FEAT. THE BLOODY CHAMBER & NEW AMERICAN STORIES
January 20, 2021
Zadie Smith’s “Meet the President”
Zadie Smith’s style of writing has equal distribution of dialogue and description. The description of the old woman at the beginning of the story is impressionistic as is the times when Smith gives thought to the way Bill Peek had grown up. She does not give a segment into where they are at or what kind of place, they are in which gives the reader an impression that you will have to imagine where they are at. The narrative structure turns form first person perspective to third person. The main character’s thoughts are very descriptive and I like how Smith makes her character, Bill Peek romanticize different places. In a way, it could be interpreted that Bill Peek is an alien because his father is coming back from Mexico which was Bill Peek’s father’s work. The illustrations and the title are obvious in such that Bill may be in a rocket or a UFO as he (Bill Peek) is imagining these places. What gave it away was that his father was in Mexico and he was coming back from his work and there is no placement in his whereabouts with Melinda and Agatha. In the end when he meets the president, he doesn’t actually meet him and finds that there are other people or aliens around him that are being blown up, so he may be an alien going to meet the president although the president himself is not aware.
Zadie Smith’s “Fascinated To Presume”
Smith’s “Fascinated To Presume,” is a review on fiction. On some points I disagree with the fact that the audience being the reader decides. To me the author decides where the story is going and what the story does. In Smith’s review there are many points that I believe do not count such as contradiction. Kids need to be contradictory in fiction because it helps the writer become more creative. Especially for critics, we should rely on critique because it helps us tweak the mistakes in our writing. What I get from it is that Smith does not like contradiction in the beginning but the reader does not get to decide, I agree with Whitman thought that we should re-examine fiction but what I do not get is why the reader has to decide if she herself is talking about being an author for fiction. Why would she say that if Smith did not like contradiction? I think this review is thoughtful but imagine if the reader were to decide on mostly everything. Authors would not be able to decide what goes into their stories and also, they would not be able to decide what does not.
January 25, 2021
Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber”
Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” has a feminist value to it and a unique gothic style. She puts a man who is a complete psychopath in the narrator’s first-person perspective. What she does is give subtle hints that she is going to be murdered. I think the symbolism of the key on the young girl’s forehead is of ownership as she finds out that the marquis is a psychopath who is now ready to kill her but fortunately, her mother ends up saving her which is a feminist role in the story. Instead of a man who is a hero, we have a woman who is the hero of the story which is the narrator’s mother. It sets a gothic mood with the symbolism of wealth and aristocracy in the chambers of the castle as well as the one chamber where the marquis’s wives are murdered. I think that the narrator is weak because she describes the psychopath who is going to murder her as beautiful throughout the story. It is almost as if she is entranced and enchanted by his wealth, or at least so immersed in it that she forgets that she does not fight back as she knows she is going to die.
“She Escaped To Become: The Invention of Angela Carter.”
Dear Dr. S….r,
I and some of my colleagues were unable to read the article because we could not access the article without paying for it on the website given.
February 1, 2021
New American Stories – “Paranoia”
In “Paranoia,” the style is very prose-like in the way of description. What the paranoia could have been was that he was paranoid about being either a homosexual and for his friend to start calling him a faggot. The end was sort of patriotic because there were a whole bunch of cars and a train honking which was patriotic for a soldier or a veteran who had just got out from the war. It seems like a bromance or just an average, typical war story only because of the way it was written. Although there is no evidence of it ever being a homoerotic story, the title just gives it away. It could have been the paranoia that he was a homosexual or the paranoia that he was from the war and could have been attacked. I think that it was just a typical patriotic war story and I enjoyed it very much.
New American Stories – “Madmen”
“Madmen” is pretty much a utopia of social-workers or psychologists that help bring out mental patients into society which is told in the first-person narrative. I think that it embodies the American dream because they are a utopia that chooses madmen to put them back into society. My impression is that when the children hit puberty, they are then able to make their own decisions which is why the girl’s menstruation is mentioned in the beginning of the story. We find that the parents of the girl chose a man against the girl’s wishes because they probably based the madman they picked off of risk. Basically, its style is utopian science fiction which brings light into the subject. If I were to write a paper this would be phenomenological for me because I feel it lends itself to phenomenology in science fiction.
February 8, 2021
Angela Carter’s “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon”
Angela Carter’s “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” is romantic in the fact that it is like the modern-day Grimm’s fairytale, “Beauty and The Beast.” It is a take on the imagination of modern times knowing that there are automobiles present. But alongside we find that it is a take on the Grimm’s fairytale with more detail and is a romantic style of writing in the elements of lost love when the beast begins to die because his beloved Beauty had gone away. Carter takes the elements of the “Beauty and The Beast” story and weaves a detailed fairytale out of its elements and takes into account how this story will develop until the end.
Angela Carter’s “The Tiger’s Bride”
I appreciate Carter’s story about almost a shapeshifting gangster who is a female. My first impression of it was that she was a beast herself, but we soon find that she only shapeshifts into a beast who also gambles for the hell of it. “The Tiger’s Bride,” lends itself to a feminist lens and is also a first-person narrative. It also represents the life of a woman who leads a rough-like, gangster stereotypical life. She is very dominant throughout the whole story as she becomes the beast herself.
February 22, 2021
New American Stories – “The Deep”
“The Deep” is in first person narrative and its style reminds me of a war story although it is depressing or in other words, tragic because the boy, Tom in the story is sick and never gets a chance at love with his sweetheart, Ruby Hornaday. It is poetic though and very descriptive of its surroundings. Although it is depressing it is probably because the story lends itself to naturalism almost like one of Emile Zola’s novels or almost like the Japanese novel, Spring Snow by Mishima and Duras’s The Lover where there is unrequited love. Tom suffers the harsh reality that he is going to die but shows his appreciation for life as the story comes to a close. At first, I thought Tom’s mother was a stripper but I know that she managed a boardinghouse so it’s not at all that bad for Tom except for the fact that he had to miss school plenty of times and had a hole in his heart. “The Deep” could almost represent that Tom was living like he was underwater and looking for ruby Hornaday in a school of many fish or that it meant the hole in his heart was deep. The title probably meant that his feelings were deep inside his heart for Ruby Hornaday only because it was hard for him to speak.
New American Stories – “SHHH”
The style that the story is written in is first person and is also tragic. The boy I think is stubborn and obnoxious because he talks about his father and siblings in such hatred. I also think the narrator or boy is angry because his father is sick and is suffering from aids. I was near tears at the ending because his friends finally got the narrator to finally participate in helping his father up and walking. He was in so much pain and could barely talk but it looked like he had swallowed the sun because there was a strange light in his eyes which meant he was near death but happy because he was in the sunlight with his son. I think the nicknames were made out of his anger at his father.
March 8, 2021
Angela Carter’s “Puss-In-Boots”
The style in Puss-In-Boots was first person narrative and sometimes second person narrative in kind of like a fairytale fable because it was also told in both the narrator and the cat’s perception and point of view. I think it is a cat’s stream of consciousness meaning a day in the life and mind of a regular cat. I enjoyed the story and appreciated the fact that it was about a cat because I like how she represented the cat-like features of his life. Reading this re-telling of puss-in-boots, I like how it reminded us of how heroic they the little cat was slaying all the mice. I think that it is cute about how Carter takes the cat’s character in its own perspective.
Angela Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love”
I enjoy reading about vampires and this one takes in a gothic style of the countess knowing she is a vampire. It is prose like only in gothic form and has the gothic aesthetic of blood-stained lace and the fact that she is a haunted house in herself. I like the fact that it is descriptive in describing the vampire countess although I think it needs a different kind of ending. I had to reread the ending twice to grasp how the vampire was very much like “The Fall Of The House of Usher” and “Ligeia” herself. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” it has this grotesque Gothic scenery aesthetic and in “Ligeia,” Ligeia dies much like “The Lady of The House of Love.”
March 15, 2021
New American Stories – “A Happy Rural Seat of Various View; Lucinda’s Garden”
I think in “A Happy Rural Seat of Various View; Lucinda’s Garden,” the technique is that the title gives it all away and has a theory pertaining to the Marxist theories of their time and especially ours. I think that once again we are faced with the bourgeois class is picking on the commonwealth and the lower class throughout the story. Gordon picks on Pie, Nick and Crosley. Especially Pie who he has no respect for and touches inappropriately. Gordon is portrayed as a sex fiend in discussion and I cannot help but agree because he has taken advantage of Pie and Nick carelessly was probably in love with her which is why he drives away so carelessly and feeling hurt into the night. I also think the title gives it away because all their views are given away into the night of Gordon’s Aunt Lucinda’s garden. The style is written in third person point of view where all their views are presented carefully in the story only Gordon reveals himself as the bourgeoisie who disrespects and/or either abducts or takes Pie away.
New American Stories – “Home”
“Home” embodies the American soldier after he comes home and I think like the most of my colleagues in our discussion that it was after the war that made him very much is because he then asks in his head to take him back because they must have sent him off to the war unprepared and then he comes home to chaos. It is in first person narrative and it is in the style of different lives with their backgrounds and stories of chaos while his mother and her boyfriend Harris are being evicted out of the home that they are in. I think the story went too fast and was intended to be so because everything was so chaotic after the soldier had come home. At first, I thought that the boy would be younger but the twist is that he himself is a war veteran.
March 29, 2021
Angela Carter’s “The Snow Child”
“The Snow Child” is a rendition of a Grimm fairytale which is “Snow White” and possibly her origins. It is in third person narrative and is in the style of almost like poetic prose. It makes the reader seem uncomfortable which is seen when the man on the horse sticks his “virile member” into the girl knowing that it was pedophilic and inappropriate that the object of his desire was a young girl that seemed to be created out of what his imagination perceived her to be that the man and ferocious woman found in the forest.
Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves”
“The Company of Wolves,” is a better told rendition of “Little Red Riding Hood,” whereas “The Werewolf” is about a grandmother who is actually a werewolf. It is thick in poetic prose and is probably more detailed than “Little Red Riding Hood.” It, like “The Werewolf” and “Wolf Alice” are very much like prose and are like a whole story put together if you read them in order because they are all like renditions of the Grimm fairytale, “Little Red Riding Hood.”
Angela Carter’s “The Werewolf”
“The Werewolf,” is like a Gothic fairytale rendition of “Little Red Riding Hood” just like “The Company of Wolves.” It has all the elements of evil in it when Carter mentions vampires, the devil, witches and especially the haunting element of the werewolf. It is a fairly good gothic fairytale that probably resonates with “The Lady of The House Of Love.” It is definitely about a witch who is a werewolf and about her hunter which is a young girl and sullenly reminds me of the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts. The twist was that the grandmother was actually in fact the werewolf. The devil is a metaphor for her grandmother because her grandmother must have been marked by a werewolf. I appreciate its prose-like style because it is in the style of the wolf’s eyes instead of the girl and her grandmother. The story instead is being told by the wolf’s version of the Grimm fairytale and is very imaginative and vivid in prose description as all her other stories are.
Angela Carter’s “Wolf Alice”
I honestly think that Carter should have replaced “Wolf Alice’s” title with “The Company of Wolves” because it is about a girl who is in the company essentially raised by wolves and most of the characters who are in the story think she’s possessed. Carter wanted to portray humanity through a wolf’s eyes from where she was coming from as the young girl was thinking in the way of the wolf if wolves even think which is a very important element in the way of the modern-day gothic fairytale.
April 12, 2021
New American Stories – “The Early Death of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp and Carr”
Lubeck, Brennan, Harp and Carr were almost like a part of a mob of trouble makers since they tried to kill a judge for picking on his girlfriend or wife. I appreciated the fact that this was almost like a movie as I was reading it. It lends itself to phenomenology where we can assume anything. Although it is hard to sympathize with the four, since they had hit the judge’s wife or his girlfriend and since it was a death of the four, I think it was a stand for justice. It was kind of uncomfortable to read it since there was a lot of bloodshed in the story, but I do enjoy the fact that they had been killed off in the end because I cannot seem to find sympathy since they were picking on a woman.
New American Stories: “Fish Sticks”
“Fish Sticks” is probably one of the weirdest stories I have ever read. Some would argue that they were all form a group home because they were at a laundromat and they met a girl called the Fish stick Girl who was mentally disabled. The fish sticks were probably a coping mechanism since she was always carrying them from out of the bottom of her purse. It is hard to understand such a story because I had to read it twice because I just could not understand how
fish sticks could be a coping mechanism. Maybe there was something so traumatic that happened with the Fish Stick Girl that involved fish sticks.
April 19, 2021
New American Stories – “The Arms and Legs of The Lake”
“The Arms and Legs of The Lake” are like the soldiers that made it through the war in this story the lake being a force in the story that they had to forge through which is the war and their arms and legs swimming in it since usually in the war it is the same old people and things that happen in everyday life for soldiers. It is almost like a day in the life of a soldier and their narratives for each one on the bus near the lake. The title could symbolize patriotism whereas the soldiers are the lake that embodies America’s very own arms and legs. I was fascinated reading this and I also thought that it would be great if I could write almost like this one day because it deals with war veterans and other things such as coming home from the war in Saudi Arabia. I like writing about things that I cannot relate with to test my skills on how much I know.
New American Stories – “Valley of The Girls”
“Valley of The Girls’ sort of reminds me of aliens from another planet with the way the style was written. First of all, I know they are Egyptian because of the Ba which is a human-headed bird that can transcend from heaven to earth and represents the soul. If anyone has watched GAIA, it is said that the pyramids used to be spaceships and that the peoples in there were extraterrestrials which is why I think that Hero and them must be aliens. I honestly believe that it is a story based on their own planet as they were travelling to earth.
April 26, 2021
New American Stories: “The Country”
I think that “The Country” is an occult story because there were people who went to this church and Jeanette comes over to see them and starts killing them and leaves the child Colson because of his innocence. They all suddenly die on him and I think since Colson is a child who represents and partakes in this sixth sense that Jeanette is evil is right because in the beginning of the story, it says that Jeanette is a doctor type who is fake to their religion and in the end, the father dies leaving Colson with Jeanette.
New American Stories: “Slatland”
I think “Slatland” portrays every aspect of what the average American woman goes through in everyday life. It would have been romantic if the main character Margit was not paranoid about her fiancé, Rezvan Balescu. I thought it was a little romantic and yet humorous because the doctor is a little wacky and kisses her goodbye because it seems he wants to get romantically involved with Margit. I obviously think that I agree with a colleague prior to discussion in class that the psychoanalyst or her therapist friend, Professor Pine belittles and ridicules her which is common for any woman in the U.S.
May 3, 2021
New American Stories: “The Largesse of The Sea Maiden”
“The Largesse of The Sea Maiden” reminds me of the opposite of The Great Gatsby because Gatsby was in the war whereas these guys were and Gatsby did not have a lot of friends whereas I guess in this story they do. It seemed like they were a bunch of sailors having a conversation with each other. I am guessing that this story could have been a regret or something like that of being regretful on the wasted years and the life of youth. It is probably the story of a dreamer in the American dream that is caught up with his friends in the war because he himself must have been a sailor and his heart must have belonged to the sea. His writing is like a narration of life and friends after the war.
New American Stories- “Raw Water”
This story reminds me of in the beginning, a road trip with two young people who are wild, young and in love. It is told in third person narrative and it reminds me of what could have been at the end between Rodney and the Nevis family. In other words, it reminds me of not any war but of youth unlike most of the stories we have read in New American Stories. I enjoyed reading the book’s assigned readings and this story in particular has a youthful tactic that makes you think of the sixties where everyone was getting high and going on road trips.
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