Invisible Cities by Calvino

     It's silly, the way folks like to look at cities. Tourists, citizens, people scrolling through lists of hotels, all view a group of buildings and a mass of people as one, large blob. Not as small, small components of a fairly debatable environment. This book depicts what a city really is; a place broken down into several different moods, seasons and social cycles. Marco Polo describes what seems to be many cities (but, really, all of this cities are describing one place) to Kublai Khan, a Tartar emperor who's empire is falling. Marco, using either objects or the emperor's native language, illustrates beautiful and tragic places. Cities in the sky, cities hidden, cities that repeatedly fall to ruin and manage to build themselves back up, tediously, monotonically, only to be stripped of their beauty and culture once more. Place with names like Eudoxia, Zobeide, Despina and Olinda. Each city feels either extremely abstract or overly familiar. Calvino managed to break down entire structures and section them off, making what's either overlooked or misunderstood special, unique and different from the blur that we call a city.
     Calvino shows use how relations with others (represented as strings, or a mimic city), can grow either tiresome or completely overwhelming. When they become too much, the inhabitants leave, starting anew. Being able to abandon something, but not leave it unresolved! The dream of so many... Calvino does this frequently, intertwining reality with what humans want, showing how the things that we create for ourselves build up and suffocate us. In one city, The citizens wake up to find everything new. They have the 'latest refrigerator model', brand new clothes, shining floors. The garbage men haul away the filth of yesterday, things contaminated with a humans' touch and experiences. The dumps are forced to become more and more compact as these cities grow. The piles of faucets, books, shoes begin to stretch for the skies, on the verge of falling down and burying the perfect, pristine cities below.
     Most of the cities remind us of our dreams or desires. A city that is cloaked in the expectations and utopias of those that do not live in it. It makes me think of all of the hopes and horrible predicaments that humans create for themselves. As an entire species, we are dreamers. Longing what we know is impossible, craving what can be found beside us. We craft miniature fantasies, ideal worlds, ideal cities. We create horrible places, miniature hells into which we toss our troubles. While, really, all of the places that we fathom are the place in which we reside. I am constantly daydreaming, creating more pleasing lives for myself and for others. Making people that will never be born, houses that will never be built. But, I cannot help be aware of where I truly stand in our world. 14, middle school, computer screens, reading responses. The concept of dreams and reality intertwining aren't limited to metaphorical terms. Beautiful places are built on dirt and dead creatures compressed in stones. Streets shaped by the steps of heavy pedestrians have stories to them; places where extinct animals once strode, where the wooden wheel of a wheelbarrow broke, spilling to bodies of dead war victims onto the charred streets below.
     Calvino reminds us that places and that life are comprised of many things, small sections that unite to create a finished product. And, no matter how much these parts may seem to contradict each other, a polished creation is always born.       
    
      

The Picture of Dorian Gray

     There was once a rosy-cheeked, ivory skinned boy with hair that looked as though it were carved out of gold. He radiated not only an aura of beauty, but one of innocence as well; only pure thoughts could wander their way into his mind. His mere presence could calm tense company. His sweet voice was capable of taming all demonic beasts. All evil would halt in his, Dorian Gray's, path! All excluding Lord Henry and then, eventually, Dorian himself.
    Dorian was lured into a horrible metamorphoses by Lord Henry's cynicism and intellectuality. Hypnotized by Lord Henry's ideas of how life should be taken advantage of, Dorian was lead into a trap. He became aware how pulchritudinous he was and started to dwell in his beauty and wealth. Vanity is the thing most capable of tearing apart an angelic being. It allows a person to become immortal through their own eyes. Old friends become hideous burdens and matinées are suddenly held higher than a human life. Why did Dorian have to fall victim to such a cruel, long death? The slow and repetitive stabs to his soul?
       I allowed myself to fall for Dorian's facade constructed of his alluring beauty. But I had done so only because I longed so hopelessly for what Dorian once was. For his flushing cheeks and untroubled smile. The Dorian found in the portrait that Basil had painted for him. A portrait that aged instead of Dorian, who kept the looks of a lad into late adulthood. This portrait though, as days and years went by, did not age in the way a person would, but it depicted the soul of Dorian Gray. Blood ran through the hands of the Dorian in the painting, proof of the night Basil had been murdered by Dorian. A twisted grin appeared on its face when Dorian drove his young fiancée into suicide. The painting became disgusting, nauseating to look at. A repulsing monster lay comfortably in the heart of Dorian Gray!
     He'd acted gullible, falling for each compliment that Lord Henry engulfed him in, and agreeing to desert Basil, who'd once been his closest friend. It was heartbreaking (a word that I barely ever use). While reading the novel, tears welled in my eyes and periodic cries of 'Oh! My Dorian dear!' were most likely heard by my family as I grieved over the deterioration of Dorian Gray's soul.
     On the night that Dorian attempted to destroy the painting that mocked his very existence, the depiction of Dorian's soul won yet again by crushing Dorian under its weight. The dead body was not that of a beautiful creature, but was the body of the monster that had stayed hidden in Dorian's portrait: bloated, drenched in blood, and still wearing a grin on its face. Gray's soul was aware of its victory of its carriers mind. But, in the painting, stood the boy that Dorian once was, pale skinned and with cheeks that seemed to be lit on fire.      

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

(There may be some spoilers in this response)
     
     One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest tells the story of drastic transformations within an insane asylum. It's the story of men, who have been forced into mental and social regression by their caretaker, fledgling and becoming not only themselves again, but functioning members of society. This is all due to one rambunctious, determined, clear-minded man. Being able to witness the patients break out of their caretakers reins is, while gradual, in ways both surreal and fantastic. Surreal because the ward itself is alien and strange. It is (at least the way I imagine it...) always filled with thick fog and distant, still shapes. All of the patients are lost in a endless void, being able to converse only from their past experiences, being able to think and live only because they had once thought and been a participant in a world that is now a betrayer and filled with vile, arrogant beings.Fantastic because the writing is able to depict such a place.
     The man who changed the ward, McMurphy, still has faith in a world outside of the hospital, and if not faith, he has domination and strength. He lives in the way he wants to live and strongly encourages others to do the same. After weeks of laughing alone, other men began to laugh with him. After cracking jokes to himself and of taunting the caretaker, the Big Nurse, he slowly collects followers. McMurphy completed his feat by shaking the foundation of what had teased and ruled over the patients for so long. The force that made itself a dictator, a mother, a superior and one not to be trifled with, the Big Nurse herself. The Big Nurse is  the pinnacle of sly threats and underlying hatred.She roams the halls of the ward, smiling an unmoving smile, walking in a stiff, bleached gown, looking down at the men of the ward, at the patients, at the employees, silently mocking their inferiority; their weakness and frailty. But, when McMurphy joined the ward, her  powerful strides down the halls were interrupted by a man in boxers covered with whales. A man who attacked her authority and confidence.
     How could one person drag down an entire system, a community structured around the wants of a single, dominate person? Is is McMurphy's toughened, sun-tanned skin? His wild, red hair? His bold, loud, assertive voice? Or is it just the fact that he's a slight change; the sun which pushes down on Einstein's graph of space, an indent that pulls the other planets towards it. The 'ripple in the water' if I may.
     This book revolves around the idea of change. It teaches the reader that a laugh, a bit of fun, a pair of boxers with whales and a handful of persistence can force things to transform, and, whether this transformation is slow or fast, easy or hard, it's a change nonetheless and a lot of the time, a small change is all that's needed to turn out drastic results.              
   

Social Action- The Missing Perspective (The Grapes of Wrath)

     Banks as we know them are smiling employees behind polished counters, gray ATM machines and the way in which one holds a pen while scratching away at a check. While we're aware of the loss of contact, a looming feeling that there is something enormous behind the machines and gleaming teeth, our fear is not extreme enough to be truly pondered over, our occasional bouts of contemplation are dismissed. A bank is a bank, customer service is customer service and our money is our money. Though it's obvious that the banks dominate chunks of the economy and force people away from their homes, we do not try to point our fingers at 'the bank' in a measly attempt to conceal whichever misfortune it may provide. We are aware of the departments, of the unions, of the different layers of the corporation. Banks are not individual beings, they are not something to spit at nor something to slap. But, no... this is wrong. Wrong through the eyes of the poor, half-starved farmers in the 1930's. Wrong in the sense that they do not live in our industrialized world, that the need something definite to shoot and kick and scream at. For them, the bank is not made of up sections but, in The Grapes of Wrath, the banks become greedy, epic and animate. They turn into cold monsters who feed off of the misery of those bulldozed off of their land. Monsters that crave the dry soil of the Dust Bowl, that frown upon emotions and family, accepting only money and prosper. 

     Though it's a huge factor that controls the entire book, the perspective of  'the bank' has been completely removed from the story. This is effective, making the bank even crueler. By excluding the perspective of the creature that the farmers in the South created, the bank grew even stronger, less and less penetrable. The reader is forced to think of the banks as the family being forced to leave their land thinks of the banks; as a demonic, robotic, sadistic scapegoat. 

     By creating vivid images of a steel, red-eyed glaring beast, something solid is created. Something that cannot escape the pleas of the evicted. Something that, perhaps if sought out and beaten, will be made able to somehow atone for the misery it afflicted. By neglecting reason and the side of another character, the pain of the characters who are able to express themselves is exemplified. Along with the personification of industry, the hate of the farmers is able to take shape, too. In the dreams of the evicted, they are able to shoot and curse what took their happiness from them. It is no longer the fault of the cotton that sucked the nutrients from the soil, so it's no longer the fault of their fathers and grandfathers. It suddenly isn't the doing of stubborn, dry clouds that the rain won't fall from, nor is it the fault of the seed that so stubbornly remains dormant. By not allowing the bank to have its say, a sufficient scapegoat has been created. Lack of perspective, while denying the freedom of some, tends to grant the liberation of another. It allows for the focus to speak as they want to speak, to create what they feel must be created. If made insufficient, the opinions of others can also become inferior, things that only block the satisfaction of another. So, why not cast that voice away and empower he who as been shamed? 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time- Social Justice

     Though what I plan to write about is only a small aspect of the story, I do think it's about delivering justice even if it's in a pathetically small way.  Let's cast aside the opinions of the neighborhood and a stressed parent and focus on Christopher, our hopelessly (and actually uncontrollably) earnest protagonist. Not many care about dead dogs, though one with a fork running through it would probably cause more concern than  a chunk of roadkill. But, not many have such a fondness for the easy to read, loyal mammals. And, not many would dedicate more than a few hours wondering about who killed a dog. I, personally, do not like dogs, I find for them to be horribly over-rated and excitable. If I stumbled upon a dead dog, I would walk right by it and would probably forget about the encounter a few minutes after it occurred. Dogs do, I suppose, deserve justice, justice that is very rarely served. The only person honorable enough and earnest enough to try to deliver this justice is an outcast, a boy with autism who's thought to be unintelligent by others (which is a very inaccurate deduction).
  
     It makes me think that the most frowned upon or criticized can often be better people than those that degrade their being. It's a rather amusing idea, that the people thought to inferior actually have a higher morale than those that put them down. Well, I can't say it's surprising, in order to make somebody inferior to oneself, the bully must be both ignorant and arrogant, two traits of stupidity.
    
     By helping a dead dog, Christopher brings not only justice to the dog, but to himself as well. He displayed his interest in things that are often over-looked, he unknowingly proved the people that thought he was stupid wrong. He created for himself a secretive form of self-justice, secretive because he was unaware that he had even created it. He had managed to liberate himself and free himself of stereotypes by just doing what he always does, which is a feat in itself.

Dangerous Laughter

    Steven Millhauser's book of short stories creates an ultimate portrayal of things that while wondrous and inventive, should have never been attempted. A man sits on his workbench, scratching away at ivory, creating a button for a nearly invisible coat. This coat, whispering, 'genuis!' from every carved fur of its lining, was created to be invisible for the fulfillment of an artist with a craving. An artist whose work, while on the verge of being microscopic, should be marveled over and should be seen. A tower begins to crumble, a tower that once had rumors crawling up and down its impenetrable length; rumors that it had reached the heavens, rumors large enough to send the townsfolk up the tower's now fragmented stairs, dreaming of the monstrous fantasy that lay above their heads. Benjamin Hershfeld, the designer of shapeless yet shamelessly suggestive clothing (and later on, the painter of mobile figures, Harlan Crane) wonders about the world, providing for thankless, ravenous customers, people who mindlessly attempt to decipher their art.
     Mysterious and intriguing, all of the masterpieces represented in this book were vital mistakes, resulting in a longing for what shouldn't have been. The craftsman of invisible art, once respected in his practice, was politely and secretively mocked, regarded as a madman. But how meticulous his work had been! How alluring and unusual! It was, though, this strange and lovable art that did him in. This particular artist found himself selfishly needing more. He labored, as though in a trance, over a creation that no other eyes would be able to witness. While self-fulfilling, this practice was discrediting him, he wanted for his art to be praised by others. Yet, he had created a barrier for himself.
     The other stories are the same, creations and creators, while holding the key to their own prison, couldn't help but prefer being locked inside. Each story told the tale of how something dug a ditch for itself, and sometimes in an attempt to get out and, other times, in an attempt to redeem itself, ended up digging only deeper, slowly becoming trapped.
     In the stories this process was so gradual that I quite nearly over-looked them. Having had been transfixed by the characters settle despair, I found myself being slowly dragged down along with them, believing that they, indeed, were the correct ones. I was angered at those that attended Harlan Crane's art expeditions, how could they disgrace such a beautiful painting, dragging down the artist's name? Why be so unsatisfied with a designer's work? It's not as though Hirschfeld forced you to wear his clothes! Then, slowly, I realized why this passion was yet another critical and intentional move on Millhauser's behave. I was forced to reflect on human nature. I saw exactly how comparable the patterns of the general populace was to our reality. In the stories, the humans either blamed or dismissed what they were either angered by or made bored by. Fads in these miniature, alternate universes carry the same patterns as they do here. People to get bored, even by the most spectacular. When confused, they turn away or become red in their faces, throwing a fit. This anger leads to finger-pointing, the blaming of others, and, at the end of it all, it's always that fault of the artist, no matter how superior their work may have been.
     I do find it to be slightly ironic though, that the author of these stories is so heavily praised!

The Phantom Tollbooth (1

     Children are convenient. They're innocent, unexposed, curious and, best of all, gullible. They are the ideal tool for writers, why not start with a clean slate with which to convey a message? Why not reduce our ugly, adult selfs into small, unknowing children? Why not create Milo and place him on a path to a quest, a quest to tell others of our horrors, our flaws and all of the mistakes to carefully avoid? So, Milo was created, a miniature adult with a heart lured to danger and a heroic quest and new friends. Now, let me assure you, this has been done many times before, perhaps not in the same whimsical, word-play filled way, maybe not with the same names or places or the exact same plots, but this has been done before, in very similar ways. 

     The problem with using such conveniences in books, is that others find them to be convenient too. Not to say that Norton was looking for a shortcut around writing the book, He wrote and rewrote it, but I must say that I've started to tire of the same themes (some of which being to avoid hate and malice, draining yourself of life, embarking on journeys of endless tasks...) the same characters (the ones to learn lessons off of, the princesses, the kings, the amusing ones...) and the same hero ( who goes through some life-changing experiences, who saves the ones in need, who tries, and learns and always, always (in these sorts of books at least) succeeds). The first time I read this book, I was won over by its charm, by Chroma the Great and the alluring concerts, by the countless personifications, by the eatable words. But, by re-reading this book, I realized the unless repetitiveness of it, the lessons always learned elsewhere, the lessons that I've been forced to learn over and over again. In the beginning of the book, the pages were filled with annotation after annotation, but as the story dragged on, my scragged writing became sparse, leaving the pages rather barren of notes. It wasn't that my motivation to write that started to decrease so rapidly, but rather the new things to notice that seemed to have disappeared. Why write then rewrite then rewrite again that Milo is still a child and attracted to this childish world of his, that he's a symbol for adults, but reduced into the form of a child, a form in which he'll be able to learn, that he's begun to learn due to this character and that character and this situation and that quest? I did try to dig deeper but ran into stone.

     I wonder, though, is this what makes a children's book? A piece of literature where things are repeated again and again? While reading this book the first time, I was capable of drawing out themes and make text to world connections. Charlotte's Web   did the same thing, it drilled that same things into the reader's mind, endlessly. It seems that these books often underestimate the capabilities of their audience. I do realize that both of the books mentioned do say deeper things. If they didn't, then why would we be re-reading in 8th grade? But I can't help but be frustrated by a clear lack of originality at the roots of the books. I so suppose that there are limits to things that can be (or more like socially accepted to be) conveyed in books directed towards children, but I do feel that, in some ways, the authors have managed to limit themselves.