Prewriting

Since I'm already pretty familiar with some of the other aspects of Art Spiegleman's life from already being a fan of Maus, I think I'd be most excited about doing a contextual essay about In the Shadow of No Towers. I'd like to bring in different elements about his parents being holocaust survivors, and what New York must have looked like pre attacks, and how other schools across both the city and country were reacting. The entire comic book community all had a reaction to 9/11 also, so I'd like to see some more mainstream stuff (Marvel had a lot to say about it) and what those other people said and did as a reaction to the event.

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Fun House

As someone who considers them self well versed in the world of comics and sequential art, I was kind of frustrated with myself for never having heard of Alison Bechdel. I know Spieleman, and was kind of hoping we'd talk about Chris Ware, but wasn't familiar with Bechdel. So I guess shame on me. But I thought this was really interesting. I'm always drawn more toward the smaller slice of life type stories and such (Alex Robinson for example), so this was really my kind of thing. I thought the artwork was fantastic from an acting point of view. The facial expressions mainly. So much emotion conveyed with so few lines. It really isn't very line or ink heavy at all. It's just what absolutely needs to be there but still accomplishes so much more than artists who might need to use more lines. The story is really interesting too. Not really a story though, as much as it was a short examination of the authors relationship with her father. How he acted, how she could interpret it, and then how she did interpret it. All the different variables she had to consider when passing judgement on her father, since it wasn't ALWAYS this way or that, and then the inner conflict those variables caused. It was just a really sentimental piece that really hit home for me. I will definitely be looking up Alison Bechdel's work for my own personal enjoyment in my own personal time.

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9/11 Poems

The first thing that comes to mind about these poems is a sense of frantic somberness (if that makes as much sense as it does in my head). It's a panicky mourning. Like no one can decide if they're more afraid for themselves or sad for the tragedy of the event. I think the ones I found most interesting were the Silent Room and the one simply titled World Trade Center.  They were both fairly simple, but really expressive and both great examples of that frantic somberness. Silent Room kind of reminded me of a Poe type reaction to the 9/11 attacks, just a slow descent into madness brought on by severe trauma. Then World Trade Center felt really honest and I think did a really good job of presenting what being an old school New Yorker was like after the attacks. The author claimed not to really care about the World Trade Center pre attacks, and in general kind of disliked them, but them being gone was ironically the worst thing that could have happened. It just felt real. Relatable to what living in a city is like. I mean, how often do any of us really visit or think about the Arch? When I lived in South Dakota, I almost disliked Rushmore since everyone outside of South Dakota made such a big deal about it, and I lived there so I knew how boring it was.

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In The Shadow Of No Towers

I'm a big fan of comics and the art of sequential storytelling, so getting to read something by the legendary Art Spiegelman was exciting to me.
First off, the art is amazing, it plays a lot with the line between iconic and abstract (as defined by Scott McCloud). He's also great at making his characters act. Characters all have very expressive and recognizable looks on their faces with intentional body language. There's a direction with the way everyone holds themselves that relates right back to the characters situation at the moment and helps drive the story. Spiegelman also has great taste in his panels and panel structure. I love the effects he adds to the Maus caricature of himself smoking. He's talking about how he's anxious and scared and it has him smoking, and there's an effect with the smoke even coming in front of the word balloons, really emphasizing the what he's talking about. It makes this empty scenery of just Art talking more moody and tone defining by making the smoke make even the panel feel more anxiety ridden and panicky. I also really love the metaphor at the very beginning with the shoe dropping. It made me laugh at how clever it was, but it made me uncomfortable that I laughed.

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Red Convertable

This story was insane. I loved it. I thought the car was supposed to be Henry. But I also thought that was a pretty straightforward metaphor. Lyman loves that car for the times he had with his brother in it. It takes seeing the car broken down and destroyed to give Henry not only some kind of purpose, but a purpose in hopes that it might somehow redeem Henry himself. But he can't get it quite right. It still isn't as whole as it used to be, no matter how hard Henry tries, just like Henry the man. And this is what really got me. Henry killed himself because of the whole never being really whole and back to who he was thing. But the big cathartic ending of pushing the car into the river just felt right. It's not so much that it's just following the idea of the car being a metaphor for Henry and dies in the river just like him, as much as it was Lyman finally letting his brother that really never came home go.

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Welcome to the Monkey House

I feel like the big idea here is Morality vs Nature. How they work together and where they come into conflict. What in nature defines morality? If not from nature then where do we derive our ideas on morality and does it really make sense? Vonnegut cites religion as the source of conventional morality, where the invention of the ethical birth control was inspired by what Nation saw as natures slight against God. I like how it was named "ethical" too, since a lot of denominations of Christianity have firm stances against birth control preventing the body from getting pregnant, instead "ethical" birth control doesn't affect the actual reproductive system, but removes the actual desire to have sex. But Billy the Poet has the opposite stance on the issue, he almost sees the devotion to God as a slight against nature. People are designed to have sex, it's part of how we were designed and therefore we shouldn't deny it to ourselves. It's almost a warning to a new everchanging world about the dangers of  looking to older and more traditional sources to solve new world problems. God and religion don't quite have the same place in society that they once did and trying to apply outdated means to solve the problems of the modern society causes meshing problems. By Billys last message about "welcome to the monkey house," Billy is implying that we're not above the rest of the animals that inhabit the planet, that all of humanity is just another animal with base instincts. That the Nothingheads are just appealing to nature instead of what they see as an obsolete system of morality. I just really found this whole world interesting, and they two different views of how to solve the same problem. It reminded me a lot of Ferenheit 451 in how it used this kind of specific futuristic scifi to explore more current social issues.

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I really liked "Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?" I felt like the idea behind the whole thing was taking how we treat and think about ourselves and applying it to the rest of the world. Kind of a "we reap what we sow" thing (just a little). Connie is a really conceited main character. She stares at herself in the mirror, she not only has an attitude that makes her feel like she gets to choose who is and who isn't in her league, but is proud to be able to disgustedly turn down boys who she feels are below her. She's incredibly vain. She even thinks her mother holds the fact that Connie is so pretty against her, and that's why they have confrontations. But I think the best piece of character work is how Connie spends all her free time at home thinking about the boys she meets, but doesn't really think of them individually as much as she thinks of them as an idea. It's the idea that these are all boys she considers worthy that find her attractive that she's so concerned with, this vain notion that this is what gives her value and takes pride in it.
"But all the boys fell back and dissolved into a single face that was not even a face but an idea, a feeling, mixed up with the urgent insistent pounding of the music and the humid night air of July." (3124)
But to be fair, she's only looking for love where she can find it. She has issues with her mother since she feels her mother loves June more than her for being responsible and caring, so gets wrapped up in the love and affection she actually does get in her life: boys.
Connie just wants to feel as loved by the rest of the world as much as she loves herself. But when she gets that it isn't quite what she wanted. Arnold is pretty much as obsessed with Connie as Connie is with herself and for the same reasons, which turns into an incredibly violent situation. Arnold pretty much stalks Connie back to her house and takes her. But you knew that part, you read the story. All I'm saying is I love how the whole turn worked out, even as morbid as it was. The idea of taking the way you see yourself and turning it back onto yourself from the outside world is a really interesting idea to me. How would I feel about people treating me exactly the way I treat myself? How would that work out? Would I like it or would I regret it. I just think it's a really interesting question to ask.

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Sylvia Plath makes me sad

I've always heard that Sylvia Plath's poetry was fairly depressing, and I've come to find out that's in fact very true. They not only had sad topics (especially Lady Lazarus), but they also all had incredibly somber tones. All I'm saying is that I'm glad I read this at the end of summer and not the beginning because I probably wouldn't recover. Not that these are issues with the work itself, I'd just rather not be sad. The fact that I'm that worried about it ruining my summer actually says a lot about the work itself. It has a certain level of class without feeling too informal and unrelatable. It's really authentic and honest.

But of all the poems for this half of the week, the one that stood out to me the most was Housewife by Sexton. Unlike something like Lady Lazarus, it doesn't feel like this thorough, epic confession, but it's very short and says exactly and only what it wants to say. It goes right back to the whole feminism thing that came up in the reading last week and I think I found this one more interesting than those. It just has a really interesting approach to the (at this point in time) well used criticism of the role of the housewife, and by not making it anything too big and stays really direct (it doesn't go into too much rational behind the argument, just state the argument itself), I think it makes itself harder to argue against and easier to keep in the back of your mind.

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I'd never read Fear and Loathing before, but I've always wanted to and I can definitely see why it's talked about in the tone it is. The closest thing to Hunter S. Thompson I've read before was part of a comic series called Transmetropolitan, which is more or less just Thompson in the future dealing with politics of the future, but still relating them back to modern issues in it's own way. That was really the only thing I needed to know that I should read Fear and Loathing.
I really liked his writing style as a whole. It reminded me of a Hubert Selby Jr. quote I read once, "Keep your balls out of your writing." And it really does that. There's no sense of pride, nothing is built up to feel crazy epic, it's all just very nonchalant. My favorite example being at the very beginning when the drugs start kicking in and he's hallucinating, "No point mentioning
those bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough." Things are that straight forward throughout the entire thing. There really aren't a whole lot of flowery language, nothing is made to sound cool or really does anything to set a tone, which in it's own way sets it's own tone if that makes any sense. And I really liked that approach. It didn't have to try but still felt well thought out and authentic. The interaction with the hotel clerk even seemed awkward on paper (even if he hadn't seen her face change, it still wouldn't have been the most conventional conversation ever). Not really sure why that minor part stuck out at me other than I feel like I've probably been the clerk in this conversation before for someone else.

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Thoughts of Joyce

I thought Joyce's work (specifically over Frazer) was really interesting since I happen to have recently made friends with someone really into feminism who happens to post a lot about it on Facebook, making me somewhat more aware of the issue than before. The piece about her moving out specifically reminded me of her. It just really hit me how far women's rights and social perception have come since I wasn't really aware of just how far back they used to be. How scandalous it was for the people around her to find out that she was moving out of her parents and single. But it all came down to her trying to avoid the mistake she felt her mother might have made and that the fact that she was a women wasn't going to stop her from being a fully realized person. She couldn't tell her parents that though, it was a decision completely individualistic, something that women weren't really expected to do at that time.

 I wasn't really sure why the letter to Kerouac was thrown in the book though (other than the fact that it was just kind of cool that it was a letter to Kerouac). Most of it seemed really passive and casual. I never felt like I was getting any sort of insight to anything of much importance to anyone that it wasn't directly written to.

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Romancing the Hobo

I think it's really interesting how Kerouac romanticizes the hobo life. Not so much hobos specifically, but the idea of how they live simply and appreciatively, but also how the direction American society and culture are moving is trying to kill that ideology. Kerouac on the other hand obviously has a great appreciation for this philosophy and resents people turning against it. I feel like a lot of his defining people like Whitman and Franklin is his argument not necessarily for this way of living, but against the arguments against it, like a counter-offensive. That the great people who built this country and shaped it's culture and are ingrained into every Americans lives either directly or indirectly (depending on the individual) lived by this philosophy and by rejecting it would be to loose what once made us great.
I loved how he even tried to explain why the shift against the hobo occurred: we became afraid and self important. We began looking down on them, and without a proper understanding of the situation, we got scared. He describes the shift as "In Brueghel's time children danced around  the hobo, he wore huge and raggy clothes and always looked straight ahead indifferent to the children, and the families didn't mind the children playing with the hobo, it was a natural thing. - But today mothers hold tight their children when the hobo passes through town, because of what newspapers made the hobo to be- the rapist, the strangler, child-eater.- Stay away from strangers, they'll give you poison candy" (2977).
My problem is that times have changed even since he wrote this and "hobo" doesn't seem like the most appropriate metaphor anymore, although the point still gets through tremendously thanks to Kerouac's writing. Today I feel like people who choose this kind of lifestyle are more stereotyped as the hippies and such, as where the hobo is more of a homeless bum, stereotyped as a drug addict panning for money for more drugs. But that's not really Kerouac's fault, it was just a point I thought of and found interesting enough to see what kind of reaction it would get here.

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Man Moth

I really found The Man-Moth fascinating. Every aspect of it. Even the structure and how the stanzas are set up is interesting. Every stanza has 8 lines, and the first line is always the shortest and indented. The reasoning behind it eludes me, but since it's a pretty specific structure I feel like there has to be a reason that's just going over my head. The poem's specific style of surrealism just happens to click with my personal interests really well, with the kind of old school pulpy sci-fi horror idea of a both man and moth creature that lives underground and only comes out at night, but at the same time being incredibly innocent and hopeful and not really a creepy poem at all. I liked how the Man-Moth has a dream, knows he'll fail, but tries again every night with the same results, and get's discouraged by it, but never lets it beat him. His dream is physically impossible, flying through the moon that he sees as a hole in the sky, yet his dream is that important to him that he can't just let it go without some sort of fight. I'm not totally sure what I think about the final stanza though, but it really stands out and makes itself important to the rest of the poem by acknowledging that this creature lives in our world and how it would interact with you. I'm not totally sure what I think it's saying, but what I've got right now is that the tear is kind of the innocence and hopefulness that keeps the Man Moth going every night, that if it can get away with it, the Man Moth will always work for it's dream, but if caught and pressured the other way, the Man Moth will surrender the thing that's most important to it out of the shame of dreaming so big and working so hard for such an impossible dream. But I'm still processing it and deciding how I feel about that part. I just really wanted to talk about this poem since it stuck out so strongly to me compared to really anything else this section so far, which although has been fine, also hasn't been what I've found the most interesting this semester.

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Rant About "A Good Man is Hard to Find,"

Although there are a lot of things to say about "A Good Man is Hard to Find," I really just wanted to rant about a specific part that stuck out to me. When the grandmother talks about how much better times used to be, it really got me thinking about the modern context of the statement. This was written in the fifties, the "Happy Days" time frame, the time in American History that people talk about in retrospect as if it were this pure and clean decade where everyone was honest, hard working and innocent. But that wasn't the case and I loved that even though the author obviously didn't intend to bring that up since it was written in what at the time was modern context, it brought up the issue that things have always more or less been the same in terms of the quality of people and society. Economically and politically things were great for white suburban families but segregation was still a thing at that point, homosexuality was considered illegal many states, and a lot of people had it unfairly difficult. It wasn't a perfect decade. Things have gotten worse for certain demographics but at the same time evened out for others. I just really wanted to bring this up because I feel like it adds a certain historical context to the piece that probably wasn't intended to be there, but works with everything else in it's own way.

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The Swimmer

I thought there were a lot of interesting things going on in this one. I've seen a few other people on here talk about the passage of time, but I had a few ideas other than that too that kind of go along with that. Time seems to be moving at an irregular pace throughout the story, but I almost wonder if it's actually time moving differently, or his perception of it. He has a drink most places he goes, so I was wondering if it he'd maybe spent most of his adult life drinking, and just woke up one day to find his life completely different than he thought it was, not paying attention or being sober enough to comprehend how much time had actually passed, and that maybe he wasn't as young as he thought he was anymore. That maybe his house had been abandoned for years and the alcohol was preventing it from sinking in. So I also wonder if Cheever was also getting at wasting youth and life on being selfish and irresponsible with your time.

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Willy is selfish and his reputation is his life

Willy is an incredibly selfish and shallow character. Throughout the entire play his entire motivation is driven by his reputation. He's overly concerned with being liked (as mentioned by someone else in their post), and loves his kids based on how they're a reflection of him. He never wants the outside world to know that there are issues within his family. He won't let Biff tell Bill Oliver that he was working on a farm in the west, that he was there working in business. And when Bernard asks how Biff had been doing, he stays vague and just tells him he's been working on "big things" in the west. When Biff says that people laugh at him, he comes back with a list of places to go and shout Willy Lohmans name and what kind of respect he has. Everything comes down to his reputation, because that's how he measures a man. Willy doesn't want his son's success for the sake of his son, he wants it for the sake of his reputation as a father. He thinks reputation is everything. He makes the comment that Charley is liked, but not "well liked", and is shocked at how well his son Bernard's life turned out despite neither of them being "well liked". He's even shocked when he finds out Bernard is working on a supreme court trial and didn't mention it because that's something to be proud of, and to him everyone should know when he is doing something important. (I originally had a different direction in mind for this post, but it kind of strayed away more into and expansion on the other post someone made about being liked. I think I like the points in this direction more though, they're a little more concrete and make a little more sense than where I was going).

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Defining "Success"

Throughout the play, the word "success" is thrown around a lot, especially by Willy and Biff. Willy obviously wants success for himself and for Biff, but it seems like Willy has a very specific idea of what being successful means, while Biff feels like it's way more open. Willy's definition of "success" is the very conventional interpretation of the American dream, with the housewife, successful and respected offspring who's achievements he can be proud of, his son was even a big football star. It's literally as stereotypical as it gets, and this is before "Leave it to Beaver" came out which is usually the go-to example of that classic American nuclear family. Willy wants this kind of thing for Biff, but Biff isn't necessarily sure that it's even what he even wants. He enjoys manual labor and working on a farm and feels like that's what will make him happy. I'm still not sure if Biff is saying that's what they all SHOULD be doing, or if it's just another thing that should be ACCEPTED to be doing. One thing is for sure though, Biff definitely thinks that Willy's definition of successful is a shame and doesn't even exist since they've all had to fool themselves and each other into thinking that's what they have, while Willy just considers everything in Biff's life to just be straight up failure.

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Hey, what's up?

I'm Zac Smith. I really like just talking about literature and picking apart decisions in story structure and story telling. And although I do read a lot of pros, I think comics/graphic novels are one of the most fascinating mediums to look at that through. I think the theories behind sequential story telling are insanely creative from an art standpoint, and dialogue with limited narration is an interesting form of writting. I really enjoy people like Brandon Graham (King City, Multiple Warheads), Frank Miller (Sin City), Brian K Vaughan (Saga, Y: The Last Man), Sam Keith (The Maxx), Art Spieglman (Maus), Moebius (The Incal), and Jack Kirby (he really created most of the Marvel characters, not Stan Lee in the way people think. Google it, it's interesting). I'm not going to pick a favorite for anything because I'm not that decisive. So yeah, that's what I've got going on.

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