I haven't posted here in...FOREVER.
Between LJ and facebook, my online social life is full. Sorry, but I'm not coming back here until further notice.

Dictionary of Literary Terms by Barnet, Berman, Burto

I read this from cover to cover, skipping some of the more boring entries such as the six-page entry on different types of meter and versification in poetry (I'll lean all that next quarter anyway). I learned some interesting factoids:

- The first edition of Shakespeare's complete works was published in folio format in 1623.
- deus ex machina literally refers to God coming from a machine. In Greek drama, it referred to a God coming into the drama and solving the characters' problems. Nowadays it can also refer to any unexpected and unlikely agent or action entering a story and resolving the conflict.
- a debat (with an accent over the "a" but I don't know how to do that) is a medieval literary form in which two speakers (often allegorical characters who embody some idea or form) debate/discuss a topic.
- didactic literature: literature that solely has instructive value. An example of this is a fable, which tells the reader how to live life.
- a motif is usually a theme/device/symbol/image that shows up in many different works. An example of this is the Faustian theme (selling one's soul to the devil), which occurs in such varied works as Goethe's Faust, Marlowe's The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus, Oscar Wilde's the Picture of Dorian Grey, and Bulgakov's Master and Margarita.

This is a short read (97 pages) and for me, is a step towards reading larger encyclopedic works. Totally worth reading.

Richard Wright - Rites of Passage

I didn't like this as much as I did Black Boy. I think this might have been because it was meant for teens, and wasn't really as deep as the other one I read. The characters were very flat and almost parody-like. I finished it in about

2

two hours.

"Finally Johnny was dreaming, dreaming that the woman had come and had found him, and yet, while dreaming, knowing full well that she would never come, that he was alone, knowing that no such voice would call him home, reprove him with love, chastise him with devotion, or place a cool soft hand upon his brow when he was fevered with doubt and indecision; knowing that he was alone and had to go on to make a life for himself by trying to reassemble the shattered fragments of his lonely heart." (115)

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame vol. 1

I really liked this anthology. The stories may be old but the best ones deal with themes that are universal. Others were pretty boring and involved themes which are now pretty out of date or which weren't delved into very much. Many of them had almost no characterization.

Authors I want to pursue:
John Campbell
Theodore Sturgeon
Isaac Asimov
AE van Vogt
Clifford Simak (maybe)
Ray Bradbury
James Blish
Arthur Clarke
Anthony Boucher
Jerome Bixby
Tom Godwin
Damon Knight
Daniel Keyes
Roger Zelazny

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End-of-break reading goals:
Richard Wright, Rites of Passage
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

NOTE: I'm starting a funny way of writing, just as an experiment. Instead of backspacing, I'll strikethrough everything that I would have erased, thereby allowing me to gain greater insight into my writing process.

Guess what book this is from (bold emphasis added):

"In Christian marriage the man is said
to be the "head." Two questions obviously arise here, (1) Why should there
be a head at all -why not equality? (2) Why should it be the man?

...

why the man? Well, firstly,

is there any
very serious wish that it should be the woman

? As I have said, I am not
married myself, but as far as 1 can see,

even a woman who wants to be the
head of her own house does not usually admire the same state of things when
she finds it going on next door. She is much more likely to say "Poor Mr. X!
Why he allows that appalling woman to boss him about the way she does is
more than I can imagine."

I do not think she is even very nattered if anyone
mentions the fact of her own "headship."

There must be something unnatural
about the rule of wives over husbands, because the wives themselves are half
ashamed of it and despise the husbands whom they rule.

Uhhhh.......yeah, sure.....



=============================================================================

It's from C.S. Lewis' book, Mere Christianity. I think there's a reason why he was a bachelor, lol! Seriously, I was expecting a book that explained Christian doctrine in a clear and logical (or just THEOlogical, pun intended) manner, but this book left me in utter disgust. I don't know if I can

read

enjoy Chronicles of Narnia the same way again. He's *SO* dogmatic and doesn't explain the assumptions he makes, just recites them as if they are as obviously true to everyone else as they are to him.

In short, if you are a non-Christian who wants to read about the positive side of the faith, then I would suggest a less sexist, homophobic, unclear book.

I want to get back into book postings, so you'll be seeing more of this stuff.

The Science fiction Hall of Fame, Volume I contains some horrible stories. For something that is supposed to have the best pre-1970 scifi, there are some really trashy works - stuff that is either just plain horrible or maybe was interesting at the time but wouldn't be now due to scientific advances (such as that story from the 1930s about meeting little green men on Mars...lol).

However, this will introduce me to some authors who bring up relevant and interesting ideas about how science will affect peoples' lives. The ones whose stories I enjoyed so far are Campbell, Sturgeon, van Vogt, Clifford Simak, Bradbury, Clarke, Jerome Bixby, Tom Godwin, Damon Knight, Daniel Keyes, and Zelazney.

I especially like Bradbury's "Mars is Heaven!" story. Questions and spoilers below:

- if the captain imagined his family back into being simply because he thought about it, did he also make his family murderers just by imagining it? Or were they illusions created by Martian technology, designed to kill him all along?

- if the world that the Earthmen found is fake and imagined, then why didn't it disappear when they died? Or did it just live on in concept, a la Raw Shark texts?

- I love how he brings up this idea of rugged, professional spacemen having the weak spot of their own families. Pretty much every human would have this weak spot because we have dual identities, i.e. the professional work identity of someone (if their job is an astronaut) and the personal familial identity of someone. Perhaps Bradbury is pointing out that our humanity (what makes us "human" in a more-than-biological sense) will always hold us back from being perfect scientific explorers or objective beings.

Wiesel - The Accident (later republished as Day)

Wiesel's deeply philosophical works always captivate me, and this is no different. Throughout the book, Elie struggles between life and death and his commitments to both. Who is he responsible to - his dead relatives or his living friends?

He deals with the same issues many survivors of horrible tragedies deal with - the "why am I alive and everyone else isn't?" question. Yet his grief and anguish is magnified to the extreme, and the prose he paints it with makes it exquisite.

"'I began to drink the salt water of the sea,' he said. 'There was no fear in me. I knew that I was dying, but I remained calm. A strangely sweet serenity came over me. I thought: at last I'll know what a drowning man thinks about. That was my last thought. I lost consciousness.'" (120)

"Hatred puts accents on things and beings, and on what separates them. Love erases accents. I thought: here's another minute that will punctuate my existence." (107)

"Love is a question mark, not an exclamation point. It can explain everything without calling on arguments whose weakness is based on logic. A boy who is in love knows more about the universe and about creation than a scholar. Why do we have to die? Because I love you, my love. and why do parallel lines meet at infinity? What a question! It's only because I love you, my love.
.....Yes, it was easy. I love Kathleen. Therefore life has a meaning, man isn't alone. Love is the very proof of God's existence." (81)