Blog Thirteen. Candide. 18-21. "And He Wept As He Looked Down At His Negro."

"...And was still weeping as he entered Surinam." (52)

Four different soups were being served, each garnished with a brace of parrots, followed by a boiled condor weighing two hundred pounds, two excellent roast monkey, a platter containing three hundred birds of paradise and another of six hundred humming-birds... (44)

"My dear Master," retorted Cacombo, "you are always astonished by everything; why do you find it so strange that in some countries it is apes who enjoy the favor of young ladies? After all, they are one-quarter human, just as I am one-quarter Spanish—" (40)

"You see," said Candide to Martin, "crime is sometimes punished; that blackguard of a Dutch owner got the fate he deserved"—"Yes," said Martin, "but did the passengers on board have to perish too? God punished the thief, but the devil drowned the rest." (57)

"We would be foolish indeed," said the old man.  "Everyone here is of the same mind..." (47)

I apologize for the lateness of this. Darn faculty meeting.

So as this short novel comes toward a close, we, with Candide and his friends, have covered much of the world: Europe, South America, and back to Europe (where Volatire's own France comes under his withering stare as much as anyplace in the novel, as Martin, his new traveling companion, says, "I am told there are some civilized people in [Paris]; I should like to think so" [58]). And, voila!, we finally find the best of all worlds—El Dorado! And Candide leaves it.

The novel, at this point, takes on a darker mood, I've always found. The satire becomes less outrageous, less cartoonish. There are no more apes chasing naked girls; no more naked natives tying Candide down with bark in an obvious homage to Swift's Gulliver's Travels, no more imaginary lands like El Dorado. There are, however, black men sold by their mothers to Dutch slavers. And Candide weeps and weeps.

1. In Chapter 8,  Cunegonde's horrifying story ends in her large appetite being sated with a nice supper. This is soon followed by the old woman's story, worse even than Cunegonde's, and soon the two women are enaged in a battle of who-had-it-worse. And clearly being infected by the plague is "far worse than any earthquake" (29).  War is awful; rape is awful; and yet both happen continually in this book.  I would argue that why this is is partly found in the conversations of the old woman and Cunegonde.  This is a huge ill, a huge problem, Voltaire highlights in the novel. What's the problem?

2. Candide and Cacombo leave El Dorado after a month, even as Candide admits it surpasses that best of all places, Westphalia. It is, in fact, paradise. How do you read Candide's deserting this place of equality, peace, and harmony? Agree? Disagree? And is Voltaire criticizing his hero—is this a dig at Candide? Or does Voltaire agree? Quote in your answer.

3. Finally: agree or disagree with my statement that the novel takes on a darker mood with the abandonment of El Dorado. And what moment particularly jumped out at you in the reading?

Finally: one of the great film satires of my time: Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers. Check this clip out. A renegade American Air Force general has sent bombers loaded with nuclear bombs to attack the Soviet Union (because fluoridation is a Communist plot that has left him impotent).  Here the President of the United States is informing a drunk Russian Premier of the imminent attack.

See you all tomorrow.

Blog Twelve. Candide. 6-11. "O Che Sciagura D'Essere Senza Coglioni."*

*"Oh, what a misfortune to be without balls." (28)

Okay, no one said satire is pretty.

Some of you on Friday remarked about the bullet train pace of the book. So a valid question (often asked when we read this book in class) is "why?"  In the space of twenty-some pages, the action has moved from Germany to Holland to Portugal, to Spain, and now Candide, Cunegonde, and the old woman are on their way to the New World, Paraguay. In these few pages, we've seen 30,000 soldiers be heroically butchered; 30,000 "inhabitants without regard to age or sex...crushed" in the earthquake of Lisbon; a Biscayan who married a godparent and two Portuguese Jews who didn't eat bacon burned to death, Pangloss, recovered from his venereal disease, hanged, and Candide flogged again in an auto-da-fe (act of faith) to prevent a follow-up earthquake (it fails). Cunegonde has survived seeing her family slaughtered, disembowelment and raped ("these things are not always fatal," she informs us), becoming the property of a Bulgar captain who sells her to Don Issacar who shares her with the Grand Inquisitor of Portugal. Candide kills one, then the other, in the space of two minutes—after all, as he says, "I already embarked on killing." The old woman keeps reminding us that she only has "one buttock for a seat," was once more beautiful than, it would seem, anyone in the known world ("the women who dressed and undressed me fell back in ecstasies when they gazed upon me, from whichever angle, and all the men would have wished to be in their place"). She too sees her mother and servants slaughtered, experiences cavity search ("it is one article of international law that is never neglected"), survives the killing of all her captors and captives to awaken to a man bemoaning the absence of his testicles. Whew! Just typing that took me fifteen minutes.

We know from reading the notes and from our discussion on Friday that Voltaire is taking the philosophy of optimism to task, and more specifically, the philosophy as laid out by Leibniz. But this isn't why we read the book today (except in a philosophy class); or should I say, this isn't why I read and teach the novel. I think it's funny and provocative and disturbing and profound and relevant to our time. So that's one answer to "why?"

1. So, for you, what is the book addressing—besides Leibniz? (Remember: a satire holds up human vices and follies to ridicule and scorn) So for you, what is its essential, fundamental, question (or questions)? And what specfically in the book so far leads you to this assertion? Go ahead and quote in your response.

2. What moment in this reading jumped out at you? How so? Go ahead and quote in your response. 

Write a couple hundred words for the questions.  Mira and Stuart: remember to get the Theo Cuffe translation. And finally, for another satire, silly, stupid, and funny as it may be, here is a clip from 2004's Team America: World Police, the work of Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park and The Book of Mormon—and even then they were exercising their musical chops, as we see here.
Parker and Stone use both satire and parody (making fun of a particular type of work). Not subtle, but funny and pointed.

See you all tomorrow.

Blog Eleven. Candide. 1-5. "Candide Listened Attentively, And He Trusted Innocently" (4).

Pangloss taught metaphysico-theologico-cosmo-nigolgy. He could prove to wonderful effect that there was no effect without cause, and that this was the best of all possible worlds, His Lordship the Baron's castle was the finest of castles and Her Ladyship the best of all possible baronesses.
"It is demonstrable," he would say, "that things cannot be other than as they are; for, since everything is made to serve an end, everything is necessarily for the best of all ends. Observe how noses were formed to support spectacles, therefore we have spectacles. Legs are clearly devised for the wearing of breeches, therefore we wear breeches...consequently, those who have argued that all is well have been talking nonsense; they should have said that all is for the best." (4)

Candide: or Optimism, published in 1759, is Voltaire's satirical attack on the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (look at the notes for the title page on 121). It's also an old man's (Voltaire was 65 when he wrote this) rumination on the state of the world and, per our study so far, how to live in it. Mookie, Sal, Buggin' Out, Jade, Mother-Sister, Da Mayor, Radio Raheem, the cops; Vivian, Jason, Susie, E.M. Ashford; Ned, Bruce, Tommy, Mickey, Felix, Emma, Ben: this has been the underlying issue, question, for all of them. Or, as Larry Kramer asks, as does Auden in his poem that gave The Normal Heart its title:


Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

"We must love another or die." That's one answer to the question Voltaire, Spike Lee, Margaret Edson, and Larry Kramer pose.

So Voltaire and his classic satire. Quick couple questions:

1. Reactions to the book so far? What jumped out at you in these chapters? Quote in addressing this question.

2. So far: is anything funny? Yes: what? No: what is making this not humorous?

3. Is Candide's world the best possible world? Why or why not in 2-3 sentences.

 Just something...different. Leonard Bernstein, as I said in class, conceived of an opera based on this book in 1956.  The lyrics are by poet Richard Wilbur.  Here is the opening song.  See what you think.
See you all tomorrow.

Blog Ten. The Normal Heart. "We Are Gathered Here In The Sight Of God To Join Together These Two Men. They Love Each Other Very Much And Want To Be Maried In The Presence of Their Family Before Felix Dies. I Can See No Objection."

...This is my hospital, my church. Do you, Felix Turner, take Ned Weeks—
FELIX. Alexander.
EMMA. ...to be your...
FELIX. My lover. My lover. I do.
NED. I do.
(Felix is dead. Emma, who has been holding Felix's hand and monitoring his pulse, places his hand on his body. She leaves. The two orderlies enter and push the hospital bed, though all the accumulated mess, off stage.)
NED. He always wanted me to take him to your new house in the country. Just the four of us.
BEN. Ned, I'm sorry. For Felix...and for other things.
NED. Why didn't I fight harder! Why didn't I picket the White House all by myself if nobody would come. Or go on a hunger strike. I forgot to tell him something. Felix, when they invited me to Gay Week at Yale, they had a dance...In my old college dining hall, just across the campus from that tiny freshman room where I wanted to kill myself because I thought I was the only gay man in the world—they had a dance, Felix, there were six hundred young men and women there. Smart, exceptional young men and women. Thank you, Felix.
(After a moment, Ben crosses to Ned, and somehow they manage to kiss and embrace and hold on to each other.)

Tom, get on your plane right now
I know your part'll go fine.
Fly down to Mexico
Da-n-da-da-n-da-n-da-da and here I am.
The only living boy in New York.  (Paul Simon, "The Only Living Boy in New York)

The quote above is from the end of the play (obviously). The film, being a film, ends with showing the Gay Week dance at Yale. It's a powerful ending, I think. No words, but a slowly gliding camera moving through the couples to Ned alone and crying, all set to Simon and Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy In New York."Are his tears at this end his thank you to Felix? I tend to think so.

When the play was first performed, as the movie makes clear in the statistics printed at its end, money was not forthcoming from the Federal government. President Reagan would not say the word "AIDS" publicly until 1987 (though this is disputed by some). Whether or not the President said or didn't say the word, the point is that Larry Kramer was watching his friends and community die in front of his eyes. He, and the play, were in the middle of a catastrophic epidemic. The movie version makes clear that the casualties were far from over, hence the last card that Tommy puts in his drawer is that of Bruce. Watching this in 1985 must have been like watching CNN breaking news. Today it's history and much has changed and become significantly better. But even then Kramer wasn't merely reporting; he was also crafting a popular drama, he was making art that, if it succeeded, would last beyond the tragedy of its time, in much the same way that Do The Right Thing still resonates, even since the creation of Black Lives Matter, and long after the racial incidents that inspired Spike Lee to make it. Something similar can be said for Wit: in all its specificity of illness and time and behavior (I believe the play and/or the film has been used to train doctors), Vivian Bearing is always with us. We know that teacher; we know that woman; we know that human being. And we all will know in some way, shape, or form, what awaits her.

So:

1. Your reaction to the film now you've seen it all (and it would have been better to watch it all in one sitting, I agree).

2. Today as we started talking about the film, Stuart said something about the "happy" ending—that there is the solace of Ned and Ben reconciling (but as as Moey said, this would not have happened without the intervention of Felix) to temper all the tragedy the film presents.  So what kind of ending is it? Hopeful? Hopeless? Something else? Stick to what we see and know from the film—don't extrapolate from what we know will happen in the future. Imagine this is it—Ned at the dance is the end.

3. We know the film is about the AIDS epidemic. But is that all? If this play can exist as art, as something more than a "These events are inspired by real events, but the names have been changed (besides Mayor Koch's)," then what is this play/film about? What does it leave us to talk about, make us talk about, beyond or outside the outrage we feel about wasn't done to help the gay community? In the way that Wit was about cancer, but at the end we weren't talking about cancer, and DTRT was about race, but by the end we weren't talking only about race, what is this about? And what would you want to talk about in the next day or two about it?

Give these questions some time to bubble and then set inside you. Don't answer them in 10 minutes. A couple hundred words. See you guys tomorrow.

And remember: your paper is due next Wednesday (or Friday—but that's your choice). Don't wait until the last minute to write it.  We'll talk on Monday about quoting and other mechanics.  My baseline with seminar papers: it would be a paper you would feel comfortable turning in to a college professor (maybe Vivian Bearing).  So maybe talk with me about it tomorrow.

Here's a video of Larry Kramer reflecting on the film and his play.

See you all tomorrow.

Blog Nine. The Normal Heart. "Do You Think We Could Start Over?"

FELIX. I just told you. We made love twice. I thought it was lovely. You told me your name was Ned, that when you were a child you read a Philip Barry play called Holiday where there was a Ned, and you immediately switched from...Alexander? I teased you for taking such a Wasp, up-in-Connecticut-for-the-weekend name, and when I asked what you did, and you answered something like you'd tried a number of things, and I asked if that included love, which is when you said you had to get up early in the morning. That's when I left. But I tossed you my favorite go-fuck-yourself when you told me, "I really am not in the market for a lover"—men do not just naturally not love—they learn not to. I am not a whore. I just sometimes make mistakes and look for love in the wrong places. And I think you're a bluffer. Your novel was all about a man desperate for love and a relationship, in a world filled with nothing but casual sex.
NED. Do you think we could start over?
FELIX. Maybe.

Do you know that when Hitler's Final Solution to eliminate the Polish Jews was first mentioned in the Times it was on page twenty-eight. And on page six of the Washington Post. And the Times and the Post were owned by Jews. What causes silence like that?

NED. You want me to tell every gay man across the country—
EMMA. Across the world! That's the only way this disease will stop spreading.
NED. Dr. Brookner, isn't that just a tiny bit unrealistic.
EMMA. Mr. Weeks, if having sex can kill you, doesn't anybody with half a brain stop fucking? But perhaps you've never lost anything. Good-bye.

Other big Hollywood names are attached to this film behind the scenes, and everyone involved hopes the movie will bring “The Normal Heart” to audiences that might not have access to the kinds of theaters that would stage the play. Not all of these audiences are going to be comfortable with seeing a story about gay men, even three decades after AIDS first came to public consciousness. But that, perhaps, is part of the point of making this film at all. Just as those early alarm sounders warned, AIDS has turned out not to be exclusively a gay men’s issue or something that the straight world could safely ignore. Complacency and indifference are always the default responses to things that seem on the surface like someone else’s problem. But they’re rarely the right responses. 
—The New York Times, 22 May, 2014

The Normal Heart opened in New York  on 21 April, 1985. It takes place in the years 1981 to 1984. Imagine a play opening now about Zyka: that's how contemporary the subject of AIDS was when Larry Kramer wrote the play. This was his impassioned, deeply angry and anguished cry for the world, for people who could help fight "the plague" as he calls it in the play, to do something before everyone he knew, and probably himself, died. At the same time, he wrote a highly autobiographical story about a young gay man falling in love and what that meant. It's a political screed mixed with a coming-of-age narrative mixed with a romance. How's that for a genre mash-up? (Read here what the Times wrote about him when the film was about to be released; read here the review of the original production; and read here the review of the 2011 revival that won The Tony Award and that starred Joe Mantello, who plays Mickey Marcus in the movie, and featured Jim Parsons in the same role he plays in the film.)

1. So what do you think so far? What part(s) of this so far have grabbed you—and what part(s) if any left you cold? What scene or moment in particular stayed with you—and why?

2. There are more naked male bodies in the first 45 minutes of this than you may see in a year of television, including even pay cable.  There's more kissing and loving and sex between men than you might ever see in any mainstream form—television and movies.  Both Director Ryan Murphy and screenwriter Larry Kramer (adapting his own play) present this as the normal way of being for these men.  And of course this movie would most likely never be shown in any high school in the state of Georgia besides Paideia (and maybe if the administration knew I was showing it, I might be having a conversation with them right now—or maybe not).  But nonetheless, one could argue that the movie goes overboard with the nudity and sex.  Do you think it goes too far in this respect?  Just fair enough?  Not far enough?  And why do you say what you do?

More to come tomorrow. We've pretty much are done with the bare butts—but there's still much to keep one interested.  Here are clips from the 2011 revival.  It's much lighter than the movie—maybe something we'll talk about.

Blog Eight. Wit. The End. "It's Time To Go." (80)

"And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest." (80)

Here is the scene of Vivian and Ashford:

You're welcome to look at the very end of the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_208943&feature=iv&src_vid=eucAdWW-4HM&v=64Q5SXWDx7w. Personally, I don't like the film version's end. The violence to Vivian's body by the code team seems toned down, compared to the play's description. And Vivian's ascension, for lack of a better word, is cut. But you might disagree. The play, I think, still leaves Vivian's ascension ambiguous. Is she going to rest with the angels? Does she gain God's forgiveness? Is there—and this was one of my questions when reading Vivian's lecture to her class—even a God? Much to consider as we finish this play.

We'll keep this simple tonight.

1. What is your reaction to the ending? Satisfying? Not satisfying? What are you left thinking about, pondering, after the conclusion of the play?

2.  We've been batting around the question of a worthwhile life vs. a...well, whatever the opposite is.  What do you think the play is saying about this?  Go ahead and quote once in your answer.

As always, please feel free to respond to what your classmates write.  You folks are really smart.  Let each other know when a comment enlightens you or makes you think more deeply than you had been.

We'll see you all tomorrow.

Blog Seven. Wit. 51-63. "I Have Always Liked That Poem. In The Abstract..." (53-53)

"...Now I find the image of 'my minute's last point' a little too, shall we say, pointed" (53).

"So the young doctor, like the senior scholar, prefers research to humanity.  At the same time the senior scholar, in her pathetic state as a simpering victim, wishes the young scholar would take more interest in personal contact" (58).

"I don't know.  I feel so much—what is the word?  I look back, I see these scenes, and I..." (63)

Vivian is dying.  She will not say the word, nor will Jason—but her "peritoneal cavity, which, despite their best intentions, is now crawling with cancer" (53).  But she knows the end is coming; as she asks Jason, "Are you going to be sorry when I—Do you ever miss people?" (57).  The two hours allotted to her by "them" are almost up.

I hope you all got some rest this weekend.  I'll keep this sweet and short.

At the end of the reading, Vivian reflects back on her teaching.  And as she says—quoted above—"I feel so much—what is the word?  I look back...and I..."

1. Feels so much what?  And looking back, she what?  Finish her sentence.  And why do you say what you do?  Go ahead and quote once in your reponse.

2.  Jason took Vivian because Vivian was a known difficult teacher—and having that on his transcript would make him look like a serious student.  It's clear that not every student took her for that reason.   So would you want her for a teacher?  Is she even a good teacher?  Why or why not?

See you all tomorrow.

Blog 6. Wit. 33-50. "You Can't Imagine How Time...Can Be...So Still" (35).

"Use your eyes." Kelekian to the students (40).

JASON. Oh. Jeeze. Clinical. Professor Bearing. How are you feeling today?
VIVIAN. (Very sick) Fine. Just shaking sometimes from the chills.
JASON. IV will kick in anytime now. No problem. Listen, gotta go. Keep pushing the fluids. (47)

"If arsenic and serpents are not damned, then why is he? In asking the question, the speaker turns eternal damnation into an intellectual game. Who would God choose to do what is hard, to condemn, rather than what is easy, and also glorious—to show mercy?" (49-50)

Neutropenia (noo-troe-PEE-nee-uh) is an abnormally low count of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell that helps fight off infections, particularly those caused by bacteria and fungi. (Mayo Clinic definition)

I've been keeping a dictionary close while reading this. I hope you have too.

So now we know that the tumor "the size of a grapefruit" (47) is not responding to the treatment. Now we now that Vivian is imperiled not by the cancer but by the treatment itself. Now we know that she is in terrible pain. Now we know she suspects she is dying.

1. A Thrower-kind-of-check-in. Your reaction to the play right now? What is it about to you?

2. We haven't yet looked too closely at the "health care professionals," as Vivian somewhat sarcastically calls the doctors and staff (though not, arguably, Susie). When I did this play last, a student made the point to complaints about the way the doctors treat Vivian, "[The doctors'] job is solving the puzzle." Another student asked, "Can the doctors have compassion for Vivian without losing themselves?" Respond to one of those quotes: agree, disagree, or answer the explicit or explicit question it poses. Go ahead and quote from the play in your response.

Here's the scene that the last reading covers. It actually goes a little past the stopping point. Warning: Vivian is really sick here.

See you all tomorrow.