Concluding Post

I can’t believe I am writing my concluding blog post, this term really flew by!
At the beginning of the course I was concerned about having to read a book a week, I did not have much faith in myself to actually do it, but I did it and I feel accomplished in having read a small collection of classics! Well done everyone we did it! 🙂

While all the books were unique and offered different stories, I did pick up on a couple of recurring themes. Most notably, memory and reflection. I would argue that all of the books that I read had an element of memory, some more notably than others, but overall, there was a comment to be made about this theme in each one of these books. Almost all of the books also offered reflections on the meaning of life, society, and death, specifically the Lispector novel and the Paris Peasant novel. These both caused slight existential crises when I read them.

My top favorite book was Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan, followed closely by the Shrouded Woman by Maria Luisa Bombal and Nada by Carmen LaForet. I liked these books because I found the narratives to be interesting and engaging, especially compared to some of the other books that felt dense and complicated. Interestingly these novels all had female narrators, which may have subconsciously biased my preferences, I’m not sure, but nevertheless, I found these books easiest to interpret and analyze, compared to several of the other texts that I was often left feeling uninspired with nothing to write about. But I always did end up finding 400-500 words to write about these books, and often after spending the time writing my blog posts I came to find an appreciation for them. I am curious to see what everyone else’s favorite book was?

Jumping back to the conversation we had at the beginning of the term about our feelings toward reading, I would say that my perspective has changed. I definitely agreed with my classmates who found reading to be stressful and a chore, but I honestly surprisingly enjoyed reading a different book every week. I think the flexibility of this course encouraged reading to become a stress-free task because it was something that I had assigned to myself. It was also great to get to read other people’s interpretations of the books.

Thank you, Jon, Jennifer, and Patricio for sharing these books with us and offering a flexible and engaging approach to studying literature!

Week 12 – Agualusa, “The Society of Reluctant Dreamers”

I liked this book, the intertwining storylines of politics, romance, and dreams made it an interesting read. While the dreaming and romantic narratives provided interesting psychological thought and emotional elements, the commentary on the political tension was my favorite element of this book.

I enjoyed that the dream narrative was not imposed upon by Freud’s psychoanalysis of dreams; it was refreshing to read about dreams without the narrative of the subconscious as the dominating discourse on the purpose of dreams. I liked the story of dreams as purposeful and symbolic; “Unfortunately, people have stopped seeing the value of dreams. We need to restore dreams to their practical vocation”, “dreams relate to our own personal emotional experience” (pg 109). It was insightful to read and made me consider the dream world as a separate reality that has ambiguous ties with our real lives. The way that Hossi appears in strangers’ dreams wearing a purple coat suggests that dreams are not just a neurological process, but a world that we all step into.

The comments made about the dictatorship and conflict in Angola were important considerations about the nature of violence and conflict in a society. These lines, “The dictatorship is growing in the shade of your silent complicity” (pg 116), “Here in Angola the honest people are in prison, and the crooks are in charge” (pg 141), “This country is divided into people who can insist on their rights and those who don’t have rights at all” (pg 144) reflect the powerful process of oppression and how inequality persists when the powerful groups in society maintain dominance and silence those who fight it. For example, Daniel’s daughter Karinguiri demonstrates the way that the government silences and punishes people who challenge the system in place. The narrator emphasizes pacifism, “All wars imprison us. That thing you call a war of liberation was the origin of the civil war” (pg 31) and “What you get through violence remains poisoned by violence” (pg 32). By condoning the violence in Angola, the story seems to work as a critique of the tense social conditions in the country after the liberation from Portuguese control. Furthermore, the line, ““Fucking whites” Gato complained. “They steal from us for five hundred years and even after they’ve fucked off, driven out by gun and blow, they’re still trying to kill us”” (pg 28) also importantly emphasizes the harmful and lasting impact of colonialism, even once it is ‘gone’, violence and conflict continues to persist.

“I tried explaining to him that we mustn’t confuse the government with the country. Criticizing mistakes made by the government wasn’t the same as insulting Angola and Angolans. On the contrary, I criticized the government’s errors because I dreamed of a better country” (pg 6). Daniel is fired as a journalist because he wants to criticize the government and the structural violence that oppresses Angolans. In this way, do you think the incorporation of dreams into this story offers an opportunity for censorship, or does it maybe offer a suggestion of utopia and dreaming of a better reality? How do you view these different storylines working together?

Week 10 – Bolano, Amulet

Another book with a stream of consciousness about memories … I am sensing a theme here.

As Auxilio hides in the university bathroom for 12 days, she reflects on different memories and experiences, transporting the reader to a different world than the reality of her sitting in the bathroom stall as the army invades the university. The line, “As if I had died and was viewing the years from an unaccustomed vantage point” (pg 32) reminded me of the Shrouded Woman and how she reflected on her life after she died. Obviously, our narrator is still alive, but as she faces uncertainty and is found by the soldiers, she is sent into survival mode. In the narrator’s case, survival mode is found in literature, the book by Pedro Garfías in particular.

The story begins by preparing us for a “horror story” (pg 1), even though “it won’t appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller (pg1). This line sets up the suspense in the book. I was prepared to read about something horrific, and while the descriptions of the soldiers coming to look for her while she was in the stalls were stressful, Auxilio lives up to her statement that this book won’t appear to be horrific. As the teller of the story, Auxilio downplays the horror, for example when she is discussing López Azcarate’s suicide, she describes the news of it as “exhilarating, as if reality were whispering in your ear: I can still do great things; I can still take you by surprise, you silly girl, you and everyone else; I can still move heaven and earth for love” (pg 19). I suppose as the “mother of Mexican poetry” (pg 1), this view is expected; finding the profound meanings behind dark realities seems poetic to me.

Time appears to be an abstract concept in this book. It took me until the end of the novel to realize that she was in the bathroom the whole time. I was shocked when I read that it was “more than fifteen days” (pg 172). It seems to be a story about the past, present, and future all at the same time, and at most points I was not sure which one of these we were in. What is not abstract however is the context. This is a book about Latin America, Mexico City in particular, and the tense political climate, which the narrator specifically references throughout, disguised by Auxilio’s reflections. She describes the “Latin American nightmare: being unable to find your weapon” (pg 67), and how “now it is rare to hear singing, where once everything was a song” (pg 13). She emphasizes the critique of Latin American political unrest in the 1960s, poignantly paying tribute to the victims of the tragic Tlatelolco massacre in 1968.

The narrator also makes reference to influential writers and figures on pages 159 – 161, making prophetic claims about them for a distant future, which I think emphasizes the immortalization of art and its influence. “Metempsychosis. Poetry shall not disappear” (pg 159). This line reflects the story’s message that literature and poetry are timeless, it exists in the past, present, and future, just in different forms.

My question for this week, is do you think the memories are real or hallucinations?

Week 8 – Perec, “W or The Memory of Childhood”

If I were to pick a word that reflects this story, I would choose “remember”. The narrator uses the word remember consistently throughout this book to introduce his certainty about a specific memory, for example: “I have a vague memory” “I don’t have a precise memory” “I do not remember” “I can hardly remember”, all of which are evident on more than one occasion. There is so much fragility and uncertainty tied to the memories he discusses, while some also holding a clear sense of familiarity. His memory is clearly a source of frustration for him as he has unreliable and fragmented memories of his family or his childhood forcing him to imagine the gaps; “whom I imagine, rather than remember” (pg 94). I get the sense that the narrator has a weak sense of identity and this lack of memory for the significant events in his life causes him stress. He has no problem recounting the “statistical details” (pg 41) of his parents, these are the facts that he can count on. But, his lack of emotional attachments to memories with his parents was sad, and unfortunately, this was likely a common reality of children growing up during the war as their important developmental and familial relationships were disrupted by violence and displacement.

The context of Nazi occupation and the second world war was important to consider as the narrator worked through his variable memories. He clearly experienced many tragic and traumatic experiences at a young age that he has now repressed, perhaps as a coping mechanism, relying on photographs, “statistical details”, and remnants of memories to form an understanding of his childhood. Given the volatility of the time, the censorship of names and true identities also adds to this confusion and uncertainty. For example, he mentions, “I could have been told that my father’s name was Andre, my mother’s Cecile and that we came from Brittany” (pg 35) reflects the way that the censorship of identity during that time would have been, and clearly was, confusing for a child. We can understand why the narrator’s blank memory is the result of trauma and while this is clearly a source of frustration for him, perhaps ignorance, in this case, is bliss? This is my question this week: Do you think that the narrator’s gaps in memory work as a form of protection and is a good thing or do you think that despite how tragic and traumatic his memories were that knowing is better than always wondering?

Going back to our first lecture in which we discussed the purpose and meanings we attach to reading, I thought the narrator’s descriptions of books as a ‘material for rumination and of a kind of certainty’ (page 142) were interesting. The narrator expresses his love for reading coming from the certainty and reliability that books offer; unlike his memory that is fragmented and abstract. He describes the comfort he finds in rereading books, knowing that the book is ‘telling a story you could follow’ (pg 142), unlike his childhood that offers no linearity or logical order of events. This perspective of reading as a form of escape and comfort is similar to the meanings that Proust attached to reading. Nevertheless, I found it interesting to read Perec’s thoughts about reading, providing a sense of comfort through the reliability of the words. However, this book offers no reliability or certainty, providing us with no conclusive account of his childhood, reflective of postmodernist literature as variable.

Week 7 – Lispector “The Passion According to GH”

This book reminded me of Paris Peasant by Louis Aragon in the way that it felt like an existential crisis and it definitely left me wondering what was going on at some points.

While I am not sure what the author’s intentions were behind this book, there appeared to be some references that had me considering this book as adding to a critique of social inequalities in Brazil. Specifically, “a city of gold and stone, Rio de Janeiro, whose inhabitants under the sun were six hundred thousand beggars” pg 109, seemed significant. The narrator, G.H. makes it evident that she is not included in this group of Brazilians, instead, she gets to leisurely ponder what it would be like to take part in low-paying jobs, such as her maid’s job. “If money and class hadn’t put me in the class I belong to, I’d normally have worked as the maid who arranges things in a large home of rich people, where there is so much to arrange” (pg 25). This line stood out to me because it reflects the privilege of those in higher social classes to only ever have to wonder what it might be like to live in the poverty that those who work for them endure. The narrator is definitely very detached from her maid, both in the sense that she simply views her job as just ‘arranging’ things, as well as not knowing anything about her maid or her living standards, assuming her room would be filthy. Many of the questions she asks herself amidst her mental breakdown reflect in itself her privilege, these questions ultimately leading her to gain a consciousness of the social construction of our world. These lines all reflect to me a sense of awakening to the absurdity of capitalism and the severe inequality and dissatisfaction that it creates:

“Life that I had tamed to make it familiar” pg 10

“Life cannot be retold. Life is not liveable” pg 12

“Because a world fully alive has the power of a Hell” pg 14

“There’s a bad taste to the disorder of living”

The narrator’s position within a higher social standing is important because she has the privilege to be able to awaken herself to the confines of living in a constraining economic system, while her maid, or the “six hundred thousand” beggars are unable to do so as they are bound by these social confines of society. The cockroach, therefore, becomes so triggering to the narrator because it is emblematic of the poverty that is pushed to the side or hidden behind all her privilege, the shield of privilege has been broken. The cockroach’s triggering death perhaps reflects a sense of her own guilt for being blind to such poverty.

There were numerous references to ‘Hell’, such as “Hell is not the torture of pain! It is the torture of a joy” pg 103. To me, these references seem suggestive of the reality of capitalism as a living hell, as it ‘tortures [of a] joy’. The author appears to gain consciousness of the unlivable and constraining realities under capitalism, describing it as hellish. What did you make of the references to both Hell, but also to God? I would love to hear how other people interpreted this confusing book!

Week 6 – Sagan “Bonjour Tristesse”

This is a coming-of-age book that deals with the complexity of love and familial problems. If I were to describe Cécile’s character I would use the word fragile. She seems to have no understanding of who she is and what she wants. One moment she is in love with Cyril, the next she views their relationship as just a series of sensations. Anne criticizes this, “your idea of love is rather primitive. Love is not a series of sensations, each one independent of the others” (pg 29). Her opinions of Anne also fluctuate between adoration and hatred, one moment she is confident that she despises her and wants her gone, the next she wants to undo all her plans to get rid of her.

I am not sure that I even liked Cecile. I can understand her mixed feelings about Anne and her father’s engagement and the frustrations she felt towards them, but once she began scheming to end their engagement, I started to lose some of my sympathy for her. Her regret for it after the fact was almost satisfying, she deserved to feel guilty and have consequences for her actions. “For the first time I realized I had hurt a living, sensitive creature, not just a personality” (pg 121) is an important reflection made by Cecile, I am glad she felt regretful about her actions. The way she treated Cyril was also unsatisfying to me, her descriptions of Cyril and their relationship made me root for him, so her inconsistent behavior towards him was frustrating. However, her disinterest in his proposal made sense to me and was an important reminder to me that she is only 16 and doesn’t know who she is and to not be too critical of her as she figures out what she wants.

I would also describe Cecile as childish, self-interested, and manipulative. These qualities, specifically her childishness, make sense given the lack of parental guidance in her life. Her father has never provided a healthy image of love or nurtured a stable environment for learning. When she begins plotting to split up her father and Anne, she revealed her manipulative intentions; “I had sized up Elsa, found her weak spot, and carefully aimed my word” (pg 71) and “I had known the intense pleasure of analyzing another person, manipulating that person toward my own ends” (pg 71). These lines and her overall selfish nature are likely the results of her chaotic and unstable upbringing.

Her relationship with her father was immediately suspicious, implicitly suggesting a father-daughter romantic relationship. As the story went on there were a couple lines that continued to suggest this that was a little bit disturbing such as: “just then my father came out of the water. He was broad and muscular and I thought he looked wonderful” (pg 78). The extent to which she works to break up Raymond and Anne also suggests an element of jealousy; jealous she is no longer the main woman in her father’s life, but perhaps also a sense of romantic jealousy, perhaps she craves what Raymond gives to Anne romantically. Her conflicting emotions about Anne are also significant; Cecile admires Anne yet also despises her, to me this suggests jealousy, but also that she craves the stability and parental support Anne could give her but doesn’t know how to receive it.

Do you think the author intends for us to like Cecile? Did you like her? And what did you make of her and her father’s relationship?

Week 5 – Laforet’s “Nada”

“Nada” has an apocalyptic, oppressive, and hungry atmosphere. Our narrator, Andrea describes her family members as “ghostly women” (pg 6), as “elongated and somber” (pg 7), as “perverse people” (pg9) and her uncle Juan’s face as a “skull” (pg 6). These characters all seem to be destroyed and hollow after the war. Even the house is described like it is a haunted house. The house is symbolic of the demolished city of Barcelona after the war and the family members living inside it represent the social and political ramifications. Within this house, Laforet does a great job at creating an atmosphere of hunger. In between narrative flow there were interjections from Andrea describing her hunger, for example when she holds Gloria who is crying after being abused by Juan, she describes wanting to eat her neck (pg 107). Andrea’s family are all starving and malnourished, reflective of Franco’s regime, which was described as ‘the hunger years’. As the story goes on, this hunger gets more desperately evident.

Given that this story finds its context in Spain, post-war, during Franco’s dictatorship, I was reading with the assumption that the author was writing under a period of censorship and inhumanity. Considering this, I was reading into how each character may serve to represent something politically significant. Andrea’s aunt Angustia’s is an authoritarian and oppressive character, perhaps she is supposed to symbolise the authoritative dictatorship that oppressed Spain. Andrea even describes feeling “oppressed, as if I were under a sky heavy with storms” (pg 16) when describing her Aunt’s strict and threatening care. Additionally, her name, Angustia, in Spanish translates to “anguish”, completely reflective of her character, and therefore also reflective of the authoritarian atmosphere of Franco Spain. Juan, Andrea’s uncle, seems to represent to me the patriarchal and violent nature of the dictatorship. Juan beats and abuses Gloria several times throughout the story and is described to be a hot-tempered and scary man. His purpose to me is to symbolise the fear of violence and brutality under Franco’s dictatorship, which is also reinforced by his name, Juan, a popular Spanish name, suggesting that his character may be representative of many Spanish men and/or Franco, during this violent and desperate time. Gloria is heavily demonized, specifically by Aunt Angustias, but also the other family members too, as an “evil serpent”(pg 81) and “the snake woman” (pg 81), for her sexual exploits. To me, her treatment from the family reflects the oppressive nature of the dictatorship that did not encourage sexual agency or liberty. Gloria is a progressive character that highlights the conservative society they find themselves in. Roman, I haven’t quite formulated an entire thought on yet, his character is more complex to me. This is my question to my classmates this week, what does Roman’s character and his suicide represent to you? Considering that I have analysed Andrea’s family and her house as representative of Spanish society, I found Roman and Juan’s feuds, within the family house, significant because they seemed to symbolise the civil war. But if anyone has any further ideas about Roman himself I would love to hear them!

While Andrea’s family members each reflect different elements of Spanish society under Franco’s dictatorship, it is important to consider the characters outside of the family and their purpose. Another name that stood out to me as holding significance was ‘Pons’, one of Andrea’s friends from university who introduces her to a “bohemian” (pg 127) group of people. Pons in Latin means ‘bridge’, which seems reflective of his character as he bridges her way out of her oppressive and impoverished family to a world of wealth and artistic freedom. Ena is definitely also a significant and complex character who represents overall to me the contrasting lifestyle of the rich under the dictatorship, but also hope, as she provides a sense of escape from poverty for Andrea. How did you view the outside relationships?

Sorry this was a long one, this book has so much to analyze!

Week 4 – Bombal

First of all, this was the kind of book I envisioned reading when I enrolled in Romance studies. To answer the question in this week’s lecture video, the characteristics of this fictitious world of Bombal stand out to me as being patriarchal and unfulfilling.

Ana-Maria, our dead narrator, reflects on the people who impacted her life and the choices she made, and what stands out to me is that the people who get the longest passages were men. Ricardo, Antonio, Luis, and Fernando, all get longer passages of retrospective interpretation than her daughters, for example, who only got a small paragraph. To me, this is indicative of the patriarchal society that forced women to find fulfillment in men since they could not have a vocation of their own; men provided a purpose for Ana-Maria, despite the frustration they each caused. Ana-Maria questions this as she reflects, “Why oh why must a woman’s nature be such that a man has always to be the pivot of her life?” (227). Each of these men caused her frustration, pain, and misery, yet their impact on and involvement in her life was evidently profound and significant. For example, she explicitly describes her hatred for Fernando and his constant affection because it was annoying, but as she introspects from the grave she realizes that she actually liked his attention; “From that moment on, in order to feel myself alive, I needed your constant suffering by my side” (page 214). This again indicates the male-dominated and male-centered life that Ana-Maria lived, men gave her a purpose in life, proclaiming for example that she needed Fernando’s attention to feel alive. I don’t get the sense that Ana-Maria’s life was fulfilling, I mainly got the sense that she spent a lot of her life frustrated by the men in her life and seeking their validation.

I also appreciated the comments the narrator made about the fragility of men’s emotions. These comments signaled a reference to the toxic masculinity that comes with patriarchal ideology; “With that curious blinking of the eyes, he always displayed as a boy when under the stress of real emotion” (176), “And he will suffer in solitude, rebellious against any reference to his affliction, against the slightest display of sympathy” (178), “And for days, for months, perhaps for years, he will go on mute and resigned, fulfilling that part of sorrow destiny has assigned to him” (178). I see these comments as empowering to women’s strength of being able to display and feel our emotions, despite the label we often receive as being too emotional, compared to the downfall of men who suffer in silence under the patriarchy to adhere to the standards of toxic masculinity.

Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this, but I found a lot of the narrator’s feelings about love to be relatable. I feel lucky to live in a time and a society where a woman’s purpose comes from far more than a man, but the way that Ana-Maria describes the infatuating feeling of being in love, the pain of heartbreak, or the frustration of men, felt relatable and made reading this novel more enjoyable for me than the past two novels. I liked this line specifically: “All men are cowards” (180).

My question for my classmates is, what do you think the impact of having a dead narrator is?

Week 3 – Aragon

In all honesty, I have no idea what happened in this story, plot-wise, but I think that was the point? Nevertheless, I found this to be a very thought-provoking read, with several lines sticking out as significant to me.

Aragon’s engagement within the surrealist movement is made apparently evident through this nonconforming novel that heavily focuses on Aragon’s conceptions of reality and society and this critical narrative about rationalism was honestly refreshing to me. Literature that reminds you of the chaos of our existence and our insignificance in the grand scheme of things is wildly comforting to me. Aragon forced me to question reality, imagination, and society and to think about thinking, and I am not mad about it because he is right; humanity is illogical and despite our attempts to fit it within the constraints of logic, there are some things that we cannot think or explain away. It was refreshing to read a book that is not trying to rationalize our world, but instead reminds me that essentially, nothing is real, which can be a comforting thought for someone who tends to overthink!

The use of personification about the mental faculties and features of our world, such as boredom on pages 128/129; imagination, will, and sense on pages 64-68; and the night on page 141, reflects the surrealist movement’s attempts to blur the lines between the illogic and the logic. While this novel was written nearly 100 years ago, I would argue it finds just as much relevance when discussing society today. For example, the line, “They do gymnastics to keep slim, but what exercises would help to put back the colour in their lives?” (pg 55) is a powerful line that highlights to me the arbitrariness we place on our everyday lives. We try to fit into society’s constructs about what is desirable, which just makes us miserable. This line serves as an important reminder to do what brings ‘colour’ to our lives. There are so many more lines that stood out to me, for example, “man has delegated his activity to the machines” (pg 118) or “in trying to free himself from matter he has become the prisoner of the properties of matter” (pg 9) because they are still relevant, if not more relevant, about our postmodern society today.

“Men pass their lives in the midst of magic precipices without even opening their eyes” (pg 177). Rationalism and reason are so engrained in our society these days and this book has reminded me that we know nothing and to question everything. In short, it has sent me into a slight existential crisis :).

I’ll end this post with my question of the week: Do you agree that this novel applies to our current society and how so?

My Thoughts on Combray (Proust)

After our conversations about our attitudes towards reading in class on Thursday, I was definitely more intentional and considerate about my reading patterns and behavior while I read Combray. In my contemplative state during my reading, I actually picked up on synchronicity between the conversations we had in class and the author’s attitudes towards reading and theatre. In this story, Marcel seems to find comfort from reality in literature and theatre, which he discusses passionately several times, unlike several of us who suggested that reading is an anxiety-inducing process sometimes. This was interesting to me since we had just discussed our own attitudes towards reading and I suppose it made me more aware and considerate of reading as an active practice that has different meanings and purposes for everyone.

The video about this reading discussed the story as a piece of reflection and recollection and prompted the question about the purpose of this style of writing. The memorial elements of this story reflect an important purpose of literature as a form of testimony. A motif of illness, death, and anxiety recurs in this story, and to me, it seems to act as an indication of the purpose of this story as a piece of testimony. The conscientiousness of death and illness to me seems to work as a reminder to the reader that while art is immortal, we are not, yet through art Proust immortalizes his experiences. Another motif that I noticed was the sky, but I wasn’t sure what to make of it, does anyone have their own interpretation of what it might represent?

The detailed descriptions of architecture seem to additionally hold significance. Proust takes care to describe windows, cathedrals, and significant buildings, things that don’t seem like important details that we would keep in our long-term memory, leading me to consider what his intentions may have been with this. To me, it seems that he is attempting to highlight our insignificance as individuals and reinforce the power of art, however, that interpretation seems to go against the individualist element of modernism that views us as important and interesting actors in society, so maybe I’m wrong.

Overall, this is the message I took away from the story; while our memories are fragmented, unreliable, and sometimes unsettling, there is comfort, reliability, and escape in art. For example, reading about Proust’s childhood attachments with his parents it is evident that this was a confusing and arguably traumatic time for him, but reading provided him with the opportunity to escape this difficult reality, and writing his own literature also worked to help him to retrospectively deal with these traumas. Overall, this reading reinforced our discussions on Thursday about the purpose of literature and reading and it was interesting to see our thoughts reflected in this story.

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