Roethke

Out of all the stories we have read this semester, Roethke’s story is my favorite. I love how as the reader I am instantly forced into the story and given all the details I need in order to coherently follow the structure of the story. The structure and dialogue of the story is very well written, molding the ambiguity of the inner dialogue with that that has been said in such a way that the read doesn’t become “bogged down” in information.
The best part of the story is the different sections of the story. Each section has a subtitle and within that subtitle are simple words and phrases that describe what each section is about. I have never thought to experiment writing a story that is broken in to subtitles and allow for the subtitles to move the plot along. However, the only real plot development, as far as I can tell, is that of Eulalea Mae, although I’m not quite sure what her purpose is to the story.

I am still confused as to what the author wants to show with this story. What is the over all message? The beginning definition or phrase at the top of the story leads me to think of the story as going in one direction but when Eulalea Mae is finally mentioned, I become a lost for words. This reminds me of the Gerbil, yet it is safe to say that in both stories the Gerbil and Eulalea Mae serve as a catalyst for some thing, though I’m worried that catalyst is only to get us through the story.

I wouldn’t mind reading other stories by Roethke, though I’m worried that since I really liked this one, I probably wouldn’t like any of the other ones. Oh well.

What I learned from "last class"

Roethke has successfully done what I have been trying to do for four stories. He does the no-quotations-dialogue, which makes it ambiguous whether someone is talking or thinking, blends inner monologue what’s going on in the story, and makes you sympathize with the character with its strong sense of first-person. His was appropriate and successful, while mine, as many of you have commented, often isn’t.

But now I have insight into why it sometimes work and sometimes doesn’t. I throw my no-quotation trick in with a vast menagerie of other literary devices, as well as actions and plot twists. Roethke’s, on the hand, takes up the entire story – it basically is the story. The entire piece is one big no-quotations trick.

Obviously, this serves to prevent confusion. There’s never time when you ask, “Is he speaking now, or thinking?” Secondly, his trick gets the opportunity to really blossom and make us laugh over and over again, because it doesn’t interfere with other things, ,or slow down what is happening.

Roethke’s story is not really a narrative in the conventional sense – there’s no story arc. He magnifies one single scene from the life of his character that probably played out in about 10 minutes. There are no actions that he has to rhythmically intertwine with his monologue. There is no grand theme that he must collectively point all of his dialogue in the direction of – the grand theme is inherently in the dialogue. He is not bogging down the story with his prose because there is no story to bog down.

And what little action does occur in the story, he pulls off through the dialogue: “As for you, Eulalea Mae – please rise when I name you individually.”

So he is free to insert as many jokes as he wants to. He piles them on top of one another, and they get better and better because they are so excessive. At no point do I yawn and say, “Where is this leading?” because I know it isn’t leading anywhere.

So that’s the lesson I learned from Roethke. If you are going to do the no-quotations trick, and blend inner monologue with verbal speech and action, inner monologue has to be a centric part of the project, if not the only part.

George Saudners' Jon

It took a few pages for me to get used to the language and style of George Saunders' story, and for the first few paragraphs, I was rather put off. There were so many which's and what's and this is, that is, which is , who is-- I got confused and had to slow myself from skimming a greater part of the story.

I kept reading though, and I was happy to see that Saunders' story, despite its awkward, albeit occasionally charming style choice, his characters were interesting, the narrative extremely original, and his off-the-cuff sense of humor was absolutely marvelous.

What really struck me in this story were the details. The trademark after Aurabon, little phrases like "baby belly," the stores and modern references, or even just the repetition of Baby Amber, made this piece seem more real, almost like I could imagine myself in the facilities and doing the assessments on Ginger-Diet Coke.

I will say, since there wasn't a whole lot of exposition, I was a little confused on what exactly was taking place, or rather where everything was taking place, but I also think that added to the story. The point of the piece, I'm still trying to figure out. I get the brainwashing and the idea of utopian society through marketing and conformity, but, well, that's all I get.

The part about a man being called a rabbit when he was once a lion, the use of dude throughout the piece, and just, the odd bits-- this story really baffled me, and I can't quite get my head around it, but I enjoyed it. I was really pulling for Jon and Carolyn too.

I'd like to write this in commercialized form...

...but I don't think I'm that brainwashed yet.

This piece was an interesting mix of science fiction and social commentary, yes. In a nutshell, as I understood it, the characters live in a futuristic America composed of the Haves, those totally owned and subservient to the consumer culture, and the Have Nots, the average Joes that aren't brainwashed by the commercialization of society and don't enjoy the same comforts as their counterparts.

Saunders' choice of voice for the narrator grew on me. Initially, I had no idea whether the narrator was a child, teen, or adult, whether he was fully competent or somewhat retarded, and why he kept referring to LI's. I still don't know how old he is suppose to be, and I don't know what would constitute "mental retardation" in this society, as everyone seems to be, in their own way, mentally deficient. But after awhile it didn't bother me; I just took Jon/Randy for the entity that he is, a confused man in a transitional period in his life.

I thought this society was an interesting setting for a coming-of-age tale. And while I certainly think that Saunders was condemning how commercialized our own society is (children sold into luxurious slavery by incapable parents and raised on consumer comforts, I agree, that's fucked), I feel like the crux of his story was Jon's choice. We recognize and empathize with his feelings of fear and anxiety, happiness and comfort, and we pull for him to do the "right" thing, make the scary choice, and get the fuck out of there.

If nothing else, this was unique. I like that Saunders took such a random-yet-well-planned course to write about simple (but obviously complex) human emotion and feeling. It's something I think I'll try soon in my own work.

Like looking inti the future...

This story was a pretty interesting read. I think it could have been a little shorter, but I stayed mildly entertained throughout. I guess the main thing that stood out to me was the obvious social commentary, which, honestly, I don't really think was that far out. I mean, sure, the world this tory takes place in seems absurd, but aren't some of these concepts of commercialization overtaking society at least metaphorically coming to pass? I honestly believe so.

Now, I would not dare compare Goerge Saunders to the likes of Ray Bradbury or Ayn Rand, but this story felt very much like the two mentione author's biggest novels. For instance, in Farenheit 451 we see this surreal world where the media controls all, big brother is ever so present, and books are hardly conceivable. That was a world Bradbury saw coming in his wildest imagination. Looking at it today it's obvious this degree of oppression and manipulation hasn't occured, but a lot of other similar concepts and aspects have. For instance, it's a known fact kids don't read, at all. It's an extremely small percent that actually read on a regular basis. And we can easily say the media controls almost everything about our lives. I think this presidential election is a great example. Look how all the major media outlets play with the public by sensationalizing stories concerning both major candidates. We associate ourselves and identity more with products or fictional characters that we see on the television than real life role models.

I really enjoy this topic, and definitely have played with stories concerning futuristic commercialism and media control. I often wonder if a world even remotely similar to this one could develope in my lifetime.

I love minimalism, but I also like being oriented

I love the idea of a futuristic plutocracy where commercialism is so pervasive that kids can only express their feelings in terms of the advertisements they’ve seen. I also love the idea that crass cross-promotion and corporate celebrity-breeding have become so bad that corporations have started raising kids from birth and insulating them completely to make them perfect celebrities and to test their products in-depth. I loved it so much that I required more.

Just how disparate is this world from our own? The author gives clues that these focus-group homes exist all over the country (the kids win in the “Midwest” category of “white teens”) but doesn’t tell us exactly how big a role they play in society. He seems to suggest that in this future world, there is an extreme polarization of wealth, and that these celebrity-like kids are the only ones who can rise above the muck – the narrator mentions that had he not been accepted into the focus group, his only other option would have been “the lumber yard.” On the next page, Slippen notes that his kids’ only other option is to become “merely another ophthalmologist among millions of ophthalmologists.” So the government regulate people’s careers and destiny? Is there a limited amount of opportunity because corporations have swelled to complete oligopoly and near ubiquity? The author never says.

In an effort to be coy and perhaps move the story along quickly, Saunders leaves me disoriented and confused. Why were they blindfolded “for their own protection” on the way to the Lerner Center? I knew they were celebrities, but does the corporation have to keep them oblivious to the world? Or are the leaders concealing where the Lerner Center is? Why? Is this business more malevolent then it lets on?

Also, if this is a highly advanced market research and pretty-boy farming corporation who micromanages the lives of their case studies, how did they manage to overlook a dying infant?

Telling me important details, such as why these kids are there, and what those “holes” in their neck are for, would have helped a lot had they come near the beginning. Obviously, not telling me why the narrator has two given names was smart, and paid off at the end when you find out why, but there is no reason why I shouldn’t know what the holes were for up front. There’s no pay-off for that.

It seems like Saunders felt the need to limit this story to a certain number of words to assure readability, and instead of taking out unneeded expository dialogue such as Dove telling the narrator “That’s your mom,” (which we deduced any), he took out entire ideas that would have helped me understand his surreal world better.

These details are relevant to the plot and to the story’s implications, because this story is an indictment of culture. It is suggesting that our world is similar to, and might eventually become like the one in the story. It would help me to know more about the process. In a story about kids who are tragically products of their environment, I would have liked to know more about the environment.

George Saunders

I really had a hard time understanding this story. It wasn't so much the structure as the grammar that tripped me up. I felt like I was being forced to become ADD to understand this story. I didn't feel any connection to any of the characters.  I also got tripped up on the number thing. I felt like I ws thrust into a world that wasn't explained to me. I felt like a tourist. This story also carries many familiar tones with it. In the beginning it much like "Brave New World" but by the end it felt like "The Island" movie. It did not feel like an easy read but rather a forced read. I felt very much like an outsider. I didn't understand the motivations or society. I very quickly began skipping over the numbers because I felt like they were a waste to remember. However, the structure wasn't completely horrible. Though the way in which it was written like sentence structure really frustrated me and slowed me down. It was all in all an okay story.

In response to George Saunders

The main thing that bothers me about George Saunders’s story is the way the story is structured. I was expecting to read a short story with a wonderful development of dialogue and over all paragraph structure. Instead I had to weed through a bunch of “like” and “she said he said” given to me from the view point of the author. After about ten pages into the story, and about triple that many uses of the word “like” (ect), I had to put the story down. My brain just could not continue.
For the most part, I did think the plot as well developed and I feel the best part of the entire story is at the beginning when Baby Amber dies. Yet the story still continued to read like a reflection conversation – imagine me retelling you a story and having to hear me constantly say, “And then she said…. And then he said…” and so forth. That was the most distracting part of the story. I wanted to give the story a chance and kept telling myself that this form of writing only happened at the beginning of the story. Yet I still kept finding it in the middle and toward the end of the story.
Another thing that drove me CRAZY in the story were the random sequences of numbers like LI 11121 inserted in the story. What the hell what that about? I kept trying to connect it to something, anything, but I’m not sure what to connect it to.
I think the story would have left a greater impression on me had I not been weeding through all these little things.
(And yes, I still want an explanation to the sequences of numbers.)

Carmer's Knights

I didn't much care for this one either. I think that it comes across as a water-downed version of the orginal. And this gets me thinking, how can someone who was a professor create such a crime? Was is it a simple forgetful error that he didn't give credit or did he actually think they were two separate pieces? How was this allowed to be published? Aren't there ways to prevent this sort of thing? Anyway, I really did not care for the original and this one even less.

Tuscaloosa Nights

I wasn't sure what to expect when I was told that this piece had been plagiarized, but I felt underwhelmed by the supposed plagiarization. While one small account in Carmer's piece somewhat resembles the entire story on which Vice's "Tuscaloosa Knights" is based, I didn't feel like I was reading a piece that was even remotely the same. While Vice's piece dealt with one particular fish-out-of-water incidence of a woman viewing human "evil" and then falling victim to her own inner desire, Carmer's piece read much more like a memoir or perhaps a cover story for a magazine; there wasn't any one "story" so much as there were accounts of the narrator's experiences while living and teaching in Tuscaloosa for six or so years.

I feel like the concept of Vice's piece being plagiarized is a contradiction to what I've been taught. All of my writing teachers have said, "If you like something, take it and run with it." I feel like that's exactly what Vice did. He found one small aspect of Carmer's book and said, "Hmm, what if I took this tiny instance and ran with it, really worked it out and turned it into something. What if it was a woman, and it was set now?" Granted, he should have been more up front in regards to Carmer's work as inspiration, but still, to refer to it as plagiarism feels like a stretch.

Focusing just on the Carmer excerpt, I enjoyed it. While it was set in Tuscaloosa, until the final chapter I felt, because of the difference in time periods, like I was a purerly fictitious "Anytown, USA" set in the early part of the century. I'm sure if I poured through the piece and picked out certain details I could more directly place certain events, but on first read it felt like it could have taken anywhere in the South or Midwest during that time period in America.

I enjoyed the blend of memoir and narrative. At times it felt more like I was reading the narrator's journal than "listening" to him tell a story. It broke the piece up very well and gave it an almost journalistic quality.

I enjoyed this piece more than Vice's. I think this is because it covers a greater subject matter of old-school Tuscaloosa, distancing me from it despite the fact that I'm a current resident and simultaneously not forcing me to associate myself with the vivid, borderline-despicable deeds of Vice's story.

"Tuscaloosa Nights" by Carl Carmer

I enjoyed reading "Tuscaloosa Nights." It had a real old-school feel to it. The first-person perspective worked well and the descriptions were excellent.

After reading Carmer's story, my original impression of Brad Vice's story is significantly diminished - not because of the plagiarized section, but because Carmer's story is that much better. Vice's prose pales in comparison to Carmer's. And I don't think such comparisons are unfair, due to the similarity of the stories.

One thing that was really obvious, and goes back to my review of Vice's story, is the way in which Carmer handles references to Tuscaloosa. In his story, they are essential and never distracting, even to me, which was a problem in Brad Vice's story.

While I don't think Vice's plagiarism was committed maliciously, he still used extremely bad judgement. It is also of note that he didn't just plagiarize the whole section without altering it, but made several changes which, in my opinion, were to the worse and cheapened Vice's attempts significantly. As it looks to me, Vice was trying to imitate one of he writers he looked up to. Well, he failed. Carmer's story is infinitely more vivid and important. It's funny how reading it lowered my opinion of last week's story.