Taxidermied Kittens

Trying to pick just one sentence to focus on in David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day is surely a form of torture. I have had this particular collection of essays on my bookshelves for several years now, and I laughed until tears came to my eyes and my stomach hurt from convulsions just the same as the first time I read it. However, re-reading part “Deux” within the context of our class opens up new ways of understanding and appreciating Sedaris’s wit and humour and his perspective on what it means to be an American in Paris.

In the essay “See You Again Yesterday” Sedaris is quick to point out that Paris was never a dreamed of destination for him. Unlike several of our previous authors, he had never “imagined” himself in France or Paris. In fact, he claims to be “afraid of France” (156) because of his presupposition that French people dislike Americans. Sedaris admits that national stereotypes go both ways: Americans see the French as “boors and petty snobs” whereas the French refuse “to ignore our self-proclaimed superiority” (156, 157). What I am wondering is whether we can position Sedaris as either affirming or subverting these nationalist stereotypes? Does his humour undermine preconceived notions of Americans in France, or, in fact reinforce these ideas?

The specific sentence I would like to look at seems to privilege America, yet it seems as if the humour suggests a certain “tongue-in-cheek-ness” that subverts the stereotypes and suggests we not take this statement too seriously. Sedaris writes, “They could burn my flag or pelt me with stones, but if there were taxidermied kittens to be had, then I would go and bring them back to this, the greatest country on earth” (157). Several things interest me about this sentence. The hypothetical consequence of this conditional sentence is that Sedaris would bring “them” back to America – not just America but “the greatest country on earth.” Here, it seems as if Sedaris is affirming the stereotypical American view that ours “is the greatest country on earth” (157). He further seems to support this reading by suggesting that “They” [the French] could burn [his] flag or pelt [him] with stones. This clause ascribes to the French the ability do both symbolic (flag burning) and physical violence (stone throwing).

Yet, the whole situation is subverted by the sheer ludicrousness of the object of the sentence. “Taxidermied kittens”! How can we take these sentiments seriously while picturing one of the long-forgotten pets left at the taxidermist in Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon? What then, is Sedaris doing here? Is he poking fun at stereotypes or is he “buying” in to them? Mainly, I’m curious how we can, overall, understand the purpose of Sedaris’s humour as a method of delivering his insights on both American and French identities.

My Paris is True

As we have been making our way through several non-fiction texts the question of truth and reliability has been brought up repeatedly. Beginning with Stein’s not really an Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas to Hemingway, Leibling and Kaplan we have debated whether or not a narrative voice is believable, i.e. telling us the Truth, because certain liberties have been taken with memories or biased perspectives. Through these past weeks I have been constantly reminded of a quote from Virginia Woolf in her essay “The Art of Biography.” She writes, “Biography will enlarge its scope by hanging up looking glasses at odd corners,” and that “from all this diversity it will bring out, not a riot of confusion but a richer unity” (195). What Woolf is speaking to is the fact that another person can never truly know another. One can accumulate data ad infinitum, but would you really come closer to knowing a person, the choices they have made, or the life they lived without delving outside the realm of pure factual accretion of facts and figures?

What I have been wondering while reading the various memoirs and biographies is whether or not Woolf’s assessment of “odd corners” shedding new light can also be applicable to memoir and autobiography. Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon is another text that has brought Virginia Woolf’s quote to the forefront of my thinking because he seems to suggest, rather remarkably, the opposite of what Woolf suggests. Gopnik writes, “The essayist dreams of being a prism, through which other light passes, and fears ending up merely as a mirror, showing the same old face” (15). A prism is used to “separate white light into a spectrum of colours” (OED). Gopnik, in this sentence, implies that an author is more effective as a medium “through which light passes” than as a surface that merely reflects a subject. Obviously, the subject Gopnik refers to is himself. As an essayist he strives to provide illumination of his subject rather than “showing the same old face” – which is his own.

However, I think that Gopnik complicates his own sentiment by referring to it as a “dream.” He, perhaps, recognizes that he can just as soon leave himself out of his essays as he can remove himself from his own mirror. It is a “cherished hope or ideal; a fantasy” (dream, OED) to presume to be able to act as a prism rather than a mirror. In other words, an author or narrator cannot be “transparent” (prism, OED); bits of themselves will always be reflected in their writing. Yet, as Woolf suggests, it is this very quality of “hanging mirrors at odd corners” that may allow for a richer reading experience and fuller knowledge of a subject.

This, perhaps, is another way that we can read these texts. Biographies, memoirs, personal essays, and autobiographies are shelved in the nonfiction sections of libraries and bookstores. Nonfiction by definition is NOT fiction, thus, we expect it to be True. Is it possible to stop looking for capital “T” truth in these texts, and, instead, perceive the smaller truths that are being revealed and reflected?

 

Gopnik, Adam. Paris to the Moon. New York: Random House, 2000. Print.

Woolf, Virginia. “The Art of Biography.” The Death of the Moth and Other Essays. Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1942. Print.

Listing Identity

I’m drawn to Kaplan’s descriptions of the vocabulary lists that Susan Sontag meticulously created and kept. Perhaps because my own list-making is so haphazard, Sontag’s listing seems so very meticulous and orderly. It also strikes me as a bit obsessive and compulsive. What interests me most, however, is that Sontag made lists of words. In the process she created for herself a vocabulary that allowed her to be a part of her surroundings rather than merely an observer.

Kaplan sees these lists as a way for Sontag to “map” (84) her life and views them as an “act of will” (101). In Kaplan’s view, “Sontag had been determined, since she was sixteen, to create a new persona for herself as far from her native persona as possible, and to experiment with a voice that was neither entertaining nor transparent” (121). In Sontag I see a connection between her accrual of vocabulary and her determination to re-define herself. In other words, in order to redefine, a new list of terms is needed.

There are several examples in these chapters of Sontag’s lists. Kaplan describes the list that Sontag made during her student days at Berkeley as she was discovering her sexual identity: “in her diary, she makes lists of gay terminology by theme: the names of bars, the slang for sexual roles and types – as though the homosexual world were another country, for which she was drawing a map” (84). Another example comes from the time that Sontag was in Paris and filled notebooks with French vocabulary. Again, her lists are ordered in definite ways that reflect her immediate needs and surroundings. The lists include vocabulary for “keeping clean, sex, talking to children, insulting sobriquets, telling stories and jokes, types of people, and mental aptitudes” (101). What is striking to me is how purposeful and non-random these lists are.

The OED defines vocabulary as “the body of words used in a particular language or in a particular sphere of activity.” It seems obvious to me that fluency in the language spoken around you requires a vocabulary to feel a sense of belonging and community. However, I also wonder to what degree fluency helps to construct and manipulate an individual’s own identity? Does fluency create agency? My ultimate question becomes this: can one construct a new “persona” by learning and becoming fluent in a new vocabulary?

Germ

It is impossible to read Giovanni’s Room without noticing the frequency of the use of the word “dirty.” Truly this is not a subtle insistence on the part of the author to indicate how David feels about his homosexual affair with Giovanni. On the contrary, it is as insistent as a jackhammer. The first time that Baldwin uses the word “dirty” in the narrative is the morning after David’s first experience in the arms of a male lover. David is overcome with feelings of shame and guilt – he wonders how his actions will be perceived by others and recalls “half understood stories, full of dirty words” (9). I am wondering, however, if it is possible to go beyond the obvious meaning of the word itself to discover the deeper themes weaving throughout the narrative.

By definition, the adjective “dirty” means: “covered or marked with a substance that causes a mark, stain, or contamination; not clean.” Further definitions include the words “lewd” and “obscene” (OED). It is the idea of contamination that I am most interested in. As David torments himself with his memories on the morning of Giovanni’s execution, he ponders “My flight may, indeed, have begun that summer – which does not tell me where to find the germ of the dilemma which resolved itself, that summer, into flight (10). Although we can read “germ” in this context as “an initial stage from which something may develop,” it is also appropriate to read “germ” as “a microorganism, especially one which causes disease” (OED). For, clearly, David feels as if he has been contaminated by something insidious and harmful. He sees his situation as a “dilemma” – something problematic that must be dealt with. Another aspect of this sentence is the emphasis on the word “flight.” At the time that this memory encompasses, flight means to create distance between his father and his aunt.

However, we see David fleeing from “dilemma[s]” throughout the narrative. He flees to Paris, to Giovanni’s room, into the arms of Sue, back into the arms of Hella, and, finally, to the south of France. I’m wondering how we can, if we can, understand the continual repetition of the word “dirty” to inform our perspective of David’s dilemma? What of the male Americans that David sees at the American Express office that smell of soap with their “unsoiled, untouched, [and] unchanged” lives (90)? Is David’s obsession with dirtiness indicative of more than his shame and feelings of being less than a man? What is he really fleeing from?

Calvados

In the introduction to A. J. Liebling’s Between Meals, James Salter informs the reader that, although, Liebling was “German by background, he rejected Germany for France” (xi). Arguably, Between Meals provides more of an homage to the French people, and their cuisine, than The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and A Moveable Feast. Unlike these other two texts, Libeling’s focus is the quotidian French rather than French artists and worldly expatriates attempting to make creative names for themselves.

However, as with both of our previous authors, Liebling’s narrative also adds to the ongoing discussion of reliable narrators. In the final chapter “Passable,” Liebling writes, “Most of the time I tried to live like a Frenchman, or, rather, like my idealized notion, formed at home, of how a Frenchman lived” (158). This sentence indicates that the French ideal that he aspires to is formed from outside of France. His Americanness (“formed at home”) informs what he thinks it means to be French. Furthermore, it is an “idealized notion” of Frenchness. The adjective “idealized” is to “regard or represent as perfect or better than reality” (OED). “Idealized,” in this instance, modifies the author’s “notion,” rather than his perception of a Frenchman or “how a Frenchman lived.” The noun “notion” is defined as a “concept or belief” (OED).

This, then, is something, perhaps, to be taken in to consideration when discussing the reliability of a narrator – particularly narrators of first person accounts (whether memoir or auto/biography). In other words, does Liebling’s confession of wanting to live like an “idealized notion” jeopardize how we read his narrative? Is the account any less “truthful” when we see a narrator allowing for “idealized notions” that may, in fact, be “better than reality”?

Earlier in the text, Liebling writes that he enjoyed the war correspondence from the First World War because the journalists “knew how to use their imaginations” (49). Later, when Liebling describes his own attempts at journalism, he expresses his “distaste” at asking a subject questions (questions that, perceivably, might get at the truth). However, Liebling’s goal “is to get him to tell you his story” (61). Ultimately, then, is the story more important (constructive, useful, etc.) than the truth?

Quality or Quantity

Often, sentences in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night act as harbingers of the future or allude to information that is not yet fully known or understood. For example, very early on in her acquaintance with the Divers, Rosemary reacts with much amusement to Dick’s new swimming trunks:

Her naïveté responded whole-heartedly to the expensive simplicity of the Divers, unaware of its complexity and its lack of innocence, unaware that it was all a selection of quality rather than quantity from the run of the world’s bazaar; and that the simplicity of behavior also, the nursery-like peace and good will, the emphasis on the simpler virtues, was part of a desperate bargain with the gods and had been attained through struggles she could not have guessed at. (21)

I am struck by this lengthy sentence for several reasons. The third person omniscient narrator, indicated by the use of “her”, can indicate knowledge of the Rosemary’s thoughts, or it can indicate a more general (albeit deeper) understanding of the unfolding events. Here, both seem to be happening simultaneously. We could easily view “Her naïveté responded whole-heartedly to the expensive simplicity of the Divers” as Rosemary’s response. However, the next word in the sentence “unaware” creates the sense that we are no longer privy to Rosemary’s thoughts but are now made to understand, via the omniscient narrator, greater truths to the situation that Rosemary, in her unworldliness, just doesn’t have the maturity to grasp. This idea is reaffirmed at the conclusion of the sentence as the narrator tells us “she could not have guessed” at the layers of simulacra built around the marriage.

The second half of the sentence opens up the idea of the “constructedness” of the Divers’ marriage. We see the effort that has gone in to building the appearance that everything is done simply and with taste. That this has been done with a” lack of innocence” subtly suggests that the motivating factors are less a carefree desire to be fashionable. Even the “nursery like peace and good will” are only gotten after paying “desperate” obeisance to the gods.

What then are the Divers trying to cover up? What is being hidden by their great attention to detail and building of the perfect image? Is there fear involved – fear of being caught emotionally naked, perhaps (not unlike Dick’s risqué trunks)? We see Fitzgerald making similar narrative moves throughout the text, what is gained by selectively doling out information and foreshadowing?

“You”

 

Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast appears to be his personal account of his post-war years spent in Europe, mostly in Paris. We encounter many of the same people (characters?) that we introduced to by Gertrude Stein, including Ms. Stein. Hemingway draws us in to the world of the interesting and famous or soon to be famous with a seemingly very personal first person account. There is a voyeuristic quality to the first person participant “I” that Hemingway uses throughout the text that, to me, creates the sense that I am there in the cafés and on the streets of Paris with Hemingway. Yes, this sounds rather simplistic, but it’s Hemingway that I’m walking with!

Very much caught up in my brush with fame, I was startled when the chapter “Hunger Was Good Discipline” opens with the pronoun “you” that interrupted my personal moment with Hemingway (69). This, however, is not the first instance of pronoun switching interjection in to the text. This moment visually caught my eye because the “you” is not imbedded in a sentence; rather its capitalization marks the beginning.

Looking back through the text, the first example of the intrusion comes in the first page of the “‘Une Génération Perdue’” chapter.

“If you kept thinking about it, you would lose the thing that you were writing before you could go on with it the next day” (25).

Before and after this sentence Hemingway employs the first person “I” to describe his writing process and his need to read what he had written and to get physical exercise. Yet, in this very personal reflection on his craft, Hemingway chooses to distance himself from the action by ascribing it to an impersonal “you”. I say impersonal because it seems as if the “you” could be replaced by “one” and the effect would not be altered. Yet, the “you” feels more invasive than an oblique everyman use of “one” would be. Syntactically the “you” thrusts the reader in to the narrative. It also serves to create distance from our first person author.

The repetition of “you” compounds the sense of being thrust in the midst of things – you is written four times. At the same time, however, the reader still feels very much aware that this is Hemingway’s narrative. What purpose, then, do we see in these instances of the pronoun switching? Is the reader really being summoned here, what, grammatically is going on? Is it possible to read this as more than a pronoun change, or is there a narrative voice change also?

The Wife of a Genius

“The geniuses came and talked to Gertrude Stein and the wives sat with me” (87).

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, often mentions Toklas as being in the company of the wives while the husbands talked with Stein. On the surface this statement would seem to, again, relegate Toklas to the background. This brief sentence creates the idea that there were two groups: geniuses and wives. There is a sense that these two groups are mutually exclusive – that there are no geniuses amongst the wives, therefore, they are placed in the inferior position of being separated from the hostess.

However, this is not the correct interpretation of this sentence. By repeatedly placing Toklas in the company of the wives, Stein claims and legitimizes her relationship with Toklas. At the time, it would not have been socially or legally acceptable for Stein to publicly state the nature of her relationship with Toklas. Therefore, Stein consistently places Toklas in the company of the “real” wives to indicate the importance of Toklas in her life. A reading that relegates to Toklas to an inferior status of being with the wives says more about the reader than it does the text. A negative interpretation is a token dismissiveness of the role of “wife” that is not borne out by the narrative.

The fact that the text continually refers back to the moment the two women meet as the mutual start to their lives is evidence sufficient to displace the notion that Stein is in any way trying to minimalize Toklas. In what other ways can we read this text as an affirmation of Stein’s and Toklas’s relationship? How does Stein’s deconstruction of the genre of autobiography support a reading that places Toklas at the center of Stein’s life rather than dismissing her to an outer circle? Does this help to resolve Stein’s “torment by the problem of the external and internal” (119)?

Life Through Death

Such a woman is the infected carrier of the past: before her the structure of our head and jaws ache – we feel that we could eat her, she who is eaten death returning, for only then do we put our face close to the blood on the lips of our forefathers. (41)

            While reading and re-reading Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood the image of the ouroboros is far from my mind. The snake consuming its own tail is symbolic of the idea that there is life through death – the two are inextricably woven and there is no separation. At first, it felt as if the novel was inhabited by creatures (I meant to type “characters,” but I think I will leave it as is) consumed by a death drive, or Thanatos, and were ultimately bent on their own destruction. However, the second reading led me to see that Thanatos is mitigated, even complemented by Eros – the will to live and love.  

            One example of this dichotomy in Nightwood is the above quote. The use of the first person possessive pronoun “our” and the repetition of the first person subject “we” brings the reader in to view the drunken “‘picture’” (41) of Robin. Yet, this woman is not only the specific character Robin; rather she is “such a woman.” She is a type, a representation of a certain person. Furthermore, the reader is not just a spectator, for it is “our [emphasis added] head and jaws [that] ache” with the possibility of cannibalism.

It is the appositive phrase “she who is eaten death returning” that, for me, is exemplary of my initial Thanatos/Eros reading. She “is [emphasis added] eaten death.” The simile creates a direct comparison between the woman and eaten death (again, visualize the snake eating its own tail). She is the symbolic embodiment of death begetting life. For Felix, this cannibalism is a way to access the past of his “forefathers”. His obsession with the historical dead is his way of creating life. My question, however, is what is Barnes saying about “our” relationship to the past and death? What are the “converging halves of a broken fate” that Robin represents? How can/do the characters find life when there is a preoccupation with death?

What Do The Women See?

See the men pass

Their hats are not ours

We                  take a walk

They are going somewhere

And they        may look everywhere

Men’s eyes                look into things

Our eyes                 look out

 

The stanza above (from the poem “Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots”) directly juxtaposes the differing ways that men and women “see” the world. As a whole, the poem speaks to a feminine agency that is dependent on the male gaze. The virginal women of the poem, are desperate to “[buy] a purchaser” to legitimize them. However, as the title suggests, these virgins are without a marriage portion. They cannot buy access to a marriage bed – transforming themselves from virgin to wife.

The imperative mood of the word “see” that opens the stanza commands the reader to take note of what is to come. The opening line also has a simplicity reminiscent of a Dick and Jane story. The “their” of the second line declares the binary opposition of women and men (us and them), and it quickly becomes clear that Loy is speaking to women by the use of the inclusive pronouns of “we” and “our”. The symbolic nature of “hats” may lead to several interpretations. The familiar euphemism of “wearing different hats” could point to the different purposes or raison d’être of the men in the poem. Men go out into the world for a purpose and with agency – they are going “somewhere”. In contrast, women go looking for men. The men are not limited to a small horizon of possibilities – they may look “everywhere”.

Eyes, and what they can see, are the object of the last two lines. Men can look “into” the world. When I first read this line, I could not help but visualize a scientist with a “thing” under a microscope. It is the agency to discover, probe, or to advance knowledge. The possibility is open for self-reflection. However, the eyes of the virgins “look out”. The impression is that they are looking for a man. They see themselves via their reflection in a mirror not in self-reflection.

The starkness of the juxtaposition makes me wonder if we can find moments where there is middle ground in this poem. Is the binary carried throughout? There is a material, economic element to this poem that is interesting to me. Why does Loy intertwine ideas of virginity and money? If “Love is a God / Marriage expensive” should women barter their virginity for the sake of societal legitimacy? There is also a poignant desperation in the last image of the poem of virgins scratching at the door. If it is not love driving the virgins, what is the motivation? Is fear of being un-wed the driving force for the virgins?