Little Shocks of Authenticity: August 2006

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Street/Museum Synthesis

I’ve always sat cross-legged. Car seats, love seats, restaurant booths—no matter where I sat, legs were crossed and often pulled up to my chest—sort of a makeshift fetal position. As I got older I began to wonder if referring to this as ‘Indian style’ was offensive as I originally thought. Lying down in public places was never an option. Standing, on the other hand, required too much effort. My family’s weekly journey to any number of Catholic churches proved to be the sole exception. Christ Our Redeemer, Holy Name of Jesus, St. Michael’s. Here, feet (once their respective legs were long enough) rested gently on the floor. Sitting during mass was a random treat, a reward; it was the state in between prostrating on one knee, kneeling entirely, or standing up for periods of time that (with knees locked) asymtopically led me to the point of passing out. Even sitting lost its simple pleasures, for during that one hour every week I had to imagine a string beginning at my spine, widening, separating, and raising my shoulder blades, lifting my gaze up to the Lord from my confinement in the McKelvey pew of choice, front row, dead center. Eventually I take a hiatus (just a hiatus, I promise my mother) from Catholicism, save for returns home to Florida during which I pretend not to mind the silly masquerade. With relative ease I am able to once again adopt the act of genuflection before bracing myself for the mindless mouthing of still memorized beats of responsorial psalms.
***
I had no idea what to expect when I walked into the mosque in London last week. The three key factors I had always previously used to identify a place of worship (crucifixes, pews, and guilt) were nowhere to be found. Nothing within reach is remotely familiar. Remembering that there is a cultural center on the second floor, I flee the courtyard, pass a sign advertising The Koran Watch (which the poster describes as the perfect gift for every occasion), and make my way up the steep two flights of stairs with little effort—my sixth-floor residence at Brasenose College has provided my legs with good training. At the top I find myself in a library of sorts; a sense of calm washes over me. Any doubts I had about my right to ‘tour’ the mosque were absolved; with books, magazines, and other various periodicals neatly divided up by language closing in on me at every angle, I was in a place where I was supposed to be intrusive. Even though I’d walked into the mosque in my typical I affirm all religions that aren’t Catholicism stance, I am incredibly eager to begin the process of reconciling my respect for Islam with its attitudes towards women. As luck would have it, the appropriately titled ‘Women and Islam’ nearly leaps off of the shelf and into my arms.

The book smells of the musk common only to books that spend their lives sitting idly on library shelves—often glanced at, perhaps even skimmed, but rarely read. I wade my way through the cerulean carpet and recline in an uncomfortable wooden chair by shifting my weight in such a way that only the back two chair legs remain grounded. I clutch the desk in front of me with my left hand while desperately trying to flip through the pages so I can see what chapter follows ‘Contraception: Because the Koran Says So.’ My initial disappointment that none of the following chapter titles make some sort of pun on ‘Women’s Sectuality’ is eased when I begin to recognize coffee stains tainting the corners of nearly every page, little tell-tale signs of readership. A grin carefully masks my face as I realize what I had earlier mistaken for the musk of idleness might actually be remnants of decaf. A male voice begins to breathe heavily into the intercom before progressing to murmuring and eventually articulate speech—urging everyone to leave the cultural center and attend afternoon prayer—interrupting this portion of my voyeuristic cultural retreat. I didn’t quite feel comfortable praying in the mosque, so I decided to meander about the lobby for a bit, hoping to continue on my relatively progressive mosque experience.

A leaflet prominently displayed on a bulletin board catches my attention with its fuchsia pie charts and equally exotically colored maps. Surprised initially by its loud appearance (it has been my experience with churches that God prefers earth tones), I am pleasantly surprised to find the content equally shocking. The maps are not an abbreviated geography lesson but instead illustrate the demographics of people affected by HIV/AIDS in communities highly populated by Muslims. Abbreviated paragraphs on either side offer advice on protection, testing, and a contact list of local and international AIDS-related organizations. Before today, I don’t know that I’ve even been to a place of worship that even acknowledges the presence of AIDS. A male voice interrupts my reading yet again, and I wish I had made more of an effort to conceal my annoyance when it turned out not to be the distant asthmatic employee over the intercom, but another gentleman standing no more than two feet away. I sheepishly spin around upon hearing Spencer respond to the voice, at which point my gaze is met by the image of this scruffy grinning mosque employee, clad in a well worn outfit of a blue t-shirt and jeans, each of which had complimentary white paint stains. His hair seems anxious to escape the confines of his face, pointing in an array of directions, but perhaps most prominently at the incongruously impeccably organized toolbox he toted in each hand; he appears to be a perfect mix of chaos and order. The traces of paint clinging to his clothes appear to be random, but not accidental.

I have a love/hate relationship with talking to strangers. On the surface, there is nothing that appeals to me more than great conversation with the most random of people. The trick, it seems, is navigating myself out of my own awkwardness so that casual diatribe can evolve into the meaningful discussion I so desire. The presence of Spencer next to me makes it somehow easier (the company of three, I find, is often less conducive to awkwardness than the company of two) to communicate, and within two minutes or less of conversation, all thoughts of potential awkwardness are long forgotten.

‘Where in America?’ he asks.

‘Texas,’ says Spencer, which I quickly follow up with ‘Austin—the good part of Texas.’

‘Aaa,’ he grins. ‘You need to get away from Bushie. Junior and Senior. Here,’ he begins to scribble down his contact information, ‘you come stay with my family in Kashmir. Can you drive?’ Spencer nods yes. ‘Can you cook?’ I say I’ll try. ‘Ok good. Then you can have the keys to my jeep. Just don’t let my parents cook for you, ok?’

What I originally assume to be a kind offer in jest ended up being the most genuine of encounters—before Spencer and I leave the mosque he insists that we write down our contact information. As nice as this offer is, both as a point of entry and point of departure, not until he shares his religious philosophy with us do I carve out a special nook for him in my emotional memory. The man’s kind words of affirmation help me reconcile some of my own issues with organized religion; they begin a process of personal healing. His shared words easily bandage some of the wounds I’ve ignored.

I find solace and comfort in my new friend’s overwhelmingly simple (and somehow equally profound) religious philosophies. He glances intermittently at his watch before pausing to stage his own philosophical monologue, which he successfully reduces to the following components. His views consist of the following components:

Do not attempt to convert people. People should be allowed to believe what they believe. But if one is going to make the (often risky) decision to declare a religion, one should live it to the fullest. That is, if one is Christian, be a good Christian. If one is Muslim, be a good Muslim, etc.

The purpose of religion is for connection. We need to keep everyone connected. If our most spiritual state isn’t attaching us to other people, what’s the point?

It’s all about yoga. Seriously. Yoga all of the time. In the car, while eating, while swimming. This life, this religion, this faith—they all require constant yoga.

Before Spencer and I head outside to reconvene with the rest of our group (and before he makes one final insistence that we visit him in Kashmir), he speaks the words that have the greatest effect on me. It seems simple enough, but he looks me in the eyes and says ‘Religion is all about peace.’ Spencer and I both laugh and respond with our own renditions of ‘Well, I mean, theoretically, I mean, it should be.’ For the first time in our fifteen-minute conversation with him, he isn’t smiling. ‘No,’ he says. ‘It has to be.’
***
Never am I so aware of the ways in which Catholicism permeates my daily life as when I visit my parents’ house, where poorly taken pictures of me, squinting at the obtrusive sunshine that ignites the stained glass while receiving each of the sacraments, are still proudly hung on the walls. I still pray at family dinners, but I make it explicitly clear that I am not performing The Sign of the Cross and omit gendered pronouns and direct references to the Holy Trinity. But simple omissions and refusals one month out of the year do not erase eighteen years of early morning masses followed by CCD. Creeds and hymns (Latin and English) do not independently erase themselves from my memory. It happened even today. Walking down High Street, in search of chips and cheese (my new daily communion), I hear an ambulance siren in the distance. I drop to my knee. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Without even thinking, I end up blessing myself while genuflecting on a street corner, re-enacting the action I had learned as a reflex from traveling with my mother. Car accidents, sirens, a young mother who appears to be having a hard day, all of these moments are deserving of our prayers. We drive by the scene and bless ourselves simultaneously. I sit in the passenger seat; legs crossed.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Novel Synthesis: On Structure and Readership

I’m not quite sure when my preoccupation with form began. Required readings of one of Eagleton’s chapters on form and content made me consciously aware that I often spoke about the relationship between the two, but it’s a rather recent realization that my first instinct is to talk about form. Several of my brief blog entries (be they about the novel, museum, or the street) often center around the navigation of form and structure, as were, as I recall, many of my even briefer comments made during class. My most recent entry on the structural shifts in White Teeth provoked me to consider an exploration of structure as it relates to readership for this next-to-last blog entry, my novel synthesis. I’d like to explore some seemingly basic (yet fascinating) structural components of the novels in the order in which I read them.
Upon the conclusion of my final assignment this past spring semester, I hurried to the UT Co-op Bookstore, filled a weighty basket with Bleak House and the other novels. Because of its monstrous size (and historical distance from my own time period, which tends to alienate me), I decided to attack this Dicken’s novel before I let myself read anything else. I read about half of the novel, took a few weeks off, and upon my return, found it nearly unreadable. I’m still not quite sure why this is. I had enjoyed the novel, my first exposure to Dickens, but found myself unable to get back into the swing of the novel. I realize that I’d stopped in the middle of a chapter, and found it necessary to start the entire three-chapter episode (and eventually the whole novel). Now having finished Bleak House (and having enjoyed it immensely), I find myself still troubled the novel’s many layers of structure. While I understand that the novel was initially published serially in some sort of periodical, even my attempts to read the novel in those serial increments, as it was ‘intended’ to be read failed me. They seemed a bit too lengthy (is it true that Dickens was paid by the word?) to be easily digested in just one sitting and I became easily distracted the by change of narrative voice within each episode.
Before I finished up Bleak House, I switched to White Teeth so I could enjoy a huge stylistic and chronological change of pace. Similarly to Bleak House, White Teeth is divided into several layers. Not only does the novel contain four separate ‘books,’ each with a corresponding title and eye-grabbing apostrophic quote, but each of these ‘books’ was subdivided into interestingly titled chapters. While my ability to voraciously flip through the pages of Smith’s novel might be due to my own interests and proclivities, I can’t help but think that the structure of White Teeth actually helped me as a reader, rather than alienating me. As I mentioned in my earlier post on this novel, Smith also employs interesting paragraphic breaks that, like her catchy lead-in quotes and chapter titles, propel the reader forward through the text.
I’m not sure that I was as conscious of the influence of structure of the other two novels on my readings of them, but this post has allowed me to backtrack and rethink what effect their frameworks might have had on me. The structural note of Dorian Gray that I most remember is seeing the page of a new chapter with a simple ‘1’ or ‘7’ at the top; the chapters are untitled. Plenty of novels don’t have chapter titles, so perhaps this only protrudes in my memory because both of the other chaptered novels we read employed chapter titles as a device. I’ve tried to sit and dwell on how this influenced my reading of the novel, and if nothing else I can say that a simple number at the top doesn’t give you any information or a preview of the chapter like ‘The Ghost Walk’ might. There is a way in which this simple numbering system reduces the reader’s expectations/ability to predict the action of the chapter. Mrs. Dalloway, another personal favorite (both in this course and in life!) was probably the hardest novel to put down—not just because of the quality of the book, but because the lack of chapter division and seemless shifts by the narrator into various character’s consciousnesses never allowed for an easy place to bookmark. I read the novel for the first time almost entirely in one sitting, mostly out of necessity. As challenging as this may have been for me as a reader, this lack of interruption now seems entirely essential to the novel. Time is not broken up by chapters, but by the tolling of Big Ben, marking away the hours in the distance.

White Teeth Novel Post

I've written, deleted, and re-written the opening to this post several times, never finding words that bear any semblance of how I feel about this novel--my opening line always ended up as an all top simple tribute to Zadie Smith or 'This is the best book ever-'--but I honestly don't know of a way to permeate the pages of this book without some sort of recording of what is has meant to me. Not only has White Teeth been my favorite novel of the summer, it has quickly become one of my favorite reads ever. We find so many authors of the past decades (from E.M. Forster onwards) announcing the death of the novel, declaring its inability to capture the essence of what the world has become, and for me, White Teeth became one of those often sought after (but rarely found) refutations of this 'death-of-the-novel' sentiment. It has affirmed for me that the novel is alive and well; it, like many genres, is still a thriving form with exceedingly unimaginable moments of brilliance. Nowhere in White Teeth do these changes of the novel become more in apparent than in its structure. While I found nearly every aspect of Smith's masterpiece incredibly intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging, my favorite moments of the book share something in common: they are all moments when Smith actively 'breaks away' from traditional paragraphic structure. Paragraph structure is always that key indicator of prose (and thus, often of the novel form)--so I'm incredibly interested in expanding the definition/form/structure of the novel to include this conscious shifts from what may have previously been considered to be the very factors that actually determine a work's status as a novel. One of my favorite examples of these shifts occurs within the first few pages of the novel. While actively contemplating suicide, Archie recognizes his 'significance in the Greater Scheme of Things' along the following 'familiar ratios':

Pebble: Beach
Raindrop: Ocean
Needle: Haystack (10).

Smith's departure from the paragraph with these abbreviated comparisons (a simple colon replaces the phrase 'is to', a line break replaces the word 'as') was not something I could recall remembering from other novels. Even other proclaimed 'post-modern' novels with which I am familiar have not escaped the paragraph, a possible narrative trap.

If this initial detour still seems to function as traditionally ‘literary’ and text-based, there exist a plethora of more visual examples in Smith’s text. On page 49, Smith illustrates the placard Samad desires by physically boxing it in and separating it from the rest of the text. Images of family trees, depictions of the ‘before and after’ advertisement found by Irie, other lists comparing the tastes of Millat and Alsana all diverge from the most-travelled narrative path. Whatever this change of style may be attributed to, be it changes in print technology, a product of post-modernism or what have you, these paragraphic breaks rejuvenated my enthusiasm for the novel. In departing from tradition, they call attention to the tradition itself, seemingly quietly commenting on the history of the novel and more directly addressing the literary audience.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Mrs. Dalloway Novel Post

‘Where are you off to?’—Hugh Whitbread
‘I love walking in London.’—Clarissa
--Mrs. Dalloway, page 6

(Where was he this morning for instance? Some committee, she never asked what.)
--Mrs. Dalloway, page 8

‘Tell me,’ he said, seizing her by the shoulders. ‘Are you happy, Clarissa? Does Richard--’
The door opened.
--Mrs. Dalloway, page 47-8

The selected quotes featured above are a small representation of the vast number of problematic ‘question and answer’ moments featured throughout Virginia Woolf’s text. As Clarissa wanders about the streets of Westminster, navigating the peculiar pathways and circuitous sidestreets, she wonders where Richard is; the narrator informs us that she never asks. I cannot help but wonder if this refusal to ask questions might be because Richard, like Clarissa, and perhaps other characters in the novel, will not answer. In two of the quotes I cited at the top of this entry, other characters (Hugh and Peter, respectively) as Clarissa questions that do not receive answers—at least not answers to the questions posed to her. Perhaps at the prime instance of a problematic ‘question and answer’ exchange (in addition to being the first example in the novel and a personal favorite of mine) comes on page six, when Hugh asks Clarissa ‘where [she] is off to’ and she responds with, ‘I love walking in London.’ Unlike latter moments in the next, such as the moment when Elizabeth’s carefully calculated entry prevents Clarissa from having to divulge the contents of her mental health to Peter, in this particular example, it does not appear as though Clarissa particularly benefits from avoiding the subject at hand. Clarissa’s seemingly illogical response to Hugh’s prodding does not serve as a simple segway into a different conversation; rather, it halts the conversation altogether. And while Clarissa does not answer Hugh’s question, the response she provides actually answers a much more important question, this one posed by the reader.
So many of our class discussions of Mrs. Dalloway have concerned the title character’s walk—rightfully so when so much of the novel is dependent upon Clarissa’s quotidian adventure. One key focus of the various discussions of Clarissa’s walk has centered upon the (arguably) diametrically opposed ideas of pleasure and purpose. For someone who knows the streets of this portion as well as Clarissa does (and Woolf must), Mrs. Dalloway never appears to take any shortcuts. She wanders about the streets, takes brief detours; for Clarissa the best route is never about traveling in a straight line. While Clarissa keeps her end-goal of the flower shop on Bond Street in mind, her walk seeks pleasure en route to purpose. To return to what I began arguing in the paragraph above, I find that the recurrent ‘Q&A’ sessions with Clarissa, thought they might not provide answers for the characters in the novel, actually have a way of answering some of the most pressing questions of the novel. Clarissa says, ‘I love walking in London,’—privileging the walk over the destination. In this simple refusal to answer the question posed by those located inside the world of the novel, Clarissa actually answers the questions posed by the novel’s audience, whose queries encompass time decades past the final page of the novel—time not as easily calculated and marked away by Big Ben.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Street Post 3: White Chapel. Tower Hill. White Chapel…again. Tower Hill…again? White Chapel? What the hell?

Last week’s Virginia Woolf walk through Westminster featured an interesting mix of purpose and pleasure. While the primary goal (of Clarissa’s walk) was to reach the place at 46 Bond Street where Clarissa would have purchased her flowers so many decades ago, the journey allowed us to take advantage of the winding, often topsy-turvy streets of London; not a simple task for a tourist whose only hope is that the city is set up on some sort of grid system. Today’s brief London encounter allowed me to face the (sometimes) harsh realities of London’s other street: the underground. Approximately seven minutes, three pounds, and four (ish) failed turnstile attempts after leaving the Brick Lane area, I found myself immersed in a dank, chaotic street system that offered little, if any, of the secluded refuge inherent to some of London’s above-ground neighborhoods. Even the energy packed hustle and bustle of Bond Street easily seeps into the quiet of St. James Park, just as one can find solace in Dean’s Yard from the frantic rigidity of most of Westminster.

I found no similar haven in this underground labyrinth. Cigarette-butt and chewing-gum laden steps led to a world where boisterous noise was the given, not just a possibility, and where focus might be defined as the happenstancial solitary moment of concentration which occurs at the very moment of the next train’s arrival--at which point I must decide if the Bakerloo line or the upcoming (and equally ridiculous sounding) Picadilly Circus line is the appropriate choice to escort me to my final destination.

To my right sits a newspaper vendor, half slumped over in a well-worn director’s chair; to my right performs a street musician, who, as it sounds, may or may not be covering the best of Journey, on his instrument of choice: the recorder. Other citizens of this public (yet somehow secret and hidden) underground street appear in each and every direction around me: food vendors, families, tourists, and, my particular favorite, a young mother earnestly screaming ‘I said MIND THE GAP SHELLY. MIND THE GAP! It is still London down here—perhaps a different, scaled-down, peripheral London, but London nonetheless. Not that I think anyone would want to live beneath the city by choice, but it seems one could. Food, entertainment, transportation, and many other spoils and troubles of the world above can be found below London’s surface. Even expensive advertising campaigns have found their way to London’s underground, with most ads featuring either West End musicals, or, ironically, I felt, car insurance.

All of these observations occurred before I was even able to step into an actual train car, as Lauren and I made our first attempt to get from White Chapel to Victoria, only to think we were going the wrong direction and change trains several times before realizing (thirty some minutes later) that our original train had been headed in the correct direction. Some might attribute our repeated failures to a tourist daze-- and this might be true to a certain extent. But our inability to function as subway regulars can’t be so easily reduced. Escalators (who knew escalator etiquette existed?) replace crosswalks; groups of small children forming human chains replace out-of-control cyclists; neatly presented posters dubbing the latest Footloose revival as THE must-see musical of the decade stand in for versions of those same posters, masking taped to any surface to which it might possibly stick. In our many mini trips between White Chapel and Tower Hill (and yes, eventually Victoria Station), we had to learn to navigate the new codes of the London underground.

*This my real street post 3, my post from last week should ahve been entitled as 'Street Post 2'

Little Shocks of Authenticity