week 5/ Lolita

Lolita is such a controversial book I wanted to wait until I had finished it in it's entirety before I commented on it. On the one hand the elegant prose style elevates this tale to such a level that it's hard to objectively look at the subject material. On the other, if one focuses solely on the subject, then one demeans and abolishes the novel. For this post I want to focus on Nabokov's writing style and how that influences the story itself.

By writing the history of a convict from the pedophile's point of view, the audience has already assumed a positive attitude towards the narrator. Why is that? Because the convict is going to naturally try and spin the story, and himself, in an, at least, moderately positive light. They will do this automatically as a method of self preservation, no matter how much guilt they may feel or express.

As the Pedophile presents his story he will justify his actions by those of the other characters. In "Lolita", Humbert doesn't even try to hide this automated psychological defense. Humbert Humbert uses his gift of elegant prose to romanticize an otherwise socially monstrous act. His flowery language distracts the reader from the actual words and allows them to be persuaded by the heady universe of love that Humbert professes himself to live in.

In this universe it is Lolita that is the seductress and Humbert the innocent bystander for the most part of the novel. Although he expresses feelings of guilt and uneasiness, it's only at the very end that Humbert admits that his actions were monstrous. At this point of admission the audience has already fallen for his story. At this point the "jury" that he speaks to are perhaps willing to forgive his transgressions in light of his new found guilt.

Humbert speaks of his eternal suffering that evolves from the knowledge that he has stolen Lolita's innocence and childhood. This suffering is meant to sway the jury of his imminent and ongoing sentence. The fact that it is done by himself to himself could perhaps persuade the jury that no further action need be taken.

All of these persuasive tactics are used in Humbert's recounting of the tale and all are meant to impress upon the jury the point that he has and continues to suffer for his crimes. There are moments where he seems sincere--the moments where he idolizes Lolita--though his continued duplicity towards the other characters should send warning signals to the reader. Here, Nabokov has presented a wonderful dilemma of prose and content that only the reader can truly work out for themselves.

week 4/ Sylvia Plath

There seems to be several similar concepts between this week and Sylvia Plath and last week with Jack Kerouac and the beat poets. The first thing that I noticed was that the power and raw emotion of the literary works are paralleled. Both Plath and the beat poets use their poetry as a type of catharsis, for themselves and for their audiences. By using such strong language Plath and the beat poets claim their reader's instant attention and suck them in to a whole new world. This world, though it may seem wicked and lost at the start, is actually an account of the deepest feelings of mankind. The writing styles are vastly different--Plath slaved over her writting and lived for the acceptance of the literary world while the beat poets rejected such dependance on social rules--and yet the message is still the same raw, human emotion that we all carry.

The second thing that I noticed was that both beat poets and the world of Sylvia Plath use their personal lives as inspiration for their work. It seems as though the harder their lives got, the better their poetry turned out. Why is that, I wonder? The beat poets were living in a post cold war era, where the terror of the past era needed to be dealt with and life had to be reevaluated. These poets found that they needed to live life to the fullest and explore all avenues that were available to them.

Sylvia Plath, on the other hand, grew up in a fairly stable school environment, was consistent in her "by the rules" poetry, married and had children. All of which were seen as normal and acceptable things for women to do at the time. The question then should be, what makes her seemingly mundane history allow for the ingenious poetry that rivaled and complemented that of the beat style? The beat pots lived life day-to-day for the thrill of living alone. Shouldn't this, theoretically, produce the most cathartic poetry?

Was it because she suffered from depression? Or was it her mundane life and almost maniacal need to publish her works that created the depression? Either way we tend to fall back on mental instability to explain away her genius. Or should we take a more romantic view on the purpose of artists and say that it is the poet who is more susceptible to human emotions than the rest of us.

I would like to think so. In my opinion it's the artist's, and especially the poets who are capable of touching the deepest of human emotions and living through the experience to explain them all to us. Yes, we all feel these truths, but perhaps it takes a more specialized being to write them down for us to see plainly. It's the poets who allow us to recognize these topics in a controlled manner.

Without art, I believe that humankind would have no release. We would build in and upon one another with out actually reaching out to touch our neighbors. Perhaps Sylvia Plath, and indeed many other authors and poets, have had trouble achieving this most simple means of human happiness, but they have allowed us to find it. Through them we become more.

week 3/ On the Road

There are two major points I would like to address in this blog; the first being Kerouac's writing style and the second being that of the content of the book itself.

Starting with Kerouac's writing style. It's unorthodox to say the least; he was shunned by the literary community as a whole and yet he still managed to sell millions of copies of "On the Road". The question I had was, why? His book is, on the surface, nothing special. It outlines life as Kerouac lived it, along with his friends and their chance encounters.

Perhaps it's the way he writes "On the Road"; in a straightforward and unassuming way. Kerouac writes in an almost stream-of-conscious manner, complete with run on sentences and bad grammar. Why then, did the people of not only that generation, but also of this one like the story so much. I believe that at the time this stream-of-conscious style of writing (a style that was so shunned by the scholastic and literary community that Kerouac and Ginsberg never received recognition from them) was what spoke to the general public. Kerouac uses everyday speech--even slang--to convey his story in one of the most compelling first person narratives that I have ever read.

Only a select few go to prestigious literary schools. The rest of the population were simply working class men and women who were just trying to get along in a post cold war life. This is something that Kerouac--and indeed the entire beat movement--reveled in. "On the Road" isn't simply a book about a guy who went traveling, it was about the life choices/styles of the up and coming generation. It was a guidebook on how to live your life, and still can be.

This major philosophy of really exploring and living ones life to the fullest is true for not only the post cold war era, but also this one, and all those to come in the future. There is so much potential in human beings and the only way to discover that potential, that talent, is to really explore oneself and those around you. What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be alive? Does one need to follow the rules of society to the tee, or are there some expectations that we should throw off and recreate ourselves into the new generation and new social code of today?

Perhaps it's just my youth speaking, but I believe that you can only excel in life if you can trust yourself. Most of the general public don't know how to do that, and that's what gets us stuck into a pattern of followers. Yes, tradition is necessary and good; history MUST be acknowledged and studied, if only to be informed about what could happen in the future. BUT, I believe that tradition for traditions sake is repetitive and destructive. It creates an entire generation of people who are unable to think and live for themselves.

In "On the Road" Kerouac teaches us how to discover, or rediscover, oneself. He lives life to the fullest by breaking it down to the bare minimums and then really feeling those moments. It's in the moment of fear before an accomplishment that we learn the most about ourselves.

week 2/ On the Road

The thing I find the most facinating about reading "On the Road", is not that his writting style is unique for the time period--which it is; Kerouac broke boundaries by writting in stream of concious, but I'll write about that later--it's that we read Allen Ginsberg's poetry and Corso's poetry and now we're reading a novel about their lives. It's really neat to get the inside scoop on what their lives were like. It gives a more personal look to the writting styles and almost violent catharsis of the beat poetry. This background check-up on the authors puts in place the day to day life that they lead. I can really understand now the why behind their "live for today" theory; in fact "On the Road" demonstrates that theory very well. I would never have or could possibly ever do the things that they did. It seems that society has become so much more dangerous. I'm really enjoying this book and I look foward to the ending!