"We try to make art perfect because we never manage it in real life"

This quote, from page 271, works both as the post title and as the topic I wanted to discuss. Bowden and Thursday are discussing the plot of Jane Eyre and how the "original" ending, with Jane going to India with St. John Rivers, is anticlimactic and how the story would have been much better if Jane and Rochester got married. I don't necessarily believe that we try to make art perfect, at least not all art. But that is the beauty of art, it can show any number of facets of life: perfect, realistic, grotesque, funny and sad.

History is the story of what happened. There can be different versions of that story, told from different point of views, but it's always what happened. Literature is what happened, what we wish happened or could happen, what we fear did or could happen. Books not only open up worlds we may not be able to visit but it let's us see the world from all different points of view, more than history could ever provide. I think literature takes from all other areas of study, science, philosophy, history (as I may have already mentioned once or twice) but it really doesn't give too much back to those subjects, other than perhaps igniting an interest in these other fields. Philosophical lessons, like those of Aesop, are told through fables and tales. I've been speaking of literature specifically, but this extends to all forms of art, high and low. The TV show CSI and similar shows sparked an increased interest in forensic science as well as creating the CSI Effect where "jurors hold unrealistic expectations of forensic evidence and investigation techniques". The point is art affects the "real world" while at the same time shining light back on it.

On a separate note, I wonder if this is just something I do or indicative of a larger theme, but when I referred to female characters I called them by their first name but when I talked about male characters I called them by their last name. This could also simply be because this is how the book lays the characters out but who knows.

Fforde, Jasper. The Eyre Affair. Penguin Group, New York. 2001

"The “CSI effect”:Television dramas that rely on forensic science to solve crimes are affecting the administration of justice." The Economist. April 22, 2010. http://www.economist.com/science-technology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15949089

Another post so soon? Aren't you lucky

I'm not quite sure yet what form these posts will take. Brave New World lends itself to a more academic style of writing. I don't want to insinuate that any of the writing I just did on Brave New World is actually academic. It's really much more like the pointless sound and fury. See how I just alluded to Shakespeare and Brave New World AND my previous blog post? I'm good like that.
Anyway, I was saying I don't know what style the posts about The Eyre Affair will take, but so far rambling seems like the theme. This is how I generally talk about things so I'm OK with this form. For now anyway. I change my mind a lot.

Onto the book! I've read the whole Thursday Next series a bunch of times (I repeat myself a lot too) but I'm going to try to keep my posts just about the part of the book I'm up to. As I said I change my mind a lot (and that repetition thing) so this might change. I'll at least try not to reference further in the book or the other books of the series. But this is a long way of saying I love the character Thursday Next but I can only say this having read the series so far, not that the The Eyre Affair so far has lead me to this statement. She is a strong, witty and independent female character without being masculinized or weird touchy feel-y I-Am-Woman-Hear-Me-Roar type character. These characters are few and far between, especially in contemporary humorous books and even when such a character does exist she isn't the main character. She's a supporting character and one that doesn't have to be fleshed out like a main character.

OK, maybe this paragraph will actually mention something about the story. We'll see. Brave New World talked about how art is abandoned for stability. The world created in The Eyre Affair goes in an entirely different way. Thursday Next is an operative with the Literary Detectives, a whole department charged with dealing with crimes and law over literature. Stability can suck it; I would way rather live in this world. Thursday is listening to a news report and there is a story about a young surrealist that was stabbed to death by a "gang adhering to a radical school of French impressionists" (Fforde 10). Obviously I don't actually want people to be stabbed for their artistic beliefs but I like the idea of someone getting so worked up over art. It's like the news reports of people rioting when they heard The Rite of Spring for the first time. Rioting! Over classical music! I've been trying to think of something that could cause me to riot but I'm coming up blank. Probably because whenever I try to come up with a specific example of anything I blank.

I'm going to end this now with this quote, when Thursday is visited by a Baconian: "If you expect me to believe that a lawyer wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, I must be dafter than I look." (38)

Fforde, Jasper. The Eyre Affair. Penguin Group, New York. 2001

Brave New World, last thoughts

I was apparently further into Brave New World than I had assumed and I finished it on my commute home. Thank you Boston for having such a slow subway system, I have almost 2 hours to just read while I try to pretend I'm not on the T.

Back to the book. As I briefly mentioned before, I have a very elaborate system involving me putting tiny pieces of ripped Post-Its on pages I wanted to talk about. This worked well in school when I was marking the pages and writing in one sitting. Now I've been marking it as I read, like all my teachers have always said to do, and now when I go back through my marked pages and I have no idea what I wanted to talk about. So here's some rambling...

I didn't like any of the main characters. Lenina was probably the most sympathetic. She wanted to break free of the life civilization had set before her, but she couldn't. She needed something or someone to push her her out of the fog and it looked like John would be the person to do that for her. But John's so utterly disgusted by civilization that her drives her back into the civilization she almost broke free from. We don't hear from Lenina again until she briefly shows up in the last few pages. But again John chases her away with cries of "Strumpet" and "Fitchew" (257)and Lenina runs back into the arms of Henry and the civilized London.

John is, if I may use a technical literary term, a pain in the ass. His most reasonable point is when he is discussing civilization, happiness, stability and art with Mustapha Mond and Helmholtz. Chapters 16 and 17 are my favorite of the entire book. Mond gives compelling reasons why civilization is how it is and how stability and happiness outweigh drama, art and science. "You can't make tragedies without social instability," Mond explains but "that's the price [you] pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and...high art." (220) While I may not believe the civilization they've created is the way we should be moving, I can at least see why they would make the choices they did. And it's only during this time, while discussing art and civilization with Mond that John the Savage is able to articulate his problems with civilization. John whole belief structure is based on trials and hardships and his biggest complaint with civilization is "[it's] too easy." (238) They have removed all of the pain and suffering and emotional cost in existence that life doesn't mean anything anymore.

In the Forward, Huxley mentions if he wrote this book with only 2 options for John the Savage: "insanity on one hand [in the form of civilized London] and lunacy on the other [in the form of the primitive reservation]." (vii) I think the book is wanting for a middle ground, one that is hinted at in the island that Bernard and Helmholtz are sent to, but John is never given this option. Mond won't let him go to the islands and he has to remain in London to continue the experiment, ultimately to his death.

I began my rambling to talk about how much I disliked the characters and my initial plan was to talk about Bernard and how much he sucks. Yes, I tried to plan my rambling, but as usual my thoughts got away from me. I like the direction I went, and I find I usually like where I end up, but I did use those lil Post-Its to mark a couple parts about how lame Bernard is, so here's one that particularly stuck out to me today:

"Bernard dashed to meet [the police]. He waved his arms; and it was action, he was doing something. He shouted 'Help!' several times, more and more loudly so as to give himself the illusion of helping." (214)

I'm pretty sure I quietly chuckled while reading this, eliciting some odd looks from fellow commuters. I like the image of someone making these grand gestures to make it seem like they are doing something...anything. "[full] of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing" (V.v.30-31) as Shakespeare so poetically put it.

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: HarperPerennial, 1998.
Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Washington Square Press Published by Pocket Books. The Folger Shakespeare Library, New York. 1992.