My Final Paper

Rio Gonzalez

Dr. Sexson

Emergent Literature

April 23, 2010

What I Gno now that I knew before but had forgotten,

And seeing my beginning for the first time.

This semester has taught me so many lessons that I had no idea where to begin. I thought I would write on the Eternal Recurrence and make it an umbrella over the other themes. I would discuss how The Myth of the Eternal Return or Eternal Recurrence were larger versions of the Twenty Minute Lifetime, Dolce Domum and Déjà Vu. I would rhetorically discuss the World as Myth and Dream, and Life as Fiction and say how they were really just an abstract way of looking at Eternal Recurrence, or a method of coming to terms with the fact that we don’t get anything right the first time around. I realized that I was burned out and over clocked. My brain was soup and I needed some time to re-gelatinize and be able to function normally again. Then I watched Troy and it hit me, the phalanx. This semester was so tightly interwoven that I could not tease apart the fabric created. Everything was interlaced to a point of equilibrium. There was so much overlap that I could not seem to find any meaty chunks to build a paper out of. I feel as if I have learned a lot but there is no place to begin but at the beginning and to overlap, myself, until I arrive back at this moment.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories read like a children’s book but sent me pondering into the corner of my room. There was the eleven-minute attention span, which stems from it being eleven o’clock when Haroun’s mother leaves. We made connections between Haroun, and the Wizard of Oz, where the characters were personified by more than one entity in the story. Then seeing this explained as a tool for the main character to connect their experiences in their twenty-minute lifetime to their “Waking Life.” This was one of the many moments in class that our readings connected directly to us, bringing the books to life and making the stories personal through the connection from Oz to B-“Oz”-eman. We then moved on to The Following Story.

The Following Story was probably my favorite of the lowbrow books. There is a lot to discover in this book, and I am certain that I am nowhere near to finding all the little lessons and meanings in store. The obvious was the Eternal Recurrence with the book ending in a way that suggests that it is to be reread. Then there is the way in which it ends, the way in which the entire book is written, talking directly to someone. I thought it was to the reader, and I still believe it is so, but also talking to the one helping him transition. I think we are the same, the lady d’India and the reader. She guides him to death and we keep him alive. We are two parts of the same action of continuance. The story is more an actual narration than the narrations we see in most novels, as if the story is being read to us, or rather, to our station as assistants in transitioning in an almost interactive way. You feel involved with this story. I love how very Beckettesque this read is, with the breaking of the story through that narrative voice to make you realize that you are reading something. That the story is a story, it’s about you and it’s about nothing and about the same things over and over again; you have learned this before but forgotten and maybe, just maybe you will remember this time, or not.

Finnegans Wake was my induction into highbrow literature; like being baptized by being tossed into the river and eventually washing up on the delta with Anna Livia. I discovered through this text not only that I loved high brew literature, but also that the real enjoyment came from deciphering the Matrix and “coming to being” with a new understanding. This book was really where I began to understand that there is more to books than ink and pages. Though I have always had a love for the smell of paper and the feel of a pen, or a typewriter, or a computer, I never thought that the works produced could be so deliciously cryptic as to take twelve years to read six hundred and twenty-five pages. I am not a fast reader by any means but that is really just ridiculous, glorious and ridiculous, the masterpiece of plerosis.

The Skin of Our Teeth was a nice reprieve from the high brow. The knock off from Finnegans Wake held several ideas that I feel were really just the processed imitations of the pure insanity and genius that was Joyce’s work. It was an easy read that, without beating you over the head, brought to light the same ideas that we discussed in class: The Eternal Recurrence, yet again, the Twenty Minute Lifetime, The World as Myth and Dream and Life as Fiction. The Twenty Minute Lifetime is displayed through the way that eons are to have passed over the course of the play. Eternal Recurrence is in this play because, though you walk in to the theatre and sit down, when you are done with the play you are returning to yourself, still in your chair, after traveling on this lovely adventure and learning about mischief, redemption and forgiveness. You have also traveled through the centuries and have met Cain, Mary Magdalene, Eve and Adam as well as Anna Livia Plurabelle, H.C.E. and the conglomerate of Shem and Sham.

Three Novels by Samuel Beckett was, by far, my favorite book of the semester. The deterioration through both the individual novellas and the whole book is a cathartic work of kenosis. The Gnostics must love Beckett’s work for its simplicity. Beckett seems to empathetically dump on the characters and then make them wipe it off their eyelids and keep on with their habits as if nothing had changed, as if nothing were wrong with their situation. I felt incredibly connected to the characters that Beckett wrote. Their pains were my pains and they had it worse than I did but they were oblivious. They did not mope or question, simply continued on with an attitude that conveyed, “this is just the way it is.”

The Tempest was probably my least favorite book of the semester. I had a difficult time with the Old English and missed some of the plotline. This is definitely going to be a book I will reread as I have discovered that the more difficult a book is to read, the greater the lessons are that can be gleaned from it. I did discover that it was Shakespeare’s finale and that Prospero was his character self; that Miranda’s attendants reflected the Muses, that the concept of marriage was a formal contract between two men, that all marriage is rape but that rape is not necessarily sexual but also holds the meanings of abduction and destruction.

The Alchemist is a book I have recommended to many people since reading. I say The Following Story is my favorite lowbrow book of the semester but that is only because this book is not a book. It was a riddle that was written about me and I had all the keys to unlock its lessons. I say The Following Story but that is only because The Alchemist is so much a literary version of my personal story that I feel it is more of a totem than a text. I have learned more from the other books but this book helped me to see, and to put into words, the life I have been living and how I have been living it. It has given me justification for my beliefs that life is good to you when you do what you love, and that people are happiest when they are following their hearts desires. The idea of alchemy being the purification of self is one I had no trouble grasping; turning, from one state of being into another.

The Four Quartets was probably the most difficult book I read this semester. I read it several times and found myself drawing a blank when I tried to think about the contents of what I had just read. Perhaps it is just a mental block that I will work past eventually but this small book of poetry I believe to be the densest thing we read even surpassing Finnegans Wake. My defense for this is not that it has more in it than Finnegans Wake but that the compacted ideas within this small book are so dense that the deciphering is not from portmanteaus or metathesis but simply because of Eliot’s incredible ability to choose only the pluperfect words to distill his point to something pure, and thusly difficult to read. This will be yet another book that I spend countless hours with, teasing meanings out of and enhancing my ability to absorb this density of information more easily. I do feel as though a large portion of what we learned is embodied in this work. The twenty-minute lifetime, eternal recurrence, dolce domum, the world as myth and dream and life as fiction are all present in this small work in a way that deeply displays the folly of taking things seriously. This may be a profound book but it is also light hearted and playful. It shows us where our troubles lie and then reminds us that we are silly and should embrace ourselves as we are while continuing our journey to better ourselves.

The Following Story revisited at the end of the semester brought us full circle “to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” It was a good visit that allowed me to really connect with the themes and lessons we’d gone over in class. Herman Mussert’s two second transition from living under the rose to living under the yew-tree and the cyclical beginning of a new life in the same manner of the traverse of Helios drawn on the board by Dr. Lubner in reference to Finnegans Wake.

I truly would have liked to have written a paper dedicated to some insightful connection but I have had so many connections that I could pick no one individually. The weave is too tight and the phalanx is too unitary to be able to pierce through or have an apocalypse. I have become so much a different person from the beginning of the semester through practice of the things that we discussed that they are reflexive as opposed to theoretical. It is more difficult, I believe, to discuss the things you use inherently than things you consciously study. To quote; “The more you gno, the more you gno.” Perhaps it is also, the more you do, the more you do.

And here I am now. I have gone on a journey that none would believe and have learned of literary theories, practices and applications that have all been tested and certified Grade A Sexson approved. I have a savory flavor on my tongue and a lyrical resonance in my mind that will take me through the summer and the rest of my life.