By the by...homework assigned Monday and due Wednesday is pure malicious evility. (Yes, evility.) That alone may condemn both these class readings to the spot of pavement over which passes a large, heavy, unmerciful bus.
"Dubliners" by James Joyce
"An Encounter"
As the prof has requested that we focus in on place, I'll try. I confess, though, I'm not as big of a description person as I used to be. There are still some authors/genres where I can read pages of intricate detail and love it; but in general, give me the basic idea, let my mind do the rest, and get on with the stupid plot already.
That said, Joe Dillon's back garden, where the narrator played Wild West with the other boys gives a sense of freedom, of adventure. This seems to be the narrator's chief escape, and it suffices...for a time. Then, "true" adventure calls. The faraway takes on a romantic quality. If I could just get there, I'd have a real, exciting adventure. School or adventure? Need the question be posed?
But throughout the journey, out on the open water, open streets, the time and money to stop and buy snacks as they wished, I was a little underwhelmed by the boys' adventure. The shift from the usual sights to the open "unknown" seemed to be a setup for the reader to feel the freedom, independence, and novelty of it all that one might expect the boys to feel as well. But it just fell flat for me. I'm not sure if I didn't get enough contrast between settings 1 and 2 or just didn't catch on all that well.
Then the old man stepped in and spoiled that (kind of there) sense of freedom and comfort, perhaps because he was both crazy and an adult. There went the authority-less day. For me, it created unease in the boys and the reader, which I suppose was the intent. The old man was the ancient, cracked chewing gum some unwatched child had stuck on an masterpiece of an oil painting of an open field. There was a bit of suspense, not knowing where the story would go next.
It built up all sorts of expectations for me and then just stopped. What's with that? Sure, I suppose we saw a miniature nod toward friendship and separating-the-men-from-the-boys and be-careful-what-you-wish-for, but come on. That's it? That's how you're going to end it? All that lead up with the crazy old man, and it goes nowhere. Not that everything has to have some amazing fantastical end, but a little more conclusion/closure would have been nice. (They never even made it to the all-important Pigeon house!) Seeing the story drop out there made me feel like it had wasted my time, and you're never too inclined to look farther for signs of merit once that's happened.
"Araby"
Since I spent forever on that first section, the speedy version.
- musty, littered (feels downtrodden *readstalkerish*) priest's former apartment where our enchanted lad (semi-stalker) watches for his lovely lady: made me think that, like the kid, maybe there was something good in it, maybe it was just a waste of space/time
- this kid, muttering and crying to his love on a rainy night by a broken pane...reminded me "Don Quixote" (which I'm presently reading in another class). His obsession with a girl he hardly knows/speaks to combined with his melodramatic moments/speech and stalkerish habits? Gee, no wonder I never sympathized with him.
- dark, mostly closed up, depressing bazaar...waste of the kid's time and effort, a fruitless journey...No wonder I came out of this feeling the same. Waste. Yeah, kid, be ashamed...and get over it.
Micro Fiction by Jerome Stern
I appreciate the difficulty of writing a fully developed story/plot within the constraints of this genre...but some non-endings work better than others for me. (Again, short version...in keeping with the brief tradition of the pieces in question.)
- Wrong Channel: limited environment details, but effect...well, it's obviously making Barbarita nervous. Significant. (Seriously, though, the doctors aren't a little more suspicious about important terms possibly lost in translation?)
- Mockingbird: First, may Peter die. Betting good money the prof loved the color refs. Some of the descriptive language, particularly in metaphor, was interesting ("island of silence bobs to the surface" p. 43). Was a little too vague and abstract at the end to work as a non-ending for me.
- Land's End: An amazing amount of description for such a short piece. And the way everything is described, as someone else's or used by someone else, builds on the idea of not belonging, of being a stranger. (Can kind of relate to that one, so we'll let this escape the book burning. 'Nother Don Quixote ref...)
- Waiting: A ragged, broken down environment for a ragged, broken down woman. Interesting. The job (and parent) strike me as a snare in which the the sub is caught...a very tight snare, upping the pressure more and more til she snaps.
"Dubliners" by James Joyce
"An Encounter"
As the prof has requested that we focus in on place, I'll try. I confess, though, I'm not as big of a description person as I used to be. There are still some authors/genres where I can read pages of intricate detail and love it; but in general, give me the basic idea, let my mind do the rest, and get on with the stupid plot already.
That said, Joe Dillon's back garden, where the narrator played Wild West with the other boys gives a sense of freedom, of adventure. This seems to be the narrator's chief escape, and it suffices...for a time. Then, "true" adventure calls. The faraway takes on a romantic quality. If I could just get there, I'd have a real, exciting adventure. School or adventure? Need the question be posed?
But throughout the journey, out on the open water, open streets, the time and money to stop and buy snacks as they wished, I was a little underwhelmed by the boys' adventure. The shift from the usual sights to the open "unknown" seemed to be a setup for the reader to feel the freedom, independence, and novelty of it all that one might expect the boys to feel as well. But it just fell flat for me. I'm not sure if I didn't get enough contrast between settings 1 and 2 or just didn't catch on all that well.
Then the old man stepped in and spoiled that (kind of there) sense of freedom and comfort, perhaps because he was both crazy and an adult. There went the authority-less day. For me, it created unease in the boys and the reader, which I suppose was the intent. The old man was the ancient, cracked chewing gum some unwatched child had stuck on an masterpiece of an oil painting of an open field. There was a bit of suspense, not knowing where the story would go next.
It built up all sorts of expectations for me and then just stopped. What's with that? Sure, I suppose we saw a miniature nod toward friendship and separating-the-men-from-the-boys and be-careful-what-you-wish-for, but come on. That's it? That's how you're going to end it? All that lead up with the crazy old man, and it goes nowhere. Not that everything has to have some amazing fantastical end, but a little more conclusion/closure would have been nice. (They never even made it to the all-important Pigeon house!) Seeing the story drop out there made me feel like it had wasted my time, and you're never too inclined to look farther for signs of merit once that's happened.
"Araby"
Since I spent forever on that first section, the speedy version.
- musty, littered (feels downtrodden *readstalkerish*) priest's former apartment where our enchanted lad (semi-stalker) watches for his lovely lady: made me think that, like the kid, maybe there was something good in it, maybe it was just a waste of space/time
- this kid, muttering and crying to his love on a rainy night by a broken pane...reminded me "Don Quixote" (which I'm presently reading in another class). His obsession with a girl he hardly knows/speaks to combined with his melodramatic moments/speech and stalkerish habits? Gee, no wonder I never sympathized with him.
- dark, mostly closed up, depressing bazaar...waste of the kid's time and effort, a fruitless journey...No wonder I came out of this feeling the same. Waste. Yeah, kid, be ashamed...and get over it.
Micro Fiction by Jerome Stern
I appreciate the difficulty of writing a fully developed story/plot within the constraints of this genre...but some non-endings work better than others for me. (Again, short version...in keeping with the brief tradition of the pieces in question.)
- Wrong Channel: limited environment details, but effect...well, it's obviously making Barbarita nervous. Significant. (Seriously, though, the doctors aren't a little more suspicious about important terms possibly lost in translation?)
- Mockingbird: First, may Peter die. Betting good money the prof loved the color refs. Some of the descriptive language, particularly in metaphor, was interesting ("island of silence bobs to the surface" p. 43). Was a little too vague and abstract at the end to work as a non-ending for me.
- Land's End: An amazing amount of description for such a short piece. And the way everything is described, as someone else's or used by someone else, builds on the idea of not belonging, of being a stranger. (Can kind of relate to that one, so we'll let this escape the book burning. 'Nother Don Quixote ref...)
- Waiting: A ragged, broken down environment for a ragged, broken down woman. Interesting. The job (and parent) strike me as a snare in which the the sub is caught...a very tight snare, upping the pressure more and more til she snaps.
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