(here’s the link to debra’s interview) http://avantwomenwriters.blogspot.com/2008/03/interview-with-debra-diblasi.html)
1. debra claims that she structured the book around “systems theory.” Systems theory is an interdisciplinary field of science and the study of the nature of complex systems in nature, society, and science. More specificially, it is a framework by which one can analyze and/or describe any group of objects that work in concert to produce some result. This could be a single organism, any organization or society, or any electro-mechanical or informational artifact.
do you think her book reflects a “systems theory” approach to narrative/storytelling? how?
2. several of you may experience the “alienated reader” effect. you know, when a book puts you as a reader in an uncomfortable, sometimes even antagonistic position while you are reading. when i first read this book i actually felt assaulted. so my question is, is there any value or point to that? are there any gains to be made by placing the reader there, as opposed to, say, placing the reader in the oprah sofa comfort zone?
3. debra calls this kind of writing “multimodal.” what do you think that means? what do you think about the effects or possibilities of “multimodal” writing? according to debra, writing must evolve in relation to our current technologies and cultural productions…
4. debra says in several different interviews, including the one i sent you the website for, that underneath the story of this weird jiri character are important issues of race, class, gender, death, and the human condition. does the book raise those issues? how? does it make you think more deeply about them, or turn you off?
5. some people have said that men have an easier time getting away with raw, disturbing writing than women writers. that writers like william burroughs, or alain robbe grillet, or chuck palahniuk are treated like famous authors when they write raw, sexually explicit, violent prose. whereas when women do it, it’s downright distasteful. ew. do you agree? why or why not? is there any merit in women writers driving their prose into darker territories of storytelling?
love lidia
April 25, 2008 at 12:05 am
I haven’t even began reading the Jiri Chronicles themselves (I probably will read most of it tomorrow) but I have read all of the short fictions and I must say – I think I’ve found a very important author to my life.
Her style, imagery and ah! just everything is so well laid out to me – I can relate to the way she structures her sentences and forms her thoughts (by my own type of writing and what I’ve grown accustomed to reading over the years) and her stories are so imaginative and realistic. I can’t tell if some of them are actually autobiographical or not but it tends to lean that way (especially about the sparrow singing being, what I believe to be, her mother) ~ so yes, I cannot wait till Tuesday!
I just had to share my excitement and thanks to Lidia to introducing me to her.
April 28, 2008 at 9:02 pm
In regard to question 5.
It’s possible, that if women writers didn’t delve into the darker territories of storytelling, the world in general would be under the false impression that women don’t relate to, fanatsize about, or live in darker territories themselves. It’s fascinating and inspiring to read! I am in love with the fact that there are so many of us women walking around carrying out our roles (we all have them and we are so good at them) meanwhile, we’re all teeming inside with IDEAS and light and darkness, and love and madness, plots of revenge, and tales of loathe and suffering! Has anyone here ever read a book filled with women’s real sexual fantasies…? Now, there, is some darker territory, in a gorgeous light.
ahem. a good place to start is with Nancy Friday.
I feel like I don’t really follow much of what Debra di Blasi is putting together with her systems theory, however, I am engulfed by the images laid out and confess to feeling dizzy when I’ve read the book for very long.
The book is so controversial and sickening and funny all at once, I’m overwhelmed and confused by much of it. Independently, her ideas and experiences are totally entertaining, it’s just when it all comes together page after page that I get a headache.
April 29, 2008 at 2:06 am
I think I will tackle question 1.
I think that this book achieved that “system theory” thing with flair! It was so cool how you got to see things from all these different perspectives and seeing how all these different characters connect. I am not even sure I could map out all of the different connections though. I think my favorite part of this book were the footnotes. I know it is odd, but almost all of them seemed like they were places where Debra Di Blasi’s mind just kind of exploded into a tangent. My favorite was the infinity footnote. That was the one where the she-bear was sitting, swaying in the sunset. I just really liked it. My second favorite was number 55. That was the one where she went on a two-page footnote rant about the b.s. of racism and Americans who “live in your delusional enclave of educated see-no-evil monkeys, agreeing to agree on a human optimism that raised Hitler to power and lowered 11,000,000 people to their fly-specked deaths”. That was a nifty rant that I highly agreed with.
Now on to question 2, for I have nothing left to say on question 1.
I definitely felt a bit uncomfortable while reading this, although that could have had something to do with the fact that I was reading it on the bus with an old lady behind me when I opened to the “How to masturbate” page with it’s big picture of a vagina. Other than that, this was a fun read.
April 29, 2008 at 2:47 am
Personally I think satire works better in most ways than the alienation approach. I suppose one could argue that a culture dumbed down by American Idol and MTV needs to be assaulted by bluntly subjective art in order to get anything worthwhile out of it. As an anti-escapist perspective Di Blasi’s approach works on some level in this culture where perpetual pleasure and transitory material happiness are worshiped with nearly as much fervor as dead dangling men. This type of rhetoric assumes that escapism is bad, which is a highly subjective point because sometimes dealing with the heavy shit all the time burns you out like a pissy aging liberal lamenting the high cost of formerly free love ideals. Another key problem with this approach is that often the only congregation left are the hardcore believers who did not really need to be won over in the first place. Many people who are the most addicted to the superficial shit rain Di Blasi assaults are never going to hear her like a spoiled brat screaming la la la la with his dirt caked hands over his ears. Satire is more subtle in that it doesn’t nail your eyelids open ( like A Clockwork Orange) and surround you with nothing but mirrors. The mirrors come and go in smaller snippets and the meaning sinks in more gently. unlike “A Clockwork Orange” DI Blasi can’t force you to read her entire book which makes it less effective. The gains of putting a reader in that position only pan out if they are willing to put themselves through it which is interesting because her apparent point is that not enough people do that normally. She is apparently writing for the people who don’t really need her shock of reality. I totally see the artistic merit of art like this and her talent and I completely agree that a lot of people need to be assaulted with reality or awareness as is the chic term now. I just don’t see this as the best way to get there. I imagine this was a deliciously cathartic book to write and vent with.
April 29, 2008 at 3:28 am
sorry, I should clarify that I do see this book as satire, but the alienation approach as mentioned in Lid’s question is at best a form of satire that I was referring to in my deadline panicky half assed argument.
April 29, 2008 at 4:42 am
I found it really interesting that Lid felt ‘assaulted’ when she read this. I for one found it to be quite eye opening, and was excited and intrigued to keep reading. I haven’t read the other fictions yet, and plan to do that within the next couple of days, want to do so immediately! Although I really did love the book, and was amazed by the talent and voice of this writer, there were a few instances in which i felt sick, literally sick and almost to the point of tears. Was this because I am PMS’ing? There is a chance. However, I think most people will probably agree with me on this specific scenario…when two pieces of writing were shown from the women who had killed their own children, in spite of their husbands. This was bad enough, I absolutely hate recalling these instances, being played over and over in the news. However, when the author continued, later in the novel, to try and explain what the children were feeling, and how likely it was that they were yelling Mommy! Mommy! MOMMY! MOM….. as they sank into the water, I nearly had to quit. At that point I literally began to close my eyes, and shake my head, to try and let my mind escape from the images which it was creating. Even as I am writing this, I am nearly in tears, and having a hard time explaining the depths of my feelings. I know that authors have common intentions of having an effect on the reader, and I can say that Debra has went far past simply having an effect, and has instead enhanced beliefs which we already had in common. It was great pick.
On a lighter note… the references to KAFKA! Good timing Lid!
April 29, 2008 at 4:45 am
The Jiri Chronicles immediately reminded me of my middle-school idols: Jello Biafra and Linder Sterling. Di Blasi’s juxtaposition of fragmented, collage-like writings find a definite parallel with the two people mentioned above. I’m thinking not so much of Biafra’s music, but of the posters that he made for his records (if you don’t know who I;m talking about, Jello Biafra was the frontman of the great San Fransisco punk band the Dead Kennedys). Linder Sterling was another punk collage artist, she from Manchester (her most famous work is the cover of the Buzzcock’s “Orgasm Addict” 7 inch (check out her work – she’s AWESOME). All three combine elements of a world that relishes safe images and slogans, uses them as twisted composites and fragments, and then step back with a shit-eating grin and arms folded. The askew advertisements, Jiri’s emails, the excerpts from “dictionaries” and “encyclopedias” are more than just mirrors (to use Jesse’s (and Flaubert’s? Zola’s?) metaphor) they’re the remnants from an assembly line of disregarding mistakes, the things an inspector would dismiss as refuse. Strangely enough, these are the capsules from our surreal environment of sanitized sloganeering because it is in direct disharmony with the motivations behind that very same culture. The Jiri Chronicles sits in the company of its devastated kin (the culture it attacks) uninvited, disrupting, and utterly more fascinating. It puts off the reader by its moments of didactic reverie, even though didactic reveries (Drink Sprite, Eat Taco Bell, Vote or Die, Participate in Our Bullshit Please) comfort us in an age of thirty second long commercials with shifts in POV every two seconds. One might say Di Blasi is exhuming the underlying violence in culture of fragmented messages, but I think she uses Jiri Cech to show this violence out in the open, that there is nothing lying beneath the surface, not even greed (because that’s flaunted too). If you bombarded someone who was raised in the deserts of Australia, an Aborigine (though that’s really a misnomer by means of a capital A) with television commercials the way most people stab into themselves with gloss-eyed fetishism, I’d say you’d get the same reaction from the Aborigine as you would the alienated reader of Di Blasi’s work.
But does Di Blasi’s bluntness do anything to tarnish her intentions? Does her supposed lack of subtlety diminish her efficacy (I nod to one of the funniest selections in the book)? Perhaps, perhaps not. Writers (all artists really, except maybe architects) are held to no obligation to anyone, not to their readers, editors, themselves; but the converse to that is no one has any obligations to the writers. Therefore, it’s a thin line that they toe, and antagonizing those who may potentially pay their rent might not be such a hot idea. But sometimes you don’t need to pay rent, and can freely throw whatever you want into the faces of others (Virginia Woolf’s room would be a handy place to do this from). Since it is the culture that wants its satire subtle that she’s attacking, why should she give it to them with a comfortable layer of sugar? Why comply with the artifice of constructed presentation? In fact, Di Blasi’s method of shocking message has already proven successful: the Comedy Central’s triumvirate of black humor – Dave Chappell, South Park, and the Colbert Report. So, I say to Di Blasi, keep antagonizing, poking, and prodding.
April 29, 2008 at 5:54 am
I agree with Priscilla, the style of “Multimodal” is very invigorating and captivating. I agree that it enlightens the ideaology of “Systems theory” the fictional stories bring together many ideas of how things can be connected, it does however seem to float between what is reality and possibly dimensional. The concept of Jiri seems to have some sort of identifiable connection with all of us, whether we like it or not. It makes it hard to ignore certain feelings that become up risen as you read the stories in this book. I find it very intriguing when a female write can express in sexually explicit, and even violent prose. I even kind of find it to be a turn-on. Women often are stereotyped as being submissive and quite, could you imagine what the world would be like if more women expressed their raw feelings like this.
April 29, 2008 at 7:34 am
O Chimpanzee Mouth Shaped Hollow!
I have a sense of humor that involved finding the entire scenario involving the toy chimpanzee hilarious. This book didn’t make me feel uncomfortable in the slightest, I enjoyed reading it! One thing that I found that was really interesting in another interview with the author was a more detailed account of how this book came into being, and it makes so much sense after reading it, and I fully intend on trying it out myself, it sounds like an exhilarating way to write and a good way to experiment.
“I assigned my experimental writing students with the task of making meaning out of a deluge of randomly selected information I’d clipped from magazines, newspaper articles and ads. Students blindly selected short paragraphs, images, charts and graphs, then had to weave the clippings into a 10-section fiction. The second rule was to not edit or censor whatever random shit popped into your head while writing: song lyrics, movie dialog, what your mother told you yesterday… Since I always do writing assignments alongside my students, the first story, “Czechoslovakian Rhapsody Sung to the Accompaniment of Piano,” grew from a pile of unrelated print information.
The important thing to note is the fractal, organic quality of The Jirí Chronicles. The more tentacles it sprouts, the more cultural significance it takes on, thus the more tentacles it sprouts, and so on.” The Mad Hatter Interview with Debra DiBlasi
Knowing that brought a lot of insight into reading the Jirí Chronicles, and the multimodal way in which it way it was written.
Jiri is quite the illusive character, there are a number of roles that he plays including sex fiend, vampire, real estate developer, racist and rock star to name a few.
On the question of whether or not Jirí is a vampire (according to the interview, inquiring minds want to know) I found a passage that was interesting in the footnote on pg. 182 that was referencing the movie King Kong, and the characters Fay Wray, and then Jessica Lange’s character, who’s name is Dwan (apparently they reordered the letters in the word Dawn for said character. OKEY DOKEY.)
“ THE BODY of Jessica Lange playing Dwan better than Fay Wray playing Ann Darrow in King Kong. Jirí has frozen poor Jesse there, in collapsible time and space, as only a vampire can: See how perky still her breasts? How dewy yet her skin? How hopeful ever the sparkle in her eyes as if she were her own lighthouse for a world about to shipwreck on the craggy shore of the future.”
I think that this could be argued as proof that Jirí, but struck me more as if he were watching King Kong and using the ‘Pause’ button on his VCR/DVD player.
Or maybe that’s just me.
See you all tomorrow.
April 29, 2008 at 7:36 am
Typo:
In that last paragraph —
I think that this could be argued as proof that Jirí IS A VAMPIRE,
April 29, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I have a lot of wonderful things to say about this book – indeed, I am going to definitely read it again and again because I know for certain I can continually make something else of its experience. But I won’t delve deep into why I love it so much or anything.
Like Michael already said: I do think Jiri is a conceptual idea of how humankind is – in one way or another – I think we all have some sort of biggot living inside of us, we might choose to not let it creep up and show itself – but in some way or another, it has to be like looking in a mirror. And then you put yourself in the narrative position and it seems that represents humankind as well – having sex with the part you control and want to hide, letting something get the better of you but not exactly knowing why or how it happened. She continually asked herself why she let someone who pretty much hates her history, her family, her identity inside of her – why she let someone speak like that to her without any objection – maybe because it’s so eerily relatable?
I did not get offended by this or feel alienated. I don’t know if I should have but typically I am not offended easily – I am actually usually offended when people dumb things down, when they take an easy way, when they DON’T end up being controversial or inspiring in some way or another. Even when she wrote about Susan Smith and Deborah Green – I remained intrigued, she showed how they both shared the same justification (or rather acceptance) of their actions because of their belief in God and a heaven – like they honestly, truly, believed it all along – that, well of course! it makes sense now, these children will never hurt again – they’ll never grow up and they “deserve the best” and that is what they ended up sharing. And then later (page 125) she says how “We don’t need a psychopath to teach vengeance. We have God.” – well, isn’t that dandy? Vegeance is appropriate. It turns my stomach, but I do not wince or feel weaker. I don’t know if it’s because somehow, I learned easily how to separate myself from these things – to take things objectively – because all in all, when I read about certain things I end up crying and when I read about other certain things, I just say “hmm” – I wonder if I should worry? But anyway, back on point. I think Di Blasi does a wonderful job showing all sorts of deep rooted problems with us all – and she does it intelligently and squeezes it into what we figure to be light and carefree. Which is the best way to get to most people and snap them before they fully recognize their fate (figuratively, of course)
I have still a lot to say about this book, but I will save some for class. Sorry if this doesn’t make any sense – I am running on 2 hours of sleep and I tried to make it smoothly coherant but you know how that can end up…
April 29, 2008 at 4:34 pm
The Jiri Chronicles… what to say? When I was younger, I felt some books I would understand better when I was older, that I just hadn’t of had the life experience yet to really see what was going on. While other books seemed to find me right at the perfect point in my life (Feast of Love anyone? ☺ ). This book fits into the first category.
This book was hard for me to grasp as a whole. I defiantly found parts that I liked and could interpret in my own way, which I believe was Ms. Di Blassis whole intention “Readers are expected to be active participants in the ‘system’ that is The Chronicles, and explore that role, and draw conclusions about themselves and the world based on that participation.”(From the interview given) While I appreciated that, I am not ready for it. I am not use to it as a main stream fiction reader. The first two sections Snapshots and Hyperfiction were laid out a little more closely to how I am used to read books, but in Jiri Chronicles chapter, I am lost. So I guess this deals with Lidia’s point number two, the alienated reader affect. Just jumping the gun a little bit, I tried reading “Blood and Guts in High School” before this book (well, actually I read this one a little bit and then picked up blood and guts and am now returning to this one, so they are now somewhat fused in my mind as being the same genre) and talk about ALIENATION! So compared to Blood and Guts, I feel like I could read the The Jiri Chronicles every night as a bed time story to lull me to sleep. So, the point- this book doesn’t make me feel alienated. Perhaps if I had read this first, I would get that feeling. Also, the reason I don’t see the alienation thing is because this book mixes in humor which I feel is a common ground that can bring readers together even if they feel they are in outer space.
And I have to totally agree with Nancy! When it all comes together, that’s when I get lost. I am excited to listen to what the class has to say tonight because I don’t get the book as a whole and what it is trying to express to the reader. I get the pieces, but can’t see the whole picture.
April 29, 2008 at 6:15 pm
So for this book I felt like a jar of YUCCA, that got past around and around and shaken and shaken and then when you drink it you get drunk real fast for a variety of reasons but mostly because that was the intention of drinking YUCCA in the first place! (If you don’t know what YUCCA is I can explain tonight!)
I did the reading before looking at any of the systems theory etc… and I did get the connections part. I was running with my friend and trying to explain the book and said something like “there are these strings that start in one story and then get focused on in another and slowly move away in the third or fourth story”. I found that it was easy for me to remember and be able to visualize parts of the stories, the added stimulus of the ads, newspaper articles, footnotes etc… made it easier for me to hang on to pieces (not all the pieces were things I wanted to hang on to, but that’s another story) This struck me because my “memory bank” brain doesn’t normally hang on to things like this … I can watch a movie, read a book and know I loved it, hated it whatever but I can’t really tell you what happened, who the main characters were etc…. that info slides way fast for me, but this stuff stuck.
When I did start looking at the internet , I came across the video of one of DiBasi’s presentations at a conference I was shown “the tree” as a visual explanation of the “systems theory”… I was shown that same tree a few months ago when I went to a conference on the Brain and Learning… The idea that your life experience makes a HUGE difference in everything you do, read, think, write, say… makes a lot of sense to me as a learner. If you can make a connection to something you know, then the chances of you being able to add on the information to yourself grows. Some of the passages in the book I read and they kind of went around me (the parts where I don’t have much experience or depth of knowledge) and some went through me and stayed there for a while. The one that was the most poignant was “Oops, Sorry” … imagine reading this section 2 days before you were going in for a mammogram and an ultrasound when you think you might have found something in that breast… I definitely connected with that one!
I’m looking forward to class tonight, too.
April 29, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I would argue that comparing DI Blasi to the great black comedy of Comedy central in terms of its shock value is a little off. Colbert is painfully subtle, to the point that the crazed bastards running the America Corporation invited him to the frickin white house corrospondence dinner and were visably disturbed by his slightly more overt satirical zingers. Chappelle is certainly more subtle than DI Blasi and I would even argue that South Park often seems more blunt in its satire simply because of its dick and fart joke based humor, which is brilliant marketing by the way.
There is difference between satire and “Sugar” infused Oprah book club escapism. The real reason for being more subtle is that assuming your intent is to shock people out of their “empty” escapism by showing them what vain, vapid slaves they are, you shoot yourself in the foot (to overuse a horrible metaphor, Orwell would be pissed!) by making it so easy to dismiss it is smut of crap or whatever else. The central alienist argument seems too many people cop out with “guilty” escapist pleasures and focus on shit like Brangelina, Bennifer, Miley, Brit and paris and so forth, instead of Iraq, Darfur, Bird Flu, etc. The problem is that those people are never going to read stuff like this unless you strap em down Clockwork Orange style.
April 29, 2008 at 10:25 pm
A few people touched on it already, like Mitchel, but I think Debra Di Blasi’s multimodal style brings “culture jamming” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_jamming), “shopdropping” (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/us/24shopdrop.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1198857740-+W3mt61SyxoZANx2W+DIZA&oref=slogin), and other avant-garde forms of protest and expression to literature. She uses the language and imagery of advertisements, something that pervades all our lives, to narrate a good chunk of The Jirí Chronicles.
Her application of systems theory explains the ecological approach to prose The Jirí Chronicles utilizes: the incorporation of text, images, footnotes, unique refrains, stuff lifted from magazines and newspapers—everything interdependent in creating the meaning of the text. It’s not just grammatically correct sentences your reading; the multimodal prose kind of throws onto the page what a reader usually sees in their head while reading a traditionally composed text: seemingly random images, not fully formed; tangent thoughts intervene. At least for me, I never read and see exactly what the text is articulating, or the text never fully constructs a coherent world in my head, just what I need or focus on to get through the narrative, like a bridge over water and nothing else. So what ends up happening is instead of NARRATIVE creating images, the IMAGES, along with the text, create a narrative in the reader’s mind; create MEANING. For example, instead of only writing “timber so dense it’s just a black scab on the lip of the world”—an image pops into your head—she actually provides the image. This forces readers to narrate the image themselves: What does that look like? Why is it there? Why is it fading? Di Blasi’s writing involves the reader more in the creation of meaning within the text and frees them from simply a passive role. As she explains, “Readers are expected to be active participants in the ‘system’ that is The Chronicles, and explore that role, and draw conclusions about themselves and the world based on that participation.”
Also, I don’t agree with Jesse about his view on the effectiveness of alienating readers. I think shocking images are extremely effective, for better or worse. Ever heard of the concept of Hell? It’s funny that he uses A Clockwork Orange as an example because that novel/movie is itself a pretty grim satire but was successful, nominated for a few Oscars. Jesse’s argument also presupposes that people only watch or read things they enjoy, or at least outwardly enjoy. Though not a satire, Requiem For A Dream is an example of a movie that is depressing as hell, making the viewer feel alienated, yet carries a powerful message for millions of potentially drug addled hipsters, and is pretty popular. Hey, Schindler’s List! Why the hell would anyone watch a movie about the Holocaust? Also, just looking at literary history, there’s all the hoopla that surrounded the vulgarity of books like Naked Lunch, Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl, Lolita, Ulysses, Tropic of Cancer—all these pieces of literature carried with them a political punch during their time, still do. Their subject matter made people cringe, even hate them, and they were probably more impacting BECAUSE of that reason, resulting in court cases that expanded free speech or forcing people to talk about taboo subjects—because even if you hate something, you have to talk about it, condemn it. And even broader, what about the pictures of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib? That’s alienating, discomforting, but instances like that have to be voiced; literature is only one of the platforms. The NATURE of those images is alienating and discomforting, and to soften them up would be a betrayal to the reality of what occurred. And so were the pictures and stories about the May Lai Massacre alienating, and that video footage of the little Vietnamese girl running down the highway naked, burnt from American napalm. But those images were essential in turning the public sentiment against the Vietnam War. I think less obtrusive satire or politically motivated literature and art is useful, though. But, I think—and I agree with Jesse here—the softer satire of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report only entertains. I mean: Jon Stewart is never going to make anyone question anything fundamental about American society. All those shows do is critique the EXCESSES of the mass media (Colbert) and American politics (Stewart)—not its very structure. Stewart even thought Blackwater USA wasn’t such a bad idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CTSaRpSS9s. And I doubt the satirical shenanigans of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantánamo Bay are going to make anyone think differently. Movies and shows like that are just results of consumer demand: the majority of the country hates Bush and wants troops out of Iraq. That’s what people want to consume. So, strangely, I think Jesse’s argument that alienating images leave only the “hardcore believers who did not really need to be won over in the first place” standing can also be turned on its head, because softer satire only appeals to people that want entertainment, not some cathartic experience.
April 29, 2008 at 11:02 pm
I am not a fan of this book. The over the top, in your face, type of satire is not my style. In truth, I would have put the book down and walked away without the slightest curiosity after the first section of the Jiri Chronicles, if I were not reading it for class, so I would have to say the style was a failure if the intent was to draw the reader in to make a point. The multimodal style of writing had some interesting aspects, such as the liberal use of footnotes, but as with most of it I thought it was overdone and chaotic to the point of distraction, so quickly lost my interest.
What disappointed me the most is that by pushing through I found some truly delightful nuggets of satirical humor, and a few flashes of descriptive phrasing that were, in my estimation, pure literary genius, but they were lost in the mire and muck of what felt to me to be pure self indulgence. When I tried to decide what it made me feel, all that came to mind is how I felt when my children were young and threw truly outrageous temper tantrums. I understood why they were upset and empathized with them, but was also irritated by their lack of self control.
As to question 5, I honestly don’t give a damn what the sex of the author is when deciding what I like, and don’t judge the type or style on that basis either. That sexism plays a part in how likely a writer of certain types is to be published, I’m sure is true, but I’d venture to guess that the true difference lies in how the material is presented that makes the difference. In my experience, women tend to go for the emotional jugular, while men aim a little lower.
April 29, 2008 at 11:10 pm
I didn’t really like this book much. The whole time I was reading it I was thinking she was just trying too hard to be edgy and shocking. I get the same feeling from reading Palahniuk. That “I’m nihilist, deal with it” attitude just pisses me off. Sure if you think life is all full of happy good times you are pretty naive but the same can be said for someone who thinks life is nothing more than pain and misery, that every marriage ends in failure, that people are only driven by greed and lust and every republican is a racist homophobe.
I also thought the whole “everyone should write using this new multimodal style that I made up or literature is doomed” idea is pretty stupid. If you want to put pictures in your book, fine, but saying that all books need to have pictures in them like your’s is just retarded.
Anyway, the author really came across to me as just a smug know-it-all who relies on being offensive in order to get attention but I’m sure I just didn’t “get it”.
April 30, 2008 at 5:51 am
This book did not make me feel alienated in the slightest, but I could see how someone like for instance my Conservative Christian father would look at it and feel alienated and label it “evil”. (Haha he love’s that I’m taking a literature class, but he would be horrified by what we’re reading.) I have a really hard time remaining impersonal when I read and write. I always find a way of relating it to my life experiences whether I want to or not. I have been questioning lately whether this is my way of trying to comprehend concepts by relating them to my own life or me just being self absorbed. Perhaps it’s a mixture. I have to say the “Sparrows” story definitely reminded me of my own mother and I cried when I read it. Art very rarely makes me cry. Although the older I get the more it does. I could also definitely see myself in the character in “Oops Sorry” when she is so bitter about how happy her neighbor with terminal cancer seems sort of like ‘What the fucks she got to be so happy about?’ Although it’s a part of me that’s ugly its there and pops up from time to time. I really dug that the characters seemed so realistic in many ways. I didn’t see them as good or bad but instead a mixture of both. Similarly I didn’t see the book as portraying the world as a miserable, fucked up place, where everyone is shallow and that’s all there is. I saw it as more confounded. I saw it more as gray instead of black and white. So I really liked what Di Blasi expressed in the interview: “I’ve befriended drug dealers, mobsters, street people and sundry ne’er-do-wells, and I can tell you that absolutely all of them, even the hitman, had good admirable qualities as a human being.” and also the “indubitably gray area that is the real world in which real people live.” I frequently wonder why we as people so often put people/things/concepts into “the good box” or “the bad box” in our cranial storage facilities. I guess it helps us not have to think. For question five, I absolutely strongly believe there is merit in women writers driving there prose into darker territories of storytelling. Women (I am totally generalizing) have been socialized to conceal there anger like men aren’t supposed to cry. Women (more generalizing) are often seen as passive aggressive in relation to this being socialized to conceal their anger thing. I randomly decided about a week ago that writing is the ultimate passive aggression companion, so I was thrilled when I read what Di Blasi wrote about getting back at people through clever fiction stories. Anyway Tangent x10. I think female writers need to write about this stuff because it is in them like all human beings and they need to let it out in creative ways. Oh shit I thought I was done, but I have to include I was a bit disturbed by the realization while reading this book that I am dating my own personal Jiri. Granted he’s not quite as “bad” he’s certainly not a vampire. But we passionately disagree on key issues. To be blunt sometimes his views disgust me. Ahh but like the woman in the book I still want him.
April 30, 2008 at 5:56 am
Terry- what’s YUCCA? I am really curious. You called me on my silence and I totally forgot to ask. I really liked that you called me on my bullshit glasses excuse too. Sometimes I start defending myself with bullshit excuses without realizing it till I’m halfway through the third one. I will make an effort to start talking
May 6, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Just judging by the cover of the book (which I know is terrible) and flipping through the pages of the book before I actually started reading it I kind of figured I wouldn’t like it because, although I do love weird books it looked even a little too strange for me so I instantly had a bad attitude about it and didn’t want to read it. But I did and I strangely came to enjoy Di Blasi’s totally different and “weird” writing style. I didn’t feel like I had to read every page because the way it was set-up it kind of reminded me of a magazine where I could just pick through and read what I wanted.
I flipped through the hyper fictions and looked over some and I read all of “Blue.” I chose that one because the set-up looked most like other stories I had read before and I went with what was comfortable for me. As I was reading the story I thought it had great imagery but I thought the story itself was just another depressing story with nothing really to it, which it mostly was until the last sentence of the story where the main character talks about picking which car to step in front of before crossing the street. After reading that I was suddenly disappointed that the story was over because it had just gotten good and juicy and to the dark style that I enjoy. But overall I liked the story because the ending was so intriguing.