My first impressions: I really like the text so far. I am not a baseball fan, like some asserted in discussion, or even a sports fan! So, I read the first 60 pages and was like, How am i going to stick w/ this book for the whole 800 pages??

But then I really got into the text. After the game, when Nick goes to see Klara it really picked up for me. So much that I actually went back to the game described in the beginning and really enjoyed reading it the second time around. The text is loaded with descriptions and symbolism. It is taking me a long time to get through the reading because I just want to stop and contemplate all the symbols and deeper meanings behind them but --on the other hand-- I have to get through the required reading in time for discussion. Its amazing cause each paragraph has a new idea or concept.

I thought of this during class yesterday, but it works better as a Blog post.

Did the use of the Bruegel paiting remind anyone else of Thomas Harris' "Red Dragon"? That book, of course, involves the FBI in a completely different context. I can't find the specific passage where serial killer Francis Dolarhyde comes across William Blake's "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun", but I believe he glimpses it in a catalog, almost as innocuous as Hoover having the Bruegel fall from above him.

[EDIT - I had a rather nice passage here about the effect the painting had on Dolarhyde's psyche, but the Blog software wouldn't let me post it because it contained the word "p-i-l-l-s", (hyphens mine) calling it "questionable content".]

So Jedger's not alone. Incidentally, the sequel to "Red Dragon", "Silence of the Lambs", comes up on p. 143 of "Introducing Postmodernism").

One could say that Dolahryde and Jedgar have similar psyches, albeit one is a serial killer and the other is the director of the FBI. Intrestingly enough, the "Red Dragon" which becomes Francis' alter-personality rages out of control when it challenges his own personal love for the female character (name anyone?) and he attempts to destroy it by eating the original painting in the novel.

Drew comparisions to the child in Cotter's class who eats the pages out of his textbook. It's almost an occultist manner of consuming knowledge. Osmosis, if you will.

Speaking of Occultism, notice Nick's incessant foray into bad luck and the number 13?

Am I running in circles or am I getting somewhere with this? Ehh?

Glad someone else was able to follow up on that, especially since the passage I has picked ended up with Dolarhyde's sexual connection to the painting, just like Jedgar's. The woman was named Reba McClane. The numerical obsession with Nick is intriguing, especially since it seems to be one of his very few personality traits at this juncture (to be sure, I haven't finished the assignment for tomorrow yet). But there's still plenty of time in the novel to see where it's all going.

I didn't say this in class, (i think i said enough w/o adding more), but something kept reverberating in my mind while I read this 2nd chunk of the novel. It was strange, and disjointed, but over and over this little phrase kept popping up in my mind...
"everything falls apart, the center cannot hold..."
At first i couldn't place it, and just enjoyed the factual phrasing of such a statement. Maybe they were lyrics from a song I used to like?
But it was persistent, and distracting while I was trying to read. So I addressed the phrase, thinking, 'yeah, entropy, obviously. Over and over, keeps happening. A major theme, in this book and every other...big deal.'
Then, with the whole apocalyptic-Sister-Edgar-in-the-South-Bronx scenario, pop! I realized where the phrase really lived. Or at least where it was born. (Unfortunately not in my own mind, only taking up space there...:)
I'm sure you guys know already. Or are at least familiar with that brilliant Yeats poem, 'The Second Coming'.
For me, though, it just didn't click until I neared the chapter's end.
lol...it's just odd to me that my mind fished that poem out of all the detritus long before I was conscious of the link. And it's a big link.
oh! (p.s.)
Just to show the phrase in context, I will add the lines that follow them. For some reason the words seem to have eked out a place in my mind, and came out to visit me when I remembered their actual existence in the world...
'Things fall apart, the center cannot hold,
mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned;
the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity....'
that's all i remember of it, but I'm pretty sure there is an opening line that I can't quite make out. And I do apologize for any mistakes...

Here is the whole poem for people to consider:

The Second Coming

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upong the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of
the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stoney sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at
last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

What a coincidence -- Yeats speaks of the desert and a second coming after twenty centuries. Perhaps 911 was our second coming, ushering in a new era where religion, and a real second coming of some god figure, is impossible, or one in which a new god emerges in a non-religious sense. The poem also has some interesting links to the Descent of Alette -- an enigmatic figure, an image of the "spiritus mundi," or collective conscious, rises from the desert (or subway) and is reborn.

Chapter 7, first 2 chapters. "How deep is time? How far down into the life of matter do we have to go before we understand what time is?"

"The old science teacher, Bronzini, moved through the now, slogging, dragging happily..."

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/f/futurist/unique.jpg

Boccioni

*correction, first 2 paragraphs

Unfortunately, I don't have anything quite as eloquent or insightful to share. But as I was reading, something kept reverberating through my mind, too. This probably pales in comparison to Larissa's Yeats reference, but this song by Trail of Dead (don't know what everyone listens to), "Source Tags and Code," has this one line: "Each painted sign along the road will melt away in source tags and code." And I can't help but think of how it relates to the book, with garbage, certain barren Bronx scenes, the whole obsession and return to numbers (13), language through numbers, travel, the highway video and pixels, etc...
I'm probably reaching, and apologies for such a lame reference, but I just can't help hearing the song in my head when I read this book.

Everyone's comments are pretty intriguing.... the Yeats find adds a really interesting element to mix. For me, i can't help continually returning to the concepts of history and trash and shit all wind round eachother...maybe i'm really exhausting this topic, but it's one of the themes in this book that really clicks for me. Peoples' perspectives on history has always shaped the way we see our world. this book really helps point this out though. I especially like the way time is so mixed and muddled throughout the novel. first off, the time period changes from section to section, jumping back and forth, between decades and generations. There was a line I really liked when Marvin is looking around shops of different memorobilia (aka history, other peoples' garbage, etc.), "...the lure of every addiction, which is losing yourself to time." (319) Some pages earlier, (287) Sims and Nick are talking about trash, and it "pushing back" and i think that's a great reference to history shaping our lives more than we know.... "Civilization did not rise...No, garbage rose first, inciting people to build a civilization in response, in self-defense." I think this is too much to try and write out, i'll continue in class, but i just thought these were very interesting passages.

kate