An (unusual) Toomer sandwich!

It is interesting that we are close reading these Jean Toomer excerpts at the end of the semester because I find his style to be among the most obvious and overt that we have read. Therefore, it is pretty easy to close read, but no less interesting. As others have noted in their blogs, "Becky" opens and closes with the same three evocative sentences. The story expands from this opening, and ends with it, forming a sandwich. Actually, it is not really a traditional sandwich, because sandwiches are usually made with two pieces of the same bread and, while this story appears to begin and end with the same slices of bread, it actually ends with the same piece of bread transformed. The top slice is straight from the bread box, the bottom slice is toasted, if you will.

In the opening, "The Pines whisper to Jesus. The Bible flaps its leaves with an aimless rustle on her mound" is taken as a metaphor. Obviously, the pines have been personified, and we assume that the whispering of the pines in the wind is interpreted by the narrator through his own religious conviction. The next sentence must be interpreted as following the former. If the pines are in fact 'whispering' in the wind, then it would seem that there is not really a Bible lying on top of the grave, not 'leaves' of a book but leaves rustling on the ground, again being interpreted in a religious context. We also assume that the mound is a proper grave, and the religious overtones support this assumption, despite their gothic nature. By the story's end, the opening has been transformed. We understand that Becky does not have a grave, but has in fact been buried in her cabin under her collapsed chimney. The bricks have formed a mound, on which Barlo throws a Bible. The haunting scene has been left there, the Bible continuing to flap in the wind, the pines whispering to Jesus as they have done since time immemorial.

This structure informs the rest of the narrative, the latter sentences following on the former sentences and transforming them. "Becky was the white woman who had two Negro sons" becomes in the second paragraph, "Becky had one Negro son." The second sentence has simplified the first. Not only is the qualifier "was the white woman" removed, making the verb 'had' to emphasize Becky's action, but the number of sons is reduced. Interestingly, Becky's race is removed in the second sentence, but the Negro race of the son is repeated. Toomer constantly plays with the action of his sentences in this story, giving the characters agency and denying it to them. In the first sentence, Becky's action becomes her identity, although the syntax removes Becky's agency from the action. In the second, simplified version, Becky performs the action, she 'had one Negro son,' but the verb is not active. Rather than connoting a violent birthing or an active possession, it seems to say that she simply had the son, as one would have a teakettle on the stove. When the townsfolk opine about Becky's situation, Toomer does not allow them to give voice to their own opinions; it is only their mouths that do, as disembodied creatures, making the vitriolic words even more sinister.
"Who gave it to her? Damn buck nigger, said the white folks' mouths." By posing the first part of this idea as a question, Toomer again removes the action from the actor. He could have written this as, "The damn buck nigger gave it to her, said the white folks' mouths" but that would have meant that the nigger would have actually acted in the sentence. In the Toomer way, the question becomes accusatory of Becky, since the actor has been removed, and in the following explanation, the only actor is the 'white folks' mouths,' making the sentences really an argument between Becky and her fellow 'white folks.' The point is clearly that whoever 'gave' her the son is unimportant, insofar as the white folks will find someone to blame, rightly or wrongly, and inflict punishment. In the story, the focus is on Becky as the more punished, since she is not only exiled by the townspeople, but also bears the cross of God, who has cast her out of his kingdom, as indeed in her death she is not buried properly in the earth. These two sentences are repeated and transformed again,
"Who gave it to her? Low-down nigger with no self-respect, said the black folks' muths." The same structure is repeated, only this time the 'nigger' has been qualified by 'with no self-respect.' Essentially, the judgment is the same from both side of the town.

"The pines whispered to Jesus" becomes a dramatic refrain that builds throughout the story, as the action proceeds. The refrain moves from despair, to compassion, to desperation, "Pines shout to Jesus!" Finally, the story ends with the Pines again whispering, and they seem totally ineffective in reaching the divine.

"Seventh Street" also uses the sandwich beginning and ending technique, which seems like a very effective structure for a short story. In both, everything operates on multiple levels. Language has literal and figurative meanings always, and in this way, the stories play with our perception.

Circles and Heroes

The beginning of Phillip Roth's American Pastoral begins with the Swede. Then it becomes about the Swede's brother, Jerry, his sort of violent antagonist. Then it becomes about the narrator, in a more focused way, since the whole story is invariably about the narrator's perceptions of these two brothers. Finally it becomes about the book that seems to connect and yet divide the narrator from the Swede. Literature that is self-referential is so satisfying. The improbable journey of the chapter ends with a smile.

Ultimately, the chapter is about how people interpret their lives through icons. The ten-year-old narrator idolizes the Swede and can only interpret the other characters in his life through his worship of the Swede. Therefore, Jerry is necessarily formed in reaction to his brother, and the most important thing is how the Swede reacts to the Kid from Tomkinsville, not the narrator's own reaction. The chapter is circular. For the townspeople, the Swede signifies a heroic example of innocence and hope during the war.

Here is one of my favorite, and I think remarkable, sentences from the first chapter:
"It was a cheer that consisted of eight syllables, three of them his name, and it went, Bah bah-bah! Bah bah bah . . . bah-bah! and the tempo, at football games particularly, accelerated with each repetition until, at the peak of frenzied adoration, an explosion of skirt-billowing cartwheels was ecstatically discharged and the orange gym bloomers of ten sturdy little cheerleaders flickered like fireworks before our marveling eyes . . . and not for love of you or me but of the wonderful Swede. "Swede Levov! It rhymes with . . . 'The Love'! . . . Swede Levov! It rhymes with . . . 'The Love'! . . . Swede Levov! It rhymes with . . . 'The Love'!" (Roth, 2)

This sentence has such different moods and such sudden changes in energy. The first description of the cheer, "eight syllables, three of them his name..." and the bahs are so clinical, the choice of sound to beat out the rhythm of the cheer so boring, that the cheer sounds more like a resentful dirge. This has a sense of the narrators voice, a worship that is so ordinary to him it is at once boring, and yet reverential. After the exclamation point, the tempo of the sentence picks up in accordance with the cheer. The first three clauses of the sentence feel like a recollection in absentia; after the exclamation point, the flashback is fully realized. We are transported to the center of the football-fan crowd. This transportation and build-up are achieved through a cascade of clauses. The prepositional phrases and commas cause jarring interruptions in the sentence flow, building to the explosion of cheerleader skirts. The cartwheels seem to discharge from outerspace, appearing on the field like fireworks in the sky. The actions of the cheerleaders are disembodied, and the movement of their skirts fuctions as a metonym for the whole of their performance. The language, "explosion" and "discharged" has a violent connotation, again linking the Swede's success in sports to the war being fought in the outside world. The sentence finally ends oddly, with "not for love of you or me..." as if cheers are supposed to celebrate the lowly crowd rather than the exceptional athlete. The many clauses of the sentence, and its two contrasting moods, require the reader to constantly go back to understand the sentence as a whole. When the words of the cheer are finally revealed, the reader must go back to the "bah" syllables in order to get the rhythm of how it is cheered.

'We call it "unheimlich"; you call it "heimlich"'

Let me begin my post by pointing out the excellent statement Freud makes in his self-effacing introduction:
But I must confess that I have not made a very thorough examination of the literature, especially the foreign literature, relating to this present modest contribution of mine, for reasons which, as may be guessed, lie in the times in which we live; so that my paper is presented to the reader without any claim to priority. (Freud, 1)
This is an excellent excuse, and one which I will now use with Freud's inspiration. I am completing this blog entry five days late, for reasons which, as may be guessed, lie in the times in which we live. I present this post to you, oh reader, without any claim to having made it a priority. Actually, this excuse is so excellent, because it rhetorically relates the reader to Freud's experience. While Freud's reader may not have read any of the literature, foreign or domestic, on the topic of the uncanny, Freud assumes that his reader will be familiar with how difficult it is to get a hold of such research and be sympathetic toward Freud's rather undiverse body of source material. Freud extends his readers an opportunity to feel critical and educated in their response to his work, and then to be prepared to be enlightened by his brilliance.

Freud's lengthy discussion of the etymology of heimlich and its equivalents in other languages is quite interesting, and serves a much greater purpose than simply to endow the reader with a better understanding of the origins of the word. In fact, Freud purposely muddles our understanding of the word, so that by the end of his exhaustive etymological tirade we have begun to have very unheimlich feelings about the heimlich. Truly, it seems that the word can mean almost anything, and the etymology demonstrates to us how such a seemingly strange topic lives at the border of our reality and how easily that which is familiar, which we think we know, can slip into the uncanny without our understanding.

Drovers Driven to Distraction/Distress

I think "The Two Drovers" is a very lovely story in its language. Sir Walter Scott has a fantastic ear for accents in his dialogue, spicing the musicality of Scottish highland lilt with colloquialisms that are sometimes translated and sometimes left to us to figure out. What is confusing is the constant change in narrative structure and point of view. It is only towards the end of the tale that we learn who the narrator actually is and his relationship to the events, "I was myself present, and as a young Scottish lawyer, or barrister at least, and reputed to be a man of some quality, the politeness of the Sheriff of Cumberland offered me a place on the bench" (21). Prior to this belated introduction, the narrator assumes an omniscient position on the life of drovers in the area and the friendship of Harry Wakefield and Robin Oig in particular. Really, the narrator's point of view is rather unimportant; the story, a rather untragic Shakespearean tragedy of politicized misunderstanding, proceeds through dialogue in many different registers and arguably languages, which Scott does brilliantly.

Interestingly, the fact that the narrator is Scottish is evident in the narration that splices the opening dialogue among the Scottish characters, although this is not revealed until the trial. The musicality of the narration underscores the idyllic pastoral relationship between the two drovers that will be fractured by misunderstanding, as well as the narrator's implicit sympathy with the plight of Robin Oig as a Scottsman.

"There was a natural variety in the whole journey, which exercised the Celt's natural curiosity and love of motion; there were the constant change of place and scene, the petty adventures incidental to the traffic, and the intercourse with the various farmers, graziers, and traders, intermingled with occasional merry-makings, not the less acceptable to Donald that they were void of expense;--and there was the consciousness of superior skill; for the Highlander, a child amongst flocks, is a prince amongst herds, and his natural habits induce him to disdain the shepherd's slothful life, so that he feels himself nowhere more at home than when following a gallant drove of his country cattle in the character of their guardian" (2).

This absurdly long sentence is replete with alliteration, causing it to proceed in a cyclical manner that turns back on itself like a song with a chorus. The many hard c's supply a beat. The jolliness of the content give it the subject matter of perhaps a drinking song, or a song for lonely journeys over the highlands with droves of cows. At first, the introduction of the name Donald is confusing--is he to be our first mention of a character? Then, we must conclude that the name is common and simply stands for the average highland drover. Scott presents this inside knowledge to us without explanation.

In the following sentence, Scott adds much italicized Gaelic, some translated and some not.
"Of the number who left Doune in the morning, and with the purpose we described, not a Glunamie of them all cocked his bonnet more briskly, or gartered his tartan hose under knee over a pair of more promising spiogs (legs) than did Robin Oig M'Combich, called familiarly Robin Oig, that is, Young, or the Lesser, Robin" (2).

In this sentence, Scott translates in different ways. The first Gaelic word Glunamie is not translated, but we can gather from context that it must related to the expression "not one of them...". Spiogs is translated parenthetically, while finally Oig is translated in an extended exposition of the main character's name, so that the name is repeated and renamed five times. This sentence is also a mouthful of rhythm, each clause pacing the sentence, with the alliteration of bonnet more briskly and the assonance of gartered his tartan punctuating the middle clauses, which run into the pair of more promising spiogs (legs) that employs alliterated first and last syllables, and ends with the riddle of Robins.

The musicality disappears from the narrator's inconsistent voice when he is describing the activities of the Englishman Harry Wakefield. "At the same time he rebuked his servant severely for having transgressed his commands, and ordered him instantly to assist in ejecting the hungry and weary cattle of Harry Wakefield, which were just beginning to enjoy a meal of unusual plenty, and to introduce those of his comrade, whom the English drover now began to consider as a rival" (10). While much of the earlier alliteration remains, the overwrought vocabulary is awkward when describing such mundane activities.

Scott is able to distinguish Wakefield's accent from Robin Oig's with different colloquialisms. "Take it all, man--take it all--never make two bites of a cherry--thou canst talk over the gentry, and blear a plain man's eye--Out upon you, man--I would not kiss any man's dirty latchets for leave to bake in his oven" (10). The vocabulary and emphasis is different than Robin Oig's speech and sounds definitively English.

Robin Oig's speech, in moments of high passion in particular, gives way to an almost indecipherable brogue, that is as alienating for an unfamiliar reader as it must be to Wakefield. "Nae doubt, nae doubt...and you are a set of very pretty judges, for those prains or pehavior I wad not gie a pinch of sneeshing. If Mr Harry Waakfelt kens where he is wranged, he kens where he may be righted" (13).

Finally the story ends with the very lengthy speech from the judge at Robin Oig's trial for the murder of Wakefield. The end of the story loses me with the judge's impenetrable language that is so heavily qualified and vacilating in opinion it seems impossible to discern what he really thinks. A sample, "In the heat of affray and chaude melée, law, compassionating the infirmities of humanity, makes allowances for the passions which rule such a stormy moment--for the sense of present pain, for the apprehension of further injury, for the difficulty of ascertaining with due accuracy the precise degree of violence which is necessary to protect the person of the individual, without annoying or injuring the assailant more than is absolutely requisite" (24). Note the gerund-verbage of compassion!

It seems that whatever political point Scott has about the tragic results of linguistic and cultural misunderstanding between English and Scottish is buried in the judge's dense speech. There is in fact quite a lot of indication that there is something more complex behind this story but it is too exhausting to dig it out. The confusing narrative structure of this story makes it mainly a showcase for Scott's excellent ability to play with language.

I have decided to spruce up my blog

with new colors and images, by the way...
How exciting!

Injun Territory

Both of these critiques of the influence of Islam in Europe employ the major persuasive rhetorical strategy that we identified in The Communist Manifesto: positioning the argument as an inevitable progression of history. Really, both Steyn and Holmes agree that Islam is already a power that Europe must reckon with. It is the way in which they recommend that Europe respond that differs. Steyn's overarching historical analogies reinforce the sense that Islam is the next historical power, the next age. Drawing from disparate continents and political climates, Steyn compares Muslim countries to "Indian territory" in the United States, at a time when American politicians were obsessed with spreading the "civilizing" influence of American culture into some of the best (inhabited) land in the country. Borrowing a term from Robert D. Kaplan, "the lawless fringes of the map as 'Indian territory'," Steyn compares the Native Americans of the United States to Muslim immigrant settlements in European countries:

"The difference between the old Indian territory and the new is this: no one had to worry
about the Sioux riding down Fifth Avenue. Today, with a few hundred bucks on his ATM card, the fellow from the badlands can be in the heart of the metropolis within hours.
Here's another difference: in the old days, the white man settled the Indian territory. Now the followers of the badland's radical imams settle the metropolis.
And another difference: technology. In the old days, the Injuns had bows and arrows and the cavalry had rifles. In today's Indian territory, countries that can't feed their own people have nuclear weapons." (Steyn, 3).

In the three differences Steyn lays out for his readers, he presents the Muslim immigrant as more confrontational, more powerful, and better armed. Rather than portraying Muslims in Europe as a persecuted group, Steyn casts them as a settling force, comparing them to the European colonists that once "settled" the inhabited Americas. This seems like a risky connection to make, on a subject that most writers tiptoe through with an effort toward political correctness, "One of Hirsi Ali's reiterated themes is that well-meaning Europeans frequently hesitate to criticize Islam 'for fear of being called racist'" (Holmes, 3). Indeed, Steyn is little concerned with political correctness, when he uses colloquial slurs like "Injuns." It is curious that in his parallel constructions that correspond to Muslims, Steyn never uses a correspondin slur that would relate the hostility toward Muslims expressed by some racist and xenophobic Westerners such as "towelhead." The most offensive characterization Steyn makes of Muslim immigrants is "followers of the badland's radical imams." This awkward phrase separates the subject of the sentence "followers" from the nexus of their beliefs "the badland's radical imams." This prepositional phrase is completely lacking in the power of a slur like "Injuns." Between the first difference and the second, Steyn also makes a clever alteration of the word "badlands" with a apostrophe. In the first sentence, it is the American plains of the Sioux; in the second, it is a moral judgment on the Arab world as a "badland." Following the first usage, "badland's" carries the connotation of the actual "Indian territory" of the U.S. that seems to comment on the moral distinction of a large geographic space, so that this potentially offensive name also loses its weight. The implicit message is that Muslims have overcome the persecution of the West, or that their persecution is irrelevant, since they have the power of "youth and will" behind them. Comparing Muslim immigrants to American frontier settlers is a useful analogy: both essentially practice a belief in manifest destiny in their migrations.

Holmes, in his review of the two books on Islam in Europe, uses the lens of another enormously important intellectual development, The Enlightenment:

"That a clash of civilization is also heartily endorsed by Islamist extremists should make us sit up and take note. Rather than signaling an admirable willingness to defend the
Enlightenment against its enemies, eagerness to participate in such a clash implies a wholesale abandonment of one of the Enlightenment's main pillars -- namely, the overcoming of collective punishment or group-on-group revenge by the strict individualization of culpability. The Islamophobia of the European right is obviously no less tribalistic than the Islamists' hatred of the West. Although the tribalization of the Enlightenment by European xenophobes clearly distresses Buruma, it does not even interest Hirsi Ali." (Holmes, 3)

Holmes comparison of the two authors' critiques of the current usage of Enlightenment theories of Europe is very interesting. It is difficult to gauge Holmes' stance on the two opinions, perhaps because he is trying to remain objective, and he often seems to contradict himself by giving Hirsi Ali the benefit of the doubt. Rather than holding Hirsi Ali responsible for the potentially violent fracturing of Enlightenment virtues practiced in Europe, Holmes allows that, "It is no reflection on her motives to point out that her high-minded criticism of anti-racism and her plea for
Europeans to stand up and "fight" for their civilization have inevitably appealed to people who refuse coexistence with Muslim immigrants on much cruder and more emotional grounds" (Holmes, 3). While Holmes does criticize the grounds on which Europeans might refuse to interact with Muslims, he allows for the possibility that there could be justifiable grounds. Holmes implicit bias for the perspective of Hirsi Ali can be sensed in his having put the word fight in quotation marks rather than civilization. Holmes allows fight to be qualified by the quotation marks, as if the European response to radical Islam has been less violent than the attacks waged by Muslim extremist organizations, while allowing Hirsi Ali's notion that Europeans have a civilization that must be protected to go unqualified.

Holmes similarly characterizes the conflict between Muslim immigrants and Europeans as inevitable and violent, "One comes away from these two remarkable books suspecting that neither compromise nor confrontation will do much to avert the coming train crash between a resentful minority of indigenous Europeans and a potentially violent minority of young men among the millions of Muslims now permanently residing in Europe" (Holmes, 3).
For Holmes, this confrontation is a threat against a civilized, established culture, while for Steyn Islam is the next political force to take over from a literally dying civilization whose time has already passed.

Paste

Well, one thing is for sure, when reading Paste I cannot for a second forget about James. The style is as heavily controlled as the emotional displays and disclosures of the characters. The opening uses alliteration profusely, with a preponderance of s-sounds creating a hushed atmosphere surrounding the recent deaths.
"The pair of mourners, sufficiently stricken, were in the garden of the vicarage together, before luncheon, waiting to be summoned to that meal, and Arthur Prime had still in his face the intention, she was moved to call it rather than the expression, of feeling something or other. Some such appearance was in itself of course natural within a week of his stepmother's death, within three of his father's; but what was most present to the girl, herself sensitive and shrewd, was that he seemed somehow to brood without sorrow, to suffer without what in her own case she would have called pain." (James, 84).
Within and without are both repeated twice in the second sentence, emphasizing the sudden loss of Arthur's parents in such a short time. Both of these suspensive sentences leave the emotion to the end, where it evidently rests in the minds of the characters behind all of their outward appearances. James' sentences, with all of their interruptions, really do seem to make everything more complicated than it really is.

The dialogue in this story is so mannered that it seems hardly to vary from James' narration. It is rather sparse, and so embedded in the narration that it doesn't stand out.

"This career could not have been eminent and must much more probably have been comfortless.
'You see what it is--old stuff of the time she never liked to mention.'
Our young woman gave a start; her companion had, after all, rejoined her and had apparently watched a moment her slightly scared recognition. 'So I said to myself,' she replied. Then, to show intelligence, yet keep clear of twaddle: 'How peculiar they look!'
'They look awful,' said Arthur Prime. 'Cheap gilt, diamonds as big as potatoes. These are the trappings of a ruder age than ours. Actors do themselves better now.'" (James, 85).

James' introductory sentence, followed by interjection, dominates Charlotte's two sentence response to Arthur. When the dialogue begins with Arthur's "you see," after a dense paragraph of family history, the you is the only thing jarring. The rest of the material in the sentence "old stuff of the time she never liked to mention" seems to conclude the previous paragraph, which begins with Charlotte looking at the jewelery. The narration continues in the second person with "our young woman," this time including the reader in the narrator's world. Arthur's final comment could easily be rewritten as part of the narrative, rather than dialogue. It sounds like James' voice speaking through Arthur. This dialogue reminds me of the Lydia Davis piece, "They Take Turns Using a Word They Like," in that it is more about the social conventions being expressed than the actual conversation.

Still, not all of James' language is formal. Oddly, he sometimes includes colloquialisms in the narration, while the characters speak very properly, and then inverts, allowing a bit of slang to creep into the dialogue, while the narration becomes exaggeratedly proper.

"'Not a nobody to whom somebody--well, not a nobody with diamonds. It isn't all worth, this trash, five pounds.'
There was something in the old gewgaws that spoke to her, and she continued to turn them over. 'They're relics. I think they have their melancholy and even their dignity.'" (James, 85).

Arthur's comment sounds conversational in his use of "trash" but the phrasing of the second sentence with "this trash" as interruption sounds mannered. James then uses "gewgaws" to describe the jewelery, which seems more like a word that Charlotte would use than James. Finally, Charlotte responds to Arthur in a very proper tone, with words like "melancholy" and "dignity" restoring the former "trash." This technique in the dialogue and narration makes it seem as if James is going in and out of his characters' heads. Perhaps that makes him a more credible narrator.