Andy's recent posts

Recent public posts (showing 241-260 of 281).

I think you got it right, Joy. I like book groups, too.

Nice one, Newengland.

I think the fact that he doesn't sleep adds to his symbolic association with a deity or adds to the sense that he is becoming more one with the world. Since the rocks don't need to sleep, he doesn't need to either.

And the author calls it "phrenetic insomnia," that makes it sound like he worked himself up into a state of frenzy which then made sleep impossible.

"Till stars grew out of the air" is really a beautiful line. It reminds me of having a sudden realization.

I like the value aspect. I think it is important to examine why we value the things we do. There's a good deal of contradiction between people and within individuals when trying to come up with answers to the question of "what is valuable?"

I just read the analysis on the site Barbara posted. His next book was called "The Gift of Stones" as an homage to this story. But what about the double entendre? Gives new meaning to the Agent as Creator metaphor?

What good is her heart to him now that he's dead? That's what I'd like to know.

While reading this story I was reminded of "The Man Who Lived Underground" by Richard Wright. In that story, the man, who has gone batnutz, spreads a bag's worth of diamonds over the floor of his little cave and walks over them like they are so many pieces of gravel.

With all this credit crunch business happening, I've been looking at articles about the socially constructed aspect of currency valuation. One columnist over at The Guardian claimed that since credit itself is not a naturally limited commodity (credit is not the same as ore), the supply of credit is only limited by people deciding as a group (ie bankers) that it should be limited.

There does seem to be a correlation to this story. If money, or in this case precious parts of earth, is valuable, the value comes from an agreement among people.

The character in the Prospect story has managed to take himself out of the loop. He's no longer in agreement. He's shifted the value of the stones away from the value created in the marketplace (among humans); he's now prioritizing the value that is created within himself when like things are placed with like things. Green with green, shadow with shadow, snow with snow, etc. He's like a guy who can no longer get to work to earn a living because he's too busy at home organizing his silverware drawer.

I don't know if Crace meant it to seem as pathological as all that. The character has certainly achieved a kind of freedom. I think there is some kind of comment on freedom or individualism here. Freedom is a powerful if under-explored concept, American presidents like it to explain and justify country to country relationships, and heaven help you if you should question freedom, it would be downright Un-American. And transcendent individualism--breaking free of the control of mass thinking--is a notion that is often trumpeted as particularly American (Walden Pond and all that?). Is the character's freedom a "good" thing? I think Steve touched on that same question above. One could see America as being strident and uncooperative and freedom-seeking like the man, but mixed with the pillaging nature of the miners?

There is also some element of the character taking on a creator role. He creates a family for himself. He organizes and restores the earth in his own fashion. Even seeing a world in a pebble has the ring of some sort of eastern theology. If one were to read the story from an eastern perspective, maybe the man's freedom is neither good nor bad, it just is?

In one way the character can be seen to have devolved to a less cooperative time or place. In another way he can be seen to have transcended the need to be a part of the soup. I don't think all cultures would view leaving the soup as a transcendence, but I suppose there is a natural contradiction in plenty of people at plenty of epochs of history between serving the community and serving one's own needs.

Well I have no unifying point to all of this, just rambling.

I like to read novels because I like to have my emotions manipulated. People who vote republican like to have their emotions manipulated, too. This is something we novel-loving democrats have in common with people who are planning to vote republican. I think now would be a good time to start looking for more things we have in common with our McCain-leaning brothers and sisters. That is how we will win their votes for Mr. Obama, IMHO.

The following article in Tikkun, the magazine of the Network for Spiritual Progressives, is basically a watered down version of Mr. Haidt's article. Only the first six paragraphs are necessary. I became interested in this group after the last dismal election when it became even more apparent that the democrats are capable of acting like idiots, too (Dear Democratic Leadership, Might I suggest we don't just concede the anti-intellectual vote? Right or wrong, it's the majority of America, and, as demonstrated in the last two elections, we need just a few more of those votes in order to win. You won't LOSE voters by pandering to Joe Church at this point. No intellectual liberals are going to decide to vote for McCain at this point. Can we just get the collective chip off our shoulder and recognize Mr. and Mrs. Sixpack as human beings instead of thinking about them as intellectual inferiors? Can we muster up some rhetoric designed to make them feel safe? That's what they want. Can we just give it to them already?)

http://files.tikkun.org/current/article....

By the way, I like this group in theory, but don't care for much of their execution. I think it's a good idea to organize leftist spiritualists and emotionalists, but this group manages to rub me the wrong way for as yet undefined reasons. Their articles are somewhat sloppy, for starters. Fair warning.

That's a good point, Marian. I suppose I've memorized about one and a half poems, unless prayers and boy scout oaths and parts in plays count?

I know I'd run into the same thing I run into when I think about re-reading a favorite novel: there are so many novels and poems out there that I want to read it's hard to spend a lot of time on just one.

How does everybody else feel about memorizing poems?

Thanks for the welcome. I'll see you later.

It is a beautiful poem, even if most of the characters are hanging out in a smelly old sour room.

Kooser's a great one for similes and extended metaphors, and this one is no exception. Almost everything in this poem represents something else, and Kooser comes right out and says it, which is a notable technique. It's like he's tired of making his students guess at symbolism in literature so he's made a career of helping people out.

Though I did have to work to get a couple of the metaphors:

"crossing the hour like a moon" took me a minute to process, but it is a nice image, worth the extra minute I spent trying to imagine it.

I wonder if everybody else absorbed all the comparisons right away or if any of the others required a second reading?

I think those are good points about the characters' eccentricities, they do make us want to find out what happens to them.

It's nice that the action is spread out for all the characters; sometimes protagonists in short stories are too passive, the father in this story is certainly not that.

You're right, Sherry. I hadn't noticed that about the father. I wonder what the implications are? Something to do with the charlatan necromancer who stole from his mother?

I think the ending is really nice. I think it's hard to write a happy ending. The business of seeing traces of older people in younger people is appealing to me. My great-grandmother, when she was very, very old, used to think that my dad was my grandfather. My grandfather died before I was born, so I suppose the only way I have of knowing him is through trying to find traces of him in my dad and uncles, etc. I look like the whole lot of them, myself, but it's been interesting to me that I discovered in the last couple years that while I 'look' more like my paternal relatives, I 'act' more like my maternal side, which leads me to wishing I knew more about my maternal grandfather and ancestors, etc.

Anyway, that's more info than is probably necessary to answer the question.

Actually, even though the part about Ace's books was kind of shoe horned into the story, I think the information about Richard's interest in necromancy really makes the ending work for me. I think endings can sometimes be like a tightening snare, the reader is like a little bunny nosing around the bait in the forest and then, at the very end, SNAP! the snare closes and tightens. (Or perhaps a noose, if the story is a tragedy!)

Plus I like Irving-style family sagas. Plus I dislike the notion that short stories are supposed to take place in a day. Plus I got the story for free (if I had been a paying customer, I might be a bit more displeased about some of the story's issues...)

I heard on a radio program quite a while ago an author saying that all story premises essentially boil down to one ultimate premise: things aren't what they seem. I can't remember what program it was or who the author was or who they were quoting, but I've found that idea helpful in my own writing and I think this Cigarette-Trick story is a nice exercise in that principle. One way to put a satisfying ending on a story is to trick the audience into believing one thing and then to reveal the truth in the end, it's a ready made ending. And it can be an easier model to work with than the conflict-rising action-climax-conclusion model, I think.

Hello all,

I joined this group for the discussion of American Pastoral. I had just about given up on finishing it until I saw there would be a discussion in November, so I decided to soldier on. Hopefully I won't forget everything by then.

I met Barbara in the short story discussion area and I've been lured into the poetry section also.

Due to the lousy economy, I have a lot of time on my hands lately.

It seems like a well run group. (I'm amazed the heads-up for the American Pastoral discussion in November was posted way back in April!)

Thanks for the welcome, Barbara.

I agree a couple of Gilbert's plot devices are a bit labored. The Angela character was certainly given short shrift. I would guess at some point in the creation of the story Angela had a larger role OR she was added at the last second.

I bet in earlier drafts Richard and Ace were brothers, not brothers-in-law, and Ace was the protagonist, which would make explanations of Angela's life and death unnecessary.

And what about the beginning of the second half of the story, right after Hoffman kills the thief and poor Manuel? The second half of the story starts:

"Esther Hoffman did not grow up to be a natural magician. Her hands were dull. It was no fault of her own, just an unfortunate birth flaw. Otherwise, she was a bright girl.
Her uncle, Ace Douglas, had been the American National Champion Close-Up Magician for three years running."

To me it sounds like the start of a different story. Like, hello? We already know these characters?

I would guess that Gilbert realized the ending is more powerful if Richard is the protagonist from the start, so she had to go back and fix things and stick in a little about Angela, because if your main character has a dead wife, the audience wants to know a little about her.

While we're picking, I was also jarred by the seventh "chapter", the one about Ace's antique magic books. It certainly refreshes the bring-back-my-dead-people theme and makes the ending work, but it's very disruptive to the narrative. Except for the two beginnings, every other section of the story is straight, chronological narrative. And then this weird part describing a room in Ace's house?

Another hang up: Richard's critique of Esther's magic sounds like it is coming from a fellow magician, not a businessman. As a businessman, wouldn't Richard appreciate the fact that Esther is pandering to the audience? Instead, it seems that Ace is the more astute businessman. Which leads me to believe that at one point in the story process, Richard was also a magician. Which leads me to believe that the story about the family of magicians that Barbara referred to in the first post is Gilbert's attempt to fix the hell out of this story.

Plus I counted three typos.

I still like the story, though.

I'm inclined to read a writer-as-magician metaphor into the story. Misdirection is as useful in story telling as it is in magic.

Hoffman thought Ace, a master of misdirection, would be the magician to bring back his mother; I'm guessing the author hoped the audience would think so, too, her own little brand of misdirection. But it turns out Esther--supposedly the inferior magician--was able to deliver the goods in the end. Ta da!

After reading Gilbert's bio and her thoughts on writing, I'd be willing to bet that the author has received some less than enthusiastic feedback throughout her career from different quarters. Perhaps this story grew as an explanation or defense of her self-taught style. Esther, the author, and, you know, everybody, has their own style; sometimes the universe conspires to let the ugly style turn into the beautiful, redeeming swan style in the end. Oh sweet redemption. All her hard work payed off. So, ultimately, a message of hope?

I'm drawn to the repeated phrase; I believe the device is called anaphora. It makes me think of how, as time passes, people get themselves into the same old scrapes and conflicts over and over again. I think one could, if one wanted to, interpret each use of the phrase as a reference to a particular moment where his bluebird almost got out.

It's funny, too, that the bird is blue and is apparently sad at the end. If the bird is sad, one would think that the speaker is sad, too, but he does not want to admit that to the audience. It seems he's willing to show us his bluebird, but he's still hesitant to show us the whole piece. It begs the question: Why use a metaphor here at all? I'm not sure if Bukowski is a frequent user of metaphor, I suspect not, my recollection is that he tends to be pretty direct. If that is so, what is it about this topic that makes him so squeamish and shy? (I mean really, Bukowski, you're a poet for Christ's sake, we know you're sensitive. Sheesh.)

Geez, that was some blog post.

I remember The Sparrow had some interesting descriptions of alien music or singing. It made me consider human singing in a different way, as in, why do we do it? What would an outside civilization think of the music we make? I liked that the book led me there.

I'm interested in problematizing the following idea: rationality is true; spirituality is false. I don't generally talk about religion or politics in polite company, so I thought I would express my ideas here. I apologize if it seems like I'm trying to convert you. Maybe persuade would be a more acceptable word?

(It would be a funny exercise for me to try to convert somebody to my personal brand of spirituality--it's a bit esoteric for all that.)

(I think I did use the word "convert" in the third post or so. That was an attempt to humorously bait people into the argument. Has it backfired?)

(If I were a car salesman, I'd be a terrible closer. I'd much rather poke the prospective buyer in the ribs while they look at all that little writing on the sticker, and then run away squealing with delight.)

(Also, Lindsay, my admittedly convoluted argument is not about atheism. One person in this forum did suggest that atheism is a religion; it wasn't me. I haven't actually mentioned atheism in any of my posts until just now. My arguments are more about language, reason, science, academia, and spirituality. I know atheism is related to these topics, but it has never been a focus in my posts.)