B-H

I thought the ending of the book was really touching.  I thought the scenes where Vladek worked together with his friend were interesting to watch and a good example of their friendship working to each others' advantage.  The final page was one of the best in any book I've read, Vladek's ultimate victory at the end was very interesting to watch, and it gave his death a sort of peace, like he had had enough of life and was once again being reunited with Anja.  The final panel was brilliant, in my opinion, it was sudden and wrapped up the story very nicely.  It does leave you to examine the concepts of love and death in a less polarizing light, perhaps suggesting that they are not so mutually exclusive as one would have you believe.  I still don't like Art Spiegelman, his actions and attitude toward his father show someone past their limit and only really care for themselves at that point.  His father survived the Holocaust and he can't even spend time with his son while he's dying.  I understand his desire for some personal space, but when your father is dying, you need to be spending time with them.  I honestly prefer Vladek as an individual.

The biggest surprise I had in this reading was how Vladek's group managed to survive.  They went through all the effort of transporting the Jews all over the country and then they just ditch them.  I'm not saying I'm disappointed, I'm just not sure why they didn't just kill them all.  It seems like it would  be the Nazi thing to do. 

I didn't really like this reading.  It didn't really enlighten me to anything new, I knew a lot of the stuff that happened in Auchwitz through reading Night and History class, but did think it was really interesting that Vladek was able to survive as a worker.  I'm surprised that the foreman didn't have him killed after a while, but I guess there were different experiences for everyone.  The "present day" scenes were rather annoying for me, largely because they seemed to only reinforce the idea that Vladek actually loves his son but doesn't express it well, a fact taht has been painfully apparent since the second page of the book.  I thought the scenes where he was portrayed as a child were very apt and a good way to show his uncertainty and vulnerability.  However, his discussion with the psychiatrist or therapist seemed a little too cold and logical, I didn't really get the feeling that he was affected by his father's tales, only interested for the sake of his job.

 I really had no idea how the Germans treated any supposed Jew the same exact way as all the others, I would think that there would be a sense of nationalism mixed in with the racism.  Maybe not favoritism, but at least better treatment.  However, this was obviously not the case, as shown by the death of the German Jew.

This was an interesting reading because it essentially showed the Germans removing any and all possibility of Jewish resistance and I think that Art Speigelman is really looking at a difficult task of showing just how hard the Holocaust was on people, namely his father.  I don't think he's doing it too well in the stories from his father, but that's likely what he was left with by Vladek.  His method of discription is too condescending and matter-of-fact to really get emotions like hurt and sadness across, and I find the art style too simple to really identify with the characters.  However, the comic Spiegelman had written earlier, about the death of his mother, was a torrent of despair and emotion.  I definitely liked that one better, I felt it was much more symbolic and raw than the cleaned up, comedic style of Maus.

Because of this, I'm starting to realize just how thorough and effective the Germans were at destroying the Jewish people.  They didn't really just invade towns, they would establish themselves and then simply kill all the Jews on a street.  Before anyone could organize a resistance, they'd already be gone.  I can only imagine the feeling of helplessness as the Germans could do with you as they wanted, and virtually any attempt to bribe or trust them would be met with bullets to the back. I would've killed myself before the Germans had a chance.

Overall, I thought this book was good as a historical cross-section of the American psyche, not so much in that it is particularly brilliant or insightful book, but its pure representative power of the people of today, the critical point in the lives of not only Americans, but humanity.  Years from now, when our descendants teleport to prestigious Jupiter college their to learn about the literary history of the ancient American Empire, I think this could very well be the very lasgt book that students would read, it really is the Hostel of literature, violent and grotesque, the entire point being to serve a base need and entertain a thrill seeker or fear defyer.  Or whatever.  I wasn't particularly put off or completely disturbed by what happened in the book, although it is the first book that ever made me go "Wow that is really disgusting, I should stop reading this."  I don't really understand the idea of a "thriller" book, mainly because books are passive adventures and you're having to essentially translate something into images in your head, so there isn't so much of that surprise element, you're also interpreting things your own way, so any suspense of something terrible happening is built up so long (Due to the very nature of reading as a generally slower form of communication than actual action) that when he is finally shot, or ambushed, it sort of fits your already expected circumstances in your head and the shock is absorbed by the familiarity.  So I'm not sure how successful this book was in its goals (Whatever those happened to be), but it's relatively well written and it's a good indicator of life today/when it was written ('81).

I think I'm liking Maus so far, not so much because of the pictures but because of the style.  I could care less about whether or not something is illustrated, it doesn't make it any easier to understand, really, it's just a way of describing things.  But the most interesting part, I found, was the dialogue and mannerisms.  I thought the grandfather was the mostinteresting character, which is good because he's the main character.  I personally think that Maus would be better suited as a short story rather than a comic, because, quite frankly, the pictures don't seem to really help me.  Although I'm sure it makes the book more accessible to people who don't like to read.  I'm also left kind of wondering how his Grandfather gets recaptured.  Because it obviously happens.  Although I guess that's the point of chapters.

I never really knew about what exactly the Poles did to fight the German invasion, I'd always just kind of assumed they didn't really put up any resistance.  But obviously that was not the case.  Also, the whole part about having the POWs freed so that the Nazis did not need to follow the Geneva Conventions was really interesting, particularly because I had no idea the Germans cared at all about international law.  Although I'm sure that changed once the Germans were fighting the rest of the world.

1. Poor, lonely, lives through her kids, attempts to right her mistakes and wrongs of the past by raising more successful children, doesn't seem to particularly care about her childrens' well-being.  Very old fashioned, "proper" woman, depressed.  "I'll tell you what I wished for on the moon.

2. 

Finding oneself 85% of the way through a two day old book that should probably last about two weeks is never an exciting discovery.  However, I was finally able to get myself away from the pages at midnight last night with only 14 chapters left in a 54 chapter novel, and I'm pretty sure I've yet to actually reach the climax of the novel, which is good.  So I'm essentially writing this blog to do two things: Pass English and talk about my thoughts on the author's concept and presentation.  And yes, there's a lot of things presented.

The basic jist of the novel is that a traumatized former FBI Agent with the mind of a serial killer (Without actually being a serial killer) is brought out of retirement to help solve some murders and he needs occasional help from the last guy he caught (who came close to killing him).  Bam.  But the big issue is actually solving the case, obviously, and to do that you need clues and evidence.  And Jesus Christ is there evidence.  The killings in the book read like some freakish Ted Bundy/Jeffrey Dahmer wet dream, and the main antagonist (Who is, surprisingly, the killer) is a sick, sick individual (All that needs to really be said.)  Yesterday, on the way home, my Mom asked me if the book had any literary value whatsoever, and I actually said yes.

 The value in a novel like this isn't a revolutionary plot, or a clever satire, or a particularly signature style, but in what it stands for.  This is a novel to disturb.  To test.  To challenge.  And I think it's representative in a lot of ways of Modern America's absolute obsession with rage and humor and thoughtfulness.  Because the biggest sellers in American books today are escapes from reality; a pundit decrying the views of others as lunacy, a boy who discovers he is a wizard, a psychotic killer who slaughters entire families; these are all related in their incredible detachment from reality and their ability to allow us to see just how banal our lives really are, drawing hatred for a caricature and involving us in something extraordinary.

Americans of today are not stupid.  Mostly. They're able to think, to ponder, to question.  But they're not sophisticated, either.  They like sex, they want violence.  So a novel like The Red Dragon is valuable because it is able to successfully examines not only its characters, but its readers.  It takes everything we as Americans want, whether we admit to it or not, and it transforms them into a cross section of our own imaginations.  We can read this and get our cheap thrills and sick pleasure, while at the same time trying to make it connect.  We exercise so much of our minds reading this book that you have to question whether or not this is a brilliant satire on American desire and hunger.  But then you look at his other novels and realize that no, it is not.  It's just another sad straw on the back of the camel.

The mere process of getting a book to read was surprisingly long and wearisome.  I originally had selected Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris simply because I wanted to get a bit of a break from the whole idea of "classic literature" and go with a novel more representative of contemporary writing.  It was either that or a political book, and I decided on the cheaper option.  However, right after I'd told Mrs. Clark Evans my choice (I'd yet to actually buy the book at this point), I'd remembered that only a week before I'd been obsessed with another book, Pride and Prejudice adn Zombies.  It is exactly what it sounds like, basically some publisher hired a writer to take Pride and Prejudice and make some small... adjustments to the book and add an entire zombie subplot. 

I was pretty much decided on this when I went to Borders on Sunday, only to discover  (to my absolute horror) that they didn't have the book listed as published until May.  Undaunted, I decided to return to the original idea of The Silence of the Lambs, only to discover, upon attempting to locate it through Borders's helpful little computer system, that it was listed as Likely In Store.  So I proceeded to search it out in the Mystery'/Thriller section, confirming my fears that no, they didn't have that one either.  So, the gears in my mind grinding as I attempted to find a suitable replacement, I saw Red Dragon, another book of the same series as Silence of the Lambs (And before the author'd sold out and focused on one character).  I was delighted to find out it was not only one of the good books in Harris's series, but it was the first.  So, naturally, I bought it without a second thought.

"He couldn't possibly leave Daisy until he knew what she was going to do.  He was clutching at some last hope and I couldn't bear to set him free."

Summary of the book. Gatsby has an obsessive desire for someone he barely even knows anymore and Nick is too polite to do anything about it.  I think that the novel is good at providing a sort of caricature of many different types of Americans at the time, each with very understandable and common motivations, and making them seem entirely dislikable.  There's nothing great about Gatsby, his fate would have been the same as Wilson's if Wilson had run over Daisy.  The real message seems to be a critique of American culture as a whole, even Nick reminds me of the quote about doing nothing as the Nazis slowly took away all of their victims, until only he was left to resist his own arrest.  I'm really not sure if I'm completely on board with the idea of a book with only antagonists, as this seems to be, but I guess it worked for Fitzgerald.

Jewess P.170

A Jewish girl or woman.

The jewess in the corner told a great story.