And god said, let there be Gwen

As we quit our jobs to work through Philip K. Dick, we've taken some time out for youtubing and sangria. You'd never know if from the boomers (Beatles ipad covers WHAT!?), but there is such a thing as productive nostalgia.

Please submit 1,000 words on Gwen Stefani as an iteration of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s American Dream, exploring notions of self-invention, sense of place (specifically east coast v. west), the fluidity of gender roles in American society from the nineteen twenties to the early twenty first century and the ever-changing American conception of love and lust, to us by Monday.

Emily: I'm having a really intense re-kindling of my love of Gwen
since were both naturally blonde Italians




Meredith: sounds so Seattle
 and god said, let there be Gwen



...and it was good.


Emily: her coolness at that point was actually like, a force
maybe its like a freshman thinking all the seniors are cool, but WHOA
she was super beautiful but didnt seem like she even noticed. then everyone else did and it became all about how she looked
Meredith: EXACTLY
Emily: it was like she was this really beautiful person who also happened to lead a band, then it turned into "she leads this band because she's a hot blonde"
 which detracts from everything
Meredith: well yeah, her image sort of contradicted the message. but it didn't matter because she was cool and hot
  and still gave a shit, maybe
 Emily: I remember buying an issue of YM- april 1996 with her on the cover and feeling powerful merely because i owned something with her likeness
 I wish she stayed accidentally beautiful
 but i actually still love her journally lyrics
  shes just a girl
  [LOLOLOL]
 like, with crushes and stuff. and wants bro to love her, and then gets her feelings hurt
  and shes ok with that
 Meredith: and her heartbreak was almost touchable for us bc he's IN THE BAND
 Emily: its like she's secure in her insecurities
but maybe shes too pretty for her appearance not to become an issue
or:! the 90s had more room for a female singer/pop star/ recording artist as something other than a sex object?
 She came up in the age of Courtney Love but had to survive Britney Spears
 Meredith: She could never be her now, like, without getting implants
why is that?!!
desensitization and hypersexualizing "people" aka celebs
Emily: meanwhile, after watching this,


  

im like I can't WAIT to get a white toner on my hair
  WHAT THE FUCK
Meredith: DON'T LOSE THE OLD GWEN!
 she is within you
 she is within us all
Emily: at least she always kept her lil boobs
  which are great
  because shes great
 Meredith: ALSO WHY IS THAT IN ITSELF REBELLIOUS
Emily: well, the most important thing is to be hot.
  and there is only one way to be hot
  thus the mold that we are all expected without question to pour ourselves into
  I dont have an issue with people expected to be hot
  its like, yes, do you! Be hot in the way that you can!
 but when there's only one way, ie tall thin blonde with enormous fake tits, thats a human rights offense
 Meredith: mmmmhm
  man i loved Underneath It All
also i love that her interactions with the camera never ever ever changed
  Emily: yes! it's actually a great, really honest love song
  which i jut realized
No Doubt: suddenly filed under things that make more sense when youre older
  vs 16 and listening while doing homework
  I like the line about wanting someone more like her
 Meredith: i like the part about riding through the rainforest with boom boxes and dyed hair
 Emily:   love her reggae phase
  which i guess shes still in
  via son named Kingston
 Meredith: natch progression, given her ska background
 Emily:  love that she even has a "background"
 Meredith: happens to the best of us
  don't remember this one at all. Brunette!






 Emily: she looks great but the song is forgettable
 Meredith:   that guy should be hot but isn't
 Emily:  he's too pretty to be hot
  he looks like a stock model
  she needs someone with a scar on his face
 Meredith:  or jaw length curly hair and piercing blues
 Emily:   and a dirty tank top
  and stubble
  and a record?
  Meredith: ...




i think i just started crying
 Emily: i think this is the first time i like felt sincere lust at age 9
 Meredith: i'm not crushin' on him so much as i'm crushin on someone singing about a real thing
  also he's fucking gorgeous
 Emily:  they dont make them like that anymore
 Meredith: think he would have Cobained himself if it wasn't for gwen?
 Emily: 1) yes
  2) how is he british and so good looking?
 Meredith: see: david beckham
 Emily: i am experiencing real emotion right now
 Meredith: string instruments
  are so real
  the realest
  moreso than a french horn, even
Emily: this dug a really deep hole in my 9 year old soul
  WHY
 Meredith: even with that little plunger effect at the opening
  well gavin's real
 there wasn't a whole lot of this on the mtv
  not overly saturated with FEELINGS
 Emily: AHHH HIS JAWLINE
 Meredith: SRSLY WHAAAAAT
 Emily: even with 90s hair!
  and hes like apologetic and in pain over failed love
 AHHHHHHHHH
 he's fucking the camera pretty hard
  ok, hes worthy of Gwen
 HIS MOUTH
 Meredith: 

 
he could make me comedown from anywhere
 Emily: fjiuoerauvhbduilslvbudfilnvfudils
  i am never saying an unkind word about this band ever again.
Meredith: this is like some Dark Knight shit
  also: 90s music videos and the use of "weird rooms"
Emily:  via cultural claustrophobia n shit
 i cant wait to devote my life to studying 90s rock
 i think this was the last time overt masculinity was appealing
 Meredith: but it's sensitive
Emily: = ultimate panty melter
like hes ready to go but hes going to ask you first
  because he cares
 Meredith: OOOOF
  grl
 he thinks yr smart
Emily: i am crippled by a nostalgia for 1995
prolls gonna get RZRBLD SUITCASE tomorrow
   THIS RIFF
  built the 90s


 Meredith: feel like this got me into air guitar
in the middle of the world on a fishhook, you're the wave, etc.
  HAH
Emily: deaf dumb and thirty!
  HAHAHAHHAHAHA
  // holy shit
it really is amazing how transportive this is
  like, i actually remember what it felt like to be ten
  through this
 Meredith: everything so zen right now



 
check that shirt
 Emily:  remember when bands were cool?
  i dont think there are cool bands anymore
 Meredith: same haircut for forever
   because there is no cool
  like this is definitely "cool"
 Emily:  it seemed vaguely dangerous
 like, they got it harder than everyone else in a way
  there isnt that wall anymore
  because we all have blogs
 Meredith: his hair, it's like he just didn't give a fuuuuuuck
 Emily: "theres no sex in your violence"
 Meredith: very simple songs
  but yeah. just gettin' it
 Emily: also, he was actually saying something
 from what i can gather
  ah lil choker necklace
  so badass
  if you look at "big" "legit" bands today, they're just sad, mostly
  not pissed
modest mouse or something
 everyone's tired
 Meredith: sad because they know things will end soon and they are struggling to find authenticity
 Emily: no one is thrashin
 Meredith: but can't via soundcloud
 Emily:  ok this is why the internet is the devil
 Meredith: no one likes them but everyone "likes" them
 Emily: "culture"  is music, etc, is so available. Its like a relationship-- everyone is shoving it down our throats and were over it.
 nothing is hard to get
  Meredith: it's like we get what we ask for
  and no ones actually wants that

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.