Signifying Nothing

Flauber is extremely descriptive. Like I mentioned in my last post, he describes everything in a situation. What does it all mean though? Chapter 2 of A Simple Soul, The Heroine is really a bunch of stories. They don't have any real meaning behind them. They do, however, help in making the image of Felicite. The way she acts in these situations is key to our understanding of her, which after all is what the book is about.

The Maid

This first chapter of Flauber's A Simple Soul is extremely descriptive. He describes every inch and cranny of the house, producing a very vivid picture. Also, he describes the maid Felicite just as vividly. After I read this first chapter I started thinking about the name. Felicite. Although I don't know French, I can kind of infer that it has something to do with hapiness. Felicidad. The maid, however, doesn't really seem happy. She gets paid very badly and has a loaf of bread that lasts her three weeks. Although he doesn't mention whether or not shes happy, her situation in life isn't one of joy. Specially not enough to call the main character Felicite.
What is he trying to do then?

The Train

Again, another kind of awkward situation in Carver's short stories. This time, in the short story The Train, it is a woman, Miss Dent, witnessing a discussion between a man and a woman. She has no idea what they are talking about and can only deduce so much from what they're saying. Meanwhile, however, the man and woman have no idea that Miss Dent has a gun in her handbag. Although it is not funny, I find the entire situation kind of ironic.

Cathedral

The short story Cathedral, made me think a lot about what it means to be blind. For a while I thought that they just had pictures in their mind all day about stuff. I can see with this story that it isn't that case. Because they have never seen a cathedral, a blind person won't have the image in its head. Its like that with everything in the world: colors, people, animals, landscapes. What do their dreams look like? Their conception of the world is very different than ours.

Vitamins

Carver's short story Vitamins is a sad truth. It depicts very sad characters. First, Patti, who cannot find a job and then finds a bad one selling vitamins. Next, Donna, who isn't making money and almost takes up Nelson's deal just for a couple hundred bucks. Then Sheila, finding love and getting rejected. Not to mention she doesn't make a lot of money either and has to move. The main character is also a sad one. He goes to the same bar every night and has the same thing. The bar is like the place he runs away from life in. He's bored. That's why he almost has the affair with Donna.
I'm starting to notice a pattern in Carver's stories. He presents a lot of sucky situations in life but situations that are very real. No one suffers any horrible death or anything, but the relationships between the characters, their jobs, everything seems to reflect misery. Life sucks.

The Compartment

You really get to know the characters in these stories. Although they are short, a lot of the details Carver puts in helps you to quickly get to know the characters. Myers, for instance, the main character in this short story, is extremely troubled. He can't sleep. He doesn't even want to see his own son. This short story also talks about all the unexpected things that could happen. First he gets his watch stolen, then he ends up on a wrong cart and his suitcase is gone along with his coat and what he left in the other cart.

Preservation

This short story is a little different from the last one. This one, unlike the past one, uses quotation marks when the people speak to each other. Carver still uses short choppy sentences, and I'm beginning to realize that that is his style. That's how he writes. He writes kind of like a list: "The pan was starting to smoke. She poured in more oil and turned on the fan. She hadn't been to an auction in twenty years, and now she was getting ready to go to one tonight. But first she had to fry these pork chops." (Carver 45) It's written in kind of an order, describing step by step what is hapenning at the moment.

Chef's House

Carver uses some weird tactics in this short story. To begin with, he doesn't use quotations when people are talking. I don't know why he would do this. It doesn't even give a different tone, and I don't see what difference it would make. I also notice how short and choppy his sentences are. Although short, they are descriptive. There's a lot of imagery even though the sentences are very short.

An Awkward Dinner

I found the short story Feathers really funny. The author really does a good job of pointing out the awkward moments. He really captures the situation perfectly. Jack and Fran go in there not knowing what to expect. As soon as they pull in a peacock falls on their car. From there the entire night is pretty funny. The teeth, the milk with dinner, the ugly baby.
Although I didn't like Fran as a character, I think Carver does a great job of writing her. The way she looks at things, what she says. The best is by far when she looks at the baby and says: "Ah!" That was hilarious.
The story is pretty sad though. The ending is very sad. It talks about how hard it is to be married and how hard it is to make friends. Jack's connection with Bud, although one of friendship, isn't a real connection. Their conversations are pure small talk and they never really act as though they are that good of friends.
What I captured most from this story is that its real. All the characters are very real and the way they live is real as well. Their interactions are real. Carver is trying to portray this type of situation as he sees it. In a way this is kind of like Seinfeld. The story really isn't about anything, just a random dinner. Its realness its what makes it funny. You can imagine the whole thing, you can see it happening to you some day.

Dream, Death, And The Self

This TLS book review of J.J Valberg's Dream, Death, And The Self is like no other book review I've ever read. It is more of a summary than a book review, really. Or maybe I'm just used to really crappy book reviews.
The first four paragraphs made me want to go and buy the book immediately. J.J Valberg's thoughts about death and dreaming are thoughts that I've always had, and in fact, death is my biggest fear precisely because I find it so incomprehensible.
Later on, though, the book becomes less and less appealing. Barry Stroud, the author of the book review, says that Valberg is very repetitive and finds that the book could be half as short and still say the same things. He also begins to use some of Valberg's terminology, such as "horizon" and "conception of the self." These seemed really vague and made me not want to read the book as much as before.
Overall, though, I think this is really cool. You get to see new ideas and thoughts without really reading the book. If you do want to read the book, though, the book review then tells you whether it is any good or not. I think that is the purpose of the TLS book review. Get the ideas across, and then say whether the actual expressing of the ideas was any good. A book is good not because of its good ideas, but because of how these ideas are expressed.

Prisoner's Dillemma

In chapter 12 of The Selfish Gene, Dawkins introduces the game Prisoner's Dilemma. These are the rules of the game: There are two players. Each has two cards, one that says COOPERATE and one that says DEFECT. A round of a game consists of each player putting down one of their cards face down without knowing what the other player is going to put. When both players have put their card down, the banker flips them both. There are only 4 possible outcomes since each player only has two cards. Outcome 1: We both play COOPERATE. The banker pays each of us $3oo. This is called the Reward for mutual cooperation. Outcome 2: We both play DEFECT. The banker fines each of us $10. This is called the Punishment for mutual deflection. Outcome 3: You play COOPERATE, and I play DEFECT. Because I have defected, the banker pays me $500, also called the Temptation to defect. Because you have cooperated, the banker fines you $100, also called the Sucker's fee. Outcome 4: This is just the opposite of outcome 3. You play DEFECT and I play COOPERATE.
After explaining the game, Dawkins goes on to talk about a certain simulated tournament where different strategies played against eachother and against itself. The winner was a strategy called Tit for Tat which does what the opponnent did on the last turn. Its first move, however, is always COOPERATE. When I read this, I started thinking that this really isn't the best strategy. To prove my point I went to Google and looked for a Prisoner's Dilemma game online. I played the computer by always defecting, and since the computer was a "nice" strategy, meaning it started off cooperating, I immediately had an advantage. It turned out that the computer was programmed with the Tit for Tat strategy so after I had the advantage it just went on to mirror everything I did and I won by a 5 point margin. (Instead of $300, you get 3 points. Instead of $500, you get 5 points. Instead of a $100 Sucker's fee, you get 0 points. Instead of a mutual deflection fee of $10, you get 1 point.) What I realized later as I read on, was that it didn't matter whether you win or lose, but that you have a high point total. Sure, with my Always Deflect strategy I could never lose, but other strategies might fare better in point total if they didn't have so many DEFLECT run ins where each gets only 1 point. Certainly if in real life these points mean offspring to animals, a nice strategy must be the one that wins out.