Palahniuk has a very interesting style, one that gets tiresome quickly in his other novels, I hear. It seems to work here though. He repeats lines. The emphasis increasing throughout the chapter. "Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth [...]" is the first one. We see this idea, or some iteration of this idea repeated throughout this first chapter. We are constantly reminded that the narrator has the barrel of a gun in his mouth. And really, what a way to start a book. Not exactly with a bang, but pretty close.
The second thing that keeps getting repeated is the fact that the building is wired and will explode in ten minutes. The narrator has set this whole thing up and acts like a count down, reminding us over and over that the building is going to blow.
These two repetitions provide tension to this scene. Palahniuk wants the reader to feel stressed right as they start this novel. He wants to stress to be overwhelming. You have two immediate problems with no quick solution--the barrel of a gun in the mouth of the protagonist, while he is in a building that is set to explode in ten minutes.
The two best lines:
"I tongue the barrel into my cheek and say, Tyler, you're thinking of vampires."
"With a gun stuck in your mouth and the barrel of the gun between your teeth, you can only talk in vowels." Not exactly like the animated GIF above, but pretty close.
I like John Green as a person. I think that becomes apparent very quickly since with only nineteen posts in this blog I have now discussed something John Green has said twice. I am a consumer of John Green's work. I love his work on Youtube (especially Crash Course: Literature). I have read one of his novels--The Fault in Our Stars--and while I didn't gush over that novel like some people did, I did appreciate the book that Green had produced. Because, you see, The Fault in Our Stars was not written for me. It was written for those high school students who struggle and want to know that they are not alone in the world. For those students that I had in Read 180, who struggled to know whether or not they really enjoyed reading, and upon completing Green's novel were able to say, "Yes. Yes, I do like these book things." This novel is for those people who need to understand what is inside of themselves. Now, I need to feel and know those things too, but Green wasn't the author that helped me discover those things. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent a little bit. Let's talk about this speech that I have linked. John Green delivers a wonderful speech at the Central Library in Indiana. High school students are in attendance, both from Indiana and from Germany (through a video conference). He speaks about Kurt Vonnegut, whom I have never read before, but now have placed Slaughterhouse-Five on my someday list. But in the midst of all this talk about Vonnegut and Indiana, Green discusses some very poignant things about why we read. Why we study and enjoy literature. In my profession, I have to field this question often, both from students and from adult friends who scoff at my chosen profession. They ask me why I teach literature, or why we need to read literature, or why I chose to become an English teacher when I could very easily do something else--something that will earn me quite a bit more money. And I think John Green did a better job here at articulating what I wish I could say than I ever could. So, I will list some of the things that Green said that stood out to me:
Green talked about traveling to a college when he was in high school to listen to Vonnegut speak. I have had similar experiences, granted, not while I was in high school, but later when I was in college. My question is, do high schoolers still travel to listen to authors? And if they don't, why not?
"We are incredibly ambitious, and hopeful, and stupid."
"Humans got places because the light is on."
"Human socials orders are always flawed."
"Stories can wake us up from our stupor and help us make thoughtful conscious decisions."
Reading makes us feel understood and un-alone. Reading helps us to see the world outside of ourselves and inside ourselves.
"Stories show us that the pain inside us is, in fact, human-ness."
"Authors light up the world for us."
We make (and consume) art to experience becoming. To find out what is inside of us.
"Stories can make life not only bearable, but better.
Green pointed out that many people don't like The Catcher in the Rye because they feel that Holden Caulfield is a whiney, bratty, liar. But then John Green said that we are all Holden Caulfield because we all act like that sometimes--especially teenagers.
Those are the ideas that stood out to me, and you really should do yourself the favor of sitting down and watching this talk in one sitting because Green says many other wonderful things and does a better job than I could. But the words ring true for me. I read literature to understand what it means to be human, to understand that I am not alone in the world. Other people have experienced what I am experiencing. I teach literature so my students will also gain these understandings. And I feel that classical literature does a better job of helping readers understand human-ness than popular literature. I did not learn very much about life from Harry Potter, but I have learned something of life from Holden Caulfield, Jay Gatsby, King Lear, Jane Eyre, Kurtz, and Okonkwo. I have learned so much from reading, and I can't think of a better group of teachers.
After I finish my vacation read of the Dinosaur Lords, by Victor Milan, I will be re-reading Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk. This was inspired by a student in my class who transferred to Pomona at the beginning of the year and was assigned Fight Club for summer reading by the AP Lit teacher at her old school. It has been a long time, but I think it is time to revisit this one.
Wonderful stanza breaks: "but hold my hands above // a pile of oranges / as if to warm my skin / before a fire."
"scrape some rind off // with my fingernail / so that a citrus scent / will linger there all day."
About halfway through the poem she transitions from first person pronouns (I) to second person pronouns (you) to marvelous effect.
"the sun / you swelled under / the tree you grew from." is beautiful.
"A drift of white blossoms / from the orange tree / will settle in my hair / and I'll know." What a distinct image! Almost transcendent.
In the final lines of the poem the image that will stick with me for the rest of my life is revealed: "Maybe then I'll climb / the hill, look down / on the town we live in / with sunlight on my face // and a miniature sun / burning a hole in my pocket." This image is why you read poetry. What a perfectly gorgeous image.
Today in my AP Literature and Composition classes, I introduced poetry. We did a fun activity and then start by reading a easy Seamus Heaney poem. But. my students groaned when I told them we were introducing poetry. GROANED! Of course, I made them fix that; had some students cheer for poetry. I'm hoping that they just haven't had many good experiences with poetry, and hopefully we will fix that this year. Hopefully they will accept that poetry is good for them, just like green beans are good for them. They still might not cheers, but secretly they will know. Today I wanted to blog about poetry since it was on my mind, but I had a hard time finding a recent poem that spoke to me. Nothing was really striking my fancy until I stopped by Poetry Magazine. I decided to try one of the featured poems, and wow!
And so, I present: Marine Snow, by Miriam Gamble-- The memory of sun, it is what they subsist upon down where the jaws snap blindly at whatever passes, where drifter is a meaningless term and to hunt is to proffer teeth and tongue and ghost-lit lantern into a sea like liquid wind, without prior compass of the way the wind is blowing. Should they be gifted with a corpse whose half-spoilt flesh holds distillate eternal summers spent glittering in the euphotic zone, they will give gross thanks and, in their way, be holy. In the cartography of sea, they are kin not to dragons nor the Stella Maris but to your own bright band-- yes, you there, eating your sunlight secondhand from a long-gone grocery display, drinking it from the guts of lazy lemons. Holy cow! This poem is a beaut! First some definitions:
Marine Snow--"is a continuous shower of mostly organic detritus falling from the upper layers of the [ocean]. It is a significant means of exporting energy from the [top of the ocean, down to the bottom of the ocean]."
Euphotic Zone--again, a part of the ocean, the upper layers. Sticking with this whole upper ocean levels feeding the lower levels.
There is so much we could analyze in this poem, but the sounds really stood out to me. The sounds in this poem hit the ear with such beauty. Let's just look at a couple phrases in closer detail.
"[...] proffer teeth and tongue / and ghost-lit lantern"--teeth and tongue is alliteration and I love me some alliteration. Also some alliteration with "ghost-lit lantern." But the word "proffer" gets me. Gorgeous sound in this line.
"[...] whose half-spoilt flesh holds distillate / eternal summers / spent glittering in the euphotic zone"--these lines sound so good. I love the bevy of "T" sounds going on in these lines. Makes a rat-tat-tat when you read it. A machine gun of "T's."
"sunlight secondhand"
"long-gone grocery display,"
"guts of lazy lemons."
I think you get the picture though, now here is the point--
This poem is about getting our sunlight through our food. That, in reality, we eat sunlight. Everything lives off of the sun, we need it to survive. This is a science poem. Fish living in the deepest depths of the ocean need sunlight, and humans do too. It is a poem about eating sunlight. That is beautiful.
But who really cares what the poem is about. Does it really matter? Does it matter what the poem was about? Or if we connected to the topic as a reader? Maybe. In the end, this poem, this poet spoke to me. Her words, her ideas, her soul, jumped out of the page, across space and time, and told me something. Something about life, and being connected, and being human. I felt fed. I felt better about the world. I felt better about myself. If you can get that from poetry than it is a worthwhile endeavor to read it.
First, big fan! I've been watching Vlogbrothers and Crash Course for several years now, Vlogbrothers for longer obviously. I love the things you and Hank do, but more than anything I love this video.
Let me explain...
I like Robert Frost. His poetry is wonderful, deep, and full of interesting discussions. My favorite is Out, Out. But I have to tell you, it really frustrates me when people misinterpret and misread The Road Not Taken. This happens most often in church and in the English classes I teach at school.
So, thank you for doing your part in correcting this rampant problem.
Best Wishes,
Mr. Allen
Now, lets get this poem on the screen and dig in.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
(5) To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
(10) Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
(15) I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
(20) And that has made all the difference.
I understand and totally subscribe to the idea that people can read poetry and glean any message that is meaningful to them, but let me explain to you how I interpret this poem.
Many people misinterpret this poem by saying that (much like John Green in the video was saying) that by taking the "road less traveled" your life will be better or meaningful. It happens in church all the time. People like to interpret this poem saying that if you follow the straight and narrow you will eventually reach heaven because you took the "road less traveled by." That is a nice message and all, but unfortunately that is not what Frost was getting at.
So we have the speaker, he is walking through the woods, he comes to a fork in the road, he looks down both paths. One path is well worn, and the other is "grassy and wanted wear." But then look at lines 9 & 10: "Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same," Frost contradicts himself. One road isn't better than the other. One isn't less worn, they are pretty much the same. So does it really matter if you choose one path over the other? Let's keep reading.
In line 11, Frost uses the word "equally" to once again discuss how these two paths are the same. Then he says that "[he] kept the first for another day!" He'll just come back and travel the other road some other time. Sounds good. But, oh, wait, "Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back." So you're not going to come back? Well then why did you say you would. You contradicted yourself again. NOT COOL ROBERT FROST!
So then we get to the final stanza. Where the speaker envisions himself in the future, detailing to generations of his offspring how he took the path that was "less traveled" and "that has made all the difference." That's the end right? Poem over? Not so fast. The problem is that it didn't make all the difference. The speaker cannot know that his path was any better than the other because
the paths were "worn [...] about the same." and
he never took the other path, "I doubted if I should ever come back," so how can he know that the path he took made all the difference.
This is how I interpret this poem. If we read closely we find contradictions. I love to use this poem to teach Deconstruction when we study Critical Lenses in AP Literature and Composition.
