Let my books be then the eloquence

So class is winding down…and I still feel overwhelmed by all the work I have to do.  This class has taught me a new meaning for the word “overwhelmed”.  I have found myself consistently having a ton of homework to do for this Honors class, yet I also have found a new depth by which to dig to accomplish the work.  Especially with all these papers due, I have to keep up to date with which one is which and so on.  Yet, this seems to have taught me an important lesson about time management.  I am thankful for that. 

The discussions in class have been a true surprise. I love discussing, and the discussions about the books have been eventful and entertaining.  Yet, they have also shown me the importance of difference of opinion.  What I said in class about the books were ideas that I had already had in my head.  I knew those ideas, but without having the forum to voice them, they were useless.  By hearing other opinions, I was given the opportunity to change my opinion or solidify it against the opposition. I truly enjoyed that aspect of class.

I have to admit that blogging is something that I will not continue after this assignment, or at least not regularly.  This assignment was always placed last in the order of things to do and therefore the quality has suffered.  I recognize that the point of this assignment was just to get us to write.  It has succeeded insomuch that I no longer dread writing about anything in this blog space.  This makes it easier to transpose ideas into words.  However, this blog is a pain because I always end up writing at 3 in the morning instead of during any normal hour. 

Paper number three has been one of joy for me.  Finally a type of paper that I can write confidently. My paper is rather long but I think that it is the first paper that I have written for this class that I feel confident on in the first draft.  It needs a lot of small work, lots of grammar and spelling corrections, yet over all the point of the paper is clear.  Paper two remains to be a problem as it was quite unclear that it needed to have a consistent thesis.  As such I now have to revamp the entire paper.  This will take a long time, since there is no consistent theme and no common thread in the paper.  Wow, I am not looking forward to that. Paper one is alright. Yes, even after the half dozen revisions, it is only alright.  But oh well….

The class has been fun, but it ain’t over yet so….Until Monday….

While sitting in class today, I came across the great realization that I was to be the note taker. So as I sat and jotted notes on everyone else’s stories I began to see a lot of similarities between the different works. Almost all of us did actual stories, of one sort or another, based in a logical pattern.  This is different from another other type of paper that we have really done in this class. Look at the literary culture of this class compared to the oral culture we attempted to develop for this assignment. The segmented essay is not a story but rather a giant group of little moments.  The third paper is also not a work of fiction, a story, but rather a thesis and similarity based paper. These are compilations of thoughts, large groupings with similar ties.  Although this assignment was short, it quickly became focused. No one really switched topics halfway through their piece.  This may be because the short nature of the assignment or the difficult present in switching topics, either option is possible.  We normally switch topics often and without forewarning in our oral culture.  Perhaps this wasn’t as true in actual oral culture.  When we talk to friends, we never stick to one topic. If gossip is truly our version of the oral culture, then sudden this oral work of unwritten texts parallels our gossip and our changing of subjects?  And the most common grouping inside our class for stories was various retellings of Ovid and other classical stories. We took a subject we knew fairly well, Ovid’s stories, and expanded on them. Interesting enough, Ovid’s works are purely literary and our work was to be purely oral. Yet we took a literary work and developed into an oral one. I wonder what mister Ong would say about that one.

And so it continued with most of the stories, based in someway off of a literary item or including words that were evidently not of an oral culture (which I recognize as not being specified in the assignment and therefore acceptable). A few, surprisingly few, chose to do unrelated stories, pertaining neither to literary culture nor Ovid at all. These must have been more difficult to memorize as they don’t relate to something that we have been actively talking about. Yet perhaps they may be easier because they are not constricted by any sort of boundaries. I know my piece was very difficult to start to memorize, but as the first idea flew out, the rest logically followed.  Such I think is the way an oral culture is supposed to operate.  One idea followed by another, not such a long pause as is often adopted in written.  As I write these words down I know that if I stop for a little bit, I could always pick it up soon, because the words are just bobbing on this computer screen.  Yet in this exercise I knew that stopping meant losing all progress.  And what seemed even more important to me, I believe that I had an important story to tell, if I stopped and forgot it, it would be lost forever.  Perhaps it is something only experienced by certain individuals, writers and musicians and artists, but there is nothing more frustrating than knowing that you once had a great thing, great material, but lost it, forgot it forever.  That is the true power of an oral culture, if it really is that important, it will continue to survive.

Ong is painful reading. Yet, I like it.  Here is a book that hits on a subject that others just ignore.  It seems like he takes one of those questions that little kids always ask, that have no answer, and set about to answer it.  It is written formally, in much the same way as a research paper.  This requires slow reading, because if you speed through it, you will lose the point.  I bet you I could read this book four times and still not fully understand it.  It is back with important nuances that are difficult for a literate person to fully wrap their head around.  Yet, when you understand the concept, the little things become clearer. I think that I understand it more because of some of my background in theatre.  Speaking is so vital to theatre.  Many theatre exercises are purely vocal and many include things that speak directly to the oral culture.  This is very important and is distinctly different than other specific theatre work, such as off of a script, which is literary. Yet I am obviously part of a literary culture.  Perhaps the important distinction is to have an open mind and a different reading style when attacking this book.  I learned to think twice when reading Lolita and have continued to fight throughout this class to maintain an open mind.  Yes this is slow, and boring, and I have to fight to skim.  But if I read and truly understand, I think I can get something really good out of this book.

I am excited to perform this unwritten text. I think I have it down. It was difficult. I noticed several things about it.  Poetry suffers in an oral test. The type of poetry we are used to is hard to compose and remember when it exists only in your head. I think we will find that most people will have different stories for their “text”.  Oral recital circumstances lead to such stories and away from the abstract.  Interesting……

I am excited to point out that necessary bloggage is soon going to come to an end.  This is a good thing, which I am very excited about. I like writing like this, in an informal setting.  Yet forced writing has caused me to write much which is worthless. I would prefer to write better material not more.  Although it is true that writing is better with practice, not only with better material. So, perhaps this has helped me more than I know.

Sorry that I was not present in class today…I was sickly.  How sickly you may ask? Sickly enough is the answer.  Stomach Flu is no fun for anyone. Yes, that rhymed.

Alright, now for some things I am thinking about. 

Having an awful time remembering all the stuff I’m suppose to remember for the memorized text.  That is a real difficult assignment.  I didn’t think it would be, what with my theatre background and such, but boy was I wrong.  Something with not having it written down first made it much more difficult. And the fact that they are my words doesn’t help.  In fact it hinders because I have a lot of crazy words floating around in my head. Trying to remember a specific set of them is really difficult.

Having a great time drawing connections between Lolita in
Tehran and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Both are good texts with talk about completely different storylines.  Yet, each brings together separate stories to function as a whole.  Both authors are professional literary magicians with the ability to withdraw threads of linkage from singularly different stories.  I love the way that love and betrayal and other such basic human emotions are so clearly and similarly conveyed in both novels, despite the differences in time and place.

Having a dreadful time with that thing called Iliad.  I got a message from the library which said and I quote, “No copy has been found, search exhausted”.  I would like to politely point out that I just don’t care if the search engine is exhausted, but find my books please.  Because wasn’t it you, little Mr. Search Engine, who told me originally that there were 18 available copies of this book?  Oh well, on to a new book, again.

In conclusion….I’m going to bed.

P.S.-this was originally posted on Friday at about 11:30 p.m. However, due to technical difficulties, it did not appear. At all. Nope, just wasn't there. So needless to say, I'm angry, and here it is again. Thank you.  Please count this for last week, not for the upcoming week.

Reading Lolita in Tehran brought many more questions to the table than answers. When leading our in class discussion, my group had prepared several important questions to jump-start the discussion. What was most impressive was that no matter what our questions truly were, you give people enough time to talk and they always return to what really bothered them about the story. Or fascinated them. But I could ask a question about the magician and we were going to end up with a talk about the strength of the regime and the futility of revolution. I have several of the questions from the discussion with me, which I am going to ask and answer with my personal outlook on the topic.

Did you think that the book ended the way it should have?
Yes and no. The story is one that is expressively human. A (mostly) true story that shows the reader an intricate look at the inside of Iranian tyranny, no true story has a real strong ending. This is because everyone’s life story goes on way beyond the mere text of the book. This is unlike a work of fiction where the character lives and dies in the pages of the novel. However, the ending seemed abrupt, especially insomuch as many ends were left undiscovered. The epilogue seems tacked on in the end to provide some closure, yet not much of the connection between the text and the epilogue is hinted at.

What is the impact of the changing between the literary sections? Does her story-telling change between the books?

The changing of the literary sections can be interpreted in one of two ways: superfluous to the point of excess of divisions in the text, or important in the style of her writing. It occasionally feels in the writing that Nafisi has weak transitions, yet it is important to recognize that this is a true story. Not all stories have smooth transitions. The story could have been writing without any divisions thus creating a much smoother flow to the text. Yet an idea, one which I had mentioned in my reading group and one that I firmly believe in, is that Nafisi wrote each section in the style of the author she mentions. Therefore in the Nabokov section she wrote with more detail and a hidden subplot. The main disagreement with this theory is that some sections are named for authors (i.e. Austen, James), two are named for books: Lolita, and Gatsby. What is the difference and what is the significance of that difference?

How effective was the resistance? Why didn’t the women more effectively organize?

Resistance is only effective if you are alive to resist. The Iranian government showed early that they had no problem with the execution of their own people. People who protested and complained were made to disappear. It is important to recognize that the women were not the only ones resisting, yet survival was a higher priority for most. I got the feeling from the text of an ideology much different from that present in Europe and the Americas. While we would have believed in the general right of the majority of people to overthrow an oppressive government, the people of Iran had seen many bad governments. They appear to believe that governments like the regime in Iran will come and go. Yet, they do protest in small ways. Backtalk, defense of intellectual freedom, the painting of nails are all quiet signs of protests. The belief among many was that if one stands to lead actual protest, there would be no common support. Yet it feels that many of the women in this society do not actively pursue change in their government. I recognize that no Islamic particularly liked the new rule regarding the veils. Why did the women not organize? You can’t kill every woman. Not only is it not practical, it is beyond the scope of the evil present in the regime. Instead of an idea of unity, it seems the women, at least the women of intellect and school, gave themselves only one choice: escape. While some escaped the country, others escaped through literature. This is not acceptable to me. While some may construe this as a purely masculine attempt to solve the situation, I believe that it is the only viable solution to keep governments from overstepping their boundary. Without outside assistance, who will stop the torture? If the people don’t take responsibility for their government, who will?

While reading Lolita in
Tehran, I began to understand how even the most specific of stories can be immensely complex.  With an original storyline of comparing her experiences with literature to the current events in
Iran, there is much to cover. There are several important things I realized about the book, that my group and I discussed during our reading group.   I don’t think this book ended the way we expected it to. I wished that it would have ended happier, but obviously that is not possible.  It almost seems like she added the epilogue as an afterthought. It seems like she realized at the end that not all things have a good ending, especially things that relate to real life.  She admits that things are better, but still not good. I don’t know what to make of her book.  On one side I like it a lot. The politics and the personal story are fascinating but also educational. Yet, it seems to lack a certain sense of consistency.  It seems at times that she started to write the book with one idea in mind and changed the plan half-way through. She starts with the reading group and all that they discover.  The connections between Nabokov’s writing and
Iran’s political turmoil seem very strong and concisely explained. As the book continues, the internal literature of the classics seems to be examined less and the outer world seems to be examined more.  It seems like she has two different concepts: one of the effects of the literature in analysis of their situation or the use of literature in the day to day life as an escape from their situation.  A theory I developed is that perhaps Nafisi (consciously or unconsciously) wrote in the style of the author which each section was discussing.  This means that she wrote with Nabokov’s detail and length during his section and so on.  While I am not thoroughly enough read of the classics to fully prove this argument, it certainly seems like she changes her style for each section of text she writes.  Interesting thought….

Time for a quick update on all things Honor’s Comp-ish. Well, the Monday assignment was very interesting.  By comparing three different translations, all modern, including Mandelbaum, I found that there are very different translations between them.  I found this to be unique, especially since these translations were all written in the same time period and relative culture.  Yet, one was very poetic and one was very much a story, and Mandelbaum was very much Mandelbaum. The second assignment was much more interesting. I find art, especially paintings, to be fascinating and beautiful. I loved looking at the difference between the two paintings.  The sense of longing and desire is such an important part of this story, yet I can barely imagine how hard it would be to create that image in such a still life picture.  Yet, these two artists and many others have done it so well.  The pictures were both fascinating and beautiful.  I wonder only how much the artists looked at the work of previous artists.  I doubt there was much of that as they probably didn’t have such resources to inspect other works.  But I bet there was some talk, some conversation about such a well-known work as this.  Interesting thought….

More politics talk….

Hold on to your hats….

Our President has recently extended a plan to trade nuclear technology with
India. 
India is the world’s biggest democracy and our outdated Cold-War theory seems to have dominated our government as of late.  The belief that such secrets could demand complete support from
India may be very well laughable.  However, I have the utmost support for the
United States’s goal of creating allies.  India is a country that needs the
United States and I think working with them is very laudable. Yet, what about
Pakistan? A mostly Muslim country, Pakistan’s nuclear program runs in constant competition with
India’s.  Yet, when approached, the United States denied the possibility of working with
Pakistan over nuclear technology.  Is this due to their government, their religion, or their policies, or our’s? If we don’t help them, will they turn to
China? Should we be worried about China in much the same way we dealt with the former
Soviet Union? I get the feeling that this encounter is the first move in a giant chess game…I wish I had more information…I guess the more to this story is every move has a consequence.  This story seems to create more questions than answers.

The current state of voting in
America is abysmal. As the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest democracy, why is it that India’s population was bigger, ancient Athens’s was more representative, and
Iraq had a larger voter turnout?  What is it about our current culture that allows us to take for granted our greatest right?  Students become apathetic as they begin to recognize that the older generation is locked in their opinions and in their votes.  Instead of making our votes less important, it makes our vote that much more important!  We are the ones who are still thinking, still deciding.  We must not be apathetic but rather enthusiastic! Where do all candidates stop while campaigning for a position?  Colleges, Universities, Campuses. Why? Because this is the swing vote.  The youth will always be the swing vote, so long as they care enough to vote.  But in the last several years, youth voting has been lower; in fact, the whole percentage of the population that votes is not representative of the population as a whole. And yet, dissent against our leaders and our president are at an all-time high.  Besides the obvious statement that if you didn’t vote, you don’t get the right to complain, there are other things to consider. Never has our country been more divided than it is right now.  You have the people who voted for each of the major parties, the people who voted third party with a hope that this would be the year wherein they would have a chance.  Then you have this large group, this significant minority, who decided that it wasn’t in their best interest to vote.  Who didn’t vote? Who thinks that this isn’t important? The students, the youth, the poor, the minorities, the list goes on.  But I can guarantee you who did vote: the rich old white man.  And when this president got elected, that vote showed.  The students suffered through misguided government attempts to form universal schooling standards instead of strong individual focus for both those above and below their grade level in intellect.  The youth suffered as another war was declared and the poor suffered as domestic reform was ignored.  The minorities suffered as new law is looked upon to close our borders, the borders to the world’s greatest nation of immigrants. But the old white men vote was present loud and clear, as we began a desperate search for cheap fuel and business maintains closer ties to the government than ever before. And don’t think that it is just with this government that we have grievances.  The past government made many, many mistakes.  Often forsaking our role as peacekeeper and humanitarian leader, the past government had isolated us from many former allies.  Such action allowed many of our current troubles to spawn, especially in the rise of terrorism.  But it is the vote that put these men into office.  Unfortunately for the hundreds of different opinions in this country, our form of democracy currently allows only two major parties with the chance of winning.  But as I watch debates, as I investigate the issues, I find myself confronted by two candidates with a majority of the same views, whose biggest claim to difference is their strident voices demanding that they are superior to their opponent.  And when they arrive in office, much changes and much stays the same.  One government loves war and national security while the other would rather build roads and fix the debt.  One government loves security and safety while the other would rather withdraw itself from the world, except for a few misguided attempts at peacekeeping.  When
Clinton stepped down, he enacted over 75 new acts and laws concerning various things with what was supposed to be purely domestic (and Democratic) interests at heart.  Yet, when Bush came to office, and to this day, over 60 of these are still in effect.  It is things like this that make me really wonder how different our parties really are, and where the people who disagree really stand.  If our parties are similar, then who is there to represent our opinions, to truly find answers to our questions?  That is why our vote is important! We must use our vote, the promise of our consent, to withdraw true answers from candidates.  We can’t let them ignore us anymore! We, the youth, the students, the poor, the minorities. We need to send a message to those in power. Our votes count too! We have issues we need solved. We need to recognized, heard, and understood.  The only way we can do that is by letting them know that we are paying attention, that we will not let our vote stand unused.  Every vote counts and everyone must vote, if we are truly to become the democracy that we claim we are.

Here’s a post to update the readers for what is happening in my project for Paper #3.  Icarus is dead.  Ironic since he dies in the story too but yes, Icarus is dead.  I seem to have hit a dead end on sources especially older sources.  I get the feeling that perhaps it is not that such sources don’t exist but rather that I lack the ability to find them.  Probably even more likely is that there are great sources out there that I can’t access.  This does not have to do with my willingness to find good sources but rather with a certain program I like to call Iliad.  This program tempts me by constantly providing beautiful authentic sources that I can not receive.  I would not know about these sources except for the wonderful program Iliad and I would not be denied these books except for Iliad.  So I am trapped in a predicament.  And so to solve it I have chosen to pick a new story.  The winner is…..Pygmalion.  This is a story that has a particular fondness in my heart.  The story of wanting something so bad that eventually it comes true resounds in a lot of stories.  Many people have written about this story or have taken a form of this story as their own.  This allows for many different views to be present as well as many different types of literature.  I am looking forward to reading translations, poems, and plays about this.  Icarus limited me to mostly translations which are somewhat more similar and less interesting.  I am excited by my change of stories.

Conducting research for this project is kind of ridiculous. The concept is good, real good. I mean, looking at other copies of the same story. Comparing the retellings of generation after generation is precisely what we have been talking about in this class. Having picked the story of Icarus and Daedalus, I find it quite interesting to look at the different stories. Some interpretations seem to lack all forms of punctuation, which makes for frustrating reading. Some interpretations enjoy rhyming. I have found that for the clearest story, I am constantly referring back to Mendelbaum’s translation. I have found that each story has something intricately special to offer to the understanding of the story. Some begin the story with Daedalus’s maze and some begin it with the start of the flight. Some stretch the story until well after the death of Icarus and some end with the desperate cry of Daedalus. The difficult part of this is that I can never seem to get the books I want. Icarus is a great story which appears in several dozen sources, ranging from Wishbone to classical. Yet, besides the sources pulled out of the library by the administration, I have trouble with Iliad. Let it begin….
Iliad has been used by me to request several amazing sources. The problem? Well, Iliad won’t let me request them because well, they are too far away and there are too few copies in circulation. While this is understandable, it sure is really obnoxious. So I keep getting my hopes up and then…Bam….shattered by the email from the library.
I have a question…..Does anyone know what exactly we are doing for the three story ET about Ovid? Like is it just the beginning of what we are doing for the full Paper #3? That’s pretty much what I figured but I thought I would just check. I think this paper will be one of the hardest papers to start. There is so much information that will be gathered, that perhaps it will be difficult to find a starting point. And next point, what about the classical author? Does anyone have a classical copy of a book? Something from Roman and/ or Greek times would be fine.
I think that Lolita in Tehran is an amazing book. Never had I read a book about books that was so captivating. At first I think many of us thought that the text would be about each of the authors in reference to her situation. I like the way she approaches it altogether better. Each book is mentioned, some more often than others, but it is expected that you know the books of which she speaks. That sort of intellectual superiority makes the book feel like you belong to an exclusive club. But within the story of her own life, she hits on the subjects that each book talks about. Like James talks about being misunderstood and about the true inner heroine that brings out. This is exactly what is happening in Nafisi’s story about herself and her life in Tehran. I love the story about living within Tehran. The revolution is so political, so realistic, yet it seems surreal to me as I read it. It is so far from what we know as Americans. I love it. She deals with hate and love and fear all within these pages. I feel close to the level of despair that she must feel yet I never feel like I am being oppressed. I am kept at a distance by her words and that allows me to fully develop my thoughts. It is really well done so far and I am looking forward to the end of the book. I am curious. How will it end? Death of more friends? A return to the reading group? A trip to America? No matter what I doubt it will satisfy us as the reader. We want solutions and I see this book as creating more questions than giving answers. This is the way a good book makes you feel. I was tentative at first but the more I read of it, the more I feel intertwined with the storyline. The revolution is not over in Iran. Our government has problems with Iran and the way it treats its people. It is so different from us, I think that many people have problems with reading texts that is so different. Yet, I think because of my previous reading experiences, I enjoy putting myself within the mind of another person. Especially one so well versed in intellect as Nafisi.