Crash 2/1/12

I feel like the physical location of Crash is trivial. It could take place almost anywhere in the world and have the same effect. Its location is not even distinct - the airport isn't referred to by its name, it is just "the airport," and other details of location are left out as well. The primary location seems to be in the narrator's head. The story thus far is essentially just his thoughts, perceptions, and feelings, thus taking place in his mind despite outside figures and occurrences. The other characters are not particularly important. It is all about the narrator. I suppose in a way, this is true of any story with a single narrator - the story is that person's view and that person's world and the experiences of that person. However, in most other stories, outside events and people play a bigger role. This is not a physical location, but rather, Ballard's world. Whether it is Ballard's or his character James Ballard's is subject to some debate. To an extent, it's both.

Nabokov and Bakhtin 1/30/12

Cut up:

He's a vet tech, a "side vet," he calls it.
He lives next to, but not in, the egghead condominiums,
The ones with the shiny white tops.
His speech has a sort of glossy syntax.
He is avid about criminal amateur disgression voting.
Whatever that is.
Awkward engineer, priest pinging,
That's his replacement major.
He has a fear of bugs and shelves, his "maggoty shelf fear."
When he sees bugs or shelves, the floor seems to vanish, a waning floor.
In an attempt to cure his fear, he visits Sheen Church.
He has a ripple relation, hallelujah.
What?

Natasha:

In Natasha, the line between reality and fantasy is blurred. It is unclear what is distinctly there, what is implied, and what doesn't exist. Natasha's strange feelings/visions add to this greatly. The end is fairly abrupt and unresolved - Wolfe admits he loves her then vanishes, then she thinks she sees her father outside but he is in bed and has died. What happens with Wolfe? What happened to her father?

There are other unanswered questions as well. Why was Natasha's father ill? How long had he been ill? What is the family's relationship to Mr. Wolfe? How old is Natasha? Why is her age distinctly undefined?

The whole story has a fairly unsettled feeling about it. The fact that so many things are so unclear adds to that unsettled feeling.

Bakhtin:

Bakhtin's ideas of polyphony and dialogism apply quite clearly to both Natasha and the excerpts from Burroughs. In Natasha, the parts of Natasha, her father, and Wolfe are all equally important both in their presence and in their effect on the telling of the story. So many things are left out or left to be interpreted, but what is present is provided by three points of view, but still in third person. There is no primary, despite what the title of the work might suggest. Burroughs' work is similar in that it has multiple characters who are important to the telling of the story. His work goes so far as to place parts of the dialog in a play-like structure with the character listed in capital letters before his or her speech.

Bakhtin questions:

What are the specific differences, if any, between polyphony and dialogism? It seems that Bakhtin uses both as an opposite to monologism.

Burroughs 1/25/12

Seeing part of Burroughs' personality (in the interview) and comparing it to small parts of his work is fascinating. Though both the interview and excerpts from his work were brief, it was immediately clear that they ere of the same person. The way he is (or seems to be) is the way he writes. He seems somewhat scattered, yet still intentional, like his cut-up work. His cut up work was also interesting - not easy to comprehend, but clearly done the way it is for a reason, or for no reason at all.

I decided to try a cut-up poem from a page of the book I'm reading now - American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

Grim, as many titles as there are ways to die.
Drown that whisper.
Beach of skulls tasting the sounds,
Believe everything.
Ghostly-grey, somewhere deep beneath the world,
Drown that whisper, "Odin."
"Odin."
It would have been warmer there.

The way the same words can make several completely different things is an amazing concept. Here is the page from which the words were taken: