Author Archives: May

Mad Toy

Compared to the last novel “Combray”, I found Mad Toy to be a much easier read. The most distinct aspect of this book is the way the content is categorized. The book is split into four parts, each representing a different episode of the main character, Silvio’s life. “The Band Of Thieves”, just like this title, captures Silvio’s aspirations to become a bandit by being engaged in a club dedicated to committing theft. “Work and days” recounts Silvio’s experience of his job working at a bookstore. “Mad Toy” narrates Silvio’s attempt to become an apprentice of the School of Aviation. Finally, “Judas Iscariote” illustrates Silvio as a door-to-door paper salesman. Though these four chapters all represent important events of Silvio’s life, the way they are presented in this novel seem to be four completely distinct stories. Despite the episodes appearing to have no connection between each other, they are implicitly connected. For example, the failure of the “Club of the Gentlemen of Midnight” ends Silvio’s dream to become a bandit and forces him to accept reality to begin work. With the difference of events in each chapter, there is also a change in the character Silvio himself.

The style of this book is another aspect that I found to be interesting. The author depicts the story in an autobiographical way in which everything is written from the perspective of Silvio. Although the audience is already reading through the lens of Silvio, italicized words representing his inner thoughts and emotions would be inserted between the actions actually happening. Some of these italicized writings would be short sentences, others would be long paragraphs written in a poetic style. These poetic expressions essentially represent another one of Silvio’s aspirations, which is to become a poet. As a reader, these italicized expressions were very insightful in terms of understanding the character of Silvio. In the scene where Silvio attempted to commit suicide, his surroundings intertwined with this repeated thought that he needed to kill himself particularly stood out to me. The inner contemplations of whether or not he should “die” and the finalization that he needs to kill himself combined with the vivid depictions of him holding the gun towards himself created a powerful and emotionally charged scene. I found Arlt’s style of writing to be very compelling as it really enabled me to engage with the plot and empathize with Silvio.

My Question is what is Arlt’s purpose of inserting italicized expressions of Silvio’s thoughts when readers already reading from his perspective?

Swanns Way

3 Replies

After reading the first page of this book, I realized that this work is very different from all the other books I have read before. Confusion is my first impression that I had regarding this book. I noticed that I would zone out and get lost as I read, and initially it would be slightly difficult to grasp what Proust was trying to express in this work. The most notable aspect of Proust’s writing style is that the sentences tend to be very long and descriptive. Each sentence is packed with various specific details, and some of them may seem to be never-ending. The thoughts expressed in brackets as well as the dashed sentences made the paragraphs sometimes exhausting to read. For me, this style of writing constituted the difficulty I found in reading this work, especially as I have rarely encountered works with such abundance of details. Additionally, the introduction of the different characters in the first part made it had to follow along.

Despite this difficulty and confusion with the content of this book, I still found it very interesting how the author uses his memory of eating a madeleine to connect memories from his childhood. The visual and gustatory imagery used to depict the author’s action of eating a madeleine was extremely vivid to me as a reader. Additionally, I found it fascinating how the author was able to deepen his thoughts with each sip of tea that was taken. Being able to use the illustrations of such a casual action, of simply taking a bite out of a madeleine and drinking tea, as a device to evoke the entire story is what makes this book to be distinct.

Although the detailed illustrative style employed throughout the book made it slightly difficult to follow along the plot, they did allow for me to engage with these visual aspects by being able to instantly picture the descriptions in my mind. The author’s relationship with his mother particularly stood out through the various depictions of how he yearned for her goodnight kisses as part of the childhood memories. I found it interesting how this relationship was especially portrayed in contrast with the relationship he had with his father.

My question for this week is what were your first impressions of this book, and has this changed over time?

Introduction

3 Replies

Hi everyone! My name is May, and I am a second year arts student here at UBC. I have not declared a major yet, but I do intend on majoring in international studies. I was born in Beijing, China, but I moved here to Vancouver when I was around three years old and have grown up here since then. I did go back to Beijing when I was in third grade and attended a local elementary school for two years. My parents wanted me to develop proficient reading and writing skills in mandarin as I barely knew how to read or write in mandarin prior to moving back to China. I moved back here in Vancouver in fifth grade and stayed here ever since.

I really enjoyed reading books as a child during elementary school. I particularly loved reading about fantasy stories, especially those that talked about fairies. However, I stopped reading in my spare time at one point before highschool. Now, I rarely read books in general, and only do so if reading something was required for a course. I did want to pick up this hobby that I had before, but never took the action to pick up a book. This course provides the opportunity that motivates me to engage with reading through the various selections of books available. My goal is to be able to voluntarily read books and to genuinely enjoy reading even after the end of this course.

I first encountered the idea of “romance” as a genre of music in the romantic era when I was studying for my RCM music history test. At first, I thought this genre of music would have something to do with the concept of “love”. However, I soon learned that the romantic genre of music is a form of extremely expressive music that originated in Europe. This is also the only understanding I had in general about the concept of “romance” prior to taking this course. I had no idea how this same concept is understood and unfolded in literature. After watching the lecture video, I realized that romance studies is not just about studying romance languages. I look forward to learning about and developing a more thorough understanding of what romance studies is!