have an entirely different idea. The main question I want you to get at is... What's wrong with Bartleby?

D P S

I have seen "Dead Poet's Society" dozens of times, so rather than tell you my feelings about it I think I will pose a number of questions. Feel free to pick up on any one of them -- or more than one. Or, if you are moved, ask and answer your own questions. I will number the questions for your convenience.

1) Nwanda -- punk or hero?
2) Is the suicide glorified in any way? Or do we as readers see that Neil has options and therefore the suicide is seen as rash and misguided?
3) Is the movie, taken as a whole, more celebration or indictment of the carpe diem philosophy espoused by Keating, Whitman, Thoreau, etc.? In the end you have a suicide, a firing, and an expulsion; but you also have self-empowerment (Todd), love (Knox), and a whole bunch of teenagers who are thinking more independently than they were before.
4) Even if we can agree that Keating isn't responsible for Neil's death, does he do anything wrong? Is he blameless?
5) Fun symbolism Department. Birds. At the beginning there is a montage scene of huge flocks of birds rising and turning all together (they're wrens, in case you were wondering). Then there is an immediate cut to the kids going down the circular stairway all together (first day of school), the same directional flow as the birds in the previous shot, bringing out the "flock mentality" of the kids. Later, Knox rides his bike through a huge flock of Canada geese on his way to see Kris jump into the arms of Chet. Upsetting the flock! Also, two scenes of kids walking in the courtyard provide bookend symbols in the movie. First you have Keating encouraging his students to walk to the pace of their own drummer (a Thoreau line!) with the Latin teacher watching from the teacher's lounge above; then, at the end, you have the Latin teacher with his students in the courtyard, walking in unison, reciting something they have memorized, following already made footprints in the snow, with Keating watching from the teacher's lounge above (they wave to one another). If the style of walking is an indication, it's back to normal now in the school.

More later, but this should get you started.

Where's Waldo?

I was just reading through "Self-Reliance" for about the hundredth time and paused on this sequence:

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

If we can forgive the sexist language (I'm sure you noticed how Emerson associates brave nonconformity with masculinity and mindless conformity with femininity), perhaps we can take a minute to appreciate this three part statement. If nothing else it is a perfect lesson in how to use the semicolon, the most under appreciated of punctuation marks.

No, seriously, I like what he says here, because it puts into words something I've felt before. Living how the world expects you to live is relatively easy. If you know how to pick up basic social cues, it is easy enough act in ways that bring us into the protected fold of society. It is also easy, when isolated, to make thoughtful decisions about the kind of person you want to be. You can close your bedroom door and make your own personal mission statement and accompanying lists of values, virtues, and resolves (like Ben Franklin). But as soon as you take that list -- and those very individualistic notions -- out into the world, you start to feel the brute power of social expectation. Truly courageous people stand up to this tidal wave of expectation, dig their feet in mud, and insist upon their own visions of themselves. To use the language of the guy from this morning's assembly, courageous people are the ones who stand up. I'm not talking about rebellion per se, or even Rosa Parks type determination -- just the simple courage to be exactly the person you are or want to be. If you decide that most gossip is mean-spirited and hurtful, then have the courage to say something your caddy friends -- or even walk away. Sometimes, in order to be true to yourself, you have to say things that create the kind of awkwardness in conversations that everyone seems to want to avoid at all costs. Later in the piece, Emerson suggests that we should speak our words as "hard as cannonballs," the exact opposite advice given to us by our good friend Ben Franklin. Cannonballs, of course, can sink ships, but in the end to have enough moral nerve to stand by an unpopular viewpoint can bring the kind of "perfect sweetness" that he mentions. Sweet!