Little Shocks of Authenticity

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'

Friday, July 28, 2006

Street Post 3

Origin. Starting place. Point of departure. A beginning.

Clarissa Dalloway’s walk begins with a single step outside of her Dean’s Yard townhouse. But we, a group of college students attempting to physically encounter Virginia Woolf’s London, seventy some years later, must actually walk to a starting point. The beginning of the Dalloway walk is not a given; we cannot simply step off of a bus and begin to work our way to the flower shop. For us, even the starting point is a place we must reach. I leap off of the second step of our coach, land awkwardly (and sandal-less) upon the scorching Westminster pavement. As I relieve my pain from the pavement induced burns by hopping quickly back into my sandals, I find myself discovering the infinite possibilities of a day; the immeasurable differences between a stroll in (or outside of) my own shoes and a morning in Clarissa’s.

After standing outside the bus for fifteen or so minutes, organizing our group and nominating Sara as our faithful trailblazer (as always), we begin our trek to the beginning of Clarissa’s journey. We walk in three different directions, incessantly backtracking and overshooting before we find ourselves in Dean’s Yard, where it is suspected Clarissa Dalloway lived. I stood in the middle of the street and spun myself around until I reached a point of dizziness, looked directly at one door and decided that that door was Mrs. Dalloway’s. Even though Mrs. Dalloway is a fictional character, and even though she could have lived in any one of those houses (not just the one I selected) if she actually were real, for my own purposes, I needed a an exact starting place, a predetermined Clarissa began her journey HERE in order to enjoy my own walk. Having traversed unsuccessfully for so long before actually finding Dean’s Yard, and knowing that randomness and chance encounter would be huge determining factors of my own walk, I desired an exact origin.

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway accounts for the happenings to various interrelated people on single day. The day, the people, the events, the thoughts are exceedingly ordinary. Random sightings and encounters recall (un)certain memories and thoughts. Like Clarissa, I would not have been able to predict my near-tragic incidents with busses, my meeting of someone who is perhaps the nicest little old man to have ever existed, and the minutes spent digging through my wallet to find enough change to purchase a bottle of water. Even as Big Ben marked away the hours, randomness and chance pervaded these neatly measured units of time. My walk and Woolf’s novel both have definite beginnings, certainties that surround and contrast the ensuing variables as I stuggle to retrace Clarissa’s journey with my mind and footsteps.

Museum 3

With Dali’s ‘Autumnal Cannibalism’ already permanently etched to the surface of our minds, Lauren and I meandered around the remaining seven rooms of Tate Modern’s surrealist exhibit, allowing the image to seep beneath the surface and hoping earnestly that another painting might captivate our minds in the way Dali’s had. The multiplicity of subjects, the seamless flow of one human body into another, the indiscernability of the human subject and its permeating landscape boggled my mind and inspired my heart. What other painting could possibly infect me with simultaneous desire and repulsion the way this one had? Even with all of my love for the painting, the act of looking at it for more than a few seconds at a time gave me a headache. We moved on to the rest of the exhibit after a couple of minutes; Dali’s painting still weighting heavily on our minds. As I scuttled about The Tate Modern’s third floor, I attempted to discern what exactly I liked about the painting. I realized I’d seen the placard which read ‘Salvador Dali, Autumnal Cannibalism’ before I’d even glanced at the painting itself. I’ve been an unapologetic Dali for years. Is it possible that I was determined to love the painting before I’d even seen it, based solely on the fact I knew it was a work done by Dali?

We approached a painting several minutes later and instantly began listing off its Chagall-like features—the eroticism, the presence of wildlife, the manipulation of a completely non-realist perspective, its foregrounding of a highly detailed human form with less distinguished animals in the periphery. Lauren and I began to vocalize our adoration of the work and its Chagall-ness. Our diatribe went on and on without us even thinking to look at the adjacent placard to see who the painting was by. It was of course, a Chagall. We burst out in a simultaneous bout of laughter; even with lengthy conversation about how this painting looked like a Chagall, the actual idea that it was a Chagall hadn’t occurred to either of us. I still laugh thinking about it, but I’ve also come to some realizations about my own spectatorship. I’m so incredibly interested in biography and have always found it impossible (and undesirable) to detach art from the individual artist. I’ve always looked at an artist’s collection as a type of biography. Looking back upon our recent class discussions of ‘Dorian Gray’, how could I not look at art in this way? Even though I am completely devoid of confidence in my own ability to interpret visual works, I understand the value and importance in being able to do a simple close reading of a painting or a sculpture, regardless of the artist responsible for its creation. Without trying to sound too self-congratulatory, I suppose this moment of Chagall (un)recognition showed that I am capable of looking at art in such a manner, and I’m quite excited that I was able to do so. I don’t know how, exactly, I might go about repeating the process, but I’m more excited than ever about closely examining visual culture inside and outside of museums.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Dorian Gray Post

My current preoccupation with Oscar Wilde seems a bit over the top when I recognize my relatively recent exposure to the great writer. It was just over a year ago in my E 314 L class that we read The Importance of Being Earnest, thus inspiriting my subsequent obsession with Wilde and all of his texts. A fifty-cent purchase from Half-Priced Books the following fall (Oscar Wilde’s Book of Wit, featuring his most quotable witticisms) displays a cartoon version of the author on the cover in his signature pose. Slightly tilting the left, his hands are placed huffily on his hips while a slightly ridiculous grin stretches across his face. I hesitate at referring to this stance as his signature pose; as I remember it, this has been my pose. Nearly every photograph of my freshman year of college gives supporting evidence.
In the opening paragraph of Chapter 11 in The Picture of Dorian Gray, the narrator describes Gray’s affinity for a certain Parisian novel, a book in which he finds a literary ancestor: ‘And , indeed, the whole book seemed to him to contain the story of his own life, written before he had lived it.’ I am completely fascinated by this idea (especially this particular quote) of our non-genealogical ancestors. I’ll admit that I (semi) jokingly refer to myself as Oscar Wilde incarnate, but there exists a certain amount of truth behind those jokes. Throughout my reading of the novel, I recognized so many pleasures and experiences that were strangely familiar. The total fascination with excess, the visually engaging (and often highly theatrical) ways in which characters never seem to calmly sit down but always ‘fling [themselves] into couches,’ the unbridled interest in the intersection between life and art. The idea that these vectors which have so deeply permeated gay culture and eventually penetrated my own life have an origin, a beginning point, that they have not always been elements of homosexual identity is so mindboggling to me. I feel almost as though I’ve taken certain things about gay culture for granted. While I’ve been familiar with the infamous Wilde trials for years now, and aware of the difference of homosexual identity as opposed to homosexual practice since entering college, I don’t think I had ever realized the extent to which Wilde’s entire life was actually a turning point in revealing sexuality as a possible identity vector.
Just as the Parisian novel has functioned for Dorian, Wilde’s novel has operated for me (though I certainly hope my relationship to the novel produces less dire outcomes).

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Dickens 2: What's in a Name?

''My name's Bucket. Ain't that a funny name?''--Bleak House, page 760

During our last class discussion of Bleak House, I came to a sudden (and what I then thought to be brilliant) realization about the name Dedlock. Not only does Dedlock provide an aura of entrapment and being closed in, it actually rhymes with 'wedlock'--a possibly interesting connection if one considers the illegitimate child narrative which pervades the novel. I wrote down ''Dedlock rhymes with wedlock'' on my notebook and showed it to Sara, who was sitting next to me at the time. She replied with her inclination toward reading it more as a homophonic play on ''dead-lock'' which I had already considered, but in a brief moment of embarrassment, I non-sensically replied with ''and Tulkinghorn rhymes with Mulkinghorn.''

While I do know (tragically) that Mulkinghorn is in fact, not a word, it was not until I decided to make fun of the name in itself that I fully recognized the ridiculousness (and concomitant cleverness) of many of the names of the novel's featured characters. I had made casual observations about the character's names throughout the entire reading process, but had never devoted any time to specifically reflecting upon their names.

Esther. Jellyby. Woodcourt. Mr. Bucket. Dedlock. Jarndyce (and Jarndyce). All of these names (and many of the others) are so incredibly fitting in their extremity and theatricality; appropriateness perhaps derived from the melodramatic structure of the text. As someone who reads plays with a much greater frequency than he reads novels (and thus finds it much more difficult to distinguish the genre of a novel than the genre of a dramatic text), the character names actually played a large role in establishing these characters as characters, and thus influenced my ability to read the novel as a melodramatic text. The heightened nature of the names made it easier to type the characters into the certain carefully chiseled ‘stock’ roles for which they were designed.

I do not wish to simply offer an array of different observations about the names, but I will try to do a condensed version with great brevity just to make my argument a bit more lucid. ‘Woodcourt’ lends itself to several readings—as an overall stoically solid name; as a name in which the strength and sturdiness of ‘wood’ balance the instability of the ‘court’; or as an indication of Alan as the would-be (will be) love interest --he is someone that Esther would court (my preferred reading). The name ‘Mr. Bucket’ has, over the past ten or so years entered popular imagination as a children’s toy that independently scoots around living rooms across America, spewing the contents from its bucket head while children attempt to throw them back in the bucket (only to be taunted by the vengeful bucket immediately popping the toys back out). Despite the ridiculousness of this image, the idea of this more recent Mr. Bucket helped illustrate Dickens’ Mr. Bucket as relentless but nevertheless amiable, which I feel are incredibly important characteristics we must acknowledge in our reading of this inspector. While the name Jarndyce did not do anything spectacular for me when reading the text silently, reading it aloud (especially in a British accent) might allow for the name to be pronounced something similar to jaundice (which is, incidentally, Microsoft Word’s preferred spelling of the name). While I am certainly not offering any sort of interchangeability of the two words or further reading into of the Jarndyce/Jaundice idea, I am certainly interested in the ways different names play themselves out when repeated (and replicated) in a contemporary context. How did the Victorian connotation of the name Esther compare to its contemporary sitcom-esque old-woman stereotype it has enjoyed over the past couple of decades?

Like many of my street and museum posts, I would like to conclude this one with a series of questions. These questions are simply things I’d like to ask myself in future readings of texts because of my new interest in them at this time. While my knowledge of melodrama is relatively limited (other than its level of heightened theatricality and use of stock characters), I’d like to further pursue an analysis of the relationship between character name and genre. To what extent does a melodramatic text call for names of a certain theatricality? What is the connection between character names in other genres?