Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Catch

Holden, from J.D. Salinger's novella, The Catcher in the Rye, is one of the most well-known characters of contemporary fiction. In the story, Holden wears a red hunting hat he gets.

Nearly our first image of him is him with this hat. This hat is a recurring motif throughout the entire novella - Holden mentions it many times.

Why did Salinger mention the hat so many times? It's because the red hunting hat is a symbol of Holden's uniqueness - a sign of him being different.

Holden's self-conscious of the hat. In turn, this shows Holden himself is self-conscious of how he acts around others - he is hypersensitive to his own uniqueness.

Red is a color which symbolizes anger, hate, antipathy.

Holden is obviously mad at the way the world is - he calls adults "phony." He detests society.

That hat on his head shows Holden's anger is inward, and covers him. Holden is sensitive to his emotions, his feelings, and lets them control him. He is subconcious of them. Conscious of them.

Being different is also painful for Holden - he does not feel he belongs in the world. He has recurrent thoughts of suicide - he wants to escape. He feels like he's suffering in the world, he thinks everyone is out to get him. He is paranoid. All these feelings at their core are anger and angst.

The hat shows he wears his jaded and wronged feelings on him wherever he goes. It shows they are a part of him - they are a part that makes him, him.

Red is a bold color - in comparison, Holden is a bold person. He stands out because he tries to be so different. The way he acts, how he talks, the choices he makes, they all come together, making him bold, daring.

Anyone who has read The Catcher in the Rye has this image of Holden - with the hat. It's ingrained. It is an image that won't soon be forgotten, just like Holden won't soon be forgotten.

---

That turned out pretty bad. Sorry.
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Monday, August 30, 2004

Jam

If the entire sum meaning of our lives is submission, seduction, and claim - if the reason we live is to reproduce, have sex, multiply, then why this intelligence? What does it get us, in the long run?

Why aren't we just walking penises and vaginas?

If only. Because if that were, things would be so simple - our lives so simple - our existence so simple.

Those earthworms, they've sort of got it lucky. . .but sort of not.

As much as I hate intelligence sometimes, other times I'm happy I've got it.

But this intelligence gets in the way of everything. In this world, you can look but not touch, and only when you've gotten to know what you're looking at can you touch.

We go against our natures. . .we go against having sex, we go against our appetites for destruction, we wear clothes to cover up what nature's given us, we build houses when nature's already made houses for us, we build streets and roads when nature's already made our paths for us, we package and make food that isn't naturally-grown even though it's out there for us to get, we wallow in needless material things, when the material things we should wallow in are those nature has given us.

If you read the bible, a lot of what it says is going against our very natures. . .thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, you can't be gay, that's wrong in the bible, it goes on and on.

Why fight the nature? Why go away from nature? Why create our own "moral" codes that're to be our natures? Why have this society? Why have order, when our nature is to be in chaos (and in fact, the order we create just makes chaos itself)?

Why enslave people to work their lives for money, which in the truest sense is survival - why not let them do as they want, and let things be natural? Why, why, why?

Our intelligence is one of our greatest shortcomings, but also one of our greatest strengths. It's something we can put aside, as we please, or use as we please. It is abuseable, useable.

But still, a man really is just a walking dildo, and a woman is still just a walking hole, and to fill up a hole you have to jam something into it.
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Sunday, August 29, 2004

Random

Woman, man. Love - lust. Kiss. Look eye-to-eye. Take off clothes. Naked. Against each other. Coalesce, become one. It is erect. She is open. Inside. My purity you stole.

Ejaculation. Sperm. White sea. Heads with tails. Flagellum. Ovum. Eggs. Gestation. Race to the finish. Combine. Zygote. Genes. Passing information. X Y.

Womb. Fetus. Placenta. Umbilical cord. Dividing. Feeding. Morning sickness. Maternity. Pregnancy. Knocked up. Big stomach.

Doctor says, "Push, push." Pain. Stretching. Head coming out. Pain. Almost there. Pain. There it comes. Out it comes.

Baby crying on mommy's shoulder. Tears. Naked. Umbilical cord cut. Penis circumsized.

Can't walk. No hair on head. Small, little, weak. Puny. Empty mind. Goo goo gah gah. Rattle rattle, playing with toy, in crib.

Learns to crawl. Then walk. Loses teeth. Tooth fairy comes. Mommy gives baths. Mommy hugs. Mommy loves. Daddy throws up and down, daddy plays with. Dog chases around, in backyard, in grass. Baby says, "Woof! Woof!" like dog, laughs and runs, but dog snaps and bites baby, baby cries. Tears to face.

Preschool. Play with other kids. Build with blocks. Race with toy cars. Lincoln logs. Crayons, paper, markers scissors, fun.

1st grade. 2nd grade. 3rd grade.

Learns to read and write. Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, now I know my abc's, next time won't you sing with me? Learns basic math. 1+1 = 2. 4 - 3 = 1.

Mommy says, "You're special." Teachers say, "You're special." They say, "You're different." They say, "No one's the same."

---

I had this whole thing writ out, but I wasn't satisfied, so I'll add more to it when I can keep myself focused on writing the whole thing as good as I wrote some of other parts. . .

I'm just too tired to do as good of a job as I have so far.
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Saturday, August 28, 2004

Thickening.

I called my mom a bitch, once.

There is a reason, but it still doesn't make it right - on that I agree.

I went upstairs. I was scouring the house for my keys - I had lost them. I went into the computer room.

She was moving stuff around, and started yelling at me because I'd moved some things around in there when I was looking for my keys. I kept looking for my keys anyway - and a piece of paper fell from the desk.

She then proceeded to wail and yell and scream at me. I simply walked out, sick of being screamed and yelled at, and shut the door, saying, "I don't know why you have to be such a bitch today."

So when I come home from school, my mom says, "He called me a bitch," and then my dad starts going on and on about how I need to stop disrespecting my mother, and all this garbage.

It's pretty sad. If she doesn't like it when I called her a bitch, what she has to do is approach me about it - not do this "tattle-tale on Mitch to dad" bullshit she's doing.

Plus she takes things completely out of context - she just says straight-up that I called her a "bitch." As I showed above, it wasn't just that - there was actually a stimulus which brought me to say it - she was screaming at me too.

I mean, I think she deserves to be called a bitch, for all she's doing at this point - going out and drinking every night she possibly can, coming home at 2 AM and coming down to my room.

I remember one time.

I was downstairs reading Choke. It was the day before school. I was trying to relax, because tomorrow it started again.

She got home. I heard the garage door.

She came downstairs.

I could smell her. Perfume, smoke. The perfume was strong - it was as if the perfume was trying to cover up it.

She opened the door in my room.

She lied on my bed. I didn't like her there, but there was nothing I could do.

She began telling me she loved me, and she told me to tell her I loved her.

I'm supposed to tell her I love her when she's sitting here drunk. I don't think so.

I act like I'm trying to read my book. She takes it away from me.

She says some other things, and I just want her to go away. . .and eventually she does, frustrated that I won't give her any "contact," or anything.

As she walks away she says, "I never thought my son would be sitting there reading a book," and I think, well, there's a lot of people that read books. . .I'm no different and I'm no more special.

I cannot stand it when she comes around me when she's drunk. It's so annoying. She knows I am not the type of person that likes to be hugged and all that - I'm not some little baby. But she still does it when she's drunk.

And when she's drunk. . .god, I don't even know how to describe it. It's just really bothersome. She acts like some little girl, or something.

When I left for work, about an hour after school, I saw my mom and I told her, bye, female dog. I meant it in a sarcastic way - I mean, bitch is just a word, I swear all the time if I feel like it, and there was a stimulus that brought me to say it to her anyway - it's not like she's innocent.

When I came home from work about 9:40, my dad gives me shit for calling her a female dog as well. I told him I meant it in a sarcastic way, but as if he'll understand.

Also yesterday, before I went to work, my mom tried to make him sign this paper, probably a divorce paper. He read it and said he wasn't signing it - it said things in it that may have given custody of my brother to her, and that he'd have to give her $1,000, plus $600, a month.

When I left for work outside, they were sitting there - she was bawled over in her lap, crying, he was sitting.

I drove off and left for work.

When I got home from work, my brother had lost some of his front teeth because he passed out and went unconscious - and he'd also gashed this big gash on his head, which now had stiches in it.

What the hell's going on? Seriously, shit is starting to happen way too fast, my life's starting to get way too busy - I basically go to school now, then work - and on days I don't work I get the time I can get. . .but I work this whole weekend.

Bleh. Too much shit to think about.
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Friday, August 27, 2004

Freudian Schmoodian?

Here's a good one for you.

If you analyze Little Red Riding Hood from a Freudian perspective, here's what you get:

Her red hood, and red garment she wears symbolizes the first coming of the menses - the first period.

The woods symbolize a little girl getting lost in the adult world, and having to get used to it and become a part of it.

And the wolf, well. . .you don't want to know what he symbolizes.

Figure it out yourself.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Whee

This isn't too well done, but I have it. . .

I'm posting it here mainly so I can print it out if I have to when I go to school tomorrow.
.
I'll also be editing this post and adding another paper I have to write for this book.

And I'm still not done with the book, completely, yet, either - I still have 50 pages. But I think I'm close enough - I've read 200 pages in two days, of this book, which has to be an accomplishment.

Well, maybe you don't think it's an accomplishment, but you try to read The Sound and the Fury and you'll see what a trying, hard book it is to read.

But yet at the same time, it's worth it to read it, too.

---

The Sound and the Fury is a very trying book, at least at first. The first chapter of it is narrated by Benjy, who is mentally disabled.

Benjy has no sense of time. Because of this, his narration makes little to no sense and has no chronological order to it.

The main problem was I approached this book like any other book in the beginning. I assumed it would follow some type of chronological order, but this was not the case.

Instead, I have Benjy, and his narration.

Reading that part of the book was very trying, and took a lot of patience. Half the time I didn't even know what I was reading, since Benjy would flashback so often.

Despite this, looking at, I think the way Benjy's perspective was written was rather innovative on Faulkner's part. When you think about it, this is how someone like Benjy would write.

By reading the way Faulkner chose to write as Benjy, we get to see just how hard it is to be Benjy. Just how confusing. Just how much his life is sound and emotion, and memory.

It's very hard to decipher all that Benjy says. . .he jumps around way too much. It would take thorough re-readings of that section of the book to gain a full and complete understanding of it.

Faulkner's choice to do Benjy's narration first, I think, hurts this novel, at least to your common readers. The way it is written is definitely a big turn-off, and is hard to read. But at the same time, it's so different from anything else you've probably read before, which gives it something of a fresh feeling to it. But it still hurts the novel. As much good as the way it's written is, it's also bad, too.

Faulkner could've easily put Jason's narration first, or Quentin's, if he wanted. I think if he had made that choice, it would have made the transition into Benjy's narration a bit easier on the reader, at least.

On the other hand, getting the hardest thing to read out of the way at first is also good.

The second section of the book is narrated by Quentin, who isn't to be confused with the other Quentin in the book, who is Caddy's daughter.

I liked this section of the book very much. Here, we're still given bursts of flashbacks, with italics to show them coming on, but we're also given some straight-up narration in chronological order.

Some of this section is to be likened with Benjy's, in that it's so abstract and hard to decipher, it's hard to make sense of what you're even reading, and takes a lot of work to keep up at. But, there is the straight-up narration, intermixed with that free-flow of thoughts.

At the point in this section where Faulkner doesn't even use punctuation at all, and spaces--like they're stanzas-- it's almost like a poem, I thought. The way it was written was also pretty poetic. I liked it. It gave you a good sense of what a human psyche would be like. . .a conglomeration of both reality and fantasy. Of abstract and tangible.

Towards the end of Quentin's section, it got harder and harder to know what was going on. Especially that one last big paragraph--it was all just one continuing sentence. You really got lost in all those words strung together, trying to make sense of them but in vain.

The third section is the most straightforward of the first person narratives. It is done by Jason.

I enjoyed the way this was written as well. I thought Jason is a lot like me. He's cynical, and sarcastic.

Most of this section was narration, but there was a little bit of flashbacks. But this was much, much easier to read than the other two sections.

It was a nice breath of fresh air after sloughing through the two prior sections.

The fourth, and final, section was a third person, omniscent perspective. It's all narration and easily the the most understandbly written part of the novel. I enjoyed it as well. It shows me Faulkner really was something of a genius.

I did like this book, despite its difficulties. It was painful to read at times, and other times it just clicked into place. What I liked the most, though, was how unconventional the book is. Faulkner's known for how experimental he was as a writer, and this book is a testament to that.

I read somewhere that Faulkner called this book a failure, but a good one.

I'd have to agree: sometimes our failures are our greatest achievements.

---

Just having fun here. I laughed my ass off.

---

A classic. You know, I've never known too many things that're "classic." I mean, there's many different types of "classic" - there's classic moments, classic times, classic clothes, classic people, classic this and that and this and that, until your head just feels about like it's going to fall off.

And then, of course, there's classic books!

What makes a classic book? No one knows, and everyone has a different opinion to it.

What is a classic book, a specific book that's classic? No one knows, and everyone has a different opinion to it.

I mean, what is classic? What defines classic? What breathes classic? What emanates classic?

The answer? I don't really know, actually. But I've been forced to write this paper on a book that's apparently considered classic by all and everyone (my new English teacher, that is). So here I am, typing away quick. Fast.

Okay, so let's start this off right, shall we?

Hello, my name is Mitchell Grant Smith, and I have aspirations to be a writer when I grow up. Well, maybe - I don't really know. And I'm here to give you a literary analysis (whatever that is) of the "classic" book by none other than William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury.

So what is this book? And what's so great about it? What's so classic about it?

Well well, gather round, ye children, and I shall tell. . .as best as I can. . .about this book. . .it will be as if we are around a fire, telling secrets which are slander and cannot be uttered again! Shhh! Quiet! Let me speak, now.

The reason this book is considered classic is because it's a masterpiece of innovation. How, you say, mouth agape, wondering eyes like doors? Well, how, well, you see, Faulkner uses a form of writing dubbed "Stream of consciousness writing," which involves writing down a character's thoughts as they come, often creating sentences which don't make too damn much sense, and are hard to get sense out of.

You sort of have to beat up the words to get the sense out of them. Sort of put on your boxing glove, and wham! hit 'em where it hurts. And in this case, your boxing glove is your brain.

Yes, this book showcases one of the most hardest-to-read narratives in literary history. . .the dreadful terror that is. . ."BENJY'S SECTION," as I've come to call it. This, being the first section (chapter, part, whatever) of the book, is written by an idiot, in first person.

Yes, that's right, you heard me. An idiot.

But "idiot" is a rather derrogatory word, isn't it? I know, I know, tone it down, Mitch. . .I will, I will. Okay, we'll say he's "mentally disadvantaged." Well, anyway, this "mentally disadvantaged" thirty-three-year-old, Benjy, narrates it. He talks about many things, blabbering on and on and on until you feel you're in hell, in excruciating pain. Well, not really, but at the same time you do.

You see, Benjy's the sort of chap that because he's "mentally disadvantaged," has no sense of right, or wrong - no sense of time or place - no sense that things change. He just doesn't know. He doesn't have enough capacity to know. It's the way he was made, by God (if you believe in him), or the way his genes got messed with to cause him to be messed up. Whatever you blame, Benjy's what he is. "Mentally disadvantaged."

Therefore (what a pompous word), when, and above all if, you read this book, prepare to have no sense of time - of right or wrong -prepare to hear things from Benjy. That's just the way it's written. And let me tell you, it's not easy to read.

I read it, and I didn't get too much from it - it's just how it goes.

Benjy's narrative takes place during only one day, but things which happen during that day cue his memories - and it takes him to the past. Usually, Mr. Faulkner uses italics to show the interjection of a flashback, but even so, it's hard as all hell to know what's even going on half the time, unless you read into it, and you use your head and break it open, and beat and bruise and bloody those words - and that isn't easy.

That means you'll have to read through "BENJY'S SECTION" many times if you care to know everything that there is to get there, sadly. I know, I know, reading blows in all its entirety, and having to read the same goddamned thing is like asking for you to hold a gun to your head and watch as time goes by, tick tock tick tick tick Tock Tick TOCK TICK TICK TOCK. But you have to do it, in my case, since you have to do this "literary analysis" thing.

Well, I didn't read through it but two times - but I got a better idea of what's going on, at least.

For all the pain of reading this first part of the book, it's worth it. At times, as imperfect and uneven as it is to read, it really gets to being worth it, I guess. . . well not really. . .well yes. Hell, I don't know. All I know is it was good when it was good, I guess - that's my "literary analysis" of it.

Thankfully, the next three chapters of the book are easier on the old noggin, so you can sit back, relax, take a shower, do the hair - whatever - and continue on reading without having to get your brain into the mess and dirty too much.

Still, that "too much" is a lot more than you'd think.

The next chapter is narrated by Quentin, a twenty-something going to college at Harvard. His narration is also strewn with "stream of consciousness" writing, to your erogenous displeasure. I know, I know, and I'm sorry.

But all in all, this chapter's much more even, since it's not all just "stream of consciousness" writing - but rather has some narration that is chronological.

At one point in it, even, it resembles poetry, pure and simple - Mr. Faulkner uses stanza-like structures to tell the story, which is interesting and worked for me, at least. Good stuff.

But at other times, the "stream of consciousness" gets a little too streaming. To the point where you aren't even able to associate the words together you're reading to form a sentence which makes sense, and you keep reading anyway, hearing the words but not putting them into context, since you don't really have any idea what the context is - since you don't really know what you're reading really means.

Near the end of the chapter, there's this part where there's this big paragraph of just words, end after end of them, connected together - not even really making a sentence, just an entire ocean of words, floating there not really hooking up.

It's enough to make you shut the book.

But me, I had to read the book, so I didn't shut it, and I tried to decipher it - but ot no avail. Not much avail, anyway.

Will someone give me an award, or money? Money would be good. This was sort of like torture, you know. Pure and simple, it was torture.

The next chapter's even easier. It's narrated by Jason, a thirty-something cynic. There's very little "stream of consciousness" writing here, and it's all narration.

And the last chapter? It's written in third person. I guess old Faulkner wanted to become a God or something, be omniscient and omnipotent and all, so he decided to do it third person.

So what makes this book classic, to me at least? Like I said, just how different it is, in the way it's written. To me, it probably pushed the envelope during its time - the 1920's. I mean, it's so unconvential, the way he wrote it, and the risks he took.

I think that makes anything classic. Well, I hope so, because that's what makes this book classic for me.

Want some other reasons why it's classic? Well, Faulkner needs to be given merit for his storytelling abilities. Because he has them.

The characters have depth in this book - they feel alive. And the reason why is because each different narrator has a distinct different in the words they use and how they write. And also because Faulkner's good at narration, too.

So there you have it. You can stop reading and do whatever you want, as long as you leave me alone! Okay, okay, I didn't really mean that. . .but if you excuse me, I have a life and things to do.
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The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner

I found this interesting. . .

"A Note on the Title
The title of The Sound and the Fury refers to a line from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Macbeth, a Scottish general and nobleman, learns of his wife’s suicide and feels that his life is crumbling into chaos. In addition to Faulkner’s title, we can find several of the novel’s important motifs in Macbeth’s short soliloquy in Act V, scene v:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(V.v.18–27)

The Sound and the Fury literally begins as a “tale / Told by an idiot,” as the first chapter is narrated by the mentally disabled Benjy. The novel’s central concerns include time, much like Macbeth’s “[t]omorrow, and tomorrow”; death, recalling Macbeth’s “dusty death”; and nothingness and disintegration, a clear reference to Macbeth’s lament that life “[s]ignif[ies] nothing.” Additionally, Quentin is haunted by the sense that the Compson family has disintegrated to a mere shadow of its former greatness.

In his soliloquy, Macbeth implies that life is but a shadow of the past and that a modern man, like himself, is inadequately equipped and unable to achieve anything near the greatness of the past. Faulkner reinterprets this idea, implying that if man does not choose to take his own life, as Quentin does, the only alternatives are to become either a cynic and materialist like Jason, or an idiot like Benjy, unable to see life as anything more than a meaningless series of images, sounds, and memories.
"

---

I'm forcing myself to read this book right now. It's very hard, and takes patience to read and fully understand (at this point I'm not really understanding much of what I'm reading, either).
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Tuesday, August 24, 2004

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Monday, August 23, 2004

Worthy Disaster

I'm on the run. With my Steak Buffet shirt on, cap in hand, tan khakis on. I'm on the run.

I don't know what I'm running from. Is it time? Maybe. Is it me? Maybe. Is it life? Maybe. Is it anything?

It had been a long day, but I had took it. I can take it. In this world, you can't be weak. If you are weak, you have to get strong.

And strength comes from many different places. Some in the darkest reaches, those darkest spaces.

My legs, up and down, my breath, huffing, one thing on my mind. To get home.

Home is where the heart is. At least they say.

I run most of the way, getting tireder as I go along. Those ten hours of working behind.

It still feels like the cap's on my head. Like I'm there going to people's tables, saying how was your meal, taking their plates.

One group, they'd said, "Looks like a crappy job." I said, "Yeah."

"That's why I'm going to college."

I walked away.

"Smart kid," I heard.

Smart kid? Me?

Cleaning those plates. . .if only cleaning up life was so easy. If only life's things put in your way were able to be seen. Were able to be manipulated, scraped away and made bare. It's not like that.

Life's a mess, but it's beautiful in some way. . .you can't touch this mess. You can't put your hand quite on it. But you can feel it. . .and sometimes that feeling is severed, twisted, and cut away.

Running. Night's out. I wonder what some people passing by think. Probably think, boy, that kid must have it tough. Maybe he works for his family, who is so poor they don't have a car and barely make ends meet.

I think, these people all have their own cares. . .they don't need to stop their cars for me. Their life's a beautiful mess, too. One you can't just scrape away like all those plates I'd scraped away. Made clean.

When I get home, my dad's home. Finally.

He's all on me about mom.

I'm too tired. I worked, I ran.

Trying to run from a disaster is wanting the disaster to land right at your knees. But this disaster's worth it, in some way. . .somehow. . .
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Long Forgotten

Oceansize is such a great, great band.

They are now honestly one of my most favorite, favorite, bands.

There's not words to describe them - I wish I could share some of this. It's so amazing. And I know the word amazing has no meaning really at this point, but trust me when I say it: I mean this with everything in me that Oceansize is a great, great band. . .and I am eagerly awaiting the release of a new CD of theirs. If it comes.

Tony, thanks for giving them to me.

Buy this album now.

...."they’re currently making the music you’d have expected Radiohead to be making if they’d followed 'The Bends' and 'OK Computer' on its natural progression. Beautiful."Simon Hawkins Bleed Music
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