Post #8: Book Talk

Post #7: Book 4 Reflection

Sherlock Holmes is quite possibly the least romantic character ever created, but the epitome of a Romantic hero in literature.

A Romantic hero is a "character that rejects established norms and conventions, has been rejected by society, and has the self as the center of his or her own existence."

Sherlock Rejects the World:

He is unaware of anything that doesn't have a direct effect on his life. In A Study In Scarlet, Watson notes Sherlock's lack of knowledge of how the Solar System works, and to that, Sherlock retorts, "if we went around the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work," (21). This shows his pure passion for the work that he does, and lack of passion for much else. He has no friends or family yet mentioned, and finds joy in others failure. When Gregson and Lestrade wrongly name a suspect, Sherlock "gave a sigh of relief" (42).

He has a certain swagger that lacks humility and understanding of others. In BBC’s adaption (Sherlock), Sherlock is always smug about his talents, whereas in the books, he seems more willing to help Watson train his mind and become more like him. Yet, in the BBC version, the friendship between Sherlock and Watson is more immediate and more clearly seen. This difference, though, could be because of the difference in time period as the BBC adaptation takes place in modern London and Sherlock Holmes takes place in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s modern London of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Both versions find different ways to make Sherlock more human, but still detached from the world around him.

The World Rejects Him:

In A Study in Scarlet, readers meet Sherlock for the first time. He is cold, analytically, unemotional. While he may have been born this way, his lack of connection with the world makes the world repel him. The more people question Sherlock's methods, the more he practices them. The more he immerses himself in his work, the more the people question him. There is no winning here unless Sherlock finds a way to become more humble and patient with others.

Though not everyone knows about it, Watson mentions Sherlock's frequent drug use (mainly heroin and cocaine, both powerful drugs) to help him stay distracted when he doesn’t have a case to keep his mind occupied. This use keeps him from interacting with people and forming relationships, and knowing how to act normal in social situations, and the world hates him for it. 

No one understands how he thinks or what he does to be so insanely clever and thoughtful when it comes to crime, but so incompetent in normal life. Based on various adaptations, Watson is the one to finally connect with him.

Center of His Own Existence:

The lack of connection between himself and the world causes him to know nothing but himself. Some people admire deities, Sherlock admires himself. He makes mistakes occasionally but corrects them and always comes out on top. He lives for the thrill of others’ lives on the line and cannot function without the kind of dramatic crime that no one else can solve.

Unfortunately, Moriarty, the Lex Luthor to Sherlock’s superman, does not make an appearance in A Study In Scarlet. Moriarty (again, based on the BBC adaptation) is Sherlock’s equal and would be way more fun to analyze. Where Sherlock took his crazy to use for good, Moriarty turned evil and lives to stump Sherlock. 

Regardless of the villain, Sherlock is the ultimate Romantic hero. He may not be the most friendly neighborhood crime fighter or the best role model for children, but he gets the job done better than anyone else in London and is always up for the challenge.

Post #6: Listicle

****SPOILERS****

Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl is nothing new. It makes for a decent read, but there isn't much between the lines. Every part of the story has been done before, and Flynn just put together the pieces. In doing so she ruins the reputation of women. A woman's life has improved in recent times, but this book definitely demonstrate equality of the sexes. All five female characters who play a fairly large role in this novel fit into some box that society has made for women.

Amy:
She represents the crazies. She is literally insane. When she doesn't get what she wants, she changes that by causing physical harm to herself and framing other people. In school, when a friend out-shined her, she responded by throwing herself down stairs and blaming it on the friend. Also in high school, Amy get bored with a relationship and spices it up by forging the boyfriend's breakup-induced attempted suicide. Just before dating Nick, another relationship got boring and this time she claims rape. Amy simultaneously plays the damsel in distress and the evil step mother in order to get the attention she lives for.

Mama Mo:
In no way is Mo a bad person. And while she's not a main character (mainly because she was dead due to cancer) she causes the Dunnes to move back to North Carthage. Mo was great: independent, caring, friendly. Her only downfall was letting her kindness mask other's bad-nature. It took her years to get out of an abusive relationship with Nick's father, and she let Nick marry someone who is clearly insane, even getting played herself. She wasn't the guiding light that many fictional mothers are, but her motherly care demonstrated a defense mechanism to avoid her problems. Mama Mo was the weakling, both emotionally and physically.

Officer Boney:
Another decent female character, but she innately fails. Multiple times she accuses Nick of killing his wife, even when he is totally honest with her. This behavior is "typical" feminine indecisiveness and kills Go's great qualities. She is only convinced right when Amy returns, but gives up easily when facing her. This show more weakness when, as a woman of authority, she does not complete the task or work to get what she wants.

Andie:
She's the adulteress. The whole book revolves around one major detail, and Andie is that detail. Amy has always been crazy, but cheaters send her over the edge. Her whole disappearance made Amy run away and frame Nick. Andie's involvement doesn't stop there, because she makes it even harder to clear Nick's name and in doing so helps Nick bring Amy home, which is the worst thing to happen in the book. She causes more problems than she solves, and is two faced like many other fictional cheaters.

Margo:
Go is a personal favorite of mine. She's the strongest female in the book, but she has some cliche qualities that ruin that. Every good trait is matched with a more detrimental one. For example, she's very supportive of nearly everything Nick does. When he wants to open The Bar, she helps. When he decides to clean out their dad's house, she doesn't argue. The counter to this is her close-mindedness when it comes to Amy. She couldn't be a friend for Amy in an unfamiliar place, and that was another thing that put Amy over the edge. Another example of conflicting qualities is her desire to offer refuge, and quickness to judge Nick.  Similar to Boney, she keeps her house open, but accuses Nick even when he tells her the truth. These flaws in character kill everything that was so great about her in the first place.

These problems make make the book realistic in a sense, but all of the women are archetypes that have been portrayed again and again in literature and pop culture. They all seem to be rather strong characters, but are as deep as a kiddie pool. The crazy woman, the mother, the failure, the cheat, and the best friend/sister. The female character that wins in the end is the insane one, and what message does that send to the world about how to live a successful life as a woman?

Post #5: Fiction vs. Nonfiction

As the title of this post notes, I believe in a strong difference between fiction and nonfiction. There are lines that may be crossed and crossed again within a book, as long as the reader knows.

When a book is marketed as a memoir, the book should be completely unfabricated events. The perspective of those events from the author may be included, but the actual events must be real. Like Laila Lalami said in her LARB One Minute Film, everyone experiences things differently and will retell them differently, but facts are facts, even in a memoir. The commentary on those facts may be different depending on the person, but the events can not change.

If the line is in any way blurred, I agree with Seth Greenland (in his LARB One Minute Film) and his theory of apocalypse. This sparked a thought of the book 1984 by George Orwell.  In this 1950's dystopian novel, Orwell predicts the future (1984) based on the state of the world he was living in. Government would be supreme, producing "novels" with no real plot line, writing the newspapers and textbooks, in charge of everything, and those who didn't work for the government were looked down upon. "Big Brother" was always right, and if they weren't they would make sure everyone thought they were by changing history they once wrote (in textbooks, etc.) and making it match the world around them. Nobody knew what was real and what was fake, and many people didn't seem to mind.

The world of 1984 is not one I would like to live in. While it does take an extreme stance on government, it also shows that if fiction and nonfiction blend, it will cause more questions, more lying, and more confusion than in necessary in the world. I would rather read something knowing it was a piece of fiction than be inspired by a "true story" that never really happened.

Paul Mandelbaum discusses how to include the fictional pieces of memoirs by owning up to the fact that they are not fact, and I could get behind this as long as it is clearly stated where the fiction begins. There is no problem filling in details or spicing up a story with some over exaggerated events, but I want to know what I'm reading.

Post #4

Many of the vital scenes from Breakfast at Tiffany's include a lot of dialogue, not so much action, but they are all needed to show the relationship between the narrator (referred to as Fred by Holly) so they need to be kept. The first scene is when they first truly talk, after Holly comes up Fred's fire escape. This scene demonstrates the nature of their relationship. They aren't the closest of friends, but they are still able to trust each other and rely on one another, and this exemplifies that because of how easily they got along and what they talked about upon their first real conversation. 

Another scene that must be kept is the party at Holly's apartment where OJ and Fred talk about Holly, and when Holly talks to Fred about her no-named cat and going to Tiffany's. These two conversations characterize Holly as someone who is extremely naive and more of a traveler who will never settle down (hence the cat with no name). This scene also gives the book a title, which isn't so important comparatively, but without it the title would be unclear. Without these, the reader doesn't really get to know Holly's attitude towards life and how she lives, which is important for the last essential scene.  

While Holly is fleeing the city for Rio to continue her life after a drug scandal, she lets her cat free on the streets of Spanish Harlem, only to run back to that spot sobbing, but unable to find the cat. After Holly leaves, Fred looks for the cat often, hoping to find it for whenever Holly returns, which again shows Holly and Fred's relationships, but also shows that Holly has matured and become less naive than when the readers first met her. 

While reading the book, there was obviously a slight amount of romance between Holly and Fred, but it was never pursued. The movie, while keeping all of those important scenes, emphasizes that aspect of their relationship far more and even ends with the two of them finding the cat and kissing in the rain which was very cliche and ruined the point of the book.

Fred and Holly in the last scene of the 1961 movie
Breakfast at Tiffany's, kissing and holding the found cat.

Some non-vital parts of the book that I would skip on would be the time Holly spent in the hospital after she was arrested and not include the character Madame Spanella. Holly's time in the hospital was very ambiguous, there was no real reason for her to be there other than her not being in jail anymore. It was a waste of time for her to stay there for an extended period of time and just complicated matters of her fleeing the country. Madame Spanella's character was of little to no importance in the plot, just someone to blame Holly's arrest on. Fortunately, both of these parts were skipped over in the movie. 

While there were only a few minor differences in the movie, including a major symbol in the book (the empty bird cage) and some added characters, and these changes made the movie a whole different story from the book, but each was good in its own way.

Post #3: Book 1 Project

Imagine waking up with no memory of the past summer. Three moths of your life is gone and everything is different. What happened? Will the memories come back? How long until you find out what changed?

This one of a kind board game, LIARS, is based off of E. Lockhart's book We Were Liars. For those who enjoyed following Cadence's story and attempting to find out what happened during the infamous Summer 15 at Beechwood Island, this game lets them have their own Cadence experience. Each player will be assigned a character from the book and become part of the Sinclair family. For those who haven't read the book or those who need a refresher, there will be background stories for each player to read about their character. As they go around the game board, modeled to look like Beechwood Island, they will play to collect forgotten memories and current experiences to try to find out what happened to the liars. There will be three different levels that come with the game, each with their own mystery, and separate memory and experience cards. Expansion packs will be available for those who need a bigger challenge and more mystery. To win the game, a player has to correctly guess what happened to the liars on Beechwood Island in Summer 15, but if they guess wrong then they are out of the game. The ending to the game are unpredictable, and include destruction, loss and regret much like the book. The hope is that, by the end, the players will feel like Cadence: "the perpetrator of a foolish, deluded crime that became a tragedy."

Map of Beechwood Island given in the book. The paths will be modified to look more like spaces for players to land on.

Creating a game for this book gives non-readers an opportunity to experience the style of the book and empathize with the characters, sparking their interest in finding out what really happened on Beechwood Island during summer 15. The point of this game is to get the players more involved in the plot of the book, and the mystery that it captures.  It also helps to demonstrate how Cadence had to piece together clues about her own life to find out what happened two years ago when she lost her memory of summer 15. She tries to keep track of everything: "I tack [the memories] to the wall above my bed. I add sticky notes with questions." The players will be able to do the same on their own "walls", collect the memories and experiences and try to connect them all. The best description given by Cadence was "my memory is hacked." She knew that things changed, that something big went on, and no one will tell her. The doctors said the family should let her remember it on her own. Getting random memories back as she lives on island were some of the only clues she got while solving the puzzle, and the players will be able to experience this in their own way of collecting clue cards. With each player acting as their own character, they will also understand the point of view that encompasses the book.

This is an example of what a player's "wall" will look like with various clues organized in whatever way suits them. There is no trick to it, just for them to live a little more like Cadence and find a way to work out the mystery. 

For those who have already read the book, this is a great way for them to continue a relationship with the story it told. They have already read one mystery but this game offers many different and unique endings. This will be especially popular for those who didn't like the original ending and would like to experience alternate plots that were created, or those who just wanted to re-live the book and Cadences experiences.

Post #2: What is a book?

A book is a memory. It could be a place, a time, a person, but it's all a memory. The memory doesn't just lie in the words and the actual story, but within the pages. When I read a book, I feel like I'm part of it, turning the pages as I follow the characters and live their life. Pressing a button or swiping the screen doesn't quite feel the same, and isn't as memorable. While my generation seems to be the most tech-savvy yet, I was not born into electronics. I grew up reading physical books, moving from hard, thick, cardboard pages to Dr. Seuss to The Magic Tree House to Harry Potter. When I fell in love with reading I was too small to hold a book open with one hand. But I grew up and adjusted and stayed in love. I remember reading Junie B. Jones books when I was sick, finishing three or four in one day, and borrowing Charlie Boone from the Intermediate School library. I would read about him upside down in the chairs at my old house around October when everything was spookier and my house smelled like pumpkin candles. All these vivid memories I have of reading come from physically holding those books and interacting with them.

The only types of stories I had came in the form of a book. A physical book. When the e-reader came out, I thought I would love it. I could get more books because they were cheaper, and I could keep them all because they didn't take up space. Similar to Tom Piazza's idea that size does matter, there's a sense of pride that comes with seeing all of your books on a bookshelf, the different series and pocket-sized paperbacks. The tattered books you've read and re-read, spilled on and cried on, and those passed down for generations. Not to mention the feel and smell of the paper as you turn the pages. You can't see an e-book. You can't see the series lined up. You can't see the worn pages and covers of your favorites. You can't share an e-book.

Victor LaValle would think that I'm "treating a book like a pair of stone tablets," but is there anything so wrong with that? It's the way I was brought up. Moses would have kept those stones even after they were written on paper, and eventually turned into an e-book. Just because there is a new technology doesn't mean that everyone has to succumb to using it. 

Although towards the end of Piazza's interviewing himself, he says that there's no future without physical books. Which isn't true. Just like I was raised on books, kids nowadays are raised on iPads. And they'll stick with them until they die, just as I will with my books. The human race is evolving still, and right now we're evolving to use technology more and more. It can't be helped, and its not bad, just different. The stories will live forever, but the medium will change, just as it has since the beginning of mankind.