Ad Man

The story “Jon,” the first one in Saunders’ collection, seemed like the weirdest story out of everything we had read up to that point. “Insanely inventive,” a quote from a New York Times book review on the front cover, is a good way to describe it. Jon, or Randy, works in this TV ad evaluation place,  and he is programmed so that his mind is taken up by every commercial he has ever seen. The main point I wanted to make is that I think he makes the right choice when he decides to go “Out” of this life and become a common person once again, but first I want to go back to a few of my favorite ads that are imprinted in his mind.

When Jon describes making love for the first time, he makes an elaborate comparison to Honey Grahams: “the stream of milk and the stream of honey enjoin to make that river of sweet-tasting goodness, […] they just become one fluid, this like honey/milk combo” (Saunders 26).

There is one meaningful moment when Carolyn is looking at Jon for a long time, anxious and worried for what is going to become of him, and the first thing that comes ­­to Jon’s mind is an ad about a Claymation chicken that gets crushed.

When Jon remembers his experience as a kid with fishing, he remembers an ad about Jesus making fish and loafs of bread. I loved this line: “…and then that one dude goes, Lord, this bread is dry, can you not summon up some ButterSub?”

Much of Jon’s life is made up of the ads he sees. His emotions, his feelings, his experiences, everything seems to be based on some commercial on TV. It often makes his narration funny and makes it easy for Jon to make a joke referencing some ad everyone around him is familiar with. There are some moments, however, when he would have been able to come up with more meaningful response and made a moment with Carolyn or another person more real if he didn’t speak in ads and had his own ideas and his own voice.

I think in the end Jon makes the right decision when he chooses to follow Carolyn and get the chip taken out of his neck. They’ll both talk nonsense at first but I have hope that the old lady was telling the truth and after a year or two they would be able to become normal people. They’ll still be able to reference commercials and have their private jokes, but their minds wouldn’t be taken over by these ads, and they would be able to have their own feelings and tell each other things they themselves believe in, rather than what they were preached in LI 6832934857.

Sanjeev vs. Twinkle

One of my favorite stories in “The Interpreter of Maladies” was the story This House is Blessed. It’s hilarious how ridiculous and gaudy all of Twinkle’s Christian “treasures” are and yet how much she cherishes them. I think most people in our class discussion sided with Twinkle, saying that the love for these objects is only a small whim and more of a joke for her than anything near a potential conversion, and that Sanjeev just isn’t in on the joke and needs to take things less seriously. I kind of see that and think the couple could have been happier if Sanjeev went along with Twinkle’s little wishes. When I was reading the story, however, I had different feelings about Twinkle and her obsession and felt myself siding much more with Sanjeev.

Throughout the story, Twinkle reminded me of a stubborn child who must always get her way and will find new arguments or excuses every time she is accused of something. She always gets hyper-excited whenever she finds a new Christian object in the house, yelling to Sanjeev “Guess what I found,” claiming that the huge Christ poster must be put up because it’s “so spectacular,” and bragging to her girlfriends that “each day is like a treasure hunt.”  When Twinkle finds the Virgin Mary statue in the yard, Sanjeev runs up to find that she had "collapsed on the grass, dissolved in nearly silent laughter,” from joy, like the reaction of a toddler to something exciting.

Of course it’s not a bad thing to sometimes have the personality of a little child and to find little things in life that bring you happiness, but I kept getting a feeling that maybe the main reason that Twinkle is so staunch about keeping the Christian paraphernalia isn’t as much her being inspired and fascinated by it as knowing that it annoys Sanjeev. This is only a theory and maybe is wrong, but it seemed like Twinkle has many characteristics of a small child, such as forming a strong opinion about something just because someone else has another opinion, to be able to argue and win the fight. We see Twinkle pleading, making excuses and compromises, and ending up almost storming out of the house half-naked to get her way and have the things she found displayed where she wants them. Kids often go through everything they can think of to get their parent to buy them something or let them do something, until in the most extreme cases it gets to tears, and then the parents often concede. I felt like Twinkle felt exactly in that role.

I like Twinkle for being so open and honest and for being the heart of the party when Sanjeev’s friends come over, but I do think she’s pretty silly and childish. I have a feeling that, if Sanjeev gave let her always have her way with keeping the religious figures and displaying them on the mantelpiece, she would soon get bored of this new passion and find something else to nag him about. I hope that once they live together longer, they might learn to understand each other better and become happier. But for now, I’m probably more on Sanjeev’s side.

Mrs. Sen and Love for Food

One of the characters from the Interpreter of Maladies I felt the most attached to is Mrs. Sen, and only after finishing the story I realized that maybe it’s because I’ve never seen a character who is a more exact copy of my grandmother. Maybe my grandma doesn’t have a full closet of saris or wear bright red lipstick, but I’m pretty sure the only things she cares about in her life are family and… food! (well, and maybe soccer matches) And I actually think there is nothing she likes more than fish. When I go to Russia in the summer, my grandmother seems to have a goal to feed me and my mom the most nutritious, freshest food, and get us to eat as much as possible. When I call her on a weekend, at any time I’ve learned to expect her to have to run turn off the stove because she has something cooking. Sometimes my mom and I can’t stand the food anymore, but I think after reading this story I sort of understand my grandmother better.

The first thing that appeals to Elliot about Mrs. Sen is her cooking. “He especially enjoyed watching Mrs. Sen as she chopped things […].” No wonder. I imagined if I were a little boy, I would have been fascinated by this lady’s cooking. 

“[…] she took whole vegetables between her hands and hacked them apart: cauliflower, cabbage, butternut squash. She split things in half, then quarters, speedily producing florets, cubes, slices, and shreds. She could peel a potato in seconds.”

It’s not just the cooking but also Mrs. Sen’s stories about her life in India that drew Elliot closer to his baby-sitter with each visit. One day, she explains the mysterious hour-long daily chopping routine by telling Elliot about a tradition in her “home”:

“’Whenever there is a wedding in the family, […] or a large celebration of any kind, my mother sends out word in the evening [and]  all the neighborhood women […]  sit in an enormous circle on the roof of our building, laughing and gossiping and slicing fifty kilos of vegetables through the night.”

The impression I got is that, yes, Mrs. Sen loves to have a good meal and to get a fresh fish from the store, but what’s more important isn’t the food itself but the connections of these foods to her heritage and to her home in India. While Mr. Sen is usually away at his work teaching classes, socializing with his American colleagues and students and slowly becoming more American himself, Mrs. Sen always wants to greet him with a traditional Indian dinner and to stick to the traditions of the many generations of her family.

It’s interesting what contrast Elliot sees between Mrs. Sen and his mother. Of course there are the cultural differences in clothing and the way they keep their homes, but I wanted to focus on food and cooking. It’s not just for her husband that Mrs. Sen cooks. When Elliot is over, she always makes sure he has enough food, giving him snacks like crackers with peanut butter, Popsicles, “peeled wedges of an orange, or lightly salted

peanuts, which she had already shelled,” and any food she and Mr. Sen happen to be eating while Elliot is over. Every day when Elliot’s mom comes to pick her up, Mrs. Sen makes sure to have her come inside and have some food as well (which Elliot’s mom never likes but calls “delicious” out of politeness). In contrast, we see Elliot’s mother who never eats lunch herself and, when she comes home, drinks wine and gorges herself on bread with cheese, often leaving the store-bought pizza for Elliot to eat alone. It’s true that Elliot’s mother can’t afford to spend the whole day cooking at home like Mrs. Sen, and I think Elliot understand that and seems to be okay with that lifestyle, but he’s surprised to see the values of his Indian babysitter so different from his mother’s. I also often got a feeling that he respects Mrs. Sen for putting so much care into preparing food and, maybe without realizing it, sometimes wishes his mother was more like her.

For Mrs. Sen, food helps her retain her family’s culture and remember her life before she came to America. It’s not as much about the pleasure of eating good food as the pleasure from sharing a traditional meal with someone. Somehow this care about food made Mrs. Sen very appealing to me, especially after contrasting her to Elliot’s mother and thinking about many other typical Americans who don’t consider family meals or family time in general as important.

Getting back to my grandma, I think the biggest reason she takes such care to cook a lot when my mom and I come over is to keep us healthy and vitaminized, but another big reason must be that it’s a family tradition. She wants me to have the traditional Russian food that can’t be quite the same if we cook it with American products, and she wants my mom to enjoy traditional well-cooked meals that she wouldn’t have enough time to cook after she gets back from work. My grandma enjoys sitting at a table and drinking tea and talking after each meal. I think I will now appreciate her efforts to feed me even when I’m full a little bit more.

I Wonder if the Cat Was Black

“You pick her up, tuck her under your chin, your teeth clenched in love, your voice cooey, gooey with maternity, you say things like, ‘How’s my little dirt-nose, my little fuzz-face, my little honey-head?’” (Moore 102)

As I was reading Amahl and the Night Visitors: A Guide to the Tenor of Love, the scenes I found the most cute and amusing were ones involving the cat. I pictured Trudy lovingly hugging her pet, calling her sweet names, and waltzing with her around the house, and it seemed that nothing in her life was making her happier. I only realized later in the story, and then in our discussion, that the more time Trudy devoted to the cat, the more she was undermining her relationship with Moss.

When Moss and Trudy are still together, we see moments they clash when the cat comes up. Let’s look at a few examples.

When Moss comes home late at night, one of the first things Trudy asks is if he made sure not to let the cat outside. Moss is tired, and now also annoyed that the cat is the first thing on Trudy’s mind. “‘You’re turning into a cat mom. Cats, Trudy, are the worst sort of surrogates,’” he says (Moore 100).

At least twice, first on 12/1 and then again in two weeks, Moss tells Trudy it’s time to let the cat outside, but both times Trudy drives him off saying the cat is still too young and something could happen. Rereading parts of the story now, I think Moss sees Trudy’s over-protection of the cat similar to her paranoia as she suspects that he is concealing an affair. This might be a little far-fetched, but I was rereading the scene where Moss yells at Trudy: “‘You just won’t let people be,’ says Moss, each consonant spit like a fish bone,” and I almost wanted to insert [or cats] in there (Moore 111). Of course he is mad about her being so suspicious, but I think his annoyance that Trudy won’t let the cat have a normal life plays in here. Also the line “spit like a fish bone” jumped out at me. I’ve never owned a cat, but I’m pretty sure overly protective owners wouldn’t let their cats eat fish with bones, so I could almost picture Trudy’s cat eating a secretly-stolen fish and spitting out fish bones in protest as she gives Trudy a look with the same frustration Moss has. Okay, maybe that’s too much.

Another important scene is where the cast comes over for dinner, and the cat is loudly playing with the marble in the bathtub. “‘It’s the beast,’ says Moss. ‘We should put her outside, Trudy,’” he adds, repeating what he suggested before (Moore 103). He doesn’t care to start an argument here and just goes on to pour Sonia a glass of wine. This isn’t such a blow to Moss and Trudy’s relationship as the fights they have, but here Trudy gets the role of someone who doesn’t let her cat outside, while Sonia is the welcomed guest Moss is offering wine, as well as someone Trudy suspects him of cheating with.

Throughout the story, I think Trudy is giving off the affection she has for Moss that he won’t take or won’t reciprocate to the cat. The cat helps her almost escape the reality of clashes in her relationship and be transported to a world of cooey-gooey sweet talk and cat fur against her. The more love and time she devotes to the cat, however, the more alienated Moss feels from her.

In the end, after the relationship is broken, Trudy eventually concedes and lets the cat outside, which I think is likely symbolic of her accepting the fact that sometimes she was overly paranoid and that she should have given Moss more freedom. When she tells Moss about it, as he is packing his things, he hugs her and tries to comfort her, which he hasn’t often done during their relationship: “‘It’s only been one day. She’ll come back. You’ll see’” (Moore 115). He seems to lose all his annoyance and hugs her. Of course I might be wrong, but I have hope that Trudy will not only see the cat come back, but Moss too.

Oui, oui, Paris!

“It was on a bridge, one tremendous, April morning, that I knew I had fallen in love” (Baldwin 157). You guys probably remember this scene from “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon.” We discussed it in detail in class, but I think I can say it’s my favorite scene in “Going to Meet the Man” thus far, so I want to get back to it and also see it side-by-side with a moment from “Previous Condition.”

In the Paris scene, the narrator tells us he loves Paris, but not just because...Paris!...but because this city let him live in the moment and be who he is without necessary guise or pretense.

For the first time in my life I had not been afraid of the patriotism of the mindless, in uniform or out, who would beat me up and treat the woman who was with me as though she were the lowest of untouchables. For the first time in my life I felt that no force jeopardized my right, my power, to possess and to protect a woman; for the first time, the first time, felt that the woman was not, in her own eyes or in the eyes of the world, degraded by my presence (Baldwin 157).

This is a very powerful scene, and maybe one of the few moments in the book in which the narrator feels secure and happy with his life. A little before that, I found this line striking: “During all the years of my life, until that moment, I had carried the menacing, the hostile, killing world with me everywhere. [...] the white man’s world” (Baldwin 158). The issues of racism, prejudice, and violence are deeply rooted in his mind, so simply being able to stand on a bridge in Paris and have an argument with his girlfriend without getting weird looks, something so many people would take for granted, for him is a privilege and a blessing.  

Looking at an earlier scene, from “Previous Condition,” we see a contrast in the situation when the narrator is in a restaurant in New York with Ida. He is scared realizing what trouble he might be getting himself into after he raises his voice with a white girl: “I turned cold, seeing what they were seeing: a black boy and a white woman, alone together. I knew it would take nothing to have them at my throat” (Baldwin 97). It’s interesting that the argument with Harriet brings out love and gratitude, while a small conflict with Ida leads to the narrator’s outrage followed by cold fear. It also seemed to me that, although Ida seemed more concerned about pleasing the narrator and was clearly worried for his well-being, their interaction seemed a little… fake, almost? I know they didn't have a serious relationship going, but the narrator didn't really seem emotionally attached to Ida, even just as a friend. At the same time, the arguing and pouting in silence on the bridge in Paris seemed to bring the couple closer. Did you guys feel the same way when reading those scenes?

I realize that the narrators of these two stories are probably different people, but as Baldwin is crafting his characters he is putting a lot of his own life and feelings into them. His characters share an identity and an appreciation for life free of racial prejudice. Baldwin had moved to Paris at the age of 24 to stay there for most of his later life, and I can see the following line showing what his own feelings were towards his new life: “I love Paris, I will always love it, it is the city which saved my life. It saved my life by allowing me to find out who I am” (Baldwin 157).

Some Notes on Picasso’s Friend

I was sitting on my bed one night, last week, reading  De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period, and I couldn’t put the book down. This story is so good! I thought. And then the next day, when we had our discussion, a common opinion was that we kind of start to hate “Jean de Daumier-Smith” from the first page and question his credibility as a storyteller after all his lies. But… but these lies, and this obnoxious character, are the beauty of this story!

Okay, I won’t say that I’d like to be that bus driver Jean insults in French, or his student at that time, or really anyone else interacting with him in the story. But, as a reader, I found him to be one of the most effective characters and narrators. For different reasons.

Look at this guy! He is probably the most stuck-up, pretentious, and just obnoxious nineteen-year-old we’ve encountered in any book. Overflowing with ambition, he presents himself as a very mature individual and a skillful artist—which maybe he is, but as I was reading, he reminded me of Esmé trying to use all the big words she had learned to appear adult-like. I enjoyed the scene we read in class, when Jean (his name isn’t even Jean, but let’s let him have it for a bit) “informed [the bus driver], in French, that he was a rude, stupid, overbearing imbecile, and that he’d never know how much [he] detested him” (p. 200). Setting high expectations for himself, he feels like he has the right to criticize people around him.  Once he finds out that Sister Irma can’t join the art school, he passionately writes letters of rejection to all his other students. “I told them, individually, that they had absolutely no talent worth developing and that they were simply wasting their own valuable time as well as the school’s” (p. 243).

Jean sets his standards high, but he does have a pretty darn good opinion of himself. In his spare time,  “Noteworthily enough,” seventeen of his eighteen oil paintings are self-portraits. As soon as he reads about the job opportunity, he feels “insupportably qualified” to apply (pp. 202, 204). To appear more educated and high-class, he uses French in his letters, as “[he is] able to express [himself] very precisely in that language.” He writes pages (or “cubic feet”) of comments and advice to Sister Irma and believes that he’ll be able to bring a great talent out (p. 233).

And then my favorite thing about the story: the absolutely ridiculous lies! Jean starts from his letter to M. Yoshoto and then digs himself deeper and deeper. His paintings are hanging in “some of the finest, and by no means nouveau riche, homes in Paris,” He’s the man who won three first-prize awards and who has asked Picasso many times “M. Picasso, où allez-vous?” as he saw the great artist losing his standing (p. 212) Every time there’s an awkward silence, Jean is coming up with new Picasso anecdotes to share to continue his lies. That’s some dedication.

Everything about this character made me laugh, which is the main reason I loved this story, but having the perspective of the narrator, the same man reflecting on his past life and his actions, made me think more about the theme we’ve pursued with many stories: lies and the storyteller’s credibility. As I read about Jean and his lies, he suddenly seemed more real than many of the normal, everyday characters who seem to accept the reality and share it with us. Here the narrator specifically tells us that he was lying, but I get the interpretation that was suggested in class, that as he’s writing he’s thinking Oh God was that really me? He seems to depict his younger self in a pretty comical light, and this (what seems to be) openness and willingness to share these embarrassing memories really draws me to the narrator.

After reading this story, I realized that the characters who are “pathological liars” are the ones I find the most appealing. Not just for the fun of their lies, but because they find enough meaning and motivation in life to see the point of relying on lies to get somewhere. I might be confusing, but I feel like Esmé trying to sound more grown-up, Jean trying to get a job that requires skill, and O’Brien trying to write “a good war story” all have something in common: they care about life and about achieving their goals. For me their lies make them not less credible, but more real and more likable as characters or narrators.

One Saved Bananafish

Such grown-upness, he thought. Raising one of his flaps of peel, he was surprised how naturally came a swish through the water. He felt a cool sensation against the naked upper part of his body. Peeking out between the red coral branches, he saw the sun’s rays dancing on the ocean floor.

He pushed off with his four peel fins, propelling himself out into the open. Just a few days before, he would have to thrust his whole body back and forth in a ridiculous wobble dance just to move a few inches.

Feeling the water pumping through his gills, heart rate increasing, he dashed towards the sun, then dived back down, disappeared into the reef only to emerge again, creating a spin with his peel as he went up.

He basked in his new freedom. His thoughts and reasoning were too slow to catch up to his untiring body and straggled behind as he sliced the water, with no sense of direction.

Only for a moment he froze. Far below, on the ocean floor, he thought he could discern a yellowish spot.

Bananas.

Such a sweet, irresistible smell—he couldn’t really smell underwater, but that’s what he had heard. Such a rich yellow color. Such bananness.

Without further thought, he darted towards the banana hole, flapping his fins faster and faster. He didn’t have a choice. He was drawn in.

In a moment, he was in paradise. All around him was the fruit he had wanted to taste his whole life. Of course, his grandma had fed him with mashed banana baby food, but he knew it wasn’t the same. He torpedoed into one of the banana patches and gorged himself, losing control over his body.

He heard a strange noise, but he did not care. He kept eating. The noise did not go away, but got louder, somewhere right over his head. Suddenly the sunlight was gone.

One-second break, he decided, and glanced around. To his horror, he saw that the sun had been blocked by a dark floating blob. What was worse, however, was the pair of round eyes, the floating yellow hair, and the two appendages splashing through the water, belonging to the creature on top of the blob.

He was horrified. His love for bananas couldn’t compete with his desire to survive. Frantically grabbing as many bananas as he could hold in his mouth—which was seven—he dashed towards the opening of the hole before the creature could trap him inside. Squeezing through the opening, he felt one banana slip out of his mouth but, reluctantly, had to accept the loss when he heard more bubbling overhead.  Without looking back, he swam away as fast as his fins would carry him—with his added body weight and six cumbersome bananas in his mouth.

“With her hand, when the float was level again, she wiped away a flat, wet band of hair from her eyes, and reported, ‘I just saw one’” (p.24).     

"Genetic Engineering's Got Way out of Hand, or Someone's Been on Photoshop." 
     This Blog Rules., 12 Aug. 2009. Web.
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