Sunday, December 7, 2008

Miss Lonelyhearts, Help Me, Help Me


There are still a few ducks in the pond by the Fine Arts Center. They move kinetically on the surface of the water as if they are trying to prevent it from freezing over.

The thesis paper I am trying to piece together is on Miss Lonelyhearts, a novel by Nathanael West about human suffering during the great depression era America and also the namesake for this blog. Originally I was going to do it on the deep seated homosexuality and gender confusion of the title character but after doing an archaeological excavation of the book I have come upon much more interesting subject matter. The trouble is that everything I want to write about can not thematically fit into the same thesis paper. I have tried and tried but I don't think I can gerrymander all of my favorite parts of the text into one coherent thesis statement. It is really reminiscent of the paths we choose to follow within our own lives. After much deliberation and after weighing in all of the options, you will find that it is impossible to cram in everything that you'd like. Some actions are sacrificed for others and there is no way to really see the importance of anything until it is brought to fruition. In most cases, what you had in mind is a far cry from what you end up with. All of this gives me a headache, which reminds me of the suffering and disillusionment of society in depression era America; subsequently reminding me of Miss Lonelyhearts and his Christ complex. The man gets sick and stays in his room for three days straight. This is an allusion to the three days that Christ spent in his tomb before the rock was moved only to reveal that Christ's body had risen to heaven. This kind of thing, however, can not fit in with the the part of the text where Miss Lonelyhearts gets aroused by a story that Mrs. Shrike tells him about how her mother died of breast cancer.


The composite photograph at the top of this post is the view from the back porch of the house I was staying at last winter in Lozova, Moldova. This other picture is the circuit box (or whatever it is called) that is on the side of the house. I find things more interesting when they are slightly out of the ordinary. The problem is that once you are too familiar with that which is different it looses its charm. "Silver turns to gray."

Speak easy,
Neil

EDIT: This reminded me of this.

1 comment:

Selina said...

Writing papers on literature that you analyze is super difficult. I tried to write a paper on the religious parrallels between HP and Narnia and His Dark Materials and it was supposed to be 8 pages. I ended up changing my topic because there was no way I could do it justice in only 8 pages. Hope the paper turned out well.

rerati