All good things...

Where do we go from here? An oft-asked question, I suppose, in any context. However, we're all English majors over here. Our futures seem as uncertain as anyone else's. Some will teach. Some will write. Others will join the nine-to-five bump-and-grind. Myself? Who knows? I sure don't. Yet, wherever I end up, I would like to think I'll have made it that much further with what I have learned in ENGL 2145.

Of course, there has been much horizon-broadening literture to read--Elizabeth Bishop's "Geography III" comes to mind, as does David Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross" and Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis." There were some assignments that proved challenging: I cannot help but reminesce on all the hours of sleep I sacrificed working on that close reading assignment. In all, I think I learned a few things while enrolled in 2145, and I feel the path is somewhat clearer now.

With a little luck, I should be graduating from KSU within the year, possibly as early as December. I cannot say that I know for sure what I will do, career-wise. I would like to think the Great American Novel is buried in my mind somewhere, just needing a few years before I'm ready to write it. I would also entertain the notion that I may find a more journalistic endeavor...not an easy route with newspapers folding on an almost-daily basis. I have also thought of maybe coming back to school in a few short years and obtaining a Master's Degree (it helps to have one of those, right? Right?) and maybe teach in a college environment as well...though I am still at the point where the prospect of being in a classroom where twenty or more strangers (who speak fluent Text-Message and watch MTV) are depending on me for an education is...well, we'll cross that bridge when we get nearer to it.

Okay, time to catch my breath. Too much thinking about work hurts the brain! On the leisure side of things, I see myself becoming a more analytical reader. Rather, I see myself reading more in general...in the near future, I can use those now-free essay-writing hours and instead knock out a book or two. Everybody wins.

In all honesty, I cannot tell you where English studies will one day take me. I know: I'm 28 years old and I'm not going to live forever. Decision-making time is nigh. However, I foresee great, plentiful things on the horizon. Even if I never finish my novel (or my play, or my screenplay, or my poetry anthology,) there are still myriad careers and paths to take down the line. One glimmer of light: I have completed ENGL 2145. That makes me one giant leap closer to...wherever I'm going.

All great things come in IIIs...

The title of Elizabeth Bishop's Geography III is a vexing one, to be sure. There is, quite frankly, no concise or clear-cut answer as to why Bishop chose this ambiguous title. The final book written and published by Bishop before her death in 1979, Geography III is a collection of nine poems that can be tied to the tranquility and votility of mankind's surroundings (its "geography," so to speak) and its effects on Bishop and her various guises. As a treastise of the bonds we share, however personal or impersonal, with the earth, Geography III is a fitting swan song for Bishop. So...why the Roman numeral III of the title? Is the third time the charm, with geography?

The clues (or are they?) can be found everywhere: the prefacing "First Lessons in Geography" defines maps, asks of volcanoes, and sets the tone for the following poems ("Geography I," perhaps?), as well as her painstakingly detailed landscapes of "Crusoe in England" ("islands spawning islands, / like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs / of islands") and "Poem":

Up closer, a wild iris, white and yellow,
fresh-squiggled from the tube.
The air is fresh and cold; cold early spring
clear as gray glass; a half inch of blue sky
below the steel-gray storm clouds.

Regardless of the mystery surrounding its title, Geography III is still a very strong collection of nine peerless works of poetry. Anyone who could fashion a work as profound in its simplicity as "The Moose" or elegaic in its nostalgia as "In the Waiting Room" deserves a Pulitzer Prize, and Elizabeth Bishop won that very award in 1956.

It is, perhaps, only fitting that we to this day ponder the title of Geography III. I am sure Elizabeth Bishop would have like it that way.

Presenting...The Women of an All-Male Cast

Upon first glance, David Mamet's Pulitzer-winning play Glengarry Glen Ross (and subsequent Oscar-nominated film adaptation) appears to inhabit a macho he-man universe of high-fives, fast cars, dirty jokes, and the daily wheel-and-deal to the American Dream. Though Glengarry Glen Ross only has two locales and seven white male speaking roles, we spy onto a world of capital-m Men, who know what's right, even when they don't. The unseen women who are only mentioned briefly seem to exist solely to screw things up for the men. How many wives, after all, destroyed business deals and cost "deserving" salesmen that new Cadillac?

Now we move onto Glance #2. The superficial "male camaraderie" is anything but; these businessmen are glorified hustlers, practically con men, bombarding unsuspecting customers and clients with "peace of mind" plots of land in Arizona and Florida. None of these clients want to purchase any of this real estate; the few that do close deals seem to do so only to shut the salesman up and get him off of their backs. Such is the daily bump-and-grind of these insecure Men, who go to work, put on their game face, and thus make a sales pitch not too far removed from schoolyard bullying. Men like Richard Roma go so far as to put their "manhood" on the line; after all, only the Manliest of Men can sell real estate, and those who cannot are easy targets for emasculation. When all does not go well (and it rarely does; occupational hazard of pushing real estate down peoples' throats), the insults, the nonstop f-bombs, and the slurs commence. These characters are more boys than men. We shall refer to this as the "masquerade of masculinity."

So...if the all-too-visible men are running the show in Glengarry Glen Ross, then where are the women? To put it simply: removed from the stage, they provide the checks-and-balances to keep these men in tow.

Women are sparsely mentioned in the play, but their influence is undeniable. One key scene, towards the latter part of Act II, finds smooth-talker Richard Roma in a bind when a key client named James Lingk (key in that by making this sale, Roma will win a brand-new Cadillac) backs out of a deal that was closed the previous night. Roma's pride and hubris (the "masquerade," as it were) takes a staggering blow as this deal is lost, and it is all because Lingk's wife made him call the deal off. After spending hours buttering the man up with promises of security, Roma loses it all with the simple intervention by a woman.

I think the line that best sums up Glengarry Glen Ross's attitude toward the battle of the sexes (which the men like to think they're always winning) is when James Lingk, asked why he would change his mind so abruptly and give in to his wife's sensible demands, declares "I don't have the power."

Note the emphasis on the word power. James Lingk, the accidental customer, is not like the real estate men who swindle and talk a sweet game. No, James Lingk has a moral compass, here personified by his wife. A conscience, if you will, to prevent him from doing the kinds of stupid things that would bring the downfall of other characters like Shelly Levene and Dave Moss. With only their machismo to drive them, the salesmen of Glengarry Glen Ross might as well be all doomed without a sensible voice to influence their actions. After all, their firebomb approach to selling land is usually thwarted by wives, girlfriends, mothers, and daughters who would know better than to fall for their bullshit confidence.

In conclusion, Glengarry Glen Ross is not at all, in my opinion at least, an anti-feminist work. If anything, it's the furthest thing from it. When the girls are away, the boys will play, as the saying goes. Glengarry Glen Ross is a study of what happens when the boys decide to play a few decades longer than they should.

LEAR: The King of Queens?

For centuries scholars have tried to figure out what made William Shakespeare (and his numerous legendary characters) tick, and as such the canon of Shakespeare has been studied, interpreted, reinterpreted, deconstructed, and took apart and put back together again like some kind of literary Humpty Dumpty. Few of Shakespeare’s creations stir as much discussion as the titular monarch of “King Lear”; as tortured as Hamlet and as conniving as Richard III, Lear is one of literature’s great enigmas. It is in recent decades that feminist studies threw in a hand at debunking the myth of King Lear. Now, in our twenty-first century anno domini, the battle of the sexes is now laid bare on the table: a proud octogenarian on the verge of madness versus three daughters who may be willing to lie, cheat, and murder for control of his kingdom. Place your bets, folks.

The stage is set in the opening scene: King Lear, more accustomed to the all-or-nothing officialty of the public court (it is a man’s world, after all, and this man is the king) than the emotional gray areas that women (and most men) find solace, is scheduled to pass the torch and divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters.

This does not go as planned.

Case in point: after daughters Regan and Goneril tell Lear exactly what he wants to hear (what need has Lear for the truth?), they are given his blessings. However, unlike her power-hungry sisters, youngest daughter Cordleia has the audacity to tell the truth: “I love your majesty according to my bond; nor more nor less.” One thing that has been agreed upon by scholars is that of Lear’s three daughters, only Cordelia maintains the honor befitting the monarchy, and even Lear fails to see that.

As per the Shakespeare tradition, things immediately get violently out of hand. Lear’s one-hundred knights still loyal to him regress to drunkenness and malfeasance. Plots are hatched. Cold heartlessness reigns in his stead.

Lear’s descent into madness can superficially traced to his age (though the dementia common to one of his years obviously did him no favors), and yet his inability to understand anything other than a regal world with no place for “water-drops” has desensitized him. He has no use for compassion or nurturing. These “feminine” attributes that Lear has denied for decades have distanced himself from his daughters, and he finds himself unawares and off-guard when the Machiavellian plots of Goneril and Regan take shape. Unfortunately, there is little (nay, nothing) that Lear can do to prevent the onslaught, for his years of chauvinism and male pride have made the damage irreparable.

An evening lost in the storm, joined by his Fool (who displays his own brand of twisted wisdom) and “madman” Tom o’ Bedlam (actually deposed one-time heir Edgar, who has not fared much better than Lear, but that’s another story), Lear finally learns, though now too little and too late), the error of his ways. The back-stabbing that surrounds him will cost him two daughters, and soon a third. Lear’s reconciliation with Cordelia is short-lived and too bittersweet for Lear’s old heart. She is hanged, and a grief-stricken Lear soon follows her to the grave, with hopes that the next generation of the monarchy should fare better.

“King Lear” is arguably William Shakespeare’s most existential and depressing offering, and it is a valid argument, to be sure. As with much of Shakespeare’s oeuvre, one could spend years, if not a lifetime, putting the pieces together of a tragedy as epic as “King Lear”, but the feminine presence in the text is undeniable. King Lear learned the error of his ways, and suffered for it, but alas, such is the nature of tragedy.

The only thing certain is sentiment and politics

Few people alive today can count themselves as fortunate as Marjane Satrapi; writing a best-selling memoir (as a black-and-white graphic novel, no less!) is, as we all know, an arduous process in which only a few can truly hack it, but that accomplishment seems moot compared to the trials she endured for many years growing up in Iran during the 1980's.

Marjane's home was a country seemingly bent on destroying itself, where nightly raids, arrests, and bombings only strengthened the resolves (and hastened the graves) of the power-seeking fundamentalists in one revolution and the nationalistic puppets of another war. Caught in the middle were any souls brave enough to challenge the oppressors, and anyone else unlucky enough to be caught in the daily crossfire. The horrors were such that young Marjane Satrapi would not (and could not) have persevered and survived without the support of a family as strong as hers.

Marjane was blessed to have had two intelligent, strong parents such as hers. Using non-violence to fight the oppressors in secret, all the while instilling their only daughter with the identity and wits to survive, Marjane's mother and father are the moral compass who promise her a better tomorrow, and give her the tools to make it so.

Marjane also has invaluable role models in her uncle Anoosh (a political prisoner for nine years and later killed by the Islamic Republic) and her grandmother (who gives Marjane a sense of national pride and heritage). A bond as strong as the one Marjane has with her parents and extended family keep her alive and safe, even as the world around them succumbs to senselessness.

I do not believe that Marjane would ever agree with her father's declaration that "sentiment and politics do not mix." Growing up during one of the most turbulent periods in modern civilization, Marjane Satrapi could only hope to find happiness and a chance to live through the love of her family.

Having lost countless friends and family during those violent years, Marjane nevertheless lost sight of the bright future ahead of her. Though it is uncertain that she could have imagined becoming a world-renowned author back in the age of "Jichael Mackson" (a "punk" symbol of Western decadence to the oppressors), Marjane Saptrapi was practically rescued by sentiment, a stronger ally against any enemy or politics.

Thoughts on "The Moviegoer"

Where does one begin in summarizing "The Moviegoer"? Making conservative use of the book's 242 pages, author Walker Percy crafts an essentially plotless story into a study of Big Questions. No mere coming-of-age character study, "The Moviegoer" rewards patient readers with a (relatively) happy ending, a forum for endless discussion (though some may consider that a negative), and a solid entry in the Existential Angst sub-genre of literature.

In true fashion for the genre, "The Moviegoer" is very ambiguous, raising more questions than it cares to answer (the plot, such as it is, is driven by the narrator's quote-unquote "search"--and as to what the search is for, your guess is as good as mine). This approach gives Percy more creative freedom to rely on imagery, and vague characters with vague intentions come and go throughout the novel, as unknowable to the reader as any stranger on the street. We readers know only what the narrator, a pushing-30 stockbroker named Binx Bolling, knows, and even then Walter Percy denies us most of that, too.

This is where "The Moviegoer" also becomes infuriating. Relying more on the New Orleans locales (where most of the novel takes place) to tell the story than our humble narrator, "The Moviegoer" traces one man's making sense of his own by-design senseless world. We know that high childhood expectations and a tragic tour of duty in Korea helped shape Binx into the womanizing lost soul he is today, but Percy keeps us at a distance. Analysis is a tough job made tougher when it comes to the ambiguity of "The Moviegoer".

A good book, methinks, but an imperfect one, for sure.