The Great Gatsby: PART ONE

Dear friends and stalkers,
Welcome back to 2Literate2Work. We'd like to apologize for the long recess between chats-- we were both busy turning 26, Meredith moved across the country and Emily paid off almost all of her library overdue fees. But we never did finish Jane Eyre (srry CharBro).

For this chat, we took to The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, or that book that everyone lists as their favorite because they were required to purchase it in high school, it's about money and they don't know how to read. It's always seemed a little pale but apparently Hunter S. Thompson re-typed the manuscript as a youth so he could feel what it was like to type a masterpiece. We figured we should give it another shot.

For our readers who are illiterate or homeschooled, Gatsby is considered by many to be the defining American novel of the 20th century. It's narrated by Nick Carraway, who finds himself entangled in the of world Jay Gatsby, the mysterious millionaire next door. Affairs, automobiles and moonshine are the other characters. Gatsby was written in 1926, "The Height of American Excess" (tm) version 1.0, right before the stock market crash and ensuing Great Depression. =PARTY TIME.



Love, Money and Death in Modern America

Meredith: sitting at a cafe, getting ready and to chat and drinking a coffee and taking notes, was listening to some ella fitzgerald and thelonious monk to set the mood
but they're playing KE$HA "we r who we r" in this shop, and that fits so much better
spot on
re: moral decay
Emily: wait, are you drinking?
should i be drinking?
Meredith: ugh no. just coffee.
WWFScottD?
Emily: G&T!
but I'm only drinking tea.

so THIS BOOK. Love! money! the American dream!
Meredith: anddd how!
Emily: had you read it before?
Meredith: nope. you?
Emily: I was supposed to for my junior year English class, but didn't
my misspent youth, etc.
But I remember my teacher, Mr. H. Wayne Curtis, telling us that T. J. Eckleberg, the big glasses that served as an advertisement and watched over East Egg was a representation for god. Metaphor for decreased prominence of god in the modern world? CHECK
Meredith: yeaaah wow
So Nick moves from the mid-west to New York to work in "bonds" and other boring things in the city
Emily: right, he's an outsider to the east, as are all the main characters
I read it as sort of a cautionary tale of the new American mobility of the twentieth century.
For the first time, you didn't have to risk your life in a covered wagon to go east or west
And New York is where the most cherished American commodity was: money
Meredith: yes
Emily: what did you think of the specific characters?
Meredith: well I thought the great Gatsby would be "greater" or i guess i didn't know in what sense he was great. i certainly wasn't expecting someone so fallible.
Emily: yes! but that's him as the representation of the American dream: he ascended from nowhere to become this titan.
Meredith: so clearly his money was his greatness in many senses. it was really sad at the end that no one showed up to his funeral.
(spoiler alert, yadda yadda yadda)
Emily: that’s when i almost cried! In public!
Meredith: was it because people were "busy" that they didn’t go to his funeral or because they didn't want to risk getting in trouble, if they were bootleggers?
Emily: it's the contrast between old and new money. All the people at his parties were old money and the ones who really knew him acquired their money in unsavory ways, and couldn’t be associated with him. Hence, his empty funeral.



I also thought Fitzgerald was attempting to point out the frivolity of the upper classes, in that sense
Meredith: so if the American dream was to have lots of money and live lavishly, why didn't Daisy leave Tom for Gatsby?
Too much of a hassle?
Emily: ah, ok so this was also hearbreaking and earthshattering: Daisy really loved them both. She gave up Gastby, who she loved more, for the security of Tom.
Meredith: did she love Tom?
Emily: in a certain way. she can't truthfully tell Gatsby she never did.
it's the DECEIT OF THE HUMAN HEART!
which is why this book is so huge
it tackles the nature of human love, money and modern america all at the same time
in less than 200 pages
Meredith: myessss so good
Emily: so Tom Buchanan
Meredith: yeah wtf Tom
Emily: he reminds me of every conservative I’ve ever met
Meredith: hahah yeah. just kind of a hypocritical jerk
total square
doesn't like "art"
Emily: yeah, super dominant authoritarian personality. and racist.
Fitzgerald really explores a lot of different personality archetypes.
Tom, the "brute" as Daisy calls him
Nick is the sane, thoughtful one
and Gatsby is a hyper-driven mystery
And Daisy and Jordan-- Daisy is a pretty fool, and Jordan is a little tougher and more jaded.
I do like how he writes the women. They felt real to me.
Meredith: me tooooo!
Emily: good work, F.!
Meredith: his writing made me melt toward the end.
Some of the most beautiful prose ever.
like this: "it was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows downstairs, filling the house with grey turning, gold turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a s low pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool lovely day."
HOW'D HE DO THAT
There’s also a lot of talk of movement, it seems like things are constantly moving, which speaks to what you were talking about the new modern mobility
Alsoooo, a lot of "east and west" talk
And he was among the expats to move east across the Atlantic to France
Emily: with Hway and stuff! they were friends!




Hway and Fitz in Paris


It seems like his prose exists somewhere in the middle of the hypermodern (for the time) of Hemingway and the more descriptive Victorian style, which is ALSO what the book was about! Transition.
Meredith: i kept being surprised that this man writing in the 1920s was writing with emotion.
it was great!
hemmy trained me well
Emily: yes, seriously. It seems like a simple book but it's a machine.
And it went unrecognized in his lifetime!
Meredith: right. Well it's super autobiographical, which, show me a book that isn't. But this one very much so.
Emily: true! Zelda[Fitzgerald’s wife] almost didn't marry F. because he didn't have money!
And she was a southern debutante! JUST LIKE GATS AND DAISY



F. and Zelda, 1921

Meredith: also, it might be my birthday being right around the corner, but the passage where Nick Carraway talks about his birthday. There was lots of drama going on. And he just suddenly remembered. Which I thought was really sad.
And then: "thirty-the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair..." f. scott f. was 29 when this book was published!
Emily: UGH
yes
I hope I forget about this book before I turn 30.
Meredith: i found myself feeling so sorry for him.
Emily: I love the scene where he and Jordan break up over the phone.
"I don’t know who hung up with a sharp click but I knew I didn’t care."
it’s so brutal.
Meredith: yes
Emily: ALSO
there is some dialogue in here that killed me
when Daisy says to Gatz "you look so cool. you always look so cool." And Nick describes that as Daisy telling him she loves him in front of a room full of people, including her husband.
I was like GAHHHHHHHHHH
those lines are quiet but so powerful.
Each character has a really distinct voice.
Meredith: Also "angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away."
Emily: yesss! Who doesn’t live in that space 24 hrs a day.
Meredith: for reals, love that shit.
I really didn't know the story when I was starting it. And to be honest felt myself dipping into boredom. But definitely redeemed itself and it might have just been where I was.
But it was funny-- you texted me "i'm at the good part"
and right when i got there, i knew what you were talking about.
Emily: yes! Toward the end when Daisy and Gatsby are sort of getting together but you know it doesn't end well.
speaking of
this line KILLED ME: “they had never been closer in their month of love nor communicated more profoundly one with another, than when she brushed silent lips against his coat's shoulder or when he touched the end of her fingers, gently, as though she were asleep.”
Meredith: I
KNOW
RIGHT
jesus
talk about melting
Emily: I was like uhh, yeah, thats everything, ever, right there.
Then the flip side, when Gatsby goes back to to Daisy's in Louisville after he gets back from the war, and she's already married tom:
“but it was going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.”
GUUUHA it so perfectly captures the feeling of having had everything and losing it, and in that moment the life and fulfillment you thought you would have disappear forever. The end of youth.
Meredith: I have such a crush on F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Emily: he is crushable.
Can the modern world even make someone like this?
No one is sincere or believes in lips brushing collars anymore.


The Drunk and The Careless

Meredith: Woody Allen just made this film, Midnight in Paris
where he kind of reconstructs the feeling of the 20s and the world that F. Scott conveyed
and Owen Wilson’s character desperately wants to live in the 20s, in Paris, with Hemingway and Fitz-g, and Gertrude stein, etc.
and there are characters playing f. Scott and Zelda and Zelda is a drunk, but actually kind of charming. and F. Scott is such a real guy. and Hemingway is the best.
mixed reviews on the film, but the FEEEEELING was nice
also Adrian Brody plays Salvador Dali. Ooof.

Emily: !@!!!!!1 me: ok, I’ll have to see it.
yeah, Fitz was a drunk but apparently didn’t drink and write.
or edit
Meredith: it's interesting, the edition I got from the Seattle Public Library, Ballard location, is the 75th anniversary edition (wow!) and it spoke about how he wasn't a strong speller and edited SO MANY drafts.
Emily: back in the age of typewriters!
Meredith: this one said it restored it kind of close to the original
And they restored thousands of commas or something
Because those things are no decorations
But yeah, I can imagine him going back and forth between leaving and omitting a comma. It can totally change a sentence, as we great writers know.
So many dogs with rain coats on right now, btw
Emily: my edition said that he had a “pitch perfect sense of the English language,” which I think definitely comes through.
comma misuse is enraging.
Meredith: yesss, that phrase is really incredible, and was certainly proven true.
what did you think of nick as narrator?
Emily: I liked him. He’s understated but reliable, and he has his own personality.
I like his contempt for everything in East Egg by the end.
Meredith: I liked him too. very sincere
He says "I am one of the few honest people I know."
Emily: yes, judgmental but also knows his own flaws.
So towards the end of the book, Nick decides Tom, Daisy and everyone of their class are "careless" and I think that’s an interesting word to use.
it seems simple and almost weak but when you think about it, it’s pretty cutting.
it’s close to selfish, it almost seems to mean lazily so.
not even selfish for a reason, just completely disregarding of anyone else at all.
because they can afford to be.
Meredith: which, is that exemplified in the accident, when Daisy kills Myrtle, the woman Tom’s having an affair with while driving Gatsby’s car?
Emily: yes, totally. and the affairs themselves, and Gatsby’s death, when Myrtle’s husband kills Gatsby-- Daisy and Tom just leave town.
Meredith: the lack of any type of emotion except from Tom seemed careless to me, too.
Emily: they've purchased immunity from the norms or courtesies of human interaction.
they don't have to abide by them.
which is why nick judges and dislikes them.
Meredith: right. he's a humble mid-westerner.
just like F. Scott F.!
Nick seemed so reluctant to go east at the beginning of the book
like he was doing just because that's what he's "supposed to do"
go to college, get job, meet wife, etc.
which doesn't sound too different from 2k11
except Yale probably cost a couple hundo more
I downed an americano at the last cafe I was at because they didn't have wifi! doh
so now I’m at vegan bakery and it smells weird and spicy
Emily: where are you, Kuwait? who doesn’t have wifi?
Meredith: srsly.

Emily: Fitz knew he was destined for greatness with this book, BUT NO ONE ELSE DID!
one of my favorite things about F. is that he knew he was a genius
he really pushed this one through on his faith in it
Meredith: did he feel like that with all his work? or was it just this one that he thought "that's gonna be a good one"?
Emily: he said: "The author would like to say that never before did one try to keep his artistic conscience as pure as during the ten months put into doing it... what I cut out both physically and emotionally would make another novel.”
and, the first printing was only 5,000!
and the obits barely mentioned it when he died!
and the NYT said "he never grew up"!!!!!!!!!1111111
Meredith: how old was he when he died? and was it from 2 much booze?
Emily: He was 44. And I think so... all the best ones go that way. BUT, he thought it should become a favorite of "classrooms, profs, lovers of English prose."
AND IT DID!
Meredith: YES IT DID
I read that he was in Italy when it was in the publishing process
so he wasn't right there through it all which I can imagine was stressful. he should have just skyped
Emily: I am lisnin to Justice's new album right now in honor of F's Parisian expat days



Meredith: ah tres bien! j'adore les artists francais
Emily: si si!
have you seen the Gatsby movie?!
w Redford?!?!?!?!
and Mia Farrow?



The greatest love story of our time!!!!
Meredith: noooo!
Emily
you'll never believe this
I just went to look it up
they're making a 2012 version, in production now
this is like that time we read jane eyre (hyperlink to ourselves)
Emily: srsly@!!!!!!!
Meredith: leo diCappiez!
Emily: Hollywood is cesspool of mediocrity and needs to Hunter S. Thompson itself
Meredith: was HST gun to the head?
Emily: yeah
Speaking of death:
F's grave is inscribed with THE FINAL LINE FROM GATSBY: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Meredith: jeeSUS
Emily: that is pretty heavy
Meredith: IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL
Emily: "epic" in the most-non fratty use of the word possible
Meredith: legit.

Next: Is Daisy a fully realized character? Is Nick a judgemental douche? How can we talk about Dashboard Confessional in conjunction with the text? AND MORE

JANE EYRE: PART ONE

This month on Chattin Teh Classix: Jane Eyre! Self-realization, spookiness and romance abound in this 1847 work by Charlotte Bronte, considered to be ahead of its time in the portrayal of its female lead as an all-around badass.

Meredith: I’ll use this time to tell our readers we are half-way through with Jane Eyre.

Srry.

We’re busy women

/keep falling asleep

Emily: ok so you know who GETS IT?

Meredith: please tell me who I think you're going to tell me

Emily: JANE EYRE

Meredith: bammmm

yes

Emily: and Andy Millman from Extras.

Meredith: HAHAHAHHAAH

Just want to say that I would have Stephen Merchant's goofy babies any day.

Emily: I’m sensing a theme.

Meredith: ugh shit

They ain't even Jewish.

Just straight up nerdy.

Okay anyway. There’s also religion in Jane Eyre.

Emily: Yes there is.

Meredith: Not sure how I made it 25 years without having read other Victorian novels written by great ladies. But this is number 1.

Though I read some gothic kinda stuff which trailed behind the “Romance period,” and there's definitely influence.

Emily: Yes. I agree. Even though I was initially kind of bored to tears because I am ruined by teh internet, I was consistently amazed at the quality of the writing itself and the story.

And Jane.

Meredith: Yesss.

Emily: I can't think of a more impressive heroine, even in modern fiction.

She just doesn't give a fuck about what anyone else wants her to do.

Meredith: She seemed hard and cold to me for a little bit but then I realized she was treated like shit for her formative years and had to be like that!

Locked in the red room with a ghost!? That’s fucked up.

Emily: Totally. And I LOVE how because of that past, she then unearths her own viewpoint, interests, sense of self, etc. In the words of Thoreau, “know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it and gnaw it still,” and in the words of contemporary Swedish pop star Robyn, “don’t fucking tell me what to do.” I’m guessing that must have been somewhat radical for the time.

Meredith: absolutely!

Emily: What 90s singer songwriter do you think is Jane's closest analogue?

Meredith: Alanis? Without the bitter ex-lover bit.

Emily: That’s a good one… Alanis keeps it real, can be sweet but has an edge.

Meredith: I’ve actually been almost frustrated that she's been sitting in corners for this whole "party" at Thornfield. Also, they put on plays for fun. How cool is that??

Emily: I know! We should start doing that. I used to do that with my friends when we were little. It was awesome.

Meredith: Yes!!!

Emily: PBR gets in the way.

Meredith: /makes it better. I’m sure the rich people are drinking brandy snifters or sommmmething.

Emily: True. So, I think Jane Eyre has something of a coming of age element to it, and I was talking about it with a friend. He says that he thinks girls have better coming of age stories than guys, because he feels that the males in classic coming of age fiction are never satisfied, and that they're always searching for something else.

Meredith: That’s really interesting. They seem to be more about the adventure too, than the actual 'coming of age.’

Emily: I think this whole male/female fiction narrative disparity is due to the false dichotomy of gender in which we exist/ that informs our life trajectories, which enables men toward transcendence and women for imminence.

Meredith: Whoa girl. more more more.

Emily: In most art throughout history, women are portrayed as primarily oriented toward catching a “good man” and this is the struggle that mainly defines them. Meanwhile, men are able to explore and then define the nature of human existence.

Which creates a narrative in which men are able to transcend the confines of the human condition or die tryin', and women are only looking for a dude to complete them, at which point the story ends happily ever after.

Which is why I LOVE Jane.

Here’s a great quote that really runs counter to that entire paradigm:

"It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel... they suffer from too rigid a constraint... precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them if they seek to do more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."

So there’s a revolution in a paragraph.

Meredith: Gah that's beautiful.

What part is that?

Emily: When she first gets to Thornfield.

Charlotte Bronte’s just looking around and being like, What the fuck, 19th century dudes.

Y’all r dumb.

Meredith: Absolutely. And for a woman to write that in mid-1800s must have been quite a controversy.

But also: since we're halfway through and I don't know how it ends, I almost don't want it to end because I’m nervous about Jane loosing her edge to get with Mr. Rochester.

I have faith in Charlotte that she's developed this great character

Emily: LOSING MY EDGE- Jane Eyre feat LCD SNDSTM

Charlotte will not let us down.

Meredith: Ok.

Emily: So I first read this book for summer reading before 10th grade.

Meredith: ah ok

Emily: And I really liked it.

And I kind of feel myself dorking out all over it like I'm in braces again.

And cheering for Jane. And just thinking, DO IT GRRRRLLLL!

Meredith: I really wish I had had this as a tool to help me develop into a lovely young lady.

I probably wouldn't swear as much.

Emily: Jane would approve of you! She would encourage you to take up embroidery.

Or something.

Meredith: hahaha

I didn't realize you'd read it before. What did you think of it when you were younger?

Emily: I remember just really liking Jane’s character. Maybe I wasn’t conscious yet of how rare a decent female in literature/film/teh media is.

I was young and unjaded.

Just bought my first j. crew bikini.

Meredith: fulllll circle

Emily: Yup. But I definitely liked how Jane was her own person and wasn’t trying to change 4 teh boys.

Meredith: Have you read Wuthering Heights?

Emily: No!

Meredith: I kind of want to just so I can know what Kate Bush is talking about

But I fear I might never know what Kate Bush is talking about.

Emily: So I found this quote I never would have noticed the first time around as a tween:

"it is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it is quitted."

Pretty effective imagery to represent the end of childhood.

But I liked the metaphor of being cut adrift and unable to go back, because I feel like I’ve been in that scenario about 80 times since reading this 10 years ago. I spose we all have.

Meredith: hah absolutely. That’s really good. And there's definitely that tendency as a child/twenty-something to feel completely alone and on a raft and not knowing where you're going.

Emily: Definitely.

Meredith: And then you can only hope your raft will bump into some other rafts on that vast ocean

Emily: HEARD THAT

Meredith: Also I read that this structure is called Bildungsroman.

Meaning the protagonist goes through life phases in different locations.

So her childhood is spent in the terrible Gateshead.

Then tween years at Lowood and maturing twenty-something (i.e. 18 in the 1800s) at Thornfield.

I'M EXCITED TO SEE WHAT'S NEXT

Emily: ME TOO!

Meredith: A Bildungsroman tells about the growing up or coming of age of a sensitive person who is looking for answers and experience. -Wiki

Emily: LOLLZ

Meredith: I’m bildungsromaning right now

hahfdklaha

Emily: I’m gonna get bildungsroman tatted on my back

in gothic letters

Meredith: yessssssss

Emily: or my abs

above "ALT LYFE"

in gothic letters.

FRANNY AND ZOOEY

This month on Chattin' Teh Classics, we explore J.D. Salinger's B side, Franny and Zooey. F and Z is the story of a brother and sister searching for enlightenment in the wake of the death of Seymour, their older brother and spiritual teacher. Franny, 20, is a college student on the verge of dropping out, and Zooey, 25, is an actor on hiatus. This post-war novel (1961) is shaped within the confines of a new existential landscape: what does it mean to be a moral human in the modern world? Also, who is the most Salingeresque indie rock star of them all?

Adolescents For Life

Emily: So this fucking book. Had you read it before this?
Meredith: Yes, but I have the worst memory ever and thought it was just a family story which I guess could be a reading of it but I definitely got more of a spiritual reading this time around.
Had you read it before?
Emily: I read it as a tween.
and thought I "got it"
and didn't
but copied a lot of quotes from it down into my Che Guevara notebook
including but not limited to:
"Just because I'm choosy about what I want-- in this case, enlightenment, or peace, instead of money or prestige or fame or any of those things-- doesn't mean I'm not as egotistical and self- seeking as everybody else. If anything, I'm more so."
That’s Franny, who I totally related to when I read it the first time. This time, I realized that anyone who relates to either Franny or Zooey probably shouldn't be allowed out in public.
That having been said, I still do to both of them, in that place where we're all adolescents for life.
Meredith: That's a good quote. She was obsessed with the ego.
Emily: Franny can't break down without thinking about her life in the world and the moral failings of everyone else to create the world she believes SHOULD be, and Zooey is sort of an insufferable self-righteous dick. But, I still think Salinger believes in Enlightenment as a way to a more meaningful or fully realized existence.
Meredith: There's a point where their mom, Bessie, says "I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy."

Salinger (1919-2010) liked gardening and Burger King, could hypnotize with his gaze.

Wikipeding Zen Buddhism

Meredith: So, i feel confused about religion. Hah.
Franny and Zooey’s older brother Seymour was their spiritual teacher and then later kills himself, which F and Z basically spend their young adulthoods trying to get over. When they were young, he used to tell them to do things for “the fat lady” and at the end of the book, this becomes a comforting answer they return to. I think that hearing that everyone is the Fat Lady kind of strips down the ego. She smiles, which I can only imagine is a nirvana-like smile.
Emily: I thought she was supposed to be this omniscient figure that you can't prove exists but act "right" for, as in morally correct, as defined by Jesus, or Buddha, etc. In Zooey's case as a kid, shining his shoes for the radio show.
Meredith: Right.
Emily: I sort of glazed over a lot of the more religious passages. Mostly because I don't "give a fuck" about religion as a set of rules. But I suppose that makes me one of the morally corrupt that Franny and Zooey attempt to rise above.
Meredith: It felt like the Jesus Prayer that Franny becomes obsessed with was kind of the opposite of how Christian prayer should be. The whole thing is sort of a chant: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Isn't a part of praying having it be conscious, instead of unconscious? But it really blended Buddhist meditation and Christian prayer .
Emily: Well, some might say that religion/prayer= transcendence over the "self", ultimate detachment, being one with god/the universe etc.
So I felt like this book was a sort of treatise on the ethics of religion but also of formal education.
Meredith: Yes.
Emily: Part of Franny's breakdown is that she feels that nothing about her college education, which she's about to complete, has to do with attaining wisdom or truth, and is more just a means to an end of the fame/prestige she has no interest in gaining.

Meredith: She talks about "wise men" vs. having knowledge, and how useless the latter is.
Emily: I think that's not even a question at this point in time.
college=job=money=beach house
If you’re good at economics or some bullshit, you can become an investment banker and fuck everyone over. The end.
Actually when I first read this, I was 18, on my gap year, "tryna figure it out."
Meredith: uh oh.
Emily: A year later at the end of my freshman year of college I had a small breakdown and almost dropped out of school for the same reasons that Franny angsts about. But I spent a week skipping class with Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius rather than the Jesus prayer.

Meredith: It's interesting that the characters from this book don't really change. The egotistical professors, even the stereotypical college girls she was talking about-- "clearly Vassar."
Emily: Twinsets and dates with phonies. I guess now they’d be wearing Uggs and spray tan.
Meredith: But I did notice something cool when i was wikapedia-ing (heh) zen Buddhism:

Looks like Franny! On the couch— only without Bloomberg the cat in her lap.
Emily: I kept thinking of Mayor Bloomberg, crawling around her bed.
One thing that is an inherent quirk of Salinger and a definitive aspect of his voice but also something you have to have a stomach for: the whole class thing.
Meredith: Right: just accept that everyone is an actor or whateves. Produces screenplays, etc.
Emily: Here's a book about transcendence and the ego and he manages to work in how they own a Vermont-cut wooden coffee table, whatever that's supposed to mean. But pretty sure it's meant to connote luxury. And the boarding schools, and the martinis, and the arrogant boyfriends, and the perfect hair.
Just helped myself to some sangria.
I feel like gchat is strongly influenced by the Velvet Underground. It’s always like "Meredith says... don’t answer the phone."
Meredith: I pity-made-out with some bro to the VU the other night. Sorry Lou.
Emily: Plz. He'd be like AWW YIH GET IT GRL.
Meredith: He followed me home, after some mixed signals (apparentlyyyy) and then I said he should call a cab.
Emily: That’s ridic and hilarious.
Meredith: Kinda sad.
Emily: Speaking of things that may not be funny but I find funny: do you think Salinger is trying to be humorous?
Meredith: Is he mocking people like Zooey?
Emily: Holden Caufield is this zany loudmouth, and Zooey is pretty similar.
Meredith: Yeah but there's always this underlying glimmer of "a good bro."
Emily: Right, it's like they're so genuine their only mechanism is to be completely sarcastic all the time.
I was laughing during the bathroom scene with Zooey and his mom. When he’s like “Mom! Stop looking at my goddamned back!” and she’s hectoring him. And he keeps calling her fatty. I love it.
Meredith: I KNEW YOU WOULD.
Emily: I was soOoOo LOL.
Meredith: Time to get yr own apartment, bro.

Who Is the Most Salingercore of All?

Not these fuckin' bros. J.D. would never be on MTV.

Emily: So right now I’m listening to Grizzly Bear, which I would kind of call Salingercore.
Meredith: How so?
Emily: A little polo-shirted, a little precious, can't avoid the class thing.
Meredith: Do you think Vampire Weekend are the same?
Emily: No, because I hate them.
They’re an imitation.
Meredith: Imitation crabmeat-core.
Emily: Salingercore distilled through pitchforkcore and PaulSimoncore.
The most Salingercore of all: Neutral Milk Hotel.
Meredith: OOOOOF
Eh I don’t know.
They’re southern!
Emily: Well, as we all know, Jeff Mangum is the Salinger of Indie rock.
You can't help but compare these reclusive geniuses with epically small discographies and rabid cult followings. Obvi Aeroplane Over the Sea is Catcher. Perhaps Avery Island is Fran and Zoo. Mangum is really just a novelist with a freight train full of horns behind him.
Meredith: Maybe sought anonymity through his characters? beautiful human
Emily: I think he sought that same moral perfection that Salinger's characters and possibly Salinger himself also strove for. Mangum is a guy who locked himself in a closet for weeks only going out for donuts because he was so obsessed with the tragedy of Ann Frank. I.e. Franny and her cheeseburgers.

television=h-bomb=normal=horrific

Emily: So we haven't even discussed the Holden in the room: this book in comparison to Catcher.
Meredith: The other coming-of-ager.
Emily: Written 10 years before. It's interesting that Franny is so intent on avoiding the obsession of fame that Salinger had achieved, and then spent the rest of his life rejecting. Maybe Franny is Salinger himself talking.
Meredith: Holden would call Zooey a total phony. And a jerk.
Emily: Totally. I think Holden is just younger. He's still trying to get over his brother's death. Zooey has had to already. Holden is 16, Zooey is 25.
Meredith: I wonder if Franny and Zooey resented Seymour. For turning them into "freaks" obsessed with moral purity.
Emily: I think Zooey did, but they both idolized him also. He was the Christ figure. He was infallible, died for their sins. I think Franny especially thinks he was this ideal human, and she's trying to live up to him.
Meredith: Yeah absolutely.
Emily: And of course he's perfect, he's dead. He's not phony.
Meredith: From what we know of him. And Buddy too, their other older brother.
Emily: He lives in the woods!
He's escaped all the trappings that keep Franny up at night and on her cheeseburger diet. Although now she’d be a vegan.
Meredith: Buddy was a really interesting character to me.
He almost seemed like a link for F + Z to Seymour. But it also seemed like he could connect with him posthumously.
Emily: And he was their teacher, along with Seymour.
Meredith: And the narrator of the story!
Talk about omniscience.
Emily: I think the thing that I loved about this book at 18 and hate about it now is that I related to the characters at that age and have spent the interim trying to get over that: this selfish quest for some sort of moral perfection that shuts out everyone else along the way, the judgment, the self-absorption. It’s like, get over yourself and start living in the world.
Meredith: Do you think J.D. knew that? That there's a group of people who can clearly relate to his characters?
Emily: Yes. He is the Zooey talking to all the Frannys.
Meredith: And they are the educated and moral.
Emily: Zooey sees himself as this guy there's no hope for, he's cranky and judgmental, and part of the reason that he rips Franny down at the end is that he wants to save her from the same fate.
Meredith: Yesssss.
He used to do "the jesus thing."
Emily: That whole self-isolation thing is too easy, it's harder to accept the world and oneself and to really live within both.
This is supposed to be a treatise on the nature of human existence
but I also sort of read it as "the plight of the alt."
They h8 mnstrmrs.
Meredith: Fucking conformists.
Emily: Right, the people who don't "get it".
Although, I love this sentiment from Zooey: "Goddamn it, there are nice things in the world. And i mean nice things. We’re all such morons to get so sidetracked. Always, always, always referring every little thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos." Salinger is like: Get over yourself! Enjoy the world! It’s much more exciting and interesting than yourself.
I think this book sort of plays out as a struggle that takes place inside Salinger's own mind. He resents the "normal" world, the people that don’t examine their existences and can mull along aimlessly and contentedly and, he thinks, blindly.
Meredith: Absolutely. And then there's the people that follow those who don't follow.
And end up following and then conforming.
Emily: Which 60 years later is quaintly epitomized by Hot Topic.
Meredith: But once you examine your existence...how do you function?
Emily: This all reminds me of a quote from John Stuart Mill— “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
That's the problem that Franny has-- coming to terms with yourself in the world as a moral being and the implications of that and the breakdown that always ensues.
Meredith: The formula for an existential crisis.
J.D. was about 36 when he published this.
Which kind of makes him like a mentor for us young folks/Franny + Zooeys.
Emily: Here’s a quote from Zooey that might be Salinger’s thesis:
“You just call in some analyst who's experienced in adjusting people to the joys of television, and Life magazine every Wednesday, and European travel, and H-bomb, and Presidential elections, and the front page of the times, and the responsibilities of the Westport and Oyster Bay parent-teacher association, and god knows what else is gloriously normal."
television=h-bomb=normal=horrific
Meredith: oof

"Damn the whole thing": 1965 edition of Franny and Zooey.

Next month on Chattin' Teh Classix: Bookish governesses! Having scandalous love affairs! With sexy bosses! Getting Victorian with Jane Eyre.

A FAREWELL TO ARMS

Welcome to 2literate2work!!!1, in which we'll discuss the deeper meaning of sacred literary texts while comparing Hemingway to TLC.

This week: Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms. Set in Italy during World War 1, it was published in 1929 and cemented Hemingway's spot in The Canon/ boring sophomore English classes. Arms tells the story of a Henry, an American lieutenant in the Italian army who meets Catherine, an English nurse, with whom he falls in love and knocks up. There are also some war scenes.

WW1: It is What It Is

Emily: AWW GIRL
LETS TALK ABOUT HEMINGWAY
babay
let's talk about you and me
Meredith: Chattin' the Classics: Part 1
At first i was all 'does this guy know how to party or what?' ...yawn
Emily: and HE DOES!
Meredith: and then i was all, geez meredith, show some respect. this is war! this is the ww1!
so much booze
Emily : on that note, can i say i didn't realize this was a "war book"
until i opened it
talk about YAWN
and I read most of the book while drinking, in honor of Hway. I was like, how original, a war book. but then, i spose he sort of "invented" the genre.
Meredith: but it's so nonchalanty.

that's in the dictionary, right?
buttttt it's basically autobiographical.
Emily: yes, nonchalantly
Meredith: no L. it's an adjective
Emily: ah, but of course
Meredith: so can i also say that i kinda hate using "woman gets pregs" as a plot twist
Emily: war is hell-- BUT WAIT!
these ladies just can't stop themselves from getting knocked up!
Meredith: i guess when folks aren't practicing family planning, it actually is a plot twist IRL, but still.
anyway. talk about tragic.
woof
Emily: I know! I read the ending in a public place and gasped, predictably
what do you think of his writing style?
Meredith: it's so hemingway
Emily: it is pretty hemingwayesque
Meredith: i mean it's good for being intentionally specific with deets
modernism, etc
he's the father of modernism?
Emily: right, or the "papa" of modernism.
the blurb on the back of my book basically says he’s the greatest writer to ever have lived.
Meredith: totally disagree.
my book is clothbound hard cover blue with his john hancock and a feather.
so handsome.
Emily: yeah, he was a handsome man.
Meredith: i meant the book cover.
Emily: oh right.
so I read about his “iceberg theory” which apparently supposes that the prose itself is only the "tip of the iceberg" whereas the true meaning or implications of it are what lie beneath the surface.
BUT I WANT DESCRIPTION!
Meredith: ah yeah. or some kind of inner dialogue.
Emily: not stoically suffering through it.
Meredith: i guess the lack of inner dialogue, i.e. emotion, lent itself well to stoic manly men.
Emily: yes.
Meredith: and the priest was a big baby because he talked about his feelings.
Emily: yes.
Meredith: but i think i had a hard time reading into the text further.
because his style seems so surfacy and factual, like he didn't want me to delve any further.
World War 1: it is what it is.
Emily: “WW1: you win some, you lose some.”
however, there was one passage i was struck/impressed by.
Meredith: tell me.
Emily: it's when he's thinking about falling in love with Catherine.
and planning an escape from the war with her.
and he goes into this long reverie, and i think it's as imaginative or descriptive or dare I say emotional as the book gets:
“Maybe she would pretend that I was her boy that was killed and we would go in the front door and the porter would take off his cap and I would stop at the concierge’s desk and ask for the key and she would stand by the elevator and then we would go into the elevator and it would go up very slowly clicking all the floors and then our floor and the boy would open the door and stand there and she would step out and I would step out and we would walk down the hall and I would put the key in the door and open it and go in and then take down the telephone and ask them to send a bottle of capri bianca in a silver bucket full of ice and you would hear the ice against the pail coming down the corridor and the boy would knock and I would say leave it outside the door please. Because we would not wear any clothes because it was so hot and the window open and the swallows flying over the roofs of the houses and when it was dark afterward and you went to the window very small bats hunting over the houses and close down over the trees and we would drink the capri and the door locked and it hot and only a sheet and the whole night and we would both love each other all night in the hot night in Milan. That was how it ought to be. I would eat quickly and go and see Catherine Barkley.”
I love the rhythm of that passage; it seems breathless. It’s the one time in the book where he allows himself to fall through the surface (or to go beneath the iceberg, if you will)-- while still maintaining that patented concise clip, and here I think that amplifies the emotion rather than replaces it. Here, he reminds me more of (post)modern male protagonists than someone trapped inside their own stoicism.
Meredith: yeah definitely, it's romantic and idyllic.
what did you think of Cath?
Emily: I actually liked her. Although obviously at times she is a little too eager to please. But I do like her-- when we first meet her, she tells Henry that he doesn't have to lie to her about whether he loves her. She’s not delusional. Overall, i think she's a pretty fully realized character. What did you think?
Meredith: I thought she was obnoxious at times. like "you don't really love me. I’m terrible," etc.
Emily: ha yeah-- overall, I get the feeling that Hemingway himself likes and respects her. I guess I was imaging her in the form of a film heroine from the same period, and they're all the same way. Falling over themselves trying to please their men, apologizing for themselves, etc. So I didn't hold that against her.
Meredith: yeah exactly. Definitely had to do some mental time configurations. And in that sense, yes, she's great.

“Why should he make us feel good at the end? This is war.”

Emily: All the battle scenes were a bit much. I think because i was left wanting for an emotional response to them.
Meredith: but they were hardly battle scenes!
Emily: I felt like I was watching a war from 100 miles away. I want to be in there!
Meredith: It was all "then they took over the mountain and then we shot and then they came up and then etc". Realllly distant/impersonal.
Emily: Yeah- how can you demonstrate that "war is hell" without showing the loss as well as the action?
Meredith: Even the scene with the bridge when they captured that one guy. It was literally right there. But still pretty far away.
Emily: All Quiet on the Western Front, also about WW1, does an excellent job of putting you into the trenches, so to speak, with the aim of trying to make you experience the terror and futility of war. It succeeds and I think it's a better "war novel" altogether.
Meredith: ah haven't read it.
Emily: so good. should be on our list. once we recover from this one.
But SPOILER ALERT to our readers: so Henry survives the war, this act of immense inhumanity between people. But Catherine doesn't survive the war of nature vs. human by dying after giving birth to their son.
Meredith: oooof
Emily: Which: Catherine's death: banal plot twist used only to magnify the horrors of war/ tragedy of our protagonist?
or
a metaphor to show that nothing on earth is benevolent?
there are always small wars that take innocent lives?
Meredith: What I thought was a banal plot twist when it first was introduced became truly tragic when put in the context of Henry's life.
Emily: my biggest fear of the book: Catherine's death is used to justify the entire story, to nicely bookend a hellish episode in Henry’s life and to make the reader feel like they've Experienced Something Epic and Moving and “A Triumph”.
Meredith: Why should he make us feel good at the end? This is war.
Emily: not saying we all deserve a happy ending, but it made me wonder what the book was about: war sucks or life sucks?
Meredith: also, while he was writing that, his wife was currently undergoing a cesarean section!
Emily: oh wow .

didn't know that.
hm.
Meredith: the whole book for the most part mirrors his life up until that point.
He served as an ambulance driver in the Italian army.
Emily: right.
Meredith: i don't think he escaped execution.
Did he? irl?
Emily: he killed himself.
so, i guess not.
Meredith: self execution
Emily: at 61
in Idaho
with a Nobel prize and a Pulitzer on his shelf.
Meredith: damn. hate when that happens! That kind of leads me to believe that it really does get worse.
Emily: but he seemed to be profoundly fucked up. Not in the worst way, but in a fundamental way.
Meredith: do you think it was the pressures to be manly and stoic?
That’s so crazy. Someone who doesn't let on that he feels feelings offs himself.
Emily: Perhaps being born with an intense want for something that doesn't exist outside your own mind manifests itself in those ways sometimes. But, what great writer isn’t born that way?
Meredith: born wanting?
Emily: I was thinking that H is the opposite of writers like DFW and Agee, who really throw themselves screaming across the page. But maybe they're more alike than I originally thought.
Meredith: yeah. They made their depression/frustrations obvious.
Emily: Yeah... there seems to be an inherent dissatisfaction with The Way Things Are in all of them. Which obviously drove them to create in the first place. And killed them, in the end.
But maybe all humans are that way, and writers are just more in touch with those tendencies.
Meredith: right.
Emily: Or more compelled to explore them and hanging them up for the world to see.
Meredith: Oh man. elliott smith just came on my itunes!!!

WWHT?

Meredith: it’s interesting comparing Hway and DFW/Agee
Emily: i guess that's always my first instinct.
like how some people compare humans to Jesus.
Meredith: i'm not as well versed in DFW. But they seem so opposite
Emily: yeah. I guess my main struggle with Hemingway was to feel empathy for him, because I'm so used to reading people who really just cut their heart out and leave it bleeding on the page for you to see, and that's what I'm drawn to and really impressed by-- people who are willing and able to do that.
Meredith: that makes sense. But then it's the separation of the author and the author's work.
Emily: right, just stylistic differences.
Meredith: okay, so he didn't fuck your mind, but he must have had similar feelings to other literary deities enough to find the same shit as unbearable. is it wrong that that gives him cred?
Emily: right, exactly. He just expresses it in a different way, maybe quieter.
Meredith: right.
Emily: well, it seems like he invented this particular brand of modern hyper-masculine stoicism (i keep going back to that word) that really defined an era in American literature and permeated other media too. I think of Bogart, of other classic film idols who embodied that same sort of emotionally unavailable guy.
Meredith: yeah absolutely. Is modernism defined as just very literal writing?
Emily: probably, a departure from Elizabethan or Victorian prose... less flowery and embellished.
I think to look at that literal writing in the context of modern war makes it more interesting:
Meredith: ooooo, you
Emily: these things that were happening were so horrific that there was no other way to describe it than in an emotionally detached manner. and all you can do is relay the events and let the reader feel it themselves.
Meredith: So i wonder how many books were written about war in that time but publishers wouldn't publish them if they were too real or cut too deep or something. I don't know how big the censorship was for ww1 to the public.
Emily: mmm, good point. would be an interesting PhD thesis ha.
Meredith: but the access we have to war now is so much more than it ever was
via wikileak vids and tweets
Emily: true. will there be any novels to come out of the first gulf war or the "Iraq War"?
probably only video games instead.
Meredith: ugh. Gross.
they're RIGHT THERE ON THE FRONT LINE OF THE ACTION though
thats how to breed stoic manly men now
desensitize them to fighting in the front
Emily: right, it's not like those games are used to indoctrinate young kids into thinking like a soldier/ normalize killing brown people.
Meredith: bam
Emily: because they've already virtually been there.
Meredith: so weird
ah
ahhhhhh
Emily: what would hemingway think?
WWHT?
also, at least the US recently lowered standards for accepting soldiers, so at least none of them can think critically let alone write a novel about the horrors of postmodern warfare.
Meredith: oh man
Emily: so this all impresses the shit out of me re: hemingway. guess it's all relative.
Meredith: why couldn't Henry join the US army?
Emily: not sure... it seemed like he wanted to join the Italians? Don’t really know how that would be possible. Don’t really "get" the "rules" of war.
Meredith: rule #1: do not tell anyone about war club
Emily: rule #2: do not tell anyone about war club
Meredith: *do not talk about war club
Emily: ahh right. we're bad at being bros.
I found the iceberg metaphor kind of appropriate because sometimes he just seemed really cold.
Meredith: totttttttez
and he's not going to give you anything more.
Emily: yes.
DUDES WHO ARE READING THIS, WE LIKE SENSTIVE BROS WITH FEELINGS
but who can still fix things
JK
Meredith: and can grow hemingway beards
Emily: yeah, that's a must
maybe staring stoically off your safari vehicle while plucking your freshly slayed condor is also a must.
Meredith: with rifle pictured stage left.
Emily: there are so many photos of him on safari. with some natives.
Meredith: teh gun stays in te picture
Emily: he's is the whitest and maliest white male ever to have existed.
Meredith: 'a hard man is good to find' -m. rivlin
Emily: you're the 4th member of TLC.
or third, now.
miss u left eye.
salt and pepa > TLC
Meredith: duh.
although early tlc
like creep is good
Emily: CRZSXYCL
Meredith: like their older stuff better
same with Hemingway
Emily: yeah, FWELL2ARMS is like his CRAZYSEXYCOOL: masterpiece.
Meredith: HAHAHAHAH
Emily: "the old man and the sea" is his "waterfalls"
one big metaphor
Meredith: that was his single.
Emily: it totally was... won a Pulitzer, like how TLC won the respect of the critics/ community at large for singing/rapping about important issues
like "the drugs"
and setting shoes on fire in the bathtub of your boyfriends mansion
Meredith: hahhahahha
damn, girl.
he had it coming
Emily: he sure fuckin did.



Next time: teenage rioting with Franny and Zooey.