Blog Post Summary
Probably the biggest theme from the blog posts this week was a frustrating sense of confusion. This confusion stems from the many and unspecified and unreliable authors, the layers of truth and time sequence – that is, the story within a story, and that story not being told clearly or chronologically – and the sheer abundance of information.
Quite a few blogs were dedicated to the idea of truth and reliability of the authors. Foremost, it is important to distinguish with narrator is telling what story; though I think many blog posts were in agreement that none of the possible narrators are particularly trustworthy. Tate suggests that if Sid Hammet is the narrator for the entire novel, perhaps he is taking certain liberties with the text and investing his own character into the character of Gould. In Kristel’s post, she made the interesting comparison between Gould (as the narrator of the sub story) and Clara, two narrators who are very affected and involved with the story that they tell. Maria brought up a very significant question of Gould’s sanity in relation to his reliability.
As a result of the lack of confidence in the narrators, the question of truth arises. Abby compares the book to a math problem (a comparison I think is fantastic) saying that not all the information is relevant and that it is the job of the reader – and perhaps the purpose of novel – to take the information that is relevant to us and leave the rest. This might explain the abundance of information and characters.
This may also shed some light on the inconsistencies of the novel. If what the reader gains from the novel is more important than the plot then this importance might be supported by the complication with the narrators, the chronology of the story, and the strange and foreign language used.
Discussion Summary
Discussion began with the identity of the narrator. Tate convincingly suggests that Sid Hammet is attempting to write from Gould’s point of view, but is not committing himself 100% faithfully to Gould’s character. Tate says that Sid Hammet might be consciously or unconsciously incorporating his beliefs (insofar as they differ perhaps from Gould’s beliefs). Jamie contributed very interesting evidence in support of this, saying that when Gould lapses into third person, it is the result of negligence from Sid Hammet.
Josh offers the explanation that the two are the same person, and that Gould is awake while Sid Hammet is asleep, and vice versa (perhaps like multiple-personality-disorder? FIGHT CLUB!?1?!?!) Anyway, he cites pages 32, and 112. The theory is interesting, and as much as I personally would like to discard it I admit it has some credibility and is not easily dismissed.
Yu suggests that also Sid Hammet takes on the identity of Gould well because he is looking for a purpose and for a reason, and finds it so much in Gould’s book that he becomes as Gould is.
The idea of Gould’s identity is further complicated by the fact that he admits to having a previous name, but adopts the William Buelow Gould, as we know him. This can be seen on pages 112 and 113, and also 78.
Kevin cautions the class against looking too deeply into Gould’s madness, because he says that it is easy to find wisdom in things we do not understand.
If we accept that Gould is crazy (personally, I have my serious doubts, the idea did not strike me until I read Maria’s blog), then we must seriously reevulate Gould’s reliability. But the class suggests that reliability does not have to be found only in facts, and though the facts themselves may be untrue, the emotions and ideas are what are real to the reader, and thus reliable.
Last but not least Roman suggests sexual repression – because what would college be without sex? Real talk though, I like the idea. He mentioned the sex scene where the Conga screams at Sid Hammet “Who are you? Who?!” (31). This drew my attention back to the first 41 pages (which are easy to forget compared to Gould’s story) and there are a lot of quotes and moments (this one included) that suggest the fragile nature of Sid Hammet’s identity, and also his own madness. I won’t quote them all here because I want to quote other stuff.
I know this post is stupid long already but I’m just going to add some quotes about art that we didn’t mention that I thought were very interesting. And then I’m done, I swear.
“’Artists! Ha! Turnkeys of the heart! … Poets! Ha! Dobbing dogs of the soul! – what here I write, & what here I paint are Experiment and Prophecy – do not judge any of it by the shorten’d yard-stick of what they call Literature and Art, those sick & broken compasses’” (53)
“[Jean Aubudon] disliked art. It was, said he, the name given to paintings after they had been stolen & sold” (61).
Talking about the troublesome task of painting:
“…the only troublesome task … was to understand the truth that the subject represented & then get it down, as honestly & as accurately as possible. To do this – to distill into a single image the spirit of a whole life – he needed stories …” (62).
“What truth this added up to, an admonishment or an encouragement, was entirely beyond me, but the subtle messages of my work were, I decided, not for me to decode” (83).
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