I feel that if this is my blog, honesty is best.. James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" is not a terrible story, it just did very little to make me interested in the characters. It felt as if he was hoping to convey many messages , yet I didn't care. The individuals in the story begged for meaning in their struggles, yet by the last page the rang hollow. If stories are windows into different versions of an assortment of varying lives, I would have likely passed this one without much of a second glance. Maybe it was a "real" story, but it felt too forced. Baldwin felt as if he "needed" me to know just how painful life is. Music is something I hold very dear, so understanding that painful beauty that resonates out of every strained notes is no stranger to me. Many artists find some form of salvation and often destruction in music's loving embrace, but this is not an original story. Maybe it should be considered the retelling of an "age-old" tell, but if so, it feels empty. Maybe Baldwin isn't my style.
As hollow as I found the story, there were still messages conveyed, and many of those were worth propping up. The story that the mother tells to the narrator about his father and her relationship with him is very painful, and lovely (84-85). It was nice to see those characters embellished on . Baldwin's ability to encompass a vast part of the lives the two individuals have led, is notable. In just a few pages I felt as if I got to know these characters quite intimately, and that is a talent to do in a few pages. I wish I found myself connected to that relationship that we shared, but something is holding me back.
I wasn't going to go for humor this week, but Batman singing "Am I Blue" must be posted.
Works Cited: Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2011. Print.
I couldn't think of a relevant video to "Cathedral", but here is one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut, speaking on the shapes of stories.
Seeing as this is my introduction blog for this class, I should probably introduce myself. I am Ryan Collins, and for the rest of the details, come up and say, "Hello." I am both a Political Science major and a Literature major, and I hope to one day put those to work in some manner (don't ask me how, for that changes daily). I am sure you will get some insight into who I am, and how I view the world through these blog posts, thus I shall keep this intro short.
On to "Cathedral". The abruptness of the narrator's approach to telling the story was initially quite off putting. It made me uncomfortable and inattentive. It was as if I was hearing a boring, one-sided conversation that was like a diary written by a very straight forward person. The personality of the narrator begins to peak out when he begins to speak snidely about the blind man, and his wife's first husband (33-34). This is when I became interested. Insecurities in a narrator are always fun to watch unfold, and in this case, it was a major driving factor of the narrator. He was uneasy about many of the situations of his life (his job, his wife's past, the prospect of new people), and his life was, well, it was boring. I enjoyed that he didn't mention the blind man's name, Robert, until he felt sympathetic with him, after discussing the recent passing of Robert's wife (35); as if it was the first time he was able to connect with him.
The story was simple, and to the point, but the development of the narrator was spectacular. In twelve pages, we view a man so insecure that the thought of interacting with a blind person felt as strange to him as if he were interacting with an alien, transform into a person who allows this same man to be physically close enough to touch him and to give him an experience that is akin to Robert's own. I also enjoyed that the figure they drew was a cathedral, which draws a religious allusion to the story, who's narrator has already said he does not believe in anything. This implies that the experience was analogous to religion, which is often seen as transformative. Carver has taken a deeply insecure man, and has altered his world view to begin making him a better person.
Works Cited: Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2011. Print.
