Jane Churchon's "The Dead Book"

For my “pick-um” essay I chose to read Jane Churchon’s “The Dead Book”, partly because it sounded interesting and partly because I wanted to comment on your blogs and I do not like to do that without reading what you have read.  This was one of the most powerful essays I have ever read.  Right off the bat this essay hits you like a ton of bricks.  I had no idea that this would be about how a woman pronounces someone dead.  Of course, the essay has much more depth than just that.  The way in which Churchon describes the actual process sends shivers down my spine.  I do not think that I could even for a second do what this woman does.

I have never had someone extremely close to me die.  When I was fourteen my grandma’s boyfriend, who had always been a grandfather figure to me, died of a heart attack.  But it is not the same as losing a parent, sibling, or real grandparent.   Someday I will know that kind of loss, but until then this essay gives me a better understanding of the process of death itself.  I connected closely with what Churchon says about the time of death making the death more real to the family.  Sometimes a death seems so unreal and out of reach, but putting a time on it can make it a reality.   

I found it interesting when Churchon talks about what gives her the right to pronounce someone dead.  It is as though these patients, who have died, do not matter as much to other people.  But Churchon gives them the time that they deserve and I admire that.  I hope that someone gives me that when it is my time.  A life is an amazing thing and many people do not realize that everyday matters, even the last. 

When she describes the morgue it sends shivers down my spine.  I know that I would never be able to go into a place like that by myself.  It’s not that the place itself gives me the creeps; it’s the fact that there is some much sadness in that one tiny room.     All that room ever sees is death, no light shines through, no miracles or happiness, just sadness.  The way Churchon describes what happens in the morgue is painful yet enlightening.  Although, I am sure there are people that work in morgues that find it horrible, Churchon takes what she does seriously and cares about what happens to the people she places there.

Life and death are a part of who we are, but it is what happens in between that determines what we are remembered for.  Everyone hopes that they will be remembered fondly and that many people will grief over them.  But what we do when we are alive is what is important.  Death should be a celebration of life, a time for stories and thanksgiving for a wonderful life in heaven with God.  At least that is what I want for myself someday.  Although I fear the death of a loved one, I know that it is not the end of our journey together.

David Sedaris' "Guy Walks into a Bar Car"

David Sedaris’ essay “Guy Walks into a Bar Car” is a love story of uniqueness and intrigued me from the start.  At first glance this looks like the story of lost love as David travels to Chicago in order to find an old boyfriend he thinks he still has a chance with.  This reminds me so much of my own life.  I often find myself wanting to maintain a part of my life that is in the past and probably should just stay there.  Thankfully, this story takes a turn for the sick and twisted somewhat quickly.  Sometimes people come into your life that you never thought would make a difference and then all of a sudden boom!  Your whole world has been turned upside down, for the better.  In the case of this essay it starts with a dirty nun joke. 

Both of the men in this essay are down on their luck, which is possibly what drew them together.  When people are having a hard time sometimes instead of finding someone stronger to lean on they find someone that they can relate to.  I see the two men and their two problems, one a gambler slash drunk and one simple drifting through life with no real purpose.  This is why they are attracted to each other; their problems are brought into the light and unmasked by the other person.

I like the style of this essay, because between all of the sad and pathetic talk about the failures in these two men’s lived there is comic relief by the drunk man at the bar.  The comic relief in itself is kind of sad and pathetic but it brings the attention back and forth, which is interesting.  For some reason, it was shocking to me when in the middle of the night these two guys decided they needed to smoke pot.  It seemed so random, yet because of the two men’s life styles, should have been expected.  Every paragraph adds to the shock of the disastrous encounter of these two men.  For instance, Sedaris writes, “One moment, I was asking if his mom gave him a discount on his drugs, and the next thing I know he was telling me about this women he’s recently had sex with.”  The kinds of information in this essay are shocking, yet I find it honest and worth reading.

I appreciate a true story that does not leave out any facts.  This is one of those stories.  Sedaris is honest about his journey as a gay man and the stumbles that have been a factor in his life.  I, of course, feel compassion towards him because of the honesty that he portrays in this essay.  There are really three love stories here.  The first is of a man who is trying to maintain a relationship with someone who he is not meant to be with.  The second is of the same man meeting a guy on a train whom he feels attracted to for all the wrong reasons.  This of course ends as pointless as it begins.  And finally, of the man falling in love and watching the one love walk out the door.  He does not go after him and that was his biggest mistake. 

This essay is about feelings and heartache, which is present in everyone’s life.  But the difference here is how you choose to deal with the pain.  The choices that this man makes have terrible consequences, but he realizes that their needs to be changes made in order for him to find peace with himself.  I feel this way at time when I know that I am not doing what my heart tells me is the right thing to do.  Sometimes we need to step outside ourselves and see what others see in order to make the right changes in our lives.  I looked up Sedaris on the Internet because I knew nothing about him prior to reading this essay and I see that he is a comedian.  It really brings the whole essay into light and I am able to look at this essay with a little lighter perspective.

Jane Kramer's Me, Myself, and I

                This story starts immediately with an array of emotions splattered on paper about a man and what he truly wanted or did not want out of life.  Many people choose to spend their lives with people they love such as, family and friends.  Michel on the other hand, wanted to spend the second portion of his life alone in a tower writing about himself.  At first I felt bad for this man; clearly he was so unhappy in his life that he was willing to leave his family for no better reason than wanting to be alone.  Then I thought that he must have been a little crazy and mostly vain for sacrificing everything to sit and write about himself.  He did however manage to create a very interesting character “myself.”

            Kramer quotes Michel on the second page of the essay saying, “You would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.”  He is of course referring to the fact that he is the topic of his books and that it is a waste of time to reading of him.  When I read this I thought of many of the books that I like to read.  If I walked into Barnes and Noble right now I would head straight to the biographies and memoir.  I love knowing people’s stories and what they have done to become famous enough to have a book written about them.  So even though I think Michel is very selfish for what he did I would also be into his books like the French were at the time.  I did not know what to think when he continues to claim that he writes only for himself.  The problem with this is that he is either trying to say that he does not want people to give him attention for his writing or that he only cares about himself so he has no need for the attention.  Nevertheless, people seemed to really care about these writings.  It gives me the erg to find a copy myself, although, I have a feeling that I would have a hard time understanding it.

            On page three of the essay we begin to find out what the essays are about and how intellectually stimulating they really are.  I really liked how Kramer describes the essays when she says, “You could call them autobiography of the mind, but they made no claim to composing the narrative of life, only of the shifting preoccupations of their protagonist in an ongoing conversation with the Greek and Roman writers on his library shelves-and, of course, himself.”  This passage really gave me a new idea to the writing process.  Michel had dedicated his entire life to writing and the only people he had to bounce his ideas off of were the authors of the books on his shelf.  I found it so profound that he was able to write so brilliantly and I can picture him sitting in his library wondering how the Greek and Roman writers thought about a specific topic and exploring that same topic for himself.  There is so much depth to this essay but I really found that Kramer was able to capture what Michel was trying to say in his essays without spelling everything out.  She left us to wonder about life and what it really means, also, how the self continues to evolve with changing situations.

Gary Will's "Daredevil"

This is a story of great friendship and the author Garry Will tells it with passion.  At first this story did not really catch my attention but after awhile I began to think of Bill as my friend and I wanted to learn about his life and the kind of person that he was.  It took only the first story to get the idea that Bill was and why he was so important to Willis.  When Will told the story about the said boat incident I saw both how daring and brave Bill was when he saved is friend who had fallen overboard without an ounce of fear.  Will goes on to describe some of the stigmas that Bill had to deal with such as, social snob, ideological snob, and intellectual snob.

I thought that at some points Will was making Bill sound almost to perfect.  No one is flawless and I thought that Will did not want to admit that Bill had any flaws.  Now the more I thought about it I could see why it would be difficult to talk about anything other than how great he was.   The section about social snob show how kind and generous he was to his friends.  I thought it was wonderful and Bill set Will up with his sister, it shows that he truly cared a lot about making his friends happy and his family too.  Bill also had a spirit for helping people out of small bind such as, leaving a briefcase at the airport.  I thought this brought a down to earth persona to Bill’s personality. 

The second issue, ideological snob, was quickly pushed aside by Will’s statement in the final paragraph of the section.  “By the time of his death, even Bill’s earlier critics admitted that he had done much to make conservatism respectable by purging it of racism and fanatical traits earlier embedded in it.”  This was powerful for me because it showed that Bill was able to bread down the barriers that had been built around his political party and show that in his lifetime he had made a difference.  The paragraph goes on to describe men in Bill’s party that had created the prejudices and how Bill was able to distance himself and his followers from these men.

Finally, intellectual snob, one point in this portion of the essay stuck out to me because I was able to relate to the words.  “Bill lived and wrote and lectured- and played and socialized and exercised- at a furious pace.  Partly because he bored so easily. But party to make money.”  Some may say that to do these things simple because he was bored or to make money is greedy and selfish.  But I see it as determination, because he did not want to live off of what other people had done.  I have also been one to want to make my own money and not live off of my parents forever.   I am a strong believer in working hard and if it means at a furious pace like Will says then that is what had to be done.

John H. Summers' “Gettysburg Regress”

John H. Summers' essay “Gettysburg Regress” caught my attention from the very beginning.  I have always been a history buff at heart.  Even now when I go to my parent’s house we tend to stay up till the early hours of the morning watching anything that happened to be on the History Channel.  This essay was one that I found enlightening and enjoyable.  The images from the start of this essay are breathtaking I imagined Seminary Ridge and how the trees looked on the side of the road, some standing strong and some cut down.  When it was told to Summers that the area was in “rehabilitation” to establish a more authentic feel I began to picture all of the changes that were being described.  I could see all the changes and how they could be both good and bad.  I thought about the trees that were being cut down and I agree that cutting down trees is never and good thing, but the goal is good. 

I understood where Summers was coming from when he talked about the old Gettysburg being neither authentic or inauthentic but merely harmless.  The changes that were being made in the present were causing some controversy that had previously been going on, this controversy takes away from the good that is being done to the battlefield.  I agree with the ethical controversy, I do not think that the two firms should have been tied together so closely.  I also see the problem that Summers recognizes as dueling conceptions about what state the battlefield should be rehabilitated to exactly.  I personally would like to see a battlefield like this one has an unchanging relic as opposed to a memorial.  There should be memorials for the lives that were lost, but people still want to experience Gettysburg as it was back then.  If they are going to rehabilitate the battlefields like they were during the war then a memorial is not the answer.

It was very interesting to read about how the different Presidents viewed how the battlefield should be restored.  I could see that it was important to have a dedication like the one President Roosevelt had so that veterans could see that changes were being made to the park before they all died.  But it was President Eisenhower who decided to make some real changes.  I thought it was funny when he used the word “youngsters” just reminded me of an old grandpa.  It is made clear that the rehabilitation is truly important to not only the veterans that served but also that the people are able to see with there own eyes what it really looked like in July 1863.  Again it is established that they are not trying to tear down trees for no reason, they are simply trying to reestablish what the battlefield look like at the time and how important it is to have an authentic environment to portray the battlefield in 1863.

I can see where Summers is trying to persuade the reader to understand the importance of rehabilitate a battlefield that has been marked by age.  I agree with most everything that he is saying, especially about making the battlefield authentic.  It is clear that these changes need to be made to the battlefield and there is obviously and tactful way of making changes and many tasteless and inauthentic things that can also be done.  After reading this essay I would love to go and see this battlefield in person and feel how authentic it really is.

   

"The Bad Lion" Toni Bentley

            The story of “The Bad Lion: by Toni Bentley was interesting because it was so human.  The way the bad lion acted was the way a human criminal rapist would act.  I have never heard of a lion that would do things for pleasure like that or any animal really.  During about the first two pages I liked the lion.  I saw him as this damaged creature that was probably nearing the end of his life and just wanted to be left alone with his pride.  But then when he started attacking the lioness I was confused; I thought at first that the lioness was apart of his pride and I could not figure out what was going on.

            Then when Alfie said that he was evil or Satan as they called him I began to feel anger towards this creature.  I should not feel anger towards an animal because animals are not supposed to make decisions like human.  They are supposed to do everything for survival, but this lion was raping and killing lionesses for pleasure.  I wish scientist would do research on this lion so that they would know what is different about this lion that affects his behavior so drastically.

            One other thing that I found interesting was the way his brother followed his every command.  The brother lion probably had no comprehension as to why this lion was doing the things that he was doing yet he naturally followed along.  I see it as the brother was doing what nature intended which is to follow the alpha male while the bad lion was going against nature, which then affected the behavior of the brother lion. 

One aspect that I really ponder is where were the female lions of their pride during all of this.  At the beginning of the essay Alfie talked about how the females would always do the hunting and the males would just ways.  So did the females watch from a distance while the males did their “hunting”?  The whole situation is just baffling and disturbing. 

Another thing that I found disturbing was how these people just sit there and watch all of this happen.  I have seen shows before about wild life and they get in fights and kill each other while people are filming.  I am not a big fan of that, I think that it is great to study animal behavior but I do not understand why people need to film animals killing each other.  Sure, it may be interesting to many people; but it is no different then watching humans doing the same thing. 

Overall, this is the most interesting essay that we have read so far.  When I finished reading it I wanted more.  There could be so many more stories about the life of the Bad Lion.  It is one of those situations where I know I should not want to read about the terrible thing this lion is capable of, but I cannot help myself.  It would also be interesting to see when the lion finally meets his match.  I felt like this animal has the capacity to do much more evil things than just killing lionesses for pleasure.  I could see him attacking other animals, maybe female, maybe not, for the same purposes.  He would not do it for food or survival but for pleasure.

"When Writers Speak" Arthur Krystal

As I read Arthur Krystal’s essay “When Writer’s Speak” I at first was taken aback by how clear the image of Vladimir Nabovac came to be.  I have never heard of Nabovac before but from what I can tell he must have been a brilliant writer.  The man I pictured sitting in the interview chair was a nerdy looking middle-aged man who spoke with a heavy accent according to Krystal.  I was not exactly sure what this essay would be about from the title alone.  But as a began to read I was surprised at how it started out by saying how bad brilliant writers are a being brilliant speaker.

However, I was in no way surprised by this.  Krystal does not seem surprised in any way either.  He relates to this in a similar way to myself.  I think of my own writing and how much extra time I have to sit and think up profound thoughts while in normal conversation I do not have the luxury to take extended pauses to think.  I like how Krystal uses humor in his essay to get his own unproven theories out on the table.

For instance, he claims that if there was an MRI done of his head while he is writing his brain would be more active than if he was simple talking.  This of course is not fact but it does make sense.  When I think of my own writing process I access memories and facts stored in my brain that I probably could not think up on the spot.  Krystal uses an example of musical instrument to demonstrate his point.   He says that one would think differently when playing the violin then when playing the piano.  This makes sense since the violin uses drastically different finger movement and notes. 

“When Writers Speak” really made me think about how I differ from sitting on a couch writing a paper to when I am having a conversation with my mom on the phone.  It is as if it is two totally different people I cannot formulate pristine sentences over the phone like I could if I thought about what exactly I wanted to say on paper.  I believe though that it should be a different process.  Would writing really be interesting if we all talked like we wrote?  I truly doubt it.  It was also be hard to have a conversation with another writer if both parties constantly had amazingly intelligent perfectly constructed sentences.

The essay was ended with a joke that I found enjoyable.  When Krystal told the story of Alexander von Humbolt asking his doctor friend if he could meet a real lunatic.  While sitting at the dinner table Humbolt is in between one shy well-mannered man and one crazy dressed talkative man.   Naturally, because of the Humbolt perceived the two men he assumed that the talkative man was the lunatic when truly it was the shy man.  This story only reiderates the fact that one’s intelligience cannot be judged by conversation alone.

"Speaking in Tongues" Zadie Smith

When considering what my response to "Speaking in Tongues" would be I immediately thought of my own experiences with different dialects.  As a college student was vocabulary has drastically changed in the last two years.  When I began my four year (fingers crossed) journey I spoke to everybody the same way.  Now, with two full years under my belt, I am more trained in academic vernacular.  My own experiences reminded me a lot of how Smith talked about her own dialect journey from a small town to university life.  Smith was able to see the changes in herself when she entered college and after reading this essay I am more aware of the changes to my own dialect.  However, Smith makes an important point when talking about the changes that were made to her dialect after entering college.  When she first started using a more English voice she assumed it was the only way she would be viewed as lettered.  Eventually, her lettered voice became her only voice.  I often catch myself talking to my family as if I am writing a term paper.  I feel as if I am a dictionary finding the most prestigious words to use when the situation does not call for it.  She also uses one influential American in particular to demonstrate the changes that can happen when academic life begins to make an impact on dialect and how to not lose the dialect with which we grew up with completely.

While reading the dialogue between Obama and a childhood friend I could clearly see the kind of person he would someday become, although, his word usage has become increasingly academic during the many years leading up to him becoming President.  Smith talks a lot about the way that Obama’s word choices won over people.  Smith uses the example that Obama never uses the word “I” in his speeches, but instead uses the word “we”.  This is because “I” feels far too singular.  Although Smith is talking about arguably one of the most influential people in the world Obama still has the ability to bridge the gap between the common people like you and me to someone as powerful as himself.

Clearly, this essay was much more about dialect but also about the cultural changes that have happened and are happening today.  In her last paragraph Smith says. “It’s my audacious hope that a man born and raised between opposing dogmas, between cultures, between voices, could not help but be aware of the extreme contingency of culture.”  This statement made an impact on me because I had never realized how being in between cultures and voices could affect a person’s state of mind.  Just because I talk a certain way does not mean that everyone else shares my dialect nor does it mean that I need to impose that dialect on anyone.  Smith used Obama to show how he could stay true to his own voice while recognizing other people’s voices at the same time.