Literary Fiction Annotation

White Noise

By Don Delillo

Synopsis:

White Noise centers on Jack Gladney who pioneered the academic field of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill. The narrative centers around Jack’s family and collegiate peers as we delve into their idiosyncratic lives, disillusionment, and ultimately their fear of death. Central events involve murder, sickness, mass hysteria, and trust. The plot, in itself, serves as a layered character that challenges the reader yielding dialogue both absent and rich.  

Elements of Literary Fiction:

Language

As the title suggests, White Noise, offers a commentary on language and conversation weaved throughout the character’s dialogue. This enables Delillo’s artistic word choice, phrasing, and style to not only carry the story, but also impact a greater conversation. The sentences themselves have a tendency to be deceptively simple, the same is true about the sequences of dialogue. Yet many readers will find the work challenging as they are asked to read between the lines. White Noise also challenges the reader to question whether they trust the narrator’s explanations and motivations at face value, as there seems to be a current of emotions if the reader is able to break the logical surface.  

Pacing

White Noise develops its layers slowly, asking the reader to contemplate events while reading. At its best, Delillo offers a pace that desires the reader to savor passages much more like a fine meal than a hamburger. The post-modern-esque writing style contributes to a feeling of a languished pace, this an artistic choice forcing the reader to dwell on the writing, often in times of inaction. The pacing of action events provides a counterpoint, often moving at a speed that feels blurred. Though that description may seem like an inept quality, a reader will understand, they are being forced to experience events as the author’s hand brilliantly intends.   

Storyline

The story of White Noise is simple, it is able to be fully explained in a matter of a few sentences, yet I will withhold at this moment to avoid spoilers. The simplicity of the overall story belies its significance to the overall conversation the book offers. As is common in literary fiction, especially in works that learn to the post-modern, Delillo has stitched meaning into the fabric of both menial and elaborate events. This makes what seems like a simple dialogue that takes place within the safety of Jack’s home as important to the overall arc as a large community-wide tragedy. The story offers a resolution, but the reader will most likely be left with questions unresolved, challenged to think about the book long after the last page.

Tone/Mood

Overall, White Noise is somber and serious. Ironically, a reader approaching the work will find humor and wit within the passages. The characters often feel like caricatures who act and voice ridiculous opinions, ‘facts’, and worldviews. The interplay between the narrative voice, dialogue, and action presents an intentional hodgepodge of emotions and responses. An overarching feeling exists throughout the book asking the reader if they “get it” yet. The feelings the reader has while reading White Noise seem as intentional as the mood the words of the book generate. They are constantly intertwined and interplayed with another.   

Read-A-Likes:

Endgame by Samuel Beckett

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides

Week 12 Matrix- Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

1. Where is the book on the narrative continuum?

v Highly Narrative

2. What is the subject of the book?

Anthony Bourdain takes the reader on a grimy journey through his life as a chef, highlighting his misadventures while dismissively glorifying a life worked in a restaurant kitchen.  

3. What type of book is it?

Memoir

4. Articulate Appeal

What is the pace of the book?

The pace is leisurely due mostly to the reflective narrative voice, yet there is a sense of quickness to each chapter, most of which feel they could stand alone as a personal essays.

Describe the characters of the book.

Bourdain’s narrative voice is self-deprecating, comic, dark, edgy with sprinkles of lightheartedness or nostalgia. The characters that he introduces in his stories are the modern day equivalent of degenerate pirates who indulge in too much drugs, alcohol, sex and nearly any other deviant activity you can think of.

How does the story feel?

Extremely funny, lurid, unabashed

What is the intent of the author?

To take the reader through a set of memories that center around food, but as we find in our own dinner conversations, food is a great lubricant for conversations about life, love, youth and folly.

What is the focus of the story?

Framing both his own childhood experiences, teenage years, and young adulthood, Bourdain focuses on his love of food as the setting for each moment in the book. Although food is the intended focus of the writing, the most memorable stories are about the experiences making food and the motley kitchen staffs’ interactions.

Does the language matter?

Always, in this case the language is approachable in tone and word selection, yet shocking and absurd at the same time.

Are the settings important and well described?

Absolutely, whether it is his childhood visits to France or the refrigerator in the back of a seafood restaurant the settings are vivid. It is important that the reader feels like they are there to understand the characters and comedy of the events that take place.

Are their details, if so of what?

Bourdain is adept at explaining the physical, emotional, and social details of his interactions with the characters of his memoir. Details range from the mental experiences of heavy drinking and drug use to the hardened hands of cooks who could pull extremely hot baking sheets out of an oven with their bare hands.

Are their extensive charts and other graphic materials? Are they clear?

None.

 Does the book stress moments of learning, understanding, and experience?

Yes, Bourdain’s narrative voice often offers what he learned through the stories he tells, how specific experiences shaped his later life, and his understanding, or lack there-of of the person he has come to be.

Why would a reader enjoy this book?

1. Subject/Author  2. Tone  3. Narrative Nature

Fantasy Annotation

The Magician’s Nephew

By C.S. Lewis

Synopsis:

The first book of the Chronicles of Narnia series was not the first published, so fans of the series argue in what order the novels should be read. In any case most publishers mark this book as the entry point to the series. The story starts out with two children Digory and Polly talking to each other through a fence, that leads to a play date that expands into a new world. Digory’s odd Uncle tricks the children into wearing a set of magical rings that takes them to another realm. Here the reader sees the events that set the rest of the series into motion, the first encounter with the great evil witch and the lion Aslan, the sign of ultimate righteousness. The reader will quickly notice the story is thick with religious allegory that seems to dictate the plot and characters.

Elements of Fantasy:

Story Line

Saricks writes that a fantasy story is defined by the “expectation of ultimate victory over evil forces”, and in this regard The Magician’s Nephew follows closely to the genre description. Both this story’s plot, and overarching references to adventures in the future are filled with the hope of good finally triumphing over evil. In accordance with this characters are very easily seen as heroes, villains, or someone looking out for their own good (in The Magician’s Nephew this aligned the person with helping a villain every time). Our young heroes, Digory and Polly, act as children playing out a grand adventure in their minds. Paying little attention to ‘why’ magical things are happening around them, always accepting them as they are. Digory has a bit of a selfish streak he has to overcome a few times, but quickly falls into line every time.

Tone/Mood

In a children’s fairy tale fashion, the adults in the story seem bewildered by seeing the magic of Narnia, yet the children take it in stride without a challenge. There is the underlying concept that Narnia is a place more easily understood than the real world, and the children operate quite naturally in it. This is the offer to the reader also, to enjoy Lewis’ work there is an expectation that you will quickly through aside any challenges to the magic. Magic exists and is not explained; yet very few people outside the setting of Narnia know of its existence. This leads to a mood of wonderment for the reader, you are taken to fantastic places and meet magical characters, you’re investment in the characters has more to do with your commitment to good triumphing over evil than in empathy for a character’s choices or personality.

Pacing

The Magician’s Nephew is generally a quick read, both because of its minimal length, but also its fast pace. Compared to other works in the fantasy genre, Lewis offers less description of the surreal settings the characters find themselves in. The book bounces between action scenes quickly, but once in a scene lengthier descriptors are applied. Most fantasy is known for creating worlds to dwell inside, and Lewis offers the reader wonderful worlds, yet his narrative style moves quickly from one setting to the next often with action motivating the characters.

Language

Lewis wrote The Magician’s Nephew as a children’s tale, much like his friend and counterpart J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yet when comparing the two the reading level of Lewis’ intended reader seems much lower. High fantasy language is mostly used in dialog between characters, yielding a narrative voice much more accessible. The main characters, being children, often talk and act in character which glues their characters together nicely, but does not include much of the fantasy jargon many associate with the genre. The narrator often speaks to the reader as an aside, justifying the children’s actions or remarking that the children would remember this or that event for the rest of their lives. You get the feeling while reading The Magician’s Nephew that you are being ‘told’ a story, literally, as if being spoken to.  

Read-A-Likes:

       

The Book of Three by Alexander Lloyd

             

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

   A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

Week 11 Response

What does the change in medium mean for appeal factors?

I think the change in medium, especially for audiobooks, begins to incorporate integrated appeal factors into the book space. As Saricks points out in Listening for the Appeal in Audiobooks, the voice acting of the narrator or cast of an audiobook becomes a defining quality of the work. This is something the world of books has a little experience with in the realm of extremely popular authors, but now legions of fans might take to a work they wouldn’t have before because they love the narrator. This begins to tie the community of people around books even more closely to other mediums through voice acting. Did the reader of the next best seller act as your favorite character in a cult classic show or voice your favorite cartoon/ video game character? It’s possible now, so it adds another layer on top of all the other appeal factors that the work would have expressed itself.

If you can't hold a book and feel the physical weight of it in your hands, how does that affect your knowledge of the genre?

Psychologically the experience of reading an ebook, to me, seems about the same. The non-weight factor doesn’t seem to influence my thoughts of the genre, although with an ebook, I’ve noticed I actually study the art on the cover for a moment because I know I will not happen to glace down at it at the end of my reading session. This may influence my idea of the cover, depending on the cover and the genre, but I haven’t found it to be a large factor.

How about readers being able to change the font, line spacing, and color of text - how does that affect pacing and tone?

In my experience changing the font has been one of the two biggest reasons I bought and use an ereader. I was recently prescribed glasses, but before that I was having issues reading smaller text. I just thought my eyes were tired from starting at a screen all day in my editing job. Being able to adjust the font and the backlighting (the other reason I purchased an ereader) really helped me be able to read when picking up a book may have been a little too blurry to enjoy at the end of the day. Ironically, with my glasses this doesn’t happen any more, so I’ve been pickup up more physical books again. The font being large did seem to change pacing, it could be because I was new to a digital book. The act of turning a page, to me, is thoughtless, and I don’t think I ever notice it when I read. For some reason taping the screen to turn to the next page tends to break my concentration a little. It could be the time the text takes to populate, even though it is quick. So the large font combined with the act of digitally ‘turning-the-page’ is something I had to get used to. I also noticed that sometimes my reader will skip a few pages ahead, maybe it senses two touched on the screen instead of one or my unit is a little funky. This is akin to flipping a page stuck to another page, but it seems to happen a lot more often on my reader than any book I’ve had. While these things don’t directly affect the pacing of the actual work, they seem to be more apparently involved in my reading experience on a digital device than on a paper book, and they add up to very minor annoyances. The benefits of the lighting and font allowed me to read more comfortably and more often before my glasses so it was a welcome trade off that a book just wouldn’t be able to offer.

How about audiobooks? Track length, narrator choice, is there music?

I think audiobooks have the ability to completely change the mood and pacing of a book. The narrator may linger on words in a section in a way you would not have as a reader, or the background music may give you a different feeling of the setting than you’d experience if you were imagining it yourself. These are almost like seeing an adaption of a Shakespeare play you are familiar with. Where the setting choices may have been changed to make a social statement or just because the director has a different feeling about the play than you do yourself. I find an audiobook to be more of an interpretation of the work than the work itself, closer to the actual work than a play or film version, but it is more than just the book itself. Choices have been made for the listener by people besides the author, the tone of the characters voices, how fast they talk, the particulars of their accents, this means a work can be elevated through a great audiobook presentation or completely ruined. Most audiobooks I’ve experienced have moments of both yielding an overall neutral experience. I’d much rather read than listen, but sometimes you can’t read (like when driving) and audiobooks become a trade off for me.

Book Club Experience

For my book club blog, I attended Professor Erin’s Lisa Simpson book club. I live really close to the library she works at, so I thought stopping in the book club would be fun! The book of the month was Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, which I was lucky enough to have read a few weeks prior for fun! I was a little nervous going into the book club, I have never done one before! Sure, I’ve met with friends in bars to discuss a specific book we were jazzed on for hours, but that is infrequent, informal, and buzzed. My undergraduate degree is in English Literature, so discussing books isn’t foreign to me, but I had read The Old Man and the Sea for fun, I didn’t really take notes or prepare for a discussion of the book on an academic level. Either way, I decided to jump in, and I had my fears alleviated within the first couple of minutes.

I’m habitually early, awkwardly early sometimes, before job interviews I tend to sit in the parking lot for at least 45 minutes. This was also the case as I arrived in the community room of the library. I was so early the lights were off, but luckily another book club member was early too, who happened to be more familiar with the room, she found the light switch and we stepped inside. Making small talk that turned to us taking a seat in the room and staring at our phones for a bit, I felt much more normal. I was wondering how many people show up to book clubs on a Wednesday night, the room could have uncomfortably held 50, a comfortable 30 or so, and when we started we had six around two tables that had been pushed together. I was even more relieved, six is a comfortable size for new social interactions for me, I once took an undergraduate Latin class that had only 3 students, if someone missed a day it was the worst! So now that I’ve set the scene, and you know what I felt like going into the book club you probably want to know how it went right?

Who cares?! Erin brought popcorn! Food has a way in general of greasing conversation and making people comfortable (especially me), and I can’t tell you how much more comfortable I felt when a bag of popcorn was passed my way with a Styrofoam cup to dump it in. I know it sounds silly, but it was just a feeling, I didn’t challenge it, I just remember it. As we were passing the popcorn around, we also had some arts and crafts! I don’t think I’ve colored anything since I’ve been a grown man, but Erin passed around half sheets with Hemingway in a wool sweater with a marlin jumping in the background, and everyone started coloring, so I joined in. Craft-time bookended our discussion, pictures of Hemingway in the beginning, and making magnets of the book cover and Lisa Simpson at the end.  Now that I’m reflecting on the experience, I am appreciating the setup of the evening even more. The book club I attended was full of friends, friends who have known each other or been connected for a decent chunk of time (college). Their lives are interconnected in the ways we all are connected with our social groups, one member didn’t have time to finish the book, and another didn’t bother with reading it at all but still showed up. For some reason, I never would have guessed this about a book club, but the social interactions can be the most important part of the club. The craft time at the beginning and the end allowed the group to talk about other things (cats mostly) before talking about the book, getting all the normal questions you have for a friend about your last meeting or the last thing you talked about out of the way, while still doing a quirky little activity. I should also say that I felt very welcomed, everyone there treated me like I wasn’t a random guy who showed up at a gathering of longtime friends, which I pretty much was, but I had a great time.

Since this was my first book club I have no way of comparing the actual discussion of the book to another book club. Compared to my English classes in college, it was a little briefer, but felt similar. Erin had prepared some talking points/ questions for the group, some were written by her, some were thought up in the moment, and some were borrowed from the web. Everyone participated, even the people who hadn’t read or finished the book! I wasn’t taking notes because it just would not have been appropriate in the situation, so I can’t remember everything we talked about. I recall a discussion of wondering how strong the old man was, the sadness of the boy, what period of time the book took place, the role of poverty in the book, and a touch on the role of symbolism (or the lack thereof if you ask Hemingway) in the book. The book club was more a group of friends that morphed into a book club when called, so there was no one talking out of turn or stealing the spotlight. Honestly, I know I can be long-winded, taking a long time to say something simple, so I may have been the one who talked most out of place. Nevertheless, I still felt welcomed, and the rest of the club was kind enough to respond to what I had said so I felt like I was fitting in.

In all, I had a great time, and I hope my surprise appearance wasn’t unwelcome! This has been a particularly weird blog to write because usually I would just assume my reading audience all has the same experience. Yet this time, Erin was there, but you the rest of my classmates were not, so I have framed this blog to your experience level. I’m going to switch now, and talk directly to Erin.

Thank you so much for making me feel welcome!  Your friends are funny, kind, and wonderful and I had a great time at your book club! Your setup (crafts and snacks) really help a new person coming into the club feel comfortable and you lead a great discussion!