"Gotta get my quidditch costume..."

Whew, thought I would never get through the first half of the book. But, like Quentin trudging through Antarctica, I made it. Just kidding, it wasn’t so awful. Especially since I was reading it in Graham Memorial and kept imagining I was at Brakebills. If you’re having trouble getting into the book, I highly recommend you try that relocation.

Anyway, moving on, I’m still not in love with this novel, but I think I’ve nailed down why. I can’t throw myself into a story line I don’t particularly feel a part of, if that makes any sense. For example, in The Hunger Games, Collins writes the story so that we, as readers, feel like we are a part of it. We are invested in Katniss’s life and possibly impending death, so we keep reading to protect her (so to speak) and ease our minds. In The Magicians, though, I feel like Grossman writes from a very severely third-person perspective, where we aren’t so much flies on the wall but watching through a security camera, completely removed from the environment and, to some degree, context. This is demonstrated pretty clearly when Grossman writes that days, weeks, and even many months pass without any remark. “Six months later and…” doesn’t give the reader any real insight and, personally, I felt pretty left out. I get that he needed to move the plot along and make Quentin a fourth year, but I’m not sure I like that approach. Maybe I just got spoiled with Harry Potter, where we follow the gang for one year in each book. It’s been a while since I read that series, but I don’t recall Rowling ever writing “Six months later and Harry was still kind of mopey and Ron still had red hair.” I like being in the action with characters, even if that means being a bit boring sometimes.

Oh, and the title is a reference to my favorite quote so far: “Gotta get my quidditch costume. I mean uniform. I mean welters.” – Josh

Magically Indifferent

So basically what I’ve gleaned from everyone’s blog posts is that after 47 pages no one is quite sure what to think about this book other than it’s kind of like Harry Potter. But then you could tell that just by reading the reviews, in which everyone made at least one reference to the master of witchcraft and wizardry. Personally, I think don’t care one way or another for the novel so far.

One thing that we’ve discussed that makes a novel “popular” is creating compelling characters that you care about from the first page (read: Katniss). Grossman failed to do this, in my opinion. Instead of creating a character that was likeable or compelling, he created one we felt sorry for. Poor pitiful Quentin and his unrequited love and his fondness for doing magic tricks where no one could see them. Oh and his parents don’t care about him? Bonus. To be fair, though, I didn’t really get attached to Jacob (was that his name?) or Julia, either, and I’m pretty sure we were supposed to like them. Either way, even when Quentin’s wildest dreams come true and he finally gets to live in a fantasy world I couldn’t muster up enthusiasm for him. I was and am purely indifferent. I was more excited for the punk kid I know nothing about.

Another trend I noticed, though it’s less prominent or significant so far in this book, was the whole “you have to have a dead person,” thing. There was a dead body within the first twenty pages, I think. What is it about our attention span that makes it necessary to have a corpse so quickly in every book we read? I am, however, intrigued about the whole “scouts” thing, where the magic school sends out recruiters that appear to be normal, apparently attractive people.

Anyone else hoping this turns out to either be a drug trip or psychotic breakdown?

Coming back for seconds

At the beginning of this semester, I saw a Facebook status in which one of my friends said, "Ugh, why didn't I discover Hunger Games over break when I actually had time to read," or something to that effect. I sympathized, being one of those people who gets easily caught up in books, but couldn't quite empathize, since I had no idea what the Hunger Games was about. Now I get it.

Not only is this a thrilling book full of action, adventure, and romance, it’s incredibly well paced so it keeps you flipping pages until the very end. Just when I assumed the drama was over and we could get on with the boring post-games, happy ending roundup, the conflict built even more. I suppose that’s one good thing about it being part of a series instead of an independent novel—not everything had to be resolved simply. There are still a lot of unknowns where the character of Katniss is concerned, though we get a conclusion on the Games themselves. I like the whole not-knowing-everything ending to a book, especially when there’s a possibility that the next book in the series will provide answers and hopefully even more questions.

As I considered reading the next book (and I will as soon as exams are over), I couldn’t help but make a mental list of things I wanted to see more of or know more about. I hope there is a lot more where the capital/district dynamic is involved. While the Games set an excellent stage for this battle in the first book, I want to see some sort of justice be had there by District 12. I want more history on the country, more details on the rebellion. I’d like to get to know Gale a little better, since he was included but barely present in book one. And of course, because I’m into clichés and all that, I can’t wait to see where this whole Katniss/Peeta thing goes. Ahh, love in the midst of really, really awful reality.

Spoiler-filled. Beware.

Well that was certainly, um, interesting. I feel like despite the fact that I finished the novel, I'm still very unsure as to what it really meant. I get what happened on the surface, but I really hope the discussions tomorrow will unveil a little more, since I feel sort of empty about the whole thing. That being sad, I really liked the concept and the challenges it presented in trying to figure out the plot and upcoming twists.

I think my favorite part of the end was that because (spoiler alert) Orciny didn’t actually exist, it was a little more plausible/applicable to my life in a unified country. It wasn’t that some crazy, mystical, unseen group was controlling everything—it was just selfish people like the ones that exist everywhere. It’s far more interesting, to me, to read about people that are familiar to me than people that are foreign (in the sense that they’re “unseen” like a secret society would be here). The dynamics of understanding why someone more like myself than the unseen “other” would do this type of thing made the conclusion more interesting and perhaps more relevant to me.

This reminded me a lot of Dan Brown’s novels, most specifically Angels & Demons. In the same way Bowden, Buric, and the others use Orciny as a veil for their crimes in tC&tC, the criminals in A&D use the ancient Illuminati and pin their actions on a nonexistent organization. It makes for a compelling plot, I think, because not only is the reader asking him or herself, “Who is committing all these crimes and why?” but also, “Does the organization I’m possibly attributing them to even exist in the first place?” There’s a double uncertainty that adds to the suspense of a mystery novel.

That being said, my favorite part about tC&tC wasn’t the murder mystery aspect at all, but imagining life as a citizen of Beszel or Ul Qoma. There is so much nuance in this fake city that I couldn’t help constantly picturing myself there, which led to a lot of interesting questions even past the classic, “Whodunit?”

The Campus & The Campus

“I lived east and south and bit of the Old Town...It was a heavily crosshatched street--clutch by clutch of architecture broken by alterity, even in a few spots house-by-house. The local buildings are taller by a floor or three than the others, so Besz juts up semiregularly and the roofscape is almost a machicolation”

Like the two towns in the novel, Chapel Hill has several buildings that appear to be from completely different areas. In this photo, you see an old house juxtaposed with a brand new, modern looking building. It almost seems as if the newer architect completely disregarded the surrounding buildings, yielding the result of “crosshatching” at various points on campus.

This compares to the two cities in the novel, in that the architects there literally disregarded all surroundings and “unsaw” the previous buildings, resulting in an awkward skyline.

To state the obvious, the situation is very different in that Chapel Hill is not “two cities” but one city that has poor planning and is constantly under construction.

The Good Kind of Confused

Wait so this isn't a Sex & the City spinoff?

Kidding. But even if I hadn't been joking around this post would have mostly likely started, ended, and been almost totally made up by question marks. Though we were warned in class that this book would be confusing at first, I wasn't quite prepared for what I read.

The most helpful thing I've read thus far, in relation to trying to understand the "concept" of two cities existing in the same place (maybe? I'm not even sure yet if that's right.) was the quote on the back cover of the book.

"...Skillfully examines the illusions people embrace to preserve their preferred social realities" (from Publishers Weekly, apparently).

So my theory as the concept is that the two warring cities are a metaphor for different parts of society, namely the upper and lower classes. Just as the people of Beszel “unsee” or avoid looking at Ul Qoma even though it’s visible, people of the higher class avoid looking at the seedier parts of any town (though I was mostly thinking about big cities having upscale parts and ghettos) despite the fact that they could, if they wanted to. If you look at cities like New York, it’s sometimes tempting to see Harlem as a totally different city than, say, 5th Avenue.

The whole being in the same place physically trips me up a bit, as I’m sure it was intended to. My brain can’t process that in one spot there could be two different spaces. Is that even right? The terminology of crosshatches, alters, etc throws me off quite a bit.

Does this remind anyone else of 1984 a little bit? Though it isn’t technically dystopian, Beszel seems pretty shady and undesirable, and the whole “unseeing” phenomenon reminds me a lot of the concept of doublespeak, where you say (or see) something but never really acknowledge it or process it. Either way, little bit mind blowing.

"Then again, he also made himself look like a ruthless murderer."

I was so caught off guard by the ending of House Rules that I literally passed out, hit my head on a coffee table, and woke up to my roommate dragging me out to the woods trying to set up a crime scene with what he supposed was my lifeless body. Just kidding, I figured out what happened like halfway through the book and trudged along until the end.

To be fair, though, I couldn't quite predict how the truth would come out, since apparently Emma and Oliver were dead set on never letting Jacob explain himself. I assumed they would go to court once the jury had decided on a verdict and Theo would confess to everything right before they announced it. What I didn't realize until the end, though, was that Theo still kind of assumed Jacob killed her despite the fact that he saw her fall and knew she didn't keep running after him. That seems silly and implausible to me, but so does the fact that Oliver and Emma live happily ever after despite the fact that they've only known each other for a month and only in a really, really weird context. But I digress.

I agree with what a few people said in class—that it was an interesting perspective on Asperger’s, but the rants on how the syndrome is entirely caused by vaccines just threw any credibility it had out the door for me. There is little to no scientific evidence that vaccines have any effect on autism in children. That was a rumor that actually started, I think, in England and spread like wildfire thanks to the internet. I just think it was quite silly of her to bring it up and turn what could have been a convincing narrative from the point of view of someone with Asperger’s into something that seemed like a weak lobbying attempt.

Anyway, I really wish that with this, my final entry on the book, I could write something deep and expository, something other than a reaction. But honestly I can’t find much to say other than it was fairly entertaining up until the last 150 pages or so.

House Rules

I suppose I will start off like everyone else and just say that I really like House Rules. I put off starting it because I assumed it was going to be a downer (and because I was busy finishing The Girl Who Played With Fire, which was pretty good), but from the first few pages, I was interested in the Hunt family’s story. While I have thus far been correct about it not being a terribly uplifting story, that hasn’t stopped me from flipping pages at a rapid pace.

My only exposure to Asperger’s has been through pop culture, but I feel like the representations I’ve seen do the syndrome a lot of justice and help thoroughly define what it means for both those suffering from it and their families. Picoult does an excellent job of helping readers get in Jacob’s shoes (which ironically, he couldn’t do in return) and see life through his eyes (but not literally… see what this book has done already?). The comparisons between having AS and being in a country where you don’t understand the language were especially poignant to me, and helped me better grasp what day to day life would be like for someone like Jacob.

One question I have, as the book progresses, is Picoult’s reason for writing the novel. As we previously discussed, mystery novels tend to be written without a real “goal” in mind other than solving said mystery, whereas realist books like Little Bee could be written to increase advocacy/empathy/etc. I wonder if Picoult wrote this purely as a compelling mystery book with complex relationships or if she intended to increase awareness of Asperger’s Syndrome. Either way, I find the book incredibly compelling, and I’m excited to read more.

Deconstruction Derby

So one of the generalizations often made about GWDT is that it has strong themes of female empowerment. With Lisbeth being the titular character, it comes across as a book about a woman who’s been victimized (both before and during the novel) who overcomes not only her own attacker but also another prolific murderer/rapist, proving her strength and independence. While this is definitely true, and Steig Larsson succeeds in creating what Ms. Magazine calls a “feminist hero,” the theory that this novel is empowering may not hold up when looking at the rest of the women in the novel.

With the exception of Erika Berger, every main female character in the book is a victim. Lisbeth gets violently raped by her guardian, Harriet gets raped by her father and brother, Cecilia’s husband was abusive, Isabella’s husband was a drunk who also raped her children, all of Lisbeth’s friends have apparently been sexual assault victims, etc etc. The pattern is clear and not coincidental—Larsson definitely had a message to deliver.

But other than Salander, arguably none of the rest of the women got their own revenge. Harriet did kill her father when she was 15, but her only solution to escaping Martin’s grip was to run away and let him continue raping and killing immigrants and prostitutes. Lisbeth even calls her a bitch, saying, “If she had done something in 1966, Martin Vanger couldn’t have kept killing and raping for thirty-seven years” (pg.544). She got some revenge, but in the end was still a victim of her brother’s abuse.

Cecilia was beaten by her husband, but instead of getting any real revenge, she just moves out and never even files for divorce. Isabella, instead of standing up for herself and her children, lets her husband do whatever he wants and turns a blind eye. These women are unquestionably still victims years after their abuse.

Finally, the more “anonymous” women of the novel get no real revenge for all their pain. Lisbeth, “did not know a single girl who at some point had not been forced to perform some sort of sexual act against her will” (pg. 249), yet none of these friends got to tattoo and blackmail their attacker. And all of Martin’s victims got absolutely no revenge and, in the end, not even the press knew they were dead. They were victims in the strongest sense of the word, but never got closure.

While I am a fan of the whole “kickass girl power” thing regarding Lisbeth, I found it a little disturbing that regardless of the victimhood of every other woman in the novel, the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is still touted as a “feminist” novel.

The Girl Who Can't Stop Reading

And just like that, 100 pages later, I finally figure out why I see so many people in public reading this book. It's because even if you can only read a page or two, it gets you that much closer to knowing what on Earth this is all leading up to. And with basically 150 pages of introductory text, it better be leading to something good. I assume it will,though, since there are so many people in love with this series.

One aspect of the book I just don't quite understand yet is the idea that Lisbeth is the main character. In every blog I read in preparation for my reception report, the focus was on her. I mean, she's basically the title of the book. But in 220 pages, I feel like she's still secondary to Blomkvist and this whole murder mystery thing. I suppose when the two characters finally meet, her story will sort of take over since we know a lot of his back story already.

In my research, one of the most interesting things I discovered was the true inspiration behind her character (other than Pippi), or maybe the motive Larsson had behind writing the book. Apparently when he was a teenager, he witnessed a girl his age named Lisbeth being gang raped, and didn't do anything to help her. Apparently it haunted him for the rest of his life (understandably so), and it's definitely an interesting aspect to think of from a psychological criticism perspective. Maybe as I find out more about her character, that will be the topic of a blog to come. We shall see.

The Girl With the Overwhelming Cynicism

I tried to go into Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with an open mind, and not judge it based on the fact that everyone who reads it thinks it’s the best novel ever. I had read the first 30 pages or so in Barnes & Noble over the summer, and had already lost interest in it, but upon giving it a second chance I found it a little easier to read.

After finishing the first 100 pages, I can’t help but draw comparisons between this novel and another bestseller people couldn’t stop talking about for a year or two– The Da Vinci Code. Like Dan Brown’s novel, Steig’s tends to rely on a lot of twists and turns to maintain readers’ attention. In both books, readers are required to learn a lot of details early on in order to get anything out of those twists in the rest of the novel, though. I find it interesting that books like these are such best sellers, due to the attention span of the average American reader (which is, of course, really short). It brings up a lot of interesting questions about the “popular genre” identification and what makes a book popular in the first place.

Another reason I am hesitant to really commit to this book is the use of stock characters. There have been wronged creative do-gooders, sketchy businessmen, badass hot chick crime fighters, and mysterious octogenarian millionaires in more books, movies and TV shows than I can count. I struggled not to roll my eyes upon reading the main characters’ descriptions, just because I felt like I had met them before. And not in an “oh that’s so relatable way” but in a “Have I read this book before?” way.

I’m going to attempt to put away my cynicism for the next part of the book, and look at it in an objective manner so next time I might actually write an intellectual entry on the novel. For the time being though, I just needed to rant a bit.

Finding the home in Fun Home

I will unprofessionally begin this blog post by saying I really, really loved this book. From the endless amounts of literary references to the dark comedy, everything in this graphic novel appealed to me. I will probably be incredibly frustrated in the next few weeks that I can't find another novel quite like it. Anyway, moving on to more intellectual topics.

What I found incredibly intriguing about Fun Home was the concepts of "home" and "family" portrayed by Bechdel. In conversation, I constantly accidentally refer to the book as "Fun House," before realizing that that's just a creepy carnival attraction. This got me thinking, though about the difference between a house and a home. Typically house is the noun used in reference to the physical structure, something detached and unemotional. A home is something more-- somewhere a family resides, filled with love and laughter and all that cheesy stuff. When Bechdel refers to her "Fun Home," though it's technically just a shortened version of funeral home, it implies she's talking about her own museum-like house, where her family resides. In this case, though, there is none of the typical cheesy "home" qualities, but a lot of secrets, angst, and struggle.

As exemplified in the scene to the left, the family cohabitates but is not terribly interactive or affectionate. Bechdel at one point describes it as being less like a family and more like an artists’ colony where everyone just does their own thing.

Yet she clearly sees them as somewhat “family-like,” because when she comes home from college, she feels like something is missing as they all go in different directions right after dinner in the scene below.

Family, I suppose, is what you make it. For Bechdel, this strange together-but-separate/distant dynamic is part of her family life. Though I struggled with the cold, unemotional nature of their interactions, to them that was normal, expected. And because she feels that familial connection, she can comfortably call the house a Fun Home.

A Feminist Take On Sunset Park

The American feminist movement has come a long way since its origins in the 1800s, but many works written in the 2000s still rely on clichéd gender stereotypes. Paul Auster’s Sunset Park is no different. Though the four characters who reside in the house in Sunset Park are quirky and face many struggles throughout the novel, the types of conflict they face and the resolution to those conflicts at the end of the book are heavily influenced by gender. Miles and Bing, the male residents, fight inner demons stemming from guilt, family hardships, aggression, and societal rebellion. Ellen and Alice, the female residents, deal with issues surrounding pregnancy, boyfriends, body image, and dependence on men. While the conflicts in the novel are legitimate and relatable issues, the fact that they are so closely associated with either side of the gender binary makes Auster’s work seem cliché and sexist.

Miles Heller is the novel’s central character, as he is the common thread between a few storylines, and it is his story that begins the book. Readers learn quickly that Miles’ main struggle is dealing with his role in the death of his stepbrother. Not only does he feel guilty for partially causing the death, but also the fact that his father and stepmother don’t know he had any part in it. When he overhears his parents discussing how cold and distant he has been since the day of the accident, he runs away and remains on the run for a number of years. This conflict, though not inherently gendered, becomes so when Miles’ reaction to the situation is to further distance himself from his family. Instead of showing emotion or weakness, which are typically associated with femininity, he opts for the “manly” route of fierce, defensive independence. He only resolves the issues with his family when he feels he has no other option, and even then he is reluctant to show much remorse for his “coldness” and remains fairly emotionally independent from the rest of his family. His stereotypically masculine features eventually lead to his downfall, as he punches a police officer trying to protect a woman. His clearly sees it as his manly duty to be a protector, and therefore needs to act aggressively, which wouldn’t have been the case if the character hadn’t been male.

Miles’ other significant struggle, which leads him to live illegally with three other people in a house in New York, revolves around his less-than-legal relationship with his girlfriend Pilar, who is only 17 years old. Miles, who is 28, is attracted to Pilar at first sight and quickly falls in love with her. Though the book’s narrator claims the relationship is healthy, Miles clearly brings his detachment issues and emotional avoidance into their life together as he hides the fact that he even has a family, and never mentions any of the struggles he’s truly experiencing. His love and lust toward a legally unattainable underage girl is a gendered conflict in that men are stereotypically seen as more driven by their sexual urges than women.

Though Miles’ conflicts and resolutions are highly gendered, he is still not written as the most “manly” of the Sunset Park residents. Bing Nathan, the character who first suggests squatting in a house in Sunset Park, is introduced by Auster to be very rebellious, a “champion of discontent.” He is described as a “bear of a man,” who dresses sloppily and has very few manners, which weighs him heavily on the side of being masculine. His main personal conflict – leading the squatters through their time in the Sunset Park house—is reflective of this assigned masculinity, in that he establishes himself as the leader of the group instinctively. Though Auster doesn’t state it outright, he seems to write Bing’s role as the primary protector of the women, Alice and Ellen, despite the fact that these women were fully capable of taking care of themselves before he came into their lives. When his success in this role is threatened, his reaction is to be aggressive towards whoever or whatever is threatening, which is also a very gendered reaction. It’s assumed by Auster that the “manly” character must take on qualities associated closely with masculinity. His conflict is resolved when the police eventually take back the house, and he attempts to physically defend the property. It’s presumed that he was so out of control that his masculine rage got the best of him, which ultimately led to his destruction (or in this case, jail time).

The first female Sunset Park resident readers are introduced to is Alice Bergstrom, a Wisconsinite woman working towards her doctorate degree in literature. Alice’s central conflict is her difficult relationship with her body and, to some degree, her boyfriend Jake. The couple has been dating over two years, but she feels that because she has put on weight, he is less attracted to her. Body image issues, though truly universal, are generally associated with women, and Auster doesn’t break out of this box. Auster writes, regarding the failure of their relationship “…She blames herself for what has happened, she can’t help believing that the fault rests entirely on her shoulders.” Auster writes this without ever hinting that a woman who is working toward her doctorate and is strong and independent might have other things to worry about than 13 pounds and the fact that her boyfriend is a subpar partner. He also writes that she “hopes to put her womb to the test” in the “not-too-distant future,” before he ever mentions that she is working on her dissertation, as if reproducing has to be more important in her life than being well educated. Alice, throughout the novel, does mention minor struggles she faces in finishing her dissertation, but the bulk of her time in conflict is spent wondering what went wrong with her own relationship, which is a conflict typically associated with feminine emotional overload.

The resolutions to Alice’s conflicts are as heavily gendered as the conflicts themselves. In reference to her relationship, after she and Jake finally break up, she worries not that she wasted so much time thinking about their issues instead of her academic career or helping writers at the organization she works for, but that she won’t find another man soon and that she will have a “childless future.” Her issues with her body end not in self-acceptance, but with her being pleased she has lost weight temporarily and not thinking about it now that she doesn’t have a man in her life (thus proving that societal expectations of femininity were really her central conflict, though Auster fails to acknowledge this). Her story ends with her housemate Ellen saying, “It won’t be long before Alice finds herself another man,” as if that is the end-all-be-all of womanly success in Auster’s eyes.

Ellen Brice, the fourth housemate, also finds herself facing conflicts based on her gender. Readers are almost immediately introduced to the struggle Ellen faces after months of not receiving any attention from men. She, driven completely by these emotions, breaks people down to only their physical attributes, and imagines being intimate with every “man, woman, and child.” Auster writes that, “The wild thoughts enter her head as if they were planted there by someone else, and even though she battles to suppress them, it is a battle she never wins.” Not only is she portrayed as overly emotional and irrational, but also weak and vulnerable, emitting an “aura of victimhood and skittish uncertainty” —all traits most often associated with women. Auster also paints Ellen as a temptress who seduces the 16-year-old boy she is tutoring over the summer, despite the fact that he makes the first move and kisses her without her consent. Ellen discovers she is pregnant shortly after the summer ends, but hides it and aborts the child. Auster writes, in reference to not disclosing this information to the father, “…why punish him with this news when there was nothing he could do to help her, when she was the one to blame for the whole sordid business?” This struggle is uniquely female, and the fact that Auster presents the father as being blameless is completely gendered. A few years after the abortion, Ellen becomes absolutely obsessed with recreating the idea of “life” in her paintings of nude bodies, thus showing that this gendered conflict still weighs heavy on her mind.

Ellen’s story also ends in a cliché, gendered way. Instead of a true, deep recovery from the depression and anxiety she suffers, as a man (most notably Miles) would get, Ellen’s story finds resolution through a shallow makeover and a new boyfriend. First, she and Bing reach an agreement wherein he will pose nude for her as long as she gives him sexual favors, and because of this her art is somehow revived from mediocrity. She unquestionably used her “womanly wiles” to resolve this conflict, making it seem as if that was her only useful tool. Ellen’s “true” change, though, comes from a makeover in which she cuts her hair, wears more makeup, and wears more form-fitting clothing. Auster writes that this makeover is a reflection of a new relationship she has with her “innermost self,” but later goes on to say that this revelation in her appearance was a direct result of a run-in Ellen has with Ben, the boy who impregnated and abandoned her years ago. Despite the fact that his career plans include working at the T-Mobile store, her reunion and resulting relationship with Ben are written so that her future now seems more stable with a man by her side (regardless of his lack of responsibility shown thusfar). And so Ellen’s story is resolved with a little lipstick and a man-- both unquestionably gender specific conclusions.

Though the conflicts that occur throughout Sunset Park are very realistic, often relatable issues, Auster seems to be highly dependant on societal gender roles and assumptions. After a close reading, it seems that the male characters in the novel experience a more diverse set of issues, presumably due to the fact that Auster is male and has a broader understanding of the range of conflicts he, himself, has been through. The women of Sunset Park fare far worse, though, due to societal assumptions regarding women and the problems they encounter. These characters seem to struggle constantly with stereotypically feminine problems such as body image, pregnancy, and relationship woes. This division of conflict type based on gender is overused and, in the end, contributes to further solidification of established gender roles. This not only hurts modern society, but also contributes to the novel a distinct air of unoriginality and bias.

Goodies vs. Baddies-- the war wages on

As I progress in Little Bee, I can't help but notice a constant struggle to define "goodies" and "baddies," as Charlie so eloquently puts it. Each character has both good and bad traits, and it's hard to really decide which will win out, or if one has to win at all.

For instance, from the beginning of the book, I saw Bee much like Lawrence did-- as someone who was entirely foreign. Not in the you-aren't-my-problem-get-out way, but in the way that she didn't have the same amount of depth as the British characters. Even as I saw her in the detention center or at Andrew's funeral, I assumed she wasn't capable of the "baddie" qualities the rest were so easily practicing. But as we find out in the pages leading up to p. 200, she very much is, even if her choice wasn't made completely in malice. She started out plotting revenge on Andrew and, whether on purpose or not, she eventually got it. A life for a life. And she was so sneaky as to not mention it to Sarah, even when she had given her finger for her and then taken her in on the day of her husband's funeral. Though somewhat understandable, that's still a pretty "baddie" thing to do. Yet I know regardless of what happens in the rest of the book, I will see Bee as a "goodie" because of how strong she has stayed throughout her struggles and the impact she has on the O'Rourke family after Andrew dies.

Sarah also has a lot of qualities of both goodies and baddies. She has been having an affair for two years that, in a lot of ways, led up to her husband’s depression and suicide. That’s certainly not a cause for praise. But she has the wonderful qualities of wanting to be a good mother and wanting to “save the world” as she later explains.

Even Charlie has “goodie” and “baddie” qualities, even though he demands that every person be either one or the other. He is sneaky and tricks Little Bee into watching TV with him when he knows he isn’t allowed, which definitely doesn’t have as many consequences as, say, letting someone die, but is underhanded regardless.

The line between goodies and baddies, as it turns out, may be incredibly thin, and probably doesn’t exist at all in this novel or the world we live in.

Buzzing about Little Bee

I decided, before writing this entry, not to read anyone else's thoughts on Little Bee so that my post would be as honest and unaffected as possible. The biggest reason for this is that I don't want to read anything negative that might sway how wonderful I think this book is thusfar.

From the moment I read the back cover, I was intrigued. If you haven't read it, it basically says that they won't give away any of the story because it needs to be experienced personally, and after 100+ pages, I can see why. The story, if taken from a really general view, could come off as cliche. "White woman and African girl bond, white woman saves African girl, in turn becomes saved herself by the girl" etc etc. Upon reading, though, it's so much more than that.

The characters themselves are, despite their very unique nuances, incredibly relatable. Unlike Auster in Sunset Park, Cleave doesn’t list all their traits up front in an obvious manner so readers can either identify with them or not. He introduces them in a vague way, and allows readers to become more and more attached as they progress by slowly revealing parts of them, much like a natural relationship progresses. So much so, in fact, that after reading about half the book, I feel like these characters are my acquaintances, like I’ve known them forever even though they are a world away (and, you know, not real).

One aspect that I find most interesting so far is the relationship between Sarah and Andrew. At the beginning of the novel, he seems like the strong one, namely because Little Bee keeps referring to the man she met on the beach instead of the woman. As the story moves along, though, you see that their relationship was incredibly complicated and, in the end, that it was actually Sarah who sacrificed for Little Bee when Andrew couldn’t. Also, the shift between how distant they were, as shown by the lack of emotion on Sarah’s part upon his suicide, and how deeply she felt for him, like on their honeymoon, was interesting. I feel like I have yet to really nail down their dynamic, which is really refreshing in a “Popular Genre” book.

Needless to say, I honestly can’t wait to get back to this book.

Initial Reaction & Feminist Reaction to the end of Sunset Park

Well that was disappointing. I’m referring, of course, to the ending of Sunset Park, wherein everyone ruins their hopes and dreams by finally get evicted from the house. Auster built my hopes dramatically toward the end, as Alice, Ellen, Bing, Miles, and Morris all began having closure to their stories, but the final twenty pages caught me completely off guard.

Really, though, I suppose I shouldn’t have been terribly surprised. After all, these people had been living illegally in a house for months, and had gotten several eviction notices already. What was the alternative, realistically? I also shouldn’t have been surprised based on the rest of the book’s plot, since nothing ever turned out how I (and I assume most readers), wanted.

The ending left me with many unanswered questions. What ever happened with Willa? Did she accept Miles’ confession and forgive him, making Morris’ life easier? What happened to Alice’s computer? She worked so hard on that dissertation that I can’t bear the thought of it being forever lost. Could PEN help her get it back? I’m less concerned with the lives of Ellen and Bing, since Ellen seemed to be relatively blameless in the police invasion and Bing sort of asked for his fate. Also, both worked through their own issues, sort of, before the book ended. Also, why did Pilar suddenly decide to leave Florida for school in New York when she had previously been so adamant about staying near her family.

I think the end of the novel, for me, affirmed a lot of what the reviews said—there were just too many characters with too many details to realistically tie everything up. Maybe it was a statement by Auster, after all, that real life is messy and never quite tied up.

Regardless of the message, though, I can’t help but feel let down by Sunset Park. I believe that good novels should leave you questioning things, but not regarding the plot. The questions should be about the lessons learned, about your assumptions and how they were played out, about the novel’s impact on your own life and what that means. Not skipped-over plot points that leave me feeling unfulfilled.

From a feminist perspective, Sunset Park’s ending was just as, if not more, disappointing than it was from the initial reader-response reaction. Auster wrapped up (if you can even call it “wrapping up”) all of the female characters in ways that leave the characters unfinished and, more importantly, oppressed.

Ellen, whose appearance was one of the first things mentioned about her, was framed as a character who was attractive but felt ugly inside. The narrator set readers up to ask the question, “Why is such a pretty girl so sexually frustrated?” Of course, the answer was that she had been impregnated, a plight only ever experienced by women, and abandoned by boy she didn’t even feel comfortable enough to tell. She bore unspeakable amounts of pain simply because she thought it wasn’t the boy’s problem—it was hers since she was the one with the womb. Due to the pressures of society viewing young, single, pregnant women as promiscuous and irresponsible, she aborted the child. Auster wraps up her story not with a redeeming transformation of character for herself, but with a transformation for a man—the same man who used her for sex and abandoned her nine years before. The narrator originally says that the change in appearance was just a reflection of a change in her “innermost self,” but goes on to say that her transformation was “inspired” by meeting Ben Samuels again, so apparently her innermost self is just a reflection of the man she’s dating at the time. So Ellen gets a boyfriend and a makeover and suddenly she is a whole person again and the novel is over.

Alice, who stands out from the other Sunset Park characters as the “normal one,” struggles with her self-image and her boyfriend. Original. I find it interesting, and a double standard, that Bing, who is unofficially described as the least attractive housemate, doesn’t seem to worry much about his looks, his weight, etc. He is even comfortable enough to pose nude for Ellen. Alice, however, deems herself unfit due to the fact that she doesn’t feel she meets society’s standards for an attractive woman despite the fact that she is, at most, only a little bit overweight for her height. Alice finally breaks up with her boyfriend toward the end of the novel, and instead of complimenting her empowerment or remarking on her intellectual abilities, Auster writes that Ellen is sure “it won’t be long before Alice finds herself another man.” Because that’s the end-all-be-all of womanly success and happiness.

Finally, Miles’ girlfriend Pilar, who at the beginning of the novel is committed to staying close to her remaining family in Florida while she’s in college, ends up dropping everything and moving to New York with her boyfriend (assuming he wasn’t put in jail for an extended amount of time). No matter that the only thing waiting for them in New York was Miles’ family who he didn’t even tell her about and a more expensive education than she would have received in Florida. In the end, it was the woman (well, girl) who gave up everything instead of the man, despite the fact that the only mistake Pilar made in her life was falling for a man who kept a lot of secrets from her.

This is not to say that the women in Sunset Park were the only ones suffering. Miles, Bing, and Morris all had a lot of issues to deal with themselves. In the end, though, they all received real, not superficial or sacrificial, change. Miles, before he punched a police officer, reconciled his relationship with his parents and seemed to be coming to terms with his brother’s death. Bing began working out the questions he had about his sexuality in a judgment-free zone. Morris deepened his relationship with his son and his wife, and was forgiven for having an affair. It seems a bit unbalanced to me.

A Critical Look At My Opinions on Criticism

Writing about literature, though sometime frustrating, functions to better our understanding of a work. It’s easy to sit down and enjoy a novel, but it takes a lot more patience to critically read and write about a work. Literary criticism should further our own understanding of what we read (by delving so deeply into it), but also should help others read the work in a different way or realize something they hadn’t noticed before. That tends to be the way I judge a criticism I’m reading—did at any point I feel compelled to re-open the book and read a piece over again because the criticism opened my eyes to something new?

Criticism, in my opinion, is carried out through reading a work with something specific in mind. No critic, regardless of his or her level of education, can read a piece and critique it from every perspective at once. It’s just too much for one person to handle. Therefore I think good criticism comes from multiple readings with various theories in mind each time, and good collaboration. Having multiple critiques of one work from different readers, I think, would be a really beneficial activity to help create a well-rounded criticism.

I see literature as a way to expand our personal experiences without actually experiencing things. I will never know what it’s like to have lived in the 1930s or to have grown up in New York City, but in reading literature, I feel I can get a sense of those experiences from my small apartment in Carrboro. I see literature as an opportunity to spend time in someone else’s head, whether it’s the author, the narrator, the main character, etc. I look for quality characters in a work, first and foremost. I believe with well-developed, intriguing, believable characters, any story could be interesting. Also, I look for realism. Not necessary for the plot or happenings to be realistic, but for the characters to interact and behave in a manner that is believable and not forced.

Finding Depth in "Silly Bohemian Romanticism"

In blog group Biblioklept's review of Auster's Sunset Park, they focus not so much on Auster's style issues, as many other reviews have done, but on the plot of the book and the characters that are so tangled up within it.

Auster's biggest concern in the book, they argue, is trying to define what "home" means, whether it's a place, a person, or some combination of both. He tries to do this through a large cast of characters all struggling, in some way or another, with the idea of "home" (and in the case of the squatters, not having one at all). Biblioklept's opinion, though, is that in creating so many characters with so many individual problems, the plot gets too big for one book, resulting in an ending that isn't as definitive and satisfying as they, and apparently many other bloggers, wanted.

Biblioklept suggests that this lack of satisfaction may be due, in part, to the fact that the main characters (namely the four squatters), feel unrealistic. They put it best in saying the gang is "an unrealistic idealization of youthful and artistic resistance to a predatory capitalist culture." This observation really resonated with me, since as I was reading I couldn't help but feel like I'd met these characters in numerous books, movies, and television shows I've seen before. All of the squatters have similar problems-- inability to fully succeed in their art (whether that be drums, painting, or writing), doubts about their personal worth, disillusionment with society-- and no real individual personality.

The reviewer does give Auster a fair amount of praise where his writing is concerned.

His keen sentences, often unfurling for pages at a time, move from concrete to abstract, to present to past to future, to inside and outside, with a precision and skill that is admirable to say the least.

I found this to be true, as I flipped from page to page without ever having a moment of awkwardness. It did, however, make it much more difficult to try to judge the characters for myself, since I was constantly getting the narrator's view of what was happening both outside, in character interactions, and inside the characters' heads. I found it hard to keep track of who knew what about the other characters.

In the end, Biblioklept says they felt less than satisfied, though they couldn't quite put their finger on why. They did say, though, that the novel made them think and feel, "which is really the job of art–even if those thoughts and feelings are often negative and unpleasant." I agree that though the novel may not be an excellent work of thorough character development, or even as good as Auster's previous works, it still opened my eyes to a world outside my own, where I got attached to characters and felt personally invested in their lives. I think that has to count for something.