Greetings!

Well, the semester is officially concluding as we are finishing up the last of our finals. Though the fall semester is technically shorter than the spring, it seems as if the end would never come—but, alas how it arrived—in a blur and all too soon. Though we are content to successfully complete another semester, there is still this feeling of wanting to slow time down. Or, maybe that is because I have to give a final greeting to some great interns that are leaving the office this semester. Though they are hopefully moving on to bigger and greater things, one can’t help but feel sentimental in seeing them go. Hopefully, the new interns (myself included) will carry on with the success of the Boylan Blog and won’t disappoint those who helped make it great. Many thanks and love to everyone at the office who helped me out and whom I shared interesting conversations and a few laughs with. To Ariana, David, Victor, Christina and Miriam it has been great! I want to wish you all success in the upcoming year, and I have faith that you guys will continue to produce good work and impress those around you. Congrats to those who are graduating, and good luck to the rest!

On another note, thanks to everyone who has been a faithful reader of the Boylan Blog this semester, I hope you enjoyed what you read and are anticipating what the upcoming year will bring to it. Maybe during this long break, and the holidays nearing you might be inspired to do some writing. Keep in mind that next semester the Zine will be in publication. So Happy Holidays and happy writing!!!

-Sabina Santiago

News Briefs

Shells of Discovery

Concealed among rocks and bones in the dusty archives of a museum, three ancient shells were discovered, that may be the world’s oldest beads. The shells were originally collected from Algeria and Israel and it is estimated they are 100,000 years old. The researchers who uncovered these shells say that they increase the growing amount of evidence that figurative thinking occurred much earlier than we had assumed. Each of the shells had a hole through its center which may indicate they were worn as jewelry.

Today, in our western culture, jewelry may not be perceived as a form of cultural expression but these shells represent more than just something to be worn. Over centuries archeologists have unearthed musical instruments, artwork, jewelry and many other objects that symbolize a revolution in humans. Humans who have been biologically modern have advanced by having modern behavior.

Within modern human history, individuals have worn jewelry to convey something about their culture, age, ethnic origin, class and who they are. D’Errico, one of the men to make this discovery stated “The common element among personal ornaments is that they convey meaning to others. They convey an image of you that is not just your biological self.”

Individuals resided in Asia, the Near East and Africa well over 40,000 years ago and it is still unclear when or even why symbolic thinking erupted when people arrived in Europe. Many researchers do believe a significant biological change occurred at the 40,000-year mark, while others think that the aspect of modern culture began much earlier.

Therefore, the shells found were models for a larger conclusion. Researchers will need to find more shells to be certain when modern behavior actually emerged. This discovery conveys not only that how we dress represents our individualism but if our ancestors didn’t adorn themselves with shells or beads, would we still be wearing accessories today?

- Alana Linchner

Source and Image Source:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13483253/ns/technology_and_science-science/

Culture Corner

The Jewish Bris

As one of the Boylan Blog’s very own interns has just given birth to a boy (Mazal Tov, Miriam!!) and provided him with the traditional Bris, or Brit Milah (depending on your origin), I decided to devote the Fall’s final Culture Corner to the tradition of the Bris.

Perhaps you’ve seen a Seinfeld episode where Jerry attended a Bris, or perhaps you know someone who has hosted one. In either case, you might have walked away from the experience believing that a Bris is simply a circumcision. But for the Jewish baby boy, a Bris is so much more.

Generally performed on his eighth day after birth, the historic purpose of the Bris is to welcome the male newborn into the covenant between God and Israel. The practice is attributed to Abraham, one of Judaism’s forefathers, who was ordered by God to have a circumcision. According to this tradition, the Bris is derived from God’s commandment to Abraham, “This is My covenant between Me, and between you and your offspring that you must keep: You must circumcise every male. You shall be circumcised through the flesh of your foreskin. This shall be the mark of the covenant between Me and you. 'Throughout all generations, every male shall be circumcised when he is eight days old” (Genesis 17: 9-12). In following this source, the burden is generally on the father to ensure that this commandment is fulfilled. (Note that this source is shared with Islam, whose practitioners also traditionally circumcise their males.)

Okay, so that’s the source. But what does a Bris mean, practically speaking? Well, here’s what to expect if you are ever invited to attend one of these events. First of all, set your alarm clock because the ceremony is usually held in the morning. If the Bris is to be held in a synagogue, keep in mind to dress respectfully; either way, the dress code is typically dress-casual, unless otherwise specified.

If the Bris takes place in a synagogue, it will likely follow the morning prayers. At many synagogues, a chair will be set aside for the Prophet Elijah, whose presence is said to grace every Bris. The baby is typically brought into the room on a pillow. (The honor of carrying the baby is deemed beneficial for a woman who is trying to conceive a child.) Next, the congregation welcomes and blesses him in Hebrew and includes another blessing for Elijah. At this point, the baby is passed to the person honored with the position of sandek, the person who will hold the baby throughout the circumcision. The mohel —Jewish person trained in circumcision—then recites the blessing on the commandment of the circumcision and then executes the procedure.

WARNING! This is probably the part of the ceremony during which you want to space out. Or contemplate your long To Do list. Or whether the chicken came before the egg, or vice versa. Whatever you do, DO NOT LOOK AT THE BABY. Of course, you don’t have to take my advice; do want you want. I’m just saying you may not want to watch the foreskin get chopped off of a baby’s penis. But then, that’s totally your call. Kidding aside, though, many people believe that the babies’ cries open the Gates of Heaven and, as such, also use this time for personal prayer.

Following the circumcision, there are a series of blessings, and finally, the baby is named. This part is especially exciting for the many guests and family members who have heretofore been referring to the baby as “Baby.” Because many are too scared of jinxing it, the name of the baby is typically not announced before the Bris.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Jewish ceremony if there wasn’t food, so now you get to enjoy a breakfast. For his part, the crying baby will be whisked off to be nursed by a concerned mother. As for what you will experience, the celebratory meal varies from one Bris to the next, but oftentimes succumbs to stereotypes and includes bagels, lox, and an abundance of herring.! Yeah, the baby probably had it harder, but Lord knows it ain’t easy not to lose your composure while attending a Bris, so eat up—you earned it!

-Rachel Weissman

Photo Source: http://www.thewengers.qc.ca/Mordechai%20Bris.htm

Poem of the Week

I began writing my first Poem of the Week with Eliot in mind, two semesters ago. As I sit to write my last, it is only natural that I should turn to him. What follows is the last section from a typically long (but beautiful) T.S. Eliot poem, Little Gidding, written in 1942. His little rosepetal sprinkled over a city shattered by war.

Part V, from Little Gidding
by T.S. Eliot

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

***
I began with Eliot. And so in this way I end.

Yet “to make an end is to make a beginning,” and for Eliot, even the very act of writing is that of creating and destroying. You begin a poem, you end the paper, and even the poetry you leave behind becomes “an epitaph.” There is something so inherently fluid about the vague marker we call time, no matter how hard we try to fragment it into neat pieces of first, second, third. “Endings” and “beginnings” become just words we assign to events that pass in and out of the world absently; to the world, “We are born with the dead” and the dead were born and lived once, too, and they watched passages of their lives end, just as we’ll watch ours. The naturalness of this is fascinating for Eliot, and comforting. It is no coincidence that this poem was written at the height of World War II in London, when the blitz left the dust of destruction in everything—the cracks in towers, lines on a face. “History is a pattern,” after all, but one “of timeless moments”: of beginnings and endings that blend into the beginnings and endings of others. Ironically, T.S. Eliot reminds his reader that nothing lasts, that our historic words are “heard, half-heard,” or perhaps not even heard at all, and even the most striking events of a time are nothing but an instant, a single note “between two waves of the sea.”

It is this infinite perspective that makes Little Gidding such a powerful poem. When we depart—be that for winter intersession or death’s undiscovered country—we leave so much behind, from the “fail[ing light]/On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel” to our footprints from “the complete consort dancing together.” Yet how beautiful are humans here, that in the midst of the largest war the world had ever seen we don’t leave behind guns and bloodshed, but the remembrance of a winter afternoon? Eliot wants us to see that these memories, and words, and ideas, and changes—no matter how small or insignificant (for even the muted stained glass in the sunless chapel counts)—are beautiful images left behind for those who come after us, just as we were given flickers from those who came before us, just as they from those before them. And so the cycle continues, and the lines blur, and looking at our pinprick lives on the cosmic scale we are liberated from time, and our ceaseless journey is humanity’s ceaseless journey, and our individual ending is another individual’s beginning. And so there really is no end, and as you say goodbye to graduating friends or the man across the street who’s moving away or perhaps your favorite professor, it is important to remember that “the end is where we start from,” and each footstep away takes as closer to home.

So take over this post and make it your own. Bring new poetry to it and share what you love. Make it new. And know that what I leave behind is what I collected from those before me, and what you pick up from the sands you started from is every piece of history there ever was and ever will be. Every poem is an epitaph, every sentence an end and a beginning, and all melds together—all past, all future—until “the fire and rose are one.”

“All shall be well.” In this way, we go on.

-Christina Squitieri

Source: The Oxford Book of American Poetry
Photograph Courtesy of Wikipedia (Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire, England)

Currently Reading

The Dead
James Joyce

James Joyce’s Dubliners might just contain the greatest short stories ever written. With no drawn-out plot— merely a catharsis and an abrupt end— each story leading up to the final story of the collection offers a glimmer of Irish paralysis of middle class life. In the appropriately titled final story in Dubliners, “The Dead,” the powerlessness of all the Irish comes full circle; any moving forward that they might have is shut down. A husband and wife leave a party, and, as they leave, the wife mentions to her husband, Gabriel, about a former love of hers, Michael Furey, who has passed away— her first real and true love. After Gabriel hears this, he is distraught by the juxtaposition of emotions between him and his wife— emotions that make him feel for her, and at the same time, emotions that let him know that he is too empty to be able to feel for her the way she deserves, and the way she might have once felt in regards to hear true love. And as the he stands atop his high balcony, looking out over Dublin, it begins to snow, emphasizing the bitter lives of the entire city of James Joyce’s cynicism. As the snow falls freely over the cemeteries and tombstones of former Irish citizens, Joyce burns in regret and disappointment for the present day immobility of his Dublin, as well as the immobility of Dublin past— the snow covers his Dublin, and retroactively destroys the symbol of Ireland past, covering all the dead bodies that have lived and loved, making the feeling of lethargy complete. And there is really nothing left for them to do anymore.

— David Abady

— Image Source: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/j/joyce/james/portrait.jpg

Currently Listening

Larry Campbell



If you’ve been keeping up to date with Levon Helm’s latest CD releases, you’d be familiar with the dominant lead guitar, mandolin, lap-steel, banjo and fiddle that pervades in the background of all of the songs. All these sounds are created by the same person, and that person happens to be the multifaceted artist, Larry Campbell. Campbell has been a back-up musician since the 70s and has performed with such famous artists as Paul Simon, Willie Nelson, Peter Wolf, Little Feat, Buddy & Julie Miller, Lyle Lovett, Sheryl Crow, and Bob Dylan.



Every since an early age, Campbell had an affinity for music. Born and raised in New York City, he received his first instrument at the tender age of ten—a $12.95 Sears and Roebucks guitar which he taught himself to play. He would listen to songs on the radio and teach himself how to play them. Campbell went on to form and play in countless bands, but most notably was his work with Bob Dylan. He toured with the master from March 31, 1997 until November 21, 2004, playing anything from lead guitar to Cajun fiddle. He helped Dylan record “Love & Theft,” which received five stars from Rolling Stone, as well as won a Grammy Award for “Best Contemporary Folk Album.”



Campbell currently tours and plays with Levon Helm and he has released a solo acoustic album called “Rooftops.” His diverse talent for both electric density and roots music has created a powerful sound which has backed an eclectic group of musicians for over forty years.



- Victor V. Gurbo

Currently Watching

“Far North”
2007
Asif Kapadia


Thinking back to the last time I sat down to watch a feature film, I am haunted by the memory of a particularly disturbing one I saw over the Thanksgiving break. My stepmother and I selected it from the local library to view with my grandmother during the holiday.

The cast, including the hunky Sean Bean and the magnificent Michelle Yeoh, appealed to us, as did the synopsis. We took it home and put it on after an evening of delightful gluttony and a round of Trivial Pursuit.
In terrible foreboding of what was to come, my dear gran, 85 years of age, said she would watch anything as long as it wasn’t scary or depressing.

The first half of “Far North,” transpires almost completely without dialog. Saiva and her adopted daughter Anja are indigenous women living alone in the arctic tundra. Years before, Russian soldiers massacred their entire tribe, including Saiva’s lover. Saiva’s life was spared (though she was raped in a harrowing scene by their lieutenant) so that she might guide them back to civilization. While the soldiers gathered their belongings she discovered a baby in one of the dead villagers’ tents. She took the child (Anja) with her on what the soldiers believed to be a journey out of the tundra. She led them to the edge of a deep rift and quickly moved out of the way while all five of them tumbled to their deaths.

One day Saiva and Anja come upon an injured Scandinavian soldier lying in the snow. They take him into their yurt and he quickly recovers. After a brief tryst with Saiva, the soldier, Loki (Bean), falls in love with Anja. Anja soon tells her adopted mother that she will be leaving with Loki and that she has no future there in the snowy wilderness.

Saiva’s jealousy and sense of abandonment by the two people she saved from certain death compel her to do something that turns the movie from drama to horror. I won’t give it away but I will say that my poor grandmother had to go upstairs and lie down.

Though perhaps the most disturbing movie of 2007, “Far North’s” breathtaking cinematography, brilliant acting and fascinating character study makes it definitely worth a gander. The unsettling twist, though horrifying, ensures that the viewer won’t easily shake the film’s impression.

-Ariana Costakes

Photo: www.directorsnotes.com

Greetings!

Finals are drawing nearer as we say good-bye to yet another semester here at Brooklyn College. Having less than two weeks left you could already see the stress and anxiety written on the faces of your fellow classmates, and you sigh and mess with your hair as you look at your planner and see that you have two papers and a presentation due next week (or maybe that’s just me). Then there is the mess and chaos that comes with registration, and you hope you get all the classes that you want before they are closed. But, sigh for a better reason—less than two weeks left of school!! Then when you get your grades and see that all those papers and all-nighters were worth the work you put in (hopefully), this time you can breathe a sigh of relief. Well, until you begin the next semester and procrastinate once again (every semester we tell ourselves we won’t do this). But, until then buckle down and shut out the outside world long enough to finish those papers and study for those exams. Good luck, and try not to have any breakdowns. Just think after finals, the only thing left to stress about is saving money and figuring out what to buy people for Christmas. Sigh.

- Sabina Santiago

P.S. - Don’t forget to complete your student evaluation forms!!

News Briefs

UN SCIENTISTS SAY LOW-MEAT DIET WOULD HELP SLOW GLOBAL WARMING

Top climate scientists for the UN said Wednesday that less consumption of meat would help retard global warming.
The farming of meat contributes to 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, far more than transportation, they said.
An increasing number of climate change scientists are calling on people in the West to cut down on their meat and dairy consumption.
The Mediterranean diet, consisting mostly of vegetables and whole grains, is said to be the most environmentally-friendly. It is also scientifically proven to be the most heart-healthy. Dimitrios Trichopoulos of the Harvard School of Public Health said that the Mediterranean diet does not exclude meat completely, but traditionally discourages the excessive consumption of animal products. Greeks have the lowest incidence of heart disease in the Western Hemisphere due to their culinary repertoire of leafy greens, herbs, tomatoes, olive oil and antioxidant-rich fruits. Greek life-expectancy is one of the highest in the world, second only to the miraculous Okinawans in Japan.
Though it is now scientifically recognized that the raising of cattle and other livestock produces more greenhouse gas emissions than do cars and airplanes, it is not publicly acknowledged. Not only are huge stretches of jungle and rain forest cleared for the grazing of cattle, but as the animals graze they flatulate abundantly, sending methane gas into the atmosphere. A few cow farts would be innocuous if there weren’t now a glut of dairy and meat cows on the planet, reared to satisfy the Western demand for beef and milk products.
The Western meat fixation has yielded one too many disastrous consequences. According to scientists, it’s time we rethought our palates for the sake of our bodies and our planet.

-Ariana Costakes

Source: Al-Jazeera English
Photo source: www.commontragedies.files.wordpress.com





The War on Terror
Is a War on Who?

About four months after September 11th, the frantic search for Osama bin Laden had nearly reached its conclusion. The al Qaeda leader was cornered in the depths of the mountains of Tora Bora, along with his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri. With absolutely no signs of escaping, bin Laden began drafting a will and preparing for his capture and/or immediate death. It was at this crucial juncture of his capture that defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued an order to decrease occupation in Afghanistan on the grounds that he feared antagonizing American allies who resided there.



When the small group (less then one hundred) American troops who approached called for backup, they were promptly denied their request for reinforcements, as well as their request to block the mountain passes which lead safe passage out of the Tora Bora and into Pakistan. In mid December, Osama bin Laden and a group of his bodyguards safely exited their mountain hideout and without resistance marched into the interior of Pakistan. Food for thought.

-Victor V. Gurbo

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/12/01/360722.aspx

http://www.desertdispatch.com/opinion/afghanistan-7442-failure-tora.html




Battle between Old and New Media

The Google Company has just announced that they are now going to limit the number of free articles that you could access through their search engine. This is due to complaints from newspaper firms arguing that Google is making profit from their newspapers articles because readers could them for free. They claim that readers could avoid paying subscription fees to newspaper websites, by searching for those articles via Google.

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of Newscorp has accused Google of “profiting from journalism by generating advertising revenue by linking readers to newspaper articles.” He believes that it is unfair that readers could search their articles via Google, therefore, bypassing the subscription fees to those articles on their home websites. But, now under the First Click Free program publishers can prevent readers from having unrestricted access to their subscriptions. Josh Cohen, Google’s senior business product manager stated that readers could view unlimited pages for free, but they’ve updated their website so that “publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing.” So, readers could now be routed to registration pages or subscription fees if they view five articles or more per day.

The reason why newspaper companies are chastising firms like Google for providing free access to news articles is because “newspapers are increasingly looking for new ways to make money from their online content amid a continuing decline in circulation figures and advertising revenues.” A lot of newspaper companies are now looking to charge readers for their online content, because they have to make up for losses in their printed versions. The major dilemma that is occurring is that people want their news on-the-spot, to be able to read only articles that are of interest to them by a click of their mouse. In an on-demand world readers find that getting news online is more convenient, and newspaper companies have caught on and are looking to charge readers for viewing content that was once free.

Is this fair? Is Google doing the right thing and joining the First Click Free program and restricting free unlimited access to news articles? I mean we now see books losing their value too with the release of electronic reading devices like the Sony Reader, Amazon’s Kindle and now Barnes and Noble’s Nook. The newspapers companies are just banking on what other companies have caught up on—readers/consumers looking for things that they can access on the spot or somehow make their lives more convenient.

- Sabina Santiago

Article Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8389896.stm

Picture Source:
http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif

Culture Corner

Water, Water Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Drink
The Water Bottle Addiction



“…And since when does everyone need their own personal water bottle…?”
—George Carlin

It’s hard to go very far without encountering someone with a water bottle—especially on a college campus. From the clear plastic disposable containers, to the brightly colored sports bottles, everyone has their own personal water bottle. We do this because we assume it’s healthy, but is it? (I know what you’re thinking—yet another one of our basic habits has detrimental side effects, but sorry…it’s true.)

The majority of sports bottles are made or lined with a polycarbonate resin, which can release something called bisphenol-A, “BPA” for short, which is found in epoxy resin, compact disks, bulletproof glass, and baby bottles. This BPA is a powerful natural hormone disruptor, which has the ability to damage the reproductive organs, cause tumors, effect breast tissue development, and reduce sperm count—all of which was discovered in 1998. This toxin can be released by leaving your water bottle in a hot car for a short while and/or running it through the dishwasher. A study in 2003 revealed that leaving a water bottle sitting at your desk is just as harmful as the previous two.

Now one might think—all right, the sports bottles are out, but I still have the regular disposable ones. I can spend the extra exponentially-increasing dollar and a half to get my water. Sadly, you are mistaken. A recent study in Germany has revealed that water in regular plastic bottles contained “estrogen-like compounds” which were released by the degrading plastic. A follow-up study has shown that snails develop and reproduce faster if stored in commercial water bottles. In addition, endocrine disrupters called “phthalates” are also present in out-gassing plastic, which has been known to have harmful effects on fetuses.

And if this all wasn’t bad enough, studies have revealed that there are also chemicals in the water itself, unrelated to the plastic. Washington State University’s geneticist and reproductive biologist Patricia Hunt said:
“Birth control pills, hormone therapy medications, and a host of contaminants can all get into our water supply, and we haven't figured out a way to affordably filter them out.”

This is not even delving into the environmental impact our water bottle addiction has on the earth.

The recommended course of action here is to either purchase glass water bottles from a filtered source, or to locate stainless steel thermoses that are guaranteed to be polycarbonate-lined free. Sadly, water, too, is now added to our list of “un-safes” along with cell phones, microwaves, and all sorts of other regular players in our lives.

- Victor Gurbo

Article Source(s):
http://www.greenfeet.net/newsletter/The-dangers-of-plastic-water-bottles.shtml

http://health.usnews.com/blogs/on-women/2009/03/12/plastic-water-bottles-should-you-avoid-the-disposable-kind-too.html

Poem of the Week

Two Little Hitlers
Elvis Costello and the Attractions


Why are we racing to be so old?
I'm up late pacing the floor
I won't be told
You have your reservations
I'm bought and sold
I'll face the music
I'll face the facts
Even when we walk in polka dots and chequer slacks

Bowing and squawking
Running after titbits
Bobbing and squinting
Just like a nitwit

Two little Hitlers will fight it out until
One little Hitler does the other one's will
I will return
I will not burn
Down in the basement

I need my head examined
I need my eyes excited
I'd like to join the party
But I was not invited
You make a member of me
I'll be delighted

I wouldn't cry for lost souls, you might drown
Dirty words for dirty minds
Written in a toilet town

Dial me a Valentine
She's a smooth operator
It's all so calculated
She's got a calculator
She's my soft touch typewriter
And I'm the great dictator

Two little Hitlers will fight it out until
One little Hitler does the other one's will
I will return
I will not burn

A simple game of self-respect
You flick a switch and the world goes off
Nobody jumps as you expect
I would have thought you would have had enough by now

You call selective dating
For some effective mating
I thought I'd let you down, dear
But you were just deflating

I knew right from the start
We'd end up hating
Pictures of the merchandise
Plastered on the wall
We can look so long as we don't have to talk at all

You say you'll never know him
He's an unnatural man
He doesn't want your pleasure
He wants as no one can
He wants to know the names of
All those he's better than

Two little Hitlers will fight it out until
One little Hitler does the other one's will
I will return
I will not burn
I will return
I will not burn
I will return
I will not burn


Only a man as cynical and untrusting as Elvis Costello could compare male/female relationships to the horrors of the Third Reich and extermination camps. Men and women alone may be tolerable, but combined, says Costello, are nothing but evil, and the world would be easier if we stayed away from each other. It’s sort of satirical misanthropy and romantic nihilism, but we still can’t help but smile at the way Costello describes the sneakiness and one-upping and betrayal and eventual disgust that occurs in all his relationships. But I attest his constant reiterations of refusing to burn as an optimistic turn in the song; by admitting that he screwed up, and that he has been screwed, he also promises that he will not disintegrate, will not go down in flames like he sometimes wants to, but instead will come back for more, probably with the same girl, and will keep on playing until he gets it out of his system. Why not put ourselves out of our misery, Costello asks, and just give up, if we’re just going to end up miserable and sitting across from each other on separate couches not speaking and not looking at each other? Because it’s just too much fun to inflict ourselves, and it’s our long-time curse.

— David Abady

Image Source: http://www.thirdreichruins.com/teehausaheb.jpg
Use Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYIk_zOX-rU

Currently Reading

Skylight Confessions

Skylight Confessions, is Alice Hoffman’s nineteenth novel; it’s an adult fairytale with twists, betrayal and love. The book spans over three generations, conveying the story of Arlyn Singer, who believes in destiny and love, her children and her grandson. On the day of Arlyn’s father’s funeral, she makes a pact with herself that she will love the first man that walks into her life. Mysteriously, John Moody, a Yale senior appears at her doorstep when he gets lost on his way to a party. Moody is the bland son of a well known architect in town, who built the famous Connecticut house known as the Glass Slipper. Enthralled by Arlyn, Moody finds himself drawn to her and it ends up leading to a marriage that will turn into heartache and mutual infidelity.

In an ominous variation of the nursery rhyme about the woman who lived in the shoe. Arlyn and John, live in the uncomfortable glass mansion with their solemn son Sam, and daughter Blanca, who isn’t even a year old when Arlyn gets the terrible news that she has cancer. Aryln dies while her second child is still a toddler; the story twists to follow the lives of Sam and Blanca as they try to salvage their lives without their loving mother.

Sam is a self-destructive artist who is constantly fighting a battle with narcotics and sorrow. He displays his anguish by spray painting various buildings in Lower Manhattan. Blanca, the only family member Sam actually loves is a beautiful loner that attempts to find the ability to love and forgive her family. She lives in her world of books but desperately tries to protect Sam from his internal demons and his inevitable destiny. The story then follows the life of Arlyn and John’s grandson Will.

Will (Sam’s son), is left in confusion to put the pieces of his mysterious family together. But it’s a puzzle of people who are incapable of understanding love. However, all families have their tribulations and the Moody’s are no exception. After Hoffman wrote this book she said “I write from such a subconscious place, it’s almost like the elements of a dream. I don’t understand what it means until I’m done. Sometimes I still don’t understand it. That’s where the readers put things together more quickly than the writer does.”

The characters within the story are complicated, relatable and all have a pinch of internal magic. “Sam was not like other boys, who would not have taken such good care of a necklace. He was different. He planned on keeping his word. The secret he’d told his mother was true; he was never going to grow up. He refused to go past this day when his mother left him. No one could force him because he’d already decided. He was never going to say good-bye.” (p.89)

This novel explores the themes of fairytales, torn families and how far people will internally tear themselves apart, in search of love and stability. It conveys that individuals are truly haunted by love and regret. I had the honor of meeting, Alice Hoffman and she gave me some of the best writing advice I ever received, “Always aspire to be the worst writer, to let the great writer within shine through your words. Then you will never be modest or disappointed.” Therefore, while some individuals may be terrified of being judged by their writing, are we all not mirror images of Sam and Blanca, searching for affection and clarity in a world gone astray?

- Alana Linchner

Sources:
http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-skylight-confessions-a-novel/

http://www.amazon.com/Skylight-Confessions-Novel-Alice-Hoffman/dp/0316058785

http://www.alicehoffman.com/hoffman-skylight.htm

http://www.alicehoffman.com/hoffman-skylight-qa.htm

Image Source:
http://z.about.com/d/bestsellers/1/0/X/1/-/-/Skylight_Confessions_Hoffman.jpg

Currently Listening

Southern Cross
Crosby, Stills, and Nash

It was around five years ago that I first heard Crosby, Stills, & Nash’s Southern Cross and created a playlist of one. I would never tire of the song with the melody that is at once heartbreaking and hopeful; it’s five years later and I’m still listening to it on repeat. Like a triple-tiered cake, the harmonies of CSNY layer over each other, soft and sweet, as they showcase their inimitable equilibrium in all its consummate glory.
While the piece first captured me with its melody and vocals, after one hundred rounds, the words began to seep in as well. Written by Rick Curtis, Michael Curtis, and Stephen Stills, the song was released on the band’s 1982 album, Daylight Again. According to Stills, on the CSN Boxed Set, "The Curtis Brothers brought a wonderful song called 'Seven League Boots,' but it drifted around too much. I rewrote a new set of words and added a different chorus, a story about a long boat trip I took after my divorce. It's about using the power of the universe to heal your wounds.”
Well, that’s one way to simplify a beautiful piece on breaking away from old attachments and heading toward a destiny. Here’s the longer version with the lyrics just below, so you can sing along:



Southern Cross
Got out of town on a boat goin' to Southern islands.
Sailing a reach before a followin' sea.
She was makin' for the trades on the outside,
And the downhill run to Papeete.

Off the wind on this heading lie the Marquesas.
We got eighty feet of' a waterline.
Nicely making way.
In a noisy bar in Avalon I tried to call you.
But on a midnight watch I realized
Why twice you ran away.


Think about how many times I have fallen
Spirits are using me, larger voices callin'.
What heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten.
I have been around the world,
Lookin' for that woman/girl,
Who knows love can endure.
And you know it will.

When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way.
'Cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small.
But it's as big as the promise - The promise of a comin' day.

So I'm sailing for tomorrow - My dreams are a dyin'.
And my love is an anchor tied to you - Tied with a silver chain.
I have my ship and all her flags are a flyin'
She is all that I have left - And music is her name.


Think about how many times I have fallen
Spirits are using me larger voices callin'.
What heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten.

I have been around the world,
lookin' for that woman/girl
Who knows love can endure.
And you know it will.
And you know it will.

So we cheated and we lied and we tested.
And we never failed to fail; it was the easiest thing to do.
You will survive being bested.
Somebody fine will come along make me forget about loving you
in the Southern Cross.


Located in the Southern Hemisphere, the Southern Cross is a constellation of stars that has historically served as a dependable navigation aid for sailors. (Its name is a result of its four brightest stars being arranged in the shape of a cross.) What Stills sings about, when he follows the Southern Cross, is destiny. He accepts that his former flame was not his soul mate and he’s moving on toward his future.
He begins to accept this when he realizes why his woman “twice…ran away.” The “spirits are using me, larger voices calling.” He acknowledges his fate; he has no choice but to follow his path, and for the first time he realizes that she isn’t on it. He grants the relationship the due credit it deserves, “What heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten.” But he’s still headed for his future woman who “knows love can endure.” Quite inspiring, actually, to hear those words from a man who has gone through a divorce.
Perhaps the most beautiful line paragraph in the song, is the tragic,

“So I’m sailing for tomorrow my dreams are a-dying.
And my love is an anchor tied to you, tied with a silver chain.
I have my ships, and all her flags are a-flying;
She is all that I have left, and music is her name.”

The old love is hard to let go of, “anchoring” him, in fact, but nevertheless, he forges ahead into the many seas, following the song of his heart. It’s so easy to stay rooted in the past, repeating age-old mistakes ad-inifitum; as Stills acknowledges, failing is “the easiest thing to do.”
But, as this song demonstrates, there is something far more rewarding about plunging headfirst into the unknown, than about wallowing in the same shallow whirlpool for years on end.
If you’ve listened to the music and read the lyrics, you should be duly inspired. Now it’s time for your journey. Untie your sailboat and load up those coolers; it’s time to go on an adventure.
(Note to self: Buy boat.)

-Rachel Weissman

Currently Watching

Glee

Glee is the story of a McKinley High’s revival of glee club—the quintessential “loser” after-school singing program that nearly every high school in this country has. Taught by underpaid Spanish teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison), an idealist who loves both the kids and the music, glee club is initially made up of the school’s social outcasts—Rachel (Lea Michele), a loud, self-adoring sophomore with two dads who “is somehow able to dress like both a five-year-old and a grandma;” Kurt (Chris Colfer), a fashionista gay male who sings soprano; Artie (Kevin McHale) a young man confined to a wheelchair since a childhood car accident; Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz), a shy, Asian-American with a serious stutter; and Mercedes (Amber Riley), a proud black woman with a flair for being fabulous. These social misfits, at first, can appeared as caricatured, almost cartoony versions of high school stereotypes, yet become very real as the series goes on. While only in its first season, Glee’s core cast has managed to be a sweet, sympathetic, funny, and extremely talented group of high schoolers.

That’s right, talented—and this is why Glee is such a unique and awesome television show. Being about a glee club, the show is structured around performance, having its cast members singing, dancing, and choreographing a few songs each night that relate to the situations of the episode. The music used ranges from classic rock (Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’’” is the first big number) to hip-hop (Kayne West’s “Gold Digger”) to Broadway (Wicked’s “Defying Gravity”), and renditions of each (including the occasional mash-up) are performed by the cast. This makes each episode feel like you’re watching a Broadway musical, complete with costumes (which are brilliantly put together), a stage, and choreographed dance numbers. What other show could you say has all that? It is here where Glee’s charm really takes hold: for one night a week, audience members are invited to geek out and fondly remember their own high school’s theater/choral/band programs (in which I'm proud to say I participated in. Uda lives!)

One thing that raises Glee up from being a televised talent show is the students and faculty who make up the cast. Glee isn’t just interested in “typical” social outcasts, but shows how everyone is weird and lonely—even the most popular kids. While glee club is originally a small bundle of misfits, it expands to include both cheerleaders and football players. While a few members of the “Cheerios” cheer squad (including Dianna Agron as Quinn Fabray) initially join as “spies” for their coach—an absolutely insane (but hilarious) woman named Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) bent on destroying glee club to get her program’s funding back—they find that music is something they are good at, that the “loser” kids are people just like them, and the friends they make are ones who can be counted on. Everyone has problems—often extremely complicated ones—but are getting through them with the help of an incredible teacher (“Mr. Schuu” is God’s gift to high school), an inspiring program, and some really good friends. While there is no shortage of drama on Glee (the president of the Chastity Club is pregnant! Oh, irony!), the show ranges from hilarious to extremely sympathetic towards its characters, often giving us moments that are really touching. A past episode, featuring a deaf glee club signing (and singing) John Lennon’s “Imagine”—in which our glee club joins in—had more than one person crying (and about half of Facebook’s status updates dedicated to it).

Beneath the love triangles, lies, secrets, and babydrama surrounding this show, what Glee boils down to is an exposé in just how beautiful our differences really are. We are all special and different and strange, whether we believe we were born a star or have a different sexual preference or can’t walk or just plain hate trying to be perfect all the time, and we all love and hate ourselves and the lives we are living. But we continue to live them, and programs like this small-town, Western Ohio, no-budget underfunded glee club can have profound effects on how we treat each other. Kids who would never speak to one another suddenly do—and find out how much they have in common. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say Glee was started to convey a larger social message and save the world, it is a fun-filled romp through music and high school that will leave you thinking about how we treat those who seem different, and how similar we really are.

-Christina Squitieri

Glee is on Wednesdays at 9:00pm, on Fox.

Picture courtesy of Fox.

At This Moment

UN Scientists have confirmed that raising livestock for meat has a more devastating effect on the environment than cars and airplanes. Ariana and Sabina ask: Would you give up meat to save the planet?

"I honestly don't know. I don't think I'd give up meat entirely, but I would definitely try to eat it less, and when I did I would try to buy from smaller, more humane farms that aren't so devastating for the environment."
-Christina S.

"I wouldn't give up anything to save the planet; in fact, I might just start shorting cattle futures."
-David Abady

"I already gave it up."
-Cesar M.

Greetings!

Hopefully, everyone had a wonderful holiday— it was easy if you tried, and all you really needed was a little lip service. It's December already, though it feels only like October. We can already see the happy holiday commercials which make us miserable. Please don't worry- finals are not that big a deal. Sadly, it is coming to the end of Ariana, Miriam, Christina, Victor, and myself as bloggers for the english majors— it's been a blast— and we leave the office hoping that we made a little bit of difference in the department. We can only hope that the first semester interns, as well as the incoming next semester, will continue the tradition of Bob Dylan, T.S. Eliot, Hemingway, Elvis Costello, Andy Warhol, and vegetable poetry, but we can only hope. In fear of being sentimental, I would like to take this opportunity to say that I very much enjoyed my time as Professor Natov's intern, and that I truly hold a fondness in my heart for every single intern from both semesters, and for our wonderful professor.

- David Abady

News Briefs

Nazi tried for war crimes

An eighty-nine-year old John Demanjuk has just gone on trial in Munich for the assistance in the murder of about 28,000 Jews during the war. He faces fifteen years in prison, which makes his crime seem only slightly more terrible than tax fraud. Surviviors from Poland and Germany have come forth as first-hand eyewitnesses, though Demanjuk has the audacity to claim that he "was just following orders," reminiscent of Nuremberg. Demanjuk has been living in Ohio as a used car salesman which seems like the perfect occupation for a Nazi, and it is just unfortunate that it took this long to get this man on trial. Ah, Deutschland, you could have been a contender. If only you could get something right.

- David Abady

Source: BBC News
Image Source: www.topnews.in/files/John-Demjanjuk1.jpg




Man Misdiagnosed for 23 Years

Rom Houben, a now-46 year old Belgium man, had been trapped in his own body for 23 years. After a car accident at age 20, Houben was diagnosed as first being comatose, then in a vegetative state. A person in a coma is unconscious with his eyes closed and unable to be roused. A vegetative condition means the patient’s eyes are open, and periods of sleep alternate with wakefulness, but the patient is unconscious and cannot think nor respond.
As it turns out, however, Houben’s initial diagnosis was way off the mark. Despite his body’s paralysis, Houben’s brain was almost fully functioning. Advanced brain scans not around at the time of his diagnosis recently revealed the man’s near-normal brain waves, and helped to finally free Houben’s aware mind. A system of communication has since been devised, via a touchscreen computer device attached to Houben’s wheelchair. Houben describes his lost years with words like “powerlessness” and “frustration,” and his rescue a “renaissance.” He has begun to write a book after so many years of suffering silently.
It is not only thanks to technological innovation that Houben has regained some control over his life, but thanks to a mother’s undying hope, too. All along, Houben’s parents refused to believe that their son was, for all intents and purposes, gone from this world. Even after Houben’s father died (news that Houben had indeed overheard while in the hospital, but was of course unable to communicate nor grieve over), his mother took him from hospital to specialist in search for a breakthrough. Her optimism and persistence was ultimately rewarded, and serves as a lesson to us all not to give up on a lost cause.
Unfortunately, erroneous consciousness diagnoses are as common as 4 in 10 cases. Until doctors can learn how to more accurately diagnose patients, people should bear this case in mind when tackling a tough, controversial medical/ethical issue such as “pulling the plug” on a family member in a supposed “vegetative state.” A human being by any other name is still human- even if labeled a “vegetable.”

- Miriam Harari

Source: msnbc.com
Image Source: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/11/25/article-1230747-0757E814000005DC-199_468x349.jpg

Culture Corner

Not Such a Different Culture

Forty six years old Annie wakes up every morning at 7:00 a.m. and begins her morning routine. Her favorite morning show blares while she brushes her teeth, puts on her underclothes and buttons her dress. After treating her feet with a prescription moisturizer, she pulls on her stockings, sticks her feet into a pair of worn, black lace-ups and heads for the mirror. First Annie brushes her hair. Next she treats her wrists to a light spray of Dolce and Gabbana. Finally she applies a light blue eye shadow to her eyes and a hint of blush to her cheeks. After a brief assessment in the mirror, she heads out of her room, down the hallway, and into the kitchen. Behind a magnet on the fridge is a chart that dictates what she will be having for breakfast this morning. Annie is pre-diabetic so it’s important that she adheres to her menu. By 8:15, Annie is ready to leave for work. Sounds like a typical enough morning, no?
Save for a few individualized actions, Annie’s morning routine probably mirrors many of ours. But when they pass her on the street, many people unfamiliar with her demographic will uneasily look the other way. Some people even cross the street. Perhaps they are scared; they think she has some sort of disease they don’t want to catch. Perhaps they are simply uncomfortable; they worry about how to react if Annie starts talking to them. Mostly they are just ignorant; they don’t realize how many similarities they share with the woman with Down syndrome.
Approximately 1 out of 800-1,000 births in the U. S. results in Down syndrome. The abnormality is caused by a malfunction in the twenty-first chromosome; where most of us have two copies of every chromosome in our DNA, people with Down syndrome have three. Its physical manifestations are generally characterized by an abnormally small chin, almond shape eyes, a protruding or oversized tongue, and shorter limbs. People with Down syndrome are also prone to below average cognitive capabilities, but, like most of us, with an accommodative family environment, proper education, and lots of love and nurture, they can overcome the obstacles that life’s many challenges might otherwise provide.
I can continue to dwell on the differences between someone with Down syndrome, but why dwell on differences when we share so many more similarities? Like many of us, Annie would take a sunny day over a rainy day and a huge piece of cake over a salad; she does have a hard time following a restrictive diet. At times she is resolute, and won’t sway from her menu; other times the temptation of a small candy bar is hard to resist and, like many of us, she’ll sneak a piece from the cabinet when no one is looking. Annie has a boyfriend at work named Arnie , and like many people I know, Annie is not ready to commit. Like many of us, Annie likes dancing and loves music. She appreciates socializing and is especially fond of vacations—last summer she spent a week in Los Angeles with her friends where they hit up Disneyland, the beach, and Rodeo Drive.
Annie lives in a residential home with two other women, only one of whom has Down syndrome. The home belongs to an agency whose mission is to help people with various mental obstacles overcome their limitations and actualize their potentials. There is always a counselor on hand but her role is only to help out in situations where Annie would otherwise be at risk. Every few months, Annie and her roommates have private meetings with a program coordinator where they work on setting short and long-term goals for themselves. Each woman decides what she would like to accomplish and discusses how they would like to go about implementing their goal. Annie, for example, likes a system where she is rewarded for small goals; for example, she likes a soda when she is in bed on time. A goal can be anything from learning to go to the bank by herself to refraining from arguing when one of her friends upsets her.
During the day, Annie goes to a workshop. The particular workshop she attends has negotiated a contract with companies that provide packaging and assembly jobs for Annie and her peers. Their goal is to prepare Annie for work in a mainstream environment, but in the meantime she earns money respectably in a stress-free atmosphere. When she gets home at 4 p.m., Annie prepares a salad for dinner, exercises, and prepares her lunch for the next day. Sometimes she goes out in the evening; sometimes she has dinner and watches T. V. After dinner she clears off the table and showers. Her bedtime is at 11:15 p.m.
Like most of us, Annie’s day is comprised of many ups and downs—the up when her favorite song plays on the radio, the down when her bus is running late. Like most of us, Annie’s life is a bundle of struggles and triumphs, the struggle to achieve an independence we all seek, the triumph when newly accomplished goals allow for greater freedoms. And like most of us, Annie wants to be recognized as a legitimate human being, someone real and respectable.
So the next time you see Annie or one of her friends on the street, in a store, or in Brooklyn college’s cafeteria, accord her the same dignity and respect you would to someone without Down syndrome. It does seem silly to have to ask this of people –don’t we recognize all people as equal?—but reality unfortunately dictates that many are unsure and confused in encountering someone with Down syndrome. Simply put, treat her like a peer. When you get to know her, you will find that she is very much like you.

-Rachel Weissman

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/weissfoto/2898762045/

Poem of the Week

Ulysses

I’ve been reading James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses for quite some time now, never having the time to finish it due to all the other books I’ve had to read for school. The magic of Joyce is that every line is a poem, every phrase a glittering little metaphor, every paragraph a view into the stream-of-consciousness mind of the current narrator. This short paragraph, as told by Leopold Bloom, takes place shortly after the “pornographic” section that had this book banned in the United States for years. This December 6th will be the 76th anniversary of the ban being repealed, so what better way to celebrate then with a glimpse of the poetry that drives the entire novel?

from James Joyce’s Ulysses
(page 377 in the Corrected Edition)

Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the manhood out of me, little wretch. She kissed me. My youth. Never again. Only once it comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the same. Like kids your second visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing new under the sun. Care of P.O. Dolphin’s barn. Are you not happy in your? Naughty darling. At Dolphin’s barn charades in Luke Doyle’s house. Mat Dillon and his bevy daughters: Tiny, Atty, Floey, Maimy, Louy, Hetty. Molly too. Eightyseven that was. Year before we. And the old major partial to his drop of spirits. Curious she an only child, I an only child. So it returns. Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. And just when he and she. Circus horse walking in a ring. Rip van Winkle we played. Rip: tear in Henny Doyle’s overcoat. Van: breadvan delivering. Winkle: cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip van Winkle coming back. She leaned on the sideboard watching. Moorish eyes. Twenty years asleep in Sleepy Hollow. All changed. Forgotten. The young are old. His gun rusty from the dew.

***
We’ve all felt that way. Drained. Maybe from finals, maybe from work or family or friends or oh god that paper is due friday and I’ve forgotten and perhaps even tired like Leo is tired, tired from love and unlove and the degrading and lonely self-love that Billy Joel sings about in Captain Jack. Leopold Bloom, older Irish gentleman, watches young girls and thinks of his own young love, of eighteen-eightyseven when he and wife Molly were not yet—what? Married? Dating? In love? Joyce gives us snapshots, Leo won’t think on it. “Year before we.” He remembers Molly’s father and how both he and she are only children and how “it returns” with his one living daughter, an only child next to his dead-at-11-days-old son. Leopold ran, free at last, and got nowhere—running into Molly, “yourself,” the very person you try to run from. They played a game and it was probably summer and he did love her then, and remembers her love and her large and sad and black “Moorish eyes” and how she watched him playing “Rip van Winkle coming back” in charades when no one can ever come back, when “Never again…returning not the same.” But still she watched him, and it was like he or she or the world was asleep because he can remember those eyes like it was yesterday, but it wasn’t, it was twenty years ago, twenty years he or she or the world was asleep and today he awoke and “all changed,” all “forgotten.” The young, be that he or Molly or Tiny and Floey and Maimy and Louy and Hetty or even his very own daughter are now “old.” Luke Doyle, or Matt Dillon, or Molly’s father, “the old major,” or maybe even Rip van Winkle himself who all may be dead or dying leave nothing behind but a gun, one that was perhaps used so often when you blink your eyes and see twenty years ago and realize how much has passed, how much you’ve left behind, how much you can never get anything back, nothing but that gun that isn’t even used anymore, but lies alone, “rusty from the dew.”

We just passed Thanksgiving. Be thankful for all you’ve left behind. Those we love will not be with us forever and going back is an impossibility even when we wake up one morning and feel like we’ve slept for hundreds of years, like we don’t know our own face in the mirror or the hands of someone we once could not let go of; parent, lover, friend. Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness passage of Leo’s suffering mind places that feeling on all of us, that life is complicated and difficult and exhausting but so impossibly beautiful, that language and memory are mystical in their imperfections and omissions and the puzzle-piece way we live surrounded by pointless details like Henny Doyle’s overcoat ripping that just makes living—and dying—even more ridiculously imperfect yet lovely, that we all have days when we feel the way the modernists felt, that nothing is new, what we remembered and love is gone, that Molly will no longer look at Leopold with those Moorish eyes and her head leaning on the sideboard and that all we’re left with is a gone rusty from what nature has done to it—a reminder of what it does and will do to us—but the language is poetry, and the memory is poetry—

And Joyce makes us see that even the very rusting is beautiful.

-Christina Squitieri
Picture courtesy of seikinsou (Flickr)

Currently Reading

Keep the Aspidistra Flying
George Orwell

Though perhaps the least celebrated of George Orwell’s novels, Keep the Aspidistra Flying is both one of the most humorous and heartbreaking of his extensive repertoire.

The story, first published in 1936, chronicles the plight of Gordon Comstock in his measured attempts to divest himself of lower middle class trappings and sink into a life of abysmal poverty. An aristocrat by blood, Gordon is disillusioned watching his relatives struggle to make ends meet having long ago squandered the family fortune. His sister Julia ekes out a living as a seamstress and lives alone in a dismal efficiency unit. Her only hope is that Gordon can secure a “good” job and make the family wealthy and respectable again.

The pressure upon Gordon to advance his career, wed and reproduce (he is also the end of the Comstock family line) pushes him to a breaking-point. He quits his menial-but-promising job at an advertising firm and goes to work at a used bookstore for pennies a day. He tries to make a living off his writing, but succeeds only in publishing a thin volume of poetry which languishes in bargain-bins in bookstores across London.

Gordon also becomes delinquent in the rent of his room at a seedy boarding-house and has to stealthily avoid his meddlesome landlady, at times spending the night outdoors to avoid her tirades.

Despite his destitute situation, Gordon continues to see his girlfriend Rosemary, who is disturbed by his economically self-destructive behavior.

Gordon experiences first-hand the limitations imposed upon the working poor. He becomes deeply neurotic, discovering that without money, he is unable to participate in society. He can no longer join his friends at the pub or take his girlfriend out to eat.

He receives unexpected proceeds from the sale of his book but loses his job after a subsequent tryst with some prostitutes ends up in the local paper. He is forced to pawn everything but the clothes on his back. Now truly destitute, he is denied life’s most basic amenities. He can no longer afford tobacco. He is forced to live on tea and toast and is evicted by his landlady. He moves into a vermin-infested flop-house and recedes into a starvation stupor, only to be discovered by Rosemary several days later. She is horrified and insists they take a trip to the country so he can regain his health. Along the way, Rosemary offers Gordon her virginity but they have to abstain, since Gordon cannot afford a condom.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying showcases the dark underbelly of capitalism all too familiar to the indigent and working-poor but shocking and maddening to a former aristocrat. Gordon is alternately disgusted by society’s obsession with money and status and terrified someone will notice he is broke.
In the end he shakes his self-induced poverty as quickly as he took it on, which despite being the most realistic of conclusions, may seem to be a bit of a cop-out. That, however, is for you to judge.

-Ariana Costakes