first of all, i should tell you that i am reading a new book. yes, i finally finished/got fed up with my old book, and started something new. i wanted something nice. something easy. i am reading 'the new gothic', a collection of excerpts and short story Gothics. (no, not goth, Gothic, there's a difference!!!)
anyway, a lot of these are completely insane and weird and gross, so it's kind of hard to say what bad stuff is happening. and anyway, devils taking over the earth is not exactly a 'social issue'. so i thought long and hard, and i finally came up with something. NEGLECT.
I'm going to focus on one story in particular. it's called 'Blood', and it's about this girl who goes to the dentist, and he gruesomely pulls a tooth out of her mouth, and it never stops bleeding. and she goes back to school, but no one's there, so she starts playing piano, and someone asks her what she's playing and she opens her mouth to say 'motzart' without thinking and the blood spills out over the piano keys, and it doesn't stop. this doesn't sound so bad, but there's some kind of nightmarish terror that builds up until the one time that she forgets. maybe it's something to do with the fact that there's no one waiting for her when she gets to school, that no one cares that she won't stop bleeding. that there's no one to help her.
I know that neglect is a very broad issue. maybe i can narrow it down to neglect of children. adults re expected to do things on their own, but children sometimes need a little help. like in this story. she didn't know what to do. but if there had been someone there, someone to ask her if she was okay, someone waiting for her to come back, it would have made it so much better. maybe hat's the issue. not enough people waiting for others to get home. because we all need someone waiting, worrying about us sometimes. someone to make the world seem smaller and warmer. because if we don't have that, life turns into a nightmare. life turns into a Gothic novel.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
social issues/bad things in my book
yep, there is loads of bad stuff happening in my book.
but that's kind of what a book is, right? A book is about something that happens, and at least some element of it is always sad. but anyway, back to the book.
First a little summary of the book. this book needs some explaining.
I, since you don't know, am reading the book 'a heartbreaking work of staggering genius' by dave Eggers. if you can call it a book. It's a 437 page stream of conciousness novel. it is the story of about ten years of david eggers' life (the exact timing is hard to tell, because a lot of the events in the book seem in no way related to each other.) It's all about random things that happened to the author, things which could really happen to anyone. It also goes into a lot of detail about whatever strange, pointless, or completely unrelated things Eggers was thinking at that very moment. I used to think that i was pretty good at complicated books, but this one is like Lewis Carrolls maze. the problem is that it starts telling you about something, and then it goes off on some other memory and then another, and then in the end you can't tell what's supposed to be real or not. so. it's not that i hate the book. it's actually quite a good book. it can be really funny. but the problem is, i keep thinking 'oh god, is this how everyone else thinks? is everyone this ADD? does everyone curse every other word in their head?' It's hard to explain. you should read it. or maybe not.
But, befuddling as it is, this book did manage to pack in some social issues. one of these was racism. yeah, yeah, that's very broad. don't judge me!!! i'm about to make it better. The main characters (the author, his younger brother, his sister and friends) are mostly white. one of the big characters, shalini, is indian. but no one is particularly racist to each other. but there is this thing, when the author thinks something, and then thinks."is that racist?" and he's terrified to sound racist, even just in is head. i thought it was just him being insane, but i realized that i do that too. i think something, and then mentally slap myself for being racist every one has said at one time or another 'not to be racist, but...'. it reminded me of thoughtcrime, from the book 1984.
but which is better? to be correcting what we think, or to make unthinking and offensive racist slurs? It's creepy to think that we don't have freedom of thought, but does ot count if it's our own selves doing the policing? And of course, it's unnacceptable to be racist. the perfect soloution, of course, would be to have a balance.
but that's kind of what a book is, right? A book is about something that happens, and at least some element of it is always sad. but anyway, back to the book.
First a little summary of the book. this book needs some explaining.
I, since you don't know, am reading the book 'a heartbreaking work of staggering genius' by dave Eggers. if you can call it a book. It's a 437 page stream of conciousness novel. it is the story of about ten years of david eggers' life (the exact timing is hard to tell, because a lot of the events in the book seem in no way related to each other.) It's all about random things that happened to the author, things which could really happen to anyone. It also goes into a lot of detail about whatever strange, pointless, or completely unrelated things Eggers was thinking at that very moment. I used to think that i was pretty good at complicated books, but this one is like Lewis Carrolls maze. the problem is that it starts telling you about something, and then it goes off on some other memory and then another, and then in the end you can't tell what's supposed to be real or not. so. it's not that i hate the book. it's actually quite a good book. it can be really funny. but the problem is, i keep thinking 'oh god, is this how everyone else thinks? is everyone this ADD? does everyone curse every other word in their head?' It's hard to explain. you should read it. or maybe not.
But, befuddling as it is, this book did manage to pack in some social issues. one of these was racism. yeah, yeah, that's very broad. don't judge me!!! i'm about to make it better. The main characters (the author, his younger brother, his sister and friends) are mostly white. one of the big characters, shalini, is indian. but no one is particularly racist to each other. but there is this thing, when the author thinks something, and then thinks."is that racist?" and he's terrified to sound racist, even just in is head. i thought it was just him being insane, but i realized that i do that too. i think something, and then mentally slap myself for being racist every one has said at one time or another 'not to be racist, but...'. it reminded me of thoughtcrime, from the book 1984.
but which is better? to be correcting what we think, or to make unthinking and offensive racist slurs? It's creepy to think that we don't have freedom of thought, but does ot count if it's our own selves doing the policing? And of course, it's unnacceptable to be racist. the perfect soloution, of course, would be to have a balance.
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