Juice Response

Juice, by Renee Gladman, is a very poetically structured story. It is without a doubt, a poem that tells a story. Like most poetry, for me, it was a bit hard to follow. It is a book written with a lot of detail at an almost obsessive level. The story the book tells is not what makes it interesting. It's the massive amount of obsessive detail that kept me interested. It was also very non linear. She describes events that took place years before, and years later. It was hard to pinpoint where and when anything was happening. It was detailed in just about everything save for a specific setting and time. It seems to be based in a city like area sometime in the 20th century, but that's all I can deduce as far as that goes. Something I found interesting was how Gladman literally puts herself in the story as a character. Her character even tells the narrator to detail her life completely (Page 56). Detail is obviously important to Renee Gladman. The book really is just a character study of sorts. A study of the narrator and the study of many others by the narrator. It also seems to be a book about change. The narrator's hometown changes drastically, her sister changes drastically, and the narrator herself changes drastically. They change so much that they don't recognize each other at the museum. One thing I never understood was the meaning of the juice. The book is titled "Juice" and the character seemed to enjoy juice, but the meaning of this went over my head.

Fiction Packet Reflection

Fiction, regardless of what anyone says, has few guidelines. There are no limits to the writer or the reader except that it's interesting, and that it is indeed fictional. You can perfectly describe a character, or leave much of it to the reader's imagination. You can say "was" or "is" or whatever you like. You can describe in detail or without any. The more you think about rules and guidelines, the more dull it gets. It will sound robotic and flat. It will not have an ounce of individuality. You don't need the senses to tell a story as Burroway suggests, though they are probably pretty useful in keeping the reader interested. I agree with most everything that Burroway and Goldberg say about fiction writing, but I don't think all of it is necessary to write a compelling piece of fiction. The best way to go about applying rules and guidelines to a fiction story is after the fact. Put all notions of rules and guidelines aside and write most if not all of the fiction story. Then go back and if it is missing something, or just not interesting enough, examine the guidelines given by Burroway, Goldberg or other writers such as Vonnegut and apply them to your story.

Response to 2nd half of City Eclogue

I understand that this blog response is a tad bit late, and I apologize.

The second half of City Eclogue is, to me, quite nonsensical and unstructured. I can hardly extract any meaning from Roberson's poems. It seems he is still going on about cities and racial tension, though even that is difficult to get from this. He speaks of birds on multiple occasions, as well as cars and trains and other symbols of freedom and transportation. I suppose truly being free and being ridden of racial prejudice is the main theme in the entire book. I like how "Eclogue", and the book itself, ends with a quote from Carl Sagan. "We are the stuff of stars". In the context of this book, it means something a little different. In a literal sense we are the stuff of stars, matter and such (I haven't studied astrology in awhile). But in the context of the book it could symbolize how every individual is special or connected by the fact that we are all matter. People aren't that different, and prejudice of race is a silly, unnecessary concept.

Response to 2nd Fiction Packet

The short story I read from this packet was Brian Evenson's Internal from his book Contagion. It is a little hard to follow as it is very descriptive in its' details. An intern is asked to literally spy on a doctor's brother, going as far as drilling holes in the wall to spy on him. The intern finds out that the apartments where he could be are abandoned.  The intern is asked by an entirely unrelated doctor to spy on their brother as well. Their are already holes in the wall, seemingly made by the brother to observe the intern. I could not really extract a deep meaning from the story. The details given in the analyses of the doctors and the intern are almost satirical in a way. They are obsessive in categorizing and labeling people with types and percentages. Toward the end, the story becomes a bit horrific in a way in my opinion. The intern watches the brother, the brother watches the intern, the intern even considering jabbing a sharp object into the brothers' eye.  

Response to fiction packet 1

The first short story I read, and only story I will be responding to from fiction packet 1, was Survivors by Kim Addonizio. It is about two gay lovers arguing over who was going to die first. I assume that they both have the AIDS since it mentions right away that they were down to their last few T cells. I may be wrong. I'm sure neither of them wanted to see the other go. One of them said that he wanted to die first because he didn't want to deal with his lover's parrot (as it seems like a piece of his lover left behind) or his homophobic family. His lover's father had beaten him until he got his son's sexual orientation out of him.

Being someone not only in love, but not entirely straight either, this short story hits a nerve. Now, what I have no room relating to  is the fact that both men have AIDS. I cannot relate to this in any way as even the chance of this happening with me and someone I love is baffling. Not being either "in" or "out" of the closet, I've never really felt looked down by my family, but I understand what being out would probably do in a family like his. Being in love, or what I define as love at least, I know I'd much rather die first as to not go through the pain of her death.