My name is not Robert Paulson. I am not a beautiful and unique snowflake. I gave up my name, I gave up the pursuit of beautiful and unique, because it didn't matter. None of it mattered. What matters - all that matters - is the name I was given, the identity that my deity tells me to have. The first rule of my existence is thou shalt do as your god tells you to do. The second rule of my existence is thou shalt be what your god tells you to be.
I too, realized at some point that everything seemed far away, and I was only "a copy of a copy of a copy" (21). I was trying to find an identity, and I was seeking exactly what the world told me I should be. And then I learned the secret - "if I don't fall all the way, I can't be saved... I can't just play it safe anymore" (70).
The first time I looked at someone and said "I want you to hit me as hard as you can" (46), I was greeted with disbelief and hesitation. Unlike Robert Paulson, I am not a man, and it just is not acceptable to hit a woman, but I needed this, and I wasn't going to stop until I got it. Much like the narrator with no name, the first couple of hits were weak, off target, but they opened the door to something more.
It took years of searching before I found my god, before I found this existence I have now, before I understood what it is to stop playing it safe and to chose how you will live. It is only by deciding to feel, by not taking sanctuary in IKEA, or staying "calm as Hindu cows" (26) that anyone is truly free to be alive. When you "come back to the pain" (75) instead of running from it, you realize that (finally!) "this means something" (77).
I spent my life in search of meaning, and when I finally found someone to whom I could say I want you to hit me as hard as you can, and they did, I also found the feeling of fight club - I found what it really means to be alive. There was no pulling punches, there was no but you're a girl. There was me, there was my god, there were his rules, and there were his hands and fists and feet. When I decided that this was what I wanted to embrace like nothing else mattered, I found life again. I had lost everything in one way or another, and so now I could have resurrection, but it had to be something I chose to give myself to fully.
You read Fight Club, and you know that you're never safe. You eat in a public restaurant, you can't control what is in the food. You drive, you can't control the other people on the road. You sleep, you can't control what is happening around you. "On a long enough time line, everyone's survival rate drops to zero" (176). So, instead, you take charge and decide to live life on your own terms. You decide what you will live for and what you risk dying for. Project Mayhem chose their god, and I have chosen mine. They followed their god's rules and I follow mine.
Until you have felt real pain, until you've been bleeding, until you have laid your life on a sacrificial altar knowing that it might truly be taken from you, you cannot fully appreciate what it is to be alive. I never knew what it felt like to be alive until the first time someone really hit me as hard as they could, and I've never stopped running back for more.
Everyone finds their own path, everyone has to choose their own gods. What I found was the path of Tyler Durden - the path of violence, self-destruction, and pain. Like my blog's namesake, I have embraced that destruction the way only a lemming can embrace their doom. It is through this path that I have found what it is to feel alive. I may not be a special and unique snowflake, and my name is not Robert Paulson. Hell, my name is not even what was given to me by my parents at my birth. I have chosen a different way. I have chosen to let someone else define me as Tyler defined his space monkeys. They found freedom and passion and purpose first in fight club and then in Project Mayhem. I, like them, have found freedom and passion and purpose in a higher power. Even if the people around me don't understand, I know the space monkeys always will, and when everything else fades away, when everything becomes nothing, there will always be "Yes, Sir" (158).
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
For fun...
I was asked to write a paper for my organizational communication class. We were supposed to do a site visit to the company of our choosing, observe the physical surroundings, the employees, and the customers and then write a paper analyzing the culture of the organization. I chose to write about Starbucks, and here is what I had to say:
*************************
A Sophisticated Organization
"He was not really a coffee drinker. So the siren mixed espresso with cocoa and steamed milk, then topped it with whipped cream. He liked it. End, chapter one. He began to enjoy the taste of coffee. So the siren chose a Central American blend, light and refreshing, no cream, just a touch of sugar. He liked it. End, chapter two. His taste was becoming sophisticated."
The opening segment of this four tile artistic panel hanging on the wall of a Brighton Beach Starbucks is inviting the customer to become more sophisticated too. By drinking Starbucks coffee, and letting the barista (the siren) suggest new and exciting things to you, your palate can become more experienced, and in turn, you yourself will become more experienced. From the moment you walk into Starbucks, you walk into a façade of sophistication. The décor is reminiscent of a library, a bookstore, or perhaps even a museum. The colors are neutral and warm, the furniture is toned down, and everything is neatly displayed with subtle signs. You have entered a quiet refuge from the busy city life outside these doors, and not only can you find refuge here, but you can be a higher class of person, if only while you are sitting within these walls and using these products.
The entire environment of Starbucks is designed to promote quiet, comfort, and thoughtfulness. The general clientele was white, middle aged or older, and very relaxed. The physical layout is painted in neutral tones – there is nothing too offensive to the eyes. The lighting is warm, indirect, and not too bright. There is enough light to allow reading, but not bright enough to be harsh. All of the light, like the environment inside, is artificial. The only windows are by the front door, and precious little of the seating is close enough to allow exposure to that light. The furniture is arranged to prevent large groups of disruptive people. The tables are small and only have two chairs at each one. There are single arm chairs for added comfort, and these are kept near where they sell newspapers and books full of mind puzzles. The furniture is therefore designed to encourage either coming in alone and reading quietly while you drink your coffee, or coming in with one other person for a quiet, more intimate conversation.
Even the art and music are designed to keep customers engaged and quietly thinking. The art on the walls, although very corporate, encourages study. Many of the paintings and murals have many small details and interplaying colors and patterns that take some time to unravel and determine exactly what you are looking at. One could easily get wrapped up in looking at the art for longer than they realize. Before you know it, your coffee is empty, and you might as well get another one before you leave. Much of the art have subtle coffee imagery in them – some with what look suspiciously like Starbucks cups, some with regular coffee mugs steaming, and still others with words that speak of coffee in tantalizing tones. The music is familiar to the ideal clientele. It is predominately on the softer side: The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, etc, and was largely feel good music or thought provoking music. In either case, you are likely to hear music that you can sing along to, that encourages you to stay longer and listen more.
Not only is the environment designed to lure people in with the promise of respite from the outside world, and a sense of civility, but it also provides the façade of elegance. Aside from the art on the walls, the rest of the décor is quite elegant. The furniture all matches, everything is made of nice wood, the signs and plaques are all framed in wood. The menu board looks like a fine wine list. The food display and the bottles on the shelves behind the bar look like a museum display. To further wrap customers and employees alike in the feeling of upper class status, English is not even spoken here. One cannot order a “large coffee” – one should request a “venti drip”. If you want something more than just a regular coffee, the language becomes even more complicated and flowery. One can be overheard ordering a “grande, soy, no whip, three pump vanilla latte” or a “venti, half-caf, extra shot, skim caramel macchiato”. Even the employees are called “baristas” and not just “the guy behind the counter”. This is a language unique to the Starbucks culture that reminds you of the different universe you are in.
The employees play a large part in the organizational culture. There is a beautiful machine at work in the store. One employee greets customers, takes their order, and calls in back to the rest of the “machine”. There is one piece of the machine to get regular coffee and food ready, one to create cappuccinos and lattes, and another to create the mixed or frozen beverages. Each of these people, or machine parts, is interchangeable, and each communicates clearly with the other people around them. If there are a lot of frozen drink orders, one of the other employees steps over to help. Management is sure to train each employee in every section of the bar so that they can be more efficient no matter what the situation.
All of their communication is done verbally, without the aid of technology. There was no way to distinguish who is in charge or who is making decisions. None of the employees were wearing name tags and all were in the same solid black uniform with a green Starbucks apron. The nice appearance and the neutral black uniform, as well as the anonymous service, adds to the feeling of this being an upscale experience. After all, there is no need to know the names of “the help” and they should try to stand out as little as possible while serving you. Each of the four employees there seemed to function as an equal. Each had a job to do and was actively doing it, each asked for help easily when it was necessary, and the others gladly jumped in when they could. The few times an employee did directly address another one, it was by first name only, again making it impossible to tell what sort of hierarchy may have been involved.
There was no place for the employees to sit behind the bar or to be easily out of view of customers, but there was a closed room to the back of the bar area where employees could go for their breaks, to count money, or for a momentary chance to sit down. The inability to sit adds to the feeling that the employees are always there ready to help and work for the customer. Each employee was not only respectful to the customers, but also used quiet tones of voice. At times, they were so quiet that even sitting just a few feet away, it was impossible to hear them, and when not actively talking to a customer, they kept their personal conversations to a whisper.
The employees were doing their part to add to the peaceful climate that had been so well established. This culture is so much a part of what the clientele expects that when two young mothers came in with their loud children, it disrupted the entire atmosphere. Not only was the child crying loudly, but the mother was yelling at him. Several people turned to look at the scene, many of the older people quickly left the building, and at least two couples came in, saw the noisy chaos, and walked out again without even taking the time to order coffee. When the organizational culture is created to give customers a sense of sophistication, relaxation, and class, the customer does not expect that to be interrupted by loud intrusions.
The baristas neither seemed extremely pleased or displeased with their job, but as an organization, Starbucks tries to encourage the day to day happiness of their staff. They have many framed employee recognition awards near the cash registers and coffee machines, not only to let the customer see that the staff has achieved excellence, but to remind the employees that they are appreciated. There was also a nicely framed sign naming the “barista of the month”, which further motivates the staff. When employees feel recognized for their work, it provides them with reasons to continue working hard.
While Starbucks is really little more than a coffee centered fast food restaurant, the culture they have created around sophistication, elitism, class, and relaxation has given them the illusion of being something more, of being special. By extension, if you are a customer there, you too, will be special. It’s like the signs they have created to advertise their coffee: “Extraordinary and Enticing”, “Interesting and Complex”, “Familiar and Friendly”, “Adventurous and Assertive”. It is hard to say if these signs are supposed to describe the flavor of the various coffee roasts or if they are intended to describe the person who drinks each one. Either way, there is a sense that by using our products, you can be these things. You, like the man who learned to like the taste of coffee with the help of the siren, will become more sophisticated.
*************************
A Sophisticated Organization
"He was not really a coffee drinker. So the siren mixed espresso with cocoa and steamed milk, then topped it with whipped cream. He liked it. End, chapter one. He began to enjoy the taste of coffee. So the siren chose a Central American blend, light and refreshing, no cream, just a touch of sugar. He liked it. End, chapter two. His taste was becoming sophisticated."
The opening segment of this four tile artistic panel hanging on the wall of a Brighton Beach Starbucks is inviting the customer to become more sophisticated too. By drinking Starbucks coffee, and letting the barista (the siren) suggest new and exciting things to you, your palate can become more experienced, and in turn, you yourself will become more experienced. From the moment you walk into Starbucks, you walk into a façade of sophistication. The décor is reminiscent of a library, a bookstore, or perhaps even a museum. The colors are neutral and warm, the furniture is toned down, and everything is neatly displayed with subtle signs. You have entered a quiet refuge from the busy city life outside these doors, and not only can you find refuge here, but you can be a higher class of person, if only while you are sitting within these walls and using these products.
The entire environment of Starbucks is designed to promote quiet, comfort, and thoughtfulness. The general clientele was white, middle aged or older, and very relaxed. The physical layout is painted in neutral tones – there is nothing too offensive to the eyes. The lighting is warm, indirect, and not too bright. There is enough light to allow reading, but not bright enough to be harsh. All of the light, like the environment inside, is artificial. The only windows are by the front door, and precious little of the seating is close enough to allow exposure to that light. The furniture is arranged to prevent large groups of disruptive people. The tables are small and only have two chairs at each one. There are single arm chairs for added comfort, and these are kept near where they sell newspapers and books full of mind puzzles. The furniture is therefore designed to encourage either coming in alone and reading quietly while you drink your coffee, or coming in with one other person for a quiet, more intimate conversation.
Even the art and music are designed to keep customers engaged and quietly thinking. The art on the walls, although very corporate, encourages study. Many of the paintings and murals have many small details and interplaying colors and patterns that take some time to unravel and determine exactly what you are looking at. One could easily get wrapped up in looking at the art for longer than they realize. Before you know it, your coffee is empty, and you might as well get another one before you leave. Much of the art have subtle coffee imagery in them – some with what look suspiciously like Starbucks cups, some with regular coffee mugs steaming, and still others with words that speak of coffee in tantalizing tones. The music is familiar to the ideal clientele. It is predominately on the softer side: The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, etc, and was largely feel good music or thought provoking music. In either case, you are likely to hear music that you can sing along to, that encourages you to stay longer and listen more.
Not only is the environment designed to lure people in with the promise of respite from the outside world, and a sense of civility, but it also provides the façade of elegance. Aside from the art on the walls, the rest of the décor is quite elegant. The furniture all matches, everything is made of nice wood, the signs and plaques are all framed in wood. The menu board looks like a fine wine list. The food display and the bottles on the shelves behind the bar look like a museum display. To further wrap customers and employees alike in the feeling of upper class status, English is not even spoken here. One cannot order a “large coffee” – one should request a “venti drip”. If you want something more than just a regular coffee, the language becomes even more complicated and flowery. One can be overheard ordering a “grande, soy, no whip, three pump vanilla latte” or a “venti, half-caf, extra shot, skim caramel macchiato”. Even the employees are called “baristas” and not just “the guy behind the counter”. This is a language unique to the Starbucks culture that reminds you of the different universe you are in.
The employees play a large part in the organizational culture. There is a beautiful machine at work in the store. One employee greets customers, takes their order, and calls in back to the rest of the “machine”. There is one piece of the machine to get regular coffee and food ready, one to create cappuccinos and lattes, and another to create the mixed or frozen beverages. Each of these people, or machine parts, is interchangeable, and each communicates clearly with the other people around them. If there are a lot of frozen drink orders, one of the other employees steps over to help. Management is sure to train each employee in every section of the bar so that they can be more efficient no matter what the situation.
All of their communication is done verbally, without the aid of technology. There was no way to distinguish who is in charge or who is making decisions. None of the employees were wearing name tags and all were in the same solid black uniform with a green Starbucks apron. The nice appearance and the neutral black uniform, as well as the anonymous service, adds to the feeling of this being an upscale experience. After all, there is no need to know the names of “the help” and they should try to stand out as little as possible while serving you. Each of the four employees there seemed to function as an equal. Each had a job to do and was actively doing it, each asked for help easily when it was necessary, and the others gladly jumped in when they could. The few times an employee did directly address another one, it was by first name only, again making it impossible to tell what sort of hierarchy may have been involved.
There was no place for the employees to sit behind the bar or to be easily out of view of customers, but there was a closed room to the back of the bar area where employees could go for their breaks, to count money, or for a momentary chance to sit down. The inability to sit adds to the feeling that the employees are always there ready to help and work for the customer. Each employee was not only respectful to the customers, but also used quiet tones of voice. At times, they were so quiet that even sitting just a few feet away, it was impossible to hear them, and when not actively talking to a customer, they kept their personal conversations to a whisper.
The employees were doing their part to add to the peaceful climate that had been so well established. This culture is so much a part of what the clientele expects that when two young mothers came in with their loud children, it disrupted the entire atmosphere. Not only was the child crying loudly, but the mother was yelling at him. Several people turned to look at the scene, many of the older people quickly left the building, and at least two couples came in, saw the noisy chaos, and walked out again without even taking the time to order coffee. When the organizational culture is created to give customers a sense of sophistication, relaxation, and class, the customer does not expect that to be interrupted by loud intrusions.
The baristas neither seemed extremely pleased or displeased with their job, but as an organization, Starbucks tries to encourage the day to day happiness of their staff. They have many framed employee recognition awards near the cash registers and coffee machines, not only to let the customer see that the staff has achieved excellence, but to remind the employees that they are appreciated. There was also a nicely framed sign naming the “barista of the month”, which further motivates the staff. When employees feel recognized for their work, it provides them with reasons to continue working hard.
While Starbucks is really little more than a coffee centered fast food restaurant, the culture they have created around sophistication, elitism, class, and relaxation has given them the illusion of being something more, of being special. By extension, if you are a customer there, you too, will be special. It’s like the signs they have created to advertise their coffee: “Extraordinary and Enticing”, “Interesting and Complex”, “Familiar and Friendly”, “Adventurous and Assertive”. It is hard to say if these signs are supposed to describe the flavor of the various coffee roasts or if they are intended to describe the person who drinks each one. Either way, there is a sense that by using our products, you can be these things. You, like the man who learned to like the taste of coffee with the help of the siren, will become more sophisticated.
Fight Club, Week One
Oh, sweet, sweet Fight Club how I love thee! Here is what we're talking about in week one:
1) In Ch. 5, the unnamed narrator explains "how I came to live with Tyler" (40). The explanation involves confiscated luggage and, with many a detour to dildos, the destruction of his home by a blast of unknown origin. He says, "Home was a condominium on the fifteenth floor of a high-rise, a sort of filing cabinet for widows and young professionals" (41).
He goes into great detail about the construction of the condo and its furnishings. The tone of this description and its content are very important. What is the description like? What does it contain? What is the significance of these details and the tone in which we are told about them? That is, what is the narrator's attitude toward them and why are we given these particular details?
Could we get a more cynical tone, please? The first thing to note about this apartment is how neatly separated it is from anyone or anything else. Sure, other people live there, but there is "a foot of concrete floor, ceiling, and wall between me and any adjacent stereo or turned-up television" (41). Everything about the interior is stale, fake, and made to model what the narrator believes is supposed to be the life and apartment of someone getting along well in the world.
IKEA has become the deity of the hegemony, and if he can simply fill his living space with enough of these idols, he too can be a part of the successful mainstream. And so, every last piece of furniture is what the furniture bible tells him he should want. As the people who look at porn figure that this is the sex they want, now that IKEA catalogs have replaced the porn (43), it is all too easy to see that these are the items you should want. And so, like a good little follower desperate for an identity, the narrator clings to the identity that the world has told him he should have. The more he could fill his space with the things from the catalog, the more he would know who he was, the happier he would be.
But yet, he, like his apartment was empty. He lived in "a house full of condiments and no real food" (45) and every piece of furniture he has is mass produced, just "a copy of a copy of a copy" (21). He realizes that he has become "a slave to [his] nesting instinct" (43) but yet, because the world says this is how to find fulfillment, he seeks it.
After his apartment blows up and all of his idols and gods have been destroyed, he prays to a new god for salvation - Tyler Durden. "Oh, Tyler, please rescue me... Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete" (46). The narrator has just taken the first step toward learning the lesson that Tyler and Fight Club will set out to teach him - "It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything" (70).
2) Among the many interesting points in Ch. 6 is this statement: "What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women" (50). How do you interpret this and why? What else does it seem to connect to or explain in these first few chapters of the novel?
"What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women" (50) and so these men must look for answers and look for role models to determine what they should become. The narrator only really had his father for six years, and then he went off to "set up a franchise" (50) elsewhere. After turning to his father in later years for advice and not getting anywhere, only to eventually be told to get married, the narrator muses: "I am a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need" (51).
Without male role models, the author never came into manhood. He didn't know what it was to be a man, and so Tyler comes along to show him - Fight Club comes along to show him. And while it is showing him, it starts showing these other boys what it is to be a man. They find life there, they find meaning there, they find their masculinity there in a way they have never found it before - not through the lens of what magazines or pop culture tell them it should be, but on their own terms.
"The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says" (50). And while the men of fight club aren't trying to chisel themselves out of allegiance to the hegemony, they still make drastic physical changes to their bodies: "You see a guy come to fight club for the first time, and his ass is a loaf of white bread. You see this same guy here six months later, and he looks carved out of wood... fight club isn't about looking good... when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved" (51).
The idea that "maybe we didn't need a father to complete ourselves" (54) comes out of fight club and it comes once they realize that "maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves" (52). When they stop looking to the outside world for the answers, when they stop laying down and just taking what the world gives them and crying over the lack of their fathers, they find that they "aren't alive anywhere like [they're] alive at fight club" (51).
And so, the narrator stops crying into the warm, twisted safety of Bob's "bitch tits", which have replaced his mother, he turns to himself and to Tyler to find what he was missing from his absent father and from the rest of the world. He finds manhood through fight club - through fighting his demons and becoming someone else for a while, because after all, "who guys are in fight club is not who they are in the real world" (49).
3) This is the place to raise other questions or make other comments about the first 125 pp. of this novel. What do you find curious? Inexplicable? Incredible? What have we not discussed elsewhere that you want to throw into the mix? If you want to be sure it gets covered, bring it on!
Just two quick things I want to bring up before I forget about them - both are regarding Palahniuk's writing style.
1) The narrator sucks us right into this. The reader is constantly addressed head on "You drill the holes wrong and the gun will blow off your hand" (11). "You wake up at Air Harbor International" (25). "You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life" (44). "You're in a rented house on Paper Street" (77). "What you have to know is that Marla is still alive" (108).
Anyone reading the book is there. You can't not be there. You can't escape it. The narrator is bringing you along, talking directly to you. And if you're a young man, perhaps one of the generation of men raised by women (50), you will find yourself in the pages of this book as you are watching your peers do the same thing. You are there with the narrator, and Tyler, and Bob... you have to be, don't you? After all, the narrator sees you - he is talking to you.
2) Throughout the entire novel, Palahniuk blurs the lines of time, space, memory, and reality in much the same way Junot Diaz talks about doing in the quote we responded to last week. While there is dialogue and there is usage of quotation marks throughout the book, there are a plethora of places that none appear. "I say, Niagara Falls. The Nile River..." (80). Sure, he says the words "I say" so we know he's talking, but there are not quotes. Perhaps this is all a dream, perhaps it is memory. Perhaps it is just "Tyler's words coming out of my mouth" (98) and so it is unclear if quotation marks should be there. Perhaps when everything is so far away and just a copy of something else, it is impossible to tell who is really saying what and when.
Just a neat parallel between the stylizing of Palahniuk and Diaz that grabbed me this time around.
1) In Ch. 5, the unnamed narrator explains "how I came to live with Tyler" (40). The explanation involves confiscated luggage and, with many a detour to dildos, the destruction of his home by a blast of unknown origin. He says, "Home was a condominium on the fifteenth floor of a high-rise, a sort of filing cabinet for widows and young professionals" (41).
He goes into great detail about the construction of the condo and its furnishings. The tone of this description and its content are very important. What is the description like? What does it contain? What is the significance of these details and the tone in which we are told about them? That is, what is the narrator's attitude toward them and why are we given these particular details?
Could we get a more cynical tone, please? The first thing to note about this apartment is how neatly separated it is from anyone or anything else. Sure, other people live there, but there is "a foot of concrete floor, ceiling, and wall between me and any adjacent stereo or turned-up television" (41). Everything about the interior is stale, fake, and made to model what the narrator believes is supposed to be the life and apartment of someone getting along well in the world.
IKEA has become the deity of the hegemony, and if he can simply fill his living space with enough of these idols, he too can be a part of the successful mainstream. And so, every last piece of furniture is what the furniture bible tells him he should want. As the people who look at porn figure that this is the sex they want, now that IKEA catalogs have replaced the porn (43), it is all too easy to see that these are the items you should want. And so, like a good little follower desperate for an identity, the narrator clings to the identity that the world has told him he should have. The more he could fill his space with the things from the catalog, the more he would know who he was, the happier he would be.
But yet, he, like his apartment was empty. He lived in "a house full of condiments and no real food" (45) and every piece of furniture he has is mass produced, just "a copy of a copy of a copy" (21). He realizes that he has become "a slave to [his] nesting instinct" (43) but yet, because the world says this is how to find fulfillment, he seeks it.
After his apartment blows up and all of his idols and gods have been destroyed, he prays to a new god for salvation - Tyler Durden. "Oh, Tyler, please rescue me... Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete" (46). The narrator has just taken the first step toward learning the lesson that Tyler and Fight Club will set out to teach him - "It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything" (70).
2) Among the many interesting points in Ch. 6 is this statement: "What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women" (50). How do you interpret this and why? What else does it seem to connect to or explain in these first few chapters of the novel?
"What you see at fight club is a generation of men raised by women" (50) and so these men must look for answers and look for role models to determine what they should become. The narrator only really had his father for six years, and then he went off to "set up a franchise" (50) elsewhere. After turning to his father in later years for advice and not getting anywhere, only to eventually be told to get married, the narrator muses: "I am a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need" (51).
Without male role models, the author never came into manhood. He didn't know what it was to be a man, and so Tyler comes along to show him - Fight Club comes along to show him. And while it is showing him, it starts showing these other boys what it is to be a man. They find life there, they find meaning there, they find their masculinity there in a way they have never found it before - not through the lens of what magazines or pop culture tell them it should be, but on their own terms.
"The gyms you go to are crowded with guys trying to look like men, as if being a man means looking the way a sculptor or an art director says" (50). And while the men of fight club aren't trying to chisel themselves out of allegiance to the hegemony, they still make drastic physical changes to their bodies: "You see a guy come to fight club for the first time, and his ass is a loaf of white bread. You see this same guy here six months later, and he looks carved out of wood... fight club isn't about looking good... when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved" (51).
The idea that "maybe we didn't need a father to complete ourselves" (54) comes out of fight club and it comes once they realize that "maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves" (52). When they stop looking to the outside world for the answers, when they stop laying down and just taking what the world gives them and crying over the lack of their fathers, they find that they "aren't alive anywhere like [they're] alive at fight club" (51).
And so, the narrator stops crying into the warm, twisted safety of Bob's "bitch tits", which have replaced his mother, he turns to himself and to Tyler to find what he was missing from his absent father and from the rest of the world. He finds manhood through fight club - through fighting his demons and becoming someone else for a while, because after all, "who guys are in fight club is not who they are in the real world" (49).
3) This is the place to raise other questions or make other comments about the first 125 pp. of this novel. What do you find curious? Inexplicable? Incredible? What have we not discussed elsewhere that you want to throw into the mix? If you want to be sure it gets covered, bring it on!
Just two quick things I want to bring up before I forget about them - both are regarding Palahniuk's writing style.
1) The narrator sucks us right into this. The reader is constantly addressed head on "You drill the holes wrong and the gun will blow off your hand" (11). "You wake up at Air Harbor International" (25). "You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life" (44). "You're in a rented house on Paper Street" (77). "What you have to know is that Marla is still alive" (108).
Anyone reading the book is there. You can't not be there. You can't escape it. The narrator is bringing you along, talking directly to you. And if you're a young man, perhaps one of the generation of men raised by women (50), you will find yourself in the pages of this book as you are watching your peers do the same thing. You are there with the narrator, and Tyler, and Bob... you have to be, don't you? After all, the narrator sees you - he is talking to you.
2) Throughout the entire novel, Palahniuk blurs the lines of time, space, memory, and reality in much the same way Junot Diaz talks about doing in the quote we responded to last week. While there is dialogue and there is usage of quotation marks throughout the book, there are a plethora of places that none appear. "I say, Niagara Falls. The Nile River..." (80). Sure, he says the words "I say" so we know he's talking, but there are not quotes. Perhaps this is all a dream, perhaps it is memory. Perhaps it is just "Tyler's words coming out of my mouth" (98) and so it is unclear if quotation marks should be there. Perhaps when everything is so far away and just a copy of something else, it is impossible to tell who is really saying what and when.
Just a neat parallel between the stylizing of Palahniuk and Diaz that grabbed me this time around.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Promiscuity Breeds Life and Healthy Change
Leslie Marmon Silko does something wonderful in her novel Ceremony. It is something that precious few authors are willing to do. She explores the ideas of promiscuity and prostitution in more than one of her characters without condemnation. Certainly Silko discusses the views of other people, and the internal struggle with shame around the subject, but in the end, it is the women who are seen as promiscuous that create life which ultimately changes the outcome of the novel.
Tayo's mother is never physically present in the book, but she is discussed multiple times. We know that she ran off many times to be with white men, and we know the ultimately, she gave birth to a son with an absent father who happened to be white. He has memories of being left to sleep alone in the cold and dark while his mother is with different men. She would toss money at him to go get food, or would ask one of the other women nearby to look after him, but she was busy living her life and earning her money.
His mother felt ashamed, not of herself, but of her people and of the men she slept with. "After she had been with them, she could feel the truth in their fists and in their greedy feeble love-making" (63) and she knew that these men had disdain for her people. She hated herself for still having some attachment to her family and because she knew she was causing them pain. "He was four years old the night his mother left him there. He didn't remember much: only that she had come after dark and wrapped him in a man's coat" (60).
From her affairs with these men, Tayo was born. Despite the disgust his family feels about his mother's way of life, it is Tayo who came from the allegedly disgraceful actions. Tayo goes on to embrace the history of his people more than even his family. He goes on to get back his uncle's cattle, to restore some of the lost water, and to learn how to carry on the traditions the Indians value. If his mother had simply led the life they wanted for her, settling down with another Indian man and having children, there is no way to know if her children would have been born with this same desire to change the world for the better.
The second case we can look at is that of the Night Swan. "...no one else would live up there because the juke box played loud and drunks yelled and stomped up and down the long porch downstairs. Of course only that kind of woman, used to that kind of life, would tolerate such things" (81). The Night Swan had been a cantina dancer, and everyone believed her to simply be a whore. It is quite possible that she does, in fact, prostitute herself, and even if this is not the case, it is quickly evident that she is more sexually free than the reservation women.
The people in town judge her harshly. Referring to her as "that kind of woman" and jealously snickering that "she's so old and wrinkled... all worn out. Only some Indian would want her anyway" but yet, they were constantly watching to see if it may be their husband or son who was seen leaving the apartment (81). Josiah's family condemns him for having a long standing affair with her and Auntie worries greatly about what everyone else on the reservation will think if they find out.
Despite these reactions, even the Earth favors the Night Swan. "The big tree was dying. The thick limbs at its center were brittle and white. One of the remaining live limbs brushed against the porch railing at the top of the stairs" (95). Even in a dying town, there is still life where the Night Swan resides. She talks too about the life that she has produced: "I'm a grandmother now. My daughter in Los Angeles has two beautiful little daughters. And when I dance now, I dance for them" (80). She has not only produced life, but living things are attracted to her.
It is also because of the Night Swan that Josiah gets his cattle. These cattle represent Tayo's quest for renewed life and peace. His encounter with the Night Swan is one of the things that helps him come back from the edge of death. In many ways, she and her cattle are the thing that saves not only Tayo, but the entire reservation.
So, while in the eyes of many other characters in the book, promiscuity and prostitution is frowned upon and should bring shame to the women practicing it, these women are the very ones who brought about the most positive growth in the novel. Silko's portrayal of these women and their accomplishments shows power in sexual freedom and choice and proves one of the main points of the book - one that Betonie himself states explicitly: "Nothing is that simple" (118).
Tayo's mother is never physically present in the book, but she is discussed multiple times. We know that she ran off many times to be with white men, and we know the ultimately, she gave birth to a son with an absent father who happened to be white. He has memories of being left to sleep alone in the cold and dark while his mother is with different men. She would toss money at him to go get food, or would ask one of the other women nearby to look after him, but she was busy living her life and earning her money.
His mother felt ashamed, not of herself, but of her people and of the men she slept with. "After she had been with them, she could feel the truth in their fists and in their greedy feeble love-making" (63) and she knew that these men had disdain for her people. She hated herself for still having some attachment to her family and because she knew she was causing them pain. "He was four years old the night his mother left him there. He didn't remember much: only that she had come after dark and wrapped him in a man's coat" (60).
From her affairs with these men, Tayo was born. Despite the disgust his family feels about his mother's way of life, it is Tayo who came from the allegedly disgraceful actions. Tayo goes on to embrace the history of his people more than even his family. He goes on to get back his uncle's cattle, to restore some of the lost water, and to learn how to carry on the traditions the Indians value. If his mother had simply led the life they wanted for her, settling down with another Indian man and having children, there is no way to know if her children would have been born with this same desire to change the world for the better.
The second case we can look at is that of the Night Swan. "...no one else would live up there because the juke box played loud and drunks yelled and stomped up and down the long porch downstairs. Of course only that kind of woman, used to that kind of life, would tolerate such things" (81). The Night Swan had been a cantina dancer, and everyone believed her to simply be a whore. It is quite possible that she does, in fact, prostitute herself, and even if this is not the case, it is quickly evident that she is more sexually free than the reservation women.
The people in town judge her harshly. Referring to her as "that kind of woman" and jealously snickering that "she's so old and wrinkled... all worn out. Only some Indian would want her anyway" but yet, they were constantly watching to see if it may be their husband or son who was seen leaving the apartment (81). Josiah's family condemns him for having a long standing affair with her and Auntie worries greatly about what everyone else on the reservation will think if they find out.
Despite these reactions, even the Earth favors the Night Swan. "The big tree was dying. The thick limbs at its center were brittle and white. One of the remaining live limbs brushed against the porch railing at the top of the stairs" (95). Even in a dying town, there is still life where the Night Swan resides. She talks too about the life that she has produced: "I'm a grandmother now. My daughter in Los Angeles has two beautiful little daughters. And when I dance now, I dance for them" (80). She has not only produced life, but living things are attracted to her.
It is also because of the Night Swan that Josiah gets his cattle. These cattle represent Tayo's quest for renewed life and peace. His encounter with the Night Swan is one of the things that helps him come back from the edge of death. In many ways, she and her cattle are the thing that saves not only Tayo, but the entire reservation.
So, while in the eyes of many other characters in the book, promiscuity and prostitution is frowned upon and should bring shame to the women practicing it, these women are the very ones who brought about the most positive growth in the novel. Silko's portrayal of these women and their accomplishments shows power in sexual freedom and choice and proves one of the main points of the book - one that Betonie himself states explicitly: "Nothing is that simple" (118).
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