Mid-term Self Evaluation Blog

Part I
One idea I noticed reoccurring in my posts was how the authors we have read use form in interesting ways, often times with narration. I guess this both intrigues and frustrates me because I really seem to like the different, unsteady form of postmodernism that doesn’t need to bind itself with rules, but at the same time I get frustrated because it makes me unsure of whether or not I’m actually understanding what I’ve read. I noticed this most in my very first blog for Winterson’s novel and I return to the concept of form with my post on Lyotard which really helped me better recognize the aspect of form in relation to postmodernism. As I said above, in some cases form helps me understand a text and at other times it confuses me more, and I discuss this in these specific blogs.
In my post for Winterson I wrote,

I noticed the postmodern aspects of this novel really shine through in Winterson’s form. It is often that I had to go back and reread something because she jumps from dialog between two people to a random thought. An example of this that really stands out for me is on pg 32. The narrator is going on about his/her obsession with looking at Louise’s wedding ring, then some dialog jumps in that reads, “‘ you bloody idiot,’ said my friend. ‘Another married woman.’” Then the narrator starts talking about Elgin and the history behind his name and his family. This left me thinking, who the hell is the friend? And why is she jumping around?

This is where the postmodern form in the novel really confused me. A friend is introduced in the above quote, and the presence of this friend completely lost me. I really enjoyed Winterson’s novel, but in this case the form really confused me. There was so much going on as I showed in this piece of my blog and I couldn’t quite grasp what was happening in the text. I also noticed, as I just reread this quote from my blog that the huge issue I had with the gender of the narrator is another form of the novel I addressed. I wrote, “the narrator is going on about his/her obsession” because at first whether or not the narrator was male or female confused me, but it them became something I liked after a few pages into the novel. The genderless narrator kept me thinking throughout the entire novel and what helped me through without knowledge of the sex of the narrator was the Malpas reading on the subject. I could then realize the concept of more than one subject in a text which I had never thought about before. So Winterson’s form both frustrated and intrigued me in Written on the Body mostly through the narrator’s gender and the creative narration that constantly jumps around. I feel I did a nice job making connections with this text in this post. I was clearly mixed up by the postmodern aspects of this novel, yet I enjoyed it as much as possible. After rereading this post I was happy with the fact that I could put down exactly what confused me about Winterson’s form and use the novel to explain what I struggled with.

Lyotard was an important blog for me because after our class discussion, I could really understand his ideas about postmodernism. In this blog I discussed how,

Reading through Lyotard for the first time definitely threw me for a bit of a loop. Our class discussion really helped me pull it all together. What I grabbed most from the reading was Lyotard’s point that postmodernism alludes the reader to think certain things and I could connect with this in comparing it to Written on the Body. As a postmodern text, Winterson is constantly trying to allude the reader, and the end of the book is probably the best example of that.

In this case, Lyotard helped me better understand Winterson’s novel and the possible alluding based on allusion as a form of expression. The alluding of the reader was an important aspect of the form in Winterson’s novel. In this case the postmodern form intrigued me and it opened up a new light for me as a reader. I was confused by the end of the novel, and after reading Lyotard I realized how many options the end of Written on the Body offered. Whether or not I accurately connected Lyotard and Winterson, Lyotard still helped me see how the genderless narrator can be used in a different way. Because the narrator can be male or female and Winterson could be trying to allude the reader to think certain things about the novel which changes constantly, form is working in two ways. The alluding the reader can change based on whether or not the reader sees the narrator as male or female, or it could depend entire on when the narrator says something that alludes the reader to think the narrator is a female or when the narrator says something that alludes the reader to think its a male. In this post I was attempting to make a connection between what I understood from our class discussion and apply it to a text. I addressed the ending of the novel because that was what immediately came to mind after discussing Lyotard. I attempted to use Lyotard’s idea of alluding and attach it to Winterson’s novel when I wrote, “The reader is left wondering whether or not Louise is really there and its completely left open for the reader’s interpretation”. I was attempting to use the text to describe the correlation I was trying to make. In these two quotes from my blog I thought it was interesting how I addressed form in both cases, and at the same time both posts went well together.

Part II
Of all the posts I’ve written for postmodernism, my two best posts would have to be for the movie, Fight Club, and for Written on the Body. I feel these two are my best posts because they address connections I made with the text and I explained where and why certain things were obvious to me. In my post for Fight Club, what I liked most and think I articulated best were my ideas about Marla’s role in the movie. I suggested the following: “When Marla intruded and the narrator confronted her and said he couldn’t cry when she was there, she has destroyed him because his need to cry becomes an important part in the movie. At that point, Marla has begun invading his life and could very well be the cause of his mental creation of Tyler”. What’s most interesting to me is the fact that I described Marla as the leading factor to Tyler’s creation which happened to be said in the novel. When I introduced this idea in my blog, in connection with the movie, I thought I was really stretching the idea and there was a possibility I had no idea what I was talking about. When I read the novel and noticed the narrator says, “I know why Tyler had occurred. Tyler loved Marla. From the first night I met her, Tyler or some part of me had needed a way to be with Marla” (198), I was really amazed at the connection I made. I then used Marla to make connections with the rest of the movie, specifically her relations with Tyler and the ways in which they invade the narrator’s life. I feel like I did a nice job developing an idea based on the movie and articulated it well in this post.

In my second post, of my two best blog posts, for Written on the Body, I thought I did a nice job discussing the novel and relating back to some postmodernist texts we read and discussed in class. I did this in the last paragraph when I wrote,

Our class discussion on McHale’s definition of postmodernism and modernism will be very useful in pulling out more postmodernism in this novel. Not only does the narrator draw in postmodernism through the essence of his/her gender, but Winterson also uses modernism through the narrator’s truth and knowledge when describing his/her experience with love.

I made a connection to our class discussion from what I understood most, and related it back to what we were reading. In most cases, my posts show how class discussion has helped me understand certain aspects of a text and relate it back to postmodernism. In this post, I also noticed how although I was confused about the use of “you” in the novel, I attempted to articulate my own ideas and confusions. Usually when I write a post on something that confused me, I tend to state my confusion and leave it at that. I chose this post because even though I was at a standstill in comprehending the narration, I continued to read and think about what I was reading to attempt to draw out some meaning. I even states in my post that “It is often that I go back and reread something because she jumps from dialog between two people to a random thought”. I tried my best, even when utterly lost in narration, to discuss some important details that caught my attention in the novel in order to write the blog post.

One of my best comments was to Kim H., and I wrote,

You have a few good points about the narrator not really knowing Louise and the narrator losing your attention at certain points in the novel. I got the impression while reading this book that the narrator knew Louise in the way he/she wanted to know Louise. That is, the narrator was familiar with her body and her movements and the sensual aspects. Who Louise really was and her personality seemed unimportant to the narrator and his/her obsession with sexuality. I think this ties in really well with how the novel can lose the reader’s attention and this is probably because you’re reading the novel through the narrator’s dirty mind and towards the end the action in the novel begins to fade away. Although some parts of the novel are frustrating…I on the other hand kind of enjoyed this book in a weird way.

I made a good connection to what she discussed in her blog and described what I liked most about her ideas. I tried to add to her ideas as well by adding more of my own thoughts about the text. I also agreed with her loss of attention when reading the novel, but stated at the end how I enjoyed the novel even though she may not have. My next best comment was for Ryan in relation to Written on the Body, and I wrote,

I must say although I don’t necessarily agree with you that the narrator is a male, you do have some very interesting points here. I too was hung up on the narrators ease in having affairs. It’s as if the narrator thinks any marriage should be destroyed, even the beautiful ones. I also found it interesting when the narrator says, “I know what I did and what I was doing at the time. But I didn’t walk down the aisle, queue up at the Registry Office and swear to be faithful unto death. I wouldn’t dare” (16). It’s as if being an adulterer was the narrator’s only option and that he/she thought, who in the world would want to get married? Marriage is for losers apparently (according to this narrator anyway)!

In this comment, although I didn’t entirely agree with Ryan, I acknowledged what I found interesting in his post and added to it with other quotes from the novel. I feel I did a nice job articulating my own ideas about the narration which correlated well with what Ryan was discussing in his post.

The quotes and blog posts above are my best to date because they were the posts I feel I described my thoughts the best in. I often have difficulty doing a good job getting specific thoughts out either because I’m afraid someone will either think I’m completely wrong or I can’t really describe what I’m thinking accurately. Esther’s does this well in her blog for Fight Club the novel. She always seems to get her ideas out in a really clear way. For example, she does an excellent job relating Jameson to Fight Club in the following passage,

Today I will be thinking about the concept of Jameson’s ‘postmodernism is not a style but instead a cultural dominant.’ (4) What I take from this phrase is that we are not able to recognize postmodernism as a thing we can take or leave depending upon our preferences, but instead it is the current state of society. Jameson also insists that postmodernism is primarily characterized by a fragmentation of the concept of history, where people create a conception of the past based on small pieces of actual truth intermixed with fiction (Esther’s Blog).

She not only cited Jameson and quotes part of his essay, but she also puts it into her own words. After quoting and explaining what she got from Jameson’s theory, she also explains where in Fight Club she noticed specific instances of the “cultural dominant”. This is really an exceptional blog because of those things. Not only was Jameson’s essay a challenge just to read and get something out of, but she also went to the extent of putting his concepts into her own words and using it to make assumptions about the novel.

Three goals I would like to set for myself for writing posts for the rest of the semester would be:

• to make better connections to postmodernism and postmodern theorists in relation to the texts we read
• use more detail when discussing aspects of a text that struck me as interesting
• work on putting definitions addressed by theorists in my own words

In order to reach these goals I need to first work on participating more in class discussion. Perhaps if I get my ideas out in class I will be more confident in writing them in my blogs. When I attempt to participate in class discussion I constantly get this feeling inside that stops me. I’ve been working on this, but the lack of confidence I feel after reading a text and trying to understanding it tends to hold me back. Because so many of the texts we discuss have so much detail it’s difficult to get to everything in one class period. When we read something by a theorists I attempt to read it twice before class, but perhaps I should skim through it once more after class before I write my blog for that day. This could help me re-gather my ideas and connect them to what we discussed in class. What helps me most and what I need to continue to do in order to reach these goals is to continue writing my blog posts after class discussion. Most of the time any questions I may have about a text are brought up by someone else in class and discussed which helps me write a better post. I am going to continue working on these things and hope that my blogging improves for the rest of the semester.

Cindy Sherman Film Stills

In sticking with the film stills we viewed in class and although I also thought of and agreed with some of the possible narratives we applied to those film still, the entire time I was looking at those black and white photographs I was constantly reminded of Hitchcock films.  After giving this Hitchcock idea some thought, I decided that the film Vertigo was one I found many resemblances to.  The way Cindy Sherman is looking away in each of the photographs and never looking directly at the camera, I saw of feeling of being watched in each of the stills.  This reminded me of Vertigo because the woman, Madelaine, in the film was constantly being seen through the male gaze.  The entire film plays out as if we are watching Madelaine through the eyes of the detective, in this case the male gaze.

If I remember correctly the male gaze was brought up as a topic in class, and after thinking about it I can really see how it applies well to Cindy Sherman.  The last photograph we looked at, the film still of the woman oddly positioned in bed with the mirror in her hand also reminded me of the male gaze.  Now, I might be beating this idea to death, but at first sight of this photo I was immediately drawn to the mirror in her hand.  The way her face is positioned, again looking away from the camera, made me thinking she was refusing to look into the mirror.  It was almost as if looking in the mirror upset her in some way.  Again the look of disgust appears on her face, which I tend to notice in quite a few of her photos.  Maybe this downward angle of the camera and the look on the womans face along with the refusal to look in the mirror is again because she feels like shes being watched.  In this photo I could also argue that the camera angle forces the viewer to be staring down at her, where as in the other photos were looking more directly at her.  In sticking with the ones we discussed in class I think that was pretty much all I wanted to add.  I may be stretching a bit, but I thought I would throw it out there since it kept coming back to me.

The end of Fight Club

The end of this novel was really interesting. I think I liked the ending of the novel much better than the movie. With the movie, the audience is left questioning what will happen next to the narrator and Marla. In the novel, however, the narrator is happy in his little world with “God” behind his desk and all the little angels bringing him food on trays and pills. We know where he’s ended up and we even get some sort of feeling of happiness for the narrator.

He says everyone is writing him letters about looking forward to getting him back, but he doesn’t seem to be in a rush. It’s also interesting to see how he doesn’t object to being called Mr. Durden at the end either. He says,

But I don’t want to go back. Not yet. Just because. Because every once in a while, somebody brings me my lunch tray and my meds and he has a black eye or his forehead is swollen with stitches, and he says: ‘We miss you Mr. Durden’ (207-208).

At this point after all the work the narrator was going through to get Marla to see he wasn’t Tyler Durden, he’s using Tyler and fight club as some sort of crutch again. He likes seeing these members of fight club and the connection he still has to it, yet he’s no part of it anymore. This reminds us of what we were discussing at the end of class yesterday also. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I remember thinking about how at the end of the novel, the narrator wanted to be the center of fight club, the person in charge. If I remember correctly we may have been talking about who has the power in the novel and the role of removing that power. I kept thinking about the how when fight club was first created by Tyler and the narrator, they were the power whether or not we’re supposed to think so, that is how I saw it. Tyler, who was essentially the narrator, instructed everyone on what they were supposed to do; their homework, if you will.

It was interesting to me that with that idea, Tyler seems to remove himself from power, but the narrator is kicked out of the fight club meeting for trying to take control. The narrator, who didn’t really want the control all along, was demanding it, and I got the feeling that this was because without power or control Project Mayhem was created so he was attempting to destroy Project Mayhem and restore control. There are a lot of points in the novel where I feel like control can’t be removed and will always be there. I see this with the support groups, and with Marla and her relationship more with Tyler and then with the narrator.

Marla is another important issue in the novel. As I wrote in one of my posts about the movie when Marla and the narrator meet at the support groups, Marla has begun invading his life and could very well be the cause of his mental creation of Tyler. In a way her constant fearlessness and freedom also resembled Tyler and who the narrator wanted to be (My blog post). The narrator admits to needing Tyler to get close to Marla in chapter 28 when he says, “I know why Tyler had occurred. Tyler loved Marla. From the first night I met her, Tyler or some part of me had needed a way to be with Marla” (198). The narrator needed Marla from the moment he met her and thus, created Tyler as a way to Marla. Marla caused Tyler!

I think that’s all I really wanted to talk about for the end of the novel, but I really liked the differences in the novel from the movie. I enjoyed the novel so much more!

Fight Club the novel #2

In the second part of the novel, the differences from the movie stand out a lot more. It seems as though the relationship between Tyler and the narrator is a bit clearer in the novel and I like it a lot more. There are certain instances within the novel where it becomes clear to me that they represent the same person; (Tyler within the narrator) then at the same time it’s hard to tell. Some of the differences in the novel I really began to like much more than the movie.

The narrator’s relationship with Chloe seems to go far beyond the support group. In chapter 13 he says,

I hugged Chloe; Chloe without her hair, a skeleton dipped in yellow wax with a silk scarf tied around her bald head. I hugged Chloe one last time before she disappeared forever. I told her she looked like a pirate, and she laughed. Me, when I go to the beach, I always sit with my right foot tucked under me…my fear is that people will see my foot and I’ll start to die in their minds. The cancer I don’t have is everywhere now (106).

This passage is interesting for me in a number of ways. We don’t really get this connection he things he has with Chloe in the movie. It’s almost as though he things he has something more with her, to the point where he won’t tell Marla that he’s hugged Chloe. On another level I think he feel connected with her because he made her laugh. She has cancer and the way in which she doesn’t need to hide it in the sand the way he does gives the narrator a way to make a joke and she laughed, did he make her feel better? He’s afraid if people think he has cancer on the bottom of his foot they’ll start to think he’s dying. He’s terrified of death, unlike Chloe, and she doesn’t fear the fact that she’s going to die, she’s accepted it, and she doesn’t bury her cancer under the sand.

The birthday cake scene in the novel in comparison to the movie really plays with the death theme of the novel. In this scene one of the “space monkeys” from project mayhem, the mechanic, is driving the car rather than Tyler. I was thinking a lot what symbolism the cake held. When my group was discussing death yesterday in class, the relationship between the narrators face landing in the cake when they get into the accident and the mechanic saying, “You had a near life experience” (148), shows the rebirth aspect of death. The adrenaline rush from the headlights of the oncoming traffic and the accident approaching was a form of rebirth for the narrator. It brought be back to the ending/beginning where Tyler has the gun in the narrators mouth and he says, “the first step to eternal life is you have to die” (11).

Everything in the novel seems to come together so much nicer and circle around with connections better than the movie for me. The movie definitely helps me imagine what is going on in the novel and without that I would be lost, but the novel gives me a much clearer picture of all the scenes with the narrator and Tyler. In chapter 18 the narrator falls asleep, and when he wakes up Tyler is on the phone. He makes a comment at this point where he’s questions Tyler in his life and says, I pick up the phone, and it’s Tyler…I smell the gasoline on my hands. Tyler goes, ‘Hit the road. They have a car outside. They have a Cadillac.’ I’m still asleep. Here, I’m not sure if Tyler is my dream. Or if I am Tyler’s dream (138).

The question of whether or not they are the same person becomes much clearer in the novel than in the movie. The narrator begins to question himself early on which then got me thinking. The differences and the connections make much more sense for me in the novel.

Fight Club the novel

I really enjoy reading this book. There are so many things that can be discussed and it’s interesting to me to see what parts are different from the movie. I’m going to try and focus on one thing that I feel like I need cleared up a little. I noticed that in the movie as well as in the novel, the narrator repeats being the center in two instances. He first says this about the support groups that he has become the center of their little world (I can’t find what page it’s on). He also says this about Tyler and Marla, “Just by contrast this makes me the calm little center of the world” (64). I can’t help but constantly return back to these lines for some reason. As I read and consider the narrators role in the novel, I can’t imagine how he could consider himself the center of Tyler and Marla’s world especially. He often sits back and watches life pass him by especially in the case of Marla and Tyler. Their relationship aggravates the narrator, and he’s extremely jealous of Marla and her relationship with Tyler. If anything I would consider Marla as the center of their world.

I was also really interested in the prevalence of history in the book. I found it fascinating how the object of knocked down the credit buildings was solely to destroy the national history museum. What was most interesting was how history is discussed in relation to religion, Jesus and the gospels in particular. As Tyler has the gun in the narrator’s mouth, the narrator says, “Maybe we would become a legend, maybe not. No, I say, but wait. Where would Jesus be if no one had written the gospels” (15)? Is the narrator comparing Tyler and himself to Jesus? I feel like he’s stressing that they too could be legends like Jesus in the way that Tyler needs the narrator to record Tyler as a legend, just as the gospels tells of Jesus as a legend. Even though I lack a full understanding of Jameson, I guess I could say the history aspect of the novel must relate to his obsession with history in some way. I’m interested in whether or not Jameson would say this novel reveals any history, but if I had to take a wild guess I would say no.

While I’m thinking about the beginning of the novel, I have to say I really like the way it started with the end just as it did in the movie, but the novel gives us so much more. The close analysis of what Tyler and Marla’s relationship becomes is so clear at the start of the novel, but only because I had some background from the movie. If I hadn’t seen the movie I would be terribly lost while reading this novel. The style of the novel is very interesting. Palahniuk has a creative way of jumping from different subjects between chapters. Each chapter focuses on different aspect of the novel. I’m ready to read more. There is so much detail in the novel so I’m trying to focus on just some particulars that weren’t discussed when we watched the movie.

Jameson

Although this post on Jameson doesn’t deserve any title what-so-ever! I gave it one anyway. I was so frustrated by this 50 something page, thing, that I don’t even know what to write about. I’ve been trying to avoid having to write this post, but it’s inevitable. Jameson talked me into circles of a mess of things I didn’t understand. This may sound ridiculous but I couldn’t even understand whether he was for postmodernism or thought it was terrible. I think coming out of reading this and out of our class discussion the only thing I slightly understood was his example of the Van Gogh and Warhol pictures and how they do or don’t reflect history. THAT’S IT! Which is awfully sad, but I guess I’ll just write a little about that.

So, two main points I guess he’s saying about each of these artists works is that:

• Van Gogh’s painting is a more accurate description of history because the shoes in his painting have depth and they show wear and tear. Because of the shoes worn and dirty appeal along with their two dimensional look, they become a part of history because someone has used them, existed in history with them on? The shoes represent a lived experience, if I understand it correctly.
• Warhol, on the other hand, has a picture of shoes that are flat and show no signs of use. Thus, they show no history or connection to real history. These shoes have no history because they have no depth, and represent more of a contemporary consumerism look. Rather than acting as an image of history, the picture connects more with capitalism, and the need to make the shoes look appeal for consumers.

Basically, Jameson’s obsession with a very defined history and the fact that we must be looking at history in the wrong way is all I could really grasp from all of this. I was looking for class discussion to help me a bit more but it happened to just confuse me even more. I did find out that Jameson is not so much for Postmodernism, and just as I thought I understood Lyotard and his ideas of postmodernism, Jameson had to come in a ruin it all. Postmodernism acts as a cultural dominant, according to Jameson. He says on page 4, “…to grasp postmodernism not as a style but rather as a cultural dominant: a conception which allows for the presence and coexistence of a range of very different, yet subordinate, features”. I think I can see here how Jameson beings to reject postmodernism and he does so by first attaching its lack of style. I get the feeling he’s basically saying postmodernism is a mess and modernism is much more clear and concise. I’m not too sure how I feel about Jameson…I’m going to now turn back to Jameson and reread it…then I’ll be back for more. I’m determined to get at least one more thing from him

FIGHT CLUB!

After watching this movie for the first time I couldn’t help but wonder why I had never seen it before. Then I watched it a second time to make sure I absolutely picked up on everything, and that is when I realized that this movie is incredibly interesting and disturbing at the same time. I want to focus on a couple of particular things in this movie…

First, the role of Marla in the movie is very intriguing and her relationship with the narrator is essential. She is first introduced into the movie when she begins invading the narrator’s emotional space by attending the support groups. The support groups seemed to act as a resource for the narrator in a number of ways. The support groups helped him sleep when suffering from insomnia, and it seemed to me that the narrator was feeding off of Bob’s pain to realize his pain. When Marla intruded and the narrator confronted her and said he couldn’t cry when she was there, his need to cry becomes an important part in the movie. At that point, Marla has begun invading his life and could very well be the cause of his mental creation of Tyler. In a way her constant fearlessness and freedom also resembled Tyler and who the narrator wanted to be.

Tyler is another essential part to the story. Being that he and the narrator are the same person in the sense that Tyler is who the narrator wants to be is very interesting to me. For the narrator to really have been who Tyler was throughout the story is so mind blowing because, although he insisted they were partners and started fight club together, he never once said anything at any of the meetings. Tyler spoke for him, and you can really see this when he’s in the hospital and repeats exactly what Tyler tells him about having fell down the stairs. A majority of the time the narrator is behind the scenes watching everything that Tyler does rather than taking any control. Is this because it was really him the entire time? It’s so crazy how this is portrayed in the movie.

Tyler and Marla then tie together in the narrator’s life. While he thinks Marla is having sex with Tyler and is dreaming about it and beginning to get quite jealous, he says “she ruined everything”. At that point it seems as though he values his “relationship” (if you can call it that) with Tyler more than Marla which is ironic to the ending. In my opinion, what led to the ending between Tyler and the narrator all had to do with Bob, Robert Paulson, being killed. That was the point where I saw the narrator snap. My thoughts on the situation are when Bob died the narrator started to recognize what was actually happening with project Mayhem and what Fight Club had turned into. He also realized that whoever Tyler was wasn’t who he wanted to be.

This is what sets off the entire end of the movie for me. It’s not that he now sees Marla, who I think he loves at the end, as a crutch, but instead he no longer needs a crutch and no longer need to go back to who he used to be, but he has found a content place in life and needed to kill Tyler or who Tyler was because that’s not who he wanted to be. I’m beginning to ramble so I’m going to leave those thoughts as they are for now!

Lyotard!

 (He looks awfully happy for how confusing he can be.)

Reading through Lyotard for the first time definitely threw me for a bit of a loop. Our class discussion really helped me pull it all together. What I grabbed most from the reading was Lyotard’s point that postmodernism alludes the reader to think certain things and I could connect with this in comparing it to Written on the Body. As a postmodern text, Winterson is constantly trying to allude the reader and the end of the book is probably the best example of that. The reader is left wondering whether or not Louise is really there and its completely left open for the reader’s interpretation.

What I really got stuck on in this reading were things like:

• “A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern” (79).
• “Postmodernism [as] the nascent state, and this state is constant” (79)

After our class discussion, however, it all became clear how with the help of the concept of a metanarrative, postmodernism can occur before and after modernism and allude the reader without focusing on any type of end product or whole. Could it be that easy? I’m going to have to say no. What I’m still really caught up on is how reality and capitalism fits in completely with this.

Lyotard writes,

But capitalism inherently possesses the power to derealize familiar objects, social roles, and institutions to such a degree that the so-called realistic representations can no longer evoke reality except as nostalgia or mockery, as an occasion for suffering rather than for satisfaction (74).

This was something I was really curious about and we never got to it in class. So, I’m still wondering how capitalism fits into the whole scheme of postmodernism and nostalgia and so on. Perhaps it connects with the unpresentable and the nostalgia of the unpresentable. Because postmodernism is attempting to allude to the unpresentable which in turn creates nostalgia for a particular form….I’m confusing myself on how capitalism applies here….

Is this the end?! Written on the Body

I must say that after reading the ending and after our in depth class discussion, I regret saying in my last post that I wanted to know what happened in the end. My first reaction of the end was that Louise was simply a figment of the narrator’s imagination; there was no possible way she could be standing in front of her after all that searching. Then I went back and read it a second time…ok so now I’m buying the idea that she actually could be standing in front of the narrator. After our class discussion I would have to say that I can agree with the idea that she was actually there, and that now Louise and the narrator were in love and planned on starting a whole new life based solely around their relationship.

The last paragraph could really show how the narrator is no longer going to obsess over Louise’s body and the narrator’s immense attraction to her body and her beautiful red hair. Instead, their relationship has opened the whole world for them,

The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corner of the world. The world is bundled up in this room. Beyond the door, where the river is, where the roads are, we shall be. We can take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm (190).

I get the impression that this is the last draw for the narrator. Louise has finally come back and the narrator can’t waste any time objectifying her the way the narrator did throughout the novel. As we discussed in class, this could be a new beginning, the subject remains dead leaving the narrator and Louise open to all new possibilities, the novel is no longer based on “I” or “you” but rather “we”, the two of them together, not one more important than the other. The more I think about our class discussion and the ending as a whole, I like the fact that it leaves the reader to construct his/her own ending in a number of ways. There is no certainty as to what happens, the only certainty we have is that, for the narrator, “this is where the story starts” (190). Could it be that this was the case during the entire novel? Not only was the ending an opportunity for the reader to construct their own thoughts, but in a way the entire novel falls into this gap. As readers we were given the opportunity to decide whether or not the narrator was male or female, or perhaps the idea of a genderless narrator is what pulled us through the novel.

Either way, this ending is not only the start of the novel for the narrator but for the reader as well. It presents an entirely new outlook on the novel and how it can be read from the end to the beginning, rather than from the beginning to the end. What is really the fate of their relationship? Is this novel a novel about love or clichés? Perhaps the really beauty in this novel is that it leaves us with absolutely no answers!!

Written on the Body/Malpas

Nearing the end of the novel, I am very interesting in finding out what will happen next. It was surprising to me that the narrator would give up being with Louise, someone the narrator loves and admires so much. The idea that Louise is given up to Elgin in order for him to save her really makes me think. Why is Elgin stepping in now, when after finding out that Louise had an affair with the narrator he still stuck around in the flat with the two of them? I have this thought in the back of my head that he admires cancer more than the helping Louise. Knowing from earlier in the novel how obsesses he is with spending time in the lab and working on cancer, could it be that Elgin is more intrigued by the disease, caring more about the disease than anything else?

Elgin is very strange in the things that he does, but at the same time I’m still unsure as to why the narrator would agree to such a thing. Perhaps it’s the longing desire the narrator will feel when realizing he/she has left Louise. I have this feeling that it’s all something that just revolves around the feeling of longing that has taken place often in this novel. Is the narrator only concerned with his/her own feelings? This reminds me a lot of the Malpas reading. One aspect of the reading that really got me thinking was the topic of bisexuality. We found out in this part of the novel that the narrator had a boyfriend at one time, (92) so this leads to the point that without knowing the actually gender of the narrator we can still come to the conclusion that the narrator is bisexual. In this case according to Cixous from the Malpas reading,

This notion of bisexuality is not simply a description of sexual practice, but rather calls for the recognition of the multiplicity of drives and desires within any subject…one is not simply a woman or man…she presents the idea that is able to affirm these differences, resist the closure of a male-orientated logic, and present subjectivity as a structure of continual renegotiations that transform the categories of patriarchy (73).

With Cixous argument based on the idea of bisexuality, the subject of this novel is thus interchangeable. Regardless of the narrator’s gender, the male as the subject is taken out of the novel. If the narrator were female having an affair with Louise the subject can then be identified as either the narrator or Louise. In hoping that I understand the Malpas reading correctly, even if the gender went the other way the subject of the novel is still missing. According to Malpas this is exactly what postmodern literature is attempting to do. To stray away from the traditional male-oriented subject and lean more towards multiple subjects in one novel.

In that case, in still a little hung up on the idea of the narrators actions meant only to turn the focus of the novel on his/her self. It seems as though Louise’s cancer and the narrator fleeing London is just another way for the narrator to concentrate on the longing and love for Louise more profoundly. I guess that’s still up for debate…now I need only know what will come of their relationship in the end…