1. From the central goal of our class, to “invent” a method of writing of a disaster and expressing the experience of another, I have found the most crucial aspect to be in this: do not simplify. Everything I have learned from this class and managed to pour into the writing of two girls’ tragedy-stricken lives points to evidence that the manner of discourse in which the “real” is conveyed must be as personal, obscene, utterly messy, and if necessary, as complicated as the characters require. I hope to have done them justice, they deserve nothing less. I have found that judgment has no place in truly understanding the affect of a person other than yourself. Everything we have learned points to the truism of: “If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.” While spanning the entire paradigm is of utmost importance in explaining our world and those who live in it, we are irrational humans whose emotions are ruled by neither rhyme nor reason. We simply live, and judgment holds no place in that truth.
A rather simplistic method of discourse I implemented was a lack of punctuation at times, particularly in marking conversations. I first came across the technique in both Everything Is Illuminated with the deceased grandfather’s recollections of particularly poignant streams of detail from his earlier youth, and in Cry the Beloved Country with lack of quotation marks. The interspersing of conversation in narration without distinct markings created the dialogue as a part of the descriptions. Their words became both actions and something deeper, more personal. Breaking the rift between what is said and how things appear reads the same as memories would, with words and observations meshing together cohesively.
Because this work is of our Internet culture, it classifies me, the writer as a “maker” of culture. This new mode of literature gives the writer more freedom in a hybrid genre that incorporates mixed media, scholastic research, cultural traits, and literary ties. The unique and random assemblage allows the reader to more effectively become attuned to the particular frequency of the experience.
2. From both the composition aspect and revision process of this work, I have found that I learned more than I originally accounted for from this class. Of course I knew that I had never really paid much attention to the effects of Vonnegut’s schizophrenia discourse, nor did I look too deeply into Foer’s preference for focalization from different generations of a family. Looking back in this last day of my work for this class, I see that everything we have “studied” in this rather unconventional class links the human aspect of art. The social struggles in The Great Gatsby and The Bell Jar, PTSD in Ceremony and Slaughterhouse-Five, the emotional struggle of a young boy to reconnect with his mother following the tragic death of his beloved father in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, everything points to becoming more attuned to that which you have not experienced. We’ve learned much, but through discovering how to truly connect with the expressed experience, we are able to learn so much more. Thank you, Gary.
