Currently

This week: 110 pages
Last week: 101 pages
Total Semester: 675

3 Favorite Sentences of the Week:

1) "That left the police, who must think that he thought that they thought that he thought they were very dumb."
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

2) "Even if you went to him and gave him the money, he would still kill you, just for having inconvenienced him."
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

3) "I'm goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she'll be able to have you put to sleep."
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

I read sentence 1 over and over again, but I just get lost. Normally I can follow that kind of stuff, but that's just one too many I think. Sentence 2 doesn't really require explanation, it's just an intriguing description of the antagonist.

Sentence 3 must be put into context. Sheriff Bell is talking to an old woman from Austin, TX, a much bigger city than his country town. The woman talks to him about "right-wing this and right-wing that," and the Sheriff really doesn't care. He says his people are common folk. The woman continues on and says something along the lines of, "I want my grand-daughter to be able to have an abortion." Bell responds by saying, that it's very likely that abortion will be perfectly legal in the future, and in a successful attempt to get the woman to shut up, follows up with sentence 3.

No Country For Old Men Speculation

At this point in the story, Llewellyn's wife Carla Jean and her mother, who has cancer, are on their way to El Paso, Texas. Llewellyn instructed his wife to leave Odessa because Chigurh knew she was there. However, I'm fairly certain that it doesn't really matter where anybody goes in this book, Chigurh will always be able to find them. I can't wait to finish this book because I really have no idea where the ending will go. I'm not sure if McCarthy prefers the happily ever after ending, or the total death and destruction ending, or somewhere in between. I'm curious to find out. I'm guessing, with the way the novel has progressed thus far, that it will be closer to the total death and destruction ending. But I guess I'll find out soon enough.

Goodbye Wells

Well, 30 pages after my last post, the interesting new character that had been introduced, Wells, is now dead. Chigurh, the scary guy, killed him. Not only killed him, but shot his face off. Literally. I'm not all that surprised.

The Plot Thickens

A new character has been introduced to the plot by the name of Wells. He seems to be a sort of hit man, or an unofficial detective, hired by a client to find his 2 million dollars, and perhaps to kill Chigurh, the scary guy. It's not quite clear at this point. Moss, the protagonist, is knocked out, and wakes up in a hospital, I believe, with Wells standing over him. Wells then tells Moss about Anton Chigurh, the man who has been chasing after him. This was one part of the story that really stood out to me. Wells's description of Chigurh is intriguing to say the least. "You can't make a deal with him. Let me say it again. Even if you gave him the money he'd still kill you. Just for having inconvenienced him." Incredulous and cocky, Moss denies that Chigurh could be that terrible, or that he would even be able to find him. Wells is persistent, and insists that men like Chigurh will stop at nothing to kill. He warns that Chigurh might go to Odessa to attempt to kill Moss's wife. Moss puts on a tough persona and continues to deny that any harm could come to him or his wife. "You might think you're cut out for this, but you're not," Wells says to Moss.

After this section of dialogue between Wells and Moss is over, another fascinating scene involving the character of Chigurh occurs. Chigurh had been shot in the leg, and drives away to a small town, spilling blood all over the car seats. When he gets there, he finds a store that sells basic supplies and he buys some cardboard, scissors, tape, and some cotton. He then proceeds to go to a drugstore in the same town, and, instead of going into the store and even just shoplifting, he decides to take the supplies he had just bought and use them as a means of lighting on fire the gastank of a random vehicle parked outside the drugstore. The car blows up as he limps in, and he is able to find a packet of syringes, a bottle of Hydrocodone tablets, and some other pain killers. No one payed him any mind, or even saw him, because of the flames outside and at the front of the building. I just really thought that characterized him perfectly as a sick, heartless killer who feels no guilt whatsoever over the destruction and death that he causes.


 

Currently

Pages this week: 101
Pages last week: 100
Pages this semester: 565

3 Favorite Sentences of the Month

1) "The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club."
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

2) "There are no clean getaways."
No Country For Old Men movie poster

3) "I dated a guy once who was a split personality."
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

4) "We both use the same body, just at different times."
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

The way I knew that these were my favorite sentences was I didn't even have to go back and look for them. They've just been sitting in my head ever since I read them. All very interesting.

If No Country For Old Men was a Picture Book

If No Country For Old Men was a picture book, there would be a lot of red color. Everything is bloody in this book. Also, if this book were full of pictures, what would the characters look like? Well, I just looked up the characters from this book on google images, just to see how the picture I had in my head compared with the actors cast for the extremely popular movie based on this book. I've seen previews and movie posters for the movie and one of the characters always looked sort of scary to me. So, I guessed which one he would be based on the characters in the book, and I was right. Anton Chigurh is definitely the scary-looking guy played by Javier Bardem.

Anyways, on to a real response to the reading. The plot has definitely picked up now, and I will say that it's not quite as fun to read about action scenes with a lot of gunshots as it is to watch them in a movie or something. That's really one of the only aspects about reading that I can think of that isn't better than watching the movie. Not all the action sequences really make sense to me while I'm reading them, but maybe they're not supposed to make sense. Who knows. Regardless, I'm definitely going to watch the movie after I'm done reading this.

Although the plot itself hasn't made all that much sense to me thus far, the book has kept my attention, but more importantly, some interesting themes/statements have been presented. The main character, Moss, is running from everyone and everything at this point, trying to hold onto his life and his new found fortune. He thinks to himself that at some point, he's going to run out of luck. And he doesn't know what he's gonna do then. I think that the sheriff is turning into my favorite character. He says things like, "I think that when the lies are all told and forgot, the truth will be there yet." He also realizes the hopelessness of being the only symbol of law and order in his part of the country, but has some sort of sick drive to continue on with his job. He's to the point where unheard of violence no longer surprises him in any way. As things get worse and worse around him, all he can do is sigh and keep doing his job the same way that he's always done it.

No Country For Old Men Thoughts

At this point, I'm about 100 pages into No Country For Old Men. The plot has picked up quite a bit, and a lot of new characters have been introduced. Something I've found that I'm not sure if I really like is that McCarthy doesn't use a lot of conventional punctuation. I get the feeling that maybe this is just a contemporary authors thing, Chuck Palahniuk had a very similar style. There are no quote marks for the dialogue. This makes it hard to follow at some points. It takes me a while to get used to his style when I pick up the book for a sitting, but after a few minutes, I don't really notice the absence of certain conventions, and the book goes a lot faster.

One thing I've really liked about the book so far is the first person narrations by the sherriff at the beginning of each chapter. A lot of the themes of the novel are presented here, I think. He talks about how there is true evil in the world, especially the part of the world that this novel takes place in. There's no point in trying to govern bad people, it's impossible. Anybody who belongs on death row will never get there. I thought that these themes were all thought-provoking, or at the least, they made me want to read on.

5 Claims

Claims:


The professionalism, precision and characterization of Phantom Regiment allows for near-perfect execution of the show's wide range of emotional contrasts: from arrogance, showcased through forte, marcato music and condescending, violent choreography,  to romance, expressed through graceful movements and a lyrical ballad, to combativeness, conveyed through brassy hits, percussive rhythms and fast-paced, militaristic visuals, to lamentation, through quiet music and slow drill, finally to vengefulness, underscored in the musically and visually strong and powerful finale to the saga of Spartacus. - A Scrap of Parchment


In this contemporary dance, choreographed by Mia Michaels, the varied confusion of the movement, pain and romance shown through the emotion, the regret expressed through the dull costume choice, and the dominating and agressive use of space create a sense of lighthearted passion between the two dancers. - My Everyday Sticky Waffle


[In this scene from Nick Cannons film Drumline, the aggressive and alert style, quick, narrow movement, and percussive, thundering rhythm] expresses[an alive sense of energetic celebration and modest jubilation]. - Case 1


This picture of the U.S. flag being raised on Iwo Jima in February, 23, 1945, shows the soldiers powerful and famous movement, swift and serious actions create the famous moment. - bill963


This passionate picture shows a strong sturctured, elegant ballet dancer expressing her confident sharp body language, elegant attire, and complex poised position. -Eddie


Two claims that stuck out to me really did so because of the sheer amount of descriptive words that fit into one sentence. I thought the claim about the contemporary dance was very strong.


Here is a link to a blog I was impressed with: http://ascrapofparchment.blogspot.com/

Close Reading

I chose to do my close reading assignment by studying an album cover of one of my favorite bands, Titus Andronicus. This is their first album, and although it looks like just a picture with white text under it, the background is black and blends in with the background of the blog.

4 Elements of Genre

 1. Font
 2. Use of Space (On the cover)
 3. Use of Space (In the picture)
 4. Lighting (In the picture)

12 + adjectives

Commanding
Simple
Classic
Historical
Old-Fashioned
Cluttered
Alive
Colorful
Dark
Homely
Still
Busy
Nostalgic
Thought-Provoking
Purposeful
Self-Pitying

Claim: On the album cover of Titus Andronicus's "The Airing of Grievances," the commanding, classic font and layout of the cover, as well as the cluttered and colorful use of space in the photograph convey the band's homely practice environment and admiration for the old-fashioned symbols of history.    

The Airing of Grievances Album Art

3 Favorite Poems

My three favorite poems that we have read so far in this class, in no particular order, are as follows:

"It is not the fact that I will die that I mind" by Jim Moore
"Dust" by Dorianne Laux
"Crying Man" by Charles Douthat

I really enjoyed the first poem by Jim Moore. The first line of the poem lead me to believe that it was going to be philosophical or something, but as I read on, it describes a variety of things that are dear to the author. Oak trees, his family, his dog all are described in unique imagery. And it comes together at the end with the theme of the poem, that he is troubled because when he dies, no one will have known what it is to love them the way he did.

The second poem by Dorianne Laux is just sort of interesting. She was so tired that she isn't able to remember what exactly happened when someone spoke to her, spoke the truth. Instead of a sharp taste, it's only a fine powder in her memory. I don't really have much of an explanation to why I like this poem. I just do.

The third poem is definitely the saddest of the three, but the most intriguing. I enjoy soft imagery and descriptions in poems, but I really prefer a poem like this one. The author presents a theme that I think is designed to make us guilty. There is someone in need of real help, and the author himself, and everyone around him fails to do anything about it. I really liked this poem, more of a story.

Currently

Pages this week: 100
Pages last week: 100
Pages this semester: 464

Top 3 Sentences of the Week:

1) "There are no clean getaways."
No Country For Old Men movie poster

2) "You ain't worth a greased jack-pin to ram you into hell."
Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck

3) "If you knew there was somebody out here afoot that had two million dollars of your money, at what point would you quit lookin for em?"
No Country For Old Men Cormac McCarthy

The number one sentence for this week I consider to be the perfect movie poster line to catch someone's attention. It's been in my head ever since I started No Country For Old Men. The number two setence is just sort of fun to say. I don't know what a greased jack-pin is. And the third sentence is just sort of thought provoking.

Upon Beginning No Country For Old Men

Well, I'm not too far in, only 37 pages, but I started No Country For Old Men and it's held my attention so far. It's very fast paced. Cormac McCarthy, the author, has a unique style that is almost like Mark Twain's, except not really. Now that I think about it, the only similarity is their heavy use of local color and language. I suppose that's a quasi-accurate comparison.

            The novel starts out with a first person narrative written in italics, like a journal. I picture it as like the opening narration in the movie, where someone with a deep, gravelly voice is giving an ominous foreshadowing of trouble to come. “Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I don’t want to confront him. I know he’s real and I have seen his work.” That was the section that stuck out to me. I had no idea what he was talking about, or who he is, but it made me want to read on and find out.

            After the first person narrative, the novel switches out of italic font and becomes a third person narration of an action scene involving a man named Chigurh. In the second paragraph, McCarthy uses the word Yessir three times. That immediately caught my attention. Generally I don’t really go for that sort of thing, bad grammar and all, but I read on and realized that it was just the author’s accurate portrayal of local language on the Texas-Mexico border. After the first 7 pages, Chigurh disappears. I’m only on page 37 now, but he hasn’t come up again after page 7. So I have to keep that passage in my head so I can connect the stories when the time comes.

            The main character is introduced on page 8, Llewellyn Moss. While hunting in the mountains, he somehow stumbles onto what appears to be a busted drug deal. There are three pickup trucks surrounded by dead men, and there are bags of powder in the backs of the trucks. There is also a case in one of the trucks. The case contains $2.4 million dollars. Llewellyn is all alone, and realizes the implications of something of this caliber, but takes the case anyway. He acts like nothing happened when he gets home to his trailer, then goes back out that night and trouble breaks loose. I’m not sure why he went back out to the site, but he did. Perhaps he went to return the money. But that didn’t happen. Regardless, it’s a fast, exciting read so far.

Before Starting No Country For Old Men

I'm about to start No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. I've never actually seen the movie, and I decided to read the book because my good friend Bill told me that I would like it. After reading the back and the quotes at the beginning its seems like it's going to be a very violent, fast paced modern Western. It's set along the Texas-Mexico border, which I don't know much about. I don't think I've ever read a novel that's set in the southwest. The area has never been of much interest to me. But, maybe that will change after I read this.

Of Mice and Men finished

Of Mice and Men was a terriffic book. I feel so accomplished just because it is considered a classic, and I finished it in two sittings. It was only 107 pages, and a lot of dialouge. Not a very thick read at all. The plot line was somewhat predictable, yet it kept my attention to the very end. The ending was sad, as George had to kill Lennie, so he could die while he was happy. While he was thinking about the dream farm that George had always promised him. Steinbeck does a great job of creating dynamic and distinct characters in such a short book, I thought. I also learned about the what it would be like to be a worker on California ranges during the 1930's. I've always wanted to know. Maybe that's why I enjoyed this book so much.

Currently

Pages this week: 100
Pages last week: 161
Pages this semester: 364

Top 3 Sentences of the Week:

1. "We both use the same body, but at different times."
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

2. "I dated a guy once who was a split personality."
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

3. "Lets have different color rabbits, George."
Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck

The concept of having a split personality is really fascinating to me, if not a little scary. It almost gets you wondering if you are someone else when you sleep. And as far as the different color bunnies go, I don't really have an explanation for that.

Of Mice and Men Initial Reaction

            After I finished Fight Club, I picked up something I’ve been meaning to read for a while, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. It’s definitely a change of pace from Chuck Palahniuk. It’s a short book, and friends have told me that they liked it. Right now I’m about 1/3 of the way through the book. I like it so far. Steinbeck does a really good job with characterization. George and Lennie, the two main characters, are almost complete opposites, yet they are best friends. Lennie has a large, strong physique, but has the mind of a child. George is a smaller guy, but looks after Lennie because he is smarter, and has common sense. With all the background given on past problems that Lennie has caused, I can’t help but suspect that the main conflict in the book will be Lennie accidentally getting himself into trouble worse than ever before. I’m interested to see how the book will play out.  

Fight Club ending

            I just finished reading Fight Club on Monday. It was one of the most interesting and definitely the most thrilling book I’ve ever written. As Mr. Hill commented, it doesn’t really have a genre. Palahniuk uses a lot of short sentences, and he skips around a lot, to create a sort of confused feeling. In the end, it all makes sense, because the goal, I think, was to make the reader just as confused as the narrator was. Basically, the main character of the book, the enigma that is Tyler Durden, turns out to be the narrator himself, or rather his split personality. “We use the same body, just at different times.” This explains why the narrator is always so tired, explains his insomnia throughout the book, and explains why Tyler told the narrator not to talk to anyone about him. Although friends throughout the first part of the book, Tyler and the narrator become enemies in the latter half, even though they are the same person.

Having a split personality is a fascinating concept, and I feel like it’s used in literature a lot; Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde is the most well-known example. But, Palahniuk goes about writing about the subject in a new way. Instead of informing the reader early on and narrating the story from 3^rd person, Palahniuk lets the reader find out as the narrator finds out. In the end of the story, after the reader founds out that the narrator and Tyler are one, everything Tyler has said backfires on him, and causes the narrator to hate the other side of his personality. The novel ends with the narrator killing Tyler, and thus, killing himself as well, to protect the people he loves from getting hurt by his other personality.  

I’ll admit that I was very confused by the story’s plot and by Palahniuk’s style for the first half of the book, but I grew to enjoy his writing style. It’s strange, and very disturbing. It did hold my attention though, and I found Fight Club to be an easy read, not heavy in terms of the reading itself. However, because of Palahniuk’s style, he crams in as many action-packed sequences as possible into a short amount of words. So, after I would finish a five page chapter, the plot would change significantly, and my whole understanding of the book would change as well. I found myself just kind of sitting and thinking after I would finish a section of reading, because so much happened, and I read so fast without stopping that I failed to realize just how disturbing some of the images that Palahniuk creates really are.

Currently

Pages this week: 161
Pages last week: 103

Seeing as I'm reading Fight Club right now, I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't make these my top sentences of the week. Of course I suppose I shouldn't be posting this because I'm breaking the first two and most important rules. Oh well.

Top 3 Sentences of the Week:

1. "The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club."
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

2. "The second rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club."
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

3. "I am Joe's Inflamed Flaring Nostrils."
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

Fonts

The fact that the last paragraph of the really long post I just wrote is in a different font for no reason annoys me. That's all.

The Art of Writing Disturbing Books

I read an author's note about Fight Club in the back of the book, and Palahniuk said that one of his main purposes in writing this book was to make it more disturbing than the book he published before Fight Club. To name all of the highly disturbing things in this book would be impossible, so I'll just name a few I guess. For one, the narrator/main character goes to cancer support groups every day of the week, even though he doesn’t have cancer. At these support groups, the afflicted and dying patients hug one another for comfort. The narrator attends these group sessions and pretends to have various cancers and diseases just to hug people for long periods of time, and to cry and lower himself to nothing. He does so to feel better about himself, and to really experience death, so that when he leaves he somehow feels much better. Ironically, the narrator meets Marla Singer, one of the main characters at one of these support groups. Marla was the only woman at the testicular cancer support group, “Remaining Men Together.” For some reason, no one says anything to her, and I found it humorous.

Death is a pretty big theme in this book. The narrator’s best friend, Tyler Durden, has a fear that he will die without a scar on his body, thus he and the narrator (who is unnamed) start a fight club, because Tyler wants to know what it feels like to be punched really hard.

Tyler Durden is undoubtedly the most dynamic, influential, and disturbing character in the book. He is employed as a movie projectionist, a soap-maker, and a waiter on different days of the week, and he takes none of these jobs seriously. Palahniuk perhaps created this aspect of the character simply to make the reader cringe. Tyler splices “inappropriate” film frames into kids’ movies while he is bored on the job. As a soap-maker, Tyler uses the chemical lye in the process of making his product, and one day he told the narrator about how lye and water react to produce the most painful burn imaginable. He then proceeds to kiss the narrator’s hand and pour lye on it. As a waiter (in a very expensive and esteemed hotel dining room), Tyler spends his down time on the job…relieving himself into the food. All of Tyler’s schemes are eventually found out and punished, but, in accordance with his strange philosophy, Tyler doesn’t care about the punishment. He laughs at it. He allows himself to “hit rock bottom” as a person, because he believes it is the only way to be saved, and to be built back up.

I’m about 2/3 of the way through the novel, and right now I feel as if some sort of plot twist is coming up soon. Throughout the book I’ve noticed that the narrator’s friend, Tyler, is never seen with Marla Singer (Tyler’s “love” interest). Just recently, the narrator and Tyler have been acting very similarly and the sentence, “I know this because Tyler knows this,” has been very common. The mystery behind this grows as I keep reading, and I’m very anxious to see what Palahniuk does with this in the end.