last 2 pages of "On Beauty"

I found this to be a different and interesting ending to the book - as Howard is giving a presentation, he completely freezes up. When he comes to the last slide, Rembrandt's love, he seems to be very much reminded of his own love, finding her in the audience. The natural beauty of both women is emphasized in these pages - as Howard seems hopeful and perhaps reflective. He is indeed still in love, and through a few exchanges glances, it seems like everything could work out (despite how he has ruined everything). Maybe Smith is trying to say that true love is forgiving, even in the most extreme circumstances. On the other hand, maybe she is portraying the ultimate failure of Howard, realizing how much he is still in love with beautiful Kiki, but still knowing that things can never be the same.

4/13/2009

People as love objects: In this world, many people objectify others (esp. love interests) based on factors other than who they are: social status, money, fame, etc. Beauty should not be about any of this - Laura says that it is about colors, lines, contours, visual concept. In "On Beauty", this is at war with objectified cultural beauty standards. In my opinion, beauty is something more, involving who a person is, more so than cultural expectations or Laura's lines, shapes, etc. Granted, I agree that a portion does involve the latter, but I think that someone's personality and how true they are to themselves creates a strong, vivid, undeniable beauty.

4/8 notes

Zadie Smith, On Beauty: Literature can be political, but still be great writing. Smith says that if a novel tells you a specific way to be moral, it is bad. A novel, however, can be truthful and honest, which is difficult because of self-deception (novel difficulties mirror life). This novel is about multi-culturalism and the culture wars (war between people on the left and on the right - in the academy, overseeing the money). In this war, the left throws out standards of greatness: outdated, irrelevant, and racist/sexist. Book branding: some books with sell because of who the author is, not "who" the author is. The good moral book is a case, an analogy of morals, that teaches you not to believe in the set standards of greatness. This book fits, encouraging one to explore any character from both worlds: no one is completely wrong or evil.

thoughts from art and lies

We had a very interesting talk in class on Wednesday regarding the concept of self. Who are we, really? What defines us? This reminded me a lot of talks we would have in one of my edl courses. It seems like most people now are defined by societal expectations. In fact, I believe we all judge people before we ever really get to know them just based on our expectations of what we think they should be. I think that this concept of cultural expectations is very much related to the concept of "success" in our modern world. Another big topic in this edl class was the questioning and eventual dismissal of the "bootstrap" theory - that with hard work and perseverance, anyone can be successful in what ever they want to do. This is a whole separate conversation...that some of us are born with luxuries and resources that others are not, and because of this, it is nearly impossible for some to succeed in the traditional sense. I went to a talk on Thursday by Peter Block, who discussed extensively the concept of self. Who are we really? What defines us? Since the talk was mainly for people involved with education, he suggested we work as transformative leaders to change the whole concept of education. He said that we need to stop worrying about who we are in the eyes of others, and focus more on being what we actually want to be. He suggests that success has nothing to do with financial status, social status, or material accomplishments, but that to be successful is to be true to yourself and do what you want to do, completely disregarding any expectations of others. He suggested that the current state of the educational system mirrors that of society: paternalism. Everything is about being in charge: power is desirable. School reinforces this concept: someone is in charge, and what they say is the good word, not to be questioned or contradicted. He viewed "teaching" and "education" as separate entities: teaching is the stereotypical teacher lecturing to a class, representing the unquestionable truth, the way things are. Peter believed that this system promoted no learning, and simply further ingrained in students head the construct of the “system” in society. Someone is in charge, you will obey. You want to be in charge. He wanted us, as educators, to move more towards “education”: cooperative learning taking place through input of many, and attention to actual cares and interests of students. In real education, one should question everything: find out why things are the way there are, and if you don’t like it, do something about it. He discussed the teacher as a new, transformative leader: not one who wants recognition or traditional successes of money, fame, power, etc, but one who pushes for the better good. He believes this requires a transformation of self: you need to reflect on what really makes you who you are, not what society defines you as. Finally, he suggested that the best way to facilitate actual education was through small groups. In the small group setting, no one is safe. You are forced to show your hand, forced to be opinionated. I think that this could work well for our class if we were a bit more comfortable with each other. The problem for me is that I feel fairly incompetent in analyzing literature at a high level compared to others in the class. This especially applied to me during times when we did poetry analysis - I needed to go word by word looking up things in context to even have an idea of what was going on, let alone knowing the deeper meaning.

3/30 notes

Art and Lies notes: The short story comes into existence around 1800. In the current state of literature in education, the canon has been blown apart, and there is a huge rise in "cultural studies". People became aware of the politics of literature - teachers can exclude based on their personal preference or bias. Isn't this the basis of any study in history? The saying "history is written by the victors" is somewhat true, but a more accurate account would be "history is written by the academics in the field". Cultural studies people may have taken this too far - often suggesting there is no great art.
What makes art great? Ralph Waldo Emerson believes that when someone reads and adores authors, they get the return of their own alienated majesty: a projection; we're afraid to see how great or how bad we are. Attention is a limited commodity: this is the way we evaluate art.

A goal of class: when you don't initially like or understand something, maybe first blame yourself: "maybe I need to learn more..."

3/27 notes

Child and Flowers: This is an Ekphrastic poem: based on something visual, visualizing through the text. The poem seems to recommend living in the moment, instead of basing everything off of previous and future experiences. It says that the flowers could wilt and die soon, so enjoy them while you can, appreciate the aesthetic (not just flowers). I question whether or not this is truly possible - in many ways, who we are is based entirely off of our past experiences, good or bad. I don;t believe that we can fully live in the moment, because we view everything (unintentionally) through a lens of experiences.

Problems and benefits of visualizing text:
Visualizing text can be very time consuming, costly, often contains human error, and there could be differences coming through new formats of the text. In the positive, the text becomes not just text: visual cues are also important. Reading is not that much different from looking at images - text is a visual experience in itself.

3/20 notes

Never flinch,
But still, unscrupulously epic, catch
Upon a burning lava of a song,
The full-veined, heaving, double-breasted Age:
That, when the next shall come, the men of that
May touch the impress with reverent hand, and say
'Behold,–behold the paps we all have sucked!
That bosom seems to beat still, or at least
It sets ours beating. This is living art,
Which thus presents, and thus records true life.'

This is instructions to future poets: to never flinch, and write about "living art". The burning lava of a song is poetry itself, not the old still-beating bosom.

Define epic art: art that relates to a hero character, telling the story of their deeds
Define modern life: life in the present, not some dry historical time period, things that are relevant to the now