Jean Jacques Rousseau: Inventing a Literary Genre

Image via Wikipedia Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778), musician, vagabond, philosopher, prose stylist, novelist, educator, and acknowledged father of the French Revolution and Romanticism, remains today a colorful character --both derided and revered. In this article I will focus on his Confessions to explore his contribution not only to the genre, but also to writing. While Rousseau was a serious writer, deep as an ocean in his philosophy, yet shallow as a brook in his Confessions. Rousseau moves in Augustine's shadow: Thus begins Rousseau's Confessions: "I am commencing an undertaking, hitherto without precedent, and which will never find an imitator." Only a fool or a genius could dare open a book with a statement that will prove to be wrong in its two assertions. Asserting that the undertaking is not "without precedent" is wrong because Augustine's Confessions is a definite precedent; and furthermore, Rousseau himself cites Augustine's book in his own Confessions. Today, Rousseau's Confessions have a constellation of imitators. To be fair we must say that Augustine's Confessions followed the traditional catholic confessions in which the offender would seek to expiate his sins by means of a voiced acknowledgment of his transgressions. With Rousseau confessions become more of a psychological and fictional narrative, initiating in this sense a 'modern' way of autobiographical confessions. Faced with severe criticism from his enemies, Rousseau decides to write a book that would show him as "a man in all the truth of nature." In the process he assures us that every bit of detail that he tells us nothing but pure fact: "This is what I have done, what I have thought, what I was. I have told the good and the bad with equal frankness. I have neither omitted anything bad, nor interpolated anything good." Yet, Voltaire wrote that Rousseau placed his five sons in orphanages. Who shall we trust? Is Rousseau a hypocrite attempting to cleanse his personal record with a sanitized 'confession?' Rousseau on psychology and language: While Augustine pondered the mansion and many chambers of memory, Rousseau theorized on 'the self,' the problem of identity, and language. In his "Essay on the Origin of Languages" (Essai sur l'origine des langues) he speculates on the possible sources of speech. But it is in the Confessions that he puts into practice those sources of speech: the signs and supplements of the original objects and presences. Rousseau writes: "I would never finish if I were to describe in detail all the follies that the recollection of my dear maman made me commit when I was no longer in her presence. How often I kissed my bed, recalling that she had slept in it, my curtain, and all the furniture in the room, since they belonged to her and her beautiful hand had touched them, even the floor, on which I prostrated myself, thinking that she had walked upon it." As Derrida has made clear, Rousseau is using signs --written words-- to bring about a presence ('maman') that is absent. And though such absence will never materialize, it has the power to move him as if it were the real "thing-in-itself." Therefore, the bed, the curtains, the furniture, the room itself, are all signs that enable him pursue 'the recollection' and thus by means of mental impressions and signifiers create the signified. In his own informal way Rousseau anticipated not only Freudian psychology, but also the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, Structuralism, Deconstruction, the linguistic turn, and other theorists. One has to wonder if the much admired work of many writers of the 19th and 20th centuries would have gotten so far, had not Rousseau laid the foundations? In spite of the fact that many intellectuals have little respect for his personal adventures, lies, and the grotesques acts of a rascal, his work is serious and original.

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Literature as a Transformative Force

Image via Wikipedia While critics, philosophers, writers, and theorists debate what 'literature' is, I will simply assume that it exists and that is has many functions. For this article I am concerning myself with literature not as a science, nor an art, much less a discipline, but as a transformative force in human affairs—the power to change people. To narrow the discussion, I hold that literature must own the power to bring about change. That doesn't mean that it must force people into specific ideologies or set behaviors. Not at all. Neither force nor coercion must enter the equation. When you think about it, change in our lives comes about because we become aware that something needs to be changed. Once we present to our consciousness an 'it' that needs change—we change! And that is the force of literature: it presents themes, topics, events, and situations to a reader's consciousness. Literary authors select the material they choose to present not because that material will entertain the reader for a while, but because such material is a crucial lesson to the characters' lives and indirectly to the reader. And therein rests the value of literature. Not only from the fountain of daily life do readers draw lessons, but also from fiction. While politicians, kings, philosophers, and military leaders influence people directly, literary writers do it indirectly; yet they 'writers—cast even a wider net. How many people read Napoleon's Memoirs today? Yet generations upon generations go on reading Stendhal's The Red and the Black and not the memoirs. What possible lessons, some may ask, have novels such as Ana Karenina, Madame Bovary, and the Scarlet Letter? Why would Tolstoy, Flaubert, and Hawthorne bother to the present readers with the age-old problem of adultery? Tolerance is the answer. By making readers aware of the depths of passion that the human heart harbors, such violence of emotions will linger in our consciousness and see that while some humans are weak in spirit others are strong, yet weak in forgiveness. By immersing ourselves in the range of passions that we find in the novels mentioned, we learn, we learn tolerance, we learn to be compassionate—we change. From Ana Karenina we learn the shock, turmoil, suffering, and disaster those conflicting passions (that engulfs the human heart and mind) can visit upon characters and readers. We learn about the intimacy of a conjugal showdown: "I listen to you and think about him. I love him, I am his mistress, I cannot stay you, I am afraid of you, I hate you ... Do what you like with me." From Emma Bovary we learn of the unquenchable thirst that even an absurd romanticism and sordid affairs cannot placate: "But who was it that made her so unhappy? Where was the extraordinary catastrophe that overwhelmed her?" And Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter we learn of the darkness and light, love and hatred, revenge and redemption that move us in our daily lives. Hester Prynne: "will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone." By presenting the theme of adultery, the authors simply advance it for the reader to digest it. And this is the transformative power of literature. Readers will bring their own experiences to the novel and will present it to their consciousness where it will linger and perhaps make them change for the good.

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Derrida: Writing, Deconstruction, and Logocentrism

Image via Wikipedia Jacques Derrida (1930 - 2007), born in Algiers, is the founder of the philosophical movement Deconstructionism. Deconstruction is a critical method that attempts "to undo" the logic of antitheses. But his work goes beyond 'deconstruction.' Despised and belittled by many academics, Jacques Derrida' s work is in contrast appreciated by artists, writers, students, and the public in general. Even linguistics genius and professor at MIT, Noam Chomsky, called Derrida "a charlatan," simply because he couldn't understand some of Derrida's writing. Of course Chomsky is a busy personality and couldn't take time to attempt to learn the language that Derrida employed in his journals, articles, and books. When I hear IT people talking to each other and don't understand a single word of what they are saying, let alone the topic of discussion, I don't dismiss them as "charlatans." I make the concession that they have their own language and that the use it to communicate and convey the nuances of information and computer science. Derrida's work has dismantled many of the assumptions we --ordinary human beings-- make about accepted 'facts.' Deconstructing binary —also called polar— oppositions, just to give an example, has helped us understand that built into these oppositions are hierarchical assumptions that confer power to one pole over the other. In the polarities 'male/female,' 'presence/absence,' 'slave/master,' 'black/white,' you can just guess which is favored. Derrida's work helped us see that binary oppositions structure thought of individuals within a culture—e.g., Western culture. But the object to this article is to learn how to understand 'writing,' as expounded by Jacques Derrida. In Plato's dialogue Phaedrus, the god Thoth, the inventor of writing, is accused of encouraging mental laziness. This is myth lore invented by Plato and Socrates, for we know that writing encourages agility of mind. Rousseau also saw writing as a supplement to speech—as signs. In contrast, because Francis Bacon --the great Elizabethan courtier and scholar-- saw speech ("Idols of the Cave") as a barrier to true knowledge, he went on to write many books. In the end gossip and false testimony, in particular, gained him a year in the London Tower. The moral being: beware that speech can be more lethal than writing. As it turned out, today we realize that writing and books have become the warehouses of wisdom. It is with the written word that wisdom is created, preserved, and expanded in the different levels of human endeavor. Even symbolic logic and mathematics need the written word to lock and secure exact meanings. Scientists use language to put forth their discoveries, their insights, and to falsify or verify them empirically. Philosopher Jacques Derrida sees in writing-in-general an entire system that nourishes the human race—archi-écriture. Despite the 'difficult' language he uses, we can extract some meaning from it, by defining some of the deconstructionist jargon: "What we have tried to show in following the connecting thread of the "dangerous supplement" is that in what we call the real life of these "flesh and blood" creatures ... there has never been anything but writing, there has never been anything but supplement and substitutional significations which could only arise in a chain of differential relations ... And so on indefinitely, for we have read in the text that the absolute present, Nature, what is named by words like "real mother," etc. have always already escaped, have never existed; that what inaugurates meaning and language is writing as the disappearance of natural presence." To understand fairly the above paragraph, one needs to go back to Immanuel Kant who distinguished between 'reality' (the world of nature and objects) and reason and the senses that apprehend reality—or as Kant call it: the thing-in-itself. According to Kant humans are doomed to never know the thing-in-itself. At best humans may represent it by the senses and the categories of the mind. Much like Kant, Derrida has invented his own language; he uses the word 'supplement,' 'substitutional significations,' 'chain of substitutions,' as synonyms for the signs with which humans filter, mediate, and represent reality. When he refers to reality, he uses 'real life,' 'flesh and blood creatures,' 'the absolute present, 'nature,' 'real mother,' 'original,' 'the thing itself of immediate present,' and other similar utterances. Writing then, for Derrida, is a metaphysical concept that guides human thinking for humans to survive in the world of nature and man-made objects. While speech is ethereal and instantaneous, writing lingers and sequesters the traces of speech and life to bring about the thing-in-itself: a presence. For Derrida: "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte" '"There's nothing outside the text."

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Nathaniel Hawthorne: Magic Realism in Young Goodman Brown

Image via Wikipedia Although magic realism may seem to be a product of Eastern European and Latin American writers, the genre has been cultivated in the United State by writers of different generations. If one considers magic realism to be a literary genre that combines fantastic or dreamlike elements with realism; that places fabulous narratives in a normal, quotidian contemporary world, then writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, John Cheever, Toni Morrison and William Kennedy qualify for inclusion in the magic realism genre. Drawing on native fables, folk tales, fairy tales, and puritan myths, American writers, as we shall see, have a body of work that display hallucinating trickery, dream sequences, and often plain distortion and bending of what we accept as the real natural world. Given the abundance of material this article will deal with Nathaniel Hawthorne's works only. Rather than novels Nathaniel Hawthorne cultivated 'romances' —which allow the writer a quicker suspension of disbelief and more latitude than novels — that border on fantasies and dreams, one can say that narratives such as The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables do contain elements of magic realism. In particular, I like the closing scene of The House of The Seven Gables in which Uncle Venner "seemed to hear a strain of music and fancied that Alice Pyncheon ... had given one farewell touch of a spirit's joy upon her harpsichord as she floated heavenward from the House of the Seven Gables." This scene is reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's fabulous scene in which Remedios the Beauty —a character in One Hundred Years of Solitude— ascends to heaven in the midst of flapping sheets. But it is in Hawthorne's short stories where we find magic realism in full display; or as critic R. P. Blackmur put it, these stories are the "daydreams which edge toward nightmare." I want to focus on his short story "Young Goodman Brown" to highlight the features of magic realism. In this short story, Young Goodman Brown, much like Dante, "had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through ... " In this dense forest Brown meets a traveler whom he suspects to be the devil himself, yet the stranger bears a strong family resemblance such as that of father and son. If this scene isn't terrifying in itself, at least is sinister enough to foreshadow what is to come. Delirious, bewildered, and right in the midst of a hellish nightmare brought to reality by the tangible proof of his wife's ribbons, Young Goodman Brown watches the full liturgy of a black mass: "there is my wife, Faith." As he spoke, he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin." And the entire town he sees there in that wicked witches worship—of the devil! After delighting readers with such hallucinating scenes, Hawthorne's narrator asks: "Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch meeting?" In an ironic twist, when Young Goodman Brown dies, the entire community —all the participants of the black mass— follow him in a long procession as he is "borne to his grave." Was this a second black mass? While many read this story as a horror story, there is more to it, for all the elements of magic realism —including props such as a staff that resembles a snake, ribbons that materialize, clothing, and an animated forest— mentioned above are present. The writing techniques I use in this article are all explained in Mary Duffy's writing manual--an indispensable guide: Sentence Openers Click-->Back to main page

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Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art

Because I have admired the Spanish philosopher and art critic Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883 – 1955) for many years, I have been reluctant to review any of his books. His writing style offers a peculiar angle of vision about culture, philosophy, and art. As a result for years I’ve been a consumer, always taking from his work and never giving anything back. But now it’s time to give something back. So, here are some very personal likes and dislikes. Ortega’s title of the book —The Dehumanization of Art— is now a constant in music, literature, aesthetics, and philosophy, having come to mean that in post-modern times human-shaped mimesis (representation of the human) is irrelevant to art. According to Ortega, the arts don't have to tell a human story; art should be concerned with its own forms—and not with the human form. The essay, divided into 13 subsections, was originally published in 1925; in these brief sections Ortega discussed the newness of nonrepresentational art and sought to make it more understandable to a public much benumbed with the traditional forms of art. A search for the substance of traditional art In the first section entitled, “Unpopularity of the New Art,” Ortega draws from his political credo which one can say it is elitist, aristocratic, and anti-popular. His analysis concludes with the belief that some people are better than others; that some are superior to others: “Behind all contemporary life lurks the provoking and profound injustice of the assumption that men are actually created equal.” That unbending political point of view colors his aestheticism. The masses, he holds, will never understand the “new art” that was emerging with Debussy and Stravinsky (music), Pirandello (theater), and Mallarme (poetry). A lack of understanding will mobilize the masses —a term that Ortega uses frequently to refer to the common people— to dislike and reject the new art. Therefore, the new art will be the art for the illustrious, the educated, and the few. To bring that kind of divisive tool —the few versus the many, aristocrats versus democrats— into the arts seems not only narrow minded, but also disingenuous. Yet my main objection to Ortega’s analysis and conclusions is more fundamental. In my estimation, ‘understanding’ in the arts is of secondary importance. The arts are created by humans to reach out and touch other humans by means of appeals to their passions and emotions—through their senses. When I was 14 years old, by accident, I heard a musical composition that was so different and strange to my young ears that prompted me to call the radio station to find out about that piece. It was Appalachian Spring, a ballet composition by Aaron Copland. What 14-year old boy from the Andes (Peru) can be familiar with ballet or Aaron Copland to even begin to understand the composition? Yet, I liked it. And that is all that mattered to me. Understanding that piece of music, or even knowing the name of the composer, was as far away from my mind as was Einstein’s theory of relativity, since I had no idea who Einstein was either. Delight, enjoyment, and rapture one feels without expressed understanding. By extolling the new forms and promoting the vanguard artists and their efforts to produce non-traditional art, Ortega’s book had a significant influence in the rejection of realism and romanticism. So seductive and convincing was Ortega’s prose that many artists and critics began to equate both realism and romanticism with vulgarity. To allow a brilliant writer to exert so much authority should be a sin. For years Ortega’s authority has bothered me. Yet, despite that inner annoyance, my respect for the man’s writings inhibited me from protesting. So, by stripping Ortega’s dazzling prose of its seduction —by “bracketing” and performing a phenomenologist reduction— we can see it in its own nakedness for what it is: an elitist and harmful point of view. People should never be made ashamed of their taste, likes, and dislikes in art. We should enjoy that touch of aesthetic delight whether it comes from primitive, Greek, Gothic, Romanesque, Baroque, realism, or romanticism, surrealism, or any period or movement. Ortega advocates the ‘objective purity’ of observed reality Following Plato’s division of reality into the forms (universals) and their simulacra, Ortega invents his own corresponding terms: ‘observed reality’ and ‘lived reality.’ The representation of real things (lived reality) — man, house, mountain— Ortega calls “aesthetic frauds.” Ortega totally dislikes objects be they man-made or natural: “A good deal of what I have called dehumanization and disgust for living forms is inspired by just such an aversion against the traditional interpretation of realities.” In contrast, the representation of ideas (observed reality) is what he views as the true art. Therefore, he praises the new art as the destroyer of semblance, resemblance, likeness, or mimesis. In that destruction of the old human forms of art lies Ortega’s “dehumanization.” Yet one must recall that more that more than 2500 years ago, the pre-Socratic philosopher Protagoras said, "Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.” Ortega’s will to “dehumanize” art will always run head on against Protagoras’ wall. Art by definition — anything that is man-made— is profoundly human and cannot be otherwise, Ortega notwithstanding. Even in the stark canvases of painters such as Mark Rothko one feels the artist’s humanity in search of the human soul through color and luminosity. Even in the random drippings of Jackson Pollock’s works one can sense man’s struggle for freedom. And what is freedom but a human aspiration? Conclusion Whenever I look at the shapes of primitive African art, the Paleolithic images of animals in the caves of Lascaux, or even the colorful and balanced grids of Mondrian—I’m in awe of the human spirit. And at such times I feel that labels, signs, markings, and explanations and descriptions (theories) are totally unnecessary. What we need are theories of art that can unite people rather than divide them. Ortega’s “dehumanization” is a toxic theory not because it advocates a detestable elitism, but because it attempts to deny the pleasures of art to the common people. The writing techniques I use in this article are all explained in Mary Duffy's writing manual--an indispensable guide: Sentence Openers Click-->Back to main page

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Positivity, you are created for greatness!

ArticleCoop | Positivity, you are created for greatness! By: Anthony K Wilson Sr When you think of the word "greatness," who are the people that first come to mind? The word probably brings up thoughts of United States presidents and other patriotic Americans, your favorite sports stars, perhaps kings and queens of other countries, and a host of others who could be thought of as heroes. The positivity of these famous people helped them to achieve their status of greatness and you can do it, too. You might be surprised to hear the word greatness connected to yourself. However, the fact is that everyone who became great started somewhere. The characteristic which they all had in common was positivity. The good news is that you, also, can develop this trait. Positivity first means that you must believe in yourself. The person who believes in himself can achieve nearly anything. Whether you have clear goals in mind for your future, or thoughts of how exciting your life can be, positivity is the trait that will get you there. When you know that you can do it, you can! Believing in yourself is only the first step. The second part of positivity is putting it into action. While goals and dreams are wonderful, they will only happen if you make them happen. Positivity is the drive to turning your dreams into reality. You will need to take the steps of determination, motivation, and hard work. All of these factors together will help you to build the life of your dreams. You were destined for greatness. To become all that you can be is not something that is available to only a select few. As your life is a wonderful gift, what you decide to do with it can point you in the direction of success. You were created as a special, unique individual and your uniqueness is the key to transforming your life into something very great. There is another point about greatness which you may not have thought of yet. While you may attribute the word to people who were famous throughout history and in today's world, you have as much potential for greatness as you are at this moment. You may be wonderfully successful and even famous in the future, but you are also great today. If this surprises you, think about it for a second. When you are giving life your very best, and giving your very best to the people in your life, this shows that you are already great. You do not need fame and fortune to make a very positive difference in your daily life today. Your community, your school, and even your family, can all easily recognize the attribute of greatness in you. You can think of the great person that you are today as being the starting point for the life and future of your dreams. As long as you continue to believe in yourself, and put this strength into action, you will see that you were indeed created for greatness. Everything you desire can come true. Author Resource: Anthony is a motivational speaker and he knows first hand how powerful positive affirmations can be in everyone's life.=> http://create-sun.com Article From ArticleCoop Click-->Back to main page

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Sarah Palin and Rahm Emanuel

By Sam Stein Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is calling on President Barack Obama to fire White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel over Emanuel's penchant for using profanity and a statement he made that was derogatory of the handicapped. Really. The 2008 vice presidential candidate put up a Facebook post on Monday evening arguing that Emanuel's offending slur (in which he said that liberal groups thinking of running health care-related ads against Democratic lawmakers were "F---ing retarded") was no less the equivalent of using the "N-word." I would ask the president to show decency in this process by eliminating one member of that inner circle, Mr. Rahm Emanuel, and not allow Rahm's continued indecent tactics to cloud efforts. Yes, Rahm is known for his caustic, crude references about those with whom he disagrees, but his recent tirade against participants in a strategy session was such a strong slap in many American faces that our president is doing himself a disservice by seeming to condone Rahm's recent sick and offensive tactic. The Obama Administration's Chief of Staff scolded participants, calling them, "F---ing retarded," according to several participants, as reported in the Wall Street Journal. Just as we'd be appalled if any public figure of Rahm's stature ever used the "N-word" or other such inappropriate language, Rahm's slur on all God's children with cognitive and developmental disabilities - and the people who love them - is unacceptable, and it's heartbreaking. The Emanuel remark was reported recently by The Wall Street Journal but dates back to the heat of the health care wars in August. And it certainly wasn't the first time the chief of staff (known for an acid tongue) has leveled an odious broadside at one group or another from his perch in the West Wing. Palin presumably seized on this one because of her own experience with the issue -- her youngest child, of course, suffers from Down syndrome. But it's hard to ignore the fact that making hay out of "controversies" like these is her political trademark, regardless of whether there is a personal tie to the matter.

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Erasmus of Rotterdam on Clarity and Vagueness

Cover of The Turn of the Screw Discussing the methods of sentence variation by using allegory and proverbs —which at times result in enigmas— in his book On Copia, Erasmus says: “For things should not be written in such a way that everyone understands everything, but so that they are forced to investigate things, and learn.” We often read that clarity, conciseness, terseness, should be what good writers strive for. Having seen these admonitions many times, Erasmus’ remark: “Things should not be written in such a way that everyone understands everything …” caught my eye. In fiction, some things are better handled if left unsaid—left open. Henry James, novelist, master of nuance For many years readers, scholars, and critics have been not only debating Henry James’ novelette The Turn of the Screw, but also interpreting it. Henry James, a master of nuance, has wrought a tale of terror that would have satisfied Erasmus because we are left “to investigate things, and learn.” In the tale only the young governess can see the ghosts, believing that the previous sinister governess and her lover are controlling the two orphaned children. It is a text that can be read and interpreted in many ways: as ghost story, a crime story, or a detective story. And in the end we are left with the enigma: is this woman mad? Kafka, the absurd Most of Kafka’s stories are open ended, resulting not only in enigmas, but also in insoluble paradoxes, problems of dehumanization, and other absurd human labyrinths. Is Gregor Samsa, a hero, an anti-hero, a pathetic character, or even a vermin? Who is to blame for his metamorphosis? And who kills him? Is it a sacrifice? “When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” Isn’t possible to infer from the very beginning that the story is just a common nightmare? Likewise, in the Trial: “Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning” Dragged through the corridors of the court and ‘the law,’ and on to his final night, Joseph K —and the readers— never learn what crime he committed. Jorge Luis Borges, cerebral stories In the work of Jorge Luis Borges we find stories that besides being cerebral are open to different interpretations. The short story “El Sur” is a hallucinating story in which the hero goes into his death with his eyes open and his boots on. Macho-like. Or did he? One of the possible interpretations is that he conjured all those images of gauchos that populate the South (of Argentina), at his deathbed in the hospital. Ambrose Bierce, stories with a twist “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is a fantastic story with a stunning twist at the end. Like Jorge Luis Borges, the story in itself has a twist, but what makes it delightful is the language in which it is told. Deliberate. Spectacular. A mix of action and thought. Without wasting words, the author leads the reader through a dreamy path and on to a plausible and realistic conclusion. The Renaissance scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam may be correct: don’t make everything absolutely clear; your readers will respect you more if you leave something for them to ponder.

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Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin: What are People Saying

and this matters to us because? it isn't like the teen mom is poor anyway. maybe if she had kept her pants on they wouldn't be in this mess. but i guess with a mother like her's, what else can you expect? It does not matter is she's poor or rich. He should be responsible for taking care of his child financially. She pulled her pants down, but so did he! MAKE HIM PAY GIRL!!!!!!! After all, it takes two. If this was anyone else but Sarah Palin's kid, everyone would be up in arms over what a douche bag this father is. But since it's Bristol Palin, then she must somehow be at fault, right? Grow up Mel. Bristol isn't her mother, and your attitude is misogynistic and right out of the 1950's. It takes TWO people to make a child, not just the mom. Levi also chose to have sex. The only one now doing the right thing, trying to care for the baby that was a result, seems to be Bristol. Levi is an immature tool who has consistently taken the lowest road possible, and I hope Bristol gets everything she deserves out of this deadbeat. For the record, Sarah Palin is retarded and I think it's a joke that people could actually consider her for office, but this isn't about Sarah Palin. If this was anyone else but Sarah Palin's kid, everyone would be up in arms over what a douche bag this father is. But since it's Bristol Palin, then she must somehow be at fault, right? Grow up Mel. Bristol isn't her mother, and your attitude is misogynistic and right out of the 1950's. It takes TWO people to make a child, not just the mom. Levi also chose to have sex. The only one now doing the right thing, trying to care for the baby that was a result, seems to be Bristol. Levi is an immature tool who has consistently taken the lowest road possible, and I hope Bristol gets everything she deserves out of this deadbeat. For the record, Sarah Palin is retarded and I think it's a joke that people could actually consider her for office, but this isn't about Sarah Palin. Every person has the responsibility to pay child support HOWEVER... I suspect there is more to this story than being told. I'm no Levi (or Palin) fan... but from the interviews I've seen and their attitude towards him (which quite honestly might be right-on), I suspect that they may be keeping the child away from Levi. Which is wrong. And child support and visitation have nothing to do with each other, no matter what us mother's feel about it. I agree that the father of a child has a financial responsibility toward the child. But what about the mother? If each is contributing $1750, that's $3500 a month. Quite a bit more than I have coming in. Why are you just blaming the mother? He did the deed as well to help create this child! I am sick of only us women being blamed for unwanted pregnancies in this country! Time to start calling men out for the sluts they are... I hate the double standard of this country, if a woman is promiscuous (sp?) she is a slut, if a man is, he's a play-ah... so stupid. HE IS A SLUT TOO! Sometimes we should just be thankful for what we get. If he wants to be a part of the babies life and he's a good father then that's all that should matter. I know it takes money to raise a baby.. but sometimes that means people need to get jobs! and this matters to us because? it isn't like the teen mom is poor anyway. maybe if she had kept her pants on they wouldn't be in this mess. but i guess with a mother like her's, what else can you expect? It does not matter is she's poor or rich. He should be responsible for taking care of his child financially. She pulled her pants down, but so did he! MAKE HIM PAY GIRL!!!!!!! After all, it takes two. If this was anyone else but Sarah Palin's kid, everyone would be up in arms over what a douche bag this father is. But since it's Bristol Palin, then she must somehow be at fault, right? Grow up Mel. Bristol isn't her mother, and your attitude is misogynistic and right out of the 1950's. It takes TWO people to make a child, not just the mom. Levi also chose to have sex. The only one now doing the right thing, trying to care for the baby that was a result, seems to be Bristol. Levi is an immature tool who has consistently taken the lowest road possible, and I hope Bristol gets everything she deserves out of this deadbeat. For the record, Sarah Palin is retarded and I think it's a joke that people could actually consider her for office, but this isn't about Sarah Palin. Every person has the responsibility to pay child support HOWEVER... I suspect there is more to this story than being told. I'm no Levi (or Palin) fan... but from the interviews I've seen and their attitude towards him (which quite honestly might be right-on), I suspect that they may be keeping the child away from Levi. Which is wrong. And child support and visitation have nothing to do with each other, no matter what us mother's feel about it. I agree that the father of a child has a financial responsibility toward the child. But what about the mother? If each is contributing $1750, that's $3500 a month. Quite a bit more than I have coming in. Why are you just blaming the mother? He did the deed as well to help create this child! I am sick of only us women being blamed for unwanted pregnancies in this country! Time to start calling men out for the sluts they are... I hate the double standard of this country, if a woman is promiscuous (sp?) she is a slut, if a man is, he's a play-ah... so stupid. HE IS A SLUT TOO! Sometimes we should just be thankful for what we get. If he wants to be a part of the babies life and he's a good father then that's all that should matter. I know it takes money to raise a baby.. but sometimes that means people need to get jobs! Click-->Back to main page

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Who is Who in Magic Realism

Image by margolove via Flickr Magic realism in literature is a literary genre that combines fantastic or dreamlike elements with realism. It differs from pure fantasy —which involves outlandish universes— in the fact that it is set in a normal, quotidian contemporary world, a world of authentic human-like characters and objects. The genre has taken hold in fiction, both in short stories and novels. Readers must be on their guard and not to trust the narrators who —in the magic realism genre— find a fertile ground for planting the seeds of hallucinating trickery, dream sequences, and often plain distortion and bending of what we accept as the real natural world. What makes magic realism a serious literary genre is the effort the authors make to have their fiction reach beyond the confines of realism, drawing upon the often forgotten native fables, folk tales, fairy tales, and myths while at the same time making the narrated events relevant to the reader. The Gothic roots While in the traditional novel readers look for key events that may provided openings to logical or psychological explanation, in the magical realist novel it is impossible no keys are provided. Ann Radcliffe in her gothic novels The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian thrilled readers with dungeons, dark castles, ghostly apparitions, fainting heroines, and unnatural events which in the end were (as explained) but simple natural events. In addition, gothic novels were fraught with horror, as we can read in Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Dorian Gray. But in magic realist novels, the fabulous, the marvelous, the enchanting, and the magic of events evoked require neither psychology nor logic, nor science. It seems as if the authors delight in showing the obverse of objects: the negative of a picture rather than the positive, the other side of the carpet, the reverse of the leaf—hoping to find the spirit, the energy that animates things. What delights the reader isn’t what they find in the predictable, nor in the familiar, or in the common— but in what lurks beyond the orbit of the real. European magic realism Beginning with Knight Errantry tales —which are laden with fabulous events— Eastern European novels have a tradition of magic realism. But it wasn’t until post II War World authors such as Milan Kundera, Günter Grass, and Italo Calvino that the genre took hold. In another article I wrote: “It is hard to imagine magic realism without Günter Grass’s prototype: Oskar Matzerath, the boy who willed himself to stop growing.” Latin American magic realism In keeping with post-modern theorists —in particular Derrida’s Deconstruction movement— magic realism aims to seize the paradox of the union of opposites. It challenges polar opposites in which one pole is favored over the other: life and death, pre-colonial past versus the post-industrial present, In magical realism we find the transformation of the common and the everyday into the awesome and the stunning and unreal. Most of the Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges’ stories are of a fabulous nature: “The Secret Miracle,” “The Aleph,” “The South,” “The Garden of Forking Paths,” and others. While philosophers such as David Hume and Bishop Berkeley attempted to deny reality with logical arguments, Borges denied causality with his stories. Furthermore, Borges suggested that the unreal world can be manifested (in literature) by including a work of art within a work of art, by contaminating reality with dreams, by altering time, and by doubles and labyrinths. With Gabriel Garcia Marquez magic realism comes to full maturity. His novel One Hundred Years of Solitude and his short stories, the genre reaches the summit of magical invention. Garcia Marquez stated: “My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separates what seems real from what seems fantastic.” To him realism offers too static and poor a vision of reality, suggesting that the magic text is —paradoxically— more realistic and richer than the realist text. But to be fair, both Borges and Garcia Marquez are the heirs of a long tradition of Latin American fabulists such as the Peruvian Ricardo Palma and the Uruguayan Horacio Quiroga. But in particular, he is the heir of the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier who coined term “marvelous reality” in the prologue to his novel, The Kingdom of this World. Latin American women novelists have also come to dominate the genre. Contemporary novelist Isabel Allende continues the cultivation of magic realism with her fantastic novel The House of the Spirits. Laura Esquivel with Like Water for Chocolate, immerses the reader in a fabulous world where the unusual becomes accepted and acted on as if it were normal. Having read Like Water a few times, I feel compelled to share one of my favorite passages: “As they crossed the hallway, Tita saw her mother, motionless beside the door to the dining room, throwing her a furious look. She was petrified. Pulque began to bark at Mama Elena, who was walking toward Tita threateningly. The fur on the dog’s back was sticking straight up from the fear and he was backing away on the defensive.” At this point in the story, we know that Tita’s mother (Mama Elena) is dead. Yet Tita and the dog Pulque see her. And instead of relying on what a human-character sees, the narrator lets the dog’s action carry the vision of such unnatural apparition. Indian magic realism Though far from being a total work in social and magic realism alone, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, contains a great deal of parody and satire of India—but all done with artistry. Given to paradox and the absurd, the exotic, and the strange, it is hard at times to tell the serious from the comic and both from the unreal. All in all we can say that humor prevails. And when we are in doubt we accept that the author means well and we read his humorous antics with goodwill—much as we do with Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. As readers, we are forced to keep track of time; a task that is easier said than done. Time in the Midnight’s Children is circular, fragmented, mythical, and cyclical—never linear. I cannot help thinking that all this is deliberate not only to simulate the chaotic societies that form the Indian nation, but also to add to the magical dimension that surrounds the characters as well as the readers. American magic realism Although the genre hasn’t quite bloomed in the United States, American fiction has a rich tradition of magical narration. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, John Cheever, Toni Morrison and William Kennedy have written many stories that could qualify for inclusion in the magic realism genre. But this is a matter for a separate article. The writing techniques I use in this article are all explained in Mary Duffy's writing manual--an indispensable guide: Sentence Openers Click-->Back to main page

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