I just realized that I forgot a few thoughts that were supposed to be part of my first last post.
A)Wikipedia--At the beginning I was sceptical about this...It always seemed like a cool assignment but I thought too much emphasis was palced on it...But, I am glad we got to expereince that and make a (lasting?) contribution to it. of course, as I kept working on it, I got a tinge of that obsessive streak...All in all, it was a positive, though somewhat stressful, expereince.
B) Blogs--I actually like the fact that we did this, even if other responsibilities etc. sometimes got in the way. I think it's a good way to share opinions on the books with classmates. Will I keep blogging? I can't predict the future...though I suspect I might...at least on occasion, post something.
C) Dictator novels--It is certainly a genre that I previously would have avoided but, having said that, I am glad I got to read these books (with the exception of Fff...yeah)...
Finally, overall a great course. Thanks Jon.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
The Feast of the Beast 2.0
A bit post festum, I realize, but better than never, right? Right?...pause...[followed by a very high-pitched]RIghT?
Thus far I have not really addressed the gender issues and I think this book, better than the others we've read, really captures the positions of powerlessness and subordination that most women faced in these dictatorships. Of course, we get accounts of brutal treatment of women in Facundo, or, as in the case of The President, their inability to have any influence on what happens. In I the Supreme and The General in His Labyrinth, we get accounts of women as sexual objects, there to satisfy the needs of the dictators...though Manuela Saenz plays a prominant role in Garcia Marquez's novel. Still, she is left behind...discarded alomost. This brings me to the position of women in The Feast of the Goat and the novel's more detailed, and certainly more graphic, accounts of violence against women.
Of course, what immediately jumps out at us with this novel is that it starts with Urania's arrival in the Dominican Republic and is essentially written from her point of view. This book, then, is not merely about Trujillo and his fall, but perhaps, even more so, about Urania and her personal journey to rid herself of the trauma of her rape, or rather, to make it more bearable because she will never be rid of it. The Urania plot really takes off in the second part of the book and, although we are told what happened to her at the end of the novel, there are hints throughout the book (ex. Trujillo remembering the girl at Mahagony House...you just get the sense that that girl is Urania). The part where she describes the events at 'the party' is very intense and difficult to read and, of course, explains why she behaves the way she does to her father and her family.
The power that men have over women in this book is also seen in the accounts of the rapes and violence committed against young girls by Ramfis & co.
There are women in this book who do hold some power, or who are not necessarily mere sex objects. I am thinking of Minerva Mirabal and my friend Lupe. The former is severly punished (arrested, tortured and eventually killed) for her 'transgressions' while the latter's male posturing makes her look ridiculous despite the reports that she has a lot of blood on her hands. Nevertheless, both these cases show, to some extent at least, that women cannot have power unless they behave like men.
Finally, the power of the dictator in this novel is accentuated by constant references to Trujillo's gaze. Other than his name, I would hazzard a guess that the word "gaze" appears most often with regard to the dictator. This is, in part, what intimidates people and gets them to do what he wants. I couldn't help but recall the issue of panopticism here. It is as if everyone in this novel is a prisoner and the guard that i s Trujillo keeps a constant watch on them. This, of course, is a common feature of dictatorships--eyes of power everywhere, with the poewer to alter beahviour--and it is present in all the books we've read.
While this book has its bits of humour, it is probably the most graphic, and therefore, the darkest, of the books we've read in this class. Just my humble opinion.
Thus far I have not really addressed the gender issues and I think this book, better than the others we've read, really captures the positions of powerlessness and subordination that most women faced in these dictatorships. Of course, we get accounts of brutal treatment of women in Facundo, or, as in the case of The President, their inability to have any influence on what happens. In I the Supreme and The General in His Labyrinth, we get accounts of women as sexual objects, there to satisfy the needs of the dictators...though Manuela Saenz plays a prominant role in Garcia Marquez's novel. Still, she is left behind...discarded alomost. This brings me to the position of women in The Feast of the Goat and the novel's more detailed, and certainly more graphic, accounts of violence against women.
Of course, what immediately jumps out at us with this novel is that it starts with Urania's arrival in the Dominican Republic and is essentially written from her point of view. This book, then, is not merely about Trujillo and his fall, but perhaps, even more so, about Urania and her personal journey to rid herself of the trauma of her rape, or rather, to make it more bearable because she will never be rid of it. The Urania plot really takes off in the second part of the book and, although we are told what happened to her at the end of the novel, there are hints throughout the book (ex. Trujillo remembering the girl at Mahagony House...you just get the sense that that girl is Urania). The part where she describes the events at 'the party' is very intense and difficult to read and, of course, explains why she behaves the way she does to her father and her family.
The power that men have over women in this book is also seen in the accounts of the rapes and violence committed against young girls by Ramfis & co.
There are women in this book who do hold some power, or who are not necessarily mere sex objects. I am thinking of Minerva Mirabal and my friend Lupe. The former is severly punished (arrested, tortured and eventually killed) for her 'transgressions' while the latter's male posturing makes her look ridiculous despite the reports that she has a lot of blood on her hands. Nevertheless, both these cases show, to some extent at least, that women cannot have power unless they behave like men.
Finally, the power of the dictator in this novel is accentuated by constant references to Trujillo's gaze. Other than his name, I would hazzard a guess that the word "gaze" appears most often with regard to the dictator. This is, in part, what intimidates people and gets them to do what he wants. I couldn't help but recall the issue of panopticism here. It is as if everyone in this novel is a prisoner and the guard that i s Trujillo keeps a constant watch on them. This, of course, is a common feature of dictatorships--eyes of power everywhere, with the poewer to alter beahviour--and it is present in all the books we've read.
While this book has its bits of humour, it is probably the most graphic, and therefore, the darkest, of the books we've read in this class. Just my humble opinion.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
The Feast of the Goat 1.0
Ok...so it's been a while longer than I expected but I'm here and ready to baa.
As I mentioned in the first blurb on this novel, I like the fact that we get different points of view.
I want to briefly note that despite not being quite as experimental or abstract as I the Supreme or even The President, this novel retains the characteristics of the modernist texts. We talked about the slippages through time and shifts in narratorial voice. The voice addressing Urania is interesting. I just read it as the voice in her head (her conscience, so to speak), not necessarily another person. Vargas Llosa also manages to use some of the strategies of Joyce or Roa Bastos without getting too abstract. For example, he lists all the enterprises losing money due to the sanctions in one long sentence: "The music of names and figures lulled the Generalissimo, who was barely listening: Atlas Commercial, Caribbean Motors, Tobacco Products S. A., Dominican Cotton Consortium...Red Iron Works, El Marino Iron Works...El Caribe newspaper" (114).
In terms of writing, power and dictators I find it interesting that Trujillo is assassinated in the first part of the novel. I think by doing this Vargas Llosa is, in a sense, further depriving Trujillo of power...and consolidating his own. The novel is about his regime, yet Trujillo is denied the importance he would have had in real life.
In terms of the humour, I found these examples funny: "You're pickled in alcohol..." (112) and the description of Lupe (the wife of Johnny Abbes) "I know she's tough, and knows how to fight, and carries a pistol and goes to whorehouses like a man..."(71)...Maybe I just find this one funny because all the women we've met previously were pretty powerless...
Finally...some fun facts about goats (I chose the points most closely related to this book):
1st brought to America by Columbus;
mature healthy male can breed 20-40 does;
both male and female goats can have beards
castrated male goat called "wether"
(from: Angela McKenzie-Jakes. "Facts About Goats." Bulletin II. Vol. I Florida A&M University. College of Engineering Sciences, Technology and Agriculture. http://www.famu.edu/goats/UserFiles/File/Facts_About_Goats.pdf)
*Sorry, residual effects of Wikipedia....
Oh and...Trujillo...vulgar, called the goat. Virginia Woolf called Ulysses vulgar and its author a "he-goat" (VW's Diary). Coincidence? I think not. Ok...ok...pushing it.
As I mentioned in the first blurb on this novel, I like the fact that we get different points of view.
I want to briefly note that despite not being quite as experimental or abstract as I the Supreme or even The President, this novel retains the characteristics of the modernist texts. We talked about the slippages through time and shifts in narratorial voice. The voice addressing Urania is interesting. I just read it as the voice in her head (her conscience, so to speak), not necessarily another person. Vargas Llosa also manages to use some of the strategies of Joyce or Roa Bastos without getting too abstract. For example, he lists all the enterprises losing money due to the sanctions in one long sentence: "The music of names and figures lulled the Generalissimo, who was barely listening: Atlas Commercial, Caribbean Motors, Tobacco Products S. A., Dominican Cotton Consortium...Red Iron Works, El Marino Iron Works...El Caribe newspaper" (114).
In terms of writing, power and dictators I find it interesting that Trujillo is assassinated in the first part of the novel. I think by doing this Vargas Llosa is, in a sense, further depriving Trujillo of power...and consolidating his own. The novel is about his regime, yet Trujillo is denied the importance he would have had in real life.
In terms of the humour, I found these examples funny: "You're pickled in alcohol..." (112) and the description of Lupe (the wife of Johnny Abbes) "I know she's tough, and knows how to fight, and carries a pistol and goes to whorehouses like a man..."(71)...Maybe I just find this one funny because all the women we've met previously were pretty powerless...
Finally...some fun facts about goats (I chose the points most closely related to this book):
1st brought to America by Columbus;
mature healthy male can breed 20-40 does;
both male and female goats can have beards
castrated male goat called "wether"
(from: Angela McKenzie-Jakes. "Facts About Goats." Bulletin II. Vol. I Florida A&M University. College of Engineering Sciences, Technology and Agriculture. http://www.famu.edu/goats/UserFiles/File/Facts_About_Goats.pdf)
*Sorry, residual effects of Wikipedia....
Oh and...Trujillo...vulgar, called the goat. Virginia Woolf called Ulysses vulgar and its author a "he-goat" (VW's Diary). Coincidence? I think not. Ok...ok...pushing it.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
The Last Post...or...?
Boom! I am back...the Barbarus Balcanicus strikes again! Or...gets back to civilization????
I thought I'd mess with the chronological order a little bit...in part to keep things in the spirit of the books we've read, and also because I have not quite managed to...let's not go there!
What can I say about this course? When I started reading the first book I thought: "I can't Ffffffacun...do this!!!" (ok, so there goes my lame attempt to emulate the style of the greatest Latin American novel of the 20th century...) But yes, Sarmiento's book was, for the most part, a snoozefest! Things got better from The President on. And yes, I have a special place in my heart for I the Supreme... It was, by far, the most challenging book but I also found it refreshing to get away from the more conventional forms of story-telling. While I am sure that there are aspects of these works that have been lost in translation, I enjoyed the richness of language in each (with the exception of Facundo). This might be an English major thing...or not...but I love the play with language in both The President and, especially, I the Supreme. I already wrote about Lot's wife ("did she invent lotteries?") in an earlier post as an example that struck my fancy...
I have to say that I was surprised by the amount of humour in these dictator novels, especially the last three. I think that that is, in part, what makes them readable. Without the humour, reading about such dark and disturbing periods in the histories of various countries might be too much to take. But, there is a fine balance here too. The portrayal of these dictators as sycophants would be completely funny if it was not so tragic.
The theme of this course was writing and power and I have discussed this to some extent earlier. I wanted, however, to point out the power of the writer that is, in some ways, transferred to the reader. For this, one has to look at the books we did as part of one whole. With Facundo, we have a supposedly objective, historical account of a dictatorial figure. The President gives us an insider's point of view but in the form of a bigger picture. I the Supreme allows us, for the first time, to get to the expressed thoughts of a dictator (we can never get directly into Francia's thoughts); The General in His Labyrinth for the first time shows a 'dictator's' doubts about what he is/is not doing--the frailty and humanity of such a figure; and, The Feast of the Goat shows that dictatorial paranoia is not always that (ie. not always completely unfounded). In a sense, each of the books answers questions left over from the previous one, and each does so from a different perspective on life in a dictatorship. In this sense, the power the reader is endowed with is a power no human being can have in real life--seeing things from virtually every persepective.
But...the If-I-had-to-pick-a- dictator...Award goes to (drumroll).... Simon Bolivar.
I enjoyed reading these books and am definitely planning to read some more Latin American lit...Of course, I have to finish The Feast of the Goat first!
So this is the last post...but not really, because I intend to post on said goat...
*NB: My recent consumption of alcoholic beverages was not limited to today's class :P
I thought I'd mess with the chronological order a little bit...in part to keep things in the spirit of the books we've read, and also because I have not quite managed to...let's not go there!
What can I say about this course? When I started reading the first book I thought: "I can't Ffffffacun...do this!!!" (ok, so there goes my lame attempt to emulate the style of the greatest Latin American novel of the 20th century...) But yes, Sarmiento's book was, for the most part, a snoozefest! Things got better from The President on. And yes, I have a special place in my heart for I the Supreme... It was, by far, the most challenging book but I also found it refreshing to get away from the more conventional forms of story-telling. While I am sure that there are aspects of these works that have been lost in translation, I enjoyed the richness of language in each (with the exception of Facundo). This might be an English major thing...or not...but I love the play with language in both The President and, especially, I the Supreme. I already wrote about Lot's wife ("did she invent lotteries?") in an earlier post as an example that struck my fancy...
I have to say that I was surprised by the amount of humour in these dictator novels, especially the last three. I think that that is, in part, what makes them readable. Without the humour, reading about such dark and disturbing periods in the histories of various countries might be too much to take. But, there is a fine balance here too. The portrayal of these dictators as sycophants would be completely funny if it was not so tragic.
The theme of this course was writing and power and I have discussed this to some extent earlier. I wanted, however, to point out the power of the writer that is, in some ways, transferred to the reader. For this, one has to look at the books we did as part of one whole. With Facundo, we have a supposedly objective, historical account of a dictatorial figure. The President gives us an insider's point of view but in the form of a bigger picture. I the Supreme allows us, for the first time, to get to the expressed thoughts of a dictator (we can never get directly into Francia's thoughts); The General in His Labyrinth for the first time shows a 'dictator's' doubts about what he is/is not doing--the frailty and humanity of such a figure; and, The Feast of the Goat shows that dictatorial paranoia is not always that (ie. not always completely unfounded). In a sense, each of the books answers questions left over from the previous one, and each does so from a different perspective on life in a dictatorship. In this sense, the power the reader is endowed with is a power no human being can have in real life--seeing things from virtually every persepective.
But...the If-I-had-to-pick-a- dictator...Award goes to (drumroll).... Simon Bolivar.
I enjoyed reading these books and am definitely planning to read some more Latin American lit...Of course, I have to finish The Feast of the Goat first!
So this is the last post...but not really, because I intend to post on said goat...
*NB: My recent consumption of alcoholic beverages was not limited to today's class :P
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