Gaiman + Christmas = Deliciously Dark Humor

I had my students read this story today for an exercise in suspending judgment and analyzing.

They were disturbed when I said I find the story to be delightful and hilarious. They would probably be even more disturbed to know how much I enjoyed the looks of horror forming on their own faces as they read.

Nicholas Was...

older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.

The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.

Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves' invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time.

He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.

Ho.

Ho.

Ho.

Marxist Literary Theory

So, over-achiever that I am, I am joining two other graduate students this fall for an independent study in Marxist Literary Theory.

I am a bit behind on the background reading that I was supposed to study before the semester started, and am currently reading Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. My mind is too filled with the ideas in the text to write much, but I just want to quote this:

"If the product of labour does not belong to the worker, if it confronts him as an alien power, this can only be because it belongs to some other man than the worker. If the worker's activity is a torment to him, to another it must be delight and his life's joy. Not the gods, not nature, but only man himself can be this alien power over man" (78).

There is something wrong when one person works in misery and exists in a state of alienation in order to produce joy and delight for others.

Source:

Marx, Karl. "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844." The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Robert C. Tucker. New York: Norton, 1978. 66-175.

Love at First Bite II

Okay, a friend's comment, and discussion with another friend about this book, led me to the realization that I overlooked a key character in Bloodsucking Fiends. The Emperor of San Francisco. In the novel, this character is a homeless man that keeps watch over the city, and often cautions people with the phrase, "Safety first!" He travels with two dogs, Bummer and Lazarus, and desires to rid the city of vampires.

I loved this character while reading the novel, but found out when I was discussing it with my friend, that the Emperor was actually a real person. He dubbed himself the Emperor of San Francisco, the United States, and the Protector of Mexico. His name was Joshua A. Norton. The residents of San Francisco treated him with respect, and when he died, they buried him in the rich cemetery, rather than let him have a pauper's grave.

Google him. It's really fascinating.

Love at First Bite

I finished reading Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore today. As always with Moore's books, it was wickedly and delightfully inappropriate, not quite up to the level of impropriety in Fool, or even in Lamb but I credit that to the fact that he seems to rise to greater levels of lewdness when he is dealing with topics that people typically revere, such as rewrites of Shakespeare's King Lear and recounting Christ's childhood and adolescence.

Moore is not for the faint of heart, just to warn you, regardless of which books you read. He thinks nothing of inventing foul language if that already in existence doesn't suffice. Yet, in spite of what some may call "lowbrow" comedy, Moore writes with class and eloquence, and, amid the comedy, delves into topics that get right at the center of the human question.

Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story addresses the topics of alienation, loneliness, individuality, and death. There are probably more, but that's what I can think of right now. The plot, briefly, and without giving away anything you won't find on the back cover, begins when Jody, a woman dissatisfied with her job, and her penchant for going from one jerk to another, is attacked and wakes to find that she is a vampire. Quickly realizing that she can't manage her predicament alone, she looks for a man to help her and finds Tommy Flood, a Beat-obsessed wanna-be writer who calls himself C. Thomas Flood and dreams of being Fitzgerald and finding his Zelda in the City.

Jody's predicament first makes her lonely, then empowers her as she learns how to be a vampire.

Of course, the vampire that changed her did it for a reason, and adds complication to the plot.

I won't say more; I don't want to spoil the book for anyone who might read it.

Soon, I'll start blogging about my reading for school, which will consist of 18th Century British lit, such as Jonathan Swift and Henry Fielding; Marxist Literary Theory, material relating to medieval women, and, last but not least, my students' papers. :)

So, I guess what I'm saying is, the blog for the next few months may not be interesting to anyone other than myself. Hang in there. I'll get back to Christopher Moore again, with the sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends, eloquently entitled, You Suck.

Bitter Chocolate

I just finished reading The Girl With No Shadow by Joanne Harris.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, this was a sequel to Chocolat. The book was good, as Harris' books always are, but I was a little disconcerted by the different flavor of this. One review said that it was a much darker chocolate, but I also found it to be somewhat bitter.

In other novels by Harris, such as Chocolat, Blackberry Wine, and Coastliners, for example, the magic that exists in the text is subtle. The seduction of the chocolate, the vivacity of the wine, and the power of the tides and shifting sands, are all built to create a motif throughout each novel. In this way, she weaves magic into her novels without making the suspension of disbelief very necessary.

In The Girl With No Shadow the magic is more blatant, clearly practiced by witches, and taking a somewhat odd turn more suited to a fantasy novel than Harris' usual type. As I said, it is still a good novel, but I miss the subtlety of the others I listed above, and the power present in, say, Five Quarters of the Orange.

As always, though, the novel was worth the read, and Harris' prose sometimes makes me wonder why I bother to write at all, because I could never produce something so artfully crafted. But, then again, it just gives me something to aspire to.

The Critics

I've been reading quite a bit of criticism regarding Aemilia Lanyer lately, as I'm writing a paper for my 17th Century Pious British Literature class concerning her. She also happens to be the main focus of my thesis, though the scope has broadened considerably now to include medieval devotional literature and drama, as well as the medieval mystics (particularly the women).

I find it amusing to trace the development of the criticism, and a little bemusing at times as well.

Lanyer was brought to attention first when A.L. Rowse (and others, he is just the main name here) drew a connection between Lanyer and the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets. For several years, she was studied not on the merits of her product, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum but because of her connection to Shakespeare.

Then the focus switched to the remarkably feminist bent in the literature, and critics such as Barbara K. Lewalski determined that Lanyer was creating a community of good women, and placing women above men on the spiritual and moral level. They also focused extensively on the fact that Lanyer is the first woman to publish her own work, and, seemingly, the first woman to seek patronage of other women. Lanyer has even been criticized for seeking patronage and some critics would dismiss her work as mercenary because of this. That, of course, has been put aside because artists, male and female alike, relied on patrons for support at this time in history. To regard Lanyer as mercenary would also place all the male authors of the age in the same category.

What I find most interesting is that many critics, among them Lewalski, dismiss Lanyer's religious subject as a facade, considering it to be undermined by the feminist tack that was taken. Devotional literature was considered acceptable for women, and the assumption is that Lanyer wrote it simply because she could.

It is possible that Lanyer was simply meeting with convention, and did not feel any of the devotion or religiosity that she expressed. Yet, it does not necessarily follow that a feminist and a religious topic cannot go hand in hand. Feminism doesn't necessitate the obliteration of faith, nor does faith deny the existence of feminism.

I have taken a different tack in my research, of course, but more on that as I work on my paper, and develop my thesis.

Ira Glass on Storytelling

My friend told me about this today at coffee, and I had to share.

I particularly enjoyed the third segment.