This took a while....

The title of this most recent/rather late post both represents my thoughts on this post, though more importantly it  pretty much sums up my views on reading Libra: it drags on forever. I don't think the reading sections themselves are super long, it's just very dense and detailed writing that can be very demanding if you want to go try to stay focused and retain all of the information. I find the sections that follow Oswald's life around to be moderately interesting; it's more the scenes with the C.I.A. agents that can  be confusing to  keep straight and dull hearing going through their monotonous dialogue and shenanigans. It seems like it takes twice as long to read the C.I.A. chapters than the ones about Oswald.

Before we started DeLillo, we had watched a film in history class about the whole JFK assassination by giving us pretty much a four day play by play of all the events before and after. In the movie there was so much speculation and mystery around Oswald that I didn't feel like it was concrete that it was completely confirmed that Oswald was the one who shot the president since he was completely denying it (which I realize many people deny committing crimes to get out of trouble, but perhaps I imagined more of a defiant revolutionary reaction to being caught) and there was the whole issue about the grassy knoll and multiple shots. I found it interesting that the DeLillo addresses the possibility of Oswald being set up by the C.I.A.  pretty much right off the bat as he shows all the secret levels and clearances and plots that even the president doesn't know about it. The immediate shadow of a doubt that DeLillo gives Oswald made it easier to take Oswald as his own character in the story instead of being labeled throughout as a killer.

A Not-So-Happy Ending

I'm a big fan of happy endings. It gives a sense of closure when the problem is resolved and you're happy with how things turn out in the book. I don't see the point in reading a book if the ending is just going to make me angry or annoyed. The ending is one of the most important parts of the book since it's probably what the reader is going to remember the most, so it has to be done well. Normally when I finish reading a book I like to be left with a satisfied feeling that I've gained something from all the time I spent reading it. That something was achieved in the book. That it wasn't a waste. When I finished reading Kindred I didn't really get that satisfied feeling. Probably because the ending wasn't a satisfying one at all. I was really enjoying the novel up until the last couple chapters. Well, I guess until the last section. Everything just started to fall apart once we found out Alice killed herself. You could pretty much tell from that point on in the novel things weren't going to pan out so well but you just had to endure it, and it just becomes like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

What really bothered me about the ending of the book was that it was Dana who had to take Rufus out. Like, really? We just spent the entire book watching her spend years of her life in 19th century helping Rufus and being a slave on his plantation and enduring all kinds of hardships and she's just going to stab him after all that? She could've just let Rufus commit suicide like he was going to anyway. At least that way his death would have seemed somewhat justified. Rufus would've gained a lot more of my favor if he had killed himself (kind of weird to say, but true) since then it would've seemed like Rufus was remorseful of his actions and that he had learned his lesson. Instead he just turns around and tries to rape Dana.

The fact that Dana lost  an arm to her time traveling experience also bothered me.  She had plenty of scars that she got from whippings and even Kevin has a scar on his forehead, isn't that enough of a physical reminder of what they experienced?  I realize that Butler is trying to make a point about slavery and how it scars the individuals permanently, but regardless I don't like that Butler made it impossible for Dana to go back to normal life afterwards since she's now disabled. I don't really know why, but somehow that doesn't sit well with me.

Rufe

It's very hard to say whether I like Rufus or not. When he was younger and more innocent I found myself liking him a lot. He seemed like an intelligent boy who had a silent strength about him who wasn't threatened by having Dana suddenly appear in his bedroom. He treated her with respect despite his upbringing which would give him no reason to respect Dana, even though she is his senior. Even his use of the n-word is arguably excused by his ignorance, though to his credit he does follow Dana's request to call them black people instead. One couldn't help but hope along with Dana that maybe Rufus will turn out different than his father.

When Dana  says "And there was Rufus, swung from his father's indifference to his mother's sugary concern. I wondered whether he was too used to the contrast to find it dizzying." (Butler, 69) I couldn't help but see a similar comparison to Hitler's childhood. Apparently he too had a very strict and abusive father and an overbearing mother who smothered him with affection. I don't think because of the dynamic he has with his parents that Rufus will grow up as messed up as Hitler, but you can certainly see how swinging from being severely punished by his father to hugged and fed cake by his mother can be emotionally confusing.

Then flash forward ten years. We see Rufus getting beaten for trying to/succeeding in raping Alice, yet claiming to love her. But then we see him joking around with Nigel and appearing kinder and more humane than Tom Weylin was. The swings Rufus can go from are about as dizzying as his parents swings. However, Rufus still realizes that the culture he lives him allows him to do whatever he wants to black people with no repercussions, and he takes advantage of it when he gets desperate and feels he needs to that he will threaten Alice and even Dana. Of course, we as the reader may not agree that he actually "needs" to. It doesn't excuse his actions in the slightest, but you out someone in power in a culture like that and you can't be surprised if every now and then they use that power to their full advantage. It really makes you wonder if/how people we know would change if they were put in a culture like the antebellum south.

Kindred Initial Reaction

I am thoroughly enjoying Kindred thus far. As much as I love Vonnegut's writing, it's a nice change to read something a little more grounded. Though time travel is also thrown in this novel, this time it's more believable and has more merit since it's a self proclaimed science fiction book, and I completely trust the sanity of the characters of this novel. With Billy Pilgrim, everything's happening more or less in his head and even in the book people, like his daughter, think he's  crazy. I also find this book easier to relate to since not only is Dana a young female, but the book was actually written in the late 1970s when Butler was in her thirties so her writing style is more what I'm used to from just reading "young adult" books I suppose you could call them.

One thing I thought was particularly interesting in Kindred is how long it takes for us to learn that Kevin is white. I suppose his super light eyes may have been a tip off (since I don't know many non-white people with eyes that aren't brown), and that scene where he asks Dana "Do I really look like that patroller?" since, obviously the patroller is white. It's not until 50-some pages in, through the story of how Dana and Kevin met, that we get a sense of what Kevin looks like, including the fact that he's white. I also think it's interesting that once we learn that Kevin's white, we aren't likely to forget it so quickly; especially once he is transported back to Maryland with Dana. Once he's in Maryland, his and Dana's relationship is completely transformed. He has to pretend to be Dana's master in order to protect her and that must be a really hard dynamic to take on, especially for Dana. We don't really see any tension at all between Dana and Kevin when they're in L.A., but once they're back in 1815 Maryland, that's all that matters to the people there so there's the constant reminder that Kevin is a white man and Dana is a black woman. It really doesn't help anything that Kevin's story involves buying Dana and pretending like he's going to free her when really he's "planning" on selling her in Louisiana and is just sleeping with her now because he can. Having to play that scenario out would be really demeaning since Kevin is her husband.

All in all, Kindred looks like it's going to be a really good read. It'll be interesting to see how this time-traveling experience changes (if it does) Kevin and Dana's relationship.

A Mixing of Novels: Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

One of my favorite scenes in Slaughterhouse Five was the scene in chapter five where Billy is in the mental hospital. I'm not entirely certain why this scene has captured my fancy, but it's partly due to what his ward-mate Elliot Rosewater brings to the scene. I don't really like Billy Pilgrim much; he's too passive. He doesn't really care about anything, and he doesn't have much of a personality as far as I can tell. Elliot, on the other hand, is a much more interesting character. Especially considering the fact that Elliot Rosewater is actually directly out of another Kurt Vonnegut book that I am currently reading: God Bless You Mr. Rosewater. When I first read his name in the mental hospital scene I thought "hey, that's the name of the guy in the book I'm reading." When Vonnegut mentioned that Elliot Rosewater had also been a soldier and had accidentally killed a fourteen year old German volunteer fireman because he mistook him for a soldier, I was like, "Wait. This must be the exact same Elliot Rosewater. That's kind of odd, why not just make up a new character." Vonnegut just plucked him out of one of his novels and stuck him in another.

Vonnegut actually mixes aspects between the novels God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Slaughterhouse Five more than once. It's like Vonnegut's novels exist in a world of their own and he just draws different aspects from it for his different books. Kilgore Trout and his badly written sci-fi is also a part of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, which I suppose only makes sense since it was Elliot who introduced Billy to his books in the first place. What really surprised me was that the old "woman attempting to have sex with a Shetland pony" picture made an appearance in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater as well, as the porn of choice of a character's fourteen-year-old son. I mean, really, what's so significant about that photo? It's photo description makes it sound more ridiculous/disturbing than actually "sexy", and I'm not sure what kind of point Vonnegut is trying to make by utilizing that image so readily (if there even is a point at all; I suppose Vonnegut could just have a very limited imagination.) It just seemed to me like an unnecessary bit to consciously include in both novels.

Anyway, back to the Slaughterhouse Five mental hospital scene. Neither Billy nor Elliot really enjoy life or have any desire to continue living on earth. I like the way Vonnegut puts it when he's talking about how Billy covers his head whenever his mother comes to visit and he says "She made him feel embarrassed and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn't really like life at all." It's so matter-of -fact and honest. It's not something you would expect to find in a novel (though Vonnegut is full of surprises). None of the books that I have read have really delved into someone just not liking life on earth, yet its totally relateable. I'm sure  everyone at some point has thought that maybe life wasn't worth it. Of course, Billy has a typical, childish, passive reaction to not liking life and just covers his head with a blanket. Elliot pretty much has decided that life is pointless as well, but I really like his way of approaching it. he tries different things and actually does some searching to try and improve his outlook on life. I really like the interaction between Billy's mother and Eliot where he was trying being ardently sympathetic with people to see if that made life more enjoyable. It's such a seemingly genuine interaction, though for all we know Elliot doesn't care at all and is just giving generic answers (as Vonnegut puts it, "loving echoes") and supporting everything Billy's mother says, replying with things like "That's a good thing to do." and "A boy needs a father." It sounds like it could be a very real, and touching conversation, but it's so empty and void of actual content. I can't pinpoint exactly what I appreciate about that hollow interaction, but perhaps it's just the optimism.

I didn't really like Elliot Rosewater in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater nearly as much as I like his appearance in Slaughterhouse Five. In "his" book I suppose you could call it, Elliot is just a really rich heir who drinks, runs around as a volunteer fireman in some tiny little town in Indiana named after his family, and pretty much runs a psychiatrist hotline on the phone in his office to whoever feels like calling him. His family and everyone at the company he's inherited thinks he's insane, his former wife appears to have been emotionally damaged by antics. In Slaughterhouse Five, however, there is less triviality about him and more depth. He seems much more respectable and down to earth, though he may not like living on it.

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.