Dialogue Snippets.

"I'll just find a really awesome nature picture and be like, 'It's sublime.'"
"Yeah."
"I just don't want to discuss it."

"The only reason I think it's so great is that I spent eight hours on it."
"The interface is just so incredible."

"I've been carrying around my coffee cup inside of that and people are like, 'Wow that's impressive.'"

"I ran into Rebecca at the gym, that freshman, the other day."
"Oh, Rebecca. I like Rebecca. She's nice AND a babe. Pretty much all I look for in a friend."

"Or is she long and blonde?"
"Yeah, there's Whitney."
"And Rebecca, yeah."

"I don't play games. I don't like games."
"You don't play that shit."
"Yeah. That's right."

"That's cool that you'll start school on the right foot and that I'm just going to crush it with my academic prowess."
"Ouch."
"Did that hurt you?"
"Yeah, I'm wounded."

"Okay, I was working on my computer and he sneaked up on me."

"What does it mean when there are shoes hung up on a power line?"
"That means one of your friends died and you take their shoes and throw them."
"I don't think that's right."
"Well, I'm more street smart than you."

Response to 1-900

I can see where David Foster Wallace got his influence from. I love all-dialogue stories. It forces you to think about the characters yourself since the only thing the reader has to go on is the characters themselves. Where are they coming from? Why are they really doing this? For instance, we know that John has had a rough time and feels the need to connect with someone, but why through a phone sex line? We understand that it’s part of Sharon job to keep it impersonal, but why does she really hesitate to answer John’s questions? Does John really believe that he loves Sharon? If not, then who is really he saying it for? It’s character studies like this, presented like this, that really gets me going (not in a sexy way…).

The use of ellipses helps the reader know when something significant to the characters has just been brought up. For instance:

“Did you ever have a relationship fall apart?

…

Maybe not a marriage.

Actually, John, I’ve been in and out of relationships…”

The fact that Sharon doesn’t reply tells the reader that she probably has, and that it? has affected her in some way. Thus, we learn a little more about Sharon, just through an ellipsis. It’s a good trick, but I do think it’s used maybe a little too much?

I love the difference shown between the characters as well. John needs some connection to get it off, and Sharon is perfectly fine without one to do her job. Once a connection is established (possibly during that one creepy (in my eyes) moment where John constantly tells Sharon he loves her), John is ready, but Sharon is hesitant, unwilling. It was a nice change, and it kind of moved me in a way I can’t explain. It’s weird. It probably has something to do with the difference of outlooks between someone who more or less “have figured it out” vs. someone going through an emotional and relationship crisis. 

My Postcard Story If You Want To Read It

When I was young there was this lonely tree with a tire swing in the middle of an expansive, green valley. I wanted to swing from it, but there was this line of people miles and miles long in front of me. I didn’t know what to do while I waited, so I saw what others were doing and I mimicked. I knitted. I took naps. I experimented with drugs and wrote a bad screenplay. I turned 20. I spent a night in jail. I read a few books. I had sex. I became sad. I turned 33. I got married. I had an affair. I went through surgery. I made love. I turned 42. Some people died around me and I took their place in line. I married again and had a kid. I became happy. She stood with me in line. I turned 70. I was left figuring out myself what to do in line as more people died around me. I laughed. I looked straight up as it rained so the raindrops looked like stars. My daughter had a son. She became happy. I reached the swing when I was 81. But I wasn’t able to get in or hold on, so I let my grandson have a go. It was all fine with me. I watched and I smiled.

Worried about it's length, but I'll try.

Me and Facebook and Everyone I Know

First off- I'm a clinical depressant...depressionist? I have clinical depression. I get bummed out a lot. I've been looking for ways to make me not bummed out, and I do go to therapy and take pills and all that jazz, but sometimes they don't work and so I keep looking for ways to be not bummed out.

Recently, I decided that I would "be weird" on Facebook, and post one shot jokes. The first thing I did was pretend I was a bear. I made "honey" an interest and "scratching my back on tree trunks" as a favorite activity and the Berenstain Bears part of my family. Some people went along with it, and some thought it was too weird, but whatever. I thought it was funny.

Now I'm just making more one shot jokes, making everyone's news feed cluttered with my posts. Stuff like, "Paul Bear Vance has updated his relationship status to: TEAM EDWARD" and pretending I was in a relationship with Facebook itself, and that it was leaving me and that I didn't care because it gave only sub-par back scratches and asking questions like, "Are YOU superbass?" and answering them like, "Oh nevermind. It turns out it's Nicki Minaj. She's so brave."

It's all very stupid, but it's all stuff that I think is funny. If I think it's funny, I'll put it on Facebook. Some people seem to be worried ("Are you okay?"). Some just confused ("So what are you doing?"). Some, and and most  concerning to me, annoyed as hell ("Shut up, Paul. You're posts are so stupid! I'm going to stop being your friend!")

What's concerning (well, not concerning but just weird) to me is that even on Facebook there seems to be social norms. How to behave, what you're allowed to do, what's acceptable, whatever. It's just strange. The internet is where I want to get away from all of that.

And that brings me to my biggest worry of the past few days. I love doing this. Acting weird on Facebook has made me happier than any drug I've tried has. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because I feel safer being weird on the internet than in real life. I have created another identity there. One that has still a part of myself in it, but not my typical anxiety-fill, self-conscious, depressed self. I'm wondering if I'm just running away from really getting better. I'm not sure. Just been a worry recently.

But for right now, Facebook is therapeutic, up is down, I can taste purple and see radio waves.

Response to Denis Johnson's "Emergency"

What I think is really clever on Johnson’s part is making Georgie’s drug trip not just a drug trip. We see certain behaviors of Georgie’s before we know for certain that he has actually taken some pills. The last sentence in the first paragraph says, “He often stole pills from the cabinets,” but refrains from actually saying, “He had taken some when I found him.” That refrain led me to think that Georgie was, at first, having some type of Post Traumatic Stress episode. He saw how frail and vulnerable he was when he had to clean the blood on the floor and it triggered something inside of him that made him see  permanent blood stains and cause him to weep and act like a little baby (in a literal sense). After that, I couldn’t help but think that his behaviors didn't all have something to do with the drugs he had taken, especially considering all of the references to soldiers.

Some of the language that was used made the whole thing not seem so much as a drug trip, but as a dream. (I guess I think of nightmares when I think of drug trips and that’s probably because of films—the only one that made trips seem like dreams was Taking Woodstock.) Stuff like, “The road we were lost on cut straight through the middle of the world,” and “…the boy climbed slowly up out of the fields as out of the mouth of a volcano.”

One thing I have a question about is in one section (page 388), Johnson switches tense abruptly and once in the same sentence. “I was one of the moments you stay in, to hell with all the troubles of before and after. The sky is blue and the dead are coming back. Later in the afternoon, with sad resignation, the county fair bares its breasts.” I’m really curious. Why did he switch tenses up like that? What does that do?

The thing I admire most about the story is the dialogue between characters. Through their dialogue you know what everyone thinks of everyone else and the way they themselves are. Favorite moment: “What seems to be the trouble?”

Dinner at the Patton's and the Answer to Yesterday's Riddle

At 5:50 the whole table is set by Margaret  like always (with the fork and spoon together, the knife separate). 
At 5:55 the food is served, every Tuesday's being roast beef, mashed potatoes, and peas.
At 5:59, a silent blessing between Margaret and James that lasts on average 15 seconds is taken care of.
From 6:00 to 6:15 the food is eaten. The television, out of sight with the volume near maximum, the only contributor to conversation.


Answer: "Dude! You're gettin' Adele!"

A Pun Riddle for You

It's a riddle! I will answer it in my next post.

A Response to Lydia Davis's "Television"

I think what Davis is doing is writing in the same mood that the narrator feels when it is time to watch TV, a time of day when she feels like it has “already moved away from [her].” As she puts it, “I want to watch a movie…which will be simple and easy to understand…It will skip over so much,” and she writes in the same way. Her sentences are often short, clear, and contain simple words. The paragraphs themselves are also very short, many only having one sentence and one only consisting of eight words. Just like the television shows too, Davis leaps to new insights and observations constantly (particularly in the second section), and these leaps reminded me of flipping through channels. We get one thing and just switch to another.

I thought use of pronouns was interesting. At first Davis only uses the pronoun we. This got me thinking, “Is she speaking about me, too? Everyone?” It’s not until after the first page until the reader realizes she was speaking about her and her family. That had to be a conscious decision to include the reader first before going into specifics. I feel that this way, it makes it hard for the reader to separate themselves from the rest of the piece even though the rest of the piece the experiences are the narrator’s own.

I am wondering why Davis would split up an already scattered piece. Maybe the second section with all of the individual bits is supposed to be the commercial break of the piece. I don’t know.

What I do admire a lot about this is how performative it is. So many elements in her writing style contribute to the subject she’s talking about. The leaps, the uncomplicated diction, the mood. That’s something I want to try.

Half-Draft of Something I Thought I Knew What I Wanted it to be Until I Started Writing It

As Beverly's daughter, apparently dissatisfied with the pace her mother was walking, a speed that, to Beverly, was perfectly fine thank you, drug her closer to the building, which seemed to be only a few months old (the only thing making it remotely aged-looking was the bird's nest in the middle of the “O” of “FACTORY” in the sign above the double doors), Beverly knew immediately that this place was not where she wanted her little Jessica to be, and her discomfort grew when the tiny, gentle hand of her daughter violently, but not forcibly, left her own, and opened one of the doors to the smell of seven thirteen year old girls’ perfume so strong that Beverly instinctively held her breath. Inside was a waiting room designed, not for conversation or comfort, but for constant observation: Pink and purple televisions were in every corner of the room looping the same four music videos (produced by this company, she assumed), each with their own teen pop singer, whose likeness were used in multiple life-size cutouts which were scattered like a mine-field and some of the girls, with their hair made-up, their faces made-up, and, she couldn’t help but notice, their skirts hemmed-up, were getting their pictures taken with them by their smiling parents, there were banners hanging from the ceiling congratulating someone named Harmony Graham, the chairs were set up in a circle so that everyone could see everybody else, brightly colored pamphlets were thrown on a round table in the center of the chairs…

            “Excuse me, Mrs…” said a young, handsome boy behind a counter who kept swishing his head to the side and back. Beverly was used to seeing young boys with longer hair do this to keep it out of their eyes, but this young man’s hair was short and cleanly cut and didn’t move.

            “Oh, right,” said Beverly, “my daughter, Jessica, has an audition…”

            The boy looked at a purple sheet of paper and swished his head to the left. “Jessica…Jessica… twelve, right?”

            “That’s it.”

            The boy gave another swish and said, “Please sit down. Someone will come get her shortly for her appointment.”

            Jessica was in a chair already, looking at the other girls when Beverly sat down and leaned toward her.

            “You okay?”

            “What?”

            “Are you nervous or anything?”

            “You shouldn’t ask stuff like that before stuff like this, Mom.”

            “Sorry.”

            Beverly picked up a pamphlet, filled with sharp images of cameras flashing, teenagers leaving limos onto red carpets, screaming crowds, sound studios, small text bites such as “120,000,000 views!!!” and “Become a Pop Legend!!!”, and it took five minutes before she found an article of any kind that might have told her more about the place she was in that wasn’t from Jessica’s own mouth, and found bits like “…have chosen Harmony Graham, an extremely beautiful, multi-talented 14 year old from Long Beach, California to be America's next Pop Star phenomenon!!” and “Harmony is chosen to participate in a challenge that will try and make her into the next Big Thing in only one short week,” and “…songs made specifically for her.” 

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