APS for Jenna

Dave Eggers 319)

 Perhaps Eggers is a perfectionist in his own life?

"Toph, there are so many things you have yet to learn"

"Right, right"

"Just stay close to me, and you will glean"

"Right"

"Fear not"

"I fear"

He looks perfect.

"You look perfect"

He's grimacing.

"It's too short. It's brutal."

"No, no. It's perfect"

 

Eggers wants everything to be perfect, even though he knows he is not perfect; as he expresses this to Toph.

 

Final thoughts on Eggers? Relationships between any other author we have read?

 

Concluding thoughts on the autobiographical approach to writing? How has this course impacted your style of writing to a more signature style of writing?

Funny!!

"She was alone!
She never knew!
(something something something!)
When we touched!
When we (rhymes with "same")!
All (something something)!
All night!
All night!
Alll every night!
So hold tight!
Hoo-ld tight!
Baby hold tight!
Any way you want it!
That's the way you need it!
Any way you want it!

Toph does not know the words, and I knew few of the words, but you cannot fucking stop us from singing. I'm trying to get him to do the second All Night part, with me doing the first part, like:

ME: All night! (higher)
HIM: All-lll night! (slightly lower)

I point to him when his part comes but he just looks at me blankly. I point to the radio, then to him, then to his mouth but he's still confused, and it's hard doing any of this while trying not to careen off the road and into the Pacific and I guess in a way the gestures look like I want him to eat the radio. But Jesus, he should be able to figure this out. He isn't cooperating. Or he could be dumb. Is he dumb?

Fuck it -- I go solo."

(page 48)

This part was memorable to me as the first part where I literally laughed out loud. It amazed me that this seemed so ordinary a moment, something that could easily, and has happened in anyone's life; just a sing-a-long in a car ride. It's almost got an edge of bravery in the moment considering it isn't just two brothers singing in a car. It's an older brother who has suddenly become a father and an orphan simultaneously. The way Eggers frames serious and tragic situations within a humorous context is extremely effective and also appreciated by me as a reader. I LOVE this book!

An Autobiography Holiday Blog from Megan and Jackie

Seeing as Megan and I have spent the entire semester thinking the same things in class..we figured we should be REALLY cool and blog TOGETHER. So here you have it--a final blog from Jackie and Megan!
A Sixty second overview of 15 weeks of autobiography!
Things we may want to mention:Smith and Watson’s Five Elements of Autobiographical Subjectivity-•
Memory- how the writer recalls events; how he/she accesses the memory•
Experience- retelling of events that are mere interpretations of the past•
Identity- the writer makes himself/herself known through implication and differentiation• Embodiment- knowing the world through the body (senses)•
Agency- the reader recognizes that the writer has implemented free choice in the telling of his/her story
Hybridity•
What makes autobiography a hybrid genre? Auto (self) bio (life) graphee (writing)- a narrative of the self told by the self-Freud’s effects on the genre-Enlightenment’s effects on the genre-Ego-grams (for those of us that actually presented them)-Six word memoirs-Our writing prompts Amneusis-Bringing something back from the past into the present
Gusdorf’s Argument--People write autobiographies, because they feel like the world would be incomplete without their own existences. Autobiography is culturally imbedded. It does not exist everywhere.

-Thoughts from Megan!
A Sixty second rambling of Jackie's knowledge of autobiography..
After reading Megan's post I thought about the syllabus as a whole. Where did we begin and where did we end? When I had entered this class I believed that an autobiography was telling one's life story from beginning to end. It was not spliced, it did not involve creative metaphors, it was simply telling the story of one's life. As the course progressed I became confused; was it possible that a person could write their life story without writing specifically about themselves? Was it still an autobiography if major chunks of the person's life were missing? Could it be an autobiography if it was fiction?!
Finally, could an autobiograpy be tragic, heartwreching, and hysterical all while telling the story of a life? Dave Eggers seems to have combined every element of every text that we have seen before thus creating the most interesting piece of work we have encountered all semester! Plus, its hysterical.

Artifice & Verisimilitude?

James Wood in How Fiction Work (FSG 2008) writes in his introduction: "If this book has a larger argument, it is that fiction is both artifice and verisimilitude, and that there is nothing difficult in holding together these two possibilities."

That simple observation has been rattling through my winter-bent mind for several weeks and I think it's apt for thinking about Eggers' autobiography.

Wood's ends the book this way: "Realism, seen broadly as truthfulness to the way things are, cannot be mere verisimilitude, cannot be mere lifelikeness, or life-sameness, but what must be called lifeness; life on the page, life brought to different life by the highest artistry. And it cannot be a genre; instead, it makes other forms of fiction seem like genres. For realism of this kind - lifeness - is the origin. It teaches everyone else; it schools its own truants; it is what allows magical realism, hysterical realism, fantasy, science fiction, even thrillers, to exist. It is nothing like as naive as opportunists charge; almost all the great twentieth century realist novelsalso reflect on their own making, and are full of artifice.(247)

Still enjoying Eggers

I find it hard to pull out quotes from this book to talk about, but I will say that his sense of humor is very similar to mine, and most of what I find funny is because of my mom. I would like to share the part on page 389 going onto 390 where he interprets (or tries to interpret) the symbolism when he meets with Sarah.

"'You look older,' she says.
Right away, I think: symbolism. I look older. It's also symbolic that, as we sit on the couch, in the dark, the light through her large windows, the weak yellow light from the streetlamp, brings her father into her face. I had only met him a few times, and never saw that strong a resemblance but now-- Now her eyes are darker. It occurs to me that her smoking, as she did when we were at the last bar, is also symbolic. That must mean something, that she says I look older, that she looks like her dead father, that she is smoking like my dead father, that we are opening our mouths on each other even though, outside of having lived similar lives, walked the same path from the parking lot to the pool at the Lake Forest Club, swum the same laps at dawn, we barely know each other. All this means something. What does this mean?--"

I am always looking for some form of symbolism that happens in my life that I can then apply them to some sort of poem. For example, while wearing an old shoe, I found it funny how shoes have "tongues" yet when they "talk to you" it's from the sole. I then started playing with sole/soul. I just liked how I could find my own little quirks in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius that help my own writing style.

Thursday's thoughts... a little early?

Remember how we talked about semicolons in class the other day? (I've suddenly remembered, after planning to write this post for a bit, that this may have happened in British Literature... so... just play along, please.) Well, I found it ironic, after talking about how semicolons are the most sophisticated grammatical device out there, that Eggers wrote, on page 288, that "you can hear his semicolons!" (speaking about Bill Clinton). Just a note about the irony of... things. Yep.

On a related, if somewhat disjointed, note, I find Eggers' writing style really appealing. We talked on Tuesday about the way he presents a little bit of a story and then skips to something else and then back and forth again... well, this is sort of like that... but it's more that he starts his stories, or anecdotes or whatever else you'd like to call them, right in the middle. Or, somewhere not at the beginning. For instance, flip the page over to 291, and at the very beginning of the paragraph after the break, Eggers writes "Toph is better at it than I am. Half the time, mine go behind me, which is funny on its own, but is not the effect we've been going for. We are doing the thing where we pretend to throw the baseball as hard as possible, with a huge windup, leg-kick and everything and then, at the last minute, instead of actually gunning it, we let it slip off our fingers, suddenly in slow motion, the ball let go with a high, looping arc, the trajectory slow and sorry, a one-winged pelican." So, he starts out explaining their game... without explaining their game. You know? And this happens on a larger scale, even in this instance. Really, Eggers is beginning a story about him and Toph visiting apartments in San Fransisco, but it starts as a story about fake baseball throwing. See what I mean? I always find syntax and word choice and word order really interesting (sometimes passively, sometimes not) so this... not quite word order choice, but uh, story order choice is sort of fascinating because it's anything but linear... which is kind of the way I like syntax to be. Convoluted is good.

So. There you have it. My Thursday thoughts... do with them as you will.

Tuesday thoughts... a little late

So, as I said in class, one thing that I noticed in AHWOSG is that Eggars, when outside the narrative, is very funny, very light weight, etc., but that the narrative takes on a lot more weight than that while still keeping humor present.

I also thought that Eggars was much more self-aware than most writers we've looked at. Mary McCarthy was pretty self-aware, but not quite to the degree that Eggars is, I think. I guess we addressed this when we talked about his work being the most performative that we've seen yet.

Another thought I had was that, although he spends a great deal of time in the acknowledgements and preface talking about falsehoods and so forth within his text, it actually seems as thought it is the most honest. Someone pointed out in class today that he doesn't shy away from letting himself looks dumb, that he's very self-depricating in that way... althought it's almost more passive than actively self-depricating.

So... those are my sleepy, late thoughts. My apologies.

Writing Styles - Eggers

Dave Eggers's writing is incredibly fluid and easy to read. He writes like he talks, or rather, he writes like he thinks. He uses repetition possibly more than any other writer we've encountered this semester. What I really noticed about his writing, however, was his technique of breaking up stories and scattering them throughout the book, getting back to them after placing another piece in the puzzle. The story I'm thinking of in particular is his father kneeling in the driveway. He tells his sister's story with such clarity it's hard to imagine it isn't seen through his own eyes (I suppose that's the mark of a good writer) but it's interesting how, instead of telling the entire story in one passage, he inserts snippets here and there, and builds the characters of his family (including the house, a character in its own right) before revealing the new developments of Beth's story. This, in my opinion, is smart writing on Eggers part, because he is able to keep the attention of his reader by building the mystery and anticipation.

His humor is an incredible agent to his writing as well. It's funny because it's about real things, like his wallpaper or his mother's bile. He could have taken on a number of other emotions and tones (depression, annoyance, humiliation, anger) but chooses to go with comedic appreciation, which I think was very wise. It makes it much easier to read and also much easier to relate to. The passage where he goes on about all the ways he would murder the people who knew about his mother's illness and pitied his family was funny because most people know what it's like to be in that situation; to be gossip fodder for the town or community in which you live, and wanting nothing more than for it to all go away. He takes it one step further by actually explaining (in sometimes grotesque detail, I might add) the ways he'd like them to die. There's really no reason for his hostility, but it's understandable just the same.

Eggers is able to reign in his audience with his use of comedy, fluidity, normalcy, and anticipation. You know the path his parents are heading down, but you have to know how and when it ends anyway. His writing is so easily relatable, and yet the way he tells his story makes it unlike any other I've read.

Similar writing style: iamgettingfat.blogspot.com (uses humor to tell strange and mundane trials and tribulations of everyday life)

Thinking and Writing

One of the words used by Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times critic, to describe Egger's book is a "stew." I think this is a brilliant description of the novel. The text is one that is filled with numerous thoughts, often simultaneously, that seem to be going nowhere and then suddenly they all seem to collapse into the conclusion of a story. The way the text is composed reminds me very much of the way a stew is cooked; a great amount of ingredients are added that do not seem to mix, but when finished the end result makes the taster understand why all of the ingredients were used. The style in which Egger's writes reminds me of a periodic sentence, except that it is with a story. A fabulous example to prove that I really do have some sort of intelligent thought behind this rambling lies in Part V dealing with the stolen wallet. Egger's writes and writes about his fears for Toph and his anger that his wallet has been stolen. He has elaborate theories on what has happened to Toph, and what he will do to the "Mexicans" once he finds them. It all comes to a resounding conclusion when he tucks a safe Toph into bed and returns to his room to find "The wallet. On the dresser. It was here." p. 165

Eggers Creation of Portraits and Performative Moments

We learned about performative literature when we were reading Running in the Family, by Michael Ondaatje, and I think that word applies to Dave Eggers' autobiography as well. I also think that Eggers capture singular moments extremely well in his autobiography as well. There are moments that seem like snapshots, especially those that describe his father's final fall on the front lawn. He includes them over the first 30 pages of the book, describing the moment in perfect detail and dictating exactly how his sister felt when she was observing the moment.

"At the end of the driveway my father knelt. Beth watched and it was kind of pretty for a second, him just kneeling there in the gray winter window. Then she knew. He had been falling. In the kitchen, the shower. She ran and flung open the door, threw the screen wide and ran to him."
(Page 29).

The description above is the final portrait provided regarding that particular moment in Dave Eggers' life. I think the moment is so drawn out, because it is so monumental in Dave's life. The snapshots seem to read like one of the those cartoon books that move if you flip them really fast, similar to Jonathan Saffron Foer's flipbook in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The moment could also be read in slow motion. It is set apart from Eggers' fast-paced stream of consciousness writing. Dave Eggers knew his mother would pass away. It was only a matter of time. He did not expect his father's downfall and death to be so sudden. That is why the moment had been so monumental in his memory. Without both parents, Eggers had a harder time accepting his situation. He was no longer a brother, but a parent, and a guardian.

The momeny is also quite performative in nature, as are many of Eggers' daydreams and exaggerated scenarios in the text. Eggers provides numerous visual moments in the text, and his readers are able to picture exactly what is going on. He does not skip a beat. Not to mention the fact that Eggers provides some conversations that appear as lists in the text. There is no indication of who is saying what, but yet, you just know. The reader just knows. These conversations read as scripts, and once you know which "character" is speaking, you exaclty how the line would be delivered.

Dave Eggers is a Modern Day James Joyce

I think I appreciated reading A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, because there were times when he wrote exactly how he would speak. He had this "stream of consciousness" way of delivering information, and I really enjoyed it, because even though the language was so difficult to comprehend at times, it was real to me. Even though the book is a work of fiction (I would argue that there are many autobiographical elements in it, however). A Portrait is one of my favorite works by an Irish writer and could possibly be one of my favorite books of all time. My list grows larger every day though.

I think that Dave Eggers autobiography is particularly realistic and enjoyable for the same reason. He writes as if he is speaking. He writes as if he is dictating exactly what is on his mind. Even though sometimes he writes about fantastical events, he welcomes the idea of his imagination running away with him, almost in a daydream state, because it is such a real thing that really happens to people:

"We'll get her in a few days. Beth and I have vowed to get her out, have planned to break her out, even if the doctors say no; we will hide her under a gurney. will pose as doctors, will wear sunglasses and go quickly and will take her to the car, and I will lift her and Toph will provide some distraction if necessary, something, a little dance or something; and then we'll jump in the car and be gone, will bring her home, triumphant, we did it! we did it!..."
(Page 41).

That is the beginning of a perfect example of how Eggers imagination often takes flight while he is writing. I can picture him sitting at his computer and just typing a million miles a minute at these points in his story. He doesn't stop, because he will lose the creative spark. Though Dave and his sister do not break their mother out of the hospital utilizing this elaborate plan, Dave is perfectly capable of thinking about it in a daydream-state. The situation is not real, but the way of thinking about it is. Who hasn't had these crazy scenarios work themselves out in the imagination before?

Eggers may have actually thought each sentence through when he was writing A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but his final product certainly does not come off that way. I am sure there were areas in the book where he wrote slowly and with precision, but some of the longer paragraphs that go on for pages at a time and contain multiple periodic sentences seem to be written at the speed they are read. Everything speeds up, like the book is on fast forward. That could be another reason why the book is such a quick read as well.

The Easiest and Hardest to Read...

I must say that I am greatly enjoying A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius for what I can bring myself to read. Yes, the language is easy, and even his trains of thought are easy for me to follow. However, the subject matter is (as I'm sure it is to others) a bit too close to home. A lot of the imagery that he describes in his terms, such as the machine that "looks like an accordion, but is light blue. It is vertical and stretches and compresses, making a sucking sound." (p. 36) just reminds me of things that I myself have seen and did not know what it was. However, that's another thing that made this book so easy... there were no terms we didn't know. It wasn't written in the correct or technical terms, but rather the way one might describe what they don't know. However, that's again what makes it so difficult to read is that I recognize a lot of what he's saying, and instead applying my own unawareness to the situation. He is a lot of fun to read, but yes there have been some parts where I had to put the book down. This is funny, because the other books we've read that have had much more gruesome imagery I've been okay with... mostly because I haven't had first-hand experience with it. I know I'm not the only one, but I figured I'd share.

Kincaid & Repetition

The most noticeable writing technique Kincaid employed in Autobiography of my Mother was repetition. I think she uses this tool to really solidify the personality and aura of the main character and all the main themes of the novel (lack of love, mainly). Kincaid repeats phrases like "she did not love me" and "we were not friends" time and again, not only in different chapters and passages of the book, but numerous times within the same passage as well. Kincaid uses repetition not only with exact phrases, but with themes as well. The reader is made perfectly aware early in the story that the narrator is of a more pessimistic mind-set and that love doesn't exist in her life. We see this in the beginning with her lack of parenting and again at the end when she states that she married a man she "did not love." She viewed herself more as a generic package than an individual who could have love if she really wanted it, but perhaps never knew how to go about finding it. I think Kincaid's use of repetition proved to be an extremely strong technique that helped the themes of pity, loss, despair, anger, and isolation really bleed from the pages. Although it was certainly not an uplifting story in any way, I believe the delivery of Kincaid's message and her ultimate purpose is portrayed very strongly.

when your remembering things that havent happened yet, thats when you need to re-evaluate the validity of your memory

"And yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present." (214)

i believe that what we are involved in now, does heavily effect the way in which we recall the things from our past. but i'm not so sure i'd go as far as to say that it is not trust-worthy . . .
can it not be trusted because it is not the entire truth? then again, what is truth? is it just the facts, laid out in an objective fashion? or is there something other than truth, that memory fails to provide? i'm curious as to what it is about memory that influences kincaid to think that it's not a valid source of experience.

an example? ok. so i'm thinking of a memory from awhile back - my younger brother and i, no more than 5 and 6 years of age, running up a muddy slant in our backyard and then hurling ourselves down it, barefoot, while holding onto a trapeze bar. when i'm recalling this, my mind flashes images of my brother in his current state, between the images of him as a little boy. i also can't help but to think of how we would interact in that situation now, as the people we've become since then. my mind/memory creates this randomized culmination of then and now without any deliberate prompt from me, and so it is entirely unavoidable. in this way, it is the experiences of my more recent past and the present, which help me to regain my thoughts of the far past. how is that not accurate?

i dont believe my wandering thoughts of how things are now, negatively effect the validity of my muddy-trapeze-memory. if anything, i feel as though they brighten it, making it more accessible to me in this state of being, so far removed from my 6-year-old self. i trust my memory, even when it may not be comprised of the clearest images and the most defined experiences. because no matter what i recall, it came from within my mind. and i trust myself first, above anyone else.

A lack of something...

While reading Kincaid's novel I had a difficult time connecting to the story. Our discussion on Tuesday in class helped me to to better understand the concept of the text--but I still felt something was missing from my understanding of the story. While reading last night I came to realize that perhaps what it is about the text that is missing is the feeling of love. There seems to be such a separation between Xuela and everyone that is around her. The writing in the text is beautiful, but perhaps I am not able to connect/understand the text because I have never been in such a position as the author. The separation between life and death seems to define the text. But then again I have never been a slave and was able to connect to Frederick Douglas's narrative? There is a good chance this idea needs more thought..

Two pulchritudinous (favorite word) lines from the text are:
"To make someone forget another person is impossible. Someone can forget an event, someone can forget an item, but no one can ever forget someone else." p108 I thought these lines were astounding. So simply written and so honest and true.

Dark and Dismal "Autobiography"

I think that The Autobiography of my Mother is quite the dark and dismal book. It's message is definitely one of hopelessness. Xuela is both self-centered and loveless. The only man she admits to loving (Roland) is only discussed for about twenty pages in one chapter. She then proceeds to discuss the people in her life whom she admits that she never loved and will never love, like her father and her husband. I am beginning to wonder whether she would have loved her mother if she had lived past Xuela's birth. Is that the pivotal moment in Xuela's story, her mother's death? Could she have deeply if her mother had lived? I'm not so sure, because she discusses her mother's life in brief later on in her story. Her mother potentially lived the same loveless life. I think the last passage of the novel dictates Xuela's stance on life quite well:

"The days are long, the days are short. The nights are a blank; they harken to something, but I refuse to become familiar with it. To that period of time called day I profess an indifference; such a thing is a vanity but known only to me; all that is impersonal I have made personal. Since I do not matter, I do not long to matter, but I matter anyway. I long to meet the thing greater than I am, the thing to which I can submit. It is not a in a book of history, it is not the work or anyone whose name can pass my own lips. Death is the only reality, for it is the only certainty, inevitable to all things."

(Page 228)

Xuela returns to contradictions. Though she feels she does not matter, nor does she long to matter, that is why she does matter. She has fought against having a purpose and a passion in life (other than the love she has for herself). She longs to meet death. All of the people in her life have, by this time, passed away. She is 70-years-old and has no one left, not that she really cares. However, she learned from birth that death really is the only certainty, that is why she thinks it is the only thing that will make her submit. She never submitted to love, and therefore, I believe, never submitted to life.

The metaphor running through this last passage is one of light and dark. She says that she is indifferent toward day, which is comparable to life. She has no qualms against darkness, or the "life" that follows life. She is prepared to meet death, because it is the only thing she believes in. It is the only thing she knows will come. Not God. Not love. Not happiness.

...something? nothing? whose story?...

Something out of Nothing... out of Something

First, I noticed that it was not until we reached the chapter that begins on page 181 that we really learn much about Xuela's mother other than that she's dead. Yet, at the same time, we really don't learn anything, because it's all conjecture. Xuela tells us over and over again that she's guessing, assuming, making things up, because, as she repeats countless times, her mother died when she was born. So... in this chapter we learn something, but really we don't learn much of anything.

In the final chapter we learn a bit more about Xuela than I think we really learn before this. On page 213 Kincaid writes:
"I had been living at the end of the world for my whole life; it had been so when I was born, for my mother had died when I was born. But now, with my father dead, I was living at the brink of eternity, it was as if this quality of my life was suddenly raised from its usual self, embossed with its old meaning. The two people from whom I had come were no more. I had allowed no one to come from me. A new feeling of loneliness overcame me then; I grew agitated with a heat, then I grew still from a deep chill. I grew used to this loneliness, recognizing one day that in it were the things I had lost and the things I could have had but refused. I came to love my father, but only when he was dead, at that moment when he still looked like himself but a self that could no longer cause harm, only a still self, dead; he was like a memory, not a picture, just a memory. And yet a memory cannot be trusted, for so much of the experience of the past is determined by the experience of the present."

Then, a few pages later, on page 226, she says "I refused to belong to a race."

I thought that this one long passage and the other short line seemed to connect. In the long passage, Xuela explains how she comes from nothing, in a way. How she came from nothing, she produced nothing, and therefore has nothing as she ages and approaches death (does this mean she is worth nothing?). So, to me the words "I refused to belong to a race" indicated that because she refused to have parents and she refused to have children she took herself out of any heritage (biological, emotional, psychological, familial) and then kept herself separate by not perpetuating her own self, not creating a new heritage. I'm sure that the short quote also relates to the colonial story at play in this book (in her Carib mother, her Irish(?) father, her white husband)... but I was intrigued more by this other interpretation.

So, we write to become something other than what we are, according to Foucault. Kincaid wrote to become nothing (a race-less, history-less, family-less, childless, love-less, legacy-less woman), which is something other than what she is, because everyone is something (except Xuela). (That made sense, read it again.)

...searching Kincaid for thursday...

Use Foucault's statement as a lens for thinking about Kincaid's novel:
"One writes in order to become other than what one is."

Not an autobiography, huh?

So, maybe I'm an idiot and missed the whole memo on The Autobiography of my Mother not being a real autobiography. I mean, I knew from the title that it was probably going to be very Danticat-like, most of the story being told about the protagonist, who I assumed to be Jamaica Kincaid's mother. Oh, how wrong I was. I read about two pages in, and then I realized that at the beginning of the course Ann Page said we would be reading one piece of fiction, a book that was not an autobiography at all. Ah-ha! It must be this one! So, I read the copyright information and realized that there was a note from the publisher:

"This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental."

And so I decided that I would have to read The Autobiography of my Mother in a much different manner than I have been reading the other pieces we have covered in this course. All along I have been reading the autobiographical pieces and wondering to myself, how much of this is true? How many liberties has this author taken in representing and retelling his or her life's accounts? Now, as I read The Autobiography of my Mother, I ask myself some different questions. I keep trying to find evidence of why the events seem untrue, or as if they never actually occurred in a real person's life. I think I am starting to find these pieces of evidence that have really made me say to myself, "That right there is why this book is not an autobiography. That is why there is no way that Xuela could possible be real."

So, maybe some of these events, or the ideas associated with these events occurred in Jamaica Kincaid's life. More likely, they did not. This book definitely aims for the shock factor for sure. I am sure there are some events that just evoke a HOLY CRAP reaction. I was that way when I read about Xuela pulling the fetus from her sister's womb (I apologize if you haven't gotten that far yet...at least I prepared you for it). I guess I have two questions, upon all this reflection:

Could Jamaica Kincaid have masked some of these events as fiction (because I trust that some of them really are complete fiction) in order to receive that detached feeling that we get when read Danticat? And...do we read texts differently, looking for different things, depending on the genre?

Speech in fiction..

I keep noticing the number of times Kincaid writes about the theme of speech. I find it interesting that she discusses her experiences with speech so often through writing. Perhaps the character has always found it easier to express themselves through writing rather than speech? I think there is evidence to this through the character's letters to her father.
I also find the themes of love and hate throughout the novel to be very interesting. Kincaid discusses the similarities of arguably two of the strongest human emotions...

...Kincaid....

"An Autobiography of my Mother"

"Mother Dying" (3)
"And this realization of loss and gain made me look backward and forward: at my beginning was this woman whose face I had never seen, but at my end was nothing, no one between me and the black room of the world."
--self reflection, realization of the self, in relation to one's family

"Ma Eunice" (5)
"brutality is the only real inheritance and cruelty is sometimes the only thing freely given."
--product of social reconstruction

from Paul:

"Why are people prompted to write their autobiographies? Is it because they are vain and believe they have an important story that needs to be heard? In some cases I believe that this is the case but I think that in the vast majority of cases it is because the person has woken up one morning realizing that their life is finite. That one day, maybe in the very near future they will die, writing an autobiography is a way to immortalize themselves. I am sure that there are more reasons, and different ways of looking at this question. But at the heart of it I think autobiographers are just trying to preserve a part of themsleves, regardless of the reason they feel the need to do so."

we are the books we read

"a literary work is a communal act"

why?

when i first heard this, i sort of brushed it off as just another quote that was trying to get at the backbone of writing. but the more i considered it, the more it began to make sense for a number of reasons. the first one being that, our whole lives we are around other people, creating experiences and interacting with one another. the stories of these events are the basic material of our autobiography (as well as other genres of literature), and they undoubtedly include people other than ourselves. in this way, our writing would not have been possible without the effect of the community we live in. even if your a hermit and havent been in the company of others in 50 years, there would still be fundamental parts of yourself that would have come from the people you were raised by. as humans we learn everything by imitation, and so everything within you essentially comes from someone else.

not only does the society in which we live, influence the matter of our past experiences. they also help to recreate the stories of each literary work. the writer physically scribbles their intangible experiences onto a page, making it concrete between the two covers of the book. but if no ones eyes ever read over those specially arranged symbols - no ones mind ever contemplates each written word into meaning - no ones perception of 'now' is suspended so that they may listen to the 'then' . . . the writers story might have been better off free from the binds of text. without an audience or a receptive community of readers/listeners, the literary work fails to exist anywhere but between the white margins of pages never noticed.

and if no one acknowledges it, does that even exist?

"People often confuse life narrative and fiction. Typically, they call autobiographical texts 'novels' though they rarely call novels 'autobiographies.' A life narrative is not a novel, although calling life narrative 'nonfiction,' which is often done, confuses rather than resolves the issue." (Smith & Watson 7).

Autobiography of My Mother... initial observations

When I first picked up this book, I noticed two things just on quick observation. On the second page of the book (not the second page of the text... the actual second piece of paper behind the cover), there is a quote that says:
"Through subtle, poetic meditations that continually question the boundaries between solitude and family, love and hate, black and white, colonialism and the colonized, Kincaid casts a lucid wash of language over Xuela's tragically barren life." (St. Petersburg Times)
This struck me as interesting because of the phrase "solitude and family." I doubt whether any of us would have asserted that the opposite of solitude is family... but it's true. And especially poignant at a time of year when so many people gather their families together. It seems like a sad point to make, but I was somewhat taken by surprise in finding such a genuine sentiment and idea in a review of the book. I found it interesting, anyway.

Another thing that I noticed before even beginning to read was the simple, and somewhat obvious, visual clues that the book gives us. At the start of each chapter is a piece of the picture on the cover... with each chapter, more of the picture is revealed. I assumed that this meant we would learn more about Xuela's mother in each chapter. Perhaps I won't win a Nobel Prize for that astute piece of observation, but I thought it was worth noting.

And, it held true as I did read. In the first chapter we really learn very little about the mother other than that she was Carib. Not a lot to go on. But, in the second chapter we learn more. We learn that Xuela shares her mother's name: Xuela Claudette. We also learn that she was abandoned at a convent, and that the narrator's father loved her. In each chapter, we learn a little more, and maybe by the end it will add up to a whole person. I guess that's the point...

The Autobiography of my Mother

"I came to feel that for my whole life I had been standing on a precipice, that my loss had made me vulnerable, hard, and helpless; on knowing this I became overwhelmed with sadness and shame and pity for myself."

The impact of family in one's own story, yet again. But, fiction this time...