Tuesday, May 4, 2010

BLOGGING NEW MOON, pt. 6: Meditations in an Emergency

Previous entries can be found in the directory.

Steve Carell once said that Marcel Proust once said that all of those years he spent suffering were actually his best years, because they made him into who he was. I personally disagree; the years of my life in which I was less happy than I am now had a tendency of bringing out my worst qualities. If I could, I would basically Don Draper away a lot of that stuff. But I can't, and so maybe someday I will look back and realize that Steve Carell was right about how Marcel Proust was right. Misery, at least, is pretty good for Bella. Look how artsy!

Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when the tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.

This is the entirety of the first page of chapter four, after Bella's nifty form-over-content calendar trick in and on the proceeding pages (if you haven't figured out the trick from the last post yet, try highlighting it). It's Bella's "Out out, brief candle" speech, an exquisite little moan of great apathetic, you know, whatever. I can hear this tone-poem in Kristen Stewart's voice, but I can also hear Tom Waits speaking it while someone hits a wind chime with a tin can in the background. And that is a good thing.

I appreciate the not-too-intrusive alliteration of a phrase like "blood behind a bruise." And actually, "Aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise" scans as iambic pentameter. Just saying. Okay, well that is a trochaic foot at the beginning. Or you could call the first one a foot with an assumed unstressed syllable in the space before "aches" and then call "like the pulse" an anapestic foot.

The kind of verbal coloring S. Meyer normally uses makes "strange lurches and dragging lulls" seem pretty great by comparison, but maybe in some other context I'd be unimpressed. I'm not sure. Do you think if S. Meyer published this little paragraph anonymously people would like it? Do you think the book around changes it, somehow? In context, is it more ridiculous than it would be out of context? If I bring this up, are we going to get into a huge argument about the state of White Person Literature again?

Put your AP Lit hats on. Is there any poetry-analysis 101 I missed? Somebody want to unpack Bella's metaphors? We've just about dispensed with the narrative trickery, and I have just about dispensed with my last semester of schoolwork, so next time we'll dive headlong into a proper chapter. But I like this little page, in and out of context. How did you all feel about it?

3 comments:

Bridget said...

I'm taking my AP Lit test in 2 days, so this is perfect timing!

I like how she says "It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does." The awkwardness of the sentence makes it sound precisely like what it means. That sentence itself is "strange" and kind of reads like a "dragging lull".

And I think you're right, in any other context this wouldn't be too bad, but the fact that it comes in the midst of Bella's angstfest makes it really vomit-inducing.

Do I get a 5?!

Kim said...

Though I super like this little page after the blank sections before, I definitely think it would be less impressive in a different context. Maybe its so nice here because we (or I at least) expect less of her and am therefore more easily impressed? Compared to her typical writing, its one of those great little bits that can usually totally redeem a book for me. Compared to an author who is normally very careful with language and style and who had an entire book of great little bits, this would probably seem rather pale.

Granted, I don't really think its a good thing to expect less. People, the authors themselves even, tend to hold young adult lit to lower standards in general. It's annoying and stupid and actually the subject of an article I just read for a paper I'm writing so I'm all fired up about it at the moment and actually kind of pissed at myself for expecting less of her. But anyway, point of the rambling: it's a nice section when placed there.

ZL said...

Probably you are right that if this was like, just a tossed away paragraph in some other book we might not even notice it. But isn't that a bad thing? If some modern authors just write so strangely on a normal basis that we just breeze through it?

It also occurs to me that S. Meyer realized she had something cool here, hence its placement all by itself, and yet on the next page the same chapter continues. Maybe I'm just mad that she didn't number this as a separate chapter because next time I will be starting Blogging New Moon Part 7... on Chapter 4.

And Bridget--- GOOD LUCK ON YOUR AP LIT TEST! I'm pretty sure I got a four, and I was FUCKING PISSED. I think I wrote about Things Fall Apart for my final essay. AP Lit was supposed to be like, the five I had in the bag. US History, I expected the four I got. But Lit? I was very upset with myself. For what it is worth, I killed it on the SAT Verbal. Just saying.

Also AP Credits are like the greatest thing in the world. If I hadn't transferred to BU but enrolled as a Freshman I would have been able to graduate in three years. So I hope that you get a good grade and it makes your life ten times easier in college. And you are right about that sentence! That is a 5-level observation. Clearly since you can break down Twilight so easily you are going to do just fine. I wouldn't write about Twilight on the exam though. It's still not accepted in some circles. And by some circles I mean all circles except this one.