Blog-Poetic Inventory/writing experience (in progress)

Jazz (Toni Morrison)

• wrote about a time she didn’t actually experience herself
• non-linear narratives
• gives cultural/family background information to better understand characters

Ceremony (Leslie Marmon Silko)

• uses traditional Laguna traditions as an interface to better understand Tayo (used traditional and original Laguna myths)
• non-linear narratives
• Historical context- a people struggling with drought of the 50′s; plutonium mining in southwest
• Silko uses all three levels of our paradigm

Crying of Lot 49 (Thomas Pynchon)

• uses historical as well as original narratives as interface for his search narrative
• use of meaning in names to further embody who the character really is “signature theory”
• novel just ends without resolution because all major/important subjects had already been resolved

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Jonathan Safran Foer)

• use of non-linear narrative to explain the history of Oskar’s family.
• search narrative creates historical context for the reader with 9/11 and Dresden bombing
• disciplinary discourse from paradigm using interviews from survivors
• pictures used for interface

Updated Project Proposal-blog

1) What specific experience will you undertake the task of, and take responsibility for, expressing? What is the concrete historical context?

I will express the experience of a migrant farm workers child; what developmental issues poverty, absent parental figures, constantly being forced to move, living in areas with high crime rates, present..

Describe the experience first in objective terms, with as many traits/categories as you can:
both A) Historical Situation, Event, Issue (actual, not invented)

Although farming practices have made rapid improvements in the last few decades do to technology, technology has failed to account for a more efficient harvesting method than using people labor.  Recently, the US has seen soaring unemployment rates causing some to unknowledgably point the finger at our agricultural labor force as the culprits stealing American jobs.  In reality, these migrant workers are necessary to America’s agricultural sustainability, and themselves pay a tremendous toll for the privelege of living in America.

B) Identity
(entire “matrix”: race/ethnicity, sex/gender, sexuality, class, religion, age, etc.)

I will explore one 12 year old Hispanic (Mexican-American) boys seasonal journey (beginning with his parents being employed by a FL tomato farmer and ending in Traverse City, MI with the blue/blackberry harvest in July) (Migrant workers usuually try to work in the southern states in the fall and winter, then move north for the summer months to avoid extreme hot/cold conditions)  This narrative will be set in the mid-1990′s; the main character/subject/narrator is a 12 year old Hispanic boy (displays high degree of intelligence, allowing him to form his own opinions about his situation, his parents, his culture; this will also give me the freedom to use various pieces of pop-culture ie books, song lyrics, that he likes to act as a potential interface for me to describe his experience)  he will be constantly trying to reconcile his current position, his growing affinity for American culture, his families culutural beliefs, etc.

2) “Explanation” or “account” of this experience from a conventional view? What is the dominant understanding?
(belief/morality or reason/disciplinary discourse — foreground your point of contrast)
Source of objective account? (list one, even if you’ll research more later.)

The Hispanic workforce has several negative connotations associated with it; questions about legal citizenship, stealing American jobs, invading American’s school systems, unnecessary pressure placed on our health care system, and increasing immigration.  Federal legislation passed in the mid-1990′s (1996 Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (Immigration Reform Act), the 1996 Personal Responsibility & Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (Welfare Reform Legislation), and the Agricultural Worker Protection Act (AWPA), bolstered the negative perception many hold about our migrant farm workers.  I’m not sure there is a dominant understanding on this subject, it being a current hotly contested topic.  I think their are people who are more informed and less informed about how necessary this working class is to US agriculture, the latter often being more vocal and serving to alienate our migrant workers from society.

3) Personal resonance for you in the present?
(hint: testing whether this is your feeling/bias, or whether you are “attuned” to past experience of event.) Source and level of your familiarity? (i.e. extent of “expertise” or “curiosity”?)
note: not necessarily “easier” or “better” to undertake something extensively knowledgeable about; might actually be more challenging — what about an area of inquiry or “wondering,” within this same objective topic? see Q. 5)
Advantage and/or difficulty of this personal resonance for the project?

I am the fourth generation of my family to decide on a career in farming.  My family has always relied on these migrant workers as the main source of our labor pool, both today and in the past.  I feel my own experiences with these migrant workers (I worked in packing house for full year before coming to college-just me and 100 Hispanics) gives me faith in their value in our workforce.

4) One cultural narrative or image that is prominent in your memory (any media)?
(Or, what is one narrative that comes to mind by association, from any discourse? Use intuitive and associative logic…)

One style of literature that I really enjoy reading is historical fiction about old Florida.  I have a special appreciation for books written by historian Patrick Smith, author of the book Angel City.  Angel City recounts the journey of a (white) West Virginian family south after losing their farm to a hard winter.  They settle in a late 1960′s labor camp in South Florida where they are subject to great attrocities, enslavement, pitance wages, and all matter of other unfair treatment including the kidnapping of their children. (supposed to be very historically accurate)

When we talk about images that are prominent in my memory, am I talking about my own images of hopelesnesses, insecurity, or whatever I intuit my character experiences? (Such as Plath uses the Bell Jar as imagery for being stuck in depression)

I guess one image that stood/stands out in my mind that I get every now and again when I feel overwhelmed/hopeless/directionless is that of “paralyzation”.  I always invision myself on top of skyscraper, sitting in my bed, completely immobilized by fear.??????  Maybe Icould somehow tie this in if this is what you mean.

5) One “forgotten” (or overlooked, neglected) aspect or element? (remember: Lêthê…)
Speculate a “blindspot” of historical discourse: what is conventionally forgotten or excluded about this experience?
(Or, what is “filtered” out by reason, and possibly by reductive binary logic?)
Why is it important to actively “recall” (resonate) and inscribe this into writing and into present/future memory? (”socio-historical significance,” humanities perspective)

In an age of high tolerance and generally humane treatment of others, I would like to suggest migrant workers are regarded and treated differently from almost all other classes of our society.  Simalarly to the racism and unfair treatment black people experienced prior to the 1960′s, migrant workers today are also treated as a class of people deserving something less than normal citizenship.  Binary logic (ie stealing American jobs, invading American’s school systems, unnecessary pressure placed on our health care system, and increasing immigration) contributes to this perception, and causes less protection/unequal perception for migrant workers under the law.

Maybe I will specifically address some wrong committed against migrant workers, and show how they didn’t recieve what others would consider normal recourse.

Migrant workers are a subgroup that has one of the greatest difficulties breaking out of the bondage of poverty.  Other traditionally “lower class” groups do at least have access to public schooling and the potential for setting themselves apart as higher achievers.  But migrant families have little chance to save, to use credit to leverage a higher standard of living, or to have a consistant education.  Their lifestyle also does not lend to good, preventative health care (physical maintenace: dental, wellness checkups, etc) so they probably face greater physical challenges as they age.

6) In what specific way, “impossible” to express? (Literally speaking.)
As for project, what practical obstacles do you foresee at present?

I have never experienced, nor will I ever experience being I minority in the US.  I am unable to verify the level of unfair treatment that they recieve.

7) One lesson (abstract) and one technqiue (specific) from one of our relay novels, that you will implement? (”Analogy” in CATTt)
If able, list the key poetics that seem promising for the project, so far.
Reviewing our novels, how many narratives seem to be an adequate/effective number to include in the assemblage? (i.e. estimate minimum and maximum)

I would like to take a lesson and a technique from our relay novel Ceremony, by Silko.  The lesson I would like to implement is fully describing the family, living environment, relationship, cultural traditions of Mexican American family.  Similarly to Tayo, my character will be trying to make sence between two very different worlds.  I would also like to use pieces of pop culture (really why I have framed child as higher intelligence) like quotes, song lyrics, biblical quotes, to bring American Culture and Mexican-American culture together and to help articulate what I intuit his experience to be.  I would also like to use Vonneguts technique of non-linear narratives to help my own narrative come alive for the reader.

One thing I am really struggling with right now is finding a multi-modal narrative (I guess narrative to work parallel to the narrative I am creating)??

I think that I will have my main narrative (what happens to the migrant family) and a multi-modal narrative that I have yet to decide on (possibly a book he is reading for school that kind of relates to his experience in some way; reads before going to sleep)??

8 ) A potential interface? and A potential figure (expressive)?
(from any level of discourse: personal, cultural, disciplinary — perhaps “discovered” through this week’s “mining” exercise; if not, need more reflexive contemplation…)

This is probably the most confusing aspect of this assignment for me.  The way I am currently interpreting “interface” is a means to interpret or understand something that is incomprehensible to us.  To me, this means connecting my narrative and my multi-modal narrative together through the use of “interface”.  I was literally going to use song lyrics, quotes, etc. as my interface to describe what I intuit my protagonist “feels”. (I don’t know necessarily what this is going to be yet)

I’ve noticed that both Jessica and Laura (I heard you approved theirs, so I’ve been trying to model mine after theirs) are using “cultural” interfaces; I just don’t really think I’m clear what a cultural interface is.

Blog for Friday 11/27

Many people would feel constricted knowing that what they were going to do was pretty much etched in stone before birth.  For me, it has always been more of a comfort zone knowing what I was in store for me.  I never really even considered any other profession other than a career in citrus.  My family owns a fruit packing house and following my graduation in May, I will also join the business becoming the fourth generation of Roe’s who farm for a living.  The memory I am using emerges from one Summer afternoon of my youth, when my grandfather and I spent the day pulling vines, pruning sprouts, and fixing irrigation in the groves surrounding my house.  This day stands out to me because it was the day that I learned to set my first tree.  Well, after we got that tree in the ground, my grandfather gave me a firm pat on the back without saying a single word.  This day stands out in my mind for another reason as well; the day I learned that acknowledging a job well done is one of the greatest rewards one can give, or receive.  Similarly my mom always used to tell me, “good thinking 99″, for something especially clever or special I had done.  She used it sparingly so it still held value to me when she said it.  It wasn’t until my later high school years that I began admiring all things old school, which included watching TV land all the time.  I learned that “good thinking 99″ was Maxwell Smarts catch phrase for his hot parter, agent 99.  Both these are examples of me being praised for something good I had done, and it occurred to me that for me, praise is my interface between the work I do, my percieved quality of that work, and whether I am apt to pursue “that” again (what ever that is).

While I don’t think that day in the grove with my grandfather ultimately steered me toward a career in citrus, that is where I will end up.

Extra Credit Analysis Response-Krystal Sardinas’s Reading Response 6-Part 2

This is an analysis of Krystal Sardinas’s most recent reading response.

After reading Krystal’s response, the affect that I am able to intuit from this new narrative is one of a woman, swallowed by a quest she neither asked for nor is fully prepared to undertake.  Krystal’s first two vignettes convey Oedipa as a woman so consumed with executing the will, whether by loyalty to a respected friends wishes, or by the growing curiosity she felt about Tristero, that she was willing to sacrifice her own health to uncover the truth.

Krystal skillfully wove her own narrative in with Pynchon’s novel, The Crying of Lot 49. After reading her response, I didn’t feel I was reading original narrative fragments as I was the unabridged text from Pynchon himself.  I thought it was clever how Krystal used Sig, Sigmund Freud as a historical reference, then had Sig reference his own book to Oedipa, again drifting in and out of events Pynchon wrote.

Krystal wrote this narrative supplement in the mode of reason;  While it seems as if some of the things that happen to Oedipa, happen only by chance, Oedipa is actually using deductive reasoning.  Although Oedipa seems to have a chance encounter with Sigmund Freud, it later leads to another piece of her puzzle, while still failing to lead anywhere.  I think this was effectively written because this is in essence what I feel Pynchon also does to his readers; leading them in several viable directions yet failing to reveal key missing elements.

Maxwell’s Demon

Maxwell’s Demon is a motif which is constantly revisited, adding some confusion for me when deciphering the unfolding mystery of The Crying of Lot 49. Maxwell’s Demon is first introduced as the Nefastis machine, invented by a professor at UC Berkeley named John Nefastis.   Maxwell’s Demon basically relies on the concept of perpetual motion, which is said to defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  The “Demon” in the Nefastis machine sits in the box, mediating unrelated temperature molecules, sorting them into their respective canisters (or something like that).  More importantly, Maxwell’s Demon is used a few other times through the end of chapter 5.  The stories protaginist Oedipa,  at one point describes Pierce Inverarity, her ex-boyfriend who she is executing a very complicated will for and who the plot is centered around, as a Maxwell’s Demon connecting her to Jesus Arrabel, an old friend of Pierce’s.  I think that Pynchon is introducing Oedipa as her own respective Maxwell’s Demon.  Pynchon is using her as his own literary Demon to connect all these different, seemingly unrelated areas of the 60′s culture.

Inventory of lessons from novels

Two of our last three novels have featured an author (Morrison’s Jazz and Silko’s Ceremony) writing about a time, or rather an “experience” that they didn’t live through.  Our in class discussions have showed how a persons experience, at least as it is able to be revealed through first person narration, is limited to the actions that directly affect that person. (ie can’t relate anything they don’t see)  Perhaps what makes each of these novels so good is that they are not constrained by the someone’s actual experience; instead, the narrators are given the freedom to experience anything someone living during this time may have experienced.  In other words, Silko allows Tayo to embody every problem faced by Laguna war veterans, instead of having his “experience” be constrained to what happened to a real person.

Silko weaves traditional Laguna myths and poems into Ceremony to help the reader understand more about this lifestyle.  Each of the myths that Silko uses explains a different part of the Laguna heritage, and how the Laguna people used these myths to explain their different trials and tribulations, such as drought.  These myths were necessary to the novel because in that they bridged the connection between new and traditional Laguna life, both for the reader and for the novels protaginist Tayo.

Ceremony

Well, if this book is going to be about a ceremony, it is not apparent in the first 37 pages.  The narrative actually begins in the most unceremonious of circumstances, with our protagonist Tayo deep in the heart of a WWII fighting hot bead.  We can also tell that this novel is written in a non-linear style; on page 9 the author describes a shirt given to him after the end of the war.  Ceremony uses vibrant imagery and detailed explanations about what things the author has presumably drawn from “experience”.  Silko goes on at length about life and the conditions her people experienced living on a post WWII Native American reservation.  She gives a lot of detail about the drought on the reservation, and how it burdened their way of life.  Equally detailed is Silko’s narrative about the horrors Tayo has experienced fighting in the Filipino  jungles; about how Tayo feels delusional when told to kill a Japanese soldier he believes to be his Uncle Josiah.  This seemed strange to me because Silko, a woman, never fought in the war, making it not her experience at all.  Yet you know from the introduction that Silko grew up on the very reservation that the majority of the novel will take place.?

Jazz

Jazz serves to continue our discussions about expression and experience in a unique way.  As with other novels we have read, it discusses through a specific focalization, a specific microcosm of society that others can only read about.  Like the Great Gatsby, this is an investigation into the the 1920′s Jazz era in American history.  Actually, just writing and thinking back to our discussion in class today, these two novels share several key similarities, even though they are addressing totally different subjects.  Both novels take place in 1920′s New York.  Both novels feature main characters retreating from the midwestern United States to the heart of America’s booming east coast cities in order to find work.  Both took place during the height of prohibition, so the illegal drinking/party scene is prevelant in both novels.  Also, both novels use infedelity as a central crux from which the other constituent events spin off.  While offering similar  and often complimentary views of the same time period, the novels differ in that The Great Gatsby, and for that matter every other novel we have read thus far, has been written as a contemporary novel.  Toni Morrison’s Jazz wasn’t published until 1992, making Morrison a full generation removed from her subject matter.  It will be interesting as we continue to read whether Morrison will be able to reign in her insight (product in the form of a novel) after an entire generation of speculation has passed.  I am skeptical whether someone trying to write a novel about a time period, several years after the fact could be neer as insightful as one written in that time.

Thesis and support

Thesis:

The short story I have chosen to complete my literary analysis on is “The

Swimmer” by John Cheever.  Cheever tells us the story of our protagonist Neddy Merrill, a young and wealthy suburban American who has decided to spend his Sunday afternoon swimming the Lucinda river.  Cheever creatively uses time as a multifunctional tool to demonstrate not only an afternoon, but a lifetime, and takes advantage of times elasticity in the narrative to explore some of suburban America’s folly.  The reader is left with a lack of closure upon completion of Ned’s afternoon with his affairs scattered years apart as a result of his indulgence.

Support:

I have been able to find and use crystal clear evidence from the story to confirm that Cheever is relating time to us in a variety of ways simultaneously.

Because time is traveling at different speeds in the story, we are left with a variety of questions that are left unanswered, constituting a lack of closure and satisfying my Abbott requirement.

Slaughter House 5

I would like to discuss how Slaughter House 5 was written in such a subtle way, given that the Dresden bombing was one of the most horrific massacre’s in European history.  The book is written about a gruesome event, but is managed in such a way as not to evoke any emotion from the reader.  This is not written as a eulogy or even a documentation of events, put rather relies on the characters to develop the reality of WWII and the Dresden bombings.  Vonnegut didn’t even take the liberty of having Billy Pilgrim, while with the Tralfamadorian’s and Montana Wildhack, describe Dresden as he himself witnessed the experience.  Instead Billy Pilgrim makes a metaphor with the moon, and how Dresden appeared to have moon craters.  And after his long tail of war and hardship and death, the only thing to say is poo-tee-weet??

I actually had an idea about what the Tralfamadorian’s were supposed to be, and how they fit into the greater story.   Vonnegut had to have a reason why he wrote Slaughter House 5, and as you read it, its kind of hard to pick out.   I think the Tralfamadorian’s represent Vonnegut’s own theories about life, war, and how he deals with each.