The Ticket that Exploded: Blog 2

The final chapter of The Ticket That Exploded did help tie a few things together, but for the most part left me just as angry as the rest of the novel. It seems as though this novel was not too different than the others and proved just how easy it is to manipulate an audience. One line that caught my attention was “after analyzing recorded conversations you will learn to steer a conversation where you want it to go.” This made me wonder where the author wanted this novel to go. In a response to my last blog, Prichard wrote “It is odd that as readers we assume this voice is a proxy of the author. What if like many writers of satires he approaches the writing from the view of the culture itself. Doesn't culture view homosexuality and homosexuals in ways that are not too far off from this book…” Perhaps that is the answer to the question. Perhaps by appalling the audience, Burroughs was also hoping to manipulate the audience into seeing what we are blind to. As we discussed in class, people go to movies to be manipulated. A romantic comedy will meet our desires of what we consider true love. Manipulating someone into believing a fantasy is easy, yet in order to be manipulated into realizing the truth, we need something a little more shocking. I agree with Prichard that culture views homosexuality in a way that is not too far off from this book. Although we are improving generation by generation, many are still caught off guard by homosexuality. Even someone who claims to be completely open about it might get uncomfortable when a sexual gesture is actually acted upon.
Both of my best friends are homosexual, yet I was raised to believe that it was unnatural and abnormal. Both of my parents hold strong beliefs that homosexuality is a mental problem. I am forced to battle between supporting my best friends and respecting the beliefs of my elders. Homosexuality has become an unspoken issue in my household, because agreeing to disagree is easier than debating my parent’s unchangeable views. However, I also know many other homosexuals and can admit that the gay community is much different than the heterosexual. The idea of, “what does sex look like outside of love and emotion,” was brought up in class. In the case of every homosexual I know, sex exists first outside of love and emotion. At the same time, I was still offended by this novel even though I do accept that many people hold different morals. There needs to be a line, where homosexuals respect the beliefs of the elders, and the elderly are more accepting of a more open generation. It’s not that homosexuality just originated, yet it is just not beginning to be accepted.
On Plurk, the idea was raised that this novel would have had an entirely different response if it was about all women instead of men. Personally, homosexuality used to be an issue that I was very uncomfortable with it because it was something that I was sheltered from. Even though I am accepting of it now, I still find lesbians more unnatural than gay men. Attraction to your same gender is not the issue that I have trouble finding natural, it is the issue of homosexual sex. If lesbians have to bring in inanimate objects in order to have sex, this seems much more unnatural than the processes of gay men. That said, for me this novel would be just as, if not more, offensive if it was purely about women. Yet for some reason, society does not think into natural and unnatural, they are turned on by the idea of two women. With that said, even if I would be disgusted by the other version of this book, I would have loved to see the author’s take on it.
The novel ended with the line, “the more you run the tapes through and cut them the less power they will have.” This made me think about how the more you read the book the more normal and less offensive the material comes. The more immune you become to the disgust you once had. I know that in time this is exactly what is going to happen with homosexuality and the more normal it will become.

The Ticket that Exploded: Blog 1

After reading the first chapter of this novel, I was so disturbed and confused that I was about ready to cry. Instead I put the book down and gave up for the night. I blame my 7 years of Catholic school for my disgust towards this novel. There were run on sentences left and right, as well as a complete disregard for a more modest view of sex. I was constantly re-reading lines and if I were to complete the entire novel and comprehend it, I would need a lot more time. Luckily, I saw in class today that I was not the only person who was noticing missing pieces. In fact, one student admitted to opening up to random pages and reading those, because the book did not follow a timeline anyways. At least it was comforting to know that everyone was pretty confused.
One of the first things that really set me off about this novel was being introduced to the Garden of Delights. It was introduced by, “…his plan called for Cinerama film sequences featuring the Garden of Delights shows all kinds of masturbation and self- abuse young boys need it special it’s all electric and very technical you sit down anywhere some sex wheel sidles up your ass or clamps onto your spine…” Not only is it extremely disturbing the thought that young boys have to experience this, I was angered by the fact that this Garden was referred to as G.O.D. for short. I am not a strict Catholic and I do not follow every single moral that Catholicism encourages, however I do respect them. I by no means expect anyone to save sex for marriage, but I do think that it should be treated a little more seriously than “I want you to shit and piss all over yourself when you see the gallows.”
I understand that there are many ways of viewing sex. A few months ago I was having a conversation with a close friend where I explained that I didn’t understand the difference between having sex and making love. That person responded with, “Well maybe you have never had sex with someone that you are in love with.” He was right. There is a huge separation between the meaning behind sex and the meaning behind making love. Sometimes sex can treated as a casual fulfillment of desires. Other times it can be viewed as making love, which includes devotion, and emotion. However, the sex described in this novel seemed more along the lines of rape and fetish. It made me sick to my stomach.
The author must have motivation behind his madness. For me, he succeeded in provoking anger. At the same time, he forced me to evaluate my morals and religious views, and compare them to that of the books. A thought raised in class was, why can sex only exist within a certain frame? This is where I see a clear difference in the term “sex” versus the term “making love.” The sex in this novel did not occur due to love. On the contrary, this novel includes a lot of hatred and evil. I still have more connecting to do with this book. Right now I am still pretty confused by the author’s motives behind this type of book and am still working on understanding the text as a whole.

Blog 2: The Invention of Morel

Well, that was unexpected. It finally occurred to me at page 44 that I could have been terribly wrong with both of my theories. On pages 44 the narrator refers to new people as “new ghosts,” which made me believe there is the possibility that he is the only living one. However, even with this new thought I still never expected how this was about to unfold. I can honestly say I was glued to the last half of this novel.
The narrator’s “love” for Faustine is the first thing worth discussing. First of all, I would hardly consider it love, but instead an intense lust. What could he love her for? He has never spoken to her, only observed and admired. Although he is willing to risk his life (in his mind) for her, this is not for love. It could be an obsession formed out of the insanity that this island is creating. On page 45 he states, “As I looked at her I reflected that I was risking everything... for that ample body, those long, slender legs, that ridiculous sensuality.” For someone who spoke so poetically about love in the first half, he was creeping me out in the second half of this novel with his fixation on Faustine. For example, the narrator was to the point of thinking about either abducting her or risking his safety for her. Neither of those portrays true romance in my eyes.
I was also very interested in the narrator’s theories for what is happening to himself. At this point in the book I start to see more sanity in him than I was imagining this entire time. The novel set it up to look as though he was going crazy, and I fell right into the trap. The narrator had five theories for what could happen to him. I did think it was humorous that during the first half of the novel I myself set up three theories for what was happening to him. His first theory was that he was imagining the people, second was that he was invisible, third was that the beings were from another planet, fourth was that he was in an insane asylum, and fifth was that the intruders were a group of dead friends and he is the traveler. By the fifth theory I was laughing in my head and making jokes that this entire novel was going to end with him simply having the sixth sense and being able to see dead people. I suppose that joke came back to bite me too.
The point where the narrator understood that he must be dead and that the other beings are not viewing him, made me believe that he wasn’t the one with the problem. He understood the reality of the situation too well to be the insane one. I almost went along with his hypothesis that he was in hell, however he had previously stated how hot the weather was with two suns and hell is actually freezing. At this point I thought again that perhaps he was in purgatory. Then came his statement on page 58: “Now it seems that the real situation is not the one I described on the foregoing pages; the situation I am living is not what I think it is.” I don’t think the outcome of this novel would be what anyone would have guessed. In fact, I am not sure how much I liked it.
I like the overall idea of having a pleasant eternity. Morel invented a machine which will reproduce, record, and project a point in your life, in order to ensure a pleasant eternity. Therefore, Morel set up this week with friends so that they would be at their happiest for eternity. This entire time the narrator had been watching a recording. It is said that these images have souls. As everything oddly fell together I began thinking first about which day I would want to relive for my own pleasant eternity and secondly about how I would have rather had the novel end. At the point where the narrator said, “When minds of greater refinement that Morel’s begin to work on the invention, man will selected a lonely, pleasant place, will go there with the persons he loves most, and will endure in an intimate paradise,” I was thinking that I much rather would have read that book!
Overall, the turn of events in the last half of this novel definitely took me for a ride. It seemed as though the book switched from the narrator being the crazy one, to perhaps being the only sane one. At the same time, living on an island where you are viewing a projection of life instead of actually life, is bound to make anyone go a little crazy.
The end of the novel had a Romeo and Juliet feel for me, but it was hard for me to find it romantic. Instead I found it mostly eerie. I was surprised that he finally got what he wanted: eternity with Faustine. The novel ends with him adding himself into the recorded week. As he is experiencing the transition, the death, he states, “My soul has not yet passed to the image; if it had, I would have died, I (perhaps) would no longer see Faustine, and would be with her in a vision that no one can ever destroy.” I guess it is true what they say, love is blind!

N + 7

Original Lyrics:
"Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today..."

N + 7 Version:
"Imagine there's no heckle
Jab easy if yourself try
No helmet below us
Above us only skyline
Imagine all the pepsin
Living for today..."

Blog 1: The Invention of Morel

On the first day of class I was sitting in my seat, dreading what I was about to have to endure for an entire quarter. After viewing the syllabus I had no idea how I would survive. Not only did I feel as though the plurk and blog aspects of this course would go right over my head, I also feared that this would be another English class filled with novels that I would not be able to follow or that I would have to fight with to stay awake. It’s not that I don’t enjoy reading, but this was my first college English course that was not purely writing. I’ve been able to only read for pleasure since high school, so needless to say I did not expect much when opening up The Invention of Morel.
Once I got my blog set up, my confidence level for the course rose dramatically. Once I emailed the professor and he told me to breathe, I really felt a lot better. After reading the first half of The Invention of Morel, I was actually excited. Surprisingly, the novel was keeping me at the edge of my seat. I was first drawn in my a few quotes from just the introduction and prologue. Throughout the entire novel there are very thought provoking points. Besides this, the novel kept me interested with the mystery, confusion, and hope. Now that I feel 100 times more ready for this course, I just with Plurk.com would load on my lap top…
I will begin with what drew me into this novel. Page viii states, “The body is imaginary, and we bow to the tyranny of a phantom. Love is a privilege perception, the most total and lucid not only of the unreality of the world but of our own unreality: not only do we traverse a realm of shadows; but ourselves are shadows.” What a better way of putting saying that one quote “it is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.” The novels way makes you understand why. Love really is a privilege and something that anyone should be lucky to experience. Anyone who has loved and lost, which I believe I have, can admit how much of a privilege love is. Love makes you feel as though the world is at your feet and everything makes sense. The introduction further explained that the author likes to “make both the protagonist and reader painfully aware of solitude, and of the pathetic, tragic, and yet comic ways in which lovers lose one another, and the impossibility of being the heroic master of one’s destiny.” At this point I was hooked. It seems as though every day I think about how beautiful love can be, how tragic love can be, how pathetic people in love can act, and how funny it all really is. I knew that not only I was about to gain a lot of knowledge about love, but that I was about to gain a lot of knowledge about the beauty of solitude. I could go on for pages about just what I have learned from the first 40 some pages of this book, but maybe I should get more into that in my next blog. For now I should probably get more into the characters.
At this point in time I have three theories for the narrator. My first theory is that he is completely insane; however this is only plausible if he is imagining or hallucinating every person he encounters. If the people are actually there, then my theory is that in fact he has been dead for a few years and still convinced that he is alive and hiding. I think that there is a great possibility that he killed himself years ago. My only other theory could be that he is in some sort of afterlife, most likely hell or purgatory. I’m pretty sure my second theory is the one that will play out, however I really hope that none of my theories are correct and I will be completely shocked at the end and feel like an idiot.
I am also very curious as to what the narrator did to have the police chasing after him. On page 34 he states, “I am in a bad state of mind. It seems that for a long time I have known that everything I do is wrong, and yet I have kept the same way, stupidly, obstinately. I might have acted this way in a dream, or if I were insane.” I suppose that could add a fourth theory that he is dreaming, but that seems too easy too. What comes next in the paragraph is what helped me form theory two. He says, “…I had this dream, like a symbolic and premature commentary on my life: as I was playing a game of croquet, I learned that my part in the game was killing a man. Then suddenly, I knew I was that man.” At this point, I began to wonder if in his head the police are chasing after him for killing a man; therefore he is in hiding on this island. In reality, the man he killed is himself, and he is actually living death. It also seems impossible that this man is still alive.
When I first was reading this novel I was convinced that he was simply insane. There are dozens of examples of where he could be insane. From him exploring this museum which seems to be made up in his head, to him hearing footsteps or voices, to him planting a garden that is sure to blow away or get taken by the ocean, to him believing that this woman is just messing with him when clearly she must not see him. It wasn’t until the woman was brought into the novel that I was convinced there is no way he is alive. When he began suggesting what he could write in his gardgen, I got another feeling that he was dead. He was debating between, “You have kept a dead man on this island from sleeping,” “I am no longer dead: I am in love” and “You have awakened me from a living death on this island.” Perhaps this man is such a romantic that he is hoping love will bring him alive again. In that case, maybe we can combine my first and second theories, in that he is insane and dead. I can’t wait to see how this plays out!

My Pataphor

After still having trouble with Plurk.com loading on my computer.... Here is my pataphor!

"Janson and Nicole's friendship is a constant upward or downward spiral. Snakes slither through the gossip and mind games. Finally, Janson and Nicole embrace and together climb up the ladder."