Infinite Content, Infinitely Content

As the composer Igor Stravinsky said, “The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit,”. This is at least how I, and undoubtedly some of you guys, felt about this project. You’re given a pretty limited set of requirements for what you can write, established characters, setting, et cetera. But within those limits, I found it all of a sudden a lot easier to write something. The combinations and possibilities were extremely fascinating. My story is from Esther’s perspective ten years later, in 1963, when she’s a writer and return to New York City. She meets Holden and they get to know each other a bit. It’s a story that looks at both of them ten years on, but now in the context of the 1963 political crises and culture (although part of the story is that things haven’t changed that much yet). My goal was to follow Esther’s thoughts over two days with Holden, and see where it goes. It's titled In Open Air, sort of "the opposite...

Mr. Mitchell - I’m not sure if you planned it like this, but it’s interesting that we have two novels in a row that take a very different approach to placing the novel “in an era”. My last post was about how Housekeeping omits the historical context of the story, so that the story becomes “timeless” to some degree, showing the human life in geological context to emphasize its transience. On the other hand, the historical context of Black Swan Green is expressed in a variety of ways and its deeply important to the actual story. The musical references are a really perfect way to place the book in historical context and to depict the emotions Jason is feeling. It shows that people are always a part of a greater culture, interacting with it in unique ways, so writing a book with such direct references is super cool. Music is a potent way of evoking an era, and a great way to elicit memories. And not only does Mitchell mention the music, but he describes how Jason feels about it. He also de...

Ruthie never mentioned when the story takes place, and Fingerbone is not actually a real town. However, you can probably trace the setting pretty well - Wikipedia helpfully mentions that the book Ruthie reads, Not as a Stranger, was written in 1954. And I assume it’s not taking place after 1980, when the book was published. In a sense it’s nice to know where the book takes place, so maybe those hours I spend procrastinating on Google Maps can be spent in relation to at least one class. Anyway, here's what Finerbone probably looks like. But upon trying to figure out where the book takes place and when and whatnot, I started thinking if that even matters. Obviously, since it’s not all that hard to figure out and place names are mentioned, it’s not exactly that Robinson’s intention is to hide the location of the story to illuminate something specific. But the setting isn’t emphasized,and Robinson also depicts how miniscule human life is in the scale of geologic time, making all hum...

One of my good friend’s mom’s, who became perhaps my friend as well, when I was younger was an anthropology professor who spoke four languages (including Korean, and once she called one of my dad’s students over the phone and when he met her he couldn’t believe that she wasn’t a Korean herself). She traveled everywhere all the time for conferences and was dedicated to all of her students and was really just this sort of beaming light of awesomeness. As a twelve year old, I remember seeing her as my role model - I was gonna be just like her. Not an anthropologist, but I assumed at that point an astrophysicist or mechanical engineer or something, but I would also spend my days working and working, but also having a family and having cool hobbies and having an quirky minimalist style (walls white, furniture bright!) and maybe an artist on the side, doing everything possible. I saw her as an Everything Woman, and I wanted to be that too. Not just a renaissance man, but really an Everything...

The first time I read The Catcher in the Rye was in seventh grade, and it was kind of my first love of a novel. Rereading it now, I still love it, but it’s obviously not the same as before. I read the book earlier as being about a bitter teenager who was angry at everything and everyone, maybe only sparing his sister because she was still a child. But what I didn’t notice before that truly struck me is how much Holden actually cares about people. Not only that, but it’s the root of his bitterness about phony people. Love and the challenging of gender norms now seem to me to be the most important parts of the novel. I think he really cares about Jane; he thinks about her like a human and in his descriptions of their time together he seems particularly empathetic. He enjoys talking to Mrs. Morrow, and the nuns, and he finds interesting things in their conversations. He wants to save face with all of the people he meets in order to make their interactions as pleasant for them as possible...

Having discussed Portrait and coming-of-age in general in more details during class has made me slightly more attuned to the elements of coming-of-age stories. I’ve started noticing these patterns in a few of my favorite movies, so perhaps a comparison of them to Portrait is worthwhile. On his blog, Dylan mentioned the movie Breaking Away , one of my favorite movies probably (and not just because it features biking and Campagnolo bikes, although that is definitely a big reason). It’s a classic coming-of-age film, particularly in the sense that Dave becomes disillusioned with the thing he most believed in - Italian culture and cyclists. He’s in a bike race where he was ahead of these professional Italian cyclists, but they sabotage him and he doesn’t finish the race. When he comes home, instead of calling his mom and dad “papa” and “mama”, he returns to his American lingo. He tears down every single poster of Italy in his room and starts calling his cat Jake instead of Fellini. But...

In a lot of ways I find myself relating to Stephen, in all of his melodrama. I’m not proud but I remember liking the feeling of being the kid brooding outside, pretending I was somehow superior to those around me, or at least special. Stephen imagines himself dying, his funeral, coming across a romantic partner (or more being found; an encounter), etc. And to me, I feel like that’s just a normal way that kids thing (although I’m realizing I might be wrong, and maybe it’s not a normal experience). The scene in the tram especially hit me hard. I remember having a first crush, having a moment with them, not shooting my shot, and just feeling an absolutely crippling sense of regret afterwards. Which is silly, because I was probably 12 and had no idea what was going on and the person I know for a fact did not reciprocate the feelings. And yet I immersed myself in those new feelings, wrote crap poems about loneliness and whatever. And yet I didn’t really read the scene as predatory, as Emma ...