Response to the first half of Maps To Anywhere

After reading the first half of Bernard Cooper's Maps To Anywhere, the piece that stuck out to me most was "How To Draw". For the most part, it stuck out because it gives an opinion on which kind of art is better and why; professional art and amateur art. Bernard Cooper feels that amateur art is superior to professional art because of the root of the motivation. With professional art, the artist is motivated my money, and fame. It is commissioned by someone and taken time with, with money in mind. He compares them to a dull fifth generation Xerox Amateur art is something done in the spur of the moment, hardly ever done by one that would proclaim themselves to be an artist. An example he gives is the Christmas gift given to neighbors by Mrs. Minn, "a little Santa, his head askew, made of Styrofoam balls and scraps of felt".

 In my opinion, both can be equally passionate, both can be equally "good". Though, I can see what he means by art being done in the spur of the moment being better. I don't necessarily think that a professional piece of art is not capable of being done in the spur of the moment. Not all professional art is done with money or fame in mind, especially considering the unstable, wavering definitions of "professional", "amateur" or even "art". Even what defines "good" is a debatable opinion. All in all, what makes art good is all in an individual's opinion.

Essay Packet 1 Response

The essay I focused on in this packet was Kristen Prevallet's Essay On The Sublimation Of Dying. In Synthesis I there is a lot of interesting use of homonyms, especially in the section titled "Homonym" naturally. She first uses the words sun and son comparatively in Mythology, as well as the words I and eye,and see and sea in Homonym. I really enjoyed the last bit of Mythology, how both the sun and the son are "...crowded by thoughts of mourning". The double meaning is so well executed, following through with the promised topic of death given by the title. Kristen Prevallet plays around with words a lot in this poetic essay, and since it is so poetic it is a little hard to follow. Even so, I enjoyed reading this essay the most of all the others in the packet. It interacts with the reader, and challenges us to think about what is being said. Death is the main theme of this essay, and it is apparent throughout. Prevallet even sort of narrates the killing of a fly on the very page in which she is writing.

Fiction Packet 3 Response

The short story from Fiction Packet 3 that I focused on was The Falling Girl by Dino Buzzati. The story is about a girl named Marta going through life rather quickly in a figurative sense. Literally, it is written that she jumps off the top of a very tall building to her death. She starts the story a 19 year old girl, but it ends with her an old woman. It is just a metaphor for the passing of life, missed opportunities and so on. Marta herself lives her life more on the quiet side, and she dies of old age. Her death doesn't have any impact on people as she wasn't all that important. She hits the ground, but no thud is heard by anyone. Marta definitely did not want her life to turn out this way. She's frightened and looks back on her life with regrets. The story is written with a lot of creatively detailed imagery; "...the city became a sweet abyss burning with pulsating lights.".

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.