especes d-espaces's blog

WPAWhat a great source of information these WPAs! I guess if I had been travelling in the 1930s I definitely would have used some of these useful tips. Absolutely everything you need to know, and I love the first few pages of “General Information:” How to get there, good to know you can take the Greyhound from anywhere in the US, and definitely great to know that “Speed is 15 miles per hour at grade crossings, road intersections, and curves where the driver's view is obstructed; 15 miles per hour in passing schools where persons are entering or leaving (...)” Very detailed, I wonder if the current travel guides are as detailed, or at least with the same king of information. I love the recommendations that are given, “Border Rules : (digest)” What do they mean by digest? Oh and the info on the reptiles in California is crucial: “Rattlesnakes exist, but are not numerous being found in rocky mountains below the 3,000 ft. level; will not strike unless disturbed.” I find there is extensive information on Natural Conservation, something I'm quite sure doesn't appear as extensively in today's travel guides...maybe because we don't value it as much? I really aprpeciate the way every aspect of the state is condensed into a whole book, and how the authors cover every aspect of it: agriculture, industry, some history. And now I'm wondering: who would actually read all this? And I'm also wondering: isn't there a part of fiction in these guides? Aren't the writers, just as Steinbeck or Kromer, changing a reality in order to make it more appealing? To make the book a marketable product? I feel like everything in the book is really idealized or only certain pieces are information are conveyed while others are just left out... no? I don't know... But I definitely like the section on literature, offering short biographies of authors who either were from California or wrote about California... A little surprised though on the passage on Steinbeck, his book “Tortilla Flat” is mentioned, and summarized, so are “Of Mice and Men” and and “In Dubious Battle” but nothing, no mentioning of “The Grapes of Wrath”... why is that? Is it because it describes a reality the authors of this guide do not find adequate, appropriate? Would it make California unattractive to potential tourists? And what does that tell of the power, influence of books, novels, and these types of guides? Can this guide be thought of as a piece of propaganda?

Cabourg, CalvadosSo I guess what is surprising is that while one part of the population is suffering, hungry, homeless and vagrant, the other part of the population is enjoying itself, having fun wandering the country, or different countries as tourists. Surprising? I would not be too sure about that...isn't that still the case? Anyways, what I found really interesting in Berkowitz's text, is the idea that this leisure, the payed vacation and all those new benefits, were not entirely opposed to the depression, bu rather,, were a way to reach a possible economic prosperity, as Berkowitz writes, “The crisis of the depression was ultimately responsible for completing the transformation of tourism into a mass phenomenon.” So far from being opposed, it seems tourism emerges well because the depression happened. Also, what I find intereesting is that the movement towards paid vacation goes along with the idea of the New Deal, and even more interesting is the a certain shift which occurred between the socialists ideals of a paid vacation, and the use of tourism as a business tool, as Berkowitz writes, “local business leaders and government officials began to establish a network of professional tourism promotonial associations. (…) Community businessmen and government officials, for their part, observing the rise of paid vacation and improvements in transportation, began viewing tourism as a potential strategy of economic development (…)” So clearly, tourism is viewed as a possible tool to create a new economic prosperity . What I find intereresting, also, is the whole way in which tourism becomes a kind of mass consumption, justified by the general consensus and enthusiasm, and how it introduced a new approach to work and travel, thus reshaping, in a way, the culture, and the “American way of life.” Paid vacation and travel also reshapes the notion of place and motion we have extensively talked about and it seems that the idea of travelling for leisure generates another notion of the relation between the individual and place- travelling is no longer an exile, but a pure pleasure... and it is travelling out of choice, no longer out of constraint. Paid vacation, even today, is an essential element in society, the French would know about it... with their 6 weeks vacation... and some would argue whether it really helps the growth of the economy... while others, like Sarkozy, use happiness and leisure time as a way to think of GDP...

EpicAn Epic. A mock heroic epic. That's what I would call Nathanael West' story. His story is horribly saddening and yet horrifyingly funny and sutble... I really love the way he sets our his characters, and follows the old traditions of story telling- his presence, in the narrative is really subtle, brings a little tone of humour and a little distance with the story, such as the passage when he writes, “As it will only delay my narrative and serve no good purpose to report how Lem told about his predicament, I will skip to his last sentence.” (p.72) This passage really demonstrates the narrators presence in the narrative and is quite funny, in the sense that he himself, delays the narrative while writing these few lines... and yet, his presence realy reminds of the oral tradition of story telling and the story unfolds as it is told to us, by this voice who pops into the story once in a while. In addition, the narrator, from the very beginning sets Lem as being his Hero, and Lem seems to have most of the attributes of a hero: he leads a happy life, until the Lawyer comes in, and brings a challenge to his Lem and his mother; Lem the has a mission, a pretty virtuous one since it is to help his mother. Lem is virtuous and loving, in the sense that he saves Betty Prail from the dog who is “mad” and in this way, can be seen as battling against evil. And finally, Lem goes through different stages of difficulty, tortures etc, and dies a “martyr.” All too epic no? The other characters, also, follow the pattern of the epic, they are idealized as having a role in the culmination of Lem's evolution, the Lawyer sets the challenge, Mr. Whipple offers him advice, Betty Prail and the fact he saves her brings him assurance etc and most importantly, all these characters are strong, very strong stereotypes... And most of all, the “American Dream” is maybe idealized, emphasized, and... in the same way... satirized... “America (…) is the land of opportunity. She takes care of the honest and industrious and never fails them as long as they are both. This is not a matter of opinion, it is one of faith. On the day that Americans stop believing it, on that day will America be lost.” (p.74) This reminded me of the question of believing, and faith we mentioned a lot while talking about The Grapes of Wrath...and yet, Lem who believes, dies for the cause, as a martyr. To what? For what? For who?

Books: "It's so unfair! Why do people always take out the good books?"Thinking about Kromer's novel, again, I'm still intrigued about the idea of being completely marginzalied from society and giving a voice to those marginalized. Thinking back, the novel makes me wonder about the question of authenticity we talked about extensively. How does Kromer's novel relate to the social issues, and how does it differ from Steinbeck's approach? Can Kromer's novel be thought of as being more authentic, more valid than Steinbeck's? We talked a lot about the Steinbeck's belonging to a certain class and how this may, according to some, undermine the validity or value of his work... Knowing that Kromer, as we discussed, also used certain devices, whether literary, the style of his prose for example, or the fact that he recounts an experience different that the one he actually experienced, or the jargon of the bums for example, does this affect the value we can attribute to his novel, as being an authentic novel? And why, we may ask, was Steinbeck's novel a lot more successful and thought provoking and controversial than Kromer's? Perhaps is it the fictive aspect of Steinbeck's story that was most appealing, the fact, in a way, that the social conditions were such, that they became a part of the story-telling realm, the realm of the imaginary, in which, normally, there is the most freedom, the most space for dreams and ideals, perhaps, the fact that they entered this realm of ideals and colonize the imaginary, is what is most striking in Steinbeck's story: that there is no more distanciation between the public and the private space of thought...The fact, in a way, that the problems were so strong that they even became part of the common consciousness, the common space for hope, the space for the self. Kromer's novel, while being extremely striking does not seem to me, as being as much appealing to the masses as Steinbeck's. Maybe because of its singularity: it takes the form of an autobiography. Is that to say autobiographies are less accessible, less understandable? Or is it because the novel, even though it sets no specific time or place, seems to be particular to this “I” who describes things in a very factual way? Or should we rather ask, why is the qestion of authenticity important? Does it add anything to the novel itself, or just to the way we consider it? And why would we want to hierarchize different novels?

Man Eating a Turtle“Waiting for Nothing” is, to me at least, an extremely touching and poignant work, in both the way it is written, and the seemingly endless crucial quest for food. I wonder... how was novel accepted when it was published? It seems to me that the autobiogrpahy touches upon several controversial subjects, or what could be considered as controversial... In fact, Kromer's narration gives voice to the marginalized of society, the narrator is completely excluded from society and can only look at it from an outside point of view, just as in the passage, “I stare in at the window. Maybe they will know a hungry man when they see him. Maybe this guy will be willing to shell out a couple of nickels to a hungry stiff. (…) I watch them as they cut it into tiny bits. The man is facing me. Twice he glances out of the window.” It is interesting to notice how the window, the transparent and yet present barrier, is the way for both individuals to look at each other and approach each other, and this also poses the question of who is looking at who, who is being observed? Along with the idea of the narrator as being completely marginalized from society, is the idea that not only what seperates the narrator from the rest of society is embodied by this mirror, but almost even more importantly, what gives rise to this idea of seperation is the certain logic, the certain ethical – moral logic which characterises the narrator's relation with himself and with others. In effect, this logic is constructed with the vital need – desire for food, hunger, which then becomes the foundation of this logic with which the narrator will understand and further, judge the different people he encounters, for example, “He is a good guy though. He bought me a steak and dinner.” It seems, here, as though the basis for the establishment, or even elaboration of such a judgment of the other, is hunger, food, the way others interact with the narrator concerning this particular aspect: hunger.

In addition to moral judgment of others, hunger is the element with which the narrator is able to determine his sense of belonging to a specific place for example. Not only that, but hunger seems to be what brings the narrator to move from one place to another, creating then, the idea that social space is determined based upon food – hunger. Reading Kromer's narration reminded me of an book I have recently read, entitled “For Bread Alone” written by Mohammed Choukri, who deals with the essential issues of hunger, space, mobility, marginalization from society, dehumanisation...

Boxcar Bertha

It is interesting to notice the very title of Bertha Thompson's autobiography: it announces the autobiography as being written by someone else, Ben Reitman who in fact recounts bertha thompson's story as he heard her tell him. Knowing this, what effect does it have on the reader? We mentioned, extensively, the authenticity of works relating to the Depression era... how is this work to be viewed? What effect does the distance create, between the reader and the text, between the author and the text, between author and reader? In addition to this problem specific to her autobiography, come the other issues raised by the genre of the autobiography: to what extent is what is being told, true, or objective? Are events, as they are being narrated, fictionalized? Idealized? Romanticised? And similarly, there is a sense in which the reader (or me...) is tempted to romanticise the character and a romanticised reading for example, would view bertha thompson as a the perfect “flaneur,” the street walker who observes others, and in a way acquires an important understanding of society, as revealed by the passage “All that I had learned in these fifteen deep, rich years, was a little sociology and economics, types classifications and figures. (…) I had achieved my purpose – everything I had set out in life to do had been accomplished. I had wanted to to know how it felt to be a hobo, a radical, a prostitute, a thief, a reformer, a social worker and a revolutionist. Now I knew. I shuddered. Yes it was all worthwhile to me.” So here, it seems that, in a way, her life as a vagabond and as a wanderer, even though her life as such was not out of choice, still led her to a kind of self-education through which she was able to acquire a certain knowledge of society, and of herself within that society. In addition, it seems the knowledge she has gained corresponds, in a way, to the knowledge she was incultated when she was still a little girl as suggested in the passage, “I don't ever remember anyone telling me a real fairy story in my whole childhood, but the tales of the gandy dancers, and of the bundle stiffs, (…) or of drunken brawls in New Orleans (...)” This sort of correlation, correspondance between the knowledge Bertha Thompson has actually gained and the stories she was told as a child, is it a mere coincidence? What does it reveal of the nature of story-telling?

for some reason i can't post this video so i'll just put the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_LMOShZwYs

Private Space

(If I may cite emilygs...)“As I looked through some of the photo books the first time around, I found some of the pictures strikingly beautiful. Almost immediately however, I felt guilty for thinking so.” I find this reaction very interesting in that is it the observer who questions perception in ethical terms. But is beauty ethical? What is the relation between morality and beauty? What is the role of the observer and his relation to these pictures which could be considered as a piece of art? And what is the process by which we can judge these pictures? Just a short but maybe useful digression...Kant, in his Critique of Judgment, discusses his idea of the “Judgment of Pure taste.” In effect, he distinguishes between a judgment of taste which does not involve interest, which is a pure judgment of taste, from a judgment of taste which involves interest, which therefore isn't a pure judgment. The latter in fact, has to do with the object's actual existence, as he writes “Interest is (...)the liking we connect with (...) an object's existence,” and the liking which is linked to an object's existence leads to a partial judgment. Thus, interest is defined as being related to reality as opposed to the presentation of an object which itself leads to a pure judgment of taste well because it is a presentation where the actual existence of the object is of no importance. What matters, then, is the presentation and the way an object appears in the imagination, and because I value the presentation rather than the existence of the object, my judgment is therefore impartial. Nevertheless, it seems to me that it is quite difficult to focus on the presentation of the object as though its actual existence didn't matter., no? And what is the process by which I can do so? In addition, while observing these pictures, for example, it seems almost impossible to ignore the existence of these people. In any event, if one is to follow Kant's idea of the impartial judgment, thus valuing the presentation rather than the actual existence of the object of art, these people, one cannot be blamed to think that the pictures are beautiful...but what of the photographers? These photo albums, as Dorothea Lange writes, “show you what is happening in selected regions of limited area” and as we can see, show the hardships of living conditions, and are comprised of pictures of little children, adults, farmers etc, but more importantly, the pictures seem to invade the private space of all these people as there are pictures of a room, a bed etc... couldn't that been seen as a kind of voyeurisme that violates private space?

Road TripGoing back home after a fun, interesting, and most of all thrilling trip, is always boring. But at least there's the learning part, or there was and being back “home” offers the possibilty of thinking over the different things, the different episodes of the trip. No? That's what Asch seems to suggest when his character returns to New York with a whole new, and different perspective, not only on the city, but also on its inhabitants, and more importantly, the narrator comes back with a new perspective on himself, as he writes, “I wanted to write of the legend of man's hunger for always, of man's death every day (...)” But why write? Is it for the pleasure of story-telling? Is it to acknowledge the conditions of those whom the narrator has osberved? Is is to give a lesson to all those, who “in the East rode a bus as if it were a shame?” In any event, there seems to be a stricking difference, in all these texts, and more specifically in Asch's text to which I was more inclined, there seems to be a huge gap between the awareness of one group of the population, the New Yorkers in this case, and all those whom the character has discovered during his trip. The huge gap then, appears in the significant difference between the main concerns and conditions of both groups, with, one the one hand a group of people more concerned with themselves, their own “business” and other material concerns, while the other group, the one that was under the narrator's scrutiny, whose maine worries vital ones, such as hunger. And yet, I feel the narrator in the end, in a way justifies the gap, the social differences in the sense that it is “New York,” that New York is different, that the city, being “shadowy in the early morning pausing through awakening” devours its inhabitants, and turns them away from themselves, and from the cry of human nature, despair, and turns them away from the suffering other the narrator has however discovered because he was able to leave New York. No?

Cartoon

We talked a lot about the ethical dimension of Steinbeck's enterprise: is it right for him to write about people with whom he has nothing in common, who belong to a different social class, when he didn't have to work, but instead had plenty of time to write? Was his success ethical, and was he using the conditions of others in order to be successful? To that I want to answer that in describing the condition of migrants, he becomes their voice, and I would say that it is his role, as an intellectual, to identify with the oppressed and to speak for them. It is his role, to portray, even through fiction (what isn't fiction?) the reality of a people, whether his people or not.This he does with his story of the Joads, and more importantly with the “inter-chapters that generalize this family history as a nation's tragedy,” (Warren French, John Steinbeck: Overview.) In this sense, these inter-chapters are just as efficient, perhaps even more efficient than the story of the Joads with whom not all can identify. Or perhaps I was just more receptive to those chapters...

In any case, the question of the fiction, I think, is in no way an obstacle to the either the people or the validity of the novel as depicting a reality, on the contrary, I think the fictive aspect is essential in the common consciousness of a people and in affirming their conditions. In this sense, the people, the migrants, the oppressed, those who have no power in decision making, those who have no power in making history but rather endure it, they are the ones who can live through fiction, through novels, through story-telling and tales, their condition and their story are transposed in the novel which gives them another existence, an existence in the abstract, in the imaginary of all those who read the novel, and slowly become part of the reader's consciousness. The oppressed gain a legitimate existence through words, just as Shahrazade in the 1001 Nights who lives through story-telling; and their existence becomes inevitably reckognized by others. In addition to affirming their existence through words, the novel also creates a common culture, a common consciousness to which all migrants can identify. Steinbeck in a way, seems to emphasise the importance and the role of the of story-telling by describing it as a kind of sancticity as he writes, “The story tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were great.”

Migrants on the RoadIt is interesting to notice how Steinbeck describes motion on the road, the exodus, the journey dictated by the cadency of the ideal, of the myth California, which leads, also, to the emergence of a community of travellers who share the same desire, the same vital necessities, the same relation to the land. In this sense, all becomes one, as writes Steinbeck, all becomes one dream, one goal, one family, and the quest and the longing are shared by all, “the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all.” And most of all, every family, every individual seems to be drawn into the shared, collective memory, “The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream.” Steinbeck thus describes a moving, individual family during the day, and a united collective family at night thus creating a nightly community, perhaps, in this sense, also creating an ideal community in which the common good, common entente is dominant. He mentions a self regulating community, with its laws, with its labor division, “each member has his duty and went to it without instruction.” Perhaps is this ideal community a response to the government's inability to help the marginal migrant population?

Steinbeck describes, then, what seems to be an equal and caring community in which food is provided to all, in which the concern of one is the concern of all, as reminds Reloy Garcia in The Rocky Road to Eldorado, “Steinbeck's rage for travel-- he saw mobility and restlessness as American traits in America and Americans-- was a rage for order, for each element in the natural and social schemes to vibrate in harmony.” This harmony is flagrant in Steinbeck's nightly community centered around a collective consciousness and also based upon communication such as music, “(...)and the songs, which were of the people, were sung in the nights. Men sang the words, women hummed the tunes.” Singing then seems to be a way in which migrants are able to reconnect with their identity, with their memories and has the soothing appeasement of an enchantment before leaving the migrants to the difficulties of the day, of the road. Thus appear two disctinct and opposed worlds, the world of the road, of the heat, of the seemingly unending quest, and the world of appeasement, the world of presence and warmth.