swamplandia!. karen russell. (9)

 because of my friend chris' facebook postings, i became obsessed with flavorpill's articles particularly their book articles.  one such article, the best debut novels of 2011, inspired me to take a break from my classics reading and try some new books.  i decided to start off with karen russell's "swamplandia!".

i had high expectations for this novel, because flavorpill said, "it's a coming-of-age story, it's a save-the-farm tale,  it's a strange love story, and it's a wonderful debut."  i guess i can call it the curse, (that sounds negative . . .) the standard set (?) by "catcher in the rye", but i assume that any novel that is described as "coming-of-age" will change my life.  and on top of that there was a love story and an alligator farm, how could it fail?  it kinda did.  it was a good novel.  however it didn't wow! me like i thought it would.

flavorpill did get it right.  karen russell is a wonderful writer.  her book was filled with interesting and quirky images.  my favorites were:

"he backed away from his thought and let it hang there, a Monet picture, beautifully out of focus."

"hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation."

"tv movies and radio songs were the only models i had for love transmissions, a boyfriend-girlfriend conversation."

"the knit of our hands on his lap looked so distant from either of us, like a sculpture we've made."

the story premise was interesting as well.  i loved the idea of the family-owned alligator farm. i, like ava, longed for the days when their mother was alive and the star attraction of their farm. their lives were filled with happiness and family love.  but sadly this did not last long.

i did become invested in all of the characters.  i hated their father for abandoning them.  i worried about kiwi and wanted to protected him from the outside world.  i was concerned with osceola and her "boyfriend." and lastly, i loved ava.  i wanted nothing but happiness for her.  she was such a sweet and brave little girl and i was angry with the world for dealing her such a horrible hand in life.  and my love for ava is why i disliked this book.  without spoiling it for anyone, there is something that happens to ava and i have no idea how or why russell let it happen to her.  her incident did make the novel real, in real life that is what would happen to her.  but regardless it broke my heart that it did.  i guess i was disappointed because i wanted everything to work out and it didn't.

so you should check this book out.  the writing is great, i just became too invested in ava's life and that may be why i was disappointed.

wuthering heights. emily brönte. (8)

i have no idea why "wuthering heights" is a classic. it doesn't deserve such a title. there is nothing timeless and enduring about this novel. i can't imagine a reader feeling any other emotion than disgust while they are reading. holly golightly cited it as her favorite novel in "breakfast at tiffany's" and as much as i love her, i do not value her opinion. though her admiration of this book makes sense especially since she is phony and a double rat when it comes to love.

the issue that i had with "wuthering heights" was that all of the characters were horrible. i did not and could not root for catherine and heathcliff's happiness or love because i found them unworthy of it. i could
not pity them. they were so cruel and evil that their miserables lives were their just desserts! furthermore, one could not side with the forces that kept heathcliff and cat apart because they were just as cruel and awful. there was on one to sympathize with because their were all appalling. the only person i felt for was the servant, nelly, she didn't deserve to be surrounded by such horrendous people and drama. actually i also felt bad for the isabella linton, because heatlhcliff took advantage of her love.

i will add that i was happy that in the end, the kids' found happiness because they did suffer due to the cruelty of the generation before them. but their happy ending does not save the entire novel.

to be honest the only good thing that came from this work was this kate bush song:

on the road. jack kerouac. (7)

in college, as a pleasure read versus an academic one, i read john leland's "hip: a history", sadly i wasn't too familiar with majority of the social movements or time periods it discussed.  i remember reading about the beats but hadn't read "on the road", "howl" or "naked lunch" so the impact of their hipness didn't really reach me. since then "on the road" has kinda haunted me. whenever i went to a bookstore, the back of my mind told me to finally pick up "on the road" but i never did.

what forced me to finally pick it up was an ed rusha exhibit at the hammer museum. on display was ed rusha's book version of "on the road". (the plaque next to his piece also taught me that kerouac wrote it all on one scroll. i can't remember if that scroll was on display, hmm). i can sadly admit that there were a series of pieces that i loved in this exhibit that i thought were solely ed rusha but turned out to be "on the road" quotes when i finally read the book. (yeah i am quite the poser.)

after reading "on the road", i reached one conclusion about myself. i have always been labelled a "flower child" by my family and though i do have hippie tendencies, i think my nomadic life is more on par with the beats. there is a rawness and grittiness to their lifestyle that is more attractive to me than putting flowers in my hair in san francisco.

if i was a male during the 1950's, i would have been a beat. i would have hitchhiked across the country, got drunk, got high and slept with girls and boys. and at the risk of sounding sexist, i would have to be male, there really wasn't a place for females in this movement; unless you wanted to end up used or abuse (not like physically or sexually though this did happen but also as a source of income as seen in the book) or dead like williams s. burroughs' wife (as in real life). as a female, i am not offended, these men were jaded by the war. did anyone actually survive the weird tension in the us caused by the cold war? all the creative spirits we recognize now were all tormented by it but that led to their genius. as i explained recently to darlene, i have a greater tolerance for communists and socialists in that historical context because society was so static that you had to believe in the extremes to have any hope for change. so i don't hold anything against the beats. they did let their women drink, do drugs and have sex so in a way that is liberating. their women were equal in their access to life's vices.

"on the road" is on flavorpill's 30 before 30 and it will probably be on my list too. it would make my list due the great quotes in it. what i loved most about "on the road" was kerouac's poetic style. he had a chaotic and beautiful way of describing life (surprisingly at times, my life.)

my favorite quote of course was:

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everyone goes "awww!""

i also enjoyed:

"people change, they eat meals year after year and change with every meal."
(why i am a foodie)

"she threw down drinks when it seemed she was about to chuck up the last."
(how i drink)

"...and like the prophet who walked across the land to bring the dark word, and the only word i had was 'wow'!"
(how i feel at coachella)

one quote that stood out, was kerouac's nostradamus moment. he wrote:

"dean has a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. he said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up new york."

random, right?!?! i googled to see if at then time of 9/11, anyone drew a parallel to this. they didn't. but i did find an article about a professor who noticed post-9/11 that his students normally wrote their class papers on that excerpt.

but what i loved more was his descriptions of the city i love the most, los angeles:

"LA. i love the way everyone says ‘LA’ on the Coast; it's their one and only golden town when all is said and done."

"on corners old women cut up the boiled heads of cows and wrapped morsels in tortillas and served them with hot sauce on newspaper napkins"

while in LA, sal eats at what i assumed was clifton's cafeteria downtown, so i emailed "ask chris" from los angeles magazine on the topic and he said possibly though there were multiple clifton's back than.

i love this book because of its carefree spirit. sal just went with the flow of life. and sometimes it worked for him and sometimes it didn't. sometimes he lived like a king and other times he had to scrape and scramble to get life together. the importance was the experience of life versus living by society standards.

i will admit that "on the road" made me romanticize a time period that was not as glamorous as it read on paper. it made me nostalgic for something that i never lived or could have ever live or even survive. i realized that today, i can not travel like sal paradise did, especially being a female. i can even admit that at the end i started to get a little bored and found the lifestyle tedious. being on the road would be exhausting however like the saying goes, it isn't the destination but the journey. and kerouac proves that to a t by making the destination obsolete. and i think this is why i would be a beat, it's about experiencing life instead of where you end up.

ps here is one of the pieces from the ed rusha's exhibit. it reminded me of delano, which is why i initially loved it.

breakfast at tiffany's. truman capote. (6)

i absolutely love audrey hepburn's holly golightly. i always watch "breakfast at tiffany's" filled with envy. if only i could have her sense of style (and petite frame)! my dream item is her shades. one of my favorite scenes is when she is peering over them at the girlie show! i googled, i can own a pair of oliver goldsmith's "manhattan", they reissued them last year. but what i admired most was that she was so cool and it was so effortless. i mean my favorite outfit was the mens dress shirt as a nightgown complete with eyelashed sleeping mask and ear plugs (seriously does anyone know where i can find her ear plugs?). such a cute outfit, and yet it was something she slept in!

hepburn was so delightful and charming, you can't help but fall in love with her. i was so excited about reading the novella, but at the same time wondered if it had the same whimsical magic of the film? i know most films ruin books, but i love hepburn's verison of golightly so much, that i couldn't imagine another. however, there was nothing to worry about. the movie stayed true to the book (well as much as society standards would permit back then) and majority of the lines i loved came straight from the novella. and the crazy thing is that most of the storyline stayed the same (there are some major difference but read it for yourself, i promise you won't be disappointed). even with the sameness, surprisingly the film's "golightly" is completely different from the book verison.

as cool as she is in the movie, holly golightly is even hipper in the book. she is this raw, no nonsense, do-as-she-pleases, free-spirited boheminian. as much as i want to be her in the movie, i would much rather be her in the book (well minus all of the sally tomato and jose drama). she is edgier and way ahead of her time when it comes to sex and drugs. it's like this perfect person you always admired ends up having a sailor mouth and does drugs. its kinda like discovering that your grandma cusses (which grandma bea does and did shock me when i first heard her. lol)

holly was never much of a lady in the movie, she did drink at all hours, had numerous male callers, and did go to girlie shows. but that is all child's play in comparison to her behavior in the book. i was shocked that she smoked pot. she also used phrases like "nigger-lip" and "preggers". and though it was implied that she got around in the film, it didn't prepare me for hearing a story about her being bit during sex or advising her friend to have sex with the lights on!??! (remember this was 1950s) here are some things i was shock to hear (well read) from her lips:

"rusty thinks i should smoke marijuana, and i did for a while, but it only makes me giggle"

"i told him look, darling, you've got the wrong miss go-lightly, i'm not a nurse that does tricks on the side."

"i wish, please don't laugh--but i wish i'd been a virgin for him . . ."

the most shocking was how open she was when it came to sexual orientation. i know i shouldn't be too shocked considering capote's sexual orientation. but i was surprised to hear her speak so frankly about it in the 1950s (i mean this was the era of joan cleaver). she used phrases like "dyke", "bull dyke" and was convinced that rusty was gay. but she wasn't opposed to homosexuality. in fact, she thought it was fine for people to be in love with members of their sex. for as she explains, "of course people couldn't help but think i must be a bit of a dyke myself. and of course i am. everyone is: a bit."

even greater are her views on marriage equality:

a person ought to be able to marry men or women or--listen, if you came to me and said you wanted to hitch up with Man o' War, i'd respect your feeling. no, i'm serious. love should be allowed. i'm all for it."

i love that last quote not only for showing how silly it is for us to be concern with who others want to marry. but also because it reminded me of when my friend miguel when he told a panel of judges, it shouldn't matter if he loved men, women or giraffes on bravo's "step it up and dance".

but even all this aside, i fell in love with holly golightly for the same reason, one does in the film. her quirks (the stealing, not giving her cat a name becaus they don't belong to each other, her visits to tiffany's) and of course the little tibbits of life advice she gives out.

on diamonds:
"it's like tiffany's. not that i give a hott about jewelry. diamonds, yes. but it's tacky ot wear diamonds before you're forty; and even that's risky."

her mean reds:
" . . . the blues are because you're getting fat or maybe it's been raining too long. you're sad, that's all. but te mean reds are horrible. you're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of. except something bad is going to happen, I ly you don't know what it is."

her free-spiritedness:

"i don't want to own anything until i know i've found the place where me and things belong together."
-her card that read "miss holiday golightly, traveling." which were made because as she explained "after all, how do i know where i'll be leaving tomorrow."-her singing of "don't wanna sleep, don't wanna die, just wanna go-atravelin' through the pastures of the sky" (ps in the book, "fred" gives her a st. christopher medal from tiffany's. i googled and he is a patron saint of travelers. adorable huh. also i googled and you can purchase a st. christopher medal from tiffany's. i might!)

her musing on love:"never love a wild thing, mr. bell . . .but you can't give your heart a wild thing: the more you do, th estronger they get. until they're srong enough to run into the woods. or fly into a tree . . . if you let yourself love a wild thing. you'll end up looking at the sky."
"--i love new york, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street, or a house, something, anyaway, tha tbelongs to me cause i belong to it."

such a character and what a mess but a charming one. i actually think i will put this on my list of 30 before 30. she doesn't make the best decisions in life, but i think she has some great tidbits that one should live by. also who doesn't love a kinky pot smoker who supports gay marriage? so yes, definitely worth the read.

the time machine & the invisible man. h.g. wells (5)

"the time machine" has been on my to read list ever since bravo's "work of art" book cover challenge. not because "the time machine" was the winning cover (it was cool, i almost bought it for that reason). but because the other artist's cover had flowers, a teddy bear (?) and a girl. this sparked my curiosity: what did she read to make a cover like that (turns out she didn't read it. but to help her out, the girl is weena and flowers were mentioned but still confused about the bear).

i read "the time machine" back in october, when the occupy wall street movement was in full force and i was disappointed that the 99% didn't take up "the time machine" as a metaphor for the current class divide and what can occur in the future if things do not change. (i can't be too mean, i for one had no idea that h.g. well's sci-fi classic was so political). "the time machine" can serve to the 1% as an example of what will happen to them if they don't improve the treatment of the 99%; they will be eaten (literally).

as the time traveler discovered 800,000 years into the future there are two species derived from humans, the eloi (the 1%) and the morlocks (the 99%). the traveler first encountered the eloi, lazy, stupid, pleasuring seeking pink-skinned creatures with curly hair, large eyes and tentacle-like hands. at first, he admired them for their "social paradise" but soon discovers that the morlocks (a subterranean species, ape-like with dull white skin and "strange large greyish-red eyes" and "flaxen hair" on their head and backs) are terrorizing the eloi. it is discovered that the eloi's paradise is the result of the morlocks who labor to feed, cloth and house the eloi. but here is the twist! the morlocks no longer have a food supply and since they are carnivores start treating the eloi like cattle and eating them!!! the rich, you have been warned. if you don't start treating the working class better then they will bite the hand they feed.

in addition to this, wells' explanation of how the classes diverged also serves as a warning to the super rich about what the future contains for them if their reliance upon the working class continues. the aristocracy becomes the unintelligent eloi due to their dependence upon the morlocks' labor. as a result of the upper class' lack of labor, they become devoted to leisure which leads to their minds deteriorating due to lack of stimulation. as the traveler explained "the too-perfect security of the upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence." in addition to this, the working class continued labor results in an even wider gap between the classes for as the traveler observed, "in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour." does this sound familiar? it's interesting to consider that although wells' future can appear far-fetch (giant crabs in the even farther future?), however when it comes to class relations 100 years from its publication, "the time machine" is pretty on point.

so why are the morlocks the "monsters" and the time traveler sympathizes with the eloi? because this story is to serve as a warning against the evils of capitalism. wells' was a socialist and wanted to stop the exploitation of the working class. he is not calling the working class monsters but understands that if their oppression continues they will start to push back. (see: occupy wall st, labor strikes)

lastly i want to point out that the eloi were vegetarians. and would just like to share a random fact that i learned at the natural history museum of los angeles. when meat was introduce to our prehistoric ancestors diets, their brains grew and their intelligence increased as a result. so i for one am worried with the current trends of veganism/vegetarianism that the absence of meat in our diets might result in the opposite effects. just some food for thought.

ps being a huge fan of natural history museum, i was happy to see the appearance of one in this novella. it makes me happy that museums ruins will be around in the future.

---
the book i checked out also included "the invisible man." i will say that i didn't enjoy it and i hated the invisible man. i was disappointed by the novella because as a kid, i always wanted my super power to be invisible. (as an adult, it would be to teleport and for those of you who have had my teleport convo with me, the ability to teleport out my fat cells and also babies.) but i learned if you are invisible, you'll go crazy. the invisible man was horrible and i am glad (spoiler alert!) he died in the end. i am not sure how to analyze this work. other than people go crazy with power. and science in the wrong hands can be destructive.

all in all, check out "the time
machine" but don't bother with "the invisible man". and do not watch "war of the worlds" (just cos i hate tom cruise.)

dracula. bram stoker. (4)

i never got on the vampire bandwagon.   i've never read (or have a desire to read) "twilight"; never watched "true blood" (again who has premium cable?), i will admit that i have sat through episodes of "vampire diaries" with my cousin erin but nothing in our vampire saturated culture caught my interest. i also never got caught up in the anne rice's work either. i was young when "interview with a vampire" came out and loved "queen of the dead" but mostly cos stuart townsend was hot. so "dracula" was my first vampire read and i mean where else does one start but with the original vampire book. (question: do all other vampire works acknowledge dracula as the og vampire? like does edward come from his line?)

the funny thing about reading "dracula" is that you have to read it with a clean slate.  you have to act as if you have never heard of edward, or buffy, even dracula himself (i mean you are meeting the guy for the first time, if its your first reading). if not, you will be frustrated with characters for their lack of vampire knowledge.  i first encountered this with jonthan harker, and what feels like his inability to instantly recognize the true nature of count dracula.  though i shouldn't be so harsh on jonathan, for someone who has never heard of vampires superstitions prior to his working with count dracula, he did well with recognizing that the lack of mirrors or his host's disappearance during the day and lack of appetite at dinner didn't add up to that of a normal human being.  i mean the weird group sex fantasies were a good red flag that something was up too, but he did well in trusting his suspicions. 

another character i wanted to kick because of her lack of vampire 101 was lucy's mother, i know garlic smells gross (i personally associate it with food so love the smell of it) but she should have never removed that garlic garland from around lucy's neck.  but i have to remember she didn't know better.  and in addition to this, why was mina the only one that noticed the two red marks on lucy's neck and in what world would anyone see vampire marks on their neck and think they pricked themselves with a pin!?!? (that is like girls trying to convince themselves that their hickey looks like a curling iron burn!) but i guess their lack of knowledge is in line with the tradition of horror, where we, as the viewer, always know better than the victim (and would have never ran in that direction.)

as much as i was upset with their naivete, i was impressed with their, well primarily, van helsing's medical knowledge.  (and yes, as i read, i totally envisioned huge jackman as van helsing.  swoon.)  what amazed me was that van helsing performed blood transfusions!  "dracula" was published in 1897 so i guess it isn't as old as i thought it was.  but still blood transfusions seem like a modern (granted "dracula" is turn of the century.) phenomenon.  maybe i'm biased because i'm a chicken (fear of needles) when it comes to giving blood and think the current way of giving blood isn't that sophisticated, so i can't imagine what people a hundred years had to endure. so when van helsing suggest that they perform a transfusion for lucy. i immediately googled on my phone and it turns out (thanks to wikipedia) that the first successful blood transfusion was performed in 1818 by british obstetrician dr. james blundell.  pretty impressive!  and how create of stoker to use it as a means to try to combat the dracula's converting of lucy to the darkside! 

blood, obviously is very important throughout all of "dracula".  that is his source of life, (it's our source of life too).  but there was one blood issue that i figured would arise especially with dracula's female victims, but it was never addressed.  (and if stoker really wanted to push victorian buttons he should have talked about this.)  but what effect does menstruation have on vampires?  a small amount of blood could provoke a vampire, when jonathan nicked himself while shaving, the count reacted with "eyes blazed with a sort of demonic fury" and he "made a grab" at jonthan's throat.  imagine what a woman bleeding for 3-7 days could cause a vampire to do? does twilight even address bella's cycle?  i mean it seems like a good deal for edward.  we, women throw out that blood each month, so bella could start using a diva cup and save it for him.  that sounds gross but i think it's thoughtful.  i mean did buffy the vampire slayer ever discuss that in the movie or in the series?  i mean at the risk of sounding like a perv, this could be the premise for a great twilight parody porn.  i know, inappropriate!  but is it . . .

it's not.  that joke would be in stoker's vein of humor, if he told jokes about oral sex, not sure if he did, but he did write about it.  i was shocked when i read mina recounting her interaction with the count:

With that he pulled open his shirt, and with his long sharp nails opened a vein in his breast.  When the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must either suffocate or swallow some of the--Oh my God!  my God! what have I done?

when i first read it, i thought i was a bit of a pervert for thinking inappropriately about what i had read but after reading the intro written by brooke allen, it is to mimic fellatio. vampires were sex-driven creatures. and if one googles there are tons of essays on sexuality and "dracula". i came across one that explained how the two dots on lucy's neck were suppose to resemble a vagina?!?! that seems to be stretching it for me!

there are also tons of essays on stoker being sexist and his portrayal of female sexuality in "dracula" as well. but without getting too deep into the topic. i will say that i did not find "dracula" sexist. the sad reality for us women is that we have to be both the virgin and the whore, this dichotomy has plagued us throughout all of history and our current mass media only endorses. so yes we are the orgy loving vampire trio along and virginal lucy needing men to keep us safe. it's like luda says "he wants a lady in the streets but a freak in the sheets."

also i did not find stoker to be sexist due to the fact that mina was a strong female character. i would add her to my canon of amazing females. i found it interesting how she criticized the "new woman" and their unconventional views of marriage yet her own involvement to stop dracula was unconventional. it's her intelligence and brilliance that pieces together the accounts that lead to the exposure and ultimately destruction of dracula (sorry for the spoiler but for a split second when i was reading, i thought he was going to survive). in this light mina to me is a true feminist, one that is not embarrassed to hold on to conventional female roles yet still has the open-mindless to embrace new ones.

all in all, is dracula worth a reread? i enjoyed it, so yes. it's clever, and i enjoyed how it was told from different perspectives. and if it's a choice between this and "twilight", go for this!

ps i was also upset with "twilight" because in "dracula", dracula and the wolves get along? was there some great schism that stephenie meyer included in "twilight" to explain the team edward/team jacob hatred?

quotations:

"if ever a face meant death--if looks could kill--we saw it at that moment."

(is this where the phrase come froms?)

pss- i have included a little film
short by spike jonze that features mina from "dracula". enjoy!

frankenstein. mary shelley.

back in october, i decided to do this whole monster books reading in honor of halloween.  i picked mary shelley's "frankenstein" to start.

if you are a hardcore fan of this blog, you may have noticed that i didn't number this one.  it lacks a number because i didn't check it out from the library. i read my own copy.  my copy is ten years old and a souvenir from my time on the delano high school academic decathlon team.  sadly, like any other required high school reading, i did not read "frankenstein." what makes my non-reading even sadder is the fact that i had a class period specifically for academic decathon in which we spent weeks reading the novel and i still did not read it.  in my (our team's) defense, our advisor left us in the asb room to read on our own.  i know we were the nerds/geeks of the school, but we were still teens and some of us were starting to show symptoms of senioritis.  when given the choice between reading or playing with random toys leftover from afternoon rally games, we always chose the later.  (sorry ms. andreas if you are reading this.)

and sorry mary shelley but the 28 year old me got why the 17 year old could not get into the book. it is quite slow to start. at first the book is a series of letters from captain walton to his sister explaining his voyage to the north pole. it all seems unnecessary until we find out that captain walton saw some monster out in the ice and then finds victor frankenstein who then shares the story of his monster making. (side note: i would also like to encourage everyone to stop calling the green monster with bolts in his neck, frankenstein, he is actually frankenstein's monster. frankenstein is the scientist. i think a modern family episode covered this but wanted to reiterate the distinction.)

back to the creature making, i personally found it disappointing. i was expecting a grandiose and grotesque description of how the creature was created start to finish but there wasn't that much detail. i get that shelley prolly did not have an strong bio background but she could have utilized her imagination more . . . though i guess the whole creating life from human remains is original on its own and i, having grown up with frankenstein's monster every halloween, find it commonplace so i may have had too great of expectations . . . sorry shelley for being so harsh.

i was really harsh on shelley a second time, when frankenstein came into contact with his creation for the second time. i was upset cos all of sudden the creature knew how to talk. i was tempted to stop reading right there and then due to that being so far fetch (i know, like creating a monster is so realistic). but i read on and accepted how he was educated. i really wanted things to work out with him and that family. it was so sweet how he did chores for them. so i was extremely sad when the old man was scared of him. i know the creature turns into a monster but he just wanted to be loved.

it's interesting because even with all the killing he does, i did have a soft spot for the creature. he turns into to monster for understandable reasons; rejection by the ones he loved the most and the realization that he would never have a future mate and would be left all alone in this world. (i mean we all sided with carrie bradshaw in the first sex and the city movie when she went crazy for the same reasons!) also if frankenstein would have nurtured his creation at the beginning versus rejecting him, the creature would have never turn into a monster. (there is an early child development thesis in there somewhere). and they all could have lived happily ever after.

maybe i am just optimistic but i really believe that if frankenstein created a mate for his creature, she would not have turned into a monster. i understood his worries about her rejecting the original creature as a mate or her being just as violent the first, but he was only violent due to lack of affection . . . and then not getting his way (but his demand was for a mate would equate as affection as well). i believe she was would have learned by example just like he did. the creature's ability to learn how to care for others based on the example of the brother and sister caring for their blind father proved he was a blank slate with some kind of "soul" versus innately evil and soulless. he would have never attempted to do chores for them if by nature he was evil; he had to have a heart to respond as he did. so if frankenstein set up a loving environment for the mate, she would have developed according. (again a ECD thesis.)

all of this reminded me of kazuo ishiguro's "never let me go" and it's questioning of whether a man-made life would still have a "soul"? being one that doesn't believe too strongly in religion, i believe that yes the creatures created like frankenstein's creature and the children of "never let me go" would have a soul but not one necessarily issued by god. i believe that the essence within humans and animals to nurture their young ultimately is what constitute a soul. one possess a soul, if they show the ability to care for another's life and well-being, which therefore demonstrates the understanding of the sacredness of life. it can be assumed that i am supporting the idea that god gives everything souls when in fact, i believe that we gain our "souls" as we gain knowledge. which i guess is kinda how adam and eve started. but it's not something that is just given via god but developed from our environment. so due to this both frankenstein's "monster" and the clones of "never let me go" have souls and should have been treated as so. also in the future when we do start cloning people, i will still stick to my declaration above.

so i guess mary shelley's frankenstein is a lot deeper than just a monster story. aside from sorting out what is a soul, maybe it's suppose to be a discussion on religion as well? the subtitle is "the modern promethus", i guess frankenstein stole the secret of life from the gods? or is god like victor frankenstein? creating humans and then being frighten by us, abandon us to roam the earth? thus religion is our search to come to terms with what we are, just as the creature sought out frankenstein? all in all, i am glad that i finally read this, it wasn't too much of a page turner for me but has some important underlying themes.

also i wikipedia'ed shelley because i was curious as to whether she received recognition as the writer because she was a woman. it's interesting cos i always think of the past as being prim and proper but there was a lot of scandals in her life. she believed in free love and her sister got knocked up by lord byron. i mean it's the stuff of british tabloids!

this side of paradise. f. scott fitzgerald (3)

i read "the great gatsby" and thought it was not all that great.  it should have been called "the good gatsby" or maybe "the decent gatsby", but great seemed like a misnomer.  but people love their f. scott fitzgerald, so i decided to pick up another of his books to see what he was all about.  i decided to start with his first work "this side of paradise".

and i have to say "the great gatsby" did not do fitzgerald justice.  "this side of paradise" was filled with so many great lines, but then again i think i'm made of the same cloth as f. scott and zelda fitzgerald.  people made of that cloth simply want a life of leisure, constantly in the pursuit of not only happiness but entertainment as well, even if it beyond their means.  

fitzgerald stringed these pearls of wisdom throughout his book.  the thoughts and opinions of his two character amory blaine and rosalind:

i'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires”- armory


"i'm as restless as the devil and have a horror of getting fat or falling in love and growing domestic." -amory
(this is seriously my biggest fear in life)

"her philosophy is carpe diem for herself and laissez faire for others."
(i try to seize the day (though not the responsible day), but am pretty lack when it comes to other people's lives, do what you want.)



i like sunshine and pretty things and cheerfulness-- i dread responsibility."-rosalind 
(i swear his words not mine.)



i googled f. scott to find out more about his life because i admired his words of wisdom.  and i now get all the fuss over the fitzgeralds.  who doesn't want to party all night and lead glamorous lives.  i also learned a little something about "the lost generation" and just like i thought i was a beat before i feel more aligned with this generation. (coincidentally, there are many similarities between the two. both were disillusioned by the world wars and had looser and less conservative values/morals than prior to the war.) 

as i was reading i couldn't help but think history does repeat itself.  armory said of himself, "i'm a cynical idealist", and i think this is an adequate description of my generation.  i remember reading an article once about how my generation, the millennials, are extremely skeptical about the government.  we don't trust the government especially when it comes to war.  however, even though we are cynical about how our country is ran, we are extremely hopefully.  i mean that obey giant obama hope poster worked on us like no other (i own a shirt).  we are also extremely optimistic about what the future holds for us.  so i guess that would make us cynical idealists?

the major similarity between us, the lost generations and the beats was that a war left us all disillusioned.   though we didn't have a great war, i think that 9/11 and the war against terrorism has effected my generation the same way that world war I effected the lost generation.  for millennials, we were "lost" or confused because the enemy we were fighting wasn't necessarily the country that attacked us.  furthermore, we wanted to be patriotic but couldn't support a war that in our eyes wasn't justified.  fitzgerald's generation was lost because they fought a world war and came back to lives in turmoil.  in addition to this, what the lost generations and my generation also share is a period of economic turmoil; the great depression and our current recession.  as resulted both could be considered "lost." this loss of faith for fitzgerald's described as:

"we want to believe. young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can't. too many voices, too much scattered, illogical ill-considered criticism.”

this description is also relevant today. we want to have faith (our hope) but know it is impossible.  as i read i armory's viewpoints on politics and the economy i couldn't help but draw parallels to the way the world is today.

but not everything stays static.   i was surprised by the whole hotel checking in incident.  its crazy to imagine a time when the only man and woman pair that could stay at a hotel room was husband and wife!  not that i'm a floozy but its difficult to imagine having to show paperwork to prove you can stay in a hotel room with a woman!

in addition to this words of wisdom on life and politics, fitzgerald impressed me with his clever descriptions and writing style.  he opened book two with a clever description of a mess in a girl's room.  he wrote:

"great disorder consisting of the following items (1):  seven or eight empty cardboard boxes, with tissue-paper tongues hanging panting from their mouths; (2) an assortment of street dresses mingled with their sisters of the evening, all upon the table, all evidently new; (3) a roll of tulle, which has lost its dignity and wound itself tortuously around everything in sight . . . "

i bolded my favorite line.  it was almost like a poem in the middle of the novel.  an ode to a messy room.  i also enjoyed book two because fitzgerald switched styles and wrote it like a play, which i found interesting because everything that surrounded rosalind was melodramatic.

i thoroughly enjoyed "this side of paradise".  i found him clever, wise and delightful.  and i am glad i gave him another go versus just keeping "the great gatsby" as the only book of his that i read.

selected stories of franz kafka. franz kafka. (2)

trying to revisit my high school years, i decided to read franz kafka's "the metamorphosis" next.  also i had read haruki murakami's "kafka on the shore" and had been meaning to pick up some kafka.  all i remember from "the metamorphosis" was that gregor turned into a giant cockroach and of course that apple getting stuck in his back.  for some odd reason, that apple stuck on his back really stuck with my group of high school's friends (we were dorks remember). i think my friend mona in particular was traumatized by its occurrence.  i personally can't think of metamorphosis without picturing a large roach with an apple.  (this would make a good halloween costume . . . my friend chrissie has a cockroach costume, i am going to recommend that she does it.)

back to the novel.  on my second reading, i still felt bad for gregor.  bad enough he turns into a bug but his family is frightened of him.  (quick side note:  but apparently gregor doesn't necessarily turn into a cockroach, the word kafka uses doesn't translate into cockroach, in fact it is closer to vermin, so it's kinda open to interpretation, for me personally i use the cockroach one.)   it even sadder how his family abandons him, especially since he spent his human life supporting them. his sister does start off helping him, but then she grows tired of the task and disgusted by him.  and which makes it even more heartbreaking is the fact that he was working to help support his sister in her violin playing.   if my sister or brother or even close friend turned into a giant bug, i wouldn't abandon them like, but would take care of them. bugs don't gross me out so am confident i could do it. i would be like geena davis in "the fly".  though in the end, she does kill him, but wasn't it as he requested?

i hate to brag but i was good student in high school yet i don't remember the analysis that was presented to us. now as an adult, i take it as a warning that if you become a slave to money and work, you'll eventually end up a cockroach. prior to turning into a roach, gregor had a sad life (possibly sadder than being a bug), he was a traveling salesman and all he did was work. he did not have a social life and only interacted with his family. this need or demand to work is not healthy for an individual. and in turning gregor into roach, kafka was critiquing the capitalistic emphasis on labor. i guess kafka was a marxist? (i googled but found no definite answer.) marx did have his theory on alienation of workers as a result to their laboring as part of the capitalist machine. and how much more alienated can one get then turning into a cockroach. greogr was alienated not only from his family but also from his own self-identity, he was a stranger in his own body. he turned into something beyond his own recognition. and if kafka wasn't a marxist, he does prove the harm of devoting one's life to work.

in college, i took a soci class and was assigned excerpts from "working" by studs terkel. our professor had us read it to demonstrate how a person's identities is tied into their occupation. it's interesting and true. when meeting someone for the first time, one of the first questions asked is "so what to you do?" this is definitely an american thing (it's due to our capitalist economy). when i was unemployed, i noticed just how frequently this question was asked. when working one doesn't notice but there was a bit of embarrassed me when i answered that i was unemployed though i did start to answer "hanging out" or "enjoying life".

during my two years of unemployment, i had one conversation frequently about this issue of one's work being one's identity. i have a friend who is the model of a worker bee, he is also a capricorn. and he couldn't stomach me when i was not working. but as i often reminded him, i do not want to be defined by my work but by my life. to demonstrate this point, i often said when i die, my gravestone will not list out my work resume, but will instead list if i was mother or wife. furthermore, people will talk about my quality of life at my funeral instead of my salary history. i mean when i am old and going senile, i want to think "wow! what fun i had!" versus "wow! wish i worked less!"

and let me clarify, work is important especially if you want finer things in life. and money is needed to have fun and experiences. however it should not be the source of your identity. and maybe instead of being a marxist statement, this could be what kafka was trying to explain. you should enjoy life because once its gone, you are going to regret that you spent your best years working.

i only read "metamorphosis", i tried to read some of the other works in here but they seemed like a snoozefest so i didn't.

the scarlet letter. nathaniel hawthrone (1)

i decided to start off my classics reading with this book for two reasons.  one being the movie “easy A” and the second being that one of the TAs at the dance studio read it for school and i realized i don’t remember anything from it and i "read" (or cliff noted) it in high school.  so before i discuss the book, i just wanted to give an endorsement for “easy A”, most people have seen it by now, but what a cute movie!  i'm a bit of a movie snob and had no plans to watch it but rented the dvd, and i was pleasantly surprised.  first of all, how cute is emma stone, totally had/have a girl crush on her.  also loved her family in the movie, i hope one day to be a cool parent.  and lastly loved the 80s movies references at the end, why can’t i get a boy to do that for me?  (answer; i’m not a funny yet sexy ginger.)

so the book.  here is all that i remember from my high school reading:

-“scarlet letter” was a slang word that we started to use to describe slutty girls (yeah i was a geek in high school).  there was one girl in particular that was “scarlet r” for reasons that i can’t remember now.

-pearl was referenced as the pearl of great price.  i remember this fact from my days as a mormon.  there is a book of scripture known as the pearl of great price.  i never really read my scriptures like i should have, but i think the pearl of great price offered life advice but in the form of actual advice not like analogies or parables.  i think the whole no caffeine thing is in that book.

here is what i got out of it as an adult:

first of all, i didn't understand why hester and dimmesdale didn't think up the whole plot to run away together earlier in the story.  america wasn't even america yet, it would have been easy for them to start a new life with new identities when they first discovered that she was with child. then "the scarlet letter" would have been their tale of embarking on a new world as parents, which sadly is the premise for "teen mom" . . . nevermind.  but the runaway scenario could never an option because then hawthorne's characters would be cowards and would not uphold the moral of this novel: take responsibility of your actions and suffer whatever consequences may result from them.  one needs to own up to what he/she has done, lie in the bed they made, handle their sh*t.  hester didn't try to deny her actions or escape her punishment. she didn't downplay her scarlet letter but "fantastically embroidered [it] with gold thread" nor did she try to hide her bastard child but pretty much put pearl on display by putting her in "fanciful" attire.  hester embraced her punishment, she didn't try to deny her sin and was a better person for it.  she lived as madonna sought at the end of "human nature" with "absolutely no regrets."  so i guess in this sense, i will have to add hester prynne to my amazing fictional women canon.  i don't know why i never gave her this label in high school, it could be because i didn't realize how much strength it takes to survive being ostracize by society and then having the man you are in love with deny the fact that he impregnated you and then having to raise your nymph-like bastard child on your own and on top of that your creepy husband coming back to haunt you.  i blame cliffnotes, they didn't give me all of this insight.

as an adult, "the scarlet letter" also gave me insight by contextualizing one critique i had of my mormon faith. i was raised mormon but as i learned in history 4, a history of religion course i took at UCLA, the problem i had/have with mormonism (LDS-ism) can be found in all judeo-christian religions, so i am not attacking the mormon faith just relaying my experience. (there are two reasons why i lost faith as a mormon or any other religion for that matter. but it will not be discuss in this post. ps the following critique is not one of those two reasons).

the issue was the utilization of peer pressure to ensure my faithfulness as a member of the church.* i now recognize the pressure that was applied to me by fellow members to live a certain life. there was always a push towards being upright and if you sin, in theory god is forgiving but you should never get to that point. and maybe i was just extremely naive (this might just be the case) but i really believed everyone around me was spotless just like god or jesus because this is what was projected to me. i felt like everyone was doing everything right and that i needed to get my act together to be like them. and i realize that no one meant any harm by trying to get me into heaven. its actually is quite nice of them. but at some point this whole notion of being your brother's keeper can be dangerous. when you begin to feel responsible for someone else's salvation as a means to save yourself, this is when problems start. this is when religion gets scary; when we want others to live according to what we perceive as right.

and who is to say that those with authority know what is going on? and that is what dimmesdale proved. here is a man of god who sins and does not take the very advice that he gave each week from his pulpit. dimmesdale demonstrates that religion should not be treated as an absolute. those with authority in the church are not innately divined but are human and capable of sin and errors like the rest of us. furthermore hester gives light to this discrepancy because the one that was labelled as the sinner by the church and society ultimately was the most christ-like.

also this is not an anti-religion rant, just some thoughts. like i addressed early the above was my personal experience, i know plenty of happy mormons so i am prolly the exception versus the rule.

so you may be wondering, should i reread this? if you have the time yes. but if not there are better classics. i mean hester prynne is a great character but her story isn't too much of a page turner.

also would like to explain a feature of all of my entries which will be my favorite quotes from the works.

favorite quotes:

"my heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire."


*sidenote: all judeo-christian faiths are guilty of this because they are community forming religions. and as a result of being a community, the members inadvertently become responsible for the salvation of each other. this is what prof bartchy taught me in history 4.