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The Relationship of Tone to the Beginning of The Semplica Girl Diaries

Apr 7th, 2020 by

The first two paragraphs do not write with “I.” There is only the diary format to show us that this is told from the first person. One example of this is, “Anyway, what the heck, am not planning on writing encyclopedia, if any future person is reading person is reading this, if you want to know what a ‘demon’ was, go look it up,” This is barely noticeable when you are reading as your brain tends to fill in the missing words, which creates a puncture in focus once it is noticed. This puncture takes the readers out of the story and forces them to go back and reread the previous text. It also makes them double check what they just read because their brain fills in the missing words and the entire point of writing this way to to exclude those words.

This type of writing can give off one of two emotions: rushed or casual. When someone is writing when they feel rushed they tend not to use smaller words. However, this is conflicted by the interweaving of small details throughout the text. In the aforementioned quote, there is the drawn out branch of encyclopedias from the original though. This leads to the belief it is a very relaxed and casual state of writing. This, in these first few paragraphs, reads as a stream of consciousness type of writing. “Last night I dreamed of two demons having sex and found out it was only two cats fighting outside the window. Will future people be aware of concept of ‘demons’? When they find our belief in ‘demons’ quaint? Will windows even exist?” These are the first few lines where these writing tactics stuck out to me. I think the beginning of any story is — arguably — the most important unless there is a big twist later on. The beginning sets the tone to how the rest of the story is going to go. If the tone suggests relaxed and casual, the reader will read it with the same tone. If the tone is rushed and urgent, it sets the reader on edge and they get thrown into the action of the story a lot faster. 

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Language and Irony in “The Semplica Girl Diaries”

Apr 7th, 2020 by

In “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” the story’s narrator is keeping a diary, which becomes the text of the story. One of the first things noticed in the story is that the dad, who is the diary’s author, does not always write in complete sentences. “Am getting off track, due to tired, due to those fighting cats.” (pg.110) It is difficult to say if this is because of his culture, lack of time, or just his way of taking notes to correct later for his book. However, he does make notes to himself in his diary. He is writing for someone to read in the future; yet, the text, in some ways, is a repeat of history.

Dad faces the dilemma of “keeping up with the Joneses.” After winning $10,000 on a scratch lottery ticket, he decides to fix up the yard for his daughters’ birthday. This includes buying SG’s to hang in his yard. While using the underprivileged or misfortunate for menial tasks has been done throughout history, these SGs are strung out as lawn ornaments. Eva has sympathy for the Sg’s, and her dad explains that they are living a better life than they previously had. He also explains the procedure of how they are strung together. “Drew human head on napkin, explained: Lawrence Semplica = doctor + smart cookie. Found way to route microline through brain that does no damage, causes no pain. Technique uses lasers to make pilot route. Microline then threaded through w/ silk leader. Microline goes in here (touched Eva’s temple), comes out here (touched other). Is very gentle, does not hurt, SGs asleep during whole deal.” (pg.142)

There is much irony in this story. The dad wants to “do better” for his family as do the SGs.“ Filipina (Betty) has little brother “very skilled for computer,” parents cannot afford high school, have lived in tiny lean-to with three other families since their own tiny lean-to slid down hillside in earthquake.” (pg. 135) Dad’s effort backfires when Eva releases the SGs and now dad deeper in financial debt than he had been before winning the lottery. In the end, the parents make a sacrifice to keep Eva from having to confess to the police that she released the SGs. “Pam and I discuss, agree: must be like sin-eaters who, in ancient times, ate sin.” (pg. 161) There was also irony in that the kids were not allowed to watch “I, Gropius,” where men touch women’s breasts, exploiting women, but the SGs were acceptable.

Posted in Desperation, Reality, Social Fears | 2 Comments »

Financial Struggles in “The Semplica Diaries “

Apr 6th, 2020 by

In George Saunders “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” he wanted to use these diaries in his character’s journal to be read by future generations to show what people went through during the past time.  He was using his platform to allow people to learn from previous people’s struggles and decision making that put them in this bad place. Saunders also wants to show that you will always have struggles in life and nothing will always be easy to get through. 

    Exciting to think how in one year, at a rate of one page/day, will have written 365 pages, and what a picture of life and times then available for kids & grandkids, even greatgrandkids, whoever, all are welcome (!) to see how life really is/was now. (109)

 He was also trying to show that when people were in the times of struggle with debt that they would do anything to keep their children happy with life.   They would do this to motivate their kids to not do what they had made the mistake of doing. They made this happen by doing whatever they needed in order to get them things, like a present that they really want or throwing them a good birthday party.  The parents would always take the time to comfort their kids, when they would be hearing what was being said between parents, as he was trying to make it so that the children wouldn’t be worrying about what was happening.  

   However, do not want to break Lilly’s heart or harshly remind her of our limitations. (123)

 

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Society in “The Semplica Girl Diaries”

Apr 6th, 2020 by

In “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” the narrator spends a lot of his time explaining things to “future readers.” In the first paragraph, he writes:

Because what do we know of other times really? How clothes smelled and carriages sounded? Will future people know, for example, about sound of airplanes going over at night, since airplanes by that time passe? Will future people know sometimes cats fought in night? Because by that time some chemical invented to make cats not fight? (110-111)

We know from the beginning that he is interested in recording his life and his world so that future generations will know what it was like. However, there is one major thing he never explains to these future readers — the Semplica girls. We learn who these women are slowly as he mentions little details and explains some of their origins to his daughter, but there is never a time where he stops to tell future generations what these “SGs” are. This seemed to me that he didn’t feel the need to explain them because he assumed they would still be around. Having women strung up in one’s yard has become so normal and sought after in his society that he cannot imagine them not existing in the future.

Two things that he mentioned stood out to me in relation to the Semplica girls. In his September 23rd entry, he explains what the Whac-a-Mole game is:

Future generations still have? Plastic mole emerges, you whack with hammer, he dies, falls, another emerges, you whack, kill? Perhaps may seem like strange/violent game to you, future reader? (140-141)

The second instance was when he describes the television show “I, Gropius”:

Household in freefall, future reader. Everything chaotic. Kids, feeling tension, fighting all day. After dinner, Pam caught kids watching “I, Gropius,” (forbidden) = show where guy decides which girl to date based on feeling girls’ breasts through screen with two holes. (Do not actually show breasts. Just guy’s expressions as he feels them and girl’s expression as he feels them and girl’s expression as guy announces his rating. Still: bad show.) (165)

These passages stood out to me because the narrator is oblivious to his hypocrisy. He talks about a children’s game possibly being considered too violent for future generations, but he sees nothing wrong with everyone stringing women up in their front lawns as decorations and insists that the wire going through their heads doesn’t hurt them (even though he later mentions that if it is tugged too forcefully, it could lead to brain damage). He (rightfully) dislikes a show where men objectify women’s bodies, but again, he is fine with using them as decoration to show his affluence. The Semplica girls are so engrained in his, and everyone else’s, mind as normal that he doesn’t even begin to consider that it might not be okay to do this to them. 

It is only at the end of the story that he begins thinking of these women as people, wondering about their lives before they came to America and what will happen now that they’ve escaped.

While we have talked a lot about how we can’t simply think of the fantastic as metaphorical, it is impossible to read this story and not think about how people behave in real life, how so many people will do things because it is trendy or they want to fit in without actually thinking of any consequences their actions may have on others.

Posted in Autonomy, Captivity, Consent, Desire, Desperation, Fantastic | 5 Comments »

Social Commentary in “The Semplica Girl Diaries”

Apr 5th, 2020 by

In an interview with The New Yorker, George Saunders mentions that the inspiration for “The Semplica Girl Diaries” came from a dream that he had many years ago; he then goes on to say the following: “Einstein said (or, at least, I am always quoting him as having said), ‘No worthy problem is ever solved within the plane of its original conception.’ So this was an example of that: my ‘original conception’ (i.e., the dream and its associated meaning) had to be outgrown—or built upon.” For me, this quote also best describes fantastic fiction in general. In “The Metamorphosis,” Kafka uses Gregor’s transformation to explore ideas about identity and self-worth; in “The Husband Stitch,” Machado uses the green ribbon to explore ideas about patriarchy and sexuality; in “A Change in Fashion,” Millhauser uses outrageous fashion trends to explore ideas about autonomy and objectification. These are just a few examples, but I think it’s safe to say that the fantastic is almost always metaphorical; it provides us with a way of examining and identifying our own fears and dilemmas by cloaking them in something much simpler.

In “The Semplica Girl Diaries,” the main “real” topics here are, as Saunders also states in his interview, immigration, poverty, and women’s rights. The family’s need to keep up with the Joneses comes at the cost of the freedom of the destitute girls that they “employ.” Thomas mentions that each of the girls applied for the job, and the father remarks that they appear happy enough; to me, this sounds like what many Americans (usually hardcore conservatives) bring up when they talk about the immigrants living in this country, that these people should be grateful and happy that they have the opportunity to live and work in “the greatest country in the world.” Because of their privileged position, the family (as well as the other families who have Semplica Girls of their own) is seeing the situation through rose-tinted glasses; as long as the girls appear happy, then it must be true, and as long as they volunteered to be here, then surely they are perfectly content.

Eva’s character in this story appears to represent the guilt felt by many people (myself included) due to their own privileges and successes—privileges and successes that many other people do not (and possibly never will) share. She appears to be the only truly compassionate one in this cast of characters; even at the story’s end, the father remarks, “Why would she do? Why would she ruin it all, leave our yard? Could have had nice long run w/ us.” He then ends the story with the following line: “Note to self: call Greenway, have them take ugly thing away.” He appears to have learned nothing from this experience, showing how entrenched he is in this privileged lifestyle; the loss of the SGs is just a minor inconvenience, and before long, everything will go back to normal. This mirrors the attitudes of many people in real life when it comes to issues like deportation and poverty—as long as things continue to work out fine for them, what does it matter what their neighbors or coworkers are suffering through?

For me, fantastic fiction will always be the best genre for exploring the world’s problems (as well as the majority of people’s responses to them). George Saunders has always excelled when it comes to including social and political commentary in his stories, and “The Semplica Girl Diaries” is no exception.

Posted in Consent, dystopia, Social Fears, Solitude, Utopia | 7 Comments »

Art as personal matters

Apr 2nd, 2020 by

I don’t know if this is normal, but when I’m making art in any form, it contains a kernel of something extremely personal. I dress it up so it’s not immediately obvious– at least not to strangers– then present it to the world to be analyzed. (Y’all can look through my past stories and exercises to try and identify my various personal problems, if you’d like.) It’s hard to bring anything actually new into the world, so you chop off pieces of yourself and call it creation.

If we look at Eisenheim’s illusions, I think we would be able to say he does the same. This is of course true with feats such as Passauer, a means through which to demonstrate a different side of his personality and talents, but I think the same can be said of the likes of Greta, Frankel, and Elis. Frankel, being a magician himself, has the most obvious connection to the illusionist, but that doesn’t mean we should neglect the others. Greta, his first manifestation, was also the child of a craftsmen, had “dark, sad eyes,” and was completely puzzled by her being on a stage. With Elis, though audiences continually were shocked by the contrast between them, I believe he was yet another one of Eisenheim’s faces, and the inclusion of Rosa served as a means to spare for Elis the loneliness Eisenheim faced, with his only love interest in the story being unavailable to him because of her father’s bigotry.

Consider Harlan Crane, who vanished due to lack of recognition. Eisenheim, though obviously commercially successful, can be said to have done the same. This lack of recognition, though, was not about his art not being seen as great but instead about his art not being seen for what it was– himself. There are only so many times you can put yourself out before the world before you get fed up of no one seeing that. Though prompted by police, for sure, Eisenheim’s disappearance was another Millhauser story about artists deciding for themselves, in spite of audiences’ tastes, when their careers would come to an end.

Posted in Art | 7 Comments »

Writing Stories as Documents

Apr 2nd, 2020 by

I know we’ve talked about this in class a lot with Millhauser stories: So many of them are written in the third person and as a historical document. Stories like “The Other Town,” “The Tower,”  and “The Dome” are all written with similar fact-based narratives that span large periods of time. These stories give the illusion of an unbiased narrator, someone who has no personal investment in the way the story is told, so we take everything they say as truth. It simply feels like a documentary about a certain subject.

I’ve tried to understand why Millhauser repeatedly uses this form, why he comes back to it again and again. So often in class we hear that famous JGB phrase: “The story tells us more about the person telling it than the actual story” (or something like that). But with this unidentified narrator we lose a whole part of the story. At first I thought we were losing bias, that there was less room for interpretation when we lose a narrator. But the more I read these stories, the more I realize it’s the opposite. Because there are no opinions mixed in with the stories, we have very little idea of the reasoning behind any of the actions. Like in “Eisenheim The Illusionist” we can only see the actions of Eisenheim. We have no real interaction with him; we never hear him speak; we never get to experience first-hand what he was like. We also only ever get the audience’s outward reactions; we never understand how the illusions made them feel, or why they were so drawn to them.

Also telling the story of something like it’s a document allows us to fully witness every event in that person/object’s life and dissect it like we are reading a history book. We are able to see how everything starts and how everything ends. There’s no room for interpretation when it comes to the actual events taking place, just instead leaving room for interpretations about the character’s motives.

Posted in Point of View | 4 Comments »

“Eisenheim the Illusionist”

Apr 2nd, 2020 by

As I was reading “Eisenheim the Illusionist,” I started thinking about “In the Reign of Harad IV” and how, in both stories, nothing was ever enough. They are both always striving to do more and better work than what they had already achieved to the point that it becomes unrealistic and fantastic. They both are written in third person, and they both sound like poetic fairy tales.

While magic in itself is fantastic, Eisenheim goes to extremes, even competing with himself (as Passauer) and eventually causing his own disappearance.

Herr Uhl believed Eisenheim “crossed the line” and attempted to arrest him. That reminded me of the discussions we have had in class: How many cats? In another literature class (Nevison’s Deviant Bodies) we have talked about how when things go beyond normalcy, they become monstrous. They create fear. Eisenheim’s magic had that effect on Herr Uhl because it was beyond any explanation.

Posted in Fantastic, fear, Mystery | 4 Comments »

Views of Magic in the Nineteenth Century

Apr 1st, 2020 by

In Steven Millhauser’s Eisenheim the Illusionist, I think that he is trying to convey that magic is a form of art.  Something like magic has to be heavily argued for as it is something that only people that go to the show can talk about.  It isn’t something physical that can be put on the internet. One has to be sure to go to the show to see it and be able to talk about it with other people that are required to be at the show to talk about it.  He was also trying to say that during the time that Eisenheim was doing magic, that it hasn’t been doing well. This is as if they were trying to do something that had been a new media and that wasn’t fully respected as an art. It was also during the time when painting was at its high and that was more or less the most popular form of media that a lot of people had gotten into.

   In the last years of the nineteenth century, when the Empire of the Hapsburgs was nearing the end of its long dissolution, the art of magic flourished as never before. (215)

Also, during this time period the magicians were doing things that some people weren’t liking. This was making people view magic as something that maybe shouldn’t exist.  Where the things that were happening would be considered normal in today’s world, it just wasn’t for them. Those in law and that backed them, were trying to keep this from becoming the normal in this medium. Millhauser could have been trying to keep those kinds of influences out of the light by having them be arrested and keeping the people to what they know and not changing how the world operates. He didn’t want anyone else to believe that this is how they should act and what they should create. 

   The decision to arrest the Master during  performance was later disputed; the public arrest was apparently intended to send a warning to devotees of Eisenheim, and perhaps to other magicians as well. (235)

 

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A Change in Fashion

Apr 1st, 2020 by

This story has less of a fantastic element incorporated in it. They always say fashion can repeat itself and it most certainly did in this story. However, it truly conveys a deeper message than what is on the surface.

Clearly, this “A Change in Fashion” is about new, victorian-like dresses that are made that cover women’s bodies. There were a couple of small details I found to be interesting about this. First, the fashion designer who created this trend was a male- leaving me to believe that maybe a patriarchal society could (soon) be a part of the fantastic? Secondly, I found this quote on page 353 (in my e-book.)

Another dress, designed for the wife of a software CEO, rose three stories high and was attached to the back of the house by a covered walkway. A celebrated fashion journalist with a fondness for historical parallels compared these developments to the fanatical elaborations of coiffure in the late 18th century, when three-foot castles of hair rose on wire supports.”

I found it interesting that the women in this story were still ‘wives’ or ‘models’ and not the actual people in charge of making the designs. Especially in the last part of the story where women hesitated and “in the spirit of daring” came to a new style, which over time, became shorter and shorter. Leaving the end of this story to be a bit more empowering than the beginning.

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Coronavirus

Apr 1st, 2020 by

I was in Georgia for spring break with the lacrosse team. The Athletic Trainer and I were stretching out my legs a few hours before a game and I asked her about her thoughts on the topic. She said, “As long as the administration like me, Jodi and Coach aren’t worried about it then you shouldn’t be either. I’m not worried about it.” Ironically enough, we came back a few days later and they canceled our season and moved us to online classes.

I remember telling my friends and teammates about this class, actually. I would say, in JGB’s class we are learning about this genre of writing called the fantastic which is like stories about people waking up and turning into bugs or an over-exaggeration of an obsession. I told my lacrosse team this in the van on our way back to Georgia and how people were essentially in mass hysteria over this virus. 

However, about a week later, I started to understand the full effects of the virus and how dangerous it actually was once I was in quarantine. I think the word ‘surreal’ is a good way to describe the current situation everyone is facing. 

With COVID-19 sweeping the country, it reminds me of the story “Inventory” and how the main character of the story was traveling and sleeping with multiple people during an outbreak. The situation she was in seemed unimaginable and now it feels as if we are facing the same exact thing.

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OHYOS

Apr 1st, 2020 by

In the book, One Hundred Years of Solitude. During this novel, we read about a family and how, and for generations, they struggle in the town of Macondo. The town is visited by gypsies which creates fantastic elements.

I think my favorite part of this book was the character, Jose Arcadio Buendia, who dedicated much time to solving these mysteries around the island. He was so passionate about his work and leadership that it practically drove him mad. 

Jose Arcadio Buendia did not have a moment’s rest. Fascinated by an immediate reality that came to be more fantastic than the universe of his imagination, he lost all interest in the alchemist’s laboratory, put to rest the material that had become attenuated with months of manipulation, and went back to being the enterprising man of earlier days when he had decided upon the layout of the streets and the location of the new houses so that no one would enjoy privileges that everyone did not have.” (pg 42)

I think this quote just proves to show his dedication and leadership that he had established throughout the community.

Posted in One Hundred Years of Solitude | Comments Off

“Smack”

Apr 1st, 2020 by

In the story “Smack” we see the protagonist, Nicola, struggle with her failing marriage with Daniel. We learn that our main character is facing the reality of her husband moving out and leaving, along with the emotional abuse from their relationship.

Her type of television is the sort that Daniel says speaks weakness to character (although admittedly a lot speaks to Daniel of a weakness of character: a fondness for jelly sweets, the refusal to give dogs human names, hair grown past the shoulders, the Tolkien books). He has, in the past, tried to educate her, turning on the History Channel, documentaries about beluga whales. (pg. 244 in my ebook)

This passage is obvious proof that our protagonist is facing much emotional trauma which can be incredibly relatable to a range of audiences. She reminisced about the times she spent with Daniel. But we also see another conflict play into this story and that is her relationship with her sister. 

My sister’s the pretty one,’ Cece had announced by the way of introduction when Nicola first arrived. ‘Our father called her the precious cargo. So everyone be on your best behavior.’” (pg. 234 in my ebook) 

This scene creates much tension between Nicola and her sister, Cece adding to the drama of the story.

…. She has, it is true, half-expected Cece to come chasing her, but perhaps her sister’s current lack of a car owed is something for that delay. 

In the dining room, between marmalade-slathered crackers, she acts out of scenes of high drama, imagining scenarios, gesticulating to the blank spaces on the walls.” (pg. 241 in my ebook)

Again, there are multiple gestures in the texts that can give us reasons and examples that indicate the rocky relationship between her sister, which adds an extra bit of spice to her current situation. However, the fantastic element in this story truly adds the icing on the cake for the flare and drama that is presented in this story.

There will be more jellyfish. Later, washing up in the tight apple-light that follows dawn, a product of the early tide. When they come, she will be here, salt-rimmed from a night on the shore. She will lay herself down, awaiting the convocation. Jellyfish beaching against her arms and legs, the crest of her body on delicate body.” (pg. 252 in my e-book)

This quote is quite lovely. The fantastic element in this story is Nicola being submerged by jellyfish, which is truly heartbreaking. Jellyfish are commonly used as a symbol of love and the fact that she, for years, has been mistreated by not only her husband, but in constant tensions with her sister, makes for an incredibly wistful ending. She was submerged in love. 

Posted in Desperation, Fragility | Comments Off

Who Told the Story in “Eisenheim The Illusionist”?

Apr 1st, 2020 by

One of the most interesting details about “Eisenheim The Illusionist” is that it is written in third person. This makes the entire story seem like a fable or just a fairy-tale, especially since we’re talking about magic tricks and professional illusions back in the 19th (and early 20th) century. Not only does the telling of the story in third person make it seem fake, but it also does something truly poetic in a sense. It’s almost as if we are part of the audience at one of Eisenheim’s shows. We don’t know what’s going on behind the curtains; if fact, we don’t know much about Eisenheim at all. And that’s a very important detail.

It differs greatly from the movie’s view of Eisenheim. Not to turn this into a review of the film or a comparison, but the film doesn’t stay true to the “third person” point-of-view. In the film, Eisenheim receives a full backstory for sympathy, while in the story we don’t get as much; only a few paragraphs. We don’t have full access to anything about Eisenheim. And that’s on purpose. While obviously, this story crosses over to the fantastic multiple times because of it’s impeccable illusions, the point-of-view can turn this into a fable.

A way to think about it, which I started doing about halfway through, was to imagine who could possibly be telling this story? Naturally, anyone could be telling it if it’s a famous legend in the universe of Millhauser. But I find the story more compelling if it is being told by Herr Uhl. He has written this story after failing to capture Eisenheim, thus causing him to become infatuated with the subject. He does research on Eisenheim’s life; he writes a story to alarm others about people like Eisenheim. And while the first paragraph may debunk this, (as it is clearly telling us this happened way in the past) the idea of Herr Uhl being the “narrator” was an interesting detail that came to mind.

Posted in Longing for Answers, Mystery, Point of View | 9 Comments »

“A Change in Fashion”

Mar 31st, 2020 by

I found this piece enticing, nonetheless. It follows the fashion trends in women’s clothing and centers around one designer in particular who revolutionizes the fashion industry. I started to ask myself the reason behind the desire women possessed to disappear. Continuing throughout the story, I noticed that the dresses became more elaborate; going the extra yard as even imitating architecture. It was bizarre to read about the impossible lengths the women in the story would reach to stay in touch with the latest fashion trends.

One dress contained in its side a little red door, which was said to lead to a room with a bed, a mirror, and a shaded lamp. Another dress, designed for the wife of a software CEO, rose three stories high and was attached to the back of the house by a covered walkway. (176)

People spoke hungrily of new, impossible dresses – dresses worn on the inside of the body, dresses the size of entire towns. Others proposed an Edenic nakedness. As the new season approached, it was clear that something had to happen. (177)

Whereas the story did contain the fantastic elements of embellishing, or exaggerating, the size of the garments, I believe the fantastic element of the story is the obsession the women have over owning a part of the “fashion trend.” The obsession for staying in trend with fashion started long ago and normalized women following a “dress code” in order to be seen. However, the story uses that desire, obsession, and reverses it, making the women obsessed with being unseen.

The four men rushed over to the other dresses, yanking them up, knocking them over, tearing them with their fingers, but the women had disappeared. Later that day they were discovered in the kitchen of a neighbor’s house, dressed in old bathrobes, and talking among themselves. (177)

For a time the new fashion caught on. Women donned immense dresses and then quietly withdrew, wandering away to do whatever they liked. Dresses, freed at last from bodies, became what they had always aspired to be: works of art, destined for museums and private collections. Often they stood on display in large living rooms, beside pianos and couches. (177)

On the other hand, it seems as though the women enjoy not “actually” being seen as the center of attention, but, instead, their image. Celebrities are a prime example. They dress in designer on red carpets, hoping to be the best dressed at the party, cameras are flashing, interviews are conducted, but do you really think they want to be there? Granted, many actually do want to be there, but seasoned celebrities often enjoy playing the part, but not actually being the part.

At the end of the story, Steven Millhauser draws the readers back in when he connects the story to the physical world again. As a fashion trend retires, people who participated or who have witnessed the trend in its prime, reminisce on the archived fashions, like mullets, poofy hair, rat tails, or neon in the 1980’s, for example. Almost like a fever dream, they remember the trends and think of how silly it looked or wish it could make a comeback.

At dinner parties and family gatherings, people recalled the old style with amusement and affectionate embarrassment, as one might remember an episode of drunkenness. (178)

 

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Plight of the ignored artist

Mar 31st, 2020 by

I’ve noticed that Millhauser writes a lot of stories about artists fighting to be understood by the world at large. Is he okay? Has anyone checked on him?
Harlan Crane’s story in “A Precursor to Cinema” runs in the same cycles: Harlan does something fantastic. Newspapers criticize or ignore him. He has to find a new group of artists. Curtis writes about how he doesn’t really know Crane. Repeat.

While not necessarily in this order, you’ll find these same elements repeat themselves in the story at least three times (as in the case of the Verisimilists and the Transgressives), and sometimes as many as six (Harlan’s many painted miracles.) With every failure, Curtis makes reference to Harlan’s vague “struggles,” which if you know any artist intimately you know almost certainly refers to some kind of mental health trouble. It was interesting to me how, despite the formal, passive narration reminiscent of that of a lecture, it seemed the narrator really cared about Harlan Crane as a fellow human being, in a way I often find I also do while writing about historical figure.

Throughout my reading, I had the foreboding sense that “A Precursor to Cinema” would be another story leading to the main character’s suicide, which I felt was evidenced by his short lifespan (1844-1888) and again his “struggles.” At the end, I found myself questioning whether or not this had been the case. Though implied he had reappeared elsewhere under a new name, Harlan Crane died, very intentionally, by his own choice. I’m reminded of a quote from Little Women, said by Amy, paraphrased by me: “If I can’t be great, I want to be nothing.” Harlan was great, a fact he demonstrated over and over again, to the recognition of no one. Rather than go on without his work getting the appreciation he deserved, he simply faded away, taking his art with him.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Trending in “A Change in Fashion”

Mar 31st, 2020 by

The first sentence of Steven Millhauser’s “A Change in Fashion” states, “After the Age of Revelation came the Age of Concealment.” This is said so matter-of-factly that I didn’t even question it. It almost sounds like the opening line to an analytical historical paper. The description of the fashion reminded me of The Handmaid’s Tale, in which the fashion is described as “The skirt is ankle-lengthlyx138mdm6uy, full, gathered to a flat yoke that extends over the breasts, the sleeves are full. The white wings too are prescribed issue; they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen.” While at the beginning of Steven Millhauser’s story, the women crave the idea of being hidden from a male gaze, while the narrator in The Handmaid’s Tale presents the fashion. There are conflicting emotions with new styles of dresses — just like with any fashion trend — some find it ridiculous while others find it an “expression of liberation from the tyranny of the body.” The goal appears to be to completely hide a woman’s body from the gaze; the idea of sexy moves from revealing to not revealing. Sexiness is molded from being able to see a woman’s figure or chest to not being able to see it and the “vague suggestiveness” of the hidden. While the women in this story are fighting to be free from a man’s control and a man’s gaze, there is still the obvious control the men have. “A rival journalist, ignoring women and their desires, spoke only of the new aesthetic of costume, which at last was free to develop in the manner of landscape painting after it had become bold enough to exile the human figure.” The fantastic, however, is not expanded on in terms of men controlling women. It is the extremity of the dress designs that grow from Hyperion’s designs. “Restless and dissatisfied, they grew in every direction; in some instances, they exceeded the size of rooms and had to be worn in large outdoor spaces, like backyards or public parks.” Throughout history, large dresses are nothing new. Queens all over the world had large extravagant dresses — usually ones that hid the shape of her body.

The sudden detachment from the dresses is another element of the fantastic. One line even states, “Dresses, freed at last from bodies, became what they had always aspired to be: works of art, destined for museums and private collections.” This line almost personifies the dresses, which for the first time separate the women and the dresses from each other. The phase was huge, enough for the dresses to become part of architecture only for them to die out just as fast as they came. The whole thing became a distant memory that would be brought up at family gatherings.

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The Truth in the Tale

Mar 31st, 2020 by

Millhauser

Because of the fantastic talent of its protagonist, Harlan Crane, and the mysteriousness of his character, Millhauser’s “Precursor of the Cinema” seems like fiction. On the contrary, there are various instances throughout the tale that demand it be taken as truth. The beginning of the short story reads like a research paper or a historical document, both of which require evidence. The evidence begins with “Plateau’s Phenakistoscope, Horner’s Zoetrope, Reynaud’s Praxinoscope…Daguerre’s Diorama.” (179) These references are of actual inventors-Joseph Plateau, William George Horner, Charles Emile Reynaud, and Louis Daguerre all lived in the 1800’s, the same time frame as Harlan Crane. The evidence continues to build on page 180 when the narrator says, “We do know, from records discovered in 1954, that Crane studied drawing in his early twenties at Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design. His first illustrations for Harper’s Weekly…” First, the narrator mentions “records discovered in 1954” which means they found proof that Harlan Crane attended those institutions; they didn’t assume or suggest, they referenced evidence. Secondly, Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design are real places located in New York City, where Harlan Crane lived. Not only that, but Harper’s Weekly was a real magazine until it was discontinued in 1912.

The narrator continues to tell us that “there is evidence, in the correspondence of friends, to suggest that Crane became interested in photography at this time.” (180). The narrator presents another source besides records-letters. Presuming that this story is a historical document or research paper, then citing two different sources is what you what would do when trying to convince someone of your position — in this case, the mysterious Harlan Crane. And the proof doesn’t stop there; the narrator then supports the authenticity of Crane’s paintings. As the narrator reports on page 183, “From half a dozen newspaper reports, from a letter by Linton Burgis to his sister, and from a handful of scattered entries in journals and diaries, we can reconstruct the paintings sufficiently to understand the perplexing impressions they caused, though many details remain unrecoverable.” Here the narrator lists three separate sources for Crane’s fantastic paintings. Not only that, but the narrator then proceeds to list the paintings and describe them. This is just another point in the favor of the reality of Harlan Crane.

Furthermore, to really cement their “paper” on Harlan Crane, the narrator references quotes from people who experienced Crane’s fantastic paintings or who were a close friend. On page 199, we read that “One woman, a Mrs. Amelia Hartman, said that it reminded her of immersing herself in the ocean, but an ocean whose water was dry.” Here we have a direct quote from a woman who experienced Crane’s Picnic on the Hudson. Two pages earlier, we read about a conversation between Harlan Crane and his closest friend, W.C. Curtis, taken directly from Curtis’s dairy. Additionally, on page 198, the narrator mentions the following songs: “Aura Lee”, “Sweet Genevieve,” “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” and “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.” These real songs were written in the late 1870’s to the 1880’s. The narrator mentions them because they appear in the accounts of Picnic on the Hudson.

With the use of so many sources, the various mentions of real places, songs, people and inventions, and the direct quotes from people of the era, Millhauser forces us to recognize one thing: Harlan Crane was real. Yes, he was mysterious; yes, there were parts of his life unaccounted for; yes, he was a mysterious figure, but haven’t there been numerous people like him throughout history? And yes, his paintings essentially “came to life,” but who are we to say that it wasn’t real? That he didn’t have a fantastic talent? Who are we to say it didn’t actually happen? I’m sure when Joseph Plateau and William George Horner invented their creations, the public believed them to be fantastic. That’s what Millhauser shows us in “Precursor of the Cinema”: the fantastic is part of reality.

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Machine’s Failure’s for Success

Mar 31st, 2020 by

In Steven Millhauser’s A Precursor of the Cinema, he is writing in a time that is trying to create a new machine to create being alone all day working on their artwork.  Millhauser is showing the invention phase is trying to show that he is allowing things to be done more quickly, instead of requiring those multiple hours. In this piece, Millhauser wants to show that our world that everything wasn’t always on a screen and that everything used to be done the long way with people.  

His father was a haberdasher who liked to spend Sundays in the country with oil paints and an easel. (180)

He also wanted to show that it was not always easy to create a new machine, especially in the times of not much on the technology side of things.  He wanted to tell you that it is okay to make mistakes and do many trials on things, through their mishaps with the making of their machines.   

“ Every great invention is preceded by a rich history of error. Those false paths, wrong turns, and dead ends, those branchings and veerings, those wild swerves and delirious wanderings-how can they fail to entice the attention of the historian, who sees in error itself a promise of revelation? (179)

 

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A Change In Fashion

Mar 31st, 2020 by

In reading “A Change in Fashion” I struggled to find the fantastic thanks to Lady Gaga. Could it be that women have gotten tired of being looked at as sexual objects that are judged by their looks and body? I doubt it since some women have always had a dislike of that issue. Possibly the fact that some people felt as those a woman being hidden behind (or inside) their clothes was still erotic? No, I don’t find that fantastic Maybe it is the actual dresses that are being “built”- then again there is Lady Gaga. The extremeness- to build a dress that you can live in, have sex in- that is certainly fantastic.

I saw more humor in this story than fantastic. I loved it when “The four men rush over to the other dresses, yanking them off…but the women had disappeared. Later that day, they were discovered in the kitchen of a neighbor’s house, dressed in old bathrobes…” (pg. 177)

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Fashion and The Male Gaze

Mar 30th, 2020 by

When thinking about what to write in this post, I struggled to recognize the source of fantastic in Steven Millhauser’s “Change in Fashion.” While the formulation and expansion of the dress was meant to achieve a purpose, I argue that the motivation of this dress isn’t far off from modern fashion. With the goal of the dress turning from the “refusal to reveal female bod[ies],” to full concealment, Steven Millhauser poses the question of how female fashion is used for male pleasure.

 
What adds more depth to this is how the dress is depicted as a form of female liberation, giving women the freedom to redefine their own bodies. While the reader is meant to believe that this was the goal, undertones of male sexual satisfaction push forward, with the abundance of fabric encouraging “indirection, disguise, and a vague suggestiveness” towards female bodies.

Women, it was argued, were never more naked than when concealed from view.

If we look at modern cultural fashion standards, women are still under the control of the male gaze. In Islamic culture, while the hijab is regarded as a religious mark, it is used as a tool for male pleasure, as the husband is the one who has full access to the woman’s appearence.

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Point-of-View in “A Precursor of the Cinema”

Mar 30th, 2020 by

When I first read about the moving paintings in Steven Millhauser’s “A Precursor of the Cinema,” I was reminded of the moving paintings in the Harry Potter series, the ones that talked and moved from frame to frame, interacting with both the students and the subjects of the other paintings. In Harry Potter, we know the paintings are enchanted because we are told that they are; in that world, magic is real. In “A Precursor of the Cinema,” however, the paintings function differently. We don’t know for certain if they are magic or science or something else entirely.

This is one of the interesting things about this story, especially in relation to the point-of-view. We don’t get these events as they are happening. The story isn’t told from Crane’s or Curtis’s perspective. Instead, we learn about these people and events long after they’ve occurred in the form of what could be a research paper. The point-of-view is distant, telling the events factually and referring to things like diary entries and other studies for evidence. If I remember correctly, the word “I” is only used once at the very end of the story. Like this unknown narrator and everyone else in this world, we are left to speculate about Harlan Crane and his paintings.

What’s interesting about this point-of-view is that it makes the fantastic seem believable; we take it as fact that this happened and that these paintings moved and that people were able to enter them. In our discussions recently about the coronavirus, many of us talked about how our reality would have seemed fantastic only a month ago. This story is almost the opposite of that; in the way it is told, it makes even the most unbelievable things seem like reality — just another thing that we learn about in a history class.

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Identifying the Fantastic in “A Change in Fashion”

Mar 29th, 2020 by

As I was preparing to write this post, I became curious about fashion trends throughout history that we, as modern people, might consider fantastic if there was no evidence to support their existence. One example is lotus shoes, which can only be worn by women with bound feet; foot binding was an ancient tradition for Chinese women until it was finally outlawed in 1912. Another is stiff high collars; these were worn by English men in the 1800s and were stiffened with copious amounts of starch. The detachable collars were so tight that many men died from asphyxia—in one case, a man was nearly decapitated due to how stiff and tight his collar was. In some Eastern cultures, there is the neck ring; over time, this ornament compresses the shoulders, ribs, and clavicle, creating the illusion of an elongated neck—after a certain point, neck rings cannot even be removed due to health risks.

But what exactly makes these things feel fantastic? Is it the willingness of the wearers to mutilate and endanger their own bodies for the sake of being fashionable? Is it the negative effects of these trends? Is it the cultures in which they are spawned? I asked myself these questions as I reread “A Change in Fashion.” As this story goes on, we see the dresses growing larger and larger, but how big does a dress have to get before it can be considered fantastic? Consider the crinoline skirts and panniers of the 17th and 18th centuries; some women couldn’t even fit through doors or ride in carriages. We see Hyperion design all kinds of strangely shaped dresses, but is this really so fantastic when you consider some of the wacky designs that have graced the runway (or anything Lady Gaga has ever worn) over the years? Even when the women’s bodies become completely concealed by the dresses, is it really so bizarre to imagine when there are women in the Middle East who are forced to cover themselves from head to toe every day?

I might be alone in this, but apart from the house-sized dresses, I hesitate to call this story fantastic. A month ago, I probably would have, but living in the midst of a pandemic has caused me to reexamine many of my previous ideas about what I consider to be plausible.

Posted in Autonomy, Defiance, Desire, Disappearance, Fantastic, Isolation, Obsession | 2 Comments »

Contagion Fables

Mar 28th, 2020 by

In an essay in the March 30 issue of the New Yorker entitled “What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About,” Jill Lepore offers a wide-ranging, squirm-inducing discussion of the “literature of pestilence.” Early in the article she writes:

The literature of contagion is vile. A plague is like a lobotomy. It cuts away the higher realms, the loftiest capacities of humanity, and leaves only the animal. “Farewell to the giant powers of man,” Mary Shelley wrote in “The Last Man,” in 1826, after a disease has ravaged the world. “Farewell to the arts,—to eloquence.” Every story of epidemic is a story of illiteracy, language made powerless, man made brute.

But, then, the existence of books, no matter how grim the tale, is itself a sign, evidence that humanity endures, in the very contagion of reading. Reading may be an infection, the mind of the writer seeping, unstoppable, into the mind of the reader. And yet it is also—in its bidden intimacy, an intimacy in all other ways banned in times of plague—an antidote, proven, unfailing, and exquisite.

In case you can’t access the article via the link above, I’ve placed a pdf of it in the Google folder for this class. I’d be eager to read any comment you might have.

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The Buendia Family

Mar 26th, 2020 by

one-hundred-years-of-solitude-quotes-by-gabriel-garcia-marquez-1700079

Over the last year, I have noticed that foreign writers have a different writing style than American ones. They capture the human experience so differently, they write about it so beautifully that I wonder if they know something we don’t. Is it because their culture and heritage is older than America’s? Were they raised with such a different view of the world and the human experience? Whatever the answer, their novels speak to my heart in a way that no American author has before. From Nina George, to Aime Cesaire, Franz Fallon, Anton Chekhov, Alice Munro, Yoko Ogawa, and now Gabriel Garcia Marquez, my understanding of writing and all of the style choices that come with it has been expanded for the better. Especially now that I’ve finished One Hundred Years of Solitude, I realize how important it is to read all forms of literature, not just the ones you grew up with, and to read a diverse set of authors. Being a writer, I know reading international authors has opened my eyes to a variety of writing styles, choices, and themes. I haven’t yet read an international author whose work didn’t affect me in some way and Garcia Marquez is no exception.

Yes, his novel has numerous fantastical elements, yes, there is murder, incest, and all sorts of crazy things happening, yes, many of the characters have the same name, but none of that detracts from the heart of the story-it is a story about family. Whether by marriage, blood, or adoption, every character is part of the Buendia family. And they are all so real. Melquiades, with his wisdom and kindness, mentors several of the Buendia men. Jose Arcadio Buendia has his obsession with inventions and progress and alchemy that eventually leads him to go mad. Ursula Buendia, with her strength and fortitude, as well as being a mother, runs a business and the town, keeps her family as safe as she can, and puts them in their places without fear such as in the case of cruel Arcadio. Pilar Ternera, mother of two Buendia boys, always there to comfort and care for the Buendia boys, caretaker of the past. Aureliano Buendia, first a quiet boy, then a colonel in a civil war, the first character we mete, and one of the most memorable. The love Rebeca and Amaranta both feel towards Pietro Crespi that strains their relationship. Rebeca being Pietro’s love until she sees Jose Arcadio and marries him out of passion. Amaranta loving Pietro Crespi but selfishly refusing to accept his marriage proposal, which ultimately sends him to his death. Jose Arcadio pining for a forbidden love and is then murdered in a bath by people he had cared for. All the way up to Amaranta Ursula and Aureliano, every Buendia family member is real. And for Garcia Marquez to make all of them real, to make them all three dimensional, to make the reader care about them all, that takes a brilliant talent for writing.

Many passages of this novel I wrote down to remember, and several of my favorites are at the end. All of them have to do with memory, nostalgia, the past, solitude. The first one is Fernanda :

“She had simply turned the royal regalia into a device for her memory. The first time that she put it on she could not help a knot from forming in her heart and her eyes filling with tears because at that moment she smelled once more the odor of shoe polish on the boots of the officer who came to get her at her house to make her a queen, and her soul brightened with the nostalgia of lost dreams. She felt so old, so worn out, so far away from the best moments of her life that she even yearned for those that she remembered as the worst, and only then did she discover how much she missed the whiff of oregano on the porch and the smell of the roses at dusk, and even the bestial nature of the parvenus. Her heart of compressed ash, which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without strain, fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia. The need to feel was becoming a vice as the years eroded her. She became human in her solitude.” (363)

The second is between Aureliano and Jose Arcadio:

“That drawing closer together of two solitary people of the same blood was far from friendship, but it did allow them both to bear up better under the unfathomable solitude that separated and united them at the same time.” (373)

The wise Catalonian has some beautiful words to say:

“One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, the shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.” (403)

The last is a realization by Aureliano Buendia:

“…and in that flash of lucidity he became aware that he was unable to bear in his soul the crushing weight of so much past. Wounded by the fatal lances of his own nostalgia and that of others, he admired the persistence of the spiderwebs on the dead rosebushes, the perseverance of the rye grass, the patience of the air in the radiant February dawn.” (414)

These quotes capture the overall feeling of the last several chapters.

While I’m not an expert in literature yet, I think it’s appropriate to say that Gabriel Garcia Marquez perfectly and beautifully captures one hundred years worth of family history.

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