Fiction packet 2

Essay on the Sublimation of Dying by Kristen Prevallet is a collection of multiple sections that are only about a paragraph long that together make up an essay. Underneath each section there is a short poem or picture, which I thought was very interesting. In Homonym, I really liked her play of words with "I," "eye," "see," and "sea."

Crumbling Expectations by Zach Savich is about a story his father wrote while battling cancer. But more than just the story his father wrote, it is how he became a writer just like his father. I thought it was interesting when he said he "tried to write himself into the story." This one particular story his father wrote has always stuck with him and inspired him to write.

Fiction Packet

I really liked "Things To Do Today" by Joe Wenderoth because instead of setting the story up in paragraph form, he has simply made a list of nearly 100 things to do.  The list contains some strange and ironic things like, "set the famous criminals free," and "oversleep." I believe that the list is a representation of all the impossible things people plan to do, while giving themselves little time to do it.
In Dillard's "Total Eclipse," the repetition in the first few paragraphs reminded me of a poem. Dillard uses a lot of description when writing her essay, like when she describes a clown made of vegetables as having parsley eyebrows, red chili pepper lips, and beans for ears.

Bernard Cooper

I found the second half of Cooper's Maps to anywhere a little bit harder to follow. In the section titled "The House of the Future," Cooper talks about a futuristic house at Disneyland that he, his mom, and his dad waited in line to enter. He also talks about his fascination with futuristic things, and how he would search in his comic books for "tomorrow's uncanny manifestations." I think this is related to how children always search for something different in society, due to their wild imaginations.
One of the strangest stories was, "The Theory of Relativity." He talks about children with their over-sized heads taking over the world. I really have no clue Coopers meaning in this story, I just thought it was an interesting story.

Cooper's Maps to Anywhere

In "Rain Rambling Through Japan," Cooper describes the importance of words. He notes, that in Japan, it is believed that everyday sounds such as rain contain a "syntactical message." This is interesting because it is hard to express the sound of rain through words, yet the sound of rain can have an impact on a persons mood.

One thing that stuck out to me during the beginning of the book was in "Chapter after Chapter," when Cooper proposes that the further we get from original events, "the less truthful these stories become." As time goes on, people start to add more detail to make the story they tell, over and over, seem more interesting. This, I believe, is what writing creative essays is- taking real life events that happen to you, and adding detail to further describe the situation, and emotion, and to make it interesting enough to catch other's attention.

One of my favorite lines in the book so far is from "Capiche?" when Cooper writes, "But lies  are filled with modulations of untranslatable truth..." By this, I think he means that even when we make up lies, there is some event or memory, or truth if you will, behind it that created the idea.

Fiction Packets

"The Fifth Story" by Clarice Lispector

The main character of this story narrates five different versions of the same story, each starting as "I was complaining about the cockroaches." Aside from the final story which is simply, "I was complaining about the cockroaches," each story begins to have more detail, further explaining the killing of the cockroaches.

One line that stuck out to me in the second story was,"The truth is that I had only complained in abstract form about the cockroaches, for they were not even mine: they belonged to the ground floor and climbed up the pipes in the building into our apartment." I believe the narrator has used the cockroaches as a metaphor to problems, because in life we seem to make other people's problems our own, and try to fix them.


"Survivors" by Kim Addonizio
The narrator of this story tells the point of view of a man and his internal battle with the nearing death of himself and his lover due to AIDS. In the beginning of the story the man argues that he wants to die first because he doesn't want to "take care his lover's parrot, or deal with his lover's family." As the story continues, the man starts to decide what he would do if his lover died first.

Though the man says he doesn't want to deal with his lover's parrot or family, I think these are just excuses to cover that fact that he doesn't want to loose his lover. Dealing with his lover's dis-approving father is a metaphor to the everyday pain of not having his spouse with him anymore. Then as the story goes on he starts to let go because he knows the inevitable will happen; and decides to "take the parrot out of its cage and open the window," letting it fly free, as he is doing with his lover.

Fiction Packet 3

I found the story "The Falling Girl," to be very interesting. I interpreted it to be about girls racing to grow up, yet not knowing what they are racing to. The main character says, "They're waiting for me down there, I can't stop." In the beginning, she is excited to get to the bottom of her fall, but as she nears the end "her heart tightens."

The story "August 25, 1983" was a dream of a writer and his later suicide. He talks with his future self about what he accomplishes in his life. The man begins to get "irritated" talking to himself because he does not like who he is and is afraid to later come to the point of suicide.

Fiction

In "Writing Fiction", I really liked that Burroway described writing fiction as an art to "quell boredom". I found this statement to be rather true especially when she later states, "Much of the pleasure of reading comes from the egotistical sense that we are clever enough to understand." Part of the reason that fiction essays are so interesting and intriguing is that the reader has to figure out for themselves what is going on in the story.

But to make a story intriguing, there must be detail. Burroway explains that details can not just be given, but must be felt through the five senses. By giving concrete detail, a story is not told- but experienced which is, "where the vitality of understanding lies." It is important to give detail to paint a picture not only for our primate brain which makes connections, but also for our mammalian brain which creates a bodily response to what we feel through our senses.