Carson McCullers + T.S. Eliot

Eliot, Prufrock  :

Love song of Prufrock: First stanza: very startling images; could start as romantic but dark vocabulary and imagery is used; insidious, like a patient etherized on a table, restless, tedious.
interesting impersonation of fog and smoke, like some creature (cat or dog)
murder and create ; interesting contrast of ideas, the division in the human mind.
The man wants to push back against time, against people and against the 'norm' for old people. yet he doesn't quite dare.
"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons ". he knows what awaits him, what life is mapped out for him. ex: formulated phrase, pinned" he wants to spit out all the butt-ends, not conform.
even the women he has known them all; whatever small differences they had; shawls or bracelets or lack of them is all the same. He wants something different.
"I should have been a pair of ragged claws" - he refers back to the imagery of the fog/smoke, like he wants the freedom the smoke has, and the luxury of not being judged "scuttling across the floors of silent seas".
He is afraid of death and yet he wishes he had power to manipulate the universe and question it, to defy death like Lazarus.
As if whole life were a mistake and a question; repetition of "That is not it at all, That is not what I meant at all". and a list of banalities: tea parties, skirts, marmalade. He calls himself a Fool; he questions like Hamlet but he doesn't do anything he debates: should he part his hair, should he eat peach? Whose standards he is using for his choices we don't quite know.
Interesting ending (inverse of the siren myth) where it is the human's voices who drown and kill. As if the mermaids are in Prufrock's imagination and so keep him safe. Yet , the humans through their judging are nefarious.

he removed emotion in poetry; more objective sphere.T.S. Eliot/Prufrock had a neurotic personality.
Is the narrator addressing a reader or himself (split-subject)? Is it a dramatic monologue?
Masculine identity hesitation? Insecure narcissism , he doesn't live up to Lazarus or Hamlet.
Lingering, time, procrastination... Is there a seduction in that?

OR is this whole poem about procrastination? What is a poem? Is writing a poem a waste of time? overwhelming interpretations of the same poem.


Hysteria  : Five sentence prose poem. The hysteria inspired by we don't even know what is interesting; it seems to disturb the narrator. He wants to stop her laughter which shakes her breast and bruises her throat muscles, to collect "fragments of the afternoon". She drwas him in and induces hysteria in him. The images used are disturbing but we don't know what is the cause or why it makes the narrator so uncomfortable. Maybe he is drawn in her laughter until he can't think clearly anymore? Maybe because it physically transforms her into some sort of hideous puppet? "teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad drill." Actually the waiter's unease seems to happen right after the waiter tries ushering them outside. It's like too much mirth, justified or not, makes the waiter nervous and he transfers his nervousness and desire to have it stop at the couple. The man is then influenced. "I decided that if....."

Hysteria was a mysterious illness attached to women ----> repressed desire according to Freud.
Is hysteria contagious and/or pejorative? Is narrator becoming a woman? Speaker is swallowed alive by laughter. Hysteria impairs memory....



Ballad of the Sad Café - Carson McCullers

Miss Amelia Evans: interesting she's still considered miss despite having been married; even for 10 days. She takes better care of Lymon than she does of herself ; how comparably cleaner he is.
She has odd quirks; is willing to sue for anything, yet she helps children free of charge. Yet she doesn't want to help for 'female problems'; which shows her avoidance of feminity in any form. She isn't aware of her lack of conformity in any way.
Her reaction to the wedding night seems almost too drastic. What could he possibly have done to elicit her wrath so much? She became the husband in a way, as she beat him around, actually breaking a tooth! She seems to have an abject fear of being a woman. During the wedding she kept wishing for overalls, and she strode out of church ahead of the husband. 
For Lymon though and the cafe, she wears a red dress Sunday. She sort of accepts feminity. However, as time goes by, she laughs louder, deeper and tests her strength even more. Love seems to highlight her masculine side even more....
She can't decide who to please; Cousin Lymon or Marvin, and so she acts in opposite ways; it seems she wants to seduce him (red dress) and kill him. Miss Amelia ignores what she can;t understand.
Seven for seven sins the devil's number. Her fav number.
She is wrecked by the hunchback, worse than Marvin did. She loses her physical and emotional vigor. Her spirit is gone and she holes herself up. 

Lymon Willis: the hunchback, who represents change in the small town of Cheehaw. He truly is out of the ordinary even more so than Miss Amelia. Yet he inspires respect and he is sized up, and sizes up the men of the town; he becomes familiar with them all. He opens up Miss Amelia, inspires her to change her routine . Biggest example to date is the cafe. Why does he try so hard at the beginning to ingratiate himself with an obvious past hated suitor of Miss Amelia's? Maybe he likes different so much he feels having been to a penitentiary and been to Atlanta is enough to wipe all sins away? He enjoys the snow. he 's like a child to Marvin and acts like one, a servant; he gives his own bedroom and forces Miss Amelia out of her room. He ingratiates himself so much  he riles up Miss Amelia and Marvin against each other. Is he sick of her adoration and is trying to get her to stand up to him; maybe pushing her more and more to the extreme until she snaps? he is so excited he paints the house??
He destroys Miss Amelia and sides with Marvin. WHo knows why when he was considered a slave to him (according to rumors was used as a ladder or was a show freak). He purposefully makes Miss Amelia lose the fight and he destroys her cafe.
Interesting we don't know his age,

Merlie Ryan: (3 day malaria) he starts rumor that Miss Amelia murdered him; interesting how Cousin Lymon represents change, how at the beginning Stumpy Macphail and Co were almost expecting /wanting Miss Amelia to throw him out, but when he isn't to be seen, he accuses her.

Marvin Macey: troubled childhood; threw his brains over the fence for Miss Amelia, gave her everything; got cruelly rebuffed by her. Interesting when he and Lymon meet, regarding each other like 2 criminals -criminals for vying for Miss Amelia? 
he has just come back to town and already he disrupts the normal process in the mill. He hits Cousin Lymon, who amazingly tried to ingratiate himself with him. 
The fact that he's different clings to him too; like not sweating in August. He becomes a symbol of everything that goes wrong; pork spoilage , bad weather , even former foster care taker cries.
He is very prideful; doesn't pay for liquor in cafe. He feels he owns the snow.
he himself echoes the situation between himself and Miss Amelia very well; everything she says bounces back on her.

Interesting how at the end the chain gang's music is reminiscent of the effect of Miss Amelia's liquor at the beginning of the song; sort of like a cycle.  Chain gang is symbol of integrity. How even criminals sustain joy better than town. Only form of community is through chains and music??

1940s, 1950s, homosexuality was an inversion of souls. 

Lymon is a lover, Marvin is beloved.
Marvin is a lover, Amelia is beloved.
Amelia is a lover, Lymon is beloved. 

Lover becomes feminity despite original sex? Beloved and lover cannot be reciprocal....  Desire wants to be repeated and is mobile. ---> cannot possess beloved / cannot have and eat at the same time.  / searches for lack of..... Is Miss Amelia and Marvin's fight a primal manifestation of desire? Is Miss Amelia trying to construct a family unit with her as  a mother, Marvin as a father, and Lymon as a child?

Broughton "Rejection of the Feminine": spiritual isolation; setting echoes that and the opening of the cafe breaks that ; as well as Miss Amelia's habits. reason for failure of cafe is due to all three characters' pragmatic view of people; all 3 exploit humanity in their own way; even in the three's affection toward each other!!! they cannot love; to love or be loved is a harsh balance they cannot achieve. feminity is scoffed at: Morris Finestein . everyone has to be masculine to be respected in this town. when Macy or Miss Amelia become femininely servile, they end up hurting each other. Miss Amelia has to be pragmatic even about pain. (kidney stones) . her doctoring children is not as motherly as it seems: it is power.  self abasment or destruction; 2 extremes. misconception of love brings solitude.

Cousin Lymon and Miss Amelia 

Poe, Baudelaire, Dickinson and Nabokov

"To the Reader" ~ Baudelaire

"Like a penniless rake who with kisses and bites 
Tortures the breast of an old prostitute, 
We steal as we pass by a clandestine pleasure 
That we squeeze very hard like a dried up orange." 

- goes back to my previous post about how some of us, or almost all of us get some sort of satisfaction from shame, from clandestine activity. 

"He is Ennui! — His eye watery as though with tears, 
He dreams of scaffolds as he smokes his hookah pipe.
You know him reader, that refined monster,
— Hypocritish reader, — my fellow, — my brother!"

- Baudelaire seems to consider that readers like himself detest no activity, no thoughts of any kind; to spice up life, readers need to "sin" in some way, in little or big ways. Maybe we can consider that the people who absolutely hate to be alone with themselves, who clutter up their days with TV or music blaring loudly, are those who 'sin' the most?

"Imp of the Perverse" ~ Poe - procrastination

any bad action he equates to a high, with very high and bad stakes, and the higher they are, the more "perversity" sets in . 

Oddly enough the language he uses is equivalent to that of suicide...

The mentality of knowing not to do something and doing it anyway: ex. The TellTale Heart, the Cask of Amontillado..... 

the idea that men are flaws from the beginning; the idea of Satan and/or man being in an innate sinner.

Alone poem ~ Poe

Talks about difference, even as a child, as if sensing man's innate capacity for sin: incapability of relating with emotions the same way (sadness, joy). So he takes inspiration not only from people but also from nature, strong images such as red cliffs, lightning, and storms. In the end "And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view —" : constant battle 

between good and evil.

sensory overload against city life already full of sensory stimuli.  

Reader /writer accomplice

Annabel Lee ~ Poe

Very creepy. I never read this poem in the context I am reading it now. You can really tell now that the relationship Annabel and the author has is wrong on some level; if at least because they were children. Can't be pedophilia because they're both kids. Maybe brother and sister? Interesting that Poe mentions the heavens, because they were jealous, "chilled and killed" his Annabel Lee. If their relationship was wrong, then that implies that the heavens too have some element of the perverse. Again we come on the idea of the boredom, the Ennui, The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,Went envying her and me —" So the pure sanctity of heaven though good, is boring.

nursery rhyme / fairy tale

I cannot Live with you ~ Dickinson

In this poem she really goes into the idea of both ends of the spectrum. She constantly makes allusions to opposites about how she and whoever she addresses in the poem ; about how they couldn't live up to expectations in their own way. This quote is very revealing.

"They'd judge Us – How –  For You – served Heaven – You know, Or sought to –  I could not – "

White sustenance Despair ; again an oxymoron. White is usually the color of purity. Yet, white can also be a blank page; an author's worst enemy. ex: Japan considers white to be sad. 

Lolita excerpt ~ Nabokov 

Just the beginning of the intro shows the complexity the opposite feelings warring in Humbert Humbert as regards Lolita. She is a woman yet a girl, she has many names, yet she is still Lolita to him. He uses Poe's poem  "Annabel Lee" which signs the wrongness of the relationship. he uses oxymorons of words and concepts. ex: sin, soul, fire, light. "half pleasure half pain came over her childish features." Lolita started as a fantasy ; she is an ideal that Humbert wants, but we're not sure he truly gets ultimately. 

fateful elf vs. nymphet. His own allusion to Lilith and Eve. nymphets eating rich food yet no acne. OXYMORON dreamy childishness and eerie vulgarity. Even about himself Humbert says slow boyish smile and yet cesspool or rotting monsters.

irony: his wife is Valeria and simply is a vague "copy" of a little girl; divorce was bound to happen

His game with the psychiatrists ; leading them on even after he had recovered. goes back to the sense that even when things are well, some human beings need to have some shame to have fun. Humbert longs for an explosion but he doesn't act on his instincts; he takes his time in the introduction.

Nabokov describes love affair with America. America is the young girl, Lolita, and he is the old Europe. 

Humber is a neurotic and a pervert. (the latter he confesses, indulges in it, with charm and his actions in the story).

does prohibition necessitate desire? prohibition on child as someone who desires, or is desiring??....

Annabel Lee                                  Lolita and Humbert Humbert

Freud

infanthood - polymorphous perversity NORMAL

attach sexuality to many things; free flowing

become perverse only when you enter societal world/norms

is pleasure perverse?

neurotic vs perverse - suppressed vs openly enjoyable

desire to confess to audience is perverse.

power of choice in perversion; like procrastination. 

Suzanne Vega's Lolita

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XlvXgPHx1w

Literary Mixtape Humbert Humbert

http://flavorwire.com/139608/literary-mixtape-humbert-humbert

What is perversity, what is normality?

1st day of class

Can the perverse exist without the normative?

Is the normative an impossible ideal, perversity is relative. - perversity is a conflicted category.
Is normality an ideal that can never be attained?

Art is like being perpetual children - out cast because of that.

General stereotype of artists doing their art for fun; it's not considered a job. Science is always taken seriously.

serial killer cult - interesting; in this TV show I watch, "Elementary", Sherlock Holmes keeps up correspondence with Moriarty despite the horrible things she's done.

Does the perverse disrupt narrative pleasure?

do romance novels disclose "perverted" woman's world - maybe like "Fifty Shades of Grey" ?

Now there are two groups, one of anarchy, the other of normality? - two ends of spectrum.

stuck between a rock and a hard place - always in  a state of perversion; people will always criticize one side or the other. Too normal implies too conservative. Too different implies perversion of some type.

Like professors who don't dress smartly all the time - some people will love that, some people won't.

Or adults who enjoy watching "kid" movies, enjoy "kid food"are not taken seriously or are frowned upon. Adults are expected to show this serious image. For example, in an art exhibit of my mother's, we were eating Nutella and this woman came up and said "Only kids eat Nutella".....! Is doing "kid" stuff as an adult a perversion, a Peter Pan syndrome, or a way of keeping the child inside of us alive?

Laziness vs. productivity

too much of this: sloth                   too much of that: workaholic.

we need to dose each when presenting image of oneself.

Is shame a part of fun? Like keeping diaries or confession posts?