A Web of Thoughts-Enmesh Yourself: December 2008

Sunday, December 14, 2008

south africa

Sometimes I think about the people floating out there in the world that I am connected to by blood relation. Do they look like me? Do they talk like me? Do we have the same personality/interests/goals? So many people. So Far away. In a way, it is a curse that we cannot meet them. That there are so many others related to us that we know of but do not know. So many people that love us that we have never met. And who we love. I understand that consanguinity is not everything, but it is a bond. A bound that binds beyond thousands of miles of wires, waves, oceans and continents. A bond that goes beneath the superficial surface and straight into our hearts. A bond that defies time and distance, as if there were none. However, I suppose I can only say time and distance has been defied when we have met them. When our questions are answered. And when our hearts are one. And I hope that day is soon to come.

Books-May Contain Spoilers

Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

Contemporary satirical master, Chuck Palahniuk, explores the ugly side of prettiness. She is a model who has everything including a boyfriend, a best friend and all the attention in the world. But everything changes when she is involved in a horrible "accident" that leaves her horribly disfigured and unable to speak. She travels through the U.S. and Canada with two companions, who find interesting ways to make a living along the way. Despite the fact that she is mute, Palahniuk speaks for her, revealing to the audience that her her lenses were not tinted rose at all, but merely shaded black.

Palahniuk exposes the dark side of the bright in this lovely little novel. He also both explores and questions the social expectations of gender. This is especially illustrated during one particular point in the novel, wherein the protagonist and her best friend are doing a photo shoot in a slaughterhouse while animal carcasses are dangling on chains around them
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American Appetites, by Joyce Carol Oates

The nineteenth literary work of this acclaimed storyteller centers around the worst seemingly worst thing that could happen. It is upper-middle class suburbia in the 1980s for Ian and Glynnis McCullough, a middle aged well-respected couple of Hazelton-on-Hudson, the New York City suburb that they have resided in for fifteen years.

The McCulloughs are most certainly a family of prestige. Ian, a political scientist who has a fairly high ranking position in the institute, which revolves many around demographics. Glynnis, a housewife who is writing her third cook-book, and a social butterfly who hosts as many parties as she attends. Their daughter, Bianca a college freshman at a respected University in Connecticuit, who is involved in the performing arts. And the beautiful glass house in which they reside, designed by a prominent local architect. It is both furnished with impeccable taste, and cleaned regulary by their dark-skinned maid

One night the glass breaks. An argument leads to an injury that leads to a scandal. And it is up to a jury to either put the pieces of the McCulloughs lives back together or sweep them up and throw them away.

Initially I was rather intrigued with the book and rather quickly I became entagled in the plot and the fate of the McCulloughs. But after awhile I found it hard to sympathize with Ian because he simply would not defend himself for such a long period of time, but I suppose that was a strategic move on the part of Oates so that his faith would become renewed by Sigrid Hunt

Regaring the verdict, obviously I believe that it was just due to the fact that there were no elements of the crime and it was, indeed, an "accident." Besides, Glynnis deserved it in the first place due to the way in which she treated her daughter and her many extra-marital affairs. haha.

I respect Oates greatly due to the fact that she stocks her works chock-full of detail. But I believe it to be extranoues at times, such as some of the scenes with the various friends the McCulloughs had in this particular novel.

Still, the theme jumped out from the blank white space between the lines and hit me square in the face. It can be best summed up in the sociological theory of the looking-glass self: "I am not what I think I am. I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am."

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Girl with a Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier
Set is Delft, Holland, 1664. Griet is sixteen years old, chopping vegetables, and they come.

In this novel, Chevalier frames Vermeer's famous painting, "Girl with a Pearl Earring." This fictionalized account centers around Griet, whose father is disabled and unable to work, so she must support her family by working as a maid for the Vermeers. Her most arduous task is to clean the studio, in which everything must be left exactly in its place.

But as the children multiply, so do the eyes on Griet. And in the end she must make a choice that will change her life forever.

A Web of Thoughts

Sunday, December 14, 2008

south africa

Books-May Contain Spoilers

Delve

Hongkong.garden

Lynx