A Quick Review of Ann Patchett's "Taft"

Tonight I finished Taft by Ann Patchett. I read it for my Literary Criticism class and I am not impressed.

Taft is the story of John Nickel a former jazz-drummer managing a bar in Memphis. Feeling estranged from his son who’s been moved down to Miami with the mother, Nickel is finding his life rather empty. Then Fay and her brother, Carl, enter his life. They are both only kids, seventeen, he feels compelled to help them. The more he gets involved with their lives the more he finds himself dreaming of their father who recently passed away.

Nickel is the narrator of the story very much to its detriment since he doesn’t have an especially interesting perspective. He’s neither especially insightful, witty, or any number of interesting attributes that would make his narration more compelling. Possibly this is due to Patchett’s hesitancy in taking on a narrator so outside of herself (since she is neither male nor black).

The link between Nickel and Taft seems forced especially since Nickel’s feelings for Fay (who is half his age) are more than paternal. While I understand what Patchett is attempting to evoke with the flashbacks to Taft, she failed miserably. From start to finish Taft was empty, it was as hollow and lonely as a quickie Nickel has with one of his clients at the beginning of the novel.

The Death of Prospero

My mother has always had a rather black thumb when it comes to indoor plants. When I realized that I had not brought my plants back with me after Christmas break I had the feeling that I might possibly return to find them in dire condition. I had not imagined that either would be dead.

Tonight, my first night home for Spring Break, while my mom was showing me her favorite American Idol contestants I looked over and noticed my plants. The African violet is still quite healthy but Prospero, my ivy, is dead. I never realized anyone could be so attached to a plant. When I touched his crispy, dried green leaves I wanted to cry.

Prospero was my first plant. I got him at a ladies luncheon the summer after my freshman year of college. He was my experiment to see if I had inherited my mother’s knack for killing plants. Instead of dying, he thrived (other than that time some of his leaves turned purple for some reason – I guessed that it was the result of being to near a cold window and supposing it must be autumn). He inspired my attempt at growing garlic in my window sill (note: garlic should not be grown indoors unless you have a deep enough pot or poor olfactory senses).

For the last two years he has been my travel companion on the multiple trips back and forth between home and campus. Through these years I’ve coaxed him out of autumn and pruned him. I’ll admit, I’ve talked to him. I’ll miss him.

Where are we headed?

There is a quote from D.H. Lawrence that Dorothy Sayers quotes in her work Are Women Human? which often comes to my mind. “Visited with a shattering glimpse of the obvious,” as she puts it, he observed that “Man is willing to accept woman as …an angel, a devil, a babyface, a machine, an instrument, a bosom, a womb, a pair of legs, a servant, an encyclopedia, an ideal or an obscenity; the one thing he won’t accept her as is a human being, a real human being of the feminine sex.” While the world has changed since those words were written I wonder if they still apply today.

Last week as I read the assignment for Literary Criticism, Lawrence’s observation was evident in the work of a man from an earlier generation through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” The story is centered on a young Italian, Giovanni, who falls in love (or infatuation) with Beatrice, the daughter of Dr. Rappaccini who is a brilliant but cold doctor with a fascination for poisonous plants. She is both extraordinarily beautiful and extraordinarily poisonous. Overlooking the more obvious feminine critiques of the story, I noticed how un-human Beatrice is.

From her introduction into the story, Hawthorne denies Beatrice’s character full humanity. She is continually portrayed in extremes; though she has a dual nature (morally and personally completely virtuous while physically a deadly temptress) her attributes are too pure in their elements to reflect human nature which is more diluted and ambiguous. She is portrayed as an angel, a poison, a siren, a flower, but not a human. She is more of an ideal than a personality. Do men still do this to women? Or are we beginning to do this to men as our society becomes more feministic and in turn demasculizing? Or in other words, as women claim the privileged discourse will we reduce a man to a monster, a knight in shining armor, a teddy bear, a doormat, a gamer, a penis, a houseguest, a dictionary, an idea or a curse word?

Never the Tame Course, Never Wholly Respectable

There is so much I have yet to do for tomorrow but too much has been going on in my mind to be able to focus.

At one point in the movie “Ever After” the prince asks the woman he falls in love with, “Isn’t it exhausting living with so much passion?” Today, one of my acquaintances from class made a similar statement as she listened to the conversation between Luci, Julie, and I. It is definitely is exhausting being so passionate.

There are days, like today, when I find myself wishing that I could be more “normal”, less passionate. Being a passionate person means having people constantly mistake your frustration, excitement or zeal with anger. It means getting carried away by your emotions in conversations about topics you have strong beliefs about. Ultimately it means believing in things strongly, which is not the fad right now. In the intellectual circle I find myself in, I feel like my passion is viewed as violent or close-minded. Possibly, this explains my love for the last chapter I read in G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy “The Paradoxes of Christianity.”

As always, there were some aspects of that chapter that I do not whole heartedly accept (mainly how he basically condones the Crusades and monasticism both of which I think had/have admirable elements but were/are misled) but I am madly in love with what he describes as the “irregular equilibrium” of Christian orthodoxy. I believe so strongly that this religion (Christianity) is about paradox. That it is about getting “over the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and keeping them both furiously.” Also, along with him I believe that “The Church [can] not afford to swerve a hair’s breathe on some things if she is to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. [Because] let one idea become less powerful and some other idea becomes too powerful.” For example, if we let the depravity of man become too powerful than we lose sight of the dignity of man or vice versa.

Chesterton understands deep emotion and strong beliefs. He sees this synergy at the core of the Christian faith, as do I. So often, I feel like I am viewed as splitting the world into black and white, secular or sacred, legitimate or illegitimate. But, I have always viewed life through more of a Chestertonian lens. The reason I resist universalism, pluralism and all such similar tendencies is because these systems cannot understand paradox. They do violence by denying difference instead of by allowing fierce oppositions to hold each other in balance. I want not “an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top of their energy; love and wrath both burning.”

When I am in a conversation with someone about my thoughts or beliefs (especially in reference to faith matters) it is so hard to do justice to this way of thinking, seeing, understanding. At least, I have a hard time articulating it to people outside my group of close friends. And it is completely impossible if my passion has been ignited, then I unintentionally radicalize my thoughts/beliefs, and express myself in extremes. At times like that I hate being so passionate, conversations would be so much easier (even if less interesting) if I were otherwise.

I will admit, this is my way of blowing of steam after two conversations where I was unable to accurately articulate myself because of my passion and my functional unease among other Christians when discussing my beliefs/thoughts.

Now to finish memorizing verses and other random bits of homework.

Critic is my being

Critic is my Being

It is nice to be back in the blogging verse. There is something enjoyable about reading others thoughts and imagining that others read yours. I must admit though that this journal might not be incredibly enjoyable to read right now. I am going through a period of extreme neurosis. I am suffering from an insatiable hunger for I know not. Each day I feel increasingly discontent. The season is a contributing factor. Each winter as the snowy months drag on I become anxious, irritable, dissatisfied. I feel like a tiger pacing in a cage, a force too strong and too wild to be contained, with no greater desire than to break free of all constraints. During periods like this I become more critical, if this is possible.

My Tuesday and Thursday classes are only aggravating my dissatisfaction. Both Epistemology and Postmodernism have become torturous. I cannot make myself care about Epistemology. I have no interest in the “branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.” I am sure there is value in this discipline I just do not care about it. Possibly there is too much of the Existentialist in me, “It does not matter how we know that the table is a table, what matters is that there is a table. Let us go from there.” I realize that is very reductionist but I hope you catch my meaning. In a way this is like studying Grammar for me, I know it is valuable but there are some things which one does so instinctively that attempting to be more conscious and precise about it is irritating. Engaging with the texts or the class about this subject is impossible for me. The text only compounds in problem for me.

Postmodernism is also devastating in its own way. Thankfully, texts are much more interested - though one is rather elementary - but the dialogue in class is horrible. Chaos often rules and as one of my peers, Beky Noogle, pointed out no one seems to listen to each other or the professor. Seth Horton’s comment that too many people are competing to teach is at times also accurate. Overall, the dialogue is disjointed, ridiculously tangential, entirely aimless or irritatingly Biblical.

In class, I keep thinking about how much I’d rather be studying the world religions. Since my freshman year in college, when I was taking both Introduction to Philosophy and World Religions, I have felt that religion is superior to the disciple of philosophy because it is more holistic. It seeks to answer all of the questions that humans ask themselves instead of just a few. Within its stories it contain both philosophy and theology.

Having friends in World Religions only aggravates this. Though their class sounds positively dreadful it has made me nostalgic about when I took it. Thankfully it was taught by an adjunct professor instead of the sleepy Prof. Railsback and overall it did not have an incredibly missional bent, though it was taught by a missionary home on sabbatical.

The professor brought in some meaningful speakers such as a Zen Buddhist Monk and Islamic Imam. Two missionaries also came to speak with us about their experience with other religions. One man told us about his encounter with Taoism in Taiwan and the other presented about the “appealing and appalling” side of Hinduism. While I enjoyed hearing more from the Monk and Imam, the missionaries’ presentations were valuable in their own way as they offered an outsiders view of the religions.

Even the assignments from the class were worthwhile. We read Huston Smith’s The World Religions (which I absolutely enjoyed) and at least 50 pages from four religious texts. I read from the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Tao Te Ching and the Buddhist Scriptures. Since I had horrible scholastic discipline, I did not read beyond the 50 pages limited though I wanted to.

That year I was torn between being a Religion Major and a Philosophy Major. I decided on Philosophy because the Religion department at this university has too much of a missional bent. Though I cannot say that I regret my decision, since the Religion department would have been miserable, I am incredibly discontent. These classes bore and irritate me. I wish…

“if wishes were horses…”

An Introduction: The Life of a Virtual Packrat

Though I’ve grown up during a technological era, I’ll admit that I am slightly wary of technology. Though I’m the daughter of a computer geek, I still privilege the face-to-face over the virtual, the tangible over the intangible and nature over machinery (which is how I explain my bias toward fantasy over sci-fi). Yet, despite this, I’m becoming a virtual packrat.

If I’m honest, I have to admit that I’ve joined at least a dozen virtual communities. With the exception of a few, I can’t manage to be loyal to them and yet I can’t bring myself to erase my accounts either. So, my virtual identities collect virtual dust out in cyberspace. I’m sure there are some I can’t ever remember anymore (or at least I can’t remember the username and password). The primary communities I have been the most faithful to have been blog sites.

During my senior year in high school, I created a livejournal account so that I could join a friend’s online book club. I never ended up reading the book but I began to use the account regularly. During my freshman year of college, I switched over to xanga since it was more popular on my campus. The following year, last [school] year, I tried to wean myself off of my computer because I felt like it had become too much of a distraction. During that time, my xanga was sorely neglected and soon lost its readers.

Lately, I’ve been missing my blog. There is something about sharing one’s thoughts and experiences in a public place that is enjoyable. Since xanga is rather passé now, and I’m looking for a way to motivate myself to maintain the English Society blog more regularly, I decided to create my own blogger blog. Maybe I’ll be able to remain faithful to this community.

***

“I had the idea that it might be wonderful if we could find a world where we could hold on forever to the good feelings we get from a story or a song, keep those feelings insider ourselves forever instead of having them only for fleeting moments. We hear a song or we read a story, and the good feelings we get don’t remain inside us. We are either anticipating them, or we’ve had them and they’re all gone. We never experience them as now. Do you know what I mean? I’m writing a story about a little girl who discovers a cave where there is lasting now.”

“What are you calling it?”

“The Cave of Now.”

“That’s clever. The Cave of Now…Very clever. Now or never. Now and forever. If not now, when?”

~ The Gift of Asher Lev by Chaim Potok