So, I guess you could say paper writing is going... well?

#SO #MANY #IDEAS!!!

Today Samara Learned... [Day 2]

that this modernism class could be very good for her. She got to talk to her professor both before & after class & he was complimentary, which probably means he will be stretching her. But that is why she is here. 

31 Days of Books: The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

Today's was a last minute change.  Most of the others were planned in advance, but I thought, "this deserves a day."  And as I thought more, I realized, yes, I said "books," but we need a poem in this little anthology.  So, today's 31 post...

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Title:  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Author:  TS Eliot

Published:  1917

Year I read it:  2012

One sentence summary:  In this profound, Modernist poem, the young Eliot personifies the aging & intensely indecisive Prufrock musing on his life and on an "overwhelming question."

Interesting fact(s):  It's not a love song.  CS Lewis hated the intro.  It's one of Eliot's few rhyming poems.  

Three reasons to read it:

• It's much shorter, more accessible, and more delightful than The Wasteland.  I found that it was a good intro into Eliot's perspective before tackling The Wasteland.  Also, I'm not a huge poetry buff, but this one has fascinated me since the day I read it.
• This poem was written and published during the Great War, just before Modernism exploded onto the scene.  It's very insightful into some of the frustrations and questions plaguing artists at the time.
• You will find references.  You will want to reference it.  This is a very quotable poem.  It's like an erudite version of Dr. Seuss.  

One reason you maybe shouldn't:

• It's far, far easier than the Wasteland, but still one of the most intertextual poems ever - so find a version with lots of explanatory notes.

Great quotes:

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the skyLike a patient etherised upon a table;Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,The muttering retreatsOf restless nights in one-night cheap hotelsAnd sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question...Oh, do not ask "What is it?"Let us go and make our visit.[Opening lines]

There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet...Time for you and time for me,And time yet for a hundred indecisions,And for a hundred visions and revisions,Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Do I dareDisturb the universe?

For I have known them all already, known them all:--Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,And in short, I was afraid.

31 Days of Writing: To the Lighthouse

Title:  To the Lighthouse

Author:  Virginia Woolf

Published:  1927

Year I read it:  2012

One sentence summary:  In this stream-of-consciousness, autobiographical novel,  Woolf tells the story of the Ramsay family and their artist-friends and of their visits to the Isle of Skye between 1910 and 1920.

Interesting fact:  Woolf felt haunted by memories of her parents until she started this novel and finished it very rapidly.  She wrote this novel, in part, to understand her parents better; and afterwards never sensed the haunting again.

Three reasons to read it:

• If you are wary of Virginia Woolf, modernism, stream-of-conciousness, or all three (as I was), this is a rather good place to start.  [I preferred it to Mrs. Dalloway - gasp!]
• Woolf's language is stunning!  She's writing prose as poetry or poetry as prose or something really amazing with bits of philosophy & psychology thrown in.  I enjoyed her language immensely!
• Interactions between the characters struck me as rather universal - wives and husband, children and fathers, the misunderstood and socially awkward nerd, the female artist being told her work in some way doesn't count.  They're people I've seem to have met - or seem to have been.

One reason you maybe shouldn't:

• Woolf can be hard to grasp.  There's so much in there - but it's fun trying!

Great quotes:

To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.

Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, halfway down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waves swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad. 

What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.

It seemed to her such nonsense-inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that.

31 days of Books: Six Characters in Search of an Author

Title:  Six Characters in Search of an Author

Author:  Luigi Pirandello

Published:  1921

Year I read it:  2012

One sentence summary:  In one of the most famous modernist plays, Pirandello explores characters with personality and a story - but no author to give them meaning.

Interesting fact:  It's categorized as an "absurdist metatheatrical" play.

Three reasons to read it:

• This really epitomizes modernism's search for what would provide meaning.  
• There is a really interesting argument about which is more eternal - the artist or what he creates.  He also explores the creative process: are characters and stories discovered by the author, or woven in his imagination?
• It's very meta - it's a play about staging a play that gets interrupted by characters from another play.

One reason you maybe shouldn't:

• Some adult content.  Reader discretion is advised.  [He's an Italian Modernist... what do you expect?]

Great quotes:

“Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.” 

“When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many other situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him.” 

[On the character] "He will never die.  The one who will die is the man, the writer, the instrument of the creation.  The creation never dies."