Author Archives: rhi2004

Luiselli, Faces in the Crowd

Faces in the Crowd, is the final novel I read for this course and luckily I got to end this semester on a good note. This novel was very interesting to read, to dissect, and to explore. The narrative was fractioned in a rigid fashion which keeps the reader attentive and on their toes in a new way, most novels utilize action or suspense and really crazy scenarios to capture their audiences, but the dizzying array of overlapping memories interweaving with linear events engaged me in a way I didn’t anticipate. Luiselli’s narrator lacks privacy and free time as a mother and finds documenting fragmentation is all she can commit to her storytelling. “Novels need a sustained breath . . . Everything I write is — has to be — in short bursts. I’m short of breath.” The brevity of the text I feel is essential, the narrator is a mother which is a huge sacrifice that is extremely overlooked Mothers are looked down on when they don’t have their life together when they can’t do everything and be everywhere all at once. The rapid way in which the narrator expresses herself leaves the audience room to empathize with a woman whose time, life, and body aren’t her own, her words are frantic like a person working backward to piece things together through this we see a woman writing her way to freedom. Luiselli’s text brings to life her narrator in a way that’s so fascinating, the progression of the narrator is unique to at least anything that I’ve read in that her personal sense of freedom is found in the appropriation of different identities and different lives. Faces in the Crowd is a unique, inward fiction with a multitude of dimensions that develop as Luiselli’s narrator experiences the elation of writing and a project reaching its climax. “When a person has lived alone for a long time,” she says, “the only way to confirm that they still exist is to express activities and things in an easily shared syntax.” In doing a bit of research on Luiselli as a way to help guide my blog this week I visited an essay of hers entitled “Stuttering Cities” Luiselli addresses this idea of language and the catharsis of writing “Perhaps learning to speak is realizing, little by little, that we can say nothing about anything.” I feel this notion was carried through the novel in the ways we are intended to make of the narrator’s willingness to crystallize her existence. Or through Owen’s attempts to convince others in his life that he’s happy. I feel Luiselli’s text explains that to write is freedom to speak is agency no matter the content her characters realize that the reason they write is not to find a connection with the world in which they can’t seem to belong, but to create a world in which they can. “He asks how much is fiction and how much fact,” the narrator says of her husband, defending her work every morning. His obsession — his perfect, misguided jealousy — misses the point entirely. Fiction isn’t real, of course, but it’s here because someone needed a reality that made sense.

Q: Is it necessary for fictitious narratives to maintain a construct of truth, do narrators necessarily need to be reliable?

Saramago Death with Interruptions

Money to Burn- Ricardo Piglia

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“Money to Burn” was a new genre for me I’m a bit of a scaredy cat and I’m not intrigued by the possibility of being wrapped up in a thriller, I feel I internalize the emotion of novels sometimes and so thrillers/mysteries tend to make me anxious while reading lol. I thought the plot was really enticing as uncomfortable as I may have felt in some places, which I guess is a testament to how deeply rich the detail and character impressions were. I think the style of narration was unique Piglia’s documentary like structure embraces both the aforementioned event and its perpetrators, their associates, and victims, I’m making an inference as I don’t read mystery thrillers, that this is a different take on storytelling the characters are flawed and the entire plot is messed up and violent to me it read more as an action movie than how I suspect mystery novels are usually drawn out to emphasize motive. A tense exposition introduces the audience to the “twins”, “Gaucho” Dorda described as a born criminal, “the man who had been ruined since boyhood” and Franco “Kid” Brignone, introduced as a, soulless spoiled angel. The two have a complicated relationship one that extends past friendship/partnership into an intense sexual relationship. As for the robbery itself the scene was so vividly narrated, the use of testimonies and thoughts of various witnesses, the corrupt police commissioner Silva, as well as characters such as the police wireless operator Roque Perez who’s presence though brief was crucially involved, punctuated the intensity of the crime in a very cinematic fashion. Interest is creatively articulated through the irony implicit in the thieves justification of their actions insisting that they are “honorable revolutionaries”. The novel I feel is intended to make it’s audience uncomfortable it presents a narrative where there are no good guys and I think this intentional exploration of criminality is supposed to make people think about the disturbing involvement of corruption and evil within society. The questions that arise from the novel are those uncomfortable social contemplations of morality that that the average person doesn’t like the thought of addressing. Like with Piglia’s inclusion of flashbacks used to illuminate his self-doomed protagonists’ twisted upbringings and their subsequent paths to petty crime, prison, and their violent ends, it feels as if he’s asking are villains born or made.

Q- My question this week is particularly for my peers who seemed to have personally really enjoyed the novel. I wonder from reading a few peoples post this week, if your enjoyment of the book has more to do with how well detailed the characters flaws are portrayed (kinda like when you watch a movie and the actor playing the villain does tooo good of a job that you begin to dislike the actual actor which of course says something to the skill of the actor like the broken characters in this book demonstrate the skill of the author) or did some of you actually find the characters redeeming? like some of the posts seemed excited to see a queer Bonnie and Clyde type rendition which to me seems odd because it’s not necessarily positive representation like dramatic love story dying in the arms of their lover aside, they weren’t good people.

The Hour of The Star -Clarice Lispector

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The interesting piece of this novel for me is the aspect that a female writer would intentionally tell the story of another woman through a male narrator. This choice was difficult for me to get behind because personally I didn’t appreciate the dismissive male voice that was arrogantly articulating a life and experience that wasn’t his own. However this mild annoyance I had for Rodrigo S.M kind of propelled this curiosity I had, like a need to understand why his voice was the whole novel.

A possibility I feel could be the reason for the choice is that a male voice animating a woman’s story presents foundational restrictions, there are such obvious boundaries and limitations to the narrators understanding of a woman like Macabéa. A person as ordinary as she in a world as cruel as hers, is perplexing within literature because she never stands up for herself. She isn’t an idolized protagonist and that is angering because you want so desperately for her to experience real joy not just and emulation of joy as her way of perseverance. The narrator to me sometimes feels like a stand-in or personification of hopelessness the narrator is incredibly confused by his own writing seen through the scrabbled way in which he frantically assess his own storytelling. This could be the authors way of expressing a complex of fairness within human nature. Macabéa’s life is just unfair its horrible and ugly and unfortunately the author is trying to say that’s just life. Some people just get dealt a really bad hand and this is a difficult concept for many people to understand and I think the narrator being confined by such restrictions like gender could represent this difficulty perhaps distrust in the cosmic reality, meaning of life “everything happens for a reason” ideology. Because Macabéa suffers so greatly that the pondering of “why” becomes too dense and complex to illustrate that its much simpler to describe her as too dumb, too limited to better her own life.

For this reason I feel the narrator is that emotive perspective of hopelessness because Macabéa herself is somehow in all her hardship innocent and hopeful. Like when she is told life is gonna get better she trusts that it will, if she were smart she wouldn’t be a believer she would expect the worst because that’s what life has shown her, but she isn’t “intelligent” she hears life will get better and she chooses to hold onto her optimism which is the only characteristic that makes her brave, makes her resilient.

Q: My question for this week is how everyone feels about the ending not necessarily as reader who didn’t receive a gratifying conclusion, but as a person who by reading this novel bared witness to such bitter injustice that is never amended. In her death, the theme of cruelty and injustice are solidified she’s left for dead in the gutter being passively observed and purposefully neglected by onlookers, the tragedy of it all is that she represents millions of impoverished people who are victim to their circumstance. Justice is ruined to the to the random vicissitudes of cruel fate.

The Time of the Doves – Mercè Rodoreda

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The foundational elements of the story set up tropes that are fairly common however, even though the concept of displaced lovers isn’t necessarily new, the feminine perspective and unique way in which Rodoreda illustrated Natalia’s thoughts introduced a particularly intriguing angle. Natalia’s character was rather complicated and the ways in which she articulated her thoughts in such a blunt fashion caught my attention. Her attitude really stuck out to me, and I appreciate the way in which she is presented, because she isn’t a typical heroine, her abrasive condensed style of storytelling for me contributes greatly to the severity of the text. Natalia’s portrayal of an ordinary wife and mother is essential in the way that the bitterness of war reverberates deep within her personhood. She is persistent in living a life that seems pointless and the way in which she contests her situation isn’t written as especially courageous, and this allows the tenderness and soul of the novel to feel more authentic contributing overall to the heartbreaking narrative. “Sometime I’d heard people say, “That person’s like a cork,” but I never understood what they meant. To me a cork was like a stopper. If I couldn’t get it back in the bottle after I’d opened it I’d trim it down with a knife…I was like a cork myself. Not because I was born that way but because I had to be. And to make my heart like stone. I had to be like a cork to keep going because if instead of being a cork with a heart of stone I’d been like before, made of flesh that hurts when you pinch it, I’d never have gotten across such a high, narrow, long bridge.” This passage exemplifies the mesmerizing “matter -of -fact” way in which Natalia recounts her expressions of anguish throughout the novel, the quotation also aligns with the parallel themes of trauma that exist both personally and politically in Natalia’s life. The Metaphor of a cork can be understood on a larger scale, as the effects repression and devastation has on the human spirit while also on a more intimate level the dwindling cork can be representative of the toll that Natalia’s abusive, controlling relationship had on her identity, almost as if she was shaving down pieces of herself to fit into someone else’s life. Another interesting stylized writing choice that I felt brought the character to life also ushers in my question for this week. I noticed Rodoreda utilizes “And” as a way to construct Natalia’s dizzying character she often begins sentence after sentence with “And” which adds a breathless quality to the narration, due to the fact this is a story told in past tense I feel the “and” motif signifies that in the midst of Natalia’s retelling of events she is confronted by copious amounts of unresolved anxiety from the war. Q: Did you find Rodoreda’s artistic styles helpful in the ways that her characters were brought to life, or did the choices make the writing feel inaccessible?

Arguedas’s Deep Rivers

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Arguedas’s portays Peru in this time, as a country immersed in a new pardigram, one of modernization and turmoil in order to articulate these changing times Arguedas frames the narrative through the eyes of a young boy named, Ernesto. The narrative concentrates on the boys life that has been structured between a soico-political dichotomy, he demonstrates the countries turmoil and opposing conflictions. As his unique identity is tested and pulled in polar directions. Ernesto was raised by an Indegenious community and is suddenly cut off from his familial ties and thrown into a religious institution Ernesto regects the white society that he biologically is apart of as he strongly identified with the indigenous culture he was uprooted from. The intensity with which Arguedas portrayed the indigenous and bicultural people in Deep Rivers is unique as he creates this mood within his writing that portrays the experiences of bicultural and indigenous people as a tragic sense of life one that is beautiful and yet undermined by sorrow. Arguedas’s literature rivals, popular thought that is pushed by white colonial societies, as he views the indigenous Andean culture as one that is not a static reality; instead be believes the culture holds advocation for ideas of change and how these possibilities for change interact with a complicated relationship to tradition and modernity. These themes are echoed within Ernesto as he tries to define his own identity he feels the cultural divides with such intensity and anguish as he is caught between the life he longs to return to and the life in which he actually lives. Ernesto’s subjective experiences help illustrate Arguedas’s respectful interpretations of native culture and spirituality, as when Ernesto is seeking comfort he is drawn in by Quechua music played in the town’s native quarter or when he visits the Pachachaca River, Arguedas describes these encounters as sincere love within spiritual values. Music and nature not only function as insight into other cultures but also as thematic devices that propel the notion of complexity and the binds between dividence. Seen through the moment in which Ernesto wonders if the calandra larks song, can be composed of the same matter that he is constructed of, and if it were possible that the lark comes from the same broken world of human beings that he has been thrown into. These passages articulate the deep alienation a bicultural or indigenous Andean person might feel in these rapid transitional times.

Q: How do you feel about the ending of the novel being that it is one that is ambiguous one that stops at the point of change, when a new stage is about to begin in the character’s evolution and growth? Do you feel the material is too complicated to expand far enough where there can be a complete ending as the complexities of race through a bicultural lense will always envoke debate and the nature of the topic will have to navigate through new conversation/understandings of race, privilege and intersectionality.

Maria Luisa Bombal “Shrouded Woman”

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The Shrouded Woman is a unique exponent of the avant-garde movement, a movement in which avant-garde artists promoted their progressive and radical politics whilst advocating for societal reform with and through their works of art. Bombal’s novel is framed as an exploration of life and death that also sets the stage for her socio-political statement. Bombal’s “shrouded woman” condems of the subjugation and enforced subordination of Latin American women. The novel suggests that a woman’s codependence on love deprives them of the right to structure their lives in completely independent manner. Ana María is written as someone constrained to the idea of love as to be in love or to be loved, and, very symbolically, she realizes in death that the construct of love she had built her life around was a deception created by a society and culture where women are supposed to be sentimental, passive, with their personal value dependent on their capacity to love and the ability to give themselves up in order to wholeheartedly love. The novel makes a clear distinction between love as a higher power that motivates human beings and spiritually guides and grounds an individual, and love as a social activity that reinforces the primary roles of men and women in a patriarchal society. As the novel concludes, after Ana María has returned to the ancestral realm of the earth, she reflects on her life discovering that while she was alive it was if she had been living life as if she were a dead person, because she was a woman her life was policed by her society, restricting her free will. The motif of love/lovers exemplifies this idea, the male characters Ricardo, Antonio, and Fernando represents three distinct stages that mark the progressive deconstruction of Ana María’s character as she is slowly chipped away at by societal expectations of conformism. With Ricardo Ana María initially rejects societal expectation to uphold her virginity however once she becomes pregnant, she is described as intimately united to Matter her pregnancy connects her deeply to the natural. When Ricardo’s abandons her and after her miscarriage this natural bond with nature is disrupted. In response Ana María encloses herself in her room and passively accepts Antonio’s marriage proposal. Married life proves unfulfilling and Ana María feels empty as her marriage is purely based off of exception and the desire to keep up with appearances. Ana María withdraws and becomes narrow minded and petty with this begins her courtship with Fernando an act that gratifies her vanity Ana María’s trajectory is defined by her relations to men unveiling the tragedy of it all as her freedom and independent personhood is situated in death.

Q: Do you believe that Ana María was ever in love at one point in the novel or was she always in pursuit of maintaining social respectability politics?

Andre Breton “Nadja”

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The most pertinent theme of Nadja is the idea of self the philosophy of the person and the mind, this theme takes up an overwhelming part of the intro to the text. Which can cause the text to feel difficult to fall into as the preface is rather complex, as the narration ponders a series of philosophies it is initially hard to grasp the objectives Breton aims to address. He speaks to the question of “who we are?” , of potential purpose, with the idea that people are haunted by their true selves which is what we as people long to become but are not yet made aware of. The eerie concept of “haunting” propels another theme situated in the contemplation of what is reality and what is truth. Andre asks the question is reality relative as in who decides what is real and what is fiction. For example in the instance of Nadja she believed most things others did not, this of course is what initially draws Andre to her side, yet this “quirk” of hers is also what admits her into institutionalized care. When the narrative concludes Andre explains why he chose to write on his relationship with Nadja the constant reminiscing of her causes him to think all that happened didn’t exactly happen. By pushing her away Andre looks back with regret wishing he had spent more time with her, he offers that her reality was in fact also a reality, perhaps one that parallels the normal rather than one that is explicitly alternative to the truth. Then finally the pondering of truth breaks into a discussion of sanity, Andre spends a lot of time with Nadja in the formative moments of their relationship Andre feels as though being with Nadja has made him discover more of himself and what the world may really be like through Nadja’s perspective. A good example of this is the scene in which Nadja points out a black window she claims the window will turn red as Andre watches he confirms the window does indeed turn red however when he returns to this moment through memory he can’t recall if the window actually did turn red. With this Andre begins to wonder if Nadja’s insanity has taken over his rationality as well or perhaps everyone else has gone mad as to not have seen the window turn red. Each proposed themes are common within the dissections of surrealist works which I think made the novel feel grounded within the movement rather that what I presumed to be a comment on a movement demonstrating a certain displacement.

Marcel Proust, “Combray”

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My impressions of Marcel Proust’s, “Combray” were that the novel was overall intriguing, and I felt fairly engaged with the material. The use of imagery was very well articulated and even though the images created were set in dated time and caste, their presence still felt familiar. The story glides through time in and out of dream sets and nostalgia which make the text interesting. However as some of my peers have pointed I can agree that how the phases of memories are laid out, make cataloging the chronological order very difficult. Sometimes the text feels like it becomes so lost in its reminiscing that it’s hard to tell where exactly the character stands in time. I think the novel effectively pulled on certain aspects of life and childhood that can be sympathized universally, to create a narrative that can be understood by most even though the author is describing what seems to be a very wealthy family. Tales of wealth can sometimes make a novel feel like the narrative is distant and out of reach of the reader, and I presumed the family is wealthy due to the “help” that is employed, and the brief discussion of class separation between the mother, her son and the housekeeper Francois. However in the time the book was written perhaps, the family is just middle class and not necessarily fabulously wealthy, but readers of today would view the family as privileged because employed “help” is usually reserved for the rich, so then again this brings up a separation in time between the reader and the contents of this novel. This is why I enjoyed how the author writes from the perspective of a young boy who for the majority of the exposition is afraid to go to bed alone without his mother. The description of this unsettling discomfort the boy feels knowing he must try to face sleep/insomnia without his mother near, is frustrating for a reader because that separation feels all too familiar. His anxieties can be sympathized with because they aren’t stagnant in a certain period or present only in specific social classes he is simply a young boy who’s become dependent on a routine and special goodnight rituals between him and his mother. The boy is anxious and his character directly mirrors his Aunt Léonie a described hypochondriac who is grief-stricken and not willing to continue moving forward with life after the death of her husband. Both the Aunt and the little boy present the theme of growing up and accepting change and how that is a concept that is neverending. The boy although he cannot see this in the moment, will eventually get used to sleeping without his mother’s goodnight kisses but then as life goes on he may find himself in a situation similar to his Aunt who would rather not continue to live, without someone instead of adapting to her new circumstances and finding a way through the anxiety and moments of separation.

Introduction

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Hi, I’m Rhiannon Bellerose second-year student here at ubc. Currently, as of this semester, I am changing my specialty from GRSJ to visual arts. I chose this course to fulfill my literature requirements and I chose to take rmst rather than traditional English literature courses because I have a background in both Spanish and Italian language studies so I thought it would be interesting. I think this course will expand upon the knowledge I gained from previous language courses, by situating a space where one can understand more about these unique cultures through storytelling. I am a so-so reader I feel university doesn’t allow for enough time for one to really sit with and appreciate a body of work with a new book every week I doubt that anyone is actually reading where all just skimming to say we got it done but the material was never thoroughly consumed. So I do enjoy reading when there is no pressure and I find the topic interesting. To me what makes a good book or good reading is there is something given at the end of the book. Perhaps a lesson, a feeling, a perspective, or a thought is left for the readers to not simply interpret but to genuinely understand an effective reading has left a reader with something to ponder. I don’t enjoy the novels required by university courses the stories never really seem to make clear a stance, it’s as if the readings are meant to be confusing which I feel adds to a discussion of accessibility I had an English prof last semester explain how universities where established as inaccessible like something only the best of the best could partake in and, still to this day there are elements of schooling that almost feel like their purpose is to be difficult like some of these “great” novels aren’t trying to say anything real in particular it is like they were created, like an entry test who can figure this out and who simply can’t. So I am on the fence about reading these days, there never feels like time to leisurely read during the year, and throughout the year I feel weighed down by all of the word puzzles that prof’s wanna call classic novels, so when breaks arise the last thing I want to do is read. I hope this course is different, I think even if the books end up being more of the same I still feel there is value in the exposure of authors that mainstream literature, more often than not leaves out.