in the style of Self

It was Wanda that never liked riding on buses, but somehow Rob got Wanda to set foot on a grayhound.  She also never imagined she would be traveling to Cleaveland to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but Rob had a way of making Wanda feel so alone without him, that she followed him around as if on a leash.  Her dependency started when they met at a friend's party, back in 2003.  Wanda was pursuing a career as a dancer, but once she met Rob, a brief first flirtation caused her to lose all hope at ever realizing a dream.  Now she was on a bus, with Rob drooling on her shoulder. 

Cock and Bull 1

http://idler.co.uk/conversations/conversations-will-self/

There is an interview with Will Self from "The Idler", in which he discusses lying around, doing very little, while writing, drawing cartoons, and "reading philanthropic novels".  At one point Self says he, "wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn’t able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing … although writing isn’t exactly idleness. There’s an enormous tension between indolence and languor."  I think something can be take from the idea that was interested in abstract thought, and having the idlest occupation in the world.  I think this reflects a lot on Carol and Dan's lives.  "Cock" begins with the two of them at University, and Self mocks the feminist philosophy that Carol has been half-assedly trying to learn.  In adition, both characters live very mundane lives in which they physically do next to nothing.  I also think that this reflects Carol's bodily change.  It is something that can be theorized about philosophically.

John Self: the actor

John Self's opinion of actors is a generally negative one.  He makes a specific point to call out " the actors of real life you want to watch--yeah, and the actresses" (175).  John is a character in a book, but Amis' narrative style makes the reader feel as if he or she is watching a play or a film.  John Self is playing a role.  He himself is a real life actor playing the part of a low-life, money obsessed, sex crazed advertising director.  John Self, when discussing his paranoia compares his aggressive, concerned glare to that of an actor.  "I don't mind, happens all the time.  If a car follows me round two corners, I narrow my gaze and tighten my hold on the wheel, covertly, like an actor" (223).  

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances" (II.VII)  Much like Shakespeare writes, John Self is just a man interacting with other actors or characters in his reality.  He is only worried about Money, and is merely a pawn in Amis' narrative.  John himself says, "Actors are paid to pretend that they are unaware of being watched, but they of course rely on the collusion of the watcher, and nearly always get it.  There are unpaid actors too (I thought): it's them you really have to watch" (126).  Ultimately John Self is describing the existence of himself in Money.  He is an actor performing a part, pretending that he is just a regular person, living his life.  But when he addresses the reader, it is the same collusion between actor and audience.  He relies on the reader, and is not getting paid directly to "act", and is yet again warning the readre about his debauched actions. 

money neurosis

It is always an interesting tact when an author inserts his or herself into the narrative of a novel.  In the case of Martin Amis as a character in Money, I was somewhat perplexed.  John Self's simultaneous acknowledgement and unfamiliarity  of Amis' work left me wondering about the reality of the novel.  Edmondson points out that Amis masters, "the art of postmodern prose: his style, with multiple layerings of fiction upon fiction, and a deluded narrator imbedded somewhere in the middle, is itself a story."  I liked what Brian Finley wrote, claiming that, " Amis wants his readers, like a theater audience, to recognize their simultaneous immersion in and exteriority to the action."  Looking at Money as if it is a play being performed makes a lot of sense.  The reader has to suspend their disbelief and give themselves wholeheartedly to the narrative.  Much like in Cronenberg's Crash.  By the end of the novel the idea that one can be aroused by car crashes is no longer strange and macabre, but just a parallel reality.   In Money, Martin Amis says to John Self, "The distance between author and narrator corresponds to the degree to which the author finds the narrator wicked, deluded, pitiful or ridiculous" (229).  Though Amis the character is referring to the movie script, he is also alluding to his own appearance in the novel, and Self's direct inclusion of the reader.  Edmondson describes it as, "the postmodern technique of involution, the inclusion of the author as a character within the text, as a method of distancing the reader and as tacit admission of the author's lack of control over himself. His presence in the text is an acknowledgment that he, as writer-creator, is also constituted by a larger narrative line, a player on the stage. Simultaneously with Amis's entering the text as a character, John Self directly addresses the reader, drawing him into the narrative."

Nabokov and Bakhtin

I am a little confused as to what is meant by polyphony.  Because I am unfamiliar with Dostoyevsky's works, I am not sure if i fully understand how it can be applied to Nabokov.  I believe that "Natasha" has some beautifully lyrical moments.  One being, "The thermometer was warm, alive--the column of mercury climbed high on the little red ladder."  And, "Baron Wolfe grew taciturn and grimaced at the ferocious noise of the automobile horns, while Natasha seemed propelled by sails, as if her fatigue sustained her, endoww\ed her with wings and made her weightless, and Wolfe seemed all blue, as blue as the evening."  This recurring sense of weightless dizzyness begins to skew the readers perception of reality.  Later on Wolfe and Natasha reveal that their stories  are mere fantasies, and the reader is unsure of what is plot and what is in the mind of each character, including the father's dreams, and the trip to the country. 




questions on Bakhtin: Bakhtin provides some explanation for this assertion by insisting that consciousness can only realize itself, however provisionally, in dialogue with the other.
I am unsure as to what exactly he means here. 

cut up

We figured we'd test the bungalows
They were a replacement after a major fire in our hills
We wouldn't miss the waning of the hard wood floor
Here there's a gentle ripple of the tides
The sound in relation to the fan is dreamy, mesmerizing
We think hallelujah
Nothing left but a maggoty shelf of burning ash
In which we fear
She describes the curve of the coast with her signature glossy syntax and verbiage
The east side faces the home of a distinguished war vet who tells tales of different seas