Quicksand
I really did not enjoy this book.
For one, Larsen’s writing is very unclear and awkward. Sentences like, “She carried herself as queens are reputed to bear themselves, and probabbly do not,” show nothing about the characters. Larsen repeatedly tells and explains, rather than shows with well-crafted imagery. It just doesn’t work. I mean, what does, “These things irked her with great irksomeness,” really tell us about how Helga felt? Not a lot.
On another note, Helga is a completely unsympathetic character. She longs for human contact and bonds, but consistantly separates herself from blacks because she is of mixed race. At times, she even seems to think she is better than them because of this. The scene in the jazz club makes her a very unattractive main character, and the reader, or at least I, wanted nothing to do with her. She calls her friends and the other black people at the club “jungle creatures” and adamently tells herself that she is not one of them and watches in disgust.
Helga just comes off as greedy and wishy-washy and unpleasant. With the exception of her difficult upbringing, there is little to sympathize with her about.
The combination of Larsen’s writing style and Helga’s attitude towards herself and others just made this book painful to read, and I really don’t know why Larsen is so exalted as a writer.
Fight Club
Tonight we acted like six year olds, or 13 year old boys.
We threw things.
We wrestled.
We ripped each others’ underwear.
We bit.
We punched.
And it relieved any and all sexual-, school-, relationship-tension, etc.
I highly recommend it.
“Midnight Cowboy” Brings Out the Worst in Humanity.
I was appalled by our class at the end of “Midnight Cowboy.”
The movie is a portrait of the people in this world who come to the city to make it big, to strike it rich, and never reach that apex. They do what they can to try to survive, stealing doesn’t seem wrong anymore, it’s necessary. Fucking a man when you’re straight is just what you do to eat. Not everyone gets to go to $40,000 college and eat in a cafeteria with both vegetarian AND vegan options! People shit all over them because they are the underbelly of society and everyone thinks they are so much better than them.
And our class shit on them, too. The fact that anyone would ever laugh at Ratso’s death, when he was so close to having finally fulfilled the one dream he had left after constantly failing all his life, only to fail again, but this time forever, is disgusting. Maybe those who laughed are just so used to getting everything handed to them on a silver platter that they just don’t understand what it is to struggle; maybe their mommies and daddies always told them that they were special and that it was okay if they didn’t do well in school, because, you know what, you’ve got other talents and you’re their little angel, that they just don’t understand what it is to not get what you want.
This film portrayed everything that’s terrible in this world. No matter what the pair did, they always were shot down and there is nothing more frustrating, but they kept on trying. And Joe Buck did everything he could for Ratso. For him to die when they were so close would be devestating.
Yes, it is just a movie, but there are a lot of people out there cheating, stealing, and fucking because life has dealt them a shitty hand, and they don’t know what else to do. It’s not so easy to get a “real job” when you have a ketchup stain on your crotch.
To laugh (in this context) just shows a lack of mature emotion.
On another note, Ratso was in love with Joe Buck, right? It was more than platonic, wasn’t it? Or was it just a deep bond between two people who need each other to get by?
Winter Wonderland
The city changes when it snows.
Everyone looks clean in white.
Elizabeth Bishop: Country Bumpkin or City Girl?
So can Bishop aliterate or what?
In her poem, “From the Country to the City,” Bishop compares America(?) to a clown, at the head of this clown is the city. And while she did not specify which city she was referencing, I automatically associated it with New York.
For one, it is obviously on the edge of the country. She rises upwards from the, “league-boots of land,” I thought of it as a clown laying across the length of the United States, his boots being the West Coast. And his head, his head is the East Coast, or more specifically New York. The “satin-stripes on harlequin’s trousers tights” she uses to represent miles of winding asphalt across the country. This is the first line she introduces the concept of the city–for all intents and purposes, we’ll say New York–depicted as a harlequin.
“His tough trunk, dressed in tatters” is the Midwest, the hardened and worn Dust Bowl of America where farmers have struggled, especially in the early 20th century.
But then you arrive at his head, his brain, with its “tall dunce-cap” and “shows and sights.” The brain, the city, New York, is done-up and painted to look flashy “with lamé and lights” but really it is just the ridiculous head of a harlequin. It is, as she says, the “wickedest clown.” It, typically New York, draws in the sons and daughters of the rest of the country. They drive across those “satin-stripes” to arrive in a city where they’ll probably never make it, despite their hopes and dreams.
Her use of aliteration: “The long, long legs, league-boots of land…” “his tough trunk dressed in tatters,” implies repetition. The pilgrims who consistantly make the journey to New York to escape the monotony of their homes only to fall into the monotony of the city.
At the end, the rest of the country, “the long black length of body,” begs the city to, “Subside,” and send its children home.
Greenpoint Rats Do It Better
I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t been to Greenpoint before, I have. But I did have an entirely new experience there and found out things I didn’t know through my research for this project.
Greenpoint, the northernmost part of Brooklyn, part of Brooklyn Community Board 1, “Little Poland,” was originally founded by the Dutch like the rest of New York. However, it has become a haven for immigrants, especially Poles. It has, unofficially, the second highest population of Polish immigrants in America, next to Chicago.
It made its name in the shipbuilding world and now many of the working-class residents, especially the immigrants, are being pushed out by gentrification and hipsters: it is following the same pattern in gentrification that Williamsburg used.
According to the 2000 census, there were 8744 families living in Greenpoint. This does not include rat families.
When I was in Greenpoint earlier this evening, I saw something I had never seen before and, honestly, never thought I would. I saw two rats mating. Or trying to mate. It’s hard with a group of college kids watching.
In the safety of the Greenpoint Ave. subway station, these rats were putting on an amazing show for us. At first, we weren’t sure if they were really trying to mate, maybe they were just playing. The larger male rat would mount the smaller female one for a split second, but mostly they would just run around chasing each other. The female would play like she was going to run into a pipe in the wall but then she would run in circles and chase the male. I did some research on rat mating and found out that this is perfectly normal. What we couldn’t see from across the tracks was that her vagina was apparently gaping open, which is also supposedly perfectly normal, but weird and a little disconcerting.
The male rat really had some persistance. He would grab her by her scruff and try to mate but then she’d run away. Although she’d always come back; she wanted it. We could even hear her make these little squeaking noises. And it just went on like that for at least ten minutes. Sometimes he would run away, then she’d scamper around the mountains of trash looking for him, sometimes she would run away and he would look for her. But sometimes, sometimes, he would succeed. Apparently it’s also normal for the male to repeatedly mount the female for very brief sessions, although I didn’t find this out until afterwards. We weren’t sure if this was normal or if we were watching Rat Rape.
I was amazed most that when the train finally started pulling into the station, he kept trying to pull into her station. They seemed completely unfazed by the screaming of the train. How could their little rat ears handle such a loud noise? Rats have pretty intense hearing, too, and still they kept flirting and touching like silly teenagers. I realized that love, or maybe just sex, makes us do silly things. And even if it’ll deafen you, you, or a rat, will do anything you can to be with the one you love.
Also, Mae West is from Greenpoint. So is Pat Benatar which is even funnier because I was just listening to “Promises in the Dark.”
Weegee
“The Joy of Living” Weegee (Arthur Felig)
The irony in this picture is just perfect. There’s not much else that has to be said.
I don’t think this is one of the photos we looked at in class, but that’s alright. Weegee’s work has always been so appealing to me because it’s so raw and unabashed. He’s not afraid to show you the hand hanging over the white-clothed stretcher or the blood on the sidewalk. He shows New York in all its grit, grime, and glory.
