Well, here we are again. It seems like the week just flies by so darn fast and once again, I’ve yet to get through this week’s book. Of course my procrastination coupled with dealing with a very sick cat recovering from a major surgery, continued training of a rambunctious 18 week old puppy, and my insane idea to adopt another 6 month old puppy all in this past week has not helped me one bit with getting homework done. But I digress…
As usual I am both intrigued and frustrated with this novel already. I’m intrigued because I think the plot seems very interesting and I’m trying to understand the characters. I’m frustrated because once again, this novel is so darn chaotic and feels so unstructured. I have a hard time telling what time frame we’re in and what’s real, what’s imagined, and what’s a memory from the narrator’s point of view. I started thinking about this style of writing and realized, at least in my opinion, all of the books we’ve read thus far seem to have this in common. They just don’t read like a typical novel. I think we really discussed this in the first week of class, but apparently I’m just now really realizing that this seems to hold true for every book we’ve read so far. Additionally there always seems to be so much anger and confusion in these books. Obviously this relates nicely to the fact that Ireland’s history has followed this theme as well; chaotic, unstructured, angry confusion. Always giving a sense of not really knowing where you belong or fit in and never really having that “good” vibe from a strong sense of “home”.
The narrator states,
“This is all my romance, of course. Everyone had a beautiful grandmother- something to do with sepia and the orange blossom in their hair” (Enright p 21).
What does this mean? I can’t quite tell if what she has said previously about Ada and Nugent really happened or if Veronica is just imagining that this is how it would have been. At some points when discussing her grandmother she seems to adore her while at others she seems to think she was too forward, proud, or flirty.
As I stated before, it also seems that the narrator is very angry and jaded. She almost seemed to get some sort of joy out of being the one to tell her mother about her brother’s death. She remembered her school days and seemed ashamed and angry at her parent’s for their apparently “robust” sex life as indicated by the number of siblings she has. Veronica states,
“There were girls at school whose families grew to a robust five or six. There were even girls with seven or eight – which was thought a little enthusiastic – and then there were the pathetic ones like me, who had parents that were just helpless to it, and bred as naturally as they might shit” (Enright p 25).
The statement made me chuckle, but also made me wonder why Veronica is so annoyed that she has a big family. Hopefully I’ll find this out as I read the rest of the book, but I’m already wondering if it was due to growing up poor because of the number of siblings.
Veronica also seems to be annoyed with everyone in her life, present and past. She is very cynical, especially when discussing her husband and children. The comment,
“There is something wonderful about death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important…- most of the stuff that you do is just stupid, really stupid, most of the stuff you do is just nagging and whining and picking up for people who are too lazy to even love you, even that, let alone find their own shoes under their own bed” (Enright p 27).
This again seems to reflect Veronica’s anger and jaded view of family, even her own. Is this because she just doesn’t feel a sense of actual belonging since she doesn’t seem to think she is really needed? Again, hopefully I’ll get these answers as I read on.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
More Lacanian psychobabble...I think I'm a bit jaded!
Well…ok then…
I really enjoyed reading the book, “Breakfast on Pluto” and loved “Pussy’s” character. That being said, after reading Mahon’s article, I guess I’m not sure I understood the book at all; perhaps though that is my frustration with the whole “Lacanian” theory. I didn’t enjoy the use of this theory in Carmilla and I’m not in love with it here either.
I think I was able to understand some of Mahon’s initial discussion about politics but I definitely got lost at times. I think I understand that his discussion about “sameness” boils down to the idea that the people of Northern Ireland and anywhere in general frequently want to be able to state and believe in “sameness” with those they may have issues with but essentially if you fight fire with fire…no one comes out a live. Or perhaps instead of the two groups being equally “innocent” they are really equally “guilty”. Not completely sure about this so I could be way off base on this one.
One of the parts in the book I loved was when Pussy became a super hero in her fantasy. The descriptive language is hilarious and paints a great scene in your head while you are reading. However, after reading Mahon’s article, I had an a-ha moment. Initially while reading the book, I thought that Pussy the superhero was coming back to clear the air of the stench that was her supposed father. Mahon’s article discusses this in a completely different way than I had previously thought about but now that I read it, it all makes more sense. Mahon writes,
“In response to Irwin’s terrified defecation, Pussy transforms into a super-hero who is tasked with protecting people from the stink of politics” (Mahon p. 447).
I totally missed the idea of the stench being political or the image of Irwin’s defecation being symbolized as his “caving into the pressure” or his “releasing information that shouldn’t be”. I think I had been really focused on Pussy’s discussions about her supposed father that I just assumed she had meant that she wanted to rid the valley of the “stench” that is her supposed father.
I found it interesting that Pussy really talked about movies and actors a lot. She was constantly comparing herself to them. I think that this partly reflected Pussy’s wish to “play a role where she could be anyone and anybody she wanted. Another idea I got from the text is just the continuation of the concept of “ownership” or a sense of “home”. In this book, there was the constant struggle within Northern Ireland, so these constant issues made it difficult for many to feel at ease or at “home”.
Also I think this issue with ownership and home comes out clearly in Pussy’s issues related to her mother and father and that no one was really her family. Not that you own your family but you do have a family of your own which is something Pussy was lacking. This essentially helps to complete the sense of “home” that she seemed to be looking for during the entire novel.
I really enjoyed reading the book, “Breakfast on Pluto” and loved “Pussy’s” character. That being said, after reading Mahon’s article, I guess I’m not sure I understood the book at all; perhaps though that is my frustration with the whole “Lacanian” theory. I didn’t enjoy the use of this theory in Carmilla and I’m not in love with it here either.
I think I was able to understand some of Mahon’s initial discussion about politics but I definitely got lost at times. I think I understand that his discussion about “sameness” boils down to the idea that the people of Northern Ireland and anywhere in general frequently want to be able to state and believe in “sameness” with those they may have issues with but essentially if you fight fire with fire…no one comes out a live. Or perhaps instead of the two groups being equally “innocent” they are really equally “guilty”. Not completely sure about this so I could be way off base on this one.
One of the parts in the book I loved was when Pussy became a super hero in her fantasy. The descriptive language is hilarious and paints a great scene in your head while you are reading. However, after reading Mahon’s article, I had an a-ha moment. Initially while reading the book, I thought that Pussy the superhero was coming back to clear the air of the stench that was her supposed father. Mahon’s article discusses this in a completely different way than I had previously thought about but now that I read it, it all makes more sense. Mahon writes,
“In response to Irwin’s terrified defecation, Pussy transforms into a super-hero who is tasked with protecting people from the stink of politics” (Mahon p. 447).
I totally missed the idea of the stench being political or the image of Irwin’s defecation being symbolized as his “caving into the pressure” or his “releasing information that shouldn’t be”. I think I had been really focused on Pussy’s discussions about her supposed father that I just assumed she had meant that she wanted to rid the valley of the “stench” that is her supposed father.
I found it interesting that Pussy really talked about movies and actors a lot. She was constantly comparing herself to them. I think that this partly reflected Pussy’s wish to “play a role where she could be anyone and anybody she wanted. Another idea I got from the text is just the continuation of the concept of “ownership” or a sense of “home”. In this book, there was the constant struggle within Northern Ireland, so these constant issues made it difficult for many to feel at ease or at “home”.
Also I think this issue with ownership and home comes out clearly in Pussy’s issues related to her mother and father and that no one was really her family. Not that you own your family but you do have a family of your own which is something Pussy was lacking. This essentially helps to complete the sense of “home” that she seemed to be looking for during the entire novel.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Breakfast is served...
Well, once again, I have yet to complete this week’s book; but I’m already very intrigued. I have to say that I truly had no idea what this book was about but in the first few pages I realized that this book was quite “edgy” shall we say.
Personally I’m finding that I love the writing style and the use of language. I think it makes the book “read like a movie” since I feel more like I’ve watched these scenes instead of read them; however disturbing some of them might be.
One of the major themes being seen so far is related to borders, as Colleen discussed. At first I really was only thinking of the physical border of Northern Ireland and the Republic since this book is set during a very violent and difficult time in Northern Ireland. McCabe writes,
“How all that started was the 1966 was the jubilee commemoration of the 1916 rising and no matter where you went in Tyreelin, everyone was waving a tricoloured flag or singing an Irish ballad. Every day there was a different politician in the town and in the pubs at night they were all talking about getting into a lorry and driving across the border to take over the north” (p. 18).
This clearly gives an idea of the issues present regarding the physical borders and differences of opinions between the “north and south”. Included in this division would be the religious battles between the Catholics and Protestants. This “division” brought about a different meaning to the word border. I started thinking of it no so much as a physical boundary but also as simply a division or as something that has two sides to it. In looking at it in this way I really started to see more and more things related to having two sides.
Father Bernard is supposed to be a good, pious, abstinent priest but he obviously has a “dark” side as pointed out in chapter 8. Charlie is a girl, but clearly sets herself up as the dominant one in the gang; another example of having two sides as she is a female with masculine traits of dominance (which Braden seemed to really enjoy) (p. 18). Then of course you have Braden himself; physically a male but seemingly mentally a female. A woman trapped in a male body. Braden crosses boundaries in his desire to be a woman, he dresses like a woman, and even “loves” like a woman. It’s the idea of kind of being cris-crossed within one body and possibly this is where the significance of “Pluto” comes into this novel. Pluto was considered a planet whose orbit takes an irregular shape therefore sometimes it was the ninth planet and sometimes it was the eighth planet, i.e. it crosses borders just like Braden/Pussy.
Who knows I could be completely off base at this point, but so far it makes sense to me.
FINAL PROJECT
As for an idea for my final project, I am planning to do a creative project utilizing illustration and possibly some poetry. The illustration will likely be pictures and graphics. I plan to do this based on one of my favorite books from our readings so far; Castle Rackrent. I’m still mystified by Maria Edgeworth and understanding her thought processes. In addition I’m still very interested in the whole idea of ownership in Irish tradition as this has been, in my opinion, a strong underlying theme in some format in all the novels we’ve read thus far.
Personally I’m finding that I love the writing style and the use of language. I think it makes the book “read like a movie” since I feel more like I’ve watched these scenes instead of read them; however disturbing some of them might be.
One of the major themes being seen so far is related to borders, as Colleen discussed. At first I really was only thinking of the physical border of Northern Ireland and the Republic since this book is set during a very violent and difficult time in Northern Ireland. McCabe writes,
“How all that started was the 1966 was the jubilee commemoration of the 1916 rising and no matter where you went in Tyreelin, everyone was waving a tricoloured flag or singing an Irish ballad. Every day there was a different politician in the town and in the pubs at night they were all talking about getting into a lorry and driving across the border to take over the north” (p. 18).
This clearly gives an idea of the issues present regarding the physical borders and differences of opinions between the “north and south”. Included in this division would be the religious battles between the Catholics and Protestants. This “division” brought about a different meaning to the word border. I started thinking of it no so much as a physical boundary but also as simply a division or as something that has two sides to it. In looking at it in this way I really started to see more and more things related to having two sides.
Father Bernard is supposed to be a good, pious, abstinent priest but he obviously has a “dark” side as pointed out in chapter 8. Charlie is a girl, but clearly sets herself up as the dominant one in the gang; another example of having two sides as she is a female with masculine traits of dominance (which Braden seemed to really enjoy) (p. 18). Then of course you have Braden himself; physically a male but seemingly mentally a female. A woman trapped in a male body. Braden crosses boundaries in his desire to be a woman, he dresses like a woman, and even “loves” like a woman. It’s the idea of kind of being cris-crossed within one body and possibly this is where the significance of “Pluto” comes into this novel. Pluto was considered a planet whose orbit takes an irregular shape therefore sometimes it was the ninth planet and sometimes it was the eighth planet, i.e. it crosses borders just like Braden/Pussy.
Who knows I could be completely off base at this point, but so far it makes sense to me.
FINAL PROJECT
As for an idea for my final project, I am planning to do a creative project utilizing illustration and possibly some poetry. The illustration will likely be pictures and graphics. I plan to do this based on one of my favorite books from our readings so far; Castle Rackrent. I’m still mystified by Maria Edgeworth and understanding her thought processes. In addition I’m still very interested in the whole idea of ownership in Irish tradition as this has been, in my opinion, a strong underlying theme in some format in all the novels we’ve read thus far.
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