Reading Borges I have to say was humorous in some ways.  Interesting in others, but regardless of my feelings on the subject, he definitely is an excellent short story writer.

The Two Kings and Labyrinths was what really struck out to me.  The labyrinth with many features, gilded and obviously complicated, could not compare to the absolutely featureless, yet so much more vast labyrinth that was the desert.

The South was very interesting.  As we learnt in the lecture and as I noticed while reading the story, there was a sort of disconnect.  It was as if the guy wasn’t actually there and it made sense since it is implied he died in the sanatorium.  The language used, the subtle hints, Borges was a master at that.

The Library of Babel?  Blew my mind.  Books upon books, overlapping books, somehow unimportant due to the massive overlap, yet somehow important because each one is ever so slightly different.

Pierre Menard’s Don Quixote perplexed me.  I understand it a little more after today’s lecture.  The idea that if it was written by Pierre Menard, in a different time, by a different person, would the meaning be the same?  Just because you change the milieu it came out of, does the story’s meaning change as well?

Emma Zunz made me go Huh?  But now that I reflect on the lecture I kind of get it.  Everything she said was true… to an extent, but what was changed was the milieu, the setting, the circumstances… which meant that everything else.. was false?  Or was it true?

I am eager to discuss this in the seminars, if I can make it out of bed tomorrow because I feel absolutely horrible.

We discussed briefly last week that a characteristic of short stories may be that they leave you with more questions at the end than you had at the start. I’d say that’s about accurate. All of these stories made me feel as though the authors have secret knowledge that they’re not letting us in on, lest it change our perspective of this brief glimpse. Some stories of course leave you with immediate burning questions that you itch to have an answer to, and others are more subtle, and become more prominent the more you think and reflect.

The Cooked Cat was definitely the former. I couldn’t believe the narrator seemed to so calmly report back to us this example of how cruel the aunt is. Similar to The Metamorphosis, I was passionately wondering why the narrator wasn’t freaking out as much as I was. The ending felt disturbingly abrupt and I wanted sit that woman down and yell her. We know her motive for killing the cat, and we’ve been told from the beginning that this family is obscenely cruel and cold, but it still felt as though those final few lines came rushing unstoppably at me. From the moment I read the title I had my suspicions that something exactly like that would happen, but I hoped up until the very end that I would be proved wrong.

The Daisy Dolls felt like it eased me into the story a little more, and even eased me out, despite the disturbing, eerie nature of the ending. I felt a little creeped out throughout the entire thing, with this whole things about the dolls… But that could just be because of all the phobias to have, I’m scared of mannequins with faces. Not severely, but crazy as it sounds I don’t like turning my back to them. They freak me out. So right from the get-go this was bound to be a story with something I didn’t quite like about it. It was very well written and extremely laden with significant details and symbols, but I just was not much of a fan of it. I can appreciate it, but not love it. Blame the dolls.

There were quite a lot of Borges stories, and while I didn’t love all of them, I did enjoy most of them. Emma Kunz was one of my favourites, and I think Borges is quite good at intriguing beginnings. With many of the texts we’ve read I’ve had to push my way through the first few pages, but I was generally interested right from the beginning with his stories.

I’m quite curious about how the lecture will weave together so many different stories. Despite having similar themes, they’re all unique in their own way. Looking forward to it. 

I’m writing this with a headache, so bear with me.

Borges is a very good writer. He knows how to do short stories, and I enjoyed almost every assigned reading within this book as well as some that weren’t assigned. The downfall to his very cohesive and structured style, however, is that it gets predictable quick; after reading two stories with aggressive rising actions and ironic climaxes, I wasn’t surprised to find about ten more stories with the same structure (Hakim, Circular Ruins, Forking Paths, Traitor and Hero, Two Kings, and Book of Sand are strong examples of this). Of course, not all of them are like that. Stories such as Babel and Utopia are more sublime in their execution and, in my opinion, more powerful as a result. In fact, those two are probably my favorite stories from this collection, although my opinion is probably biased since Babel reflects a philosophy I strongly adhere to and Utopia reminds me of a short story I wrote. Really, though, every story in this book seems to offer something interesting, and once I get the chance, I will read the whole thing.

I’ve just realized that the title of Cooked Cat is “Cooked Cat” and not “Crooked Cat,” which is what I’ve been reading until now. Ha.

Daisy Dolls is my favorite story this year. The writing quality is excellent and I was, for the first time in a long time, actually drawn to read more for pleasure than academic interest. Grammar, flow, and of course, plot—everything just clicked. I wasn’t crazily confused or driven mad at any point reading this, however, which is a shame as I rather enjoy healthy doses of insanity. The story reminds me of a mixture of several other stories and concepts I’ve experienced, and to be honest, it falls far short of what I’d classify as insane (ranks somewhere around The Yellow Wallpaper, I suppose). That aside, intensity isn’t what makes this story so great; it’s the undertone. Every part of the plot, from the protagonist’s collection of “scenes” to the shy man, create a unified atmosphere that just permeates through the digital pages. No character is meaningless, no setting empty of symbolism, no action without a grand thematic purpose. Maybe I’m lavishing more praise than this story actually deserves (must be the headache), but, all in all, it’s a damn good piece of literature.

While I disliked the Borges readings (it’s true, Jon), I did like reading “The Daisy Dolls.” My initial impression of the story was that it was another feminist story, where women are depicted as daisy dolls to be used for pleasure and thrown aside once they ceased to interest their masters. Then I realized this may be one element to the story, but the story seemed to center more on Horace than the actual daisy dolls (despite the title of the book). So what is this story trying to say about Horace?

The way I see it, Horace is, in some ways, a form of Jekyll. A man who has an “outside” self and an “inside” self. He has his hidden desires that won’t go away, so he turns to a solution to indulge in them. He doesn’t exactly have a Hyde, but he does try to hide his sexual relationship with a doll. At least he does make an attempt to do so. Whether he is actually successful or not is another story. I found it hard to understand how any person could possibly be sexually attracted to a doll- and act on those impulses too! Maybe I’m being narrow-minded. After reading the short story, I’m still not quite sure what kind of a person Horace is. Has he been abused in his childhood, so now he’s messed up and wants to have many relationships with many dolls? He cares about his wife, but he still can’t help himself from cheating on her. We don’t know what happened in his childhood. We’re only given a hint. Apparently, they died in an epidemic when he was a child- and he resented them for it. What happened after that? We don’t know.

And what is it about those daisy dolls? Are they really a host body for spirits, as Horace believed? Or are they manufactured as sexual objects? In some ways, they really are both. They’re not just dolls. There’s something odd about them. They’re not the dolls you’d give a child to play with. They’re like… inanimate prostitutes? As for the spirit theory, the dolls really do have a personality. Horace swears they even move on their own. So what are they, really? Even after pondering this question many times, I still haven’t a clue. If I had to go with one answer, I’d say these dolls are inanimate prostitutes. But even that answer isn’t a sufficient answer. They’re more than prostitutes.

Metamorphosis, The Yellow Wallpaper and now Daisy Dolls. What do all these have in common? They are messed up stories that confuse and alienate their readers. As someone very close to me would say, “dafuq?”

Pardon me if my reading of the story may seem blurred, but I finished it a couple weeks back in a hurry and felt bewildered, and confused throughout the entire tale. Just like Daisy Dolls, this story begins with a gradual decline in reason and rationalism, to a quick exponential spiral into disarray. The story doesn’t really make much sense, and it doesn’t feel provocative to me, it seems just flat out absurd.

If my memory serves me correctly our protagonist works for a doll shop where he adjusts and forms doll’s postures that convey sexuality in order advertise clothes for a particular clothing brand. For some reason, the main character feels anxieties that his wife is slipping away from him. He feels as if she may be on the brink of leaving him forever. So to cull his paranoia he seeks consultation by bringing home “Daisy”, a large mannequin that he dresses to carry the physical embodiment of his wife. Yet his wife still remains and it becomes and extremely awkward scenario. But the role of the protagonist, his wife and Daisy evolves. First it is a simple form of comfort for the husband, but eventually his wife comes to embrace Daisy almost as a daughter and the doll becomes a link that brings them closer and rekindles their relationship. But later on, Daisy becomes something more, something much more perverse. Even with each others company Daisy is needed by each alone for their own deeds. The acts they each commit upon the water-warmed doll are never really revealed but it doesn’t take much to realize what they are doing to her. They are using her as an object to fulfill their bizarre sexual fixations. And this is where the novella becomes most puzzling, we have almost no idea what is running through these two peoples minds.

The novella takes a turn and Daisy’s magnetizing powers are reversed into an enlarged gap between the couple. The couple throw a house party and invite guests to entertain, and oddly choose to introduced Daisy as well. This is the one brief moment where our embargo on other spectators perspectives is broken, the guests are obviously baffled by Daisy and their opinion of their hosts is quickly altered. Ironically both husband and wife desire Daisy exclusively to themselves, and both wish to destroy her by attempting to murder her (even though she isn’t alive). Both experience separate lapses of rationality and absurdity at alternating times, witnessing each others madness only to relapse into it. This is a story that really makes the readers scratch their heads in confusion. What is wrong with these people? What does their actions tell me about mine? How am I supposed to relate?

These stories carry over the absurdity of last week’s readings as well as Freud’s unconscious sexuality and repressions, but I need a lot of counsel on this. What the hell happened?