Ellison

Ralph Ellison, ah, how we keep meeting this way! I disliked your work at first, but I must say...it has grown on me tremendously. The Invisible Man has made three appearances in my collegiate life. At first, I assumed Lit. Professors were being paid commission to assign the novel at every turn, espousing it's endless merit to my cynical "don't bother me I already know lots about books!" early-twenties brain. Oh how mistaken that brain was, tsk tsk. The reason Professors kept assigning the work is because it was important. But important how? I asked myself one night, after wrapping up it's third chapter. It seemed like a book that would be important for African Americans and white folks in a race relations kind of way (it was). It also seemed like a book that would be important in advocating for disenfranchised groups of people the world over, albeit in a somewhat brutal way (it was). I missed something though. Reading a portion of the work now, four years later, I see that The Invisible Man was more important in the shaping of modern American Fiction than any other title I can immediately recall. Ellison's creative method is stunning and cerebral, disorienting at it's best, ghastly at it's worst. The novel calls uneasy truth to the forefront of thought, forcing the reader to examine it carefully, and with purpose. The storyline lures one in, and then Ellison's world attacks you from an unseen point, turning from a straightforward narrative into a discombobulated beast of fiction. That is how I envision this text in my head, a desperate, wounded person that you are afraid to look in the eye, a person that speaks the truth while you're left sheepishly staring at your feet. The excerpt we read for class is one of my favorites (save the opening diorama of light bulbs and radios, see Jeff Wall's representation, above). True, it is graphic, but it's violence is for the sake of symbolism. The reader sees masks of every kind (the narrator's grandfather, the rosy cheeks of drunken men), humans described in animal terms, and painfully realistic violence, but when we as readers look past the whirring sentences, we see that Ellison is trying to show us something. This is a novel that breaks things down, both socially and artistically into the most base of human instincts. Pain and violence are possible in the author's world as are racism and exploitation. Yet, for Ellison every force has an opposite that becomes apparent as the work progresses. There is hope, equality and comfort buried somewhere in the text, but we must each seek it out for ourselves. Too bad we only get one chapter......

Gertrude Stein

I was first introduced to the works of Gertrude Stein during the summer six years ago. On muggy days, otherwise filled with sweating and drinking water, I became enamored with writers of The Lost Generation. I read several works from writers F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Ford and William Faulkner. Thinking back, I can see myself hunched in a corner of the library, reading about how this writer influenced that writer and that writer hated loud drunks (I.E.Hemingway or Fitzgerald). It was a summer of reading at it's finest, but little did I realize, I had only scratched the surface of American expatriate art in Paris. Fall classes began two months later, and a friend of mine in a Lit. course informed me that "a writer named Gertrude Stein totally influenced all those novelists you say you like. She edited Hemingway and was part of the Shakespeare and Co. scene, if you don't know her, you don't know ____ about America's best in Paris. You do know about Shakespeare and Co right? Ms.Beech?". Insulted as I was, the remark prompted me to check out Ms. Stein's works at the library, and that work was, by a sheer matter of coincidence, Tender Buttons. My expectation for the work was something like this: formal poetry, probably akin to Elizabeth Bishop or Mary Oliver...clean imagery, emotionally charged, maybe with human nature or overt sexuality at the heart of the piece....right? WRONG (well, kind of). I had never read anything like Tender Buttons. The poem's words held together in a way that reminded me of ex-girlfriends, old dogs and my grandfather's flannel shirt. There were pictures created without imagery, free association where I expected concrete reality...it was clearly symbolism..or was it? Or was it Post Modern? Maybe it was word association, like in Life Studies....nope, wrong again..maybe. For me, the poem was incredibly easy to read. Every word could be a point of entry to the text. At times, I could almost read Tender Buttons just by looking a a whole paragraph, scanning for words that were important to me. Did I like the work as a whole? Maybe. I did like that the poem allowed me to finally read the way in which I liked: a way open to personal feeling and experience. I wasn't sure about the methods used however, perhaps they were too abstract for my meaning hungry brain. Tender Buttons is a work without rules, a poem that challenges, and at times forces the reader to bring their own personal experience and imagination to the task of reading. As a reader, you must look and look again, constructing meaning with whatever tools exist in your brain, as was said in class, "There is no right or wrong answer." Important writer, important time period. Why is Gertrude sometimes overlooked? Was it the period she came out of? Because she is sometimes dwarfed by her contemporaries? Because she was a woman? Because of the difficulty of framing her works for an academic setting? I don't truthfully know, I'm just glad she is finally included in an anthology.