Tag Archives: politics

03Apr / 2023

Papi: from the eyes of a child

The book this week was quite a change a pace compared to the other reads in this course. The narration from the child’s perspective is quite a unique one compared to other books with a youthful and innocent narrator; there are a lot of nice stylistic touches that reminded me of my own childhood as well. In particular, the narrator created a list (I’m not quite sure what the point of it was) that detailed how the world is broken up into 3 places, or types of “spells” such as yawning and “attacks”. I don’t know where the childhood fixation on creating weird lists of things comes from, but I think the effect of the text was very strong. It certainly reminded me of all the goofy things I was up to as a child, and really brought me back to how you view life when you are younger. Perhaps that is a child’s own way to figure out and establish some control for the world around them, as if to say “I was here, and I experienced all of this, and I want you to know that I figured all this out”.

One thing I didn’t expect from this book was for the focus to not be solely on how parental roles influence the way our lives play out, or to outline the different ways different parents and their actions influence the way children grow up (basically, some form of trauma dump). Obviously the focus of the book is the relationship between these characters within this family, but the personal relationship (or emotional development, better put) between the narrator and Papi are quite distant at times, speaking from seeing a choppy focus of her emotional journey with these parental figures through all these tumultuous events. I think a better example/ piece of evidence would be how Mami is portrayed throughout this story, and how her significance to the narrator is not really conveyed, as if they way they live together isn’t moulding who she is as a person. They merely appear as “figures”. To some effect, the distance does highlight that gap between her and Papi, in that he is often not there when he says he will be or shows up when it wasn’t expected of him to. This probably reveals a message about distant fathers and the fascination and admiration that comes with such an enigmatic figure.  But I think another reason for this portrayal is to convey a broader message that isn’t limited to the theme of “family” or “parental figures”, as Jon said in the lecture video, maybe it is to convey other effects such as the portrayal of the macho cacique archetype, or some broader societal meaning.

To end with a question, how did you feel about the narrator’s childlike storytelling; did it remind you of anything, or was there anything especially notable to you about it? Why so?

Posted in Indiana

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27Mar / 2023

Distant Star

I. Do. Not. Like. Poets.

This was my first impression halfway into the book. I don’t like their worldview, or the way they write about experiencing things. I bet these people would’ve been been miserable to hang out with. As the book opened in the setting of college, something about the mood of this book greatly reminds be of the movie “In the mood for love”. I think theres something very distinct about the tonality of college students hanging out and figuring things out in uncertain political times that seem to transcend cultures.

The question from the lecture was something I was thinking about, even as I was reading the book. I was confused why the narrator referred to these people as poets (Weider, Lorenzo, etc) when their explicit circumstance didn’t consist of writing poetry (lexical art I guess) themselves anymore. I think this ties into the broader question asking if the photographs that Weider showed counts as art. Personally, I think at the core of art is this notion of creation, or birthing something new. In this sense, Lorenzo just living out his life is art, because he is creating all these possibilities despite his limiting circumstance; this notion is what he himself recognizes as ingenuity. In a similar vain, the act of Weider to collect these photos and present them in the way he did was an artistic move. His action birthed this sort of effect, and was meant to be a statement. What precisely he was trying to convey, I am not certain. As I said, I do not like poets and they way they convey experiences. But regardless, it was meant to create a sort of reaction, and doing it the way he did meant something more than just “submitting a document to spread information” and thus in my eyes, it counts as art. Maybe not the images solely, but the act itself. Personally, I am not educated enough about the different kinds of art to make a claim on what kind of artistic category it falls under, but I think a fair point can be made that art often crosses these boundaries and that boundaries often times do not work well in the realm of art.

A question everyone: In your view, what counts as a poet, or what makes a poet a poet? How has reading this book influenced your perspective on this matter?

Posted in Bolano

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13Mar / 2023

Captain Pantoja and the Secret Service

Reading the first few pages of this novel already made me nauseous; needless to comment on the rest of the book which was only more and more outrageous as it went along. From the descriptors of the maths that are required to run a brothel, to completely grotesque descriptors about Captain Pantoja’s hemorrhoids, or cult like activities of sacrificing humans. The content was abhorrent, although the writing itself was quite interesting.

One thing I do appreciate is the changing form of writing format, for a letter, to a mission report (?) to just a dated narration. The different formats that is utilized adds so much dimension to each characters perspectives and their jobs. With each format change, the language also changes drastically, which is not always achieved across authors, so it was quite impressive that the tone of the story shifts so much depending on what context you were hearing it from. I personally enjoyed the bits where you would jump back and forth between 2 situations; I could visualize it like a movie with its jump cuts and I thought the effect of that choice was very special.

Regardless, I find the way the book deals with the subject matter a bit alarming, since there is a certain sense of dehumanization when describing the prostitutes and women broadly, and I think that might raise some red flags about the way this book was intended as “comedy”. I know of many people, on justifiable grounds, who wound find this completely inappropriate, and I think that is why “black comedy” remains controversial. To some degree, I recognize that might be the point of this book, as I have read that the author had his work based on facts, but it is still appalling to see sex work described as going on “convoys” or taking about servicing 20 men a day as if it’s just a statistic. The only image I have from that is a woman tired out on a mattress, just used, waiting for it to start over again and again and again. Frankly, I can’t find anything comedic about that. The depiction of the circumstances of the prostitutes weren’t depicted all disingenuously though; even at the core of these stories, its made clear that poverty was the root cause of prostitution, and that only coupled with the abhorrent conditions they are forced to work in, whether in slave-driving brothels, or walking door to door with no semblance of security in their jobs. Thats why it wasn’t only a steady stream of money that allured the prostitutes to join the secret service, but also the respect that is given with the position. In this sense, the novel reminds us about these real events in history and provides a thought provoking depiction of it.

Lastly a question to all: what do you think the broader significance of the cult was, with the place it has within this story?

Until next time,

Kelly

Posted in Vargas Llosa

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28Feb / 2023

Part 1: One Hundred Years of Solitude

The writing of Garcia Marquez is so especially unique that I feel as if I’ve experienced 100 lifetimes from following all the events, when really I’ve only read 40 pages. This book is probably my favourite read so far in the course, and I am decently surprised that this book reads so much better than his other book “Chronicles of a Death Foretold”. I am also decently pleased that despite all the characters sharing approximately 3 names, I can discern them fairly well, and I think that credit also goes to the storytelling of Garcia Marquez.

The entirety of the book follows the bizarre adventures of every character, and in each corner there is magical realism and an interesting morphing with temporality to be found. At the centre of the story is a family, which I think also signifies a key feature of the book, that being human relationships. With the use of naming each children after some other figure before, I think that highlights the inherent connections and ultimately the tangled threads of fate belonging to each member of the family. Another notable feature of the book was the repetition in describing the experiences of each family member that ultimately fall to this feeling of “solitude”. I think in some ways, as the little things that occur in their lifetime are chained to one another, it all eventually trickles into this state of solitude that each character experiences, and no doubt we would experience at some point in our lifetimes, hopefully magnitudes weaker than the tragedies they experience.

“One Hundred Years of Solitude” carry on the torch of Latin American Literature’s proclivity for extravagant drama, which permeated a decent chunk of the books we have read before, only this one is much more bizarre and overwhelming, and pays special attention to the intricacies of human relationships, whether between father and son, husband and wife, or even between a family and other townsfolk. An additional feature that joins later on in the book is when war eventually breaks out, and the impact of that period of Mexican history on its people is once again illustrated very poignantly. From a personal standpoint, I was on the down low rooting for Aureliano to overcome his foreboding mortality when facing the firing squad as I was following his story in the first half of the book, but once it did actually get there I couldn’t care less about his demise, or at the very least I felt no remorse if he had died.

Altogether, this book has provided me with a reading experience like no other before, and pushed the bounds of fiction for me, and for that will always remain memorable. Which sort of leads me to my question to you all: Which character out of all of them is the most unforgettable to you? It doesn’t necessarily have to be someone you like or dislike, but rather the character you find yourself caring about the most. (For me, it was Ursula)

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