A Smack in the Head

As I was reading  “Relapse” in the novel Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh, a quote by Mark really stuck out to me. When asked by Tommy why he does heroin he replied:

“It kinda makes things seem mair real tae us. Life’s boring and futile. We start oaf wi high hopes, then we bottle it. We realize that we’re aw gaunnae die, without really finding oot the big answers. We develop aw they long-winded ideas which jist interpet the reality ay oor lives in different weys, without really extending oor body ay worthwhile knowledge about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up oor lives wi shite, things like careers and relationships tae delude oorsels that it isnae aw totally pointless. Smack’s an honest drug, because it strips away these delusions. Wi smack, whin ye feel good, ye feel immortal. Whin ye feel really bad, it intensifies the shite that’s already there. It’s the only really honest drug.  It doesn’t alter yir consciousness. It just gies ye a hit and a sense ay well-being. Eftir that, ye see the misery ay the world as it is, and ye cannae anaesthetize yirsel against it. “ (90)

This quote establishes many honest things about the world of the junky, the most important being the loss of consciousness that an addict develops towards the ‘real’ world. He states that “life’s boring and futile” unaware that drugs have made him stagnant and disconnected within his own subculture of junkies who fight and complain over nothing. I’m uncertain what “big answers” he has truly confronted in the novel since he doesn’t seem to ponder any of his existence. The temporary state created by smack has left Mark in a state of the all-encompassing world as one that is miserable.   The emotions of smack to  “strip away delusions” or make him “feel immortal”  are purely dependant on whether or not the high is good. He contradicts himself by saying that if it’s a bad high then it “intensify the shite that’s already there” for he has already admitted that there is nothing there to begin with. In this way Mark’s perception of what is “honest” is in every way a lie, for he is lying to himself. The emotional state caused by being high is purely within his control. He refers to it almost like a medicine, with its ability to “anaesthetize” against life, yet he is unaware it only allows him to compensate for a lack of consciousness. This is a crucial moment in the novel, because unlike most other works of transgressive fiction we have read this semester the narrator is explicitly telling the reader he has no purpose for living. He, and the reader, are both fully aware of his lack of self worth and identity as he admits that he’s “never goat enough tae spare” and is lost in his “self-centered smack apathy.” 

Sue-icide, Dicks & The Spectacle

This is a short beginning of a story influenced by the narrative flow & certain themes eluding to "the spectacle" in Cock and Bull. I want to start experimenting with Will Self's style of creating a series of changeable narrators as one entity. In the novel they all seem to stem from the same "self", yet establish varying viewpoints through different voices.

Between 3:30 and 4:30 was the golden hour in dump diners like Simply Delicious. Just after the late crowds and right before the early birds. Sue watched the servers blankly performing their end of shift duties; rolling silverware, slopping the clear vinyl table wraps with rags soaked in milky gray bleach water, counting out tips. The pungent overlap of mac and cheese or meatloaf shift meals for the closers mingled with bacon, fried eggs and cinnamon toast for the breakfast crew. This uncomfortable scent and the damp antiseptic of the bleach rags filled the room.
Sue’s reflection stuck to the corner of the TV set in the corner of my eye, and held there. The box of noise distracted her, once again. from writing the tale of her own death. As I expected, she was in the same booth, as she had always been, with nothing to show or shine; all she had was a fifty-cent black coffee in her hand and pair of periscope eyes.
I have watching Sue in her projection booths, like this one, firing great stories at the wall. The influences that have created her escape route for finding her "true meaning" are piled high in a stack on the table beside her winter mug: a collection of obituaries.
She sits shuffling her black boots back and forth against the booth, like she’s headed somewhere better than this. She's far too well aware of her own cynicism and its made her narcissistic, as she sits with a face veiled in roseblack lien, a bleeding pen in her right hand, and carbon black spectacles framed around her mink-blue eyes. Like clock-work, this inescapable routine, same booth, same black coffee, had become formulaic to the point of no returning. She knew too much. She read the top of the peppershaker with her fingertips as though a piece of Braille, but learned nothing.
The distraction of the blaring TV keeps her from realizing that I’m still watching. It always seems its the thing you knew was there, but weren’t expecting, that brings the end to the story.
Sue thought herself a master and maker of her fate, and she was ready to end it every day. Though her tomorrow was no longer written on the sky, she couldn't stop looking out of the window of the diner, the page in front of her soon-to-be "sue-icide" still empty.
Some news story was sounding now, an urgent report about a girl who ate one-too-manymarshmallows while playing the popular child’s game “fluffy bunny.” She choked to death, but now holds the title of having engulfed the most marshmallows. Now, there was an epic ending, and Sue could not help from laughing. News events like these must be fictionalized, and the line was never boldly drawn between fact and fiction.

Still, in the case of marshmellow girl, Sue's loose change of the general grieving should have been unpocketed, and a man across the diner was staring at her. The skin of half of his face was covered in burn marks, and though his eyes were slitty they managed to laugh along with her. A spoon winked from his hand as he teetered it up his lips. A constant schlip shliping sounded from the moist pocket between his palm and the top of his tall forehead as he repeatedly slicked back the last wispy tuft that had survived his hairline’s long recession. The sweat dripped over his brow, down his nose. His lips moved mumbling, half speaking the words in his brain, and the soles of his Chucks slid squeaking back and forth across the parquet. But his back was already to the wall, and like her, this man seemed as though he had nowhere left to go.
His name was Richard, but as most Richards were regularly nick-named, he was called "Dick". The interchanging of the names Richard/Dick still doesn’t make much sense, not even to him. Dick withdrew the coin, a 1943 steel war penny, and stuffed the rest of the change back into his pocket. He admired a thick crescent of gunk on the coin’s rim and then tucked it in his cheek alongside his gums. The penny was fine in a pinch, the kind a low-life crack addict is certain to love. There was left over residue on the penny, and Dick knew it wouldn’t be enough to really matter, but just knowing that it was inside of him was enough to get him hot. Simple things become meaningful with drugs. Common objects whose lives were once secret glow soft with whispers.
Dick could breathe again as he swished the penny against his gums, and his erection underneath the table went from full mass to half mass. This was after all a day of mourning, and he couldn't shake the feeling someone was watching.

America's got Guts!

Chuck Palahniuk’s short story “Guts” is relatable to British transgressive fiction in various ways, but there are a few notable elements that distinguish the piece as a work of American literature. The most interesting that I found is the variation of tone, where Palahniuk’s work emphasizes more of a freedom of language that is more personally provocative towards the reader. With lines like “Sticking stuff inside yourself. Sticking yourself inside stuff. A candle in your dick or your head in a noose, we knew it was going to be big trouble” the tone is less “magical”, and more confrontational than that of British transgression.

Reading the “Guts effect” Palahniuk reflected “My goal was just to write some new form of horror story, something based on the ordinary world. Without supernatural monster or magic.” He attaches levels of exaggerated honesty onto main ideas of value in American life (family, sex, money, success). He shows their temporality of glory that can be lost in a single moment. I think the fact this story was published in Playboy changes a lot of the type of auidence this story may be targeting. Like Money, Crash, or Nights at the Circus, this story is acessible to nearly anyone. It encapsulates the desire of sex in an animalistic and pornographic way as the UK novels do, only the “art of distance” does not seem employed here. The reader is put in a position where Palahniuk assumes his reader can find a commonality in the absurd choas and unsettling images in the story. Lines like “If I told you how it tasted, you would never, ever again eat calamari” would make anyone laugh for there is a certain “on-point” comparision in his choice of comparing the large intenstine to calamari.

It seems like there is an extra level of personal connection between Palahniuk and the reader. He plays on the idea of the true lack of freedom tied to the “American Dream” whether it be through commidity or self exploitation in pursuit of temporary desires. Examples of this can be seen in lines like “This is the baby they brought home from the hospital thirteen years ago. Here's the kid they hoped would snag a football scholarship and get an MBA. Who'd care for them in their old age. Here's all their hopes and dreams.”

Palahniuk juxaposes images that provoke an ambience of a surban atmosphere where the animalistic qualities of human condition are placed into the framework of wealth. He explores the relationship between money and inner desire and how the two correspond and humilate each other. This can be seen in events like the the narrators large intestine being ripped out by a ‘sucking’ pool clearner, the lamb skin condom as an intestine,the vitamin he sees inside of the cleaner that “saves his life”, or paying for a bladder operation with a college fund . I found his ideas

Operating on an American sense of realism as opposed to British trangression, the work itself possesses no limits to its madness, and contains almost a greater sense of literary freedom. After reading “The Guts effect” I got a clearer understanding that the free nature of this piece is the result of Palahniuk’s idea that books aren’t a “mass medium” like television, for they require a greater level of intimacy. He reflects, “A book is as private and consensual as sex. A book takes time and effort to consume - something that gives a reader every chance to walk away” and that society is seeking a more false form of intimacy. Perhaps, the pornographic nature of intimacy suggested by the piece. He thinks that it is from the present day’s disregard for reading, that books contain a boundaryless freedom.

Feathery Language

The riddle of a delicate malapropism:

The tone of the story is one of Feevers uneducated voice of poverty with a cross of mystical undertones; in some cases the usage of “misused” and feathery language tends to read like a riddle. It open door ways in which the reader must determine from Feevers “Oracular proof” the truth to the unbelievable tale. Wesler remarks in a passage on 43 that he was a “prisoner to her voice. The voice could almost have had its source not within her throat but in some ingenious mechanism or other behind the canvas screen. The voice of a fake medium at a séance.”

The reader, like Wesler, becomes a “kaleidoscope equipped with consciousness” where the “the rest of the riddle you must answer at the appointed hour.” As the Wesler describes the performance of Feevers, as one in which occurs "in slow motion.. the suspension of disbelief."(17). Carter seems to be making a comparison about the impermanent and deceptive nature of illusion in relation to divine law. The essence of the world crafted by Carter is one between life and death, a moment, like the clock set to midnight that the dark angel stands beyond, is one where time stands still. This moment, perhaps the loss of Fevvers virginity, will be for Feevers, a time when the “clock outside will correspond to that registered by the stopped gilt clock inside. Inside and outside [will] match exactly, but bother [will be] badly wrong."(53)

Perhaps, “Nights at the Circus” then is a critique then on the temporary pleasures of desire and "ludric play", where the circus is only a “permanent display of the triumphs of man’s will over gravity and rationality.” The novel encapsulates an esthetic of unfinished suspense and surprise through the embodiment of Feevers who views her body as the “abode of limitless freedom” (34).

I recently went to the Whitney and they had a piece called the circus by Alexander Caldert. I found it related to the mechanical motions of time bring embraced by the novel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6jwnu8Izy0

Money in Magic

Money & Nights at the Circus

The humorous nature in which Amis juxtaposes a variety of images to emphasis money in relation to the self, Angela Carter in “Nights at the Circus” uses a variety of juxtaposed images that operate through the same technique. In a passage where Feevers tells Wesler she was sold to a man under the fake name of ‘Mr.Rosencretuz’ she reflects, " I am an honest woman. And the poor old bugger had put his cash down on the nail, hadn’t he, even if I’d pocketed none of it so far.” (81)

Carter emphasizes a duality of Feevers/Sophia: money vs. religion. She uses a repetition of certain images and thematic concepts throughout the course of Rosencretuz rebirth ritual. The man who payed a fortunate to Madam Shreck for her virginity lives in a “mansion in the Gothic style” that is “ivied all over, and, above the turrets, floated a fingernail moon with a star in its arms.” Throughout the course of Rozencretuz's 'metaphysical' self-proclamation there is a constant mentioning of bottles of cabret being opened; Feevers even reflects during the course of his divine rant “the least he could do was crack another bottle of claret. Half the profit from this bizarre transaction but he was temporarily blind and deaf to the world, harkening only to the invisible angels shouting in his ears.” (80)

He assures her not to run away with the “idea there’s anything fleshly indecent or even remotely corporeal about [the] meeting of this night of all nights, when the shining star lies in the moon’s chaste embrace above this very house, signifying the divine post-diluvian Remission and Reconciliation of the Terrible.”

Here, Carter has used the image of the moon and the star to represent a reoccurring concept of “Remission and Reconciliation.” ‘Mr. Rozencrantz’ proclaims to Feevers that she is a “creature half of earth and half of air, virgin and whore, reconciler of fundament and firmament, ambivalent body, reconciler of the grand opposites of death and life” and that she will “come to him neither naked nor clothed, but wait with [him] for the hour when it is neither dark nor light.” (81) Feevers focus on the wine, which Carter uses as a symbol of wealth, highlights one of the novels main contradiction: money vs. the metaphysical. She reflects, “That’s rich!” I thought considering the amounts of money changing hands.” (81) Fevvers does not know how to feel the magic of her own being without the view of dirty money attached to it.

Money Talks in Different Voices

A passage I found particularly striking in “Money” is the sudden break in the narrative on page 104. Amis sends readers on a discourse into an analysis of the “four distinct voices" inside of John Self's head. It is evident that the reader has a sense of the voice of John Self by the 104^th page of the novel; however in this particular passage Amis uses an array of literary devices to articulate various components that make up that narrative voice.

The first voice of John Self is the “jabber of money.” Amis uses the phrase the “blur on the top rung of a typewriter” as figurative use of language to describe the feeling of jabber that the reader so often experiences in John’s narration. He includes denotations of imagery to further describe this feeling – “%1/4@=&$!” Amis is attempting to convey two forces cause these jumbled thoughts: emotion and numbers; this is pointed out in the phrase “sum, subtractions, compound terrors and greeds” to describe the voice of the “jabber of money.”

In his description of John Self’s second voice, pornography, Amis uses diction of speech to aid the reader in a visualization: “The way she moves has got to be good news, can’t get loose till I feel the juice-suck and spread, bitch, yeah bounce for me baby.” This speech is intended to give the visual of a “demented DJ” that is juxtaposed in the following sentences with the image of a “retard in Times Square”. The gurgled monologue to aid the readers visual is presented in the form of “Uh guh geh yuh tih ah fuh yuh uh yuh fuh ah ah ah yuh guh suh muh fuh cuh.” In these various forms of speech by a “demented DJ” and a “retard”, Amis establishes a nonsensical and unpleasant rhythm attached to John Self’s “pornographic” inner voice.

The third voice is of “ageing and weather.” Here, Amis does not rely on figurative language, diction of speech, imagery, or denotation to describe this voice. Instead it is poetically stylized with the negative connotations often experienced by John Self’s pitiful character: “Time travel through days and days, the ever-weakening voice of stung shame, sad boredom and futile protest.” The rhythm, here, seems to provoke a sense of longing for the reader and the stories main character.

The last voice, described as an intruder. However, I couldn’t help but feel as if Amis coped out on the hard-hitting, “voice-driven” way in which the narration of the passage relayed the other voices. At first the intruder voice is described as “the unwelcome lilt of paranoia, of rage, and weepiness made articulate in spasms of vividness: drunk talk played back sober.” Here, he is making a comparison: where drunk talk as an unwelcome lilt of paranoia, of rage, and weepiness, and sobriety is spasms of vividness. The contradictions of these denotations of language are followed by a description of two images on a television screen: “hysterical ads” and the “fucking news.” By describing John Self’s “fourth voice” in such a way that it is not clearly defined, only cluttered with misleading contradictions, perhaps is a way to make the reader feel as if the narration of the passage has hit the point where “all the voices are coming from somewhere else.”

The voice shifts back to the narrative voice of John Self from which most of the novel has been told. He compares the intruding voice to a vampire and advises: “not to let them in, these crashers. Don’t let them in, whatever you do.” Perhaps, a warning and foreshadowing for the reader to beware of the events, as well as narrative shifts that will occur as the novel unfolds.

On Movies and Money

The Unsuccessful Car Crash?

On Crash: Novel vs. Movie

The all-at-once, blunt, matter-of-fact, bizarrely weird movie Crash, accomplishes the beguiling ambivalence to “apotheosis” as the novel did.However, I recently read a quote by Barbara Shulgasser of the San Franscisco Chronicle that stated,

“Cronenberg has said that he made the film to find out why he was making it. You may watch it for the same reason.”

I felt like the movie was more open ended in meaning than Ballard’s carefully constructed novel. This openness, to an already intensely interpretive novel, made the film feel nearly pointless. Without a doubt it incorporates most all of the sexual images of the novel, but leaves out important plot points and themes. I felt like the “electric highway” universe was more vividly pictured in the novel, with all the emphasis on images like the clutter of traffic, to depict the imposing technological age that traps everyone in a particular space. Cinematically, this could have been accomplished in the film easily, but I did not feel it was pushed hard enough.

The ambiguity in the movie of the viewer attaching onto any particular character’s consciousness, does mimic that of the novel. However, the way in which Ballard’s character perceives events occurring, does not match up to how I felt he perceived things in the novel. There's such a vividness of detail in Ballard's perception, that Cronenberg tried to replicate in the film with odd shots like a finger stroking a seat belt, or attention to things happening off screen away from the main action, but it could have been done more effectively so that the viewer is not just watching through the eye of the camera as their limitation, but also develops a perception of the camera's own consciousness as Ballard creates in his novel.

Ballard’s novel contained a particular articulation of events, and their overlap; contrasting repetitive themes through their collision that adds up to some over-all collective meaning. At the end of the movie however, I felt like I had seen an ineffective psychological take of sex in relation to the machines in which the acts occurred in, and how car crashes can affect someone’s consciousness.

What the fuck is Crash? A meticulous realism or free-floating psychodrama? Wish fulfillment or cautionary tale? Diagnostic or symptomatic? Satirical or speculative? The answer, H.G. Ballard might have said is: YES. Crash doesn’t operate by either/or; it follows the logic of chance in a universe that has raised its stakes against the occurrence. Cronenberg, on the other hand, had a different take and the movie felt undeniably incomplete to me.

MONEY $$

After beginning the first 50 pages of Money, it is evident that Martin Amis, is appealing to some sort of "common" human experience, as Ballard did in Crash. I feel as though, however, it is transforming into a nesting story of dimensions, putting the reader onto different planes of the “common” experience.

John Self, a largely unread media slickster who describes himself as ‘200 pounds of yob genes, booze, snout and fast food’ (31) assumes that his listener is his contemporary; they are somebody who lives in the year 1981 and is familiar with current affairs. However, there are general qualities attributed to this narrate's listening that does not obviously guarantee that he/she will be exactly like the narrator. Self seems to assume or rather suspect that the narratee is different from him, even though they are living in the same world.

He often interrupts his narrative with questions concerning the narratee’s habits and cultural background, such as:

“About me and reading (I don’t really know why I tell you this - I mean, do you read that much?): I can’t read because it hurts my eyes.” (42)

Self projects a narratee who is better educated then he is, his own knowledge of the world not extending beyond the current news presented by tabloids and the fast-food culture of the media.The cultural gap between John Self and the narratee is emphatically underlined in his self-conscious confessions of his attitude to people who are better educated than he is:

“As a rule, I hate people who are the beneficiaries of a university education. I hate people with degrees, O- levels, eleven-pluses, Iowa Tests, shorthand diplomas ... And you hate me, don’t you. Yes, you do. Because I’m the new kind, the kind that has money but can never use it for anything but ugliness. To which I say: You never let us in, not really. You might have thought you let us in, but you never did. You just gave us some money.” (47)

By creating a narrator who attributes to the narratee a number of contradictory properties and positions, Amis has put his readers in the communicative situation in which they must continually re-adjust his/her position in relation to the text. Furthermore, by inscribing himself into his own novel, Amis blurs the borderline between fiction and reality and intensifies the reader’s disorientation. The reader thus becomes involved in a metafictional game in which he/she is forced to experience directly rather than merely observe. This seems the novel’s central themes: the dissolution of the self in a (post)modern world, where everything and nothing is known and can be known; particularly through our often main focus on money.