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Showing posts from March, 2022

Amulet, Roberto Bolaño

      One of the wonderful things I have realized throughout this course is that, despite how I have been often made to feel throughout other literature classes, it is not always necessary to pick out every detail and hidden theme from a book. I am all for analyzing stuff but I've noticed while reading and writing these blogs that often it really isn't necessary.  Roberto Bolaño's Amulet  was another great example of this for me. Last week I read The Trenchcoat  and learned about an awful situation that I had not known anything about previously. This week I also found myself learning something new and once again questioning why the American school system taught me literally nothing about other countries' history. I am sure I could have found some underlying things throughout this novel but just reading it and understanding the situation was enough.      Amulet  was a novel narrated by Auxilio who hides in a bathroom stall as UNAM is...

The Trenchcoat, Manea

            I am very glad I watched part of the lecture video *before* reading this novel. Having a little bit of context about what was happening in Romania made things make a lot more sense than they would have had I been reading blind. Even still, t his novella was pretty confusing, not because I couldn't understand the writing it seemed by design, I can reread a page and still be left feeling confused even while understanding context and what had occurred plot wise. I get the sense it was intentional, a reflection of the time the book was set in and it seemed obvious that most of the characters didn't fully understand what was occurring either. There was a overarching feeling of fearful uncertainty thinly veiled by social niceties like those that were seen at the dinner.        Initially, I was pretty confused by the first section of the novella, a conversation occurring sometime in the future that had absolutely...

W, or the Memory of Childhood

       Finally! An author I know! I have been SLOWLY reading Perec's A Void  for ages now, I really cant get into it because I keep just rereading sections to make sure there is really no 'e' there. I have to admit the difficulty I had reading A Void did not give me much hope for this book. I could talk extensively about my appreciation of A Void  in an artistic, boundary pushing, breaking away from norms wowee kinda way but as a book goes, it is kinda rough to read honestly. Anyway! Onto the book I am actually meant to be writing about. W, or the Memory of Childhood  was pleasantly read-able for me. It became very quickly obvious that there was two seperate sets of memories that were intertwined into eachother. A note at the beginning of the book brough to my attention that 'W' should not be thought of as 'double-u' as in French it is called 'double vé.' I do not know what the word in French but in Spanish I first thought of vida which I guess I sho...