I was originally going to reflect upon a latter section of Maps to Anywhere, however no matter how hard I tried, I found my brain working back towards a particular section that we had discussed the week before. The larger section is titled The Wind Did It, which is an essay detailing the interactions that Cooper has with his father, but what really stuck with me was one of the final set of paragraphs, where Cooper illustrates a scene of him returning to his father's home while his father is not present, and the only word that I have to describe it is surreal. Just absolutely and utterly surreal. It doesn't seem like it's actually happening, but as if it is some dream of sorts that we're experiencing with Cooper, but this might be able to be attributed to his style; Cooper writes in a very dreamlike manner, with a great deal of commas, short phrases, and appropriately specific details, it makes it too much to take in for the reader as they try to visualize the moment. An example of this is on page 63, where Cooper has entered the house and is gazing upon the plethora of various objects laid about the house, such as "coupons [his father] never use - Scotchguard, Lime Away, Lady Clairol - torn from the Sunday Times. A yellowed brochure for a Mixmaster... a flyer for a missing child. A note that simply says See you soon, signed, Rose - like the flower." All of these elements add up to a sense of mystery as the reader is left to pick up the many pieces Cooper leaves for us to digest.
Perhaps the most interesting moment in this section is that at one point, Cooper himself seems to be stupefied by the sheer amount of detail, "as fragments combine and cohere", he begins to lose himself, and his sentences become more and more abstract and seamless, until he hears "the wind scour the house" which breaks his concentration. After reflecting for a moment, I remember the title of the section, being The Wind Did It. In fact, the header for this particular section under that chapter is also titled The Wind Did It. But, what did the wind do? I found myself without answer until this moment. The wind blew him out of his fragment-laden fervor, bringing him back to reality. But if nonfiction is supposed to be realistic, where was that place that Cooper was before? And can we truly personify the wind as doing something as magical and mystical as that? It's like Impressionistic art brought into word. But that's not something that could be nonfiction.
Again and again, this genre continues to flabbergast me.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Reader Response 4/2/2015 - Maps to Anywhere
I feel like these creative nonfiction essays that we are reading for class are too complex to simply be looked at objectively. I'm still astounded that such truth can be hidden within works that are supposedly nonfiction. I suppose that there exists truth in many forms, this is just the genre that I am most unfamiliar with, despite my literary experience; I've only dealt with creative essays a few times before in my entire life, with the previous being Running in the Family, and that was a work that we only read through and didn't focus too much upon. (It's also classified as a fictionalized memoir, which doesn't help much.) In that work, it seemed to blend such dreamlike elements that it was incredibly difficult to determine what was real and what was not. Blending magical realism alongside the elements inspired by the truth offers an interesting perspective, but it's still fictionalized, nonetheless. Unfortunately, this is the closest that I have gotten to creative essays.
The same holds true for a great number of works within Maps to Anywhere, as the nonfiction works often blend elements that seem unrealistic or magical, akin to magical realism, but are simply different perspectives or takes on the observation or account of something which, due to the natural gaps in the retelling, allows false elements to sneak in and the author is allowed to manipulate them as they will. A prime example of this exists in "The Heralds" in the first section. It may be possible that the narrator never saw a "stream of black birds soaring over the city", but this is not where the doubt comes in. The doubt enters the scenario when Cooper states that they were "endless" and "like winged pieces of letters, like a moving sign in Times Square, heraldic and quick and colossal". If the stream of black birds were truly endless, then there must be some infinite source of black birds, which is impossible, but this can be written off as an exaggeration. The usage of the similes comparing the stream of birds to the letters and the Times Square sign are literary tools and imply some degree of falsity, however because they are joined with the word "like" in the form of similes, it can be also written off. However, if they were written as metaphors, without the usage of the term "like", I still feel that they would hold true despite their literary falsity.
This is one thing that I have great trouble with when it comes to creative essays; the only rule that exists is that the meaning behind the words, not the words themselves, must be true, but that begs the question of what is true and what is not. Could this blog post be considered creative nonfiction? It's possible, because I feel as if what I'm writing here is true, but someone else might not know that and be confused about it. Even though this is a genre that should be very simple to understand, for me it is the exact opposite. The wordplay that exists in this genre is something that spices up the individual writings and, personally, adds to the confusion, but it's something that I will eventually overcome, given the time.
The same holds true for a great number of works within Maps to Anywhere, as the nonfiction works often blend elements that seem unrealistic or magical, akin to magical realism, but are simply different perspectives or takes on the observation or account of something which, due to the natural gaps in the retelling, allows false elements to sneak in and the author is allowed to manipulate them as they will. A prime example of this exists in "The Heralds" in the first section. It may be possible that the narrator never saw a "stream of black birds soaring over the city", but this is not where the doubt comes in. The doubt enters the scenario when Cooper states that they were "endless" and "like winged pieces of letters, like a moving sign in Times Square, heraldic and quick and colossal". If the stream of black birds were truly endless, then there must be some infinite source of black birds, which is impossible, but this can be written off as an exaggeration. The usage of the similes comparing the stream of birds to the letters and the Times Square sign are literary tools and imply some degree of falsity, however because they are joined with the word "like" in the form of similes, it can be also written off. However, if they were written as metaphors, without the usage of the term "like", I still feel that they would hold true despite their literary falsity.
This is one thing that I have great trouble with when it comes to creative essays; the only rule that exists is that the meaning behind the words, not the words themselves, must be true, but that begs the question of what is true and what is not. Could this blog post be considered creative nonfiction? It's possible, because I feel as if what I'm writing here is true, but someone else might not know that and be confused about it. Even though this is a genre that should be very simple to understand, for me it is the exact opposite. The wordplay that exists in this genre is something that spices up the individual writings and, personally, adds to the confusion, but it's something that I will eventually overcome, given the time.
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