A Different Direction: Defining Literature

Quite a bit of my media consumption of late has been about Bob Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature. Initially, I had missed this announcement. I usually am uninterested in things like this, but here we are several months later and I am blogging about this unusual choice.

When I think of literature I think of Shakespeare, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Joyce. I don't normally think of Bob Dylan. Up until recently, I didn't even listen to Bob Dylan. I knew several of his songs through other artists, but I found his voice to be grating. Literature is poetry and plays and novels. Things that a reader can really dig into. I do not consider The Hunger Games literature. Nor do I consider The Martian by Andy Weir, although I absolutely loved that book. There is a lot that is not literature and up until recently, I would have had song lyrics on that list as well. But now everything is up in the air. 

So, I want to explore this topic in further detail. I have several things that I am going to be reading, watching, studying and I will post them here so you can follow along with my journey.

Here is the video that started me on this quest, check it out if you would like.

William Shakespeare's Star Wars Rapid Fire

I may have milked this book too much. I've been writing about this awesome book for weeks now and so I figure that I will post one final rapid fire post where I discuss several lines from the play and then put an end to this book.

OBI-WAN

                    That number seven shall our freedom mean.
                    But only on of seven shall we need.
                    I fear those numbers--seven and then one--
                    Do something dangerous portend. But why?
          (5)     Our company is only six, unless
                    There were another join'd unto us here.
                    Then were we seven, yet what means the one?
                    O! Strangely sweeps the thought into my mind:
                    I have a feeling through the Force that ere
          (10)  We leave this place, some seven shall we be.
                    Yet one shall stay behind as sacrifice.
                    Thus seven and thus one: the numbers tell
                    The story that herein shall soon be told.

It might be because we just read Gloucester's speech in King Lear the other day, but I hear some echoes of those same sentiments here in Obi-Wan's speech. Obi-Wan feels fate tugging on him and believes that destiny is calling for him to sacrifice himself for the party. And because Obi-Wan believes in fate (or the Force or whatever) he will go through with it.

OFFICER 1     [through comlink:] But what hath happen'd?

HAN
                                                  --'Tis no matter, Sir--
                    A slight malfunction of the weapons here.
                    But all is well, and we are well, and all
                    Within are well. The pris'ners, too, are well,
                    'Tis well, 'tis well. And thou? Art thou well?

This passage made me laugh. It pays such wonderful homage to the movie, but amplifies the comedy in Han Solo's answer to the officer through the comlink. The repetition of the word "well" makes this happen. Over and over again Han keeps saying "well," and each time it just adds to the final punchline: "Art thou well?" Like Han Solo really cares. This was just perfect for this character.

But now that I have been looking back through this book, I think that I have one more post to get out of this. I want to compare one of Luke Skywalker's speeches to the original Shakespeare from Henry V. I think it will provide some good fodder for my thinking. So, until then...

Self-Portrait in Needmore, Indiana, by Rochelle Hurt

Linebreak.org consistently puts out wonderful poetry and they have done it once again. Check out the latest poem by Rochelle Hurt.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ROCHELLE HURT

Self-Portrait in Needmore, Indiana

As expected, after the wedding, the house
became a cough we lived in, trembling
in the throat of that asthmatic spring.

The streets stacked and curved like fingers
on a grease-knuckled hand gripping
the waist of our Midwestern dream.

We went sun-blind inside just looking
at each other.
Death is not working—
but wanting—too hard. My father’s body
was little more than a paper bag by the day
he died and tumbled into a graveyard.

I could have died etching my name
into the glass eye of my cage—a bay
window painted with lace. The skyline
in its expanse was a farce played out each night.

Sometimes my reflection was the star
of the show. Sometimes, it was the child
clapping from her seat, so looking out
and looking in became the same thing.
Sometimes, it just rained for weeks.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's talk about metaphors and similes in this poem.

• "As expected, after the wedding, the house / became a cough we lived in," Comparing the house to a cough and then Hurt goes into more detail helping us visualize this cough. "trembling / in the throat of that asthmatic spring." This is a bad situation. They got married and things just aren't going as expected. A lot of people call that period right after marriage the honeymoon period, and it is supposed to be magical and romantic. But I can identify with the experience here, learning to live with a person you have never lived with before is difficult and takes a long time to get right. Their living together is irritating. They scratch at each other; it is painful.
• "The streets stacked and curved like fingers / on a grease-knuckled hand gripping /  the waist of our Midwestern dream." As if their dream--getting married, settling down, working, having kids--is a girl that is being held by the streets. The "fingers / on a grease-knuckled hand gripping / the waist."
• "My father's body / was little more than a paper bag"
• "I could have died etching my name / into the glass eye of my cage." Ahhh, what an image! Now the speaker feels trapped by the whole situation, this whole marriage. And what is her "cage?" "a bay / window painted with lace." The speaker is trapped by the domesticity of it all. Her situation is a "farce played out each night."
• "Sometimes my reflection was the star / of the show. Sometimes, it was the child / clapping from her seat," Then sometimes she would look out of her situation and sometimes she would look inward--into herself. In both instances this speaker sees the same thing. And sometimes it just rains.

via GIPHY

And don't we all stop at times in our lives and look at ourselves? Sometimes we look and see ourselves as the star on the stage, the lights in our ryes. But sometimes we see ourselves up there, up on the stage and we cannot stop ourselves from clapping. Life is a struggle, it is not easy and no one said it was going to be. But we do need to realize that we can do it. We can be successful when life is tough and "it rains for weeks."

Beautiful Description in The Crossing

Just a quick post to share this beaut of a sentence that I found in The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy.

"In that wild high country he'd lie in the cold and the dark and listen to the wind and watch the last few embers of his fire at their dying and the red crazings in the woodcoals where they broke along their unguessed gridlines. As if in the trying of the wood were elicited hidden geometries and their orders which could only stand fully revealed, such is the way of the world, in darkness and ashes. He heard no wolves. Ragged and half starving and his horse dismayed he rode a week later in the mining town of El Tigre."

Wow! I mean, just wow!

McCarthy's Use of the Complex Sentence

Still reading The Crossing, by Cormac McCarthy. Got into part two and my reading just really slowed down. It's not that it isn't interesting, just that there is a ton to process. Here is a quote from part 2, page 129:

"They rode the high country for weeks and they grew thin and gaunted man and horse and the horse grazed on the sparse winter grass in the mountains and gnawed the lichens from the rock and the boy shot trout with his arrows where they stood above their shadows on the cold stone floors of the pools and he ate them and ate green nopal and then on a windy day traversing a high saddle in the mountains a hawk passed before the sun and its shadow ran so quick in the grass before them that it caused the horse to shy and the boy looked up where the bird turned high above them and he took the bow from his shoulder and nocked and loosed an arrow and watched it rise with the wind rattling the fletching slotted into the cane and watched it turning and arcing and the hawk wheeling and then flaring suddenly with the arrow locked in its pale breast."

If you have ever read McCarthy (or Faulkner, or Morrison for that matter) you know that he likes the long sentence. Part of his style. In this case I believe that McCarthy is using this to suggest that time is passing, but it seems that all of time is sloughing into itself. You cannot really tell when things are happening; it seems that it is all happening at once. All at one time. His use of the conjunction "and" accomplishes this task. The sentence isn't incorrect, just very long and drawn out. It helps the reader to feel the exhausting nature of this journey. And this happened, and this happened, and this happened. I don't think that most writers should use this style. This is reserved for those masters who are allowed to break the rules.

Last Our Town Post

I don't want to belabor Our Town. Like I said in my review, I really do think that this is just an average play with some good lines and an semi-interesting theme. It is uplifting though, which doesn't happen often in classical literature. We love talking about death, depression, and not getting the girl in AP Lit. But there are some wonderful, poignant lines in Act III.

"Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you."
"Do any human beings every realize life while they live it?--every, every minute?"

The Stage Manager's answer to these questions is no. Humans do not realize how wonderful life is. Simon Stimson seems to agree later on the next page. But them Mrs. Gibbs provides the counter-voice.

And I think that I agree with Mrs. Gibbs. There are times in our lives when we do realize how wonderful earth and life is. That might be a moment when your first child is born. Or perhaps when a second child is born. Or perhaps when you marry your best friend in the world entire (as Cormac McCarthy would phrase it). Maybe when you read something and it touches you to the very core. But maybe it can be something as simple as looking at an old photograph, posing for a new photograph, reminiscing about the 80's with your Mother on Thanksgiving, or hanging out with those people who you love. I think that Wilder just wants us to have one of those moments while reading or watching his play. He wants us to stop and realize that life is wonderful..."every, every minute."

I do find it interesting though that as I was reading this play my favorite youtubers put out the following two videos about uncontrolled excitement, which I believe is connected to all of this. Sometimes the vlogbrothers are heady and seem to like to push their brand of nerdom on the rest of us. But other times they really have something interesting to say. These two videos give us some amazing analysis of these ideas. Watch them both!



 And then we get this wonderful line from John Green:

 "Okay, so I would argue that you are both never and always truly alone." 

And sometimes you have to just stop and be thankful for the genius that is John Green and how he can, in one simple sentence, encapsulate everything that I feel when the sky is grey and clouded over, and my feet are freezing, and I just feel yucky inside.

Review of Our Town, by Thornton Wilder

Our Town by Thornton Wilder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Yes, now you know. Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at th mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know--that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness."

Just finished Thornton Wilder's Our Town. I had never read the play before and I have been preparing it for my AP Literature and Composition students. This play will become their reading over Christmas break. I will say that I enjoy this play better than the old play we used to assign which was The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, which I felt didn't offer much in the way of literary interpretation. Our Town certainly does a better job of offering students something to discuss and interpret, but overall I felt that it was simplistic and heavy handed.

I mean I get the message, I understand the theme that Wilder is trying to put down. And it is a good theme, but at times (especially during the third act) I felt like Wilder was stuffing it down my throat.

I mean what else can I say. It was an average play about an average group of people, living in an average town.

But, like I said, I think it will serve well for a Christmas break reading assignment.

View all my reviews

Parents, tell your children how you feel

I was reading Our Town, by Thornton Wilder to prepare for my AP Lit students Christmas reading selection and ran across the following passage in ACT I.

     EMILY:Mama, am I good looking?
     MRS. WEBB:Yes, of course you are. All my children have got good features; I'd be ashamed if they hadn't.
     EMILY:Oh, Mama, that's not what I mean. What I mean is: am I pretty?
     MRS. WEBB:I've already told you, yes. Now that's enough of that. You have a nice young pretty face. I never heard of such foolishness.
     EMILY:Oh, Mama, you never tell us the truth about anything.
     MRS. WEBB:I am telling you the truth.
     EMILY:Mama, were you pretty?
     MRS. WEBB:Yes, I was, if I do say it. I was the prettiest girl in town next to Mamie Cartwright.
     EMILY:But, Mama, you've got to say something about me. Am I pretty enough...to get anybody...to get people interested in me?
     MRS. WEBB:Emily, you make me tired. Now stop it. You're pretty enough for all normal purposes.--Come along now and bring that bowl with you.
     EMILY:Oh, Mama, you're no help at all.

No help indeed. I am embarrassed for Mrs. Webb. She had the opportunity, an opportunity to build her daughter's confidence and show her how much she is loved and valued. But instead he gets annoyed, passes off Emily's concern, and scolds her. Not the best parent in my opinion. Mrs. Webb has things to say about her own beauty, but chooses to just tell her daughter that she is "pretty enough for all normal purposes." Gee, thanks Mom; whatever that means.

People, don't be like this parent. Tell your children that they are beautiful and handsome and pretty and wonderful. Heaven knows they need that kind of affirmations, especially when they enter their formative teenager and early adult years. Don't be a "Mrs. Webb."

Poetic Turns

The newest poem from Linebreak is a great example of poetic turns. Here is the poem:

Against Aristophanes

by Jacques Rancourt

                                                  No e-mails can reach you.
                                                  No texts. Here, a smokestack

                                                  chokes up soot intermittently.
                                                  Cloud-makers, I once called them,

                                    (5)         and what a world if that were true.
                                                  At the window I tap from

                                                  the interior and wait for the ghost
                                                  to write back. Only the willow,

                                                  starved for water, responds
                                    (10)       by clicking a beaded branch

                                                  against the glass. At one end
                                                  of a parking lot, a Target bag

                                                  skims the pavement,
                                                  drifts before a thing whose stillness

                                    (15)        I took to be a truck at rest,
                                                  moonlight on chrome,

                                                  its driver asleep across the seats.
                                                  How his mother, if she lives,

                                                  must worry. I wake and wait
                                    (20)       for you to call at this lavender hour.

                                                  Nothing strange inside
                                                  your heartbeat, irregular as it was,

                                                  nothing but your blood's drum,
                                                  your mysterious body

                                     (25)      more mysterious now,
                                                  more foreign for being

                                                  outside of me. I thought
                                                  we were made of water,

                                                  one soul split into two,
                                     (30)      but we are made of canyon,

                                                  a sky unpolluted by light
                                                  and thus filled with light,

                                                  a moon so full
                                                  if reveals the desert to be

                                      (35)     in motion: a coyote stalking
                                                  a trickle of water,

                                                  a wren skipping nail to nail
                                                  on the arm of a cactus.

I see two distinct turns in this poem. The beginning of the poem has these wonderful images, all of them charged with some imaginal energy. I like the image of the smokestack smoking away. The narrator taps against the glass, watching a Target bag drifting through the parking lot like some wrath--"At one end / of a parking lot, a Target bag / skims the pavement, / drifts before a thing whose stillness /  I took to be a truck at rest, / moonlight on chrome," All very beautiful! The poem is focused on describing all of these images, a very image heavy poem. And then it turns in line 19-- "I wake and wait / for you to call at this lavender hour." Now we are inside the narrators head again and he (I'm assuming it is a male) is dreaming of "your mysterious body" (which I am assuming is a girl).

But it doesn't stop there. In his contemplation he continues to look inward. To examine this relationship and how it effects him and his sense of self. On this inward journey, the narrator turns the poem again in line 27--"I thought / we were made of water, / one soul split into two, / but we are made of canyon," Now we turn into a metaphor. These two people, man and woman, are "made of canyon." They cannot be further from each other; they are different.

Some wonderful final images as well.

• "a coyote stalking / a trickle of water, / a wren skipping nail to nail / on the arm of a cactus."

The Hero Cycle in The Crossing

One of the immediate things I noticed while reading the beginning of The Crossing was McCarthy's use of The Hero Cycle. So, I thought it would be interesting to analyze the events of the novel through this lens.

The Call to Adventure: Billy Parham's "call" comes early on in the novel. In the first few pages, Billy wakes in the middle of the night to the cries of wolves. He dresses, careful not to wake his little brother, and goes outside to follow the wolves, to watch them in their graceful circles. Their howling calls Billy. In that moment you can see Billy Parham dedicating himself to the wolf--that he will be intricately connected to these majestic creatures. But Billy's call doesn't end there. A short while later, Billy's father calls him to help trap the she-wolf that is eating members from their herd. This is the final moment of his call. Billy ultimately accepts the call to go out and interact with these animals.

1st Threshold: Billy crosses the border into the world of adventure in three places. One could interpret that his trips with his father are crossing a threshold. He goes out to experience the wild and find the she-wolf. Or, you could interpret the part when Billy goes out alone to track and trap the she-wolf without his father. Finally, the first threshold could be when Billy actually crosses the border into Mexico.

Mentor/Helper/Wise Old Man: Billy visits senor Echols during his journey to trap the she-wolf. Echols has scents that will attract the wolf and acts as almost a mystical helper for Billy. The fact that Echols speaks in Spanish adds to the mysticism. He gives Billy advice, but more than that he helps Billy to understand the nature of the wolf. That the wolf will be inextricable changed once Billy traps it. That to trap the wolf is to end the wolf. But he also knows that Billy will be changed in the process as well.

Sometimes you need to just stop and savor language.

This is one of those times. When we need to just stop and revel in the beauty of literature. Some quotes from McCarthy's The Crossing:

page 31--

"Before him the mountains were blinding white in the sun. They looked new born out of the hand of some improvident god who'd perhaps not even puzzled out a use for them. That kind of new."

page 45--

"He said that the wolf is a being of great order and that it knows what men do not: that there is no order in the world save that which death has put there."

page 46--

"You catch the snowflake but when you look in your hand you don't have it no more. Maybe you see this dechado. But before you can see it it is gone. If you want to see it you have to see it on its own ground. If you catch it you lose it. And where it goes there is no coming back from. Not even God can bring it back."

Little Prediction:
I think that Billy is going to catch this stinking wolf that they have been tracking and trying to trap since the beginning and then he is going to want to keep the wolf. He will train the wolf to be a pet, domesticate the wolf. But then it really won't be a wolf anymore, will it? He will take the wolf out of the animal. He'll have a pretty wicked pet, but it won't be the same. Just like the snowflake McCarthy talks about. You can look at a snowflake, but once you touch it, once you catch it in the palm of your hand you change the snowflake forever. It cannot be undone and it is no longer a snowflake.

page 46--

"The wolf is made the way the world is made. You cannot touch the world. You cannot hold it in your hand for it is made of breath only."

See what I mean?

page 47--

"He said that the boy should find that place where acts of God and those of man are of a piece. Where they cannot be distinguished."

McCarthy and the Mundane

Beautiful passage on page 22 of The Crossing:

"He took the deerhide gloves our of the basket and pulled them on and with a trowel he dug a hole in the ground and put the drag in the hole and piled the chain in after it and covered it up again. Then he excavated a shallow place in the ground the shape of the trap springs and all. He tried the trap in it and then dug some more. He put dirt in the screenbox as he dug and hen he laid the trowel by and took a pair of c-clamps from the basket and with them screwed down the springs until the jaws fell open. He held the trap up and eyed the notch in the pan while he backed off one screw and adjusted the trigger. Crouched in the broken shadow with the sun at his back and holding the trap at eyelevel against the morning sky he looked to be truing some older, some subtler instrument. Astrolabe or sextant. Like a man bent at fixing himself someway in the world. Bent on trying by arc or chord the space between his being and the world that was. If there be such a space. If it be knowable. He put his hand under the open jaws and tilted the pan slightly with his thumb."

Couple of ideas here.

McCarthy excels at the complex compound sentence, like Faulkner and Morrison before him. His repetition of the conjunctions makes the sentence go on and on and on.

But at the end the image of a man bent against the shadowy sky, "fixing himself." That image is illuminating. Billy and his father are out setting traps to catch a wolf that is killing members of their herd. This "quest" (more on that later) is completing these men. Billy's father is becoming himself while doing this semi-mundane and pedestrian task--setting traps. But all of a sudden it becomes the most important task in the entire world. Maybe because he is passing knowledge on to his son. Or perhaps because man needs a quest; man needs something to do. Billy sees his father in a much more ancient light. Like he is some renaissance man measuring the universe. And why can't he be?

Fight Club is The Great Gatsby

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE GREAT GATSBY

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

In the afterword of Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk states:

"Really, what I was writing was just The Great Gatsby, updated a little. It was 'apostolic' fiction--where a surviving apostle tells the story of his hero. There are two men and a woman. And one man, the hero, is shot to death."

Now, Palahniuk simplifies things a bit. The Great Gatsby is at it's heart a story of a love triangle and in the end the "hero" does indeed get shot to death. The Great Gatsby is about so much more than that, but I get what he is suggesting. I am not the first one to look at these comparisons either. There is a terrific article by Reece Choules entitled, Fight Club vs. The Great Gatsby: Was Palahniuk's Novel a Modern Update which you should check out.
But I do think that it would be interesting to dig into this idea a little further.

First, we could spend some time sussing out who the characters connect to in The Great Gatsby.

Choules states that Tyler is Gatsby, Marla is Daisy, and the narrator could be a sort of Nick Carraway. Then the Fight Clubs and Project Mayhem would be Tom Buchanan since they stop the main characters from getting what they want. This is a fine interpretation. I can see how Tyler could be Gatsby. He wants things--Marla, destruction, but most importantly he wants a world that is different than the current one he live in. Gatsby could be said to share that desire. He wants to live in a world in which Daisy never loved Tom and Gatsby is willing to do everything in his power to create this world. Tyler also does not hold back in his attempts to achieve his dream.

I think you could also see the characters in a different light, with the narrator as Gatsby, Marla is still Daisy, and Tyler Durden is Tom Buchanan. Gatsby gets shot in the end and Tom (essentially) is the one that makes that happen. The narrator is shot at the end of Fight Club and Tyler pushes that event. Marla is the sexual desire of the narrator, even if it is just subconscious. Like Gatsby, the narrator deeply wants Marla. And Tom Buchanan is a definition perfect man-child, just like Tyler.

Of course, these character analyses become muddled when we get to the end of the book and it is revealed that the narrator is Tyler Durden. So they the narrator is both Gatsby and Tom Buchana? Or the narrator is both Gatsby and Nick? See what I mean? Not quite as interesting anymore.

Choules then discusses the themes of both books and I totally agree with his assessment.

"The Great Gatsby was about a vacuum in the soul of society after WWI, or the downside of the American dream and the struggle of the classes; then Fight Club is about the rejection of that dream. In the world Palahniuk creates everyone has become cocooned in the pursuit of perfection. Perfect catalogue houses, impossibly sculptured bodies, designer clothes, rock god status, and fast cars are the dreams on sale, and everyone is told to believe in these."

Choules is absolutely right. The characters in The Great Gatsby are just beginning to understand the problems inherent in the American dream. Which they all become very disillusioned with at the end. The characters in Fight Club outright reject the American dream as many people in society are doing today. 

But on a very simplistic level, I can agree that Fight Club could be seen as an updated Great Gatsby.

Fight Club Review

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One wouldn't think that Fight Club would be an overly literary book, but it is. Palahniuk uses the strange, dark world of Fight Club to comment on society.

The narrator can't sleep. He works as a car recall inspector and is faced with gruesome death everyday. He is the one who inspects vehicles and decides whether to prompt a recall on the cars or not. He has a very scientific approach to this--a mathematical formula to decide when to pull the trigger. Because of this torture, the narrator develops insomnia. He begins going to support groups for the human contact. He doesn't have any of the diseases that they rest of the group does, but he pretends. When he cries in the arms of another person he then is able to sleep. Eventually, the narrator meets Tyler Durden, who is everything that he isn't. Tyler is smooth and manly and aggressive and rebellious. Through this interaction with Tyler the narrator helps to create Fight Club which becomes a new way of life for Tyler, the narrator, and a whole generation of men.

I really do not want to spoil anything, but this book is excellent. I have a colleague who says that Fight Club should be required reading for every teenage male, and I tend to agree with him. This book is more about what it means to be a man than anything else. How society has bastardized that idea and modern men stray far away from their primal roots.

I enjoyed Palahniuk's writing style. He uses repetition and short, crisp sentences. After the big reveal you can even go back and see how the surprise is hinted at all the way through the book because of the writing style. Now that takes skill and a really good editor to accomplish.

I don't know if I will read anymore books from Palahniuk. I have heard that this is pretty much his pinnacle and wonder if they would really be worth my time. But maybe. This book certainly was fueled many blog posts for me.

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On the Popularity of Poems

It fascinates me to see what students decide to do when given choice. Of course, you have to stand back and allow them to make those choices...and get the subsequent consequences of those choices. You try to help them to see the best course of action, but it is always better to let these growing people ultimately make those decisions for themselves.

Thus we come to Poetry Response #2, which was just due this last weekend for my AP Lit students. I was very surprised to see so many people choose Margaret Atwood's tiny poem, You Fit Into Me--just four lines of poetry. The jaded teacher in me wants to analyze this and say my students were just being lazy and choosing the shortest poem. Or maybe they chose it because I had told them that it didn't get chosen very often. Or maybe they all got together and decided to do the same poem. Who really knows?

I find very short poems very difficult to analyze though. I hope my students experienced that too, hopefully not to their detriment. When you are analyzing it is better to have more content to work with. I don't know if I would have chosen a four line poem just because of the difficulty inherent in filling an entire page of analysis. I don't know if I would have had enough to discuss. The brevity makes this poem difficult.

Fight Club is Oedipus Rex

Super interesting article about how Fight Club is really just a retelling of Oedipus Rex. I won't go into all of the details on this one like I did with Marla Singer Doesn't Exist. But you can read the article for yourself here.

Marla Doesn't Exist

While I read Fight Club, and more so while I was viewing the film, I kept thinking that something was up with Marla Singer. Her character just seemed strange to me. After, I did some research and I am not the only person to have these ideas. There are many people who subscribe to the theory that Marla Singer does not exist! You can even read another article, by Rob Conery, which you can read here, and I will be quoting and paraphrasing heavily from Conery's article. But let me break it down for you...

The Marla Singer Didn't Exist Theory

Our narrator is messed up, there is no doubt about that. He is having a difficult time sleeping and his job is such that he moves all around the "country staring at death and destruction." Eventually that has to have some sort of effect on a guy. Because of all this stress, our narrator creates Tyler Durden, another side of himself--a split personality if you will. Tyler represents the animalistic, destructive side of our narrator. But Tyler created another split personality earlier on in the story, before he created Tyler, he created Marla. Marla could represent the narrator's remorse, his guilt, his lies. This first split personality was the result of his work and lack of sleep. How all the death and destruction first affected him. First he created a persona who feels and wants to deal with her emotions and her own mortality. I find it very interesting that the narrator's first persona is a female. But when that persona doesn't work, the narrator creates a new persona that just wants to embrace all of the destruction and even expand it.

So, enter Marla Singer. The narrator first "meets" Marla at a support group for testicular cancer. I'm pretty sure that if Marla was real she would not have testes and probably would be seen as strange attending a support group for testicular cancer. I can't say for sure because I haven't ever attended a support group like this, maybe they just welcome everyone regardless, but Marla should probably be at a different cancer support group. Then she is found smoking through the entirety of the meeting. Fight Club was published in 1996 and if I remember correctly, most states were passing strict no smoking laws during that time. Growing up in the 90's I don't remember people being allowed to smoke inside buildings unless it was a bar or bowling alley. Maybe people smoke at support groups like this, but if I were there I would at least say something, or move to the other side of the room so I would not have to breath in her smoke. But no one seems to notice. She just smokes and no one says anything, not even the narrator. Maybe because she isn't really there? And if Marla Singer didn't actually exist I think that makes the part where the narrator goes to hug her at the meeting and confront her all the more interesting. If she isn't there then he is embracing and arguing with himself. 

After the testicular cancer meeting, the narrator chases Marla out into the street arguing with her. She crosses the street several times in the midst of heavy traffic and walks into a laundromat and steals some cloths. In both instances no one seems to notice. The cars don't honk at her, she isn't hit by them. No one yells, "thief!" when she steals the clothing. Maybe because she isn't really doing those things. You can really see this in the film. Fincher did a wonderful job in this scene and it is probably one of the biggest pieces of evidence for this theory.

What becomes very interesting and could spark whole essays about this book, is the fact that Marla and Tyler copulate in the book. I don't want to go into details, but I believe that suggests something interesting about our narrator.

Once the narrator falls deeply into the Tyler persona, Marla moves out of the lime light. The narrator has chosen to pursue the animalistic side of himself and he doesn't need the grieve and guilt side anymore. He doesn't want to feel those emotions, he wants to feel pain. So, Marla isn't apparent for many chapters, but she is still there, waiting in the corners of the narrators mind.

One more clue that really convinced me was the fact that Marla and Tyler can't be together in the kitchen scene. After Tyler copulates with Marla, they both come down to speak with the narrator in the kitchen, but they never come down together. The book even takes a moment to explain that Tyler cannot be in the kitchen when Marla is there and vice versa. I believe that is because they are both persona's in the narrator's head and he can't have more than one persona at a time occupying his mind.

Eventually, the narrator figures it out. That Tyler isn't real and he begins to try to bring the whole thing down. Tyler has set it up so that the narrator will be unable to do it, he even has instructed the Project Mayhem lackeys to harm the narrator if he tries to stop them. And who comes to his rescue, when his other persona isn't working out anymore? Marla Singer. His guilt and remorse returns to hold his hand and help him through the final moments of his life. In the film she holds his hand while they watch the destruction of another building in the distance. Giving him the comfort that Tyler was unable to.

Marla isn't an animal and she cannot compete with Tyler and so she just fades into the background. But Marla knows that the narrator cannot embrace the animal forever. He is using the animalistic persona to mask his feelings instead of dealing with them. And when he is finally ready to deal with his emotions, once Tyler is gone, she reappears. Unfortunately, the narrator never actually does deal with his emotions, with troubling things he has seen and done in his life. Both of his made-up persona's have failed him. He decides that all he can do is take his own life.

Now, there are plenty of things that could refute this idea, but that is why it is a theory and not fact. The biggest thing to remember is that Fight Club is an incredibly fun book to think about.

Fight Club ch. 20

Just a short post this time. I thought Palahniuk made some interesting choices in chapter twenty. 

In Chapter twenty, the narrator goes out on a homework assignment for Project Mayhem--Tyler has asked his groupies to bring him twelve driver's licenses to prove that they had made twelve human sacrifices. The narrator targets a Korner Mart (convenience store) employee named Raymond Hessel. He points the gun at Raymond's face and starts rummaging through his pockets. 

I like this scene for two reasons: first, the narrator lets Raymond go. He doesn't kill Raymond like I assume Tyler has instructed him to. The narrator looks through Raymond's wallet and discovers little details about him from the contents--a library card and a college student ID. He asks Raymond why he isn't going to school anymore? What he was studying? What he wanted to be when he grew up? They he lets Raymond go. The narrator tells Raymond that he will be watching him and if Raymond doesn't get back into school and begin working towards being a veterinarian (like he dreamed), then he will come and kill him. I love this. I love that the narrator decides that this young man needs this in his life. All he needs is a little push to get back into the right path. Which is very interesting because the narrator has rejected that same path. He walked what he is asking Raymond to walk and it didn't bring him any fulfillment. At the end, the narrator decided that it was all a lie and he really had nothing in his life; nothing made him happy. And yet, he pushes Raymond to seek after this dream. I love the last couple of lines...

"Now, I'm going to walk away so don't turn around."This is what Tyler wants me to do."These are Tyler's words coming out of my mouth."I am Tyler's mouth."I am Tyler's hands."Everybody in Project Mayhem is part of Tyler Durden, and vice versa."Raymond K. K. Hessel, your dinner is going to taste better than any meal you've ever eaten, and tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your entire life."

I'm sure that meal was the best he's every tasted.

They add Tyler Durden to this scene in the movie, which is an interesting choice.

The second thing that I really like about this chapter is the use of the second person. I usually don't like it when authors use "you" in their writing because it is so difficult to get right. Palahniuk gets it right in this chapter. You can feel the tension because this is happening to you. 

"You gave me your wallet like I asked.
"Your name was Raymond K. Hessel on your driver's license. You live at 1320 SE Benning, apartment A.
[...]
"Raymond K. K. K. K. K. K. Hessel, I was talking to you."

The use of you draws the reader in and after a while you really get into the scene. At the end when you are let go, you can breath again.  Because you realize that you've been holding your breath the entire time.

Fight Club and the Man-Child

My mind keeps going back to my chapter 6 read along of Fight Club, and how Palahniuk talked about a generation of men raised by women. How men don't know how to be men anymore. Those thoughts reminded me of several articles (even a book) written about this very subject; the foremost being an article by Kay S. Hymowitz entitled Where Have the Good Men Gone, published in 2011 in the Wall Street Journal.

Essentially, Hymowitz details the decline of the modern American male. She discusses the societal phenomenon wherein men become stuck in this limbo--pre-adulthood. These "pre-adult" men "talk about Star Wars like it's not a movie made for people half their age; a guy's idea of a perfect night is a hang around the PlayStation with his band mates, or a trip to Vegas with his college friends." They wait longer periods of time before starting a career, getting married, settling down, and having children. And this problem is perpetuated by our society. Mom and Dad say, "why not, he can move into the basement." "Getting a job right now is tough." Hymowitz doesn't necessarily blame these "pre-adult" men, but more points the finger at American society. Although, I would make sure these "men" do understand that this problem isn't out of their control--they could make the choices to become responsible...anyway.

I wonder if Palahniuk is concerned about this same thing. Let's go back to chapter 6 and look at a passage one more time:

   "My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college. After college, I called him long distance and said, now what?
     "My dad didn't know.
     "When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance, I said, now what? My dad didn't know, so he said, get married.
     "I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need."

Sure sounds like the same thing that Hymowitz is talking about. The narrator drags himself through the milestones of life, not quite sure what should be next. He has a job, a nice apartment, beautiful furniture, and a top-of-the-line car. But he isn't happy; in fact, the narrator is miserable--he can't sleep, he doesn't seem to have friends, he drunkenly spins through life. He consults with his "father," but even then he doesn't get any certainty. There used to be a set plan and now that plan has been thrown out the window and set on fire. Men (and especially the narrator in Fight Club) don't know where to turn, where to go, what's next.

The narrator creates Tyler as his new father-figure, but Tyler is part of this problem. Tyler is the epitome of the "pre-adult." Tyler is the frat boy with ideas of anarchy. Tyler doesn't have a career, he has a series of jobs. Tyler squats in an abandoned house in a shifty part of town. He cuts in scenes of pornography into family movies because he thinks its funny. He drinks and fights and plans to shake the world up. But does Tyler contribute anything to society? I would argue that he doesn't. "Pre-adult" men don't contribute, they just take.

Fight club, the group of "pre-adult" men who gather in the basement of a bar to smash each other's faces in, is a definition perfect example of what Hymowitz is talking about. I like to think that Palahniuk is writing this as a rejection of the idea of the man-child. He creates a narrator that simply cannot do the work of an adult. Because of his failure, the narrator reverts back to this man-child ideal and ruins his own life and the life of those around him. For a while he is happy, but he continually has to find more extreme things to occupy his time. This all leads to his eventual suicide. He doesn't like what he has become. The man-child destroys the narrator.

Fight Club ch. 2

Introduced to Marla Singer in chapter two and Palahniuk shows his description chops in this chapter.

"Short matte black hair, big eyes the way they are in Japanese animation, skim milk thin, buttermilk sallow in her dress with a wallpaper pattern of dark roses, this woman was also in my  tuberculosis support group Friday night. She was in my melanoma round table Wednesday night. Monday night she was in my Firm Believers leukemia rap group. The part down the center of her hair is a crooked lightning bolt of white scalp."

"Skim milk thin" and "buttermilk sallow" are just the most awesome of descriptions. I don't think she is supposed to come across a beautiful or anything. Maybe androgynous? Her features don't scream gorgeous; more like sickly

And she seems to be smoking the entire time the narrator is watching her in this scene. I find that interesting and would like to come back to it later.

The other thing I would like to revisit in a future blog post is the fact that the narrator is at a support group for men who suffer from testicular cancer. And the group is called Remaining Men Together. I find it very ironic. Plus Marla is there.

Like I said, I want to circle back around to this one, but I find it very interesting.