The Activist and Calvino

After finishing the second half of "The Activist" I was still left just as confused and lost as I was in the first part of the book. My questions were not answered what-so-ever, which made me upset. I was left with no closure and overall, it was one of worst books I've read. I was very unsatisfied. However, I did think that Calvino made a good point in his writing about how some people may be too shy to really tell how they feel and reading gives them this chance to speak out. I thought that correlated a lot with "The Activist" and what was going on in the minds of the characters.

The Activist

After reading the first part of "The Activist" I was really confused and had no idea what was going on. However, it kept me intrigued because I wanted to end my confusion. They way it was written was a lot different like the other passages we have read. Throughout the reading, I noticed that Gladman changed the way she used text. I thought it was interesting to see how there are many forms of text one can use. I would like to know the reason behind to why she uses all these different forms. Is it to keep the reader interested? Or is it because she wanted to experiment herself. It made me more interested to see how it will end.

Perec and Matthews

After reading Matthews excerpt, it gave me a much better understanding of the Oulipo and how it really must have been to write an entire book without a certain letter. In the last class I had to do an exercise where I had to write what I did in the morning without using the vowel "e". I couldn't even get past the first sentence without be stuck. It makes it that much harder to believe that Perec did a whole book with this type of structure. Reading the book, I found myself getting more distracted because I wanted to prove him wrong and find an "e". Because of that, I lost track of what I was reading, and I felt like I lost the plot and what the whole basis of the book was about. It made me curious and wanting to know if Perec had an idea that this was going to happen with his readers.

A Void & Lipograms

The reading of "The Void" was not one of my favorites. It was so difficult to comprehend Perec's writing without the use of the letter "e." My first initial thought was, why would one want to do such a task? I'm sure many others have thought this same thing. Maybe it was because he wanted to see himself succeed in such a large and challenging task. Using lipograms in poems is more realistic, because poems are known more for their creative and challenging ways. Taking out the letter "e" made it seems like everything was more wordy. Like Perec had to find ways to go around what he really wanted to say because there was an "e" in the word or sentence. I give him a great deal of credit for doing a task like this.

Surrealism

Because of never watching "Lost" before when I watched the assigned episode, I confused. I didn't know what was real and what was surreal. One could tell that there were similarities with the episode and "The Invention of Morel" The whole show is incorporated with what is real and what is not. That is exactly what science fiction is entitled to do, so both the story and the episode a well job at bringing out the science fiction in the story. It was interesting to see how both the stories were set on an island. It makes it seem that many authors tend to think that an island is a place for one unable to tell what is real or not.

Short Stories 1

Short stories have always been my favorite form of literature. I love how they have a great deal of detail and information in such a short length. Authors of short stories have to invoke the reader right in the beginning, if not then the story fails. By attracting the readers attention right away, they have to use detail and show connections with characters. Walser, Kafka, and Melville do a wonderful job and completely these tasks. All three do a great job and giving their ordinary characters something remarkable happen to them. I liked the connection that they had in that area. It became more appealing to me because then I was able to see how each author wrote differently to show the same situations.

Things Fall Apart 2/28/2010

The first part of "Things Fall Apart" was a much easier read than the past passages we were assigned. It was something I was more used to reading and I was more interested throughout the first part. I really liked how culture was perceived; it showed that they continually change along with traditions. It was interesting to see how Chinua Achebe, showed this. It seemed as though he wanted to show that literature is the same way as cultures. In the first part of the book, once can tell that there are many different cultures and traditions. The main character Okonkwo tries to resist the changing of the traditions because he feels that people may look at his culture differently.