Confessions Of A Sentence

I am not much of a writer, specially in english. Most of my vocabulary is in spanish, and I am capable of making "words in the sentence are all vibrating and destabilizing themselves: no longer solid and immutable, they start to flutter this way and that in playful receptivity"(The Sentence Is A Lonely Place). At least that is what my old spanish teacher told me. But when it comes to English, "Words seemed to be intruders, blown into the rooms from otherwhere through the speakers of the television set or the radio"(The Sentence Is A Lonely Place). Perhaps it is because it is not my native language, or maybe I just don't feel comfortable writing in English because it limits my thoughts. I don't have enough vocabulary to fulfill all the expectations that my mind has for that piece of paper that will soon be read by someone. When Lutz wrote: "when we had to write, I could never call up any of the brassy and racketing words I had read" (The Sentence Is A Lonely Place)", I immediately had a flashback to the past weeks when I was writing my essay. I had some words in mind from previous books I read but they just disappeared once I started writing. Isn't it unfair? I just wish sometimes I was an English Dictionary I would avoid all this trouble.

But life is not as easy we have to learn to become good writers, and that is the purpose for this essay we are reading. Maybe it is not about knowing all the words but knowing how to work with them how to "make sure that the stressed syllables in a sentence outnumber the unstressed syllables. The fewer unstressed syllables there are, the more sonic impact the sentence will have"(The Sentence Is A Lonely Place).

Inconclusive

It came to an end, but can we really define it as an end? It was an inconclusive ending, The Tristero mystery ends up with no solution, and the novel ends before the reader could see what happens with the bidder who can help Oedipa unravel the mystery. Pychon does not give us time to wrap it all in. What we know is that Oedipa, trying to solve a mystery losses everything she once loved. She lost her husband to drugs, Dr. Hilarious to craziness, and Driblette committed suicide, and Metzeger ran away with a 15 year old, she says: "they are stripping away one by one, my men"(126). Her life has no meaning now and meaning the mystery does not have it either. She turned her life to "WASTE" trying to find something that may have just been a joke by Inveraty.

Most of the characters end up lost just as her quest. An example of her loss is how Mucho has been influenced by the LSD making him be lost in his own world, he said: "my dreams have changed (118)." and Oedipa is not a part of them anymore. The distortion of the world is the distortion of Oedipa to him.

I think that comes to the end of it, just as she lost her time and lost everything, in a way we lost it to. We tried to find the satirical meaning of the book to what purpose? There will still be things that we don't get and that we will never get.

The Inside Joke

It is hard to keep up with this book because first of all we didn't live in that time second  you need to have a lot of background historical information to keep up with it. And third it is not our culture! It is like an inside joke, you get it once they explain it to you but otherwise it's hard to get. Imagine an American watching Jaime Garzón, it is the same comparison.

But some things are really easy to get and you don't need any background information, it is just simple irony. It is really Ironic when Dr.Hilarious drives crazy. He is a psychiatrist, he is suppose to cure crazy people with medicated prescriptions. Instead, he prescribes LSD and  "is gone crazy. He took a chair and smashed the switchboard with it"(108),needing the help rather than giving it. He thought that "Three men with submachine guns were after. Terrorists, fanatics"(109) were after him. He ends up admitting that he was a Nazi Doctor in Buchenwald and used his facial expression as a weapon to render jews permanently catatonic. Oedipa ends up doing Dr. Hilarious' own psychoanalysis. When it was her who need one.

Going back to my inside joke point I want you to see this video, if you are Colombian you probably understand taking into account that you have some background information of the situation if you are not you will probably feel a bit lost just as I do in some parts of the book.

Can We Judge Pychon?

I can't help noticing how times have change even through literature, well that is obvious isn't it? Writing has accompanied humans since it was created showing the change of humanity. You may be wondering why am I writing this, what does it have to do with The Crying Of Lot 49, is there a pint on reading this blog? Well there is a point. This book was written in 1966 a period of modernization in the USA, the opening of a new era, a new mentality. In class we were asked to write historic events occurring in that time, and most of us came up with drugs, hippies etc. But one particular event just led me to more conclusions and that was Martin Luther King and Racism. Pynchon wrote this book in a critical period of racism, were it was beginning to be something of the past but was still present. In chapter 4, and through out the whole book I was annoyed by the way he described people from other races. He wrote: "Around them, all Negroes carried gunboats of mashed potatoes,spinach,shrimp,zucchini,pot roast,the long, glittering steam tables,preparing to feed noontide invasion of Yoyodyne workers"(65). The word Negro is a very depicting word, a discrimination to narrow it down a little. But although it sounds a but harsh on them, it was how they were treated, they were no African Americans they were Negroes who were not as capable as White people.

There is also some kind of resentment towards hispanics Pynchon writes:"For she had undergone her own educating at a time of nerves,blandness, and retreat among not only her fellow students but also most of the visible structure around and ahead of them, this having been a national reflex to certain pathologies in high places only death had had the power to cure, and this Berkeley was like no somnolent Siwash out of her own past at all, but more akin to those far eastern or Latin American universities you read about,those autonomous culture media where the most beloved of folklores ,cataclysm of dissent voiced, suicidal of commitments chosen--the sort that bring governments down"(83).  There is a clear target to the Latin American culture and education, he is comparing Oedipas education to ours showing how it fails, leaning to America as the only prosperous choice. We have to recall that in that time most of the Mexicans migrated to the USA and the opportunities given could not be compared to what hispanics lived before.

It may be sound a bit bitter but it was the time in which the book was written, there was racism and although the time was changing it was still present in most of the cases.

Si Vede La Mafia?

Reading Chapter 3 I found myself with something quite repetitive: La Cosa Nostra. Once I read that, I had a sudden flashback to a class when my friends were mocking me about the italian mafia. It all came back to me,  Cosa Nostra "is a Sicialian criminal society which is believed to have emerged in late 19th century Sicily, and the first such society to be referred to as a mafia (although it is not the first organized criminal society to appear in Italy)" (wikipedia).

Pychon's target here is the mafia wars dealt with in the 60's, but i found it interesting how he mocked them. The bone thing was quite awkward, he writes:"Tony Jaguar decided he could surely unload his harvest of bones on some American someplace, through his contacts in the "family,"known these days as Cosa Nostra" (47). In that time there was more of a market of heroin, it was the first mafia war.

What makes it more humorous is how Di Presso is running away from his own client, maybe showing the conspiracy held in the Mafia's in that time and how dangerous they were.

Irony Of The Day (Chapter 2)

Teacher: So now kids let's see what you have learned from today's class of The Crying Of Lot 49. Yes Mark.

Mark: We learned how the Irony plays in the second chapter.

Teacher: Can you children give me an example? Yes leslie

Leslie: It is very  easy,  when Odeipa said: "What did Iverarity tell about me," she asked finally and Metzger responded: "That you wouldn't be easy"(30).

Teacher: But why is it irony? Yes Sammy

Sammy: Because she was easy, she was tempted by Metzeger and was let herself get involved quite easily with Metzeger.

Teacher: Very good children! she turned around and they all had left for recess...

So Now what... The Bees? (Chapter 2)

First of all lets listen to this song:

Isn't it wonderful? But lets just look at in the world of The Crying Of Lot 49, rather than being called "I want to hold your hand" it is called "I want to kiss your feet" 

a clear mockery of The Beatles' single.

When Oedipa goes into the motel she meets with Miles "maybe 16 with a Beatle haircut" (16). When I read this I thought, "what is it with this guy, I know the Beatles were awesome but what's the point of bringing them back every two pages?" I kept on reading and my question was answered: "It's the group I'm in" Miles explained, the paranoids. We're new yet. Our manager says we should sing like that. We watch English Movies a lot, for the accent"(17). A side from the constant allusion to the Beatles I noticed the target here, how Pychon is questioning the influence this rock group had in our culture, in humans. The way they had been limiting the expression to a mediocre kind of sound, that was still a great phenomenon and will always be. How everything was controlled by them and everyone depended, in a way, on them.

Finally I Found A Period (Chapter 1)

Well I have to admit it is an interesting book. Although you start it without having a clue of what Tomas Pynchon wants to say, you end up intrigued with what will come next. I know it may sound as if I have not much to write, I am complementing the book but I promise I have a point. This satirical book kept me distracted and it took a real long time for me to concentrate on what was going on. After some debate with my mind, I noticed it was Thomas Pynchon's way of writing. He never ends his point, starts describing and describing or giving more details of the scene that by the time there is a period I end up thinking on how my friday ended, missing the point of the book.

Ill give you an example, Pychon writes: "Yet at least had believed in cars. maybe to excess: how could he not, seeing people poorer than him come in, Negro, Mexican, cracker, a parade seven days a week, bringing the most godawful of trade ins: motorized, metal extensions of themselves, of their families and what their whole lives must be like[...]"(5). I am sorry to tell you but it goes on, can you believe it? By the time I reached cracker my mind was thinking: "is it over yet?" 

But  i'll show you how my mind went on while reading with another fragment of this sentence: "or only of dust-and of those alive "oh I can't take it anymore" when the cars were swept out you had to look at the actual residue of their lives, and there was no way of telling what things had been truly refused "Were is the satire here?" should I take a 5 minute break?"(when so little he supposed came by that out of fear most of it had been taken and kept) and what had simply (perhaps tragically) "I did so bad on my Macbeth essay, oh wait I need to focus"[...] as the sentence went my mind went as well... 

There must be a reason for which Pychon is writing like that, maybe he finds it amusing to distract people, or he sees it as a way of making fun of a type of writing, which I am not fond of, but still the story amused me, it took me to another place: quite aside from reality, but fun in a way, just like when you go to the movies and get so into the movie that you are taken to the same world it pictures, I had to refocus sometimes but when I focused the chapter was quite entertaining, just as it is entertaining to write with only commas.

After All Selfishness Leads To Altruism

Being Selfish

After all the book was called The Selfish Gene and it ends up selfish. There is no altruism here, or at least I did not get the feeling of it. After some years of convincing myself that I was not selfish and I really cared fro the world, I saw the true reflection of every human being through this book. I know this is not much of a moral book, it was not Dawkins intention. WE have been fooled by our own conscious even if we try we will seem altruistic but it is our selfishness who ends up winning. We have been "cheating in subtle ways against our social companions"(236). Every part of us has a self interest, "single genes cheat against their other genes with which they share a body" (236).

Our genes have replicated in that way and that is why we are such a disappointment or we can say the whole earth is, and sadly " the success that a replicator has in this world will depend on what kind of world it is" (265). If that was our hope, to have some genes that were not selfish and worth replicating, well with what was just said we are screwed. 

 If it all depends on our world we have no hope...

Macbeth Through The Selfish Eye

I am sitting in front of my laptop thinking of a way I could find The Selfish Gene a bit more interesting. I decided to take my imagination to a more scientific perspective turning myself into the one and only Richard Dawkins. I don't make a really good Dawkins, but it's worth a try.

When "I" wrote: "The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or unit of imitation. Instead of writing, "examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases,clothes [...] (192)."I" would have used Shakespeare and Macbeth as the one example.

Shakespeare has been an "idea that catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain"(192). Shakespeare has been an all time writer who has enlightened the world with his wonderful masterpieces such as Macbeth. But, "How does it {meme} replicate itself?"(192). By the spoken and written word, aided by great music and art" (193). We can see it with the following:

"If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly. If the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here,"(Act 1 Scene 7) "Why does this have such survival value?" (193) It has been Shakespeare who has inspired the art of English literature and the genes of his work who have prevailed through time.