Dropping Eaves & "Smooth Talk"

Everyone is the class was assigned to listen in on a conversation that he or she had no part of, just to get a feel of what people are really talking about. And honestly, it's annoying to hear people say, "everyone only talks about boring, mundane topics." Yeah... that may be true but I don't expect all of my conversations with people to be about heavy, life-altering topics. Now don't get me wrong, I do love to discuss thought-provoking literature with people, or ponder world issues and whatnot, but at the same time I also find pleasure in just talking about simple things. Maybe it's just me, but hearing little tidbits about people's days often cheers me up. It makes me realize that there are people who make the same mistakes I do, and find humor in the same silly things, and listen to the same music or whatever. Maybe I'm just kind of a people-person, but if someone has a story to tell, I will always be interested in listening. I used to work in a little bakery/cafe and I always loved hearing people's stories as they passed in and out of the shop. And who knows, maybe you can find insight from people's "meaningless" conversations. So if you're passing judgement on someone based on the thirty seconds of conversations you eavesdropped on, then (in my opinion) you're being to hard on people. There's a quote I really like that I think could be relevant here:

"The world is smaller than you think, and the people on it are more beautiful than you think."
-Bertram van Munster (director/producer)

Now on to the movie "Smooth Talk"...
My reaction to the ending of this film: "What the WHAT??" I did not care for it at all. Why the heck did Connie survive? I really thought at the end of the story symbolized her departure from innocence and therefore she would never return home again. I so very badly wanted the movie to end with the line "What if my eyes are brown". When a book or a movie ends ambiguously, it is typically a better piece of work (not always though...). I mean, think about it, when a story ends with a cliffhanger, there is always room for interpretation. Whenever I have conversations about books I've read or movies I've seen, it is usually over the ending; what could have happened, what we think happened to the character, etc. The authors of these stories know what they are doing and when they leave the story with a cliffhanger, they want to leave it up to the reader's imagination. Plus, I always think you can pull more symbolism from stories that don't have a "set-in-stone" conclusion. For me, hearing other people's interpretations of these stories is one of the great things about reading an interesting story.
But I have to say, I did like how when Connie was telling her sister what happened, she said something like "It didn't even happen. I wasn't even there". I think this shows how she had a momentary out-of-body experience because she was so stricken with fear. In reality, when we are paralyzed with fear, we don't always use our right mind.

January 25th

So I'm sitting in class, as usual, listening to Professor Sexson talk about the difference between taking to people who are interesting and people who are boring (obviously listening to boring people makes time seem infinite) and it suddenly hit me like a bolt of lightning: I'm one of those boring people! I can't tell a good story, I really can't. In fact, whenever I try to tell my friends stories about occurrences in my life, they tend to give me the eye roll and the sarcastic "wow, great story, Michelle". It's quite frustrating, but I would like to think I'm slowly improving on my "non-interesting qualities" and I'm hoping this class will help. Being exposed to good literature in this class is forcing me to ask deeper questions about the stories I read: who are the characters, really? Like I said in my previous post, characters in stories are very similar to everyday people. Not everyone is who they appear on the surface and there are many layers to every individual (ya know, like onions... or parfaits). It's just a matter of taking a closer look, and dissecting every aspect of the character's personality; that is when you can see the character for what he or she really is.

The topic of "pick-up" lines was also discussed today in class. Personally, I think they're pretty cheesy but I know several girls who would be completely smitten if a teenage boy recited Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" It really makes you think back to Connie and Arnold Friend. Arnold consistently "kept his cool" while he was speaking to Connie even when he was saying very crude things. However, the novel Lolita is written about a pedophile yet the language is so eloquent, we almost forget that he is talking about a very young girl. It's very easy to see why young, naive girls would fall for the sort of smooth talk that Arnold Friend demonstrates.

January 22nd, 2010

Flipping through the section called "Monsters and Heroes", I came across a story by an author I really enjoy: Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The story is called "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and it is basically about a angel who has come to earth to take the very sick child from his parents. This "angel" is a withered old man with, obviously, enormous wings coming out of his back. The parents hear from their neighbor that she suspects he has come to take their child and the parents lock the old man in their chicken coop.

I'm not trying to give a complete retelling of the story, but there is a part that struck me as odd. The priest, Father Gonzaga, visits the old man with enormous wings and states that there is no way this man could possibly be an angel. "He reminded them that the devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary" was stated and it sort of had me thinking: we really do have a pretty set-in-stone idea in our heads about how "godly" things should appear. There's the stereotypical version of an angel that we are all familiar with (the wings, white gown, halo, probably has the appearance of a younger individual, whatever, etc. etc.) but it is refreshing to see an author portray an angel as an old man that represents something that is flawed and all too human. I think it also represents how we tend to disbelieve anything that doesn't fit the description of how we would originally perceive it to be.

I'm really enjoying this section called Monsters and Heroes. While reading the stories, it is sometimes unclear who represents the supposed monster or hero, which gives me something to take a closer look at. It sorts of skews my perception of the classic fairytale heroes and monsters and makes me realize that characters rarely fit just one description. Just like Arnold Friend; he is not necessarily just a "monster" or the "devil" but rather a bunch of personality types meshed together which makes him even more real. In real life, people are not one-dimensional and the same goes for characters in stories. If you look a little closer, you can see that the best characters in literature are so memorable because they are so dynamic.

All for now
-Michelle

Day Three

"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?"

I think the above quotation accurately sums up the reason why we are required to put our thoughts about the class into a blog. For me, it is much easier to express my thoughts and opinions on a piece of literature if I'm able to write/type the words out myself. But anyway...

On the third day of class, Professor Sexson read through the poem "The Demon Lover" by an anonymous author. This poem had striking similarities to Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" which only reinforced the claim that every story is just another retelling of a different story. Joyce Carol Oates found inspiration to write her story from the true crimes committed by Charles Schmid (which she read in an Arizona newspaper). She always pulled inpiration from "The Demon Lover" in that the devil in the poem had a cloven foot, which is what gave away who he really was; Arnold Friend was similar in that he stuffed his boots with tin cans in order to make himself appear taller. It makes the reader think that Arnold Friend could really has a "cloven foot" and represents evil. By taking this class, I hope to pick up on more of these connections in poems, stories, limericks, etc. I think it is very interesting that nearly every story you read exists solely based on the fact that a previous story was written that gave the author inspiration to write his or her interpretation.

This class is very quickly turning out to be one of my favorites. I have to say, it really beats sitting through an Organic Chemistry lecture.

Au Revoir!
Michelle S.

Second Day

The second day of class was more focused on literature rather than just taking attendance. ;) After hearing Professor Sexson recite the first few lines from Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", I was really intrigued and wanted to find out what happened next with Connie and the mysterious Arnold Friend. Later that day I read the story and was horrified. This story was very unsettling and gave me a strong reaction. What was even more upsetting about this story is that is was inspired by true events (I googled the "Pied Piper of Tuscon"). I thought it was interesting how this story fell in the section called "Monsters and Heroes" because Arnold Friend is definitely not the stereotypical "monster" but fits the description of a modern-day monster so perfectly; he has a dark, alluring presence, talks smoothly, and knows a haunting amount of information about Connie and her family. Listening to his calm voice say threatening things to this fifteen year-old girl is even more disturbing than if he were yelling them. The end of the story also left me with chills because it was so ambiguous; we don't know what will ever happen to Connie or her family. I think this author did exactly what good literature is intended to do: stir up a strong reaction from the reader.

Something else that caught my attention was how the story was for Bob Dylan. Flip a few pages from the story and the reader notices the lyrics to Dylans's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". I thought that music played an important role in this story, and almost offered Connie a sort of escape from her family as well as the rest of the world. The lyrics "Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you/Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you/The vagabond who's rapping at your door/ Is standing in the clothes that you once wore/Strike another match, go start anew/And it's all over now, baby blue" left me picturing Arnold Friend moving closer and closer to Connie's screen door as he is coaxing her to take a ride in his gold jalopy. I really like seeing strong parallels between between music and literature (especially when it involves the wonderful Bob Dylan).

Today marked the first day of class and I can tell it is going to be very interesting. We went over the syllabus in class and briefly touched on how to create a blog of our own. Over the course of the semester, we will be required to read The Brother Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I'm looking forward to this book (mainly because Professor Sexson has said wonderful things about it) and because I haven't read a book this long since the most recent Harry Potter.

So far, so good!
-Michelle