This book makes me happy...

Sorry I am not in class today to be really excited about this book but I'm trapped in a smelly hockey arena for the afternoon.
I could write my blog post on how hysterical I find this book, but since I wrote my last one on that perhaps I should find another topic..
One of the greatest lines from this text that relates perfectly to the class is on page 138.."It is the kind of event that should have surfaced as the first chapter of an anguished autobiographical novel." Throughout the course we have discussed what we would put into our autobiographies; would the stories be sad, funny, enlightening? I think the way in which Ondaatje writes is beautiful. He writes his autobiography on a lighter note..his family does not seem to live the perfect life, but he is always able to find humor in not so fabulous situations. My favorite character in the text is obviously Lalla. She reminds me so much of my Grandmother in the way that neither of them care at all what anyone else thinks of them. It is also to think about all the references to flowers in the sections on Lalla....

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

..TAXI CAB DRIVER IN BOSTON...

...remind me to tell you about the Haitian taxi cab driver in Boston....

...or a kaleiodoscope?....

"No story is ever told just once. Whether a memory of funny hideous scandal, we will return to it later and retell the story with additions and this time a few judgements thrown in. In this way history is organized." (Ondaatje 26)

...fractal....

...could the fractal or scattergram be a way of describing Ondaatje's style in "Running in the Family."

Cheers for Ondaatje

In Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family, I noticed the involvment of family and stories to tell his story. These are techniques we've seen already, including using family history to tell your own, and splicedness, or the use of other stories to represent the events unfolding in the authors life. Ondaatje also introduces us to humor in his memoir, which we've been slightly deprived of thus far in class. "'Sissy,' Francis' sister, "was always drowning herself because she was an exhibitionist.'" (51) He uses humorous anecdotes about his family and the people around him, and a lot of witty one-liners. We're once again seeing a foreign account of life, but Ondaatje brings his reader into his world. This is one of the more "easy" reads we've had so far, in terms of the enjoyability and fluidity of the memoir.

The Cinnamon Peeler

The poem in Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje entitled "The Cinnamon Peeler" really caught my attention. I can't really explain what it is about this poem that made me so fascinated, but I would like to say that I love the duality of sense and sensuality that occurs throughout. That, and the first lines
"If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow."
drew me in with such an unusual and bluntly put statement