Leaves of Grass 4: An agrovating life one has..

I was reading Poem 4 of Leaves of Grass, and all it talked about was the bad parts of a stressful life. That he suffers, that he does, that he does't. Everything is bad, like the lack of money, the sickness of himself or his family. He uses a very stressfull tone, which I assimilated to a girl on a friday night getting ready for a party. That she doesn't know what to wear, if she looks good on it, what does the rest think. Whitman as well worries too much about those things, when he says "My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues", as if he needed someone else's opinion about himself. This is, for me, a bad thing, because as the word self- confidence says, it is self. You don't need anyone to say how you look, because what matters is how you feel. No one is going to love you for how they see you, they are supposed to love on how you are. He apart only sees the bad features of life. That is not a healthy lifestyle.

Flaubert's Style

A Simple Soul, by Gustave Flaubert, is a text where we can clearly see a style called Free Indirect Style, a style in which the writer is 3rd person omnicient narrator, that describes the emotions of a person without dialogue. In It, the author needs to characterizise, narrate and describe the character and his/ her feelings. Flaubert does this with ease. Felicite is described in a way that we can picture her almost perfectly, feel what she feels, her despair, her love, her emotions, and Flaubert not once specifies what she's feeling, just by the way she is described. Flaubert is very detailed in most of the writing, describing most of the context in which Felicite is in, what happens to her, etc. Another adjective very appropriate to this style is realistic. Flaubert pretty much tries to immitate what life was, how Madam Aubain treats badly Felicite, how she pretends to like her when she inside always thinks that she's lower class and ignorant. I myself have tried this style, and it's very hard to accomplish, because not evreyone has the capacity of making the reader feel the emotion of the character, like Flaubert can.

The Thoughts Of All Men

While I was reading Poem 17 of Walt Whitman's Leaves Of Grass, it started out as "These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands-". I thought of it very curious that a poem starts like that, Then i kept reading and at the end there was another line that caught my attention again, "This is the grass that grows wherever the land is, and the water is;/ this is the common air that bathes the globe." The poem talks about things like if its not as much yours as mine, then it is not the same. It was cool that the guy talked about his thoughts being the ones of all the world, and then comparing it to the grass, because the grass grows wherever there is land, and he says that these thoughts grow wherever there is people.

"These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands—they are not original with me;
If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing, or next to nothing;
If they are not the riddle, and the untying of the riddle, they are nothing;
If they are not just as close as they are distant, they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is, and the water is;
This is the common air that bathes the globe." Most of the poems talk about grass, this one is no exception. I wonder what does Whitman mean when he talks about the thoughts of all men. He says "they are not original with me;", which I am guessing makes reference to the fact that he is not the creator of the thoughts, he is just another individual man with the thought, another leaf of grass.

Badly Written, Mr. Pynchon

While I was reading The Crying of Lot 49, chapter 3 specifically, there were a couple errors I found. For example, in page 33 it says "Report All Obsene Mail To Your Potsmaster", and clearly the word Potsmaster is wrongly written. They do find out in the novel, so it must be there for you to see is at well. There was a cool part which Oedipa starts talking a little french, and says something about her not knowing something, a very weird something! Then, as well, the author suddenly changes the name of the city. He used to talk about San Narciso, who later in the story became San Francisco. I also noticed that the author likes to put funny names on the characters, like Mucho Maas ( a lot more in spanish), Dr. Hilarius (the 'serious' psychotherapist, and now Mike Fallopian, part of the Peter Penguid Society. What's with the names of these people.

What The KCUF?

I just began reading the book The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon, and it is really weird! The first chapter was like a collection of many different texts put together. It made no sense to me, I don't know if I was not focused enough, but I couldn't make a sense of what it said. I noticed many things, like where the title comes from. KCUF is the radio station at where Mucho Maas wroks at. These are weird things that appear in the book. It's as if the author wanted to show us something, and he does it very straightforward because you can tell he's mocking something. Or just make us laugh, because he has plenty more examples. San Narciso is where Oedipa goes, obviously San Narciso is a mockery of San Francisco, meaning everyone there is narcisist. It might have a relation with gay people, because San Francisco is quite known for having many. Also, the name of the main character, Oedipa, could be metaficcion, having a relationship with Oedipus Rex. Up to now there have been no demosntrations of it, but maybe later in the novel that shall come up. I noticed a guy called Dr. Hilarious, who is a psychotherapist. Very ironical was when he talks about Mucho's job, and says it's an "exquisit torture"(pg 4). Obviously if it's exquisit it can't be torture. Thigs like this make the book funny, I hope it's fun the whole way, because I can't find seriousness in it!

Something To Talk About...

At the beggining of chapter 5, there was a metaphor that I really liked. It is a parragraph long, yet it is very impressive so I'd really like to share it. It goes as follows "For instance moles and blackbirds do not eat each other, mate with each other, or compete with each other for living space. Even so, we must not treat them as completely insulated. They may compete for something, perhaps earthworms. This does not mean you will ever see a mole and a blackbird engaged in a tug of war over an earthworm; indeed a blackbird may never set his eyes on a mole in his life. But if you wiped out the population of moles, the effect of might be dramatic" (Page 66). I'd like to apply that to a story I just invented. There are three people in it. Paco, Juan, and Camila. Paco and Camila are good friends, and Juan and Camila are good friends, but Paco and Juan don't even know the other exists. One bad day, Paco had a heart attack and died. Everyone is sad, mainly Camila. Juan didn't know Paco existed, but he is so affected by Camila's sudden sad and depressed attitude that he is kind of manipulated to being similar. His mood is now down, as well as Camila's, for someone he didn't even know. Both cases, the blaackbirds and worms metaphor and mine are similar. It is easy to let ourselves be carried by what we have around us. T.V. is almost always a bad influenze, some radio programs are as well, music, videogames and other people sometimes make us change our mood according to theirs. I don't know if this is bad or not, and I kind of can relate it to the book in the sense that this is a selfish act, because we unconscuosly make others feels as bad and sad as we are. I guess we just need to stop letting ourselves be carried by other's feelings and moods.

What Type Of Book Is This?

I am a little further through The Selfish Gene, and it just seems to me as if I were reading a book assigned to my Pre AP Biology course! All it talks about is DNA replication, genes, nucleotides and those kind of stuff I learned about a moth ago. It's getting a little frustrating for me because I had some trouble learning this info well explained (there is a lot I still don't understand), well less am I going to get it from a book that just barely quickly talks about the topic. I don't like to be reading a science book in english class! I have read these weird kinds of texts before in class and have learned to read them and analyze them, look at them as texts, books, not what they are. It's like when we read the Bible. I read it as a very important english text, not as a religious book to follow. What is wrong about this book is that you cannot analyze things like "A DNA molecule is a long chain of building blocks, small molecules called nucleotides" (Page 22). There's just npthing metaphorical about it, nothing satyrical or ironic. They are just science facts. The funny thing is I remembered about my biology teacher when I started reading the book, and the next day in class asked her if she had read the book, and she said she was reading it just now! So for my english class i'm reading the same book that my biology teacher is reading, a book filled with science facts.. weird!