So it goes.

One of the things I noticed about Slaughterhouse Five when I first read this book (and I am among the ones that have read it before for World Since 1945) was Vonnegut's shameless overuse of the phrase "so it goes". At first it would really bother me. It would be one of those small technical things like Reed's use of numerals instead of spelling out the number like you're "supposed to" that would just get on my nerves. Vonnegut mentioned that the Tralfamadorians would say "so it goes" whenever someone would die, and that's about as far as he would go to address the subject. He always uses it after he has just described some tragic event, and I suppose what else can you say. He uses "so it goes" to quickly divert from the tragic event he has just talked about and move on. I suppose that follows the Tralfamadorian view of time, how people never actually die because they are still living somewhere in time, since it wouldn't make sense to get sad over death. Vonnegut definitely doesn't seem to want to dwell on any traumatic event, which he alludes to when he talks about the story of Lot and his wife and says that "people aren't supposed to look back." Rather than dramatizing every horrific thing he tells us like many books do, he sort of brushes it off with a kind of "whatever" attitude that provides an emotional detachment. I think I like it better that way. I think it makes the events that he's talking have more of an impact since he makes them seem commonplace and with an air of "I see that all the time". It also makes the reader conscience of every time he uses "so it goes", so you really notice and remember when he's talking about something tragic that he's witnessed. If the only thing you remember from the book is how often he uses so it goes I guess you wouldn't be in that bad of shape. You would remember that meant that there were a lot of tragic things that happened during the bombing of Dresden. And I suppose that's something.

Reflections on Mumbo Jumbo

When we first started Mumbo Jumbo, I felt completely overwhelmed by the rush of new characters, confusing scenes involving an obscure "epidemic", and phrases such as doo-whack-a-doo which isn't even English. With Ragtime, the plot was pretty straight forward and you could pretty much predict when Doctorow was going to change viewpoints and follow another character for a while; and Ragtime was just overall a much easier read. I initially approached Mumbo Jumbo the same way I had approached Ragtime: as though it were clear, straightforward, and something I could just read through  once and be able to get the quiz down. Well, my first Mumbo Jumbo quiz certainly would prove that wrong. I realized that if I was going to retain anything I had read I was going to have to take notes on the chapters, and read in a area with no distractions. I suppose Mumbo Jumbo was an enjoyable enough book; there were definitely some humorous scenes, and strange happenings like in the Moses story to keep your attention.
The most useful thing I have learned (partly through frustration, but mainly through reading my panel presentation article by Roxanne Harde) to keep in mind while reading Mumbo Jumbo is to not take Reed's words too literally, but also don't take everything at face value. If you take things too literally, then it would be very easy to get offended by the book. on the other hand, if you aren't looking into the story for a deeper meaning/ allusion at all then you can miss a lot of what Reed's saying.
I can't exactly say I like Mumbo Jumbo. It's not really my favorite style of writing with all the randomness and bending of well known stories, but I got through it. 

LAW(L)D

I'm beginning to like reading Mumbo Jumbo more and more. I think I am learning to appreciate Reed's writing style and I am understanding his sense of humor more. Reed clearly enjoyed himself while writing Mumbo Jumbo. I especially saw this come to light in the scene in chapter 45  involving Hinckle von Vampton, W.W., and W.W.'s dad. The ridiculousness of the entire scenario is just unbelievable. We have Hinckle going to desperate measures to turn W.W. into the ideal Android by lightening his skin with creme because he is "too dark", only to have a burly, black man barge in and yell, arguably quite stereotypically, things like "Lawd we axes you to pray over this boy......mmmmmmm". He then proceeds to punch Hinckle out cold and rough up Gould, then stuff his son in a cotton sack and take him back to Re-mote, Mississippi.

Looking past the hilarity and general chaos surrounding this scene for a moment, a point is made by W.W.'s father showing up in relation to the story. W.W.'s father is portrayed as a very rough character, yet he realizes that the Benign Monster magazine is not respectable and he doesn't want his son to write for it and be associated with it. In this way, the illusion that Hinckle has about how his magazine will undermine the Jes Grew movement is shattered in the reader's eyes since, along with Nathan Brown's rejection of the magazine earlier in the novel,  none of the black people take the magazine seriously.

When W.W.'s father is asked by one of the deacons with him how he's going to justify beating Hinckle and Gould, he simply replies "John 2:14"which is a bible verse. I looked  it up and it says "In the temple courts he found them selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there." (ESV translation). This doesn't really say much by itself, but in verse 15 it talks about how Jesus overturns the money-changer tables and takes out a whip and drives out the people doing business in the temple. I took this to mean in relation to the rest of the story that Hinckle and the Benign Monster were tarnishing the reputation of the black community by trying to pass off their garbage magazine as a black magazine, just as the money-lenders and merchants in the temple were tarnishing the holiness of the temple by turning it into a marketplace. WWJD? Punch Hinckle in the face.

What Just Happened...

My initial reaction to reading the first nine chapters of Mumbo Jumbo was the realization that I had processed none of it and had no idea what was going on. My next thought was "oh shit, I have to give a panel presentation on this." Reed is so elusive with what he's talking about like how he refers to Jes Grew as an epidemic and then alludes to music. Maybe my vocabulary isn't advanced enough to comprehend what he's saying. I had tried to start reading Mumbo Jumbo  in the locker room before basketball, but was getting nowhere, so I gave up and decided to read it later at home. I wasn't sure what Jes Grew was for at least four chapters. I got a pretty good idea of what Jes Grew was eventually, but it was frustrating not getting what  was going on for so long. Some sort of hook to get the reader interested is important, but this was ridiculous. Compounding my frustrations was the fact that Reed kept using numerals instead of spelling the word out, and for no purpose. If he was trying to make a subtle point or the numerals somehow related to the title or the plot that would be one thing, but I just found it annoying.
When we talked about the book in class and read through the first chapter and I heard what other people had to say about the book, my frustrations were lessened and I went from "I hate this book" to "I guess it's not so bad." Hopefully, the plot will become more clear as the book goes on and I will to hate the book less and less.

Tateh and Capitalism

Tateh's story in a lot of ways is the perfect picture of the American Dream (ignoring the fact that he's not technically American). Tateh starts out in extreme poverty and through his own creative genius and skill he is able to make a fortune and pull himself out of the slums life. He is able to make the capitalist system work for him whereas before he was toiling under it and rebelling against it., though I wouldn't call him a capitalist. Despite Tateh's newly acclaimed affluence, I don't believe he has changed his opinions. Tateh merely realized that though the socialist ideals were valuable and something he still believed in, he realized that they were simply that: ideals. He did the sensible and responsible thing, considering he had a young daughter to support and protect, and left the socialist strike. It wasn't as though Tateh denounced socialism and made a conscious decision to become a capitalist, he just left to find something else that would make his life better since the socialist movement hadn't gotten him anything thus far. I feel as though Tateh would treat people working under him well and give them adequate pay since he was once in their position, and that's what really separates him from actual capitalists. (I do think it's an interesting note that its not until Tateh leaves the socialist movement for good that he makes it big with his art; it makes me wonder if Doctorow sees any value in socialism or movements of the sort).

Sarah

I've been very intrigued with the character Sarah. When we first met her, she was basically only a tool for Mother for her own selfish gains, mainly the child; Mother didn't pay much attention to her. Only when Coalhouse Walker comes around  and she realizes Sarah will have to be actively apart of the relationship if this romance is going to happen does she start to interact with her more. As far as her role in the novel, she only really serves as the vehicle for Coalhouse to enter the story. I didn't really think much at first of Doctorow skimming over Sarah so quickly and shoving her in an attic. However, after reading how she left the house and tried to talk to the Vice President to plead on Coalhouse's behalf  then ends up getting killed, I was kind of surprised and a little disappointed because that meant that we wouldn't get to learn more about her since Doctorow killed her off so soon.

I mean if you think about it, she's much more interesting than many of the characters such as Younger Brother, and Doctorow devotes a lot of time talking about him. Sarah gets pregnant by a well-to-do pianist who is much older than she is (and we don't even know if it was consensual or not) then bites the cord and tries to bury the child, and is caught. That's some crazy shit. And we have no idea why she did any of it, or the complications of her and Coalhouse's relationship. I was also surprised that no one in the family even really tried to learn about Sarah. She's living in their house, you'd think they'd ask her where she came from or something, if nothing more than for peace of mind to know that they didn't just let some crazy delinquent into their house. Even Mother, who strikes me as a busybody, doesn't try to get the scoop even though she's the one who invited them in in the first place. It seems to me like there was a really interesting story right there, but Doctorow kind of buries it under everything else that's happening, and we don't get to hear any of it.

"Postmodernism"?

Before History as Fiction started, I had never heard of postmodernism. As we delved further into reading about what different scholarly people thought postmodernism is (or was) I found myself wondering what was even the point of defining something that was so complicated/elusive/indescribable. Why even bother? It seems so wannabe elitist to spend so much time writing a paper on the definition of postmodernism while at the same time claiming that it can' be defined. After the first two days I still had no idea what postmodernism meant. Obscure comparisons between two film directors and their really old movies, and how one was postmodern while the other wasn't, helped nothing.

I forgot about feebly attempting to pin down the definition of postmodernism once we started Ragtime, which I am heartily enjoying. In fact, just at a glance I think the books we read will be really interesting this semester. I was excited when I saw Slaughterhouse Five was on the list because I thought it was really interesting and I read through it in a day, which is saying a lot. There are very few books that I will sit down and read straight through. There's something refreshing about both Slaughterhouse Five and Ragtime compared to other books I've read. I can't quite pin it down; perhaps it's the way the writing is so nontraditional and doesn't follow the normal layout of a story where the reader follows one character straight through a chronological order of events with obstacles that the character overcomes and then lives happily ever after. Maybe it's more interesting because sex is interspersed throughout both stories so unabashedly. I don't know the reason, but both Ragtime and Slaughterhouse Five are postmodernist works. Even though I may not be able to define postmodernism, I think I like it.