The drawing Oedipa finds on the bathroom wall!!

The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon (Chapters 2-3)

            The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon is a very interesting novel in which Mr. Pynchon’s style of writing is very evident.  The story revolves around Mrs. Oedipa Maas who has been named the “executrix of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity.”  This is a very bizarre appointment due to the fact Oedipa is in fact the ex girl friend of Mr. Inverarity.  Oedipa and Pierce have been separated long enough for Oedipa to be remarried to a disc jockey named Mucho Maas.  In the second chapter, Oedipa begins her task as “executrix” of Pierce’s will by going to San Narcico (Pierce’s home town) “to look into Pierce’s books and records and confer with Metzger, the co-executor.”  Oedipa, a married woman mind you, proceeds to get drunk with Metzger and by the end of the night has sex with him in her hotel room. In the hotel Oedipa and Metzger meet a band called “The Paranoids” who, in chapter 3, steal a boat and go out onto an island in Lake Inverarity.  In this scene, the character Di Presso is introduced.  Di Presso is a lawyer who is representing Tony Jaguar who sold bones to Inverarity but was never paid, and is now suing Inverarity’s estate.  Oedipa learns of a tale of a company of GI’s who were killed by Germans in WWII and whose bodies were thrown in a lake.  One of The Paranoids’ member’s tells of a play, “The Courier’s Tragedy,” directed by Randolph Diblette that sounds a lot like that of the company of GI’s.  Oedipa is intrigued by this and goes with Metzger to see the play.  The play is described in detail over roughly 11 pages.  The play is very mysterious and Oedipa feels compelled to talk with the director after the play.

            I found the first three chapters of this book very intriguing.  Nothing seemed to fit, and I felt like Thomas Pynchon was giving me the pieces to a very complex puzzle that is to be put together later on.  I find that, even though this is not one of my favorite pieces of literature, I still want to read on and on, if nothing else just to find how all of these small, seemingly unrelated events, comes together in the ending.  The jury is still out in my opinion as to weather or not this is a good book.

Jackie Robinson!! This is the mental image I get when I read the play Fences!

Fences, Act 1 by August Wilson

     Act one of “Fences,” by August Wilson, is a very enjoyable introduction to the two act play.  The play’s central character is Troy Maxson, an African American garbage collector, whose dreams of playing baseball were crushed because of his age (53 years old), and his race.  The play is centered on Troy Maxson, his family, and his friend Jim Bono.  The Maxson family is riddled with poverty.  They live in an “ancient two-story brick house set back off a small alley in a big-city neighborhood.”  Troy’s main concern is providing for his family; more so financially than emotionally.  He criticizes his son, Cory, for his dreams of playing football in college, even though a team in North Carolina is already recruiting his talents.  Troy even goes so far as to tell Cory’s high school coach that his son is not allowed to play football any longer, and tells the recruiter not to come to get Troy’s approval (he needs Troy’s signature for Cory to play ball) at the end of act 1.  This causes conflict in the plot of the play.  Troy’s oldest son by a previous marriage, Lyons, also makes an appearance on in the play.  Lyons has dreams of being a great musician, and has little want to work, a view his father does not share.  Jim Bono and Gabriel Maxson provide a since of comic relief in the plot.  Jim Bono is Troy’s best friend.  Troy and Jim did jail time together (Troy killed a man he was robing) where they formed a bond.  The pair is seen in the poem drinking together on Friday nights.  Gabriel Maxson, Troy’s brother was injured in World War II and has a metal plate in his head that has lead him to the delusion that he is the Angel Gabriel who is destined to open the gates for Saint Peter on judgment day.

            I found the first part of this play very enjoyable.  There was suspense created by the conflict between Cory and Troy.  The mood of the play is however light, and somewhat comical in places.  The play seems like it could actually happen; a quality that makes it relatable to the reader. BIG THUMBS UP!!

"Howl" by Allen Ginsberg

The poem “Howl,” by Allen Ginsberg is broken down into four very distinct sections, including a footnote.  The first section describes how the narrator saw what he described as “the best minds” of his generation.  Ginsberg describes poets, drug addicts, musicians, and psychiatric patients in the worst of conditions.  The first part has a gloomy feel; the reader perceives a very negative and dark sensation.

The second part is very repetitive.  The word “Moloch” is repeated continuously throughout this section of the poem.  This second part also has a negative feel.  Words like “filth” and “ugliness” make the reader get a nasty feeling.

The third part is once again very repetitive with the fraise “I’m with you in Rockland” used 19 times.  As is the pattern here, a negative feel is conveyed through lines like “you’ve murdered your twelve secretaries,” and “we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter.”

The fourth part entitled “Footnote to Howl” fits the same description as the previous three.  The word “Holy” is continuously repeated almost so much so that the reader becomes sick of reading it.  Fraises like “my mother in the insane asylum” and “the jazz bands marijuana" give this section the same negative, dark, and hopeless feeling as three sections before it.
I did not like this poem very much.  In order to understand the poem, the reader has to understand the background of Allen Ginsberg.  The reader cannot fully understand or enjoy the poem unless he has a grasp of Ginsberg’s personal past.  I also felt that the poem had a negative feeling, a hopeless feeling.  The constant references to insane asylums and psychiatric patients and drug abuse make the poem un-relatable to the average reader, and the constant repetition of words and phrases make the negative feelings seem like they go on and on in a repetitive, never ending cycle.  All in all this was not one of my favorite poems.

Delmore Schwartz's "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities"

In the short story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” by Delmore Schwartz, the narrator is a young man dreaming about himself sitting in an old “Moving-picture Theater” around the year 1909.  The boy is watching a movie about the relationship between a man and a woman.  Throughout the movie, the narrator of the story refers to the man in the movie as his father, and the woman as his mother.  The plot follows the couple on a date in Coney Island on June 12^th 1909.  The father proceeds to pick up the narrators mother from her residence in Brooklyn where their journey begins.  They arrive at Coney Island by town car and proceed to take a stroll on the boardwalk where they watch the ocean and enjoy a ride on a carousel, they then continue on with their date with a nice dinner.  It is during dinner that the father proposes to the boy’s mother.  I find this scene very intense.  The father proposes not with a confession of his undying love for the woman, but as though it is just the next step in his overall plan in life.  The man asks for the woman’s hand in marriage as though it is a business deal:

“My father tells my mother that he is going to expand his business, for there is a great deal of money to be made.  He wants to settle down.  After all, he is twenty-nine, he has lived by himself since his thirteenth year, he is making more and more money, and he is envious of his friends where he visits them in the security of their homes, surrounded, it seems, by the calm domestic pleasures, and by delightful children, and then as the waltz reaches the moment when the dancers all swing madly, then, then with awful daring, then he ask my mother to marry him…”

The proposal was lacking of emotion in the way I perceived the passage.  And I believe the narrator felt the same way for he stands up in the midst of the theater and shouts: “Don’t do it!  It’s not too late to change your minds, both of you.  Nothing good will come of it, only remorse, hatred, scandal, and two children whose characters are monstrous.”  The narrator shows his emotion throughout the movie, crying at several points and shouting once more, landing himself thrown out of the movie theater, at which point the narrator wakes up form his dream and the reader learns that the narrator has had this dream on the eve of his 21^st birthday.

I find it noteworthy to mention the scene in which the newly engaged couple has their picture taken.  This is a scene in which the narrator relates to the photographer saying “The photographer charms me, and I approve of him with all my heart, for I know exactly how he feels…”  I believe that this scene, in which the photographer cannot find any pose that suits the couple, shows just how incompatible the couple really is; they seem not to match or complement each other even in appearance.  From this scene the reader gathers that the couple is not a happy, well-paired couple.