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grandhotelabyss · 2 years

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Thanks for the question! I tend to agree with the Romantic view that great art always has something odd or excessive about it:

Yet her features were not of that regular mould which we have been falsely taught to worship in the classical labors of the heathen. “There is no exquisite beauty,” says Bacon, Lord Verulam, speaking truly of all the forms and genera of beauty, “without some strangeness in the proportions.”

The quotation is from Poe and is especially meaningful coming from him, since his own philosophy of composition centered on the achievement of calculated effects through perfected forms. But even the story from which I draw the quotation—my favorite: “Ligeia”—is all out of proportion, too verbosely descriptive, too summary in narration, pantingly melodramatic at the end. Not perfect, only great. And that’s a short story!

What novels approach perfection even so? You’re right to point to novellas and short novels, where a limited temporal and spatial setting and a small cast of characters allow for a unity of tone and style in pursuit of a single theme: The Dead and Death in Venice, Mrs. Dalloway and The Great Gatsby, Seize the Day and Sula, are all close to perfect, for example.

Some writers can carry this effect of compression into longer forms: Kazuo Ishiguro might be the reigning master here, though even he felt he had to cut loose with The Unconsoled, a willfully baggy and bizarre book. Other authors preceded Ishiguro in deliberately letting go of perfect forms early in their careers to attain a new maturity: for example, the long, loose third novels of both Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison, both of which followed two compact and assured short novels. Similarly, as the critic Leo Robson has shown, some 20th-century writers made almost a fetish of slovenly, large forms to throw off the dead hand of Flaubertian or Jamesian modernist perfection-seeking: Iris Murdoch, Joyce Carol Oates—and, before them, D. H. Lawrence.

Comparing the perfect short novels to the imperfect but greater long novels of major novelists is instructive here: The Dead in comparison to Ulysses, for example, where Joyce’s virtuosity becomes undeniably excessive, positively wearisome in places, but in search of a bigger quarry—arguably, all of western culture—than in the earlier, shorter work. And the same goes for Mann (Death in Venice vs. The Magic Mountain)—or Melville (Benito Cereno vs. Moby-Dick) or Eliot (Silas Marner vs. Middlemarch) or Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground vs. The Brothers Karamazov).

But we wouldn’t want to confuse literal magnitude with greatness or deny that shorter works can be more appealingly odd than longer. Take Conrad, for example: Heart of Darkness is probably greater and stranger than Nostromo, despite its being a third or a quarter of the length. Or we could just return to the opening example of Poe, progenitor of all whose achievement centers on the short story, often attaining the most shapely forms without spilling a drop of the necessary oddity and excess: Hawthorne, Chekhov, Borges, Kafka, O’Connor.

In summary: perfection is more achievable in short forms, desirable insofar as it amplifies a single theme, but for that very reason sometimes inferior to works of greater complexity and variety, which are often though not always longer.

#literature #literary criticism #fiction #creative writing

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suburbanlegnd · 3 years

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Thank you so much for tagging me bestie @youdrewstars13 ❤️

tag 9 people to know more about their interests, hobbies, etc:

MUSIC

fav genres: I listen to almost all genres, but pop and alternative the most

fav artist: taylor swift

fav song: my tears ricochet

most listened song recently: houseparty by annalisa

song currently stuck in your head: big by rita ora

fave lyrics: "this is me trying" by taylor swift

BOOKS

fav book genre: fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery

fav writer: andrzej sapkowski, virginia woolf

fav book: the witcher, maléfices by maxime chattam, fingersmith by sarah waters

fav book series: the witcher

comfort book: the witcher lol

perfect book to read to read on a rainy day: mrs dalloway

fav characters: geralt or rivia, ciri

TV AND MOVIES

fav tv/movie genre: mystery, action, fantasy, horror, drama

fav movie: joker

comfort movie: the handmaiden

movie you watch every year: Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey

fav tv show: killing eve, dead to me, the marvelous mrs maisel, supergirl, brooklyn 99, the witcher, euphoria, dickinson, orphan black, the 100, atypical, queen's gambit, the haunting, black mirror, the bold type

comfort tv show: dickinson, the bold type

most rewatched tv show: killing eve

ultimate otp: villanelle and eve from killing eve

5 fav characters: villanelle, geralt of rivia, jake peralta, miriam maisel, octavia blake

this was so long, and so fun! Thank you! ❤️

I tag: @your-international-weirdo @in-the-woods-yet @isntiitdelicate @corneliaboulevard @swiftieforevermore1989 @cinnamongay @skarlettsterminator @demonsanddarlin @please-dont-say-you-love-me @feeldaylight @burntostsunday @wishyouwoods @chiara-swiftiedreamer13 @anyone (no pressure of course) ❤️

#tag games #❤️#thank you!

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her-culture · 5 years

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My Top 10 Books of All Time, and Why You Need to Read Them

In my first article for Her Culture, I thought it would be fitting to write about books that have changed my life and shaped my world views in one way or another. My mom was a journalism major, so I guess I could say I got my love of reading from her. She used to read to me every night as a kid and imparted the importance of good literature to me. As a sociology major currently, these were very formative books in my adolescence that not only challenged certain misconceptions about the world, but allowed me to think in a more macroscopic way by reading different perspectives and experiences as well. I put my favorite quote from each book, if it had one, underneath each title—hopefully those will be enough to give you the general gist of each book. These aren’t listed in any particular order, but they are all relatively equally important to me, and it was incredibly hard to narrow it down (stay tuned for honorable mentions at the end):

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

When I think of this book, I have so many fond and nostalgic memories of adolescence. Even though it was not too long ago, I think this book was really my turning point to begin truly questioning the social facts that govern our society. Although the novel is relatively short, the story holds a much-needed allegory for some of the major plights of Western society: elitism, greed, class, consumerism, etc. I would call this book a buffet of sorts; I say this to mean you can take a plethora of different meanings from Fitzgerald’s relatively straightforward tale. Moreover, I recently learned that Fitzgerald was an Irish immigrant, so the concept of Gatsby’s relentless pursuit to be from East Egg is similar to his own trials and tribulations of fitting into American society—and invariably, not being able to in the end. I really love the imagery and the language in this book as well; essentially, Fitzgerald paints an exquisite portrait of the problem of the consumerist God we worship in America. My favorite imagery in the book is probably the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckelburg; that’s one of my favorite images ever in literature, actually.

Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf

“Fear no more the heat of the sun”

This book reminds me of the conversations I’d have with my best friend in high school every day after AP Literature. We’d get coffee and drive around and talk about the various existential topics the book discusses. The book takes place over the course of 24 hours, it essentially covers a middle-aged woman’s retrospective meditation of her life and past decisions as she prepares to throw a party. Although it seems like a simple plot, it delves into ideas about purpose, free will, and even the profound effect strangers can have on your life. I loved the interpolation of other people’s narratives into the story as well; it made the story richer than just Mrs. Dalloway’s narration. Furthermore, I like the stream of consciousness style that you don’t see in many critically acclaimed works, but it makes it feel all the more intimate. Not only do you feel for Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus, and others, but the power of this style of writing makes it seem like you are in that character’s predicament. It reminds me not only of the fragility of life itself, but of the gravity of what you would consider menial everyday interactions can have—the butterfly effect.

Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison

“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”

My mother is specifically to thank for reading this book. She suggested it to me the summer before senior year, and since summer had always been my prime reading time in high school, I read it. Toni Morrison is one of the best writers of the century, without a doubt, and this book is all the proof you need to believe this claim. She created an intricate masterpiece, intertwining various double-entendres—especially with the names of characters, time periods, storylines, and more. Her language is vivid, and every word is meaningful; she has no fillers. Every aspect of the story adds to the jigsaw puzzle that is solved at the end of the book. I’d hate to give any of the plot away, but one of the characters is named Guitar because he’s instrumental to the development of the protagonist, but that’s just one example of her mastery. It explores race, ancestry, colorism, and the power of self as well. This is one of my top favorites of all time, and if I were to order them, this one would without a doubt be close to the top.

Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keys

“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”

When I first read this book, I was relatively young, but it still had a profound impact. I think it challenged me to think about the power of sentience and that it’s one of the many things we take for granted. It reminds me a bit of some themes in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (an honorable mention), but in my opinion, it’s less cliché in a way. Although it’s technically supposed to be a young adult novel, I would say it has a lot of adult themes, so it was a good stepping stone into adult tragedy. Charly’s connection to Algernon is one of the most poignant relationships in literature, and I do feel like this book gets overlooked frequently when we discuss the greats. On another note, it also caused me to evaluate the power of interactions and relationships with others, as humans are innately relational; this book does a fantastic job of capturing that aspect of life.

Jazzy Miz Mozetta – Brenda C. Roberts

“Okay, young cats, let the beat hit your feet.”

This is the only children’s book in my top 10, but for a good reason. This is another book my mother introduced, but way earlier than the others she suggested, as she would read it to me at night. She’d read it probably 3-5 times a week because this was one of my favorite ones. When I see this book, I have so many fond memories of my mother tucking me in with my matching pajamas and warm milk at night. To this day, I appreciate this book as one of the most incredible children’s books of all time. Roberts’ incredible vision of music, color, and sound made me proud to be black at such a young age, in a world that doesn’t want you to feel comfortable in your own skin. Moreover, you don’t see many children’s books with black protagonists, and this was such a fantastic representation. Especially because I also love music, she did such a good job of creating that through the illustrations. It emphasizes community, music, and living life to the fullest.

Tuck Everlasting – Natalie Babbitt

“Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.”

Tuck Everlasting was one of the first books that really caused me to examine mortality in a secular sense. I went to church school once a week as a kid, and that was the only space where we discussed life and death in that way, so this was an important introduction to the concept of death altogether, in a sense. We’ve all heard about the fountain of youth at one point or another in our lives, and this novel explores that idea essentially. I also really like the tension between immortality and a normal life, somewhat reminiscent of the Greek myth of Eurydice when Orpheus goes back to the Underworld to retrieve her. This is another book connected to my mother actually, who read it at the same time as me so I would have someone to discuss my reading with and bounce off my ideas. I think this is part of the reason this book resonated so deeply with me; I had an adult to converse complex topics of mortality with.

The Virgin Suicides

“It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.”

The above quote is relatively long compared to the rest, but it’s one of my favorite passages in literature. I love the effervescent, ethereal nature of this book. I almost feel nostalgic reading it, although I didn’t grow up in the 70s, but there’s somewhat of a vintage quality to it. These aspects are kind of similar to Lois Lowry’s book A Summer to Die. If you can get past the gruesome, macabre aspect of the actual storyline—young girls committing suicide—you can bask in Eugenides’ masterpiece. His syntax is honestly unmatched, as well as his symbolism. In my opinion, this is a much better version of the popular young adult novel 13 Reasons Why, as it goes into detail about what led to the suicides and you get a look inside the minds of the girls, but from an outsider perspective (as young boys are the narrators of the novel, along with an occasional third person narrator). As a male, Eugenides encapsulates not only youth but the experience of adolescence as a girl as well. The writing is just beautiful, and that’s all I can say about it. The interesting part is that although I guess this would be categorized as a tragedy and certainly has a melancholy tinge to it, you don’t finish the book feeling sad necessarily. I was unsettled, but I still wouldn’t consider it a tragedy per se. Eugenides’ genre-defying classic is one that needs to be acknowledged as the phenomenal work that it is. To this day, I don’t know if I’ve read a book like this one, in the best way possible.

Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”

The way this book was introduced to me was as a book “about World War II and aliens,” and that is basically the most accurate summary I’ve ever read. It’s hard to say exactly what the premise of this book is because it really is about a wide array of topics, but it’s all connected, and it makes sense when you read it. It had a huge impact on me because I’ve never read a book as non-traditional as this one. I appreciate Vonnegut because he doesn’t subscribe to anyone’s rules—another genre-bender, one could say. It would be diminishing to this work to say that it’s about existentialism, but it is in a sense. The Tralfamadorians (the aliens in the novel), teach Billy how to look at his life macroscopically, and also about the deceptive nature of time. In Vonnegut’s words, “so it goes.”

Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

“Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.”

I can’t lie, I wasn’t the biggest fan of this book when I started it because I wasn’t sure where it was going. It has a Pride and Prejudice nature to it at the beginning before you delve into the plot that makes it seem sort of outdated, and although it is a timepiece technically, the actual message of the novel is timeless. There’s a lot more than meets the surface in this novel, and the imagery is also incredible. Hardy’s message is essentially about “crass casualty and dicing time” which is basically the notion that random things happen to us at random times and there’s nothing we can do about it. This also counters the notion of free will which is an interesting stance especially for the time this book was written. In fact, when this book was first published it was banned because of the depiction of rape and of secularism as well. At the time it was written (The Scarlet Letter era), the woman was the party at fault if she was raped, so it was met with generally negative feedback at first. Once I finished the book, I was a huge fan just because Hardy went against all norms to write such a tale. I specifically like the idea that Tess essentially saves herself in every scenario in the novel; Hardy knew even in 1891 that she didn’t need a man to save her.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Díaz

“Each morning, before Jackie started her studies, she wrote on a clean piece of paper: Tarde venientibus ossa. To the latecomers are left the bones.”

This book needs to be regarded as one of the best ones of our generation, as well as Junot Díaz as an author. Not only is this book timely, but it is also timeless. I really liked the integration of the actual history of the Dominican Republic into the novel, and also the acknowledgment of the intersection of race, language, history, and culture as the book is written in Spanglish. We don’t read many books in school or any books that garner any major media attention about Afro-Latino comic book nerds and their histories, so it’s important for a number of reasons. Díaz takes us on a long, vibrant journey through many genres, full of culture, and unrefined.

These are my top 10 books, at least as of right now, as the more books I read, the more the list changes. However, many of these will always remain at the top as classics to me. These are all must-reads not just because of how significant they were to me, but because of their respective contributions to literature. Outside of the fact that a few of them aren’t even categorizable into a genre, these books were truly eye-opening and formative for me. If you like to conceptualize the world and read about various topics from free will to mortality, I would highly consider reading at least a few of these, if not all.

Separately, I would like to think of this list as an ode to my childhood, and even more to my mother. She gave me this passion and this insatiable love of literature, so I truly thank her for taking the time to read to me, with me, and even for her suggestions. I can’t thank her enough.

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mamondae-blog · 6 years

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Shannon Gitte Diaz

Bibliography Entry:

Publication date: 1999

Publisher: ST MARTINS PRESS

Author: Michael Cunningham

Genre: Literary Fiction

Retrieved from http://www.powells.com/book/the-hours-9780312243029/18-0

Introduction:

Michael Cunningham was raised in Los Angeles and lives in New York City. He is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World (Picador) and Flesh and Blood. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and Best American Short Stories, and he is the recipient of a Whiting Writer's Award. The Hours was a New York Times Bestseller, and was chosen as a Best Book of 1998 by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Publishers Weekly. It won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the 1999 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was later made into an Oscar-winning 2002 movie of the same name starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.

Summary:

After opening on a melancholy note with Virginia Woolf's willful death by drowning, The Hours branches out into three interconnected plotlines.

In one plotline, Clarissa Vaughan—a middle-aged book editor living in 1990s New York—gets ready to throw a party. A beloved friend of hers is about to be awarded a distinguished literary prize, and Clarissa is arranging a private celebration where he'll be congratulated by supporters and close personal friends. Clarissa's friend Richard Brown is dying from HIV/AIDS-related illnesses, and when Clarissa checks in on him in the late morning, she can tell that he's having one of his bad days. When she comes back later to help him get dressed for the party, things take a tragic turn: Richard slides himself out of a fifth-story window and is killed. Rather than throwing a party for Richard, Clarissa now finds herself making arrangements for his funeral. In the last hours of the evening, she collects Richard's elderly mother, Laura Brown, and offers her a late-night meal.

In another plotline, that same Laura Brown is still a young woman living in a sunny, pristine suburb of Los Angeles. She wakes on the morning of her husband's birthday and eventually musters up the energy to get out of bed and face the day. Throughout the morning, Laura and her three-year-old son, Richie, make a birthday cake together. It doesn't turn out as Laura hoped, and after receiving an unexpected visit from a neighbor, Laura dumps the cake in the garbage and starts again. In the afternoon, Laura leaves Richie with a neighbor for a few hours so that she can "run some errands," by which we mean she steals away for a few hours so that she can enjoy some rare time alone. Laura checks herself into a hotel, then curls up to read Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Back at home that evening; Laura presides over her husband's birthday dinner. Later, once Richie is asleep, she and her husband get ready to head to bed. As Laura fiddles around in the bathroom, she thinks about how easy it would be to swallow a fatal number of sleeping pills and slip away from her life.

In the novel's third plotline, Virginia Woolf wakes up with an idea for the first line of a novel. After getting some coffee and checking in with her husband, she spends the morning drafting the first pages of the book that will eventually become Mrs. Dalloway. In the afternoon, Virginia takes a walk and ponders her heroine's fate. Back at home, she lends a hand in the printing room, where her husband, Leonard, is preparing another book for publication. Virginia is expecting a visit from her sister, niece, and nephews, and soon the clan arrives. The children have found an injured bird in the yard, and before they all come inside, Virginia helps them to make a little deathbed for the creature. In the early evening, after her extended family members are gone, Virginia slips outside for another walk. She heads toward the train station with a half-baked plan to run off to London for a few hours. She buys a ticket, and then decides to walk around the block while she waits for the next train to arrive. As she does, she sees Leonard coming toward her. Playing it cool, she keeps her plans to herself and walks home. Back at home, as bedtime approaches, Virginia makes a final decision about her novel. Instead of killing off her heroine, Mrs. Dalloway, she decides that "a deranged poet, a visionary" will die instead.

Critical Analysis:

It was indeed that this novel was a great novel of all time as it was a recipient of a lot of award. After reading the summary of the said novel, the curiosity of mine upon how this novel was considered as the novel of all time and how this novel was a recipient of a lot of award in America has been answered as the technicality of the author, how great the interconnection was presented in every plotline. One story with three interconnected plotlines is quite a tricky thing to use considering the great outcome and sacrificing your name in one novel is an enormous thing to be noted. The story gives a lot of moral lessons as it tackles a lot of social issue such as the LGBT and also the HIV/AIDS victim. The story had this moral lesson to those writers who didn’t have this chance to be a productive in their field of expertise because of lack of confidence. The novel is very technical in a way that the author used a plot twist and a surprise thingy to his reader. This story will tell how great Michael Cunningman is and how talented he is in the field of literary writing.

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fwiona-blog1 · 7 years

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3: How to Keep from Drowning in School Work

hello friends!

Sorry for being AWOL. I was sick for like three weeks and then I had to spend some time catching up on school work.

~ which brings me to my next blog post ~

(yes I made this on paint lol)

There’s always that one part of the semester where you fall behind in your work and you feel like everything is coming at you from all sides out of n o w h e r e and then you have a mini heart attack and google “how to get a successful job without going to college”. Am I right ladies?

If you’re me, you realize everything you have to do, get stressed out, freak out, call your mom, call your best friend, take out your frustrations (undeservingly) on your SO, cry a little, and then W O M A N U P and put your game face on.

What’s the game plan?

Step 1: DON’T FREAK OUT

This is the most important step I promise you. Freaking out will NOT help anything! Sure it seems like a lot right now, maybe it is actually a hell of a lot to do, but you’ve made it this far! Everything will work itself out in the end and if it doesn’t then it wasn’t the right path for you. Freshman year I had a freak out because I thought I wasn’t going to make As in all my classes (you know, the things you worry about as a freshman?) and I called my mom crying because I’m dramatic like that and she told me (and I will never forget this as long as I live) she told me, “As long as you’re doing your best, that’s the best you can do.”

#thanksmom

So do your best, don’t give yourself a heart attack, REMAIN CALM, and move on to step 2.

Step 2: Make Some Plans

When you have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time, it’s time to break out your planner (or if you don’t have a planner, a piece of paper I guess idk). Plan out your next week by pulling out your syllabus and marking down when everything is due in your planner. It is most helpful to plan out every hour of this week so that you will be able to easily see when you have free time.

Realize this: it’s not as much as you thought it was. Every single time, I freak out because in my head I’ve convinced myself that I can’t possibly get everything done by the time it is due, but when I write everything out, I always realize that I have more time than I thought I did.

Now write in all your other obligations, like work or babysitting or church or something. I don’t go outside much so I don’t have to worry about this (jk (kind of)).

Step 3: Make Some Lists

Now pull out sticky notes or another piece of paper or your target receipts idk and, for each assignment due, write out all the tasks you have to do to accomplish the assignment. So for example if I had to write a paper on Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, my tasks would be:

1: read book

2: do research

3: write outline

4: write rough draft

5: edit

6: print & turn in

Now, estimate how long it will take you to accomplish each task.

1: read book – 3 hours

2: do research – 5 hours

3: write outline -1 hour

4: write rough draft – 3 hours

5: edit – 20 minutes

6: print & turn in – negligible

Step 4: Apply Plans

Now, go back to your planner and block out the times that you will be working on each task. So, for Monday, let’s say I have class from 10:00 to 13:00 and then a meeting at 18:00 and then I have to meet someone for dinner at 19:00. I would mark out 14:00 to 18:00 to read Mrs Dalloway (I always give myself more time than I think I’ll need to make sure I don’t fall behind – if I finish earlier I can start on the next task) and then from 20:00 to 23:30 to work on research.

If you have more than one assignment to do, you’ll have to make room for multiple tasks every day. I like to do a little bit of everything each day so I don’t get bored or overwhelmed.

So currently, I have three assignments due by Tuesday for three separate classes. So I took my planner and mapped out all my meetings, meal times, and events for the next week. Then I made my lists, which came out like this:

Modernism: Read book on WB Yeats and write paper

1: read book – 170ish pages a day for 3 days

2: do research – one afternoon

3: write paper – 3 hours ?

4: edit – 20 minutes

5: print

Italian Literature: Find news article(s) to discuss in class

1: find articles – 15 minutes every day

2: print articles

3: look up unknown words in article – 30 minutes ?

4: prepare short summary of article – 1 hour

Italian Language: Prepare translation, also do grammar worksheet

1: look up unknown words in translation – 30 minutes

2: work out translation – 1 hour

3: double-check translation – 1 hour

4: 4 grammar problems – 30 minutes each

And this is how I keep from stressing (:

I hope this helps you! If you have any questions or comments or you want to tell me how much I suck please feel free to message me!

~ good vibes yo ~

-fiona

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