Blog Poste Quatre- @ l?_ -/--

first off, I resent the word "if" in this question: "if these short stories are art...". Literature is the greatest form of art because of its vast possibility for interpretation. Literature can appeal to any part of a person's soul and can do it in a much more complete way. I see it like this, visual art is like a wide plain for one's soul, where you can go anywhere, you can walk in circles, walk a straight line (which would be desired by the artist because undoubtedly their final ideal lies at the other end), one could even end up where they started. But with literature instead of having such a barren field, there are many different roads on which to travel, thus making it impossible to end up where one started. literatue changes your being, it takes you somewhere you were not before you read the piece. what is art? art is the vehicle for a souls travels down all 42 (bonus points for whomever gets that) of lifes roadways.

All of these stories are art, and Ellison's Battle Royal is really a perfect example.
The grotesque course of events is obviously a creative endeavor on Ellison's part, but is also an exercise for the reader, who has chance after chance to see the many layers of the story from their own mind's eye. in the background of the story, the reader can see the gala as a gala, but that is boring and shallow. Or with some work on the readers part, the gala can be a very real representation of white America, and can depict the greed and animalism of the white upper class. Or later when the main character lunges onto the electrifyed carpet to get money, it is not just an electifyied carpet, but a way of sybolizing the black people's struggle. A stuggle that never ends, and even when a prize is reached, it is dangerous to physically obtain. Devices such as this, the metaphoric imagism, and colors in the story, and brutal , disgusting situations are all ways to reach Ellison, the artist's, vision.

Also in Battle Royal, almost every single detail and action and diolouge is up for interpretation. Obviously, the story is meant to pertain to the black stuggle, but can safely be applied to any minority group. Battle Royal covers both the exploitation of the lower classes by the authority and the fight within the underclasses to rise just through the boxing match, and this is only one scene. A huge numbers of interpretations is one of more beautiful things about Literature, it can strike each reader differently, and even strike the same reader differently at different times. If one piece of of literature can capture and move one soul multiple times then surely it is art.

Blog Poste Trois- Iago the addict

Iago is most definately a moral pyromaniac, and I agree so wholeheartedly with the term pyromanic to describe him, since he is infact the devil.

I don't ever see, when Iago sees his war against his peers as a game, I more see it as though it is somekind of addiction. I feel this because while, yes, it is a fiction work it is based in reality and having a person do something of Iago's nature wouldn't ever be thought of as a game. People have been known to become addicted to war, though, and I think that as an explanation of Iago's actions this holds more water.
Or, if not an addiction to war, at least some better driving force than sport. He first gives reason as some sort of revenge, or for his job, and that engenders the thought, but as his plan becomes more and more complex he begins to invent reasons (Othello and Emelia), and he goes crazy.

Writers, I notice, often change in the middle of composing a piece. Usually it is either irrelevant or in the shadows of the work so it really doesn't matter.

Iago very early made this change because he writes the actions of the other characters in his first monologue and first soliloquy.

I know this post is disorganized and even contradictory, but I'm ok with that.

Blog Poste deux- Qui?

I like coffee, I like the sun, I think earth is brighter when smiled upon. In other words (please be true), it would make my week to actually be served this.






somewhere I'm not
scatterbrain.
somewhere I'm not
scatterbrain.
lightning fuse
powercut.
scatterbrain

-Thom Yorke

I get like this much anymore, Scatterbrained, like the world became a wind tunnel and I am still hiking through it. It's an intense phenomenon that comes with coffee, or supreme dehydration, little sleep, and perplexing ideas. I was very glad to hear Mr. Yorke say this, because i think he knows what i'm talking about. Health is not priority for artists. "Lightning fuse powercut." in a low voice, like how we talk when we're in the dark, but scarcely falling asleep. We are not confused, but quite fused with everything else. A glorious climax of mental continuity with the electricity of the air, and the people, and the words, and--! Somewhere I'm not . scatterbrain .


so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

-William Carlos Williams

16 word to do so much if you've an idea of what to do with them. perfect doesn't get, but paragonal, it's a word, i just made it up, just for the sake Ms. Cassel's sake.

Everyone , ever who has

He picked up the children's history book and looked at the portrait of Big Brother that formed its frontispiece. The hypnotic eyes gazed into his own. It was as though some huge force were pressign down upon you-something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to deny the eviddence of your senses. In the end the party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later; the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the valididty of experience, but the very exsistance of external reality was tactically denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense... he wrote, "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows."

George Orwell, 1984 (pg. 80-81)

that's it. voila. abrakadabra.

blog poste un- Je suis peur.

My grandpa is an asshole. Not that he's not great to be with; his lack of tolerance is comical in this day and age, and I love talking to him about genealogy and the sort. never-the-less... He is the class of old-school that has stayed in the most rural of areas in the U.S., thinks thoughts modern thought thinks terrible, and denies the history that was of his time, a.k.a. the Holocaust. He hasn't been to church in at least thirty years, drinks, curses, sleeps, and probably considers hell somewhat of an improvement.

there is no way that his faults have been forgotten by the many people he's hurt, in fact I think that the number of people he's made cry sums to a considerable amount in God's eye. At least enough for God to see some flashing light, and to mark Grandpa in his black book. Et ici est ou j'ai peur.

I am of my grandpa's blood and according to Sophocles that makes me responsible for my grandfather's demerit. the past doesn't forget!!! I would like it to so that i don't have to automatically become struck with a fatality of his degree.