What's up my good friend the blog

This week was tough to decide on a blog topic. To be very honest I am not nearly far enough in Winesburg, Ohio to really be able to discuss it. That's next weeks blog for sure! So I am back on All the King's Men. Sorry if it's a disappointment. In class we did a project that mostly had to do with a sexual coming of age, and the relationship between Anne and Jack. I like to talk about their relationship because I am a seventeen year old girl and love is just plain interesting! So we have this darkly humorous cynical guy: Jack. And this young, frivolous and a tiny bit promiscuous girl: Anne. How do these two go together? I'm starting to think that this book has absolutely nothing to do with politics. It is just a very complicated love story. Or is that every novel? All this stuff makes my head hurt. BUT, lets continue on. Water and love. Water: wet, cold, hard, soft, death, life. Love: heat, pain, passion, emptyness, beginnings, endings. I've noticed that the love between Anne and Jack is centered around water most of the time. Water brings them together and breaks them apart. But, in the end is everything washed away and the truth is exposed? The truth that they are "meant" to be together. It sounds SO cheesy, but when you read the novel that is exactly how it sounds. They meet as children, they fall in and out of love, and finally, after a lot of turmoil, they are together. So warren... is a romantic? Maybe I'm totally on the wrong track, but it's my track, so it's right for me. Let's talk a little MJ (Michael Jackson). The titles of his songs, to be exact. The way you make me feel, rock with you, don't stop til' you get enough= LOVE. Jack's story could be an MJ album. Just saying. I'm listening to Michael Jackson right now. So Jack watches Anne come out of the water and he's thinking "woah" so he's thinking you knock me off my feet, my lonely days are gone. Then he becomes a little older and he's thinking I want to rock with you, all night, we're gonna party til' the sunlight. Next thing you know, he's hit by a smooth criminal, Willie Stark. So Jack's thinking Annie are you okay? Are you okay Annie? You've been hit by, you've been struck by, a smooth criminal. And finally, at long last, Don't Stop Til' You Get Enough! They are together and all Jack can think is, keep on with the force don't stop, don't stop til' you get enough! Yes, I just summarized a love life using michael jackson lyrics. Perhaps thats why Warren just added that little gem of a love story in the novel, because it's easy. It's a sure fire win, if you are half descent with the idea of love. Channel MJ, you'll get it.

Why read to write?

These days I feel like I have been writing my own stories. If you read the margins of my books you will find a whole other book. I call it "Alaina's View." I have to take every bit of barely symbolic language and make it into some fantastic, insightful literary masterpiece of thought process. When I read novels on my own, I never write in them. I find it oddly insulting to the writer. I feel like I scar the pages with my own personal views of an authors ideas. We take every book and massacre it. I remember nearly every section and with all my markings, I can find whatever part I want in a novel in warp speed. There is no sacredness in this type of reading and writing. When I read Harry Potter, I find something new and interesting every time I read through the novels. Do you want to know why? because just reading and letting it flow through your mind like an assembly line of thought makes for a more interesting experience that you can do over and over again. If I take every paragraph and ravish it with my ideas and opinions, why ever read it again? You create so much of an idea for the novel that you miss the novel completely. Reading has been made into a personal thing. If you read like we read, we all have the same opinion. there are rules you've given us for reading and now we all read the same way. We have to linger on every passage, not just the ones we enjoy. We know what is going to happen before it does. Why would you enjoy living life if you already knew what was going to happen? We cannot appreciate it as a whole because we read every paragraph individually, the endless search for "meaning." Everybody likes to tell a good story. And everybody likes to hear a good one. You don't see me over here putting hidden crap in my stories because it will "make them better." Because it doesn't, and I don't think authors actually do it on purpose unless they seriously have no lives. And I am so tired of reading depressing stories. I live in a world where people die every day. We all sin everyday. We all feel the weight of the world on our shoulders. No wonder kids are so messed up, all we ever do is read depressing stories and predict the depressing stuff that is going to happen and then OVER ANALYZE the depressing stuff we find. The feeling we get from books, the bond, the enjoyment: slaughtered. And what for? I certainly do not know. A world has been created where we will never really understand the literature we are made to read. Only the weird stuff we find in it. I am not an author, and I'm tired of being made into one. I had a bad weekend, so I made an angry blog. Maybe next week I'll praise annotations :)

Candide: Did the coen brothers write this?

Candide is a novel for people with attention deficit disorder. If you cannot pay attention when reading Candide, I don't know how you read novels at all. The incredibly linear style creates short stories into a novel by putting them together extremely quickly. Years pass by in just a few chapters. But don't forget about the never ending dark humor! Another aspect of this novels attention-getting talents. Voltaire shows us death, canabalism, and rape like pulling adorable, white bunnies out of a hat and then putting them directly back into the hat. He doesn't linger on the dark ideas but he certainly doesn't pass them up either. I found myself laughing at hanging, beating, stabbing, and ravishing with a feeling of total disgust afterward. There is one thing about Candide that is undeniable: talk about historical references. GOOD LORD. "everything is best," with this, Voltaire ridicules Leibniz's philosophy by oversimplifying his optimism and terminology and presenting funny examples. I wonder if he wrote the entire novel just for this purpose. I mean its short, it has a common theme, maybe we over analyze his intentions for the novel. Voltaire was obviously an incredibly talented writer and could hide his deep criticism through what seems to be an innovative, comical, interesting novel. I like this idea. I like to think that authors us books for more than creating a timeless story, but a timeless story with a present use for his time. Out of all of the summer reading, this one was not a bore. Its possibly the most genuinely interesting book other than Harry Potter (the best novelistic act of all time :D)

all the kings men... rocks!

All the King's Men is one of my favorite books ever. The themes are timeless and can accomodate any thought process. It has the timeless love story between Anne and Jack, politics with Willie, murder, death, secret fathers, sex, crazy children, divorce, marriage, and everything else. When I heard it was a political novel I was dreading it but turns out, I enjoy them! I like to read about people trying to change and shape American government. It also created the idea of following your dreams and breaking out of social rights and wrongs. Willie is the person we all want to be, a smooth talker who seems to control everything around him with perfect precision. It also discusses how sometimes being on top, or "the boss" can lead to your demise. The dialogue was also a great part of the novel. I felt like I knew all the characters and talked to them all of the time because of the constant dialogue between the characters and the narrator to the reader. I also am just in love with the Anne Stanton and Jack Burden love story. I'm a real sucker for long-term love that takes time to truly establish itself. It reminds of the Pearl Jam song "Black". It talks about how "he" can't live his life the same because she "tattooed all I am, all I ever was, black..." I feel like Jack's entire life is not only effected by Willie but also by Anne Stanton. She plays a HUGE part. She is part of the intertwining of Willie and Jack's life! She loved both of them and they both loved her. Poor Jack can't catch a break and Willie doesn't help a home boy out! I hope my life is far less complicated than Jack Burden's. He truly carried a "burden" all his life.