the jiri chronicles, part 2
ok, so these are the questions at issue i WOULD have raised today:
(by the way, look to the right–there is a new “page” about postmodernism)
(by the other way, here’s the link to debra’s interview again, too: http://avantwomenwriters.blogspot.com/2008/03/interview-with-debra-diblasi.html)
1. debra claims that she structured the book around “systems theory.” Systems theory is an interdisciplinary field of science and the study of the nature of complex systems in nature, society, and science. More specificially, it is a framework by which one can analyze and/or describe any group of objects that work in concert to produce some result. This could be a single organism, any organization or society, or any electro-mechanical or informational artifact. Systems theory as a technical and general academic area of study predominantly refers to the science of systems that resulted from Bertalanffy’s General System Theory (GST), among others, in initiating what became a project of systems research and practice. It was Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson who developed interdisciplinary perspectives in systems theory (such as positive and negative feedback in the social sciences).
do you think her book reflects a “systems theory” approach to narrative/storytelling? how?
2. several of you experienced the “alienated reader” effect. you know, when a book puts you as a reader in an uncomfortable, sometimes even antagonistic position while you are reading. when i first read this book i actually felt assaulted. so my question is, is there any value or point to that? or, as jeff suggested, is she just showing off or self absorbed in narrative hijinx? are there any gains to be made by placing the reader there, as opposed to, say, placing the reader in the oprah sofa comfort zone? because barb is right, this book aint gonna make it on oprah…
3. debra calls this kind of writing “multimodal.” what do you think that means? what do you think about the effects or possibilities of “multimodal” writing? according to debra, writing must evolve in relation to our current technologies and cultural productions…
4. debra says in several different interviews, including the one i sent you the website for, that underneath the story of this weird jiri character are important issues of race, class, gender, death, and the human condition. tony’s list seems to track at least some of that. does the book raise those issues? how? does it make you think more deeply about them, or turn you off (like jeff who went to sleep but did at one point make a ‘happy sound.’–cracked me up)?
5. some people have said that men have an easier time getting away with raw, disturbing writing than women writers. that writers like william burroughs, or alain robbe grillet, or chuck palahniuk are treated like famous authors when they write raw, sexually explicit, violent prose. whereas when women do it, it’s downright distasteful. ew. do you agree? why or why not? is there any merit in women writers driving their prose into darker territories of storytelling?
love lidia
April 20, 2008 at 5:20 am
1. In her blog, I interpret Debra to say that she uses herself as the primary catalyst (related to Systems theory) to trigger others to examine the interrelated cultural and personal issues of “racism, vengeance, sexism, societal fear of death & dying, terrorist paranoia, religion, suburban sprawl (greed) in relation to trashing the environment.” Rather like a rock you drop in water from which a series of waves expand outward. By shocking the reader, she triggers them to think about these issues instead of ignoring them, as we usually do. Also to help us gain perspective and accept our own dark side to lessen intolerance. She makes her book a “significant emotional event” so readers examine perceptions, reality and break out of their apathy. They will think, instead of being lulled by the usual mundane, soothing literature we all know and love.
April 20, 2008 at 9:23 pm
5. I think it’s great that Debra has the audacity to venture into the realm of ugly, scary and down right repulsive writing in order to shock the reader into actually thinking about the important issues within our culture.
I believe that women, such as Debra and yes, Hiliary Clinton, who venture into “male territory” are making gains against the existing patriarchal society, in which we’ve all been conditioned on what to expect and accept. If you don’t agree and think you have no bias regarding male vs female roles, see “Tough Guise” and “Killing Us Softly 3″ by Sut Jhally, Jackson Katz and Jean Kilbourne. I really love Sut Jhally because he helps me realize how I’ve been unknowingly conditioned by the powers that control the media.
P.S. I was reminded the other day of what an amazing political environment we are currently experiencing. Discussion in another UWB class pointed out that while all previous American presidents have been white males, today, the next President could be a person of color or a woman. Not only that, if John McCain is elected at age 71, he will be the the oldest person ever inaugurated as an American President. So in the 2008 Presidential campaign, we have three current, pertinent issues: racism, feminism and ageism. Wow!
April 20, 2008 at 9:51 pm
3. I think I understand what Debra means by multimodal, instead of just telling a story straight out, she includes different creative forms, different fonts, pictures, doodles, random sentences, etc. aka different modes of communication to tell a story.
I have never read a book presented in this way before, and mostly I loved it. I tend to read very fast, and take in very little. The multimodal style forced me to slow down and really understand the meaning. I love word play and a lot of the multimodal stuff was based around words, getting the full value of a word, it’s like she wanted to make sure that the reader knew the words that were chosen were important and not just thrown in for the heck of it.
The added pictures/drawings/etc were fascinating, too, because it helped emphasize what was happening in the story at that moment. You could read the story and ignore the art, but the art really helped to understand the atmosphere.
The only negative I can see with multimodal, and maybe it would have been different with a different author or if it was used slightly differently, is that there were times when I was confused about what was going on. It was almost too scattered at times and I couldn’t find the focus of what was actually being communicated.
April 20, 2008 at 10:16 pm
The Oprah Comfort Zone… sometimes it is good to read a book in the Oprah Comfort Zone, a nice, comfortable, relaxing book. Reading these books are very similar to watching a mainstream movie, just sit back, relax, and turn your mind off.
The “alienated reader” effect does something quite the opposite. It’s not relaxing, it’s not comfortable, it’s very much in your face and – if you continue to read it – makes you respond with a critical mind to what is being presented.
The fact that the reader might feel uncomfortable or maybe even assaulted… I think that is actually pretty great, again assuming the reader continues to read the book. That means the author found a button to push. If the majority of readers stopped reading at that point then I would think that Debra was alienating the reader for no purpose. But it seems that many continued the book, which means she pushed their buttons and did it in a way that they wanted to continue the relationship between author and reader. This is where critical thinking skills started to work, the reader is now (maybe grudgingly) open to thinking about things from a different, uncomfortable perspective. It’s easy to read a book and completely turn off your brain, it’s another thing to read a book and keep your mind open.
April 20, 2008 at 10:34 pm
With something as complex as this book was, I feel relieved from the burden of having to understand every single little thing in it. There isn’t that one overriding theme that you may get with a literary classic you read in high school. — And that is more realistic, that life and issues are so complex, there is no one conclusion that can be drawn from it – “that indubitably gray area that is the real world in which real people live” (Di Blasi interview). I think you’re allowed in these situations to have more individualized experiences with the book, based on your own reference points.
In the interview, Di Blasi talks about references and “external catalysts”. If you shared every single reference and knew what all the “external catalysts” were you’d understand the story better, but it’s not likely to happen. So you have some, and she mentioned you can “build interconnections between all references.”
I’ve become aware with things like these (in any form of expression) that you have an easier time if you suspend judgment (as much as possible), and suspend the perceived need to “get it”. I think it’s okay if you don’t “get it”. Get what you can get out of it. Your own perceptions are valid. Maybe if you came back to it later you’d have more references and could get it more. (I generally don’t care whether I like something or not, more whether it was interesting or not. )
Maybe because I’ve come across some “strange” things like this book in other classes, that I almost come to expect it from modern art and literature. I’ve come to expect lots and lots of sexual content, “experimental” forms, the avant-garde, graphic violence, and general “weirdness”. These may not be my favorite things, but I don’t dislike them for those elements.
A class I had last quarter was about modern feminist art and the same things are found throughout there. Those women artists are also not held at the same level as their male counterparts, there’s a huge gender gap in terms of who’s considered at the top of the game. I think women are going to these extremes in response to the oppression of female voices in all art forms, in most places, throughout most of time. I think there’s some anger behind all that. Men definitely get away with it more in my opinion because it seems out of character when women do it, but that’s a myth.
April 21, 2008 at 12:39 am
I thought a little bit more about why I didn’t like this book. It was partly because of the writing style but mostly because of the subjects. I really don’t enjoy reading material about religion or cultures in such a crude way. Jiri’s character didn’t really bother me all that much for some reason. I felt as though he was completely appalling, yet I could picture exactly what he would be like. The characters that bothered me were the terrorist that she slept with and how that went down, and her point of view of herself. The terrorist really made me step back and say whoa! How he was so demanding of her, just wanted her for sex, and would never let her fully enjoy it and only wanted it for himself. That was a strong way to portray the Muslim culture and how they value women, and then every post card she received there was just recently a bombing there. Completely freaky that she had a terrorist in her bed and she didn’t know it.
I suppose it has never crossed my mind to think that it’s distasteful for women to write disturbing things and men can. Maybe that’s just the generation that I’m in.
I felt that the font changes and the excerpts were a bit distracting as well. The only ones that I liked were the poster board ones. Those were funny and I liked the sarcasm in most of them. Those to me were creative and clever.
April 21, 2008 at 5:12 am
1,4. I think these two subjects are very related in comparable ways to how DiBlasi chose to construct (narrate) TJC. The way she, um, invokes system theory, and the way she presents Jiri’s “identity” are inherently connected because each would be nonexistent without the other. Can a multi-modal tale be told without Systems Theory? Yes, why not, but would it necessarily have happened had DiBlasi not been exposed to the conceptual method of seeing different aspects of the world? Yes, in a infinite universe, but do we live in an infinite universe? Yes, but does not that mean all my comments have been meaningless? Yes, but I doubt anyone will read this far into my blathering; even if someone does s/he may choose to glean what meaning s/he wants. Example: TJC looks at virtually all text-able forms of media for ways to present how DiBlasi sees (extrapolates) her realm. She infers data in hundreds of systems, delineates it accordingly. I wonder why this hasn’t been done mainstreamidly. (No, I don’t ACTUALLY “wonder”–but sarcasm and/or rhetoric are notoriously difficult to convey sans handy-dandy adds about your life and why you despise a bunch of crap in the middle of your book. (This is one thing someone can make money by–selling advertising space in books; they do it in magazines, why not text-books?)) Inasmuch as DiBlasi presents life-systems in multi-modes, she “takes up issue” with several, um, fads that are tainting humanity: sex, race, class, blah, blah, blah; maybe it’s ’cause of my degree subtype (Cult Liter Arts) and maybe I’m in the minority (by being actually fully in the majority) but I just feel underwhelmed whenever these inequality issues are brought up. Not only have I heard it before, DiBlasi herself seems unenthused about explicating the subject. TGC deals with prejudice or mutual humans’ detachment more consciously than “race, class, gender, death, and the human condition” though these issues probably pop up in every story ever told. Not only are they ubiquitously prolific, they are so deep and universal they have been pondered (etc.) since time and still elude complete understanding. I think, at least superficially, DiBlasi is recklessly ambitious if she is really trying to resolve them all in one little couple-hundred page bio-add. Fortunately for my impression of her, she was not trying to do anything but the inverse of this; I think by only beginning to hint at actual “philosophy” concerning her work’s themes (apart, admittedly, from death), she makes a seducingtastic and enormously entertaining case-study of how silly we all (meaning “US”) have been in persistently trying to gift wrap and bow-tie things like “race, class, gender, death, and the human condition” into solvable entities.
A(nother) note: I love equality–I find it the best thing since equally-sliced bread (what?). I like to imagine I–barring thugs–give most folk I meet a semi-equally fair shake of it regardless their “race, class, gender, death, human condition” (um, except if they’re dead–I’d treat THEM different). In fact, I treat everyone MORE equal than everyone else. If you don’t believe me, I will treat you the most equal of all! I [spoiler] am an exception to the norm–I have never really been harshly discriminated at–so I likely have reduced impressions of the magnitude other people (classmates?) feel on this. If anyone agrees or disagrees (agrees!) let me know how alone I am.
For example, it never occurred to me that A WOMAN *gasp* was the one so deviously writing such scandalous profanity until someone mentioned it on this forum–barring some of the conversations she supposedly weld with some other females! OMG I have never realized the things women discuss!
I am going to be wary, when next I see a woman, awry; she might attack!
To briefly answer what 4 was “asking”, I was neither toggled “on” nor “off” by Debra nor Jiri nor the themes expressed n/or implied by either. Point in fact, I was more intrigued by, consequently more focused on the issues of mainstream mass-market/media culture and in this regard (arrggh! I was trying so hard) I see a subject/s similarity to 10:01. TJC chose a medium incongruous to literature, yet filled itself with extra-medium forms in every available space (I really just wanted to use the term “extra-medium” *-*).
April 21, 2008 at 3:31 pm
2. I definitely felt alienated as a reader. As I said in my first post, I just felt dirty every time I read the book…it made my skin crawl. I think there’s obviously a point to it, otherwise why do it? I just don’t know what the point is…I had to agree with Jeff…the way it was written and formatted did make it distracting and to me felt like the writer was trying to hide something behind all the flashy effects. Oh, speaking of that…(good transition to the next question)
3. Debra writes “multimodally” (see, I can be creative…I just made up an adverb!) by going beyond the use of just words in her writing. The story isn’t told using only words, but is also told through pictures, drawings, even things like font and size of text. I believe that every different mode she uses to tell the story (whatever the story might be, because I still haven’t figured it out) was intentionally employed. While this “multimodality” (making up words again) may be creative, it can also be distracting.
5. Well, stereotypically, men are expected to be dirty-minded and crude, whereas women are seen as being “the gentler sex”. However, we all know that this is not always the case. I personally have grown up (and enjoyed) reading the classical, romantic English female authors (you know the ones, Austen, Bronte, etc.) It is mightily disconcerting to have a female writer use the English (and Czech, and others) languages in such a way. So, I think it may be harder for women to get away with this kind of writing, but at the same time, they should be able to.
Now, this still doesn’t mean I like the book, mind you. I still have nightmares that haunt my slumber. But, for all I know, she might have done that on purpose.
April 21, 2008 at 6:46 pm
five!:
chuck palahniuk starts off stranger than fiction, his book of short stories, with the Testicle Festival in Missoula, Montana where people come together to perform public sex acts on stage. i can tell you that many devoted palahniuk fans had a very hard time getting over that particular story and moving on to the others. in fact, that entire book dealt with a lot of uncomfortable, in-your-face issues and many people disliked the book for it. even though palahniuk is known for kind of being out there – he’s a male who received a strong negative reaction for touching on those subjects.
i think it is a bit harder for women to do it in their writing without it being downright rejected. but i don’t think that’s why i disliked her book. it was the style that i couldn’t get past, the topics don’t bother me at all. the extra stuff that i had to wade through in her work distracted me completely from that darker, “raw” writing that i really prefer to see.
April 21, 2008 at 8:36 pm
yeah, but chuck palhaniuk is a millionaire, whereas there are NO women writers who venture into dark writing territories who are…except in fantasy…
April 21, 2008 at 9:32 pm
I think when pushed to leave your comfort zone you get a gateway to personal growth, and whether we get there via bungee-jumping or an alternative book, the “uncomfort zone” is still teeming with potential. That’s where you find yourself, right? Prodding unorthodox questions, seeing the other side of the story, and revealing to yourself thoughts and reactions you’d never known before. Again, like in 10:01, “you never know”. In that case, it was “what people are thinking”, but here I feel it relates to “you never know what you’re capable of until you’re in the specific situation which calls for you to think about it”. (that could have been more eloquently put, sorry, haha.) That usually applies to the unknown “fight or flight” situations (in which you don’t know if your adrenaline will let you lift a car from crushing your baby, or make you shit your pants in a bank robbery) but here it’s like a taste of intellectual adrenaline, kind of. So I’d hope that authors aren’t just flexing their literary muscles while confusing the crap out of us to show off, but rather to push us, like our personal trainers/Everest climbing guides.
On the subject of sex: I guess I haven’t quite read enough from male authors that same kind of candidness about sex that Diblasi used, but I’d suppose that it might be more common? I felt she did a great job of writing from the male perspective on sex (not that I’m any authority, it just sounded genuine), but really my first reaction was that she wrote about it differently than men do. I once read an article about how the most meaningful writing about sex isn’t at all arousing, but evocative. Even if it’s just a carnal desire to uh, satisfy, she wrote about sex more in depth than I’d seen before.
Not that any guys should share too much information, but was there any validness in how she portrayed the male view of sex, or is she misleading me?
April 21, 2008 at 9:43 pm
chuck is a millionaire because he is an amazing writer (and because his books translate well into movies, which happen to sell well). the fact that he’s a male is secondary, at least to me.
i am fully aware of the fact that women and their work is unappreciated. i took a class on feminist art with amy last quarter and we were able to see just how much women and their work is under appreciated just because it is made by women. but with this particular book in mind… that isn’t the objection i have. i think i’d dislike it quite a bit more if it was written by a man.
also. one final note.
there are women writers like alice sebold who write really explicitly about horrific things like a child being raped, murdered and chopped up into pieces. left to die in a ditch. and she’s pretty well known. in fact, she’s pretty well liked.
April 21, 2008 at 10:06 pm
2. HA! The more discomfort the better, as far as I am concerned; whether or not I ENJOY the discomfort is irrelevant– because we’re talking about art, not entertainment. The kind of schmaltz you’ll see on the best seller list (or/because of Oprah) is highly commercialized media designed with the agenda of appealing to as many people as possible so as to maximize the investment on the part of the publisher. The result is a very repetitious series of novels which the majority of us read “for the plot”. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, since I do enjoy traditional novels and think they’re just as artful (and relevant) as the modernist’s avant garde, but there is a lot so say for someone who breaks the mold.
The simple fact that there is so much dissention over the quality of this book is proof enough! The author may of had a “story” to tell, but I think her ultimate goal was to piss off/delight as many of us as possible. This is the kind of stuff that sets trends and standards in the future; after all, the only thing that’s permanent is change, and nothing ever changes without someone being angry about something.
3. This whole “multimodal” thing is interesting, but when she says that “writing must evolve in relation to our current technologies and cultural productions” a get a really nasty whiff of pretentious hot-air.
Obviously it doesn’t, since period/fantasy settings are exceptionally prevalent in all forms of mass-culture media. Zany commercials included into one’s writing may be defined as a “cultural production”, but is not nearly so relevant to our societies current state as, say, the public school system. How much of our “culture” is a “product” of the crap we had to go through during adolescence, and how more relevant is it to our collective ideals than our current technology? Of course, utilizing the changing landscape of our society is important for works set in the present, since it obviously allows us to better connect with the narrative.
There is a thin line here, but this statement sounds like “artist” speak to me for something that should be very straight-forward.
5. I tend to agree that there is a huge gender gap when it comes to edgy art, at least in the literary world. Women do however, dominate the “visual” world of shocking art, especially those who (perhaps not coincidentally) use their bodies as the medium. How about that for a “cultural product”!
April 21, 2008 at 10:27 pm
So, to touch on 5 I guess, it never occurred to me that it was a big deal that a woman was writing this stuff. And, had I thought about it, I think the things written in this book would be more of a turn off if it was a guy writing it. The fact that it’s a woman writing as a chauvinistic asshole is sort of reassuring, because it’s like “ok this is obviously a spoof and caricature.” A man writing as a chauvinistic asshole makes you maybe wonder how much of his actual personality is leaking through.
I also can’t really think of a specific example where a woman released a grimy book and was then shunned for it, but I suppose I don’t pay that much attention. I would, however, like to point out that (in my humble opinion) Chuck Palhaniuk being a millionaire is less of a statement about male writers than it is a statement about the fact that he happened to be the person who wrote Fight Club. Which was turned into a feature film. Which grossed $100,853,753 worldwide (so says Wikipedia, so say we all). Right book, right time? And isn’t The Lovely Bones being directed by Peter Jackson right now?
Dunno. Could be so, but I’m skeptical about the causality.
April 22, 2008 at 12:03 am
what a great dialog! i love it when you all get feisty. all the ideas seem valid to me. by the way though, chuck is a friend of mine, and he’s gone on the record as saying if a woman had written “fight club” or any of his books she’d be relegated to “independent experimental fiction” … which is where debra’s work is currently ghettoized, so it remains in my mind a valid question.
case in point, another friend of ours, chelsea cain, who wrote a crime thriller in which the woman serial killer surgically slices people up–is also a millionaire. according to both chuck AND chelsea, crime thrillers are a sanctioned–you know, okey dokey place for women writers to get grimy nasty gross…for big money.
but i respect all of your points of view, and i LOVE the crosscurrents.
lid
April 22, 2008 at 2:35 am
1. I can see how systems theory fits into Di Blasi’s work. The way she splices bits and pieces; different voices, advertisements, notebook pages, lists etc to create one story or chronicle. Since systems theory is used to relate several objects like the example she gives in her interview of the tree, it makes sense to use various styles of writing to create one unified work. I also thought about all the references she makes to things in nature and how that somehow connects to the characters in the book like the platypus, the flies, bears, and the cancerous cells.
2. I think by multi-modal she means something similar to her use of systems theory. Using various types of communication to create her book; she even manages to work TV. when she shows the picture of television set with the news anchor in the gas mask. Today’s world is very fast paced and there is a constant barrage of images and messages coming at you from all directions- to me her work is like that, kind of like a web page. The pages don’t even need to be read in a certain way- you can read the blurb on the side of the page then go to the middle for part of a conversation or scan a picture. I think this is what she’s referring to when she says that writing must evolve in relation to our current technologies/cultural productions.
5. The fact that the author is female and writes about “raw” feelings/experiences is what I like most about this book. I think it’s important for people to recognize the “gross” parts of our thoughts and our lives instead of pretending everything is peachy keen, especially for females who are culturally supposed to never have a nasty thought. I also think her writing about sensitive topics, sex, race, hatred etc. allows women to say, hey it’s okay for me to feel like that. I certainly don’t think it’s distasteful for a woman to write about darker territories and it’s important to have a female perspective on those types of storytelling.
April 22, 2008 at 4:50 am
I think I defiantly felt a bit uncomfortable reading the book, especially throughout all of the Jiri pieces. I do think there is value in putting a reader through that. I think that if you are never assaulted or made to feel uncomfortable then you just continue on the same simple street. Personally I tend to question more when I’m shaken by something. I may not have really liked the book, but I do know that it made me think and question a lot more than any book I just enjoy. It’s good when that happens.
Also I don’t think she was shocking just for the sake of shocking. I really do see how she is expressing all the themes of race and sex and gender and death. She did something original by not just explaining those themes or pointing them out, instead Di Blasi used Systems Theory and different medias to show them to us.
I don’t think that it was distasteful for Debra to be raw or explicit. If a man had written it, I would have had the same feeling. I personally find sexually explicit content uncomfortable for me, in fact difficult to read. I actually appreciate a woman who has the courage to explore those areas.
April 22, 2008 at 5:53 am
2. several of you experienced the “alienated reader” effect. you know, when a book puts you as a reader in an uncomfortable, sometimes even antagonistic position while you are reading. when i first read this book i actually felt assaulted. so my question is, is there any value or point to that? or, as jeff suggested, is she just showing off or self absorbed in narrative hijinx? are there any gains to be made by placing the reader there, as opposed to, say, placing the reader in the oprah sofa comfort zone? because barb is right, this book aint gonna make it on oprah…
I’m sure there is a point to putting the reader on the offense, but I think many readers will need to take a class to understand the point. I don’t think that she was showing off, but perhaps she was venting. I can appreciate a good vent, but I felt like she was communicating on another plane of existence; which was another reason why I felt frustrated reading it. I wanted someone to spell it out for me in the end by telling me the why. What were her intentions? My best guess is that she is frustrated with readers (like me) being too comfortable with the issues around race, class, gender, death, and the human condition and she tries to evoke something closer to the emotional reaction she’d like to see in reality with regards to these issues. I know that I don’t have as strong a reaction to the news these days as I did to the sight of a dog’s face covered in maggots. She is certainly not trying to make everyone feel better nor is she trying to get on Oprah’s book club reading list.
April 22, 2008 at 6:01 am
1. Ok this is going to be a stab in the dark but just going to Wikipedia and looking a bit at some of the different applications of Systems Theory I would like to point out this little quote:
“The basis of the method is the recognition that the structure of any system — the many circular, interlocking, sometimes time-delayed relationships among its components — is often just as important in determining its behavior as the individual components themselves.”
Now perhaps this is what Debra was getting at? What I see here with all of the stories within is repetition of a character moving through life and hitting a wall in some fashion. The obsession with death is key to understanding our own existence on some level because we all understand we’ve got a timer moving it’s way down to zero. Now it seems the concern of death isn’t necessarily what these characters are concerned with but more the acknowledgment of something bigger, and I really couldn’t tell you what that something is because I sure as hell couldn’t figure it out, maybe it is something deeply personal (/shrug?).
Ok so I’m going to change my review of this book again to indifferent to intrigued. I keep thinking back to the story of the guy in the cafe sitting at the blue table. There was something that just made me latch on to this character, because he was dead before the story really even started it seemed like.
April 22, 2008 at 4:00 pm
5. I agree that men have an easier time getting away with certain “disturbing” material that they might have said in written work, or in the real world for that matter. I think it might be more expected from men which is why it is more accepted – they are allowed to have those thoughts because they have been taught through life that they can be rugged…manly…even angry. But if a woman were to do those things or to act that way, well that’s just wrong. The taboo’s that women constantly live under is so unfortunate, I love that a woman can step outside of what is expected and write something odd, something strange. If more women step out of the boundaries of what is laid out for their gender, the stereotype is closer to being broken than if we just abide by it, century after century. I also when women write without holding back because (and this might be a stereotype in itself) but they have a better way of showing and describing emotions, feelings – love, lust, anger, resentment. And I think its beautiful to read a story written by a woman that employs the uncommon, the unknown. This book was odd, but I enjoyed the fact that is was so unpredictable.
April 22, 2008 at 4:50 pm
(I know this is later than the deadline, btw) Jeff said something about how commercialized the popular/mainstream books are, and I totally agree! It’s the same deal in Hollywood – it’s not the the popular movies are more insightful, right or better in anyway except that they’ll make more money. Which then it cycles back into Hollywood, giving them positive feedback about useless movies, which they then try to recreate. It’s not poignant or eloquent – it’s profitable.
And word up to discomfort – Lidia already told us these weren’t bedtime stories.