Blog #20. "A Glimmer Of Hope—Was That It?" No-No Boy Chapter 11.

So we get to the last blog of the year, 53 in all for the course. Thanks for the effort many of you put into this part of the class. Some of you did this right away, some of you at the most ungodly times (2 in the morning?),  some of you first thing in the morning, some of you minutes before the 8:30 deadline. No matter. You did the work. Good for you.


Here is a brief biography of John Okada. The bio makes an interesting, and probably valid, point: if Okada had made Ichiro more autobiographical, then perhaps the novel would have found an audience in 1957 among Japanese Americans, for whom the novel was clearly aimed. For Okada was really Kenji: a decorated war veteran. But as the bio points out, Okada was drawn to a No-No Boy acquaintance in the camp were both were interned. Okada's brilliance is his ability to understand perfectly the mind of someone who made the opposite choice from himself. His brilliance is his ability to inhabit every mind in his panoramic view of a seething community. Most people you will meet in college and after will never have heard of this novel: but some will. Count those folks as being pretty darn cool.

Anyhow. The book is over. Bull beats Freddie: Ichiro beats Bull: Freddie is "just about cut..in two" (249). Ken is dead. Mrs. Yamada dies a suicide. The community—perhaps the psyche of America itself, circa 1947-1957—is being destroyed from within. Yet...Ichiro feels a "glimmer of hope" (250).

1. So how does Okada conclude this novel? Is it a hopeful ending—do we believe Ichiro? What makes him feel hope? Is he really seeing reason for hope—or, like Emi and her singing "The Star Spangled Banner", is he convincing himself of something to assuage the hopelessness around him? Quote twice from the last chapter; and write several sentences—not just a few thrown together on your phone. Please, think about this question and answer it thoughtfully.

2. Late addition. In today's Slate.com, an article that dovetails all too comfortably in our discussion. Read it here: and take a minute to tell us what you think about it.

See you guys tomorrow.

Blog #19. "He Was Thinking About The Apostrophe, The Topside Comma, The Period With A Tail On It. It Was The Little Scale On Which Hinged The Fortunes Of The Universe." No-No Boy Through 10.

They'll take a trip up to some resort, thinking this is God's green land of democracy for which I killed a dozen Krauts, and get kicked in the face with the unfortunate mistake about the reservation story because he'd signed the letter Ohara and the guy at the resort thought it was good old Irish O'Hara. Tough to have a name like Ohara and feel that maybe when they made up the batch of orders upstairs one of the Lord's workers neglected the apostrophe and do the guy turns up in the U.S.A. a Jap instead of an Irishman. That's beside the point, however. When they find out thet're still Japs, they'll be too busy to be mean to us. (227)

This is Gary who echoes what Ken said back in Chapter 7. The heroes—the men who went to war like Kenji—"'probably make it tough on you [No-No Boys] probably do so out of the misbegotten idea that maybe you're to blame because the good that they thought they were doing by getting killed and shot up doesn't amount to a hill of beans. They just need a little time to get cut down to their own size. Then they'll be the same as you, as bunch of Japs'" (163). So says Ken the war vet, the winner of a Silver Star, the third highest medal a soldier can win. And so says the war resister Gary who is targeted by war vets like Ken ("'Go for broke, you know. You've heard it'" [227]). When the vets can't get at Gary, they, as we know from the reading, target his black friend Birdie, and almost kill him. At the end of the day, the war hero and draft dodger both agree, everyone—the war heroes and the draft dodgers alike—end up being all they are allowed to be in America. Japs.

Think about what we started talking about in class today. Ken dreams of an America where race doesn't matter, an afterlife, a heaven, where there aren't any "Japs or Chinks or Jews or Poles or Niggers or Frenchies, but only people" (165). And if that can't even be attained in heaven, he'd settle for nothingness. We get further with this in second period than fifth, but the question can still be posed. I asked it on a previous entry, but I don't think the section made sense to many until we read it in class today.

1. What does Ken propose as a remedy to the racism that he cannot escape? What is his rationale? And do you agree or disagree with it? Don't think about whether it could ever happen or not—imagine it was possible.

2. In heaven, Ken hopes there is no Jackson Street: no segregation, where, as Gary says later, "God's green land of democracy" exists.  Can there be an American Dream in a country that is segregated by ethnicity, race, or even class? Ichiro says that many ethnic Americans have their own communities (think Buford Highway; think South Dekalb), but Ken says "that doesn't make it right" (164). What do you think?

3. We approach the end of the novel: and Ichiro is finally moving. What's a way in the last couple chapters that we finally see him begin to act in a positive, forward thinking way? Try to not repeat what others have said before you.

Finally. Leave it to Stephen Colbert to lift our—or maybe just my—spirit in the wake of the bombing in Boston, Click on this link and take a look if you like. It takes a lot to uplift me, and this did it.

Blog #18. "'One n A Million.' 'Less Than That. If A Lot More People Were Like Him, There Wouldn't Have Been An Evacuation." No-No Boy Through Chapter 7.

What it amounted to was that there was a Mr. Carrack in Portland, which did not necessarily mean that there were others like him. (169)

"Have a drink for me. Drink to wherever it is I'm headed, and don't let there be any Japs or Chinks or Jews or Poles or Niggers or Frenchies, but only people." (165)

"He didn't really mean it." she replied. "He only meant that things ought to be that way but I think he knew he was only dreaming."
"He did. It's probably what makes him so unhappy and kind of brooding underneath."
"Is he really going to die?" She looked at him pleadingly, as if beseeching him to say it was not true.
All he could do was nod his head. (170)

On  Friday several of you mentioned in both classes how the book has a static feel: it keeps saying the same thing over and over. I get that; I feel you. But I'd have you consider how Okada is possibly—probably? definitely?—playing with a single theme as seen through the eyes of people so traumatized that to see the forest for the trees is nearly impossible. I would propose that the novel, messy and repetitious as it is, is asking (as we said in second period Friday), "Is there really an American Dream?" That's it. Of course with that inquiry comes a host of associated questions. "If there is an AD, what exactly it is? And is it available for everyone? And if it is, why did it fail these immigrants and their American children? And if it isn't available for everyone, can it possibly exist? Can a dream that is called American be a real dream if it is available for only some Americans?"

So:

1. What do you think of my hypothesis? Do you agree? Disagree? Why or why not? What in the novel helps support your response?

2. Ken, for me, at least, is the tragic figure of the novel. When several of you said on Friday the book was depressing because Ichiro is such a depressing (and depressed) character, I agreed. But what I want to add is that the true bleakness of the novel is represented by Kenji. What do you think of that statement? Agree or disagree.

3. Kenji has a take on how to solve the problem of America—or at least the problem the novel presents. "'Go someplace where there isn't another Jap within a thousand miles. Marry a white girl or a Negro or an Italian or even a Chinese. Anything but a Japanese. After a few generations of that, you've got the thing beat...'" "'It's a fine dream, but you're not the first,'" Ichiro replies. Like so often in the novel, it's a position left uncommented on by Okada. Emi says Ken really didn't mean it; Ichiro thinks he did. What do you think of his solution to the get "the thing beat"?

That's enough for now. See you all tomorrow.

Blog #17. "And There Was No Answer Because There Was No Pattern And All He Could Feel Was That The World Was Full Of Hatred." No-No Boy Though Chapter 6. rld Was Full Of Hate

"If you're not white, you're not wanted."
—Jenny Chagnon.

As with Drama City, this novel, to me, at least, is so dense and rich and complicated and confusing that I feel like we've only scratched its surface. I want another month to study this book. As Sam said Wednesday, it really is a psychological novel: Jake supported this by noting, correctly, that narrative-wise, very little has happened in the book: what, are we a week into Ichiro's return to Seattle? He's been to school; he's been to the Club Oriental; he's been beaten by his brother; he finds some degree of solace with Emi; and then we switch to Ken's world, and we get a close look at his family over dinner, his trip back to the Club Oriental, and then his and Ichiro's trip to Portland and another operation on his leg. Not much. Yet we are getting, thematically, a look into what America means to a specific group of immigrants and their children and their community; we are getting to see what racism can do to a ethnic minority; we are seeing the American Dream through the eyes of those who have had it torn away from them...and perhaps returned.

I'll shut up now. Jenny's quote above comes from Wednesday as we talked about race and American identity in the novel. So:

1. Do you agree with her statement as relating to the book? Why or why not? And if it is true, in your opinion, can the same be said for today? Why or why not?

2. We get a glimpse of a happy family in the Kannos, in that great dinner scene. It's so clearly—to me, at least—a scene from a Norman Rockwell painting. The Kannos are the American Dream, right down to the baseball on the television. They are the opposite of the Yamadas—this is an American success story. Or is it? Say why you answer what you do.

3. A scene or moment from Chapters 5 or 6 that particularly struck you—and how so?

Tomorrow we'll all be tired, some sunburned, but we'll do our best to soldier on. See you then.

Blog #16. "We've Both Got Big Problems, Bigger Than Most People. That Ought To Mean Something." No-No Boy Through Chapter 3.

So says Ken Kanno, an old friend of Ichiro's that Ichiro runs into on his way out of the University. Kenji is Ichiro's double in the novel: the same age; just as aimless; and questioning his actions constantly. He also is a war hero, one who "had every right to laugh and love and hope" (63). And he is dying as his amputated leg rots away what's left of its stump. "Am I a hero?" he asks Ichiro (60). And he then asks Ichiro if he would trade fifty years of life for two years of being a war hero. And Ichiro says he would.

One of the hardest parts of this book is figuring exactly what position John Okada takes on what he is presenting. Are we supposed to agree with Ken that he is not a hero? Are we supposed to agree with Ichiro that he doesn't deserve to be accepted by America, a country he feels he has betrayed? Did Bob Kumasaka really die bravely, pinged by a random sniper? Are "homes and cars and money" (34) lost really worth the price of citizenship? What Okada does do clearly (and brilliantly in my opinion) is paint a picture of a community in agony; and if the streets Ichiro walks in Seattle "are part of the city which is part of the state and the country and the nation that is America" (34), then Okada is portraying in some great sense a country in agony.

1. What scene or moment in Chapter 3 struck you particularly? And why? Quote in your response.

2. What I wanted to ask today, for it is the question the novel forces us to ask. What would you have done in Ichiro's place when he faces the judge in Chapter 1? Would you have refused to fight as Ichiro and the others did? Or would you have done what Bob and a thousand others did, including Ken, and gone to war? And why?


3. A text-oriented question: Ichiro goes to visit his old Engineering professor, Baxter Brown, and what follows is an uncomfortable reunion. At the end of it, Ichiro thinks, "That wasn't the way I wanted it to happen. What happened? He was nice enough. Shook hands, talked, smiled. Still, it was all wrong...Was it him or was it me? Him or me? He or I? Brown or Itchy? It wasn't Brown, of course...No, Brown is still Brown. It is I who reduces conversation to the inconsequential" (57). Is Ichiro—Itchy—correct here? Why or why not?


There might be a short quiz in class tomorrow, so be sure to do your reading. See you all then.

Blog #15. "I Am Not Your Son And I Am Not Japanese And I Am Not American." No-No Boy Through 25.

There was a time when I was your son. There was a time that I no longer remember when you used to smile a mother's smile and tell me stories about gallant and fierce warriors who protected their lords with blades of shining steel and about the old woman who found a peach in the stream and too took it home and, when her husband split it in half, a husky little boy tumbled out to fill their hearts with boundless joy. I was that boy in the peach and you were the old woman and we were Japanese...(15)

Well, I was that boy too. Momotaro is a classic Japanese folk tale, a book version of which my mother gave me when I was in first grade. In fact, for Halloween at my elementary school that year I came dressed up as the famous peach boy. You can bet there was nobody else in Winthrop, Massachusetts, 1964, wearing that costume. I would have preferred having had a Batman or Superman costume and not some weird foreign costume with miniature samurai swords stick in a sash around my waist.

No-No Boy is many things: a historical novel about an event and time that is rarely written about; an immigrant story; a story about what it means to be American. The book, originally published in 1957, disappeared quickly, rejected by the exact audience one would think would have devoured it—Japanese Americans. It was rediscovered in the 1970s by a group of young Asian American writers and has not been out of print since. It is a classic of post war American literature. As playwright Frank Chin writes in the afterward of the novel: "Back in 1957 John said things Asian Americans are afraid to think, much less say today [1976]. Things that every yellow feels. I've known all my life that I am not Chinese and I am not white American. I was brought up to believe there was nothing else for me to be but a Chinese foreigner or a fake white American...The [1920's] produced a generation of Asian Americans who didn't know who they were. We still don't. John Okada shows the 'identity crisis' to be both totally real and absolutely fake in a book that is still too strong for many yellows to read." I don't know if Asian Americans feel this way today, 37 years later: maybe we'll talk about this. I do know I did—my generation, the children of Ichiro's generation, many of whom only learned of that time in American history from school. Much as you learned of it.

Enough of me. Some questions for you:

1. Reactions to the novel so far?

2. What moment or scene especially jumped out at you—and why? Quote in your reponse.

 3. Finish this statement: Ichiro Yamada is ____________. And then explain your statement.

Finally: go this site. It has good pictures of what we will talk about in the novel, and shows where the film we watched clips from today—Come See The Paradise (1990)—got many of its images. In particular, the banner in the window of the business that reads I AM AN AMERICAN, and the picture of the little girls waiting to get on the buses, the white tags pinned to them.

Hang in there guys: 50 more minutes of me, and then you have a week off.

Blog #14. "Show Yourself, Thought Nigel. I Am Gonna Murder The Fuck Out Of You Tonight." Drama City to The End.

"Things happened to that dog on this cruel earth to make it the way it was. Wasn't his fault, but still. It's not like God is gonna step in now, point his finger down from heaven, and touch that animal, make it so it can be around people and other animals the right way" (230).

"Maybe. But I'm still gonna avenge my friend. Rico Miller? Shit, motherfuckers like him, they're in their element behind those walls. I ain't gonna let him have that gift. Boy needs to be put down like an animal...I'm not goin' back to where I been. I'm gonna be at work tomorrow and the day after that. But I'm still gonna do this thing tonight."
"It don't work this way."
"We'll see."
"You been out of it so long, you forgot how it goes. You go in, you got to go in fierce. Forget they're human. Forget that you're human too."
"I know it. Remember, I've done this before."
""But you cleaned your slate. Now, what, you gonna go and throw away your soul again?"
"What about yours?"
"Mine's been lost forever..." (257-258)

"There go my name, Mama," he said, pointing happily at the tree. (266)

He walked down to the steps where Melvin Lee lay unconscious in the grass. He shot Lee twice in the chest, holstered the Colt, and walked on.

Nigel could see this boy was not  much older than Michael Butler. Or Rico Miller, the boy he'd just killed. (274)

A couple of teenage boys, school age but not in school, walked across the field and chuckled at him, standing there wearing a uniform a uniform and holding a bag of shit as they passed.  Go ahead and laugh, thought Lorenzo. I don't care. (279)

Deacon's troops were still out there, working the corners. And if you were to go away, there would always be other young men to replace the Marcus Griffins, Lawrence Grahams, Nigel Johnsons, and Deacon Taylors. Lorenzo understood why boys went down to the corners; he had been one of them and he knew. Still, the knowledge didn't lessen the bitterness he felt.  (281)

Lorenzo said a prayer for all the people who looked after him and were looking after him still: Mark Christianson and Irena Tovar, his grandmother, and Miss Lopez. 
"...I'm dating a man, a police officer. I don't know where it's going, but it's good today. And that's what I'm focusing on, today."
Lorenzo said a special prayer for the soul of Nigel.
"...so thank you for letting me share," said Rachel Lopez. (287)

So everything comes together, almost all by happenstance, mistake, and misunderstanding. If DeEric hadn't embarrassed Melvin Lee in front of Rico...If Rachel hadn't come to Lee's apartment when Rico was hiding out there (or had come an hour or two earlier when Lee was there)...If Lorenzo hadn't seen Rico's car at the dogfight...If Lorenzo hadn't spent two more minutes to find out what that scream was about in the hospital...If Nigel hadn't lowered his gun in front of Griff...

Then again: if the schools worked...if the police didn't take their time getting to dogfights or make cursory drives through drug areas like Columbia Heights where "sales of one kind or another had been ongoing for over thirty years" (147)...if "a federal law enacted in 1996 [that] imposed a lifetime ban on female offenders from receiving family benefits and food stamps" (88) didn't exist...if the drug organizations didn't follow the model of corporate America, where workers—like Rico and Lee—are disposable, despite all the talk of their value to the company...if people were just smarter and stronger and kinder...then Michael and DeEric and Rico and Melvin and Nigel would all be alive at the end of the book.

I apologize: I wish I had done a better job of elucidating the depth of this book—a depth some of you I know do not think exists in it. I do think it is there, though, even in spite of my fumbling the presentation of it. In my mind, the book is a heartbreaking depiction of American at the precipice. It's the Youngers' Chicago forty six later; it's Gatsy pushed to its logical end, where bootlegging has become drug dealing, and Gatsby's huge, ugly car (as Elizabeth pointed out in class) has become the ubiquitous Escalade (starting, today, at $63,000 and topping out at eighty two eight). An immigrant couple's lifetime of honest work becomes the rationale for a perverted vision of the American Dream where imprisonment and/or death replaces the son who becomes an Army general and the daughter who becomes a chemist at the National Institute of Health.

So:

1. Your reaction to the end of the book? Is it a happy ending? A sad ending? Exactly what kind of ending was it for you—and how so?

2. You may have addressed this above, but it's still a major question for our understanding of what the book is about. Your reaction to Rico's— and Melvin Lee's—death? Do you feel satisfied by their deaths? Are we supposed to agree with Lorenzo that he "needs to be put down like an animal"?

3. We talked a lot about Rachel earlier in our reading, but we haven't talked very specifically about Lorenzo. At the end of the book, what do you think of him? He is a man who has done much violence in his life—in many ways, he is a mirror of Rico—and in the book, he does violence too (arguably unnecessary violence): he is, in many ways, not a good man. Is he a good man at the end of the book?

4. Last question: is Nigel a good man at the end of the book? Yes? No? Why—in a couple of sentences.

It's just taken me over an hour to write this entry. I'm not expecting an hour of writing from you, but nor do I expect five minutes on this either. Give yourself twenty minutes or so to respond.  See you all tomorrow.

Blog #13."She Bragged To Her Friends At Church About Her Son The Businessman." Drama City through 22.

"...'my entrepeneur,' who had the NJ Enterprises shop up on Georgia, and they had gone along with the charade, which she knew to be a lie herself. She rarely spoke of it with Nigel and never with anyone else" (234).

"While she was preparing his food in the kitchen, she'd run the cash through the electronic counting machine she kept back there in one of the cabinets. She liked to do that soon as he made the delivery" (234).

"[There is] a hollowness at the core of capitalism. We knew there was some shit in the blood of society in that sense."
 —David Simon.

The last quote comes from an interview David Simon and George Pelecanos made in the midst of Pelecanos's work on Simon's series The Wire. Both certainly see something having gone wrong in America, Simon creating a microcosm of this ill in his hometown of Baltimore while Pelecanos makes his hometown of Washington D.C. his microcosm.According to the Washington Post, in 2005, the year the novel is published, "Across the [D.C.] region, there were 466 homicides in 2005, compared with 420 in 2004—a rise of about 11 percent. About half of those slayings have been solved." Earlier in the book, Lorenzo finds out about Michael Butler and DeEric Green's murder when he "automatically went to Metro's page 2, where they had the Crime and Justice feature, which many called the Roundup and some cynical types still called the Violent Negro Deaths" (159).What the novel dramatizes is one reason for this epidemic of killing. And it makes a case for why it might never possibly abate (according to the Post, in 2012, "The city has an annual murder rate of 2.38 murders per 10,000 citizens, which is much higher than the nation average").

So write a couple hundred words on the following questions:

1.  Who's the villain in the novel? Or maybe more specifically, what does Pelecanos argue has gone wrong here in this microcosm of America, 2005? Think about this before you respond—and do not defer to the simple and simplistic "society." Quote from this weekend's reading in your response.

2. In the several times I've read the novel, I've always found Nigel Johnson to be the most compelling character in the book. Who do you find to be the most compelling character in the novel—and why?

Blog #12. "'You Know How This Go. It's All In The Game.'" Drama City Through 17.

"You know how this go. It's all in the game." It was something they had said to each other many times in the past. Nigel did not sound like he believed it anymore. (172)

This is Nigel's reaction to the murder of his two "soldiers," DeEric Green and Michael Butler, shown in a scene that rivals the dog fight (and perhaps the sex between Rachel and Aris) in terms of graphic detail. DeEric understands the "game"—or at the very least he accepts the risks it brings. "Green like what this life gave him. He wasn't ashamed of one thing" (102). Michael is another story: "Green wondered why Butler wanted to be in the life at all." Lorenzo knows why Nigel keeps this boy around, a boy who had never handled a gun and didn't "take pleasure in being hard," who "didn't talk about football, fucking up dudes, killing bitches in the bed, or none of that" (100). Lorenzo knows "Nigel liked to pick the most promising, most intelligent ones out and take them under his wing. It never did work out. None who stayed on came to a good end. This was the one definite of the game. Still, Nigel kept trying to promote the ones he felt had promise. He was an optimist that way" (112).
Lorenzo, as Aldo called him today after class, is a survivor: he now knows "'but if these kids knew how it has to end...I mean, if you could only tell 'em'" (146). But he can only know this because was lucky enough to survive, unlike poor DeEric and Michael.

That's a lot of lead in, I know, to the questions. So here they are.

1. Your reaction to the murders of DeEric and Michael? And is the book in this glorifying violence?

2. The question I want to start off with tomorrow is what is the book's commentary on the drug culture in the book, specifically the dealers? To get at this, we have to think about what the book says about why these young men fall so easily into it—and, as the book repeats again and again, it is a choice. The obvious reason is money, we get that. But what else? Quote from the book in this answer. And try not to repeat what others say: there are only so many answers to this, but try to add shadings to what others have said before you. And: is the book glorifying the dealers, glorifying the "game"?

3. Last question: what do you think of the Lorenzo we see at the end of the reading? Surprised? Not surprised?

Finally, here's a clip from the first season of The Wire, from an episode written by...George Pelecanos. It could come straight from the book. These are three old friends. 

See you all tomorrow. Remember: your answer needs to be up by 8:30.

Blog #11. "'Who's That Mama?' Said Shay. 'Nobody,' Said Shirelle. 'You Come Along.'" Drama City Through 12.

"I don't want no trouble," said Lorenzo.
"Ain't gonna be none," said the man.
"I'm her father."
"I know who you are."
Lorenzo shifted his feet. "I just want to talk with her."
"That's not gonna happen," said the man. "You already made your choice. You care about Shay, you got to let her be." (118)

So Butler had made his choices. Same way Green had made his, early on. (101)

"Melvin was scared. I could tell by lookin' at him 'cause I been knowin' him a long time. He used to run with my brother James, back when." Green blinked away the image of his brother, playing basketball down by the courts, imitating MJ with his tongue out the side of his mouth, laughing about it, having fun. "Melvin don't belong out here no more."
"You punked him," said Butler with admiration.
"Wasn't me," said Green, a touch of regret in his voice. "He got his ass broke in the cut." (125)

Many offenders she had known, those who were clearly not going to make it, had spoken almost wistfully about going back to prison, In a couple of cases, she had told these offenders to violate themselves, go back to jail, get fat and recharged, and then come out and try it again. Many, of course, never did come out. (89)

"Mommy, why you sad?' said the daughter.
"Just play your game, girl," said Nardine with an angry slashing motion of her hand. (88)

At this point you may be asking when does the conflict of the novel begin—how will all these characters and stories we're getting come together? What does Rico's story have to with Lorenzo? Who cares about Nardine or Deanna or Nixon Velsaco or Rafael Salamanca, any of Rachel's offenders who will never show up in the book again? I'd argue that Pelecanos wants us to know this world intimately so when we judge, as we cannot help but do, we do so with some depth and understanding of the complexities of this world and the complexities of the people who inhabit it. Nixon and Rafael work side by side, but one is probably going back to prison—"Salamanca...had recently confessed to Rachel that he craved drugs as a means of escape from the harsh reality of what his life had become" (96). Nixon will probably make it, not because "jail time, remorse, or conscience had reformed him," but because he "was too old to survive the new game" (95). Nardine is probably going back to prison (where she spent the prior 6 years), leaving her two kids with her grandmother, because life is too hard. Does this make her a horrible parent? A useless human being? Do we poo poo Nixon's success, knowing that if he were younger, he might have gone back to the game? DeEric Green is not the sharpest knife in the drawer—where should he put that television screen?—and he isn't ashamed of the his life in "the game," but he genuinely cares for his younger charge, Michael Butler. As we know Melvin Lee feels for Rico Miller. The book may feel like a beach read, but it strives for an acknowledgement of the ambiguity in this world that most pop books won't go for.

So:

1. What scene or moment in chapters 9-12 jumped out at you and why?

2. Look at one of the quotes I've given at the top of the entry. Write about its significance in the book—what does it open us up to, or show, that's important to our understanding of the character(s) and/or the world we're in? Please don't repeat what you wrote about in question 1. And don't simply repeat what someone else has said.

Tomorrow will be a reading day after you turn in your paper. We'll try to start pulling together all the strands of this book on Tuesday. It's a rich stew: part history, part sociology, part page-turner, part tragedy, and certainly a questioning of the subject of our study, The American Dream.

Blog #10. "Fuck That Animal. Let It Suffer Some. Cur Deserves To Suffer For Showing No Heart." Drama City Through 8.

So says Melvin Lee when the dog he bet on, Mamba, loses its fight to Lucy. "Mamba, confused and in agony, rubbed his snout on the bloody carpet, trying to do something about its useless, dangling eye" (67). We never find out what happens to the animal, but there's a good chance he will end up like the dogs Mark Christiansen found back in the nineties "when the fight-dog craze was at its peak...Dogs, especially those who had lost fights, were disposable, like a shirt friends ridiculed because it had gone out of style. Mark found dogs shot in alleys, lying curbside with broken necks, thrown off roofs, and disposed of in Dumpsters with the trash" (68-69). Two years after Drama City was published, America got a glimpse into the world we see here when then Falcons (now Eagles) quarterback Michael Vick was convicted of running a dog fighting ring. He served 21 months in federal prison. Some thought he got off too easy; some thought he shouldn't have been punished at all. As I remember someone writing in the wake of his conviction in an email to the AJC, they were only dogs, what was the big deal? Sounds not that far from Lee's reaction.

So:

1. What is your response to the dog fight scene? Go ahead and quote in your response of a hundred words or so. Just don't use the quotes I've used above.

2. We talked today about Lorenzo and Rachel's (and Shirley and Irena's) efforts to not judge the people who do the sometimes questionable, sometimes awful, deeds that they have to deal with. Rachel can make the distinction between the man who had to have done bad in his younger days from the older man who is doing good. Lorenzo can distinguish between ignorance and "a crime of deliberate abuse" (16). Can you not judge what happens at the dog fight? Should we judge what happens? And if we should, what should/would we say about it? Write about a hundred words.

As I said in class today, Pelecanos amps up the moral quandaries facing his characters (and the reader as well) with every new chapter. I think he wants us to struggle with forgiveness, tolerance, and possibility of redemption along with Rachel and Lorenzo. 

I apologize for this being late. If you happen to finish this by the end of break, that would be acceptable.

Blog #9. "Does She Love People In Her Heart?" Drama City, Ch. 1-3.

Drama City is the most contemporary work we're reading this year, published in 2005. George Pelecanos has since published five more novels (he has written 17 in all) as well as having written for the HBO series The Wire, Treme, and The Pacific. Pelecanos is a much respected crime novelist; and while Drama City certainly fits the description of a crime novel, it is, much like The Wire (for which he also served as a producer) something more and greater. It is a sociological study of urban America, specifically of Washington D.C., and it asks, as did The Wire, what happened to the American city? In this novel, we will never come near the Washington most of us know. The world of Lorenzo Brown and Nigel Johnson, of Rayne and Lakeisha, of Rachel Lopez and Sarge and Shirley, is only a few miles away from the Smithsonian and The White House, but as we read on, we realize those destinations may as well be in another country for our characters. But their world is absolutely real: Pelecanos makes sure we know exactly where we are in the D.C. of these characters. Google Map Park View Elementary School, Washington: it is exactly where Pelecanos says it is, a block from where Lorenzo sees Nigel's mother's house. Pelecanos is not making this world up.

So write a couple hundred words answering the following questions:

1. What's your reaction to the first three chapters of the novel?

2. What moment or scene particularly jumped out at you—and why? Go ahead and quote from the book here.

3. In a word: what is the depiction of the city so far in the novel? And why? Quote from the book here.

Finally: no doubt Pelecanos's research in writing for The Wire influenced this novel. Take a look below at a scene from the final season of the series. It's an N.A. (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting and some of the dialogue comes straight from the novel.

Hope everyone had a restful break. See you all tomorrow.

Blog #7. "The Bell Jar Hung, Suspended, a Few Feet Above My Head." The Bell Jar Through 19.

First: sorry I missed you guys today. I hope to be back tomorrow. I'll certainly be reading your responses here with interest.

A couple of things first. This is Sylvia Plath reading a poem called "The Applicant": it gives you an idea of what she pursued in her poetry, and in this particular poem, it crosses into our discussion of the novel. Second are responses to Plath, and particularly in many cases The Bell Jar, by some contemporary writers. I'm particularly struck by what Lena Dunham, creator, writer, director, and star of HBO's "Girls" says. Just take out "Plath" and replace it with "Esther" and I think it applies to the novel we're reading.

I wonder if Plath would have been saved had she been born in a different time: in a time when psycho-pharmacologists are no more shameful to visit than hairdressers and women write celebrated personal essays about being bad mothers and cutters and are reclaiming the word slut. Would she have been a riot grrrl, embracing an angry feminist aesthetic? Addicted to Xanax? A blogger for Slate? Would she, like me, have found a cosy coffeehouse environment on the internet, a way to connect with people who understood her aesthetic and validated her experience? Would she have been less dependent on the approval of viewers and critics and more aware of the positive effect her book was having on splintered psyches and girls with short bangs everywhere? Or would that kind of connectedness and access to unmitigated and misspelled negativity have driven her even madder?

We're one chapter away from the novel's conclusion—perhaps some of you have read it already. Where Chapter 19 ends is awful: Joan's suicide, Joan whom Esther thinks had "thoughts [that] were nor my thoughts, nor [had] feelings that were my feelings, but we were close enough so that her thoughts and feelings seems a wry black image of my own" (219). Joan seems to me acts as a mirror of Esther. She "continued to pop in at every crisis of my life to remind me of what I had been, and what I had been through, and carry on her own separate but similar crisis of my own." Is Joan a hint of what Esther faces in the future? Does Joan, a lesbian, present an alternative to the heterosexual world that Esther thinks is "normal," but who can't imagine such a radical way of behaving? "What does a woman see in a woman that she can't see in a man?" Which begs the question of what exactly does Esther see in men? Certainly not "tenderness," which is Doctor Nolan's answer to Esther's question.

So:

1. What particularly jumped out at you in the reading?  Why?

2. "I was my own woman," Esther thinks after she has bought a diaphragm. "I am climbing to freedom, freedom from fear, freedom from marrying the wrong person, like Buddy Willard, just because of sex, freedom from the Florence Crittendon Homes where all the poor girls go who should have been fitted out like me..." In this part of the reading, has contraception given Esther "freedom"? Is she really her own woman?

3. Why do you think Joan killed herself? I'm not convinced I even know. But give it a shot.

4. As with the blog itself—just look at how much I wrote above—I sometimes, often times perhaps, say too much. So tell me: if you could lead the discussion tomorrow (or Monday, in case I don't make it back tomorrow), what would you want to talk about?

Hope you all are well, and I hope to see you tomorrow.

Blog #6. "The Silence Drew Off, Baring the Pebbles and Shells and All the Tatty Wreckage Of My LIfe." The Bell Jar 11-13.

"The stones in the modern part [of the graveyard] were crude and cheap, and here and there a grave was rimmed with marble, like an oblong bathtub full of dirt" (167).

"I remember the tubs, too: the antique griffin-legged tubs, and the modern coffin-shaped tubs..." (20).

Esther's preoccupation, obsession, with death, followed by suicide, has come to its logical end as she buries herself in a little cobweb strewn hole in the cellar and digests, one after another, fifty of what I assume to be sleeping pills. The horrifying aspect of this moment for me has always been its matter-of-factness: the way this extremely bright young person decides to negate herself with such thoughtfulness, with such single-mindedness, with such clear-headed planning. "I am going for a long walk" (167). Followed by her laughter as she realizes she had "forgotten the most important thing" (168), that is, the pills themselves.

A few questions as Esther moves into the world of Walton—that is, Claymoore, that is, McLean Hospital, where Susanna Kaysen spent 18 months.

1. Your reaction to these three chapters, as Esther's illness erupts fully?  What moment or scene especially struck you—and why?

2. Esther at this point knows her "mind has gone" (159). Does it strike any one of you as odd or strange that there is so little intervention from the outside world into Esther's illness? Perhaps it isn't strange at all. But something tells me that, autobiographical or not, Plath's greater commentary here, as we know, is the way the world sees Esther—or doesn't see her. Does the way Esther goes relatively untreated—aside from the shock treatment and meetings with Dr Gordon that we will talk about—fit into this commentary, this theme?

Enjoy your day off. We'll see you tomorrow.

Blog #5. "I Plummeted Down Past The Zigzaggers, The Students, The Experts, Through Year After Year of Doubleness and Smiles and Compromises, Into My Own Past." The Bell Jar Through 8.

We talked in class today about Esther's obsession with death and thinly veiled thoughts of suicide—the window that wouldn't open in her hotel that infuriated her. Now we discover before this, the Christmas before, she went down a ski hill in "a flight I knew I couldn't stop by skill or any belated access of will," preceded by "the thought I might kill myself [forming] in my mind cooly as a tree or a flower" (97). So Esther has indeed made an effort, clumsy as it may seem, to fullfill the "negation" of her self that she so often mentions.

1. When I said in both classes that Esther's ability to get an A in a science class that made her physically ill, that left her "panic struck" (35), was a terrifying moment in the book, was a terrifying moment for Esther, I wasn't kidding. Those of you taking Physics, or some other similarly extremely difficult class, imagine the amount of work you do, or would have to do, in order to get an A in that class: now imagine doing all that work when you are as "scared and depressed" (36) by it as Esther is: and imagine, finally, that your teacher holds you up as a model of success and accomplishment—thinks you're having the time of your life doing it? What would that be like? Really: what would that be like? Maybe it wouldn't be as awful as I'm making it out to be—but maybe it would. What do you think?

2. Why would Esther consider suicide? We know she's depressed—perhaps even schizophrenic (her illness is never defined in the book, but some have said that her observations like the ones we talked about today—the distance she feels from herself, the way the ordinary [looking in the mirror at herself] take on extraordinary qualities—speak to schizophrenia): so her illness may be driving her to these extreme actions. Yet could you see anything in what her life is like that would make her consider, in the midst of her illness, to throw herself down a ski slope knowing full well that she could not stop herself? Think about what we see of her life in Chapters 6, 7 and 8. Go ahead and quote once in your response.

Write a couple hundred words.  We'll see you all tomorrow. Maybe we'll talk about turkey necks and turkey gizzards.

Blog #4. "I Hate Handing Money To People For Doing What I Could Easily Do Myself." Bell Jar Through Chapter 5.

This year happens to mark the fiftieth anniversary of both the publication of The Bell Jar and Sylvia Plath's death. If you read the introduction, you would find out that the novel was originally published under a pseudonym Victoria Lucas and available only in the United Kingdom; it was not published in America until 1971. It's always been hard for many to read the novel and not think of Plath herself—Anna said on Friday that the book is depressing because she knows what happens at the end, that is Plath kills herself (though this may not be the fate of Esther, the very autobiographical protagonist of the novel).  Plath remains a provocative and important American writer, perhaps more for her poetry than this, her one novel; at the same time both her poems and The Bell Jar are concerned with a very personal questioning of where does a women fit into a 1950s America. Reviewed in today's New York Times are two new biographies of Plath. And Gwyneth Paltrow played her in a 2003 film. So this fifty year old book you're reading still has a lot of life left in it.

So now that we've been primed by Girl, Interrupted, we're ready to jump neck deep into this intensely personal narrative of Esther Greenwood, star student at an unnamed women's college (it's Smith College in  Northampton, Massachusetts), living a life of envy with her summer internship in NYC at Ladies Day magazine (really Mademoiselle magazine), and courted by a gorgeous Yale graduate in medical school. Esther has it all (much like Susanna Kaysen did)...or does she?

1. Your reaction to the book now that you are five chapters in? What moment or scene in either chapter 4 or 5 really stuck out to you? Why? Quote from that moment or scene.

2. Something is not right with Esther. Tellingly, no one around her seems to notice. Yet we do, because she's recounting what went wrong for her that year in her life. How do you know something is not right with her? Pick one detail that clues you in. And please, try not to repeat what others have said before you. If you see something similar, add to what was said before you.

3. And last: just as Girl, Interrupted gave us a view of being a young women in the last days of the 1960s, The Bell Jar drops us right into the midst of the 50s and what it means to a young woman—an aspiring, intelligent, educated woman—in this time. Looking at chapters 3 to 5, what one moment jumped out at you as being a telling detail of what a young women is supposed to be in this world and time? And what's your reaction to this detail?

See you all tomorrow.

Blog #3. "How You Hurt Yourself On the Outside To Kill the Thing on The Inside." Girl, Interrupted.

VALERIE. What would you have said to her?
SUSANNA. That I was sorry. That I'll never know what it was like to be here. But I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in when you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to kill the thing on the inside.

One of the things I like about this movie is its unwillingness to create an easy villain in it. Erin mentioned how this reminded her of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, which makes absolute sense: mental institution, crazy but endearing patients, a protagonist we root for. But unlike that classic film and book, there is no Nurse Ratchet, no Big Combine that acts as the antagonist to the hero. Valerie is not the enemy. Doctor Wick is not the enemy. Nor is Melvin, who is visibly shaken by Daisy's death and who allows Susanna to keep Ruby the cat. Claymoor is not an evil institution. And the friends Susanna makes in the hospital are not, as a whole, cute and cuddly. Not when we see the large woman carried off in a straight-jacket toward the end. Not when Polly is carried off, screaming about how ugly she is. Not when Daisy hangs herself. Not when Lisa almost plunges a hypodermic needle into her arm to kill herself. And though at the end Susanna is "cured," the world itself isn't: "I've wasted a year of my life. And maybe everyone out there is a liar. And maybe the whole world is stupid and ignorant. But I would rather be fucking in it than down here with you." And as she says as she drives away from her "home" and "family" at the end:

Final diagnosis, recovered borderline. What that means I still don't know. Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is. Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you and me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. They were not perfect, but they were my friends. And by the 70's most of them were out living lives Some I've seen, some never again. But there isn't a day my heart doesn't find them.

Who got out and lived lives we never know.

So:

1. Your reaction to the movie? Like? Dislike? And what scene from today's viewing stuck with you particularly?

2. Someone in another class asks you what this movie was "about"? What would you say? Don't just write a sentence or two, but give a solid, complete answer.

3. This is clearly and deliberately a story about young women. Why is that? And could this be a story about young men—could one simply replace these young women with young men? Why or why not?

That's more than enough for now. See you all tomorrow and we'll talk about this.

Blog #2. "Razors Pain You." Girl, Interrupted and The Bell Jar.

A quick scene from the film.

The poem Lisa is reciting is one by Dorothy Parker:

Razors pain you. Rivers are damp.
Acid stains you. Drugs never cramp.
Guns aren't lawful. Nooses give.
Gas smells awful. You might as well live.

Lisa, of course, has a huge desire to live—to live without the constrictions of society. Susanna is drawn to this bigger-than-life young woman; but at the same time, she's debating one of the main questions of the film: how to live in this world?

The title of the film is never really addressed in it: it comes from a famous painting by the Dutch painter Vermeer called "Girl Interrupted at Her Music".  This is it. There is a scene in the screenplay where Lisa and Susanna are killing time at a museum after they have escaped Claymoor. Susanna is drawn to the painting and overhears a group of high school students and their teacher talking about the painting.

ART TEACHER. What do you think, Maureen?
MAUREEN. I think her teacher's pissed. He's trying to get her attention, but she's looking out. As if—I don't know—
ART TEACHER. What?
MAUREEN. ...as if she's trying to get out of the painting.

Hmmm...gee, I wonder who else is trying to get out of the painting?

Some questions:

1. A scene or moment from Friday's viewing that stayed with you? And why?

2. Susanna is diagnosed with "borderline personality disorder." "'Social contrariness and a general pessimistic attitude are often observed,'" Susanna says in the movie. "That's me, all right." To which Lisa says, "That's everybody." Now: the film has been criticized, and for good reason, for its depiction and discussion of mental illness. That said—given what we see, and given that we are not mental health experts, does Susanna strike you as mentally ill? Valerie tells her, "You are a lazy, self-indulgent, little girl, who is making herself crazy." So what do you think?

3. Finally: what has jumped out at you about Esther Greenwood, the protagonist of The Bell Jar? A scene or moment that struck you? And do you see any of Susanna in her?

We'll finish the movie tomorrow and start discussing it.

Blog#1(Spring). "Just Accepted at Radcliffe. What a Conundrum!" Girl, Interrupted.

MRS. GILCREST. My Lord! What beautiful skin! You remember me, don't you? Barbara Gilchrist, Bonnie's mom. Bonnie was in your lit class, wasn't she?
SUSANNA. Yeah. How's she doin'?
MRS. GILCREST. 'Just accepted at Radcliffe. What a conundrum. I'm a Wellesley girl myself, but these days young women should make up their own minds, don't you think?

Just to bring you back to what we watched today, the completion of the scene we ended with:

Girl, Interrupted is based on a memoir by Susanna Kaysen about the eighteen months she spent at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. It is the same psychiatric hospital that Sylvia Plath spent time at in 1953 and that she writes about in The Bell Jar. (The reason we're watching this movie just became a lot clearer, didn't it?)

Not worrying about Plath yet: though several of you have already seen the film (all girls, for some reason), most of you haven't: and Andrew's response at the end of fifth period probably speaks for many of your responses, which was basically, "What the hell?#@>?" It's a disorienting film, for sure. Susanna struggles with her focus and balance; Polly who burned herself; Georgina, "the pathological liar"; Daisy and her chickens; Lisa, chaos on two feet; all raise the question of, indeed, what the hell? How did they get this way? What is the treatment they receive at Claymoor doing for them? Will they get better? Can they get better? And what's all this have to do with The American Dream? Answers are forthcoming.

First: what was your response to the first 40 minutes of the film we watched today? And what scene, moment, or image stuck with you, and why?

Second, for second period, answer the following question: do you recognize the world Susanna exists in? Yes, it's 1968 and it's Boston, but if the film still resonates for an audience, it's because we can, on some level, relate and understand what Susanna's experiencing. Is her world all that different than yours? Where does her world (that is, home and school) intersect with yours?

Second, for fifth period: are you surprised that Susanna is struggling with her emotional and psychological balance? Can you make a case that her imbalance is, on some level, a rational response to the life she's living? If so, how? If not, why not?

So that's two questions, guys. Everyone answer #1, and second period does the first part of #2 and fifth period does the second part of #2.

We'll see you all tomorrow and we'll discover what other fun things are in store for Susanna at Claymoor.