Overall, I really enjoyed History as Fiction. I think it's a really interesting topic for an English class as opposed to say, a history class or philosophy class. Lots of the things we dealt with could have fit in either of those courses, but it was nice to look at it from a literary standpoint.
I'm surprised that there were so many books that could work for this course. I mean, I know there is a whole genre of historical fiction, but for there to be that amount of books with a metafictional aspect, I was shocked by. I think this metafictional aspect brings in the philosophical thoughts to the equation, and that is what makes the course mentally challenging.
Sometimes, during our discussions, I would find myself contemplating the big questions, especially when Mr. Mitchell would ask things like, "what is history?" That's not exactly something you can answer in a sentence or two. But even if we never figured out a concrete answer, those questions that led to discussions, supported by the books we were reading, helped me to think about the true nature of history and fiction (if there can be a
"true" nature).
Although this course was a lot of work, I really liked the variety of the assignments. There was reading, blogging, big papers, small papers, and presentations. It was difficult to get through everything, but it was never boring to accomplish, and in the end, I felt like I had created something worthwhile to read and listen to.
Thank you, Mr. Mitchell, for an amazing two semesters during my senior year; you have made me a better writer, reader, and ultimately, a thinker.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
I wanted to quickly clarify one of the comments I made in class yesterday, this having mainly to do with my feeling that the actual scene where Lee shoots Kennedy is anticlimactic. It wasn't that it was different than the climax I was expecting, it was just that at the end of the section, I wasn't actually sure whether or not the President had been shot.
While I was having my difficulties articulating this fact to the class during discussion, I tried to figure out exactly what it was that made me unsure about the scene. I think I finally found it. This scene occurs on page 396, and it is the top section where Lee actually pulls the trigger. My problem, and perhaps this was just unobservantness on my part, but DeLillo never actually says, "Lee shot the president."
Granted, this might be a little too obvious to be at all literary, but he could have at least said something along the lines of "Lee fired," or "the president was hit." As the scene is, the only references to the gun going off are vague to me because I know nothing about guns. To me, I'm not really sure what "Lee turned up the handle, drew the bolt back," and "Lee drove the bolt forward, jerking the handle down," actually mean. Does that mean he shot the gun? Does it mean he was preparing the gun to be fired? I don't know. I guess I took it as being his preparation for the shot, loading the gun and things like that.
I suppose I should have taken the president's reaction as a hint, but that could have been a reaction to many things, and I guess I just didn't put two and two together. So, in the end, it wasn't that the scene wasn't exciting enough for me or anything like that, it was just that when I came to the page break, I was thinking, "wait, did he just shoot Kennedy?!?" which I feel like shouldn't have been a question I should ask in a book that is entirely about this event.
While I was having my difficulties articulating this fact to the class during discussion, I tried to figure out exactly what it was that made me unsure about the scene. I think I finally found it. This scene occurs on page 396, and it is the top section where Lee actually pulls the trigger. My problem, and perhaps this was just unobservantness on my part, but DeLillo never actually says, "Lee shot the president."
Granted, this might be a little too obvious to be at all literary, but he could have at least said something along the lines of "Lee fired," or "the president was hit." As the scene is, the only references to the gun going off are vague to me because I know nothing about guns. To me, I'm not really sure what "Lee turned up the handle, drew the bolt back," and "Lee drove the bolt forward, jerking the handle down," actually mean. Does that mean he shot the gun? Does it mean he was preparing the gun to be fired? I don't know. I guess I took it as being his preparation for the shot, loading the gun and things like that.
I suppose I should have taken the president's reaction as a hint, but that could have been a reaction to many things, and I guess I just didn't put two and two together. So, in the end, it wasn't that the scene wasn't exciting enough for me or anything like that, it was just that when I came to the page break, I was thinking, "wait, did he just shoot Kennedy?!?" which I feel like shouldn't have been a question I should ask in a book that is entirely about this event.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
One scene that I'd like to talk about briefly is the scene with the two Jacks. One of them is Jack Ruby, who is talking to another Jack about getting a somewhat Mafia-affiliated loan. In this scene, they are sitting in the back room of Ruby's club, and the dialogue is quite unique, and posed some problems to some readers in our class.
To me, the dialogue was written in the vernacular, verbatim as it would be spoken in a conversation. Some qualities of this involved not directly referencing important topics in the conversation, but merely hinting at them because both parties knew what was being discussed. This is what would happen in a normal conversation; no one is going to have a conversation with someone who also knows the whole situation and explain every little detail for the benefit of those listening. If you were eavesdropping, you probably wouldn't understand everything that was going on, because everything would be explicitly spelled out.
Another quality of this conversation was that it wasn't always exactly grammatically correct. Sometimes we say things that don't actually make sense were you to deconstruct them or write them, but that make absolute sense when you're speaking. One instance of this that came to mind is when people say "No, I know." Normally, you would say "Yes, I know" because you would be agreeing with whatever the other person had just said. However, what we are denying is the assumption that you didn't know whatever they had said. Sorry, kind of a tangent, but I think it's interesting.
I really enjoyed this vernacular-ness because it felt like a real conversation. Some readers felt like it seemed unnatural and were really confused by it, but I liked it so much better. I felt like I was in the flow of the conversation, and by picking up little bits and pieces, I even felt like I was a part of the conversation.
To me, the dialogue was written in the vernacular, verbatim as it would be spoken in a conversation. Some qualities of this involved not directly referencing important topics in the conversation, but merely hinting at them because both parties knew what was being discussed. This is what would happen in a normal conversation; no one is going to have a conversation with someone who also knows the whole situation and explain every little detail for the benefit of those listening. If you were eavesdropping, you probably wouldn't understand everything that was going on, because everything would be explicitly spelled out.
Another quality of this conversation was that it wasn't always exactly grammatically correct. Sometimes we say things that don't actually make sense were you to deconstruct them or write them, but that make absolute sense when you're speaking. One instance of this that came to mind is when people say "No, I know." Normally, you would say "Yes, I know" because you would be agreeing with whatever the other person had just said. However, what we are denying is the assumption that you didn't know whatever they had said. Sorry, kind of a tangent, but I think it's interesting.
I really enjoyed this vernacular-ness because it felt like a real conversation. Some readers felt like it seemed unnatural and were really confused by it, but I liked it so much better. I felt like I was in the flow of the conversation, and by picking up little bits and pieces, I even felt like I was a part of the conversation.
CIA strippers.
In the scene where we get a background look at Jack Ruby's club in Don DeLillo's Libra, there's a very interesting parallel that I didn't notice until I was leading the class discussion of that chapter. This parallel has to do with double lives, and specifically those of the CIA agents and the strippers.
In the cases of both the CIA agents and the strippers, each have a public and private persona and life. With people like Larry Parmenter, the public life has to do with day to day household chores, and there is even a scene where we see him helping his wife carry groceries into the house. When you contrast this mundane task that everyone does with Parmenter's secret CIA life, the difference is striking. Parmenter has to lead such a double life because he can't even tell his wife about the things he does at work. To think that there are all of these ideas and this secret knowledge stored up in his head when on the outside, he just looks like a helpful husband helping with chores.
I drew a parallel between this juxtaposition with Parmenter and with the strippers at Ruby's club. When we first see the strippers, we see them backstage discussing things like wages. This seemed striking to me because when we think of strippers, the first image that pops to mind is a woman performing on a stage of some kind. As Mr. Mitchell pointed out, even though they are revealing their body, in a way they are masking themselves because you don't really get to know who they are by simply watching them. You are much more likely to learn something by listening to their mundane backstage conversations.
I hadn't really drawn this parallel until I asked the class what they thought of the strippers and how we get a view of them that we don't normally see. Nobody seemed to have thought about this, so I figured I should explain why I thought it was interesting. And this is what I told them!
In the cases of both the CIA agents and the strippers, each have a public and private persona and life. With people like Larry Parmenter, the public life has to do with day to day household chores, and there is even a scene where we see him helping his wife carry groceries into the house. When you contrast this mundane task that everyone does with Parmenter's secret CIA life, the difference is striking. Parmenter has to lead such a double life because he can't even tell his wife about the things he does at work. To think that there are all of these ideas and this secret knowledge stored up in his head when on the outside, he just looks like a helpful husband helping with chores.
I drew a parallel between this juxtaposition with Parmenter and with the strippers at Ruby's club. When we first see the strippers, we see them backstage discussing things like wages. This seemed striking to me because when we think of strippers, the first image that pops to mind is a woman performing on a stage of some kind. As Mr. Mitchell pointed out, even though they are revealing their body, in a way they are masking themselves because you don't really get to know who they are by simply watching them. You are much more likely to learn something by listening to their mundane backstage conversations.
I hadn't really drawn this parallel until I asked the class what they thought of the strippers and how we get a view of them that we don't normally see. Nobody seemed to have thought about this, so I figured I should explain why I thought it was interesting. And this is what I told them!
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