Subjectivity

We've been throwing around this idea in class about Billy's reliability as a narrator. Is is really lying if the things Billy is talking about did happen, just in his head? Just because it didn't happen for us, doesn't mean it didn't for him. And how much does that undermine his credibility? It reminded me a lot of a conversation I had been having with Kathryn about color sensitivity.

It's hard to explain, but essentially the idea is that none of us quite sees the same color. Our eyes are all different-- different shapes, different sizes, and so the light we intake is all going to be slightly different. There are of course scientific ways to determine what a color is, X number of nanometers corresponds to red, and so on. Perhaps this isn't so much of a comment on color, but a comment on the failures of language...

Nonetheless, the idea goes like this: perhaps the colors we all see aren't only slightly different, but drastically different.

As opposed to this...

Something like this.

What if we have all just agreed that some color is called "blue"? Maybe the color of "my blue" is on the complete opposite end of the color wheel from the "blue" that Kathryn is seeing.

Kathryn's "blue"

My "blue"

Is there anything less legitimate about Kathryn's blue than mine? There's no way of proving which one is the actual blue, because if we point to an object and agree "That's blue," then we're both right. We're each seeing our respective blues.

I think that this plays in a lot to what Billy Pilgrim means to us as a character. Just because he is telling us things that seem completely absurd, like UFOs and Tralfamadorian time travel, in his mind he is telling his reality. Just because the description of his blue doesn't perfectly match the blue that we see, it isn't any less real to him. He is telling it how he sees it, and just like with colors, there is no way of being certain that his perception of reality isn't the same reality that we are actually living in. 

The Family Story

I'd like to start off by noting that this is actually the third time in my Uni career reading this book, and two chapters in there's still a lot I could say that would end up being spoilers. Don't get me wrong, it's a great book, but I'm hesitant to respond in-depth yet for the sake of the other half of the class that hasn't graced the pages of Billy Pilgrim's adventures. What I was trying to figure out how to share in class, but never found a place to is in fact a well preserved Bild-family tale. Let us set the stage...

It is 1995, the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. A vigil has been set on the campus of the University of Chicago. In the center is Henry Moore's Nuclear Energy statue, commemorating the Met Lab, a part of the Manhattan Project that did research toward the atomic bomb.

A number of famous anti-war protest leaders have been invited. My grandparents are among the leaders of a Chicago group of activists known as MetroSeniors. It is they who have organized this assembly. Among the leaders is the humanitarian, Kurt Vonnegut. He gives an impassioned speech in some assembly hall on campus, or as impassioned a speech as Vonnegut can give. Word has it that in person he was a bit of a downer. But I think you could grasp that from his books. 

Afterwards, there's a small party at my grandparent's house. The same one that my father grew up in. The one that I stayed in every time I went to Chicago until I was 11. 4819 South Kimbark St. in Hyde Park. Look it up-- it's a beautiful house, though at the moment there are some renovations going on. More of a construction site than a house right now. But I digress. The party. 

Ah, but first there's a bit of information that I've left out. Depending on your version (as we discussed in class today), the title page may differ. There may be a part in the sub-title that says "By Kurt Vonnegut, a fourth-generation German-American now living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod [and smoking too much]..." and so on. 

So, the party. It's... well, seniors and middle aged people such as my parents all around a vast dining room table, talking, whatever it is you do at parties. The smoking too much part wasn't an exaggeration. Vonnegut was in fact as close to a chain smoker as you can get without actually being one. So by this point, he's really craving a cig. Pulls one out. Quick as a flash, my grandmother (bless her heart) is there.

"There's no smoking in this house. Take it outside," she says flatly.

Vonnegut looks at her in astonishment. I mean, he is Kurt Vonnegut after all.

"I don't care who you are. No smoking here. The door is right over there if you must."

And that is the story of how my grandmother almost literally kicked Kurt Vonnegut out of her house for trying to smoke. (I believe he did eventually come back in, two or three cigarettes later, but he was nonetheless a bit miffed)

What is Art? (baby don't hurt me...)

I'll begin with one of the most confusing pieces of performance art I've ever seen.

...That is, if I could ever find a video of it. In essence, it involved a very large piece of paper over a hole, and then having the artist walk through it. There was wild applause, and the paper remained in the gallery for a few weeks, if not months. So the burning question is, was that art? What was the art anyway? Was it the man walking through the paper? Was it the paper in the moment of being torn? In that case, would every single particle of paper that was separated a work of art in itself? Or was the art what remained-- the shreds of the paper on the floor, the parts that clung to the hole still, and the memory of the man who had destroyed it..?

In my opinion, art is a combination of process and purpose, but the biggest part is not what is physical, but what takes place in the minds of the viewers. Art is the reactions people have to the physical piece. I suppose that's postmodern in its own right-- you have to be self aware of your own reaction to the piece in order for the meaning of the piece to exist in the first place. The art is in your own head, and the process by which you create the art is as much of the art if not more than the final piece that gets framed and hung somewhere. The art is what cannot be created or recreated-- your initial feelings and the process of the artist. The final piece is a sort or memory of the art; a logical conclusion.

Of course that brings in arts that don't create physical remnants, like dance or theatre. I feel those better highlight the importance of purpose in art. The performer is highly self conscious of the fact that they are doing art. Any movement done in the span of time considered a part of the performance is considered art. Let's go back to my first example of performance art. The artist enters the gallery and stands in front of the crowd. He bows. The act has begun. But he is still several paces from the work itself; the paper. He takes those paces and stands before it, contemplating his actions. Pause right there. The artist takes several paces. Are those steps considered art?

In a day to day context, those would just be steps. I'm sure that thousands of people have taken nearly identical steps in the exact same gallery. But the steps taken by the artist are special. They are a part of his work. Yes, they are necessary in order to get closer to the stunning act itself, but would we consider the introduction any less a part of the book than the climax? I suppose that the difference with performance art and dance is this postmodern idea: the creator is INCREDIBLY self aware. Each movement is meticulously planned-- you are aware if your actions on a level you wouldn't be in day to day life. Your actions have a purpose, an end goal, some kind of rhyme and reason. And that is the difference between what is and isn't art.

::twitch::

Twelve pages into Mumbo Jumbo, and I've had to stop for a bit.

YOU CAN'T JUST PUT NUMBERS IN THE MIDDLE OF A SENTENCE.

ALSO PHONETIC SOUNDS ARE NOT LEGITIMATE ADJECTIVES.

THIS LED ME TO BELIEVING THAT ZUZU WAS A BIRD???

The biggest problem is that these AREN'T legitimate problems, and no one really said that you can't do this crap. And so the struggle continues....

Thanks for ruining a great book.

This post isn't going to focus on Ragtime. Sorry. I needed a break from Doctorow's post-modernist head and confusing time and space jumps. I wanted something clear and fairly straightforward; I wanted a book that I knew what was going to happen, but was still enjoyable no matter how many times I reread it. I turned to Steig Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I turned to one of the best examples of post-modern fiction of the decade. (Please forgive me, this is going to be quite a long post, and may not make much sense to those who haven't read the series.)

It took about three chapters for me to realize that I was never going to be able to look at this book the same way. It was in the middle of an examination of Blomqvist's massive court case that I realized that dammit, Larsson had freaking made up a multi-international corporate empire known as Wennerström Enterprises. You can't just do that! The book literally pivots on the egregious crimes that Wennerström has committed and there are several chapters dedicated solely to picking apart how this corporation functions and specifically what parts of its operations are being scrutinized. And what works so well about making up this corporation is that for American audiences we know next to nothing about Swedish business.

I mean, yes of course we get the idea that this industry isn't real. But we've been so intimately involved in it that there is a part of us thinking "God, you can't make this stuff up. Somewhere there has to be some massive business we can substitute in for this fake one and we'll see that all of these crimes have actually been committed!" It feels too real to be fake, and Larsson's previous endeavors in the field of political journalism certainly help to bolster these fictional accusations that he makes.

Then there is the post-modernist idea of thinking on a global scale while acting on a local one. There is nothing more perfect than this. Much of the novel focuses on the small village of Hedeby. There, Blomqvist and his private researcher, Salander, begin to uncover a string of horrendous murders that took place both in the village and in the surrounding areas. Okay, act locally-- check. But these murders are called into question by the sheer anti-semitism of them. They're all literal but warped interpretations of passages of Leviticus, calling into question religious-fanaticism. Better yet, several members of a prestigious family (some of the suspects) were deeply involved in Nazism during the Second World War, and you can't get more global than that. It's the same matter as with Younger Brother or Coalhouse-- who's to say these things didn't happen?

The globalization really takes off in the second and third books, when Larsson goes above and beyond in making things up. He creates a small branch of government that "technically does not exist" and yet is able to function in any number of illegal ways and quietly manipulate most aspects of Swedish international security. There are no records of it, and apparently the Prime Minister didn't even know it existed (at least until s*** hits the fan, or basically the entire plot of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest). Way to cover your butt, Larsson. It's ridiculous and completely over the top, and yet it plays so much on our 21st century distrust in political policy that it works. I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't at least consider scrutinizing Swedish policy in the aftermath of the book. And again, as an American audience, who are we to question this? Honestly, can you say that you know how Swedish government works?

There are still a lot of unformed ideas in my head that I may or may not continue writing about later. In the meantime though, I think I'll sit on my bed glaring at the trilogy (and two graphic novels) trying to decide if I want to continue the series for the fifth time. Thanks so much postmodernism; now that I've been intimately acquainted with you, I don't know if my relationship with Lisbeth Salander will ever be quite the same.

Changing the Subject

These first few chapters of Doctorow's Ragtime... well. Erm. Phew. That about sums it up for me. The story hops around quickly enough to give you whiplash, and characters appear and disappear as soon as you remember what they had been up to last time. To be honest, I thought that Houdini had been killed off as soon as he was introduced in that whole "buried alive" act. I'm not sure if that means I'm extremely pessimistic or that I've been reading too much Game of Thrones. But what I really want to get at is all of the lengths that we're going to to avoid discussing the extremely explicit actions that some characters want to delve in to.

Now, I'm not saying that this would be a good way to spend an entire class period. Or even a bit of one. It would end with a lot of blushing and giggling and awkward glances for everyone. But that's just it, isn't it? We can't talk about sex at school. Or at least in an English class. It's alright in a health class, but why? Is it simply because they sterilize it so much that it's literally just body parts doing something? In English, sex is detailed, characters, people are connected to their... "parts." People can be held responsible for their actions instead of just being diagrams on paper. But these are characters!

Okay, fine maybe in this case we don't really want to imagine this portrayal of Emma Goldman going down on this portrayal of Evelyn Nesbit, and that's understandable, but we avoid the subject entirely. Honestly, a decent amount of last night's reading is discussed in our peripheral vision. Something along the lines of "Evelyn starts slumming, Emma Goldman talks, Houdini escapes from jail, ohbythewayThawwaveshisschlongaround, and Mother finds a baby buried alive." How about them slums though, huh?