Fear and loathing and the American Dream

[raven]

Hannah says that when I don't update, she thinks about calling the emergency services. That amuses me slightly and makes me wonder about expanding on fire, police, ambulance, coastguard, mountain/cave rescue, etc., etc., to include Non-Appearance On LJ. I don't mock First Post Private - far from it - and would go so far as to say LJ can serve as a valuable public service.

I started today with a driving lesson. It wasn't as bad as usual - actually, it was. My driving instructor is a nice guy and does not shout even when I drive into things, but he does say I think too much to drive well. Apparently people who think struggle, because "you're always wondering about what could happen and what terrible accident might be round the next corner and that's why you drive like you're drunk."

Which I do. That is not slander.

So after that, I spent most of the day reading Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. After the death of Hunter S. Thompson, I decided I really ought to read it, and filled in a formal library request. I've always suggesting books, but Mrs Barry says as long as I don't write them down she'll never remember. Because I have a ridiculous sense of humour, my suggestion slips are comically detailed - down to ISBN and publication date - but usually get accepted. The book arrived last week and I hadn't had time to read it until now.

I love it. I can't articulate exactly why, but it's something to do with the corrosive, hedonistic use of language, the descriptive madness, and the sheer self-destructive exuberance of the world it portrays. It's crazy and drug-addled and crazy again, and I'm loving it.

I still haven't finished it - about two thirds of the way through, now - but I was reading it on my way into Liverpool this afternoon, and put it down on my lap as I had a sudden and welcome revelation. As most people know, I am a card-carrying Philistine. I don't like English Literature, and the idea of my doing it for A-level seemed like hell on earth (I adore combined lang/lit, but that's another story). I don't get Dickens or Shakespeare (actually, I do like Shakespeare, but that's different) nor George Elliot, and I hate Jane Austen with the fire of a thousand suns. (Really. I hate Pride and Prejudice as much as most people love it.)

But as I was sitting on the train and thinking, I realised one or two things. I like On The Road and all that beat stuff, I loved To Kill a Mockingbird and the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, I thoroughly enjoyed Death of a Salesman and the political undertones beneath The Crucible. Judging from what I've read today, I'm going to like Hunter S. Thompson, too.

In conclusion - I don't like English literature. I like American literature. I'll read anything with "the American Dream" in the blurb, but always in the negative - Fear And Loathing is described as "a savage journey to the heart of the American Dream", and Death of a Salesman has much the same theme. Maybe I'm just a cynic, but at least I'm not as much of a literary vacuum as I thought.

While I was having all these thoughts, I was becoming increasingly aware of the sunshine. In the last two days, the temperature has leapt eight degrees and there are daffodils and cherry blossom about. Even the railway line through the docks looked curiously washed and clean by sunlight, and by the time I reached Central I was carrying my coat over one arm and wondering vaguely where winter went.

To me, it feels like study leave. Those long hot days where the sun hurts your eyes and the books on the table glare at you in their own special inanimate way, the way the daffodils are superimposed on a background of sweltering examination halls and the weeks that stretch out afterwards, sunlit but aimless.

That is me. To Hannah, who seems to suffer from some form of SAD, the sunlight and spring are an excuse to skip with happiness. And some of that happiness is definitely contagious. We didn't skip, but we went happily around the city, shopping. I got a rainbow belt to go with those jeans I got in London (they keep falling off me, which is embarrassing) from the Bead Shop in Whitechapel, and Hannah bought shoes. While we were in that general area, we also got a fantastic birthday present for balthaser, but I suspect we both just wanted an excuse to buy it.

And after that, we went up to Starbucks on Bold Street and sat on one of the chessboard tables between the ground and first floors, looking out through the glass at the street outside (I forget what it's called, but it runs parallel to Bold Street). She had hot chocolate, I had mocha, we both had whipped cream, and we sat there until closing. Hannah saw Peter Pan last night and told me earnestly that she believed in fairies while I giggled. I will forever associate the phrase with shoebox!Remus. "I do believe in commas, I do, I do!" along with "FUNNIFICATION IS NOT A WORD MOONY oh how the mighty have fallen."

During this dialogue, a woman stepped out of a gallery on the other side of the road (gallery of photgraphy, apparently; I'd never seen or heard of it before and neither had Hannah). We watched her through the glass, walking up the pavement, and after a moment she stopped, took out her camera and took a picture of us sitting there with our drinks. She smiled up at us before leaving. I don't suppose we'll ever know what that was about.

At six o'clock they chucked us out. A barista came to hurry us up, then disappeared. The place seemed empty, so I kissed her by the glass and decided there and then not to care who was watching. If the barista was anywhere about, fab for him, I'm sure he just got a long-held fantasy fulfilled, and we wandered dreamily out onto the street, where it was beginning to get dark and the Radio City tower was lit up.

And that was my day. Hannah has gone out with Clemily and some others to Liverpool tonight - I wondered what was the motive behind not inviting me and Colleen, heh - and I'm sure they're savouring the night life as I write this. In the meantime, I've ambled home in a relative daze and now I'm going to finish reading in a perfectly good mood.

Comments

[just-the-ash.livejournal.com]

That's my own problem with driving. I overthink it. Oh my, here I am struggling to control a 2000-pound metal thing down a narrow strip of land with tons of other moving things on it, and the least lapse in concentration could kill me and other people. Oh boy.

If you want to talk about American lit, blather away at me. I would say "Been there, done that, got the t-shirt," but actually, my t-shirt from the creative-writing graduate school association is of... Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wells Wilde.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Exactly. How people take driving lightly, I will never know.

Talking of American lit, can you advise on what else I might like? I'm at something of a loose end, away from the library, but I can note stuff down for later. And were those really his middle names?

[just-the-ash.livejournal.com]

He claimed those were his middle names. Whether they were has been debated.

Since you're on this American Dream kick (which On the Road is certainly part of), read Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie if you haven't already. I teach it alongside Death of a Salesman because they have many, many themes in common (and also long, philosophical stage directions, rather more pompous in Williams than in Miller). The only film versions of those two plays worth seeing, IMNSHO, both contain John Malkovich: the Malkovich/Dustin Hoffman Salesman, and the Menagerie in which Malkovich plays opposite Joanne Woodward and Karen Allen. If you can get over looking at Allen and seeing her as Marion Ravenwood, hard-drinking inamorata of Indiana Jones, it's great.

Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, corny and ethnically condescending as it is, also provides an interesting take on the whole thing. The film of it is deeply flawed -- Puerto Ricans were played by Natalie Wood, daughter of Russian immigrants, and George Chakiris, a Greek, and the whole opening sequence depends on the Broadway musical's conceit that here come all these gangstas, and then OMG BALLET! But the ways in which it's flawed are still interesting. (Trivia: The first words spoken in the film, "Beat it," gave Michael Jackson a title for his album. He wanted the video of that song to be reminiscent of the movie.)

Also, add John Steinbeck's East of Eden and Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy to the American Dream pile. Kerouac's Dharma Bums is more interesting to me than OTR, because in the absence of women around whom to be misogynist, the Kerouac!Stu thinks about more interesting things -- and Japhy Ryder (i.e. Gary Snyder) is more mysterious, and hence more compelling, to me than poor crazy troubled Neal Cassady/"Dean Moriarity."

Now, if you'd been talking of poetry, I'd suggest looking at the ways in which Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman (who never met) transformed what they'd learned from the English Metaphysical poets, particularly Hopkins.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

To the list above I would add, off the top of my head, John Dos Passos's USA trilogy, if you're feeling ambitious. He's awfully underappreciated these days, in my opinion.

[shipperkitten.livejournal.com]

I guess she's out with Cl because the Emily part is at home. Having spent three nights out last weekend and not getting home until 9pm every day this week, Emily is going to bed now so she will be alive enough tomorrow to function.

[shipperkitten.livejournal.com]

and I'm sure they're savouring the night life as I write this.

People go out to Liverpool before 10pm? *boggles*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess not. It was just a way of speaking. Did they make it back alive, I wonder...

[shipperkitten.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard anything from them, avoiding LJ because I haven't seen the F1 yet (it was on at the crack of dawn and grandma is coming round for lunch with its ritual race-watching so I didn't get up). May phone Clare soon to see what is happening tomorrow (I am taking her laptop shopping!) so will report back. ;)

Have you watched BSG yet? Clare and Hannah need to have the CDs so we can get them hooked! ;)

[milieus.livejournal.com]

That's my problem with driving too! And the whole "turning and staying even an inch in my own lane" thing, but psh.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You're sixteen, right? How old do you have to be to drive over there?

[milieus.livejournal.com]

The laws vary from state to state. I think the ages are usually lower in the southeast (where I live) and the middle of the country, probably remnants of the agricultural tradition. The law here in Gerogia used to be fifteen for a permit, and sixteen for a full license. However, they've changed it for those born 1990 and after: sixteen for a permit, seventeen for a license. I made pre-1990 by twelve months! Woo.

However, in Georgia you're requited to take an "Alcohol and Drug Prevention" class before getting a full license, usually given along with health class at school. I have a scheduling problem with finding room for the health class, so when I turned fifteen I didn't see the point in bothering to get my permit then and there. I finally got my permit on Dec. 30th of this year, so I can get my license starting this New Year's Eve. What a date, eh?

That was probably more than required but now you're...um...well informed?

[minkboylove.livejournal.com]

Ah, you've found HST. :-) Wasn't he just a bastard with the English language?

Look out for Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 and Eighties social commentary Generation of Swine. Both fantastic reads. The one worth really looking out for though, in my opinion, is Hell's Angels - one of his early works and possibly his first published book. It's very interesting to see the young Thompson as a dilligent and sometimes almost workmanlike journalist who occasionally indulges in the flashes of verbal ferocity that turned him into a legend.

[amchau.livejournal.com]

*points* *swoons* Goon Show icon!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yes! He's compelling, somehow.

Thanks for the recommendations; I do think a trip to the library is in order. Was everything of note written twenty-plus years ago, or did he go on writing until his death?

[bekkypk.livejournal.com]

Oh dear... It's a generally agreed thing between me and the boi that I think far too much... and I just picked up my provisional forms yesterday... oh dear >_<
xx

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Good luck! If it helps, you couldn't be a worse driver than me. :)

[bekkypk.livejournal.com]

Awww *hugs* I hope i'm okay. At presant i don't know what's what in the car though. O_o;; Do they tell you or just expect you to know?
xx

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

They tell you, don't worry. If they don't just sit there and look intelligent. :)

[bekkypk.livejournal.com]

XD FLOOR IT!!!! :D
xx

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Maybe that's my problem with driving. Actually, though, I think I may be the opposite: I don't think at all on the road. I get so hyperfocused on one detail (usually the asphalt directly in front of me, or the speedometer) that I ignore important things like, oh, traffic signals, other cars, and pedestrians. Oops.

I haven't read Fear and Loathing, because I saw the movie and was turned off by it, but what I have read of Thompson intrigues me. It's interesting that you say you like Beat-era literature too, because he's always reminded me of that. I like it, I think it's often very evocative and admirable, but I often don't get it. The aesthetic is alien to me--the spontaneity of it, the overflow.

Um. I don't know what the point of this comment was. Have you read The Great Gatsby? (Speaking of the American dream.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

*g* Have you got your license, or is this an ongoing problem?

Maybe Beat-era appeals to me because I am in such awe of people who can write (and think and behave) like that; the way they just throw some stuff over their shoulders and race off to the sunset with such narrative passion. I've read Gatsby, but I was younger then and don't think I got it, exactly; I might attempt a re-read over the next week or so.

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

I've never taken the test for my license, although I'm sure I would fail. I have my permit, but I never use it. I don't want to drive. It makes me too nervous.

[alohomoron.livejournal.com]

Hello, I randomly clicked on your name from a comment you left in pinkishmew's livejournal and saw your post so felt COMPELLED to comment to suggest that you read, if you have not done so already, 'American Psycho' by Bret Easton Ellis and 'Thin Skin' by Emma Forrest. They're both books that look at the American dream and show how, underneath it all, everything can be falling apart. I really enjoyed them, anyway.

Also - much love for the SBP icon.

*pootles off*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

This one is my favourite sbp icon. *points* Too cute.

Thanks for the recs! I certainly will look out for those two. I don't know why this particular sub-genre is so appealing to me, but it really does; something about the cracks showing behind the facade of the dream.

barstow

[enguarde.livejournal.com]

i absolutely adore fear and loathing. I gave my copy to a friend to read last year and have heard nothing of it since. I get so excited when people readthe books that I love, I am glad that you are reading it.

i had a really weird dream last night (I know it is the most awfully boring thing to hear somebodies dream, but) where I was in merchants in my dressing gown, and you appeared and we went on that libraryharrypotter trail thing that you set up. And I thought Mrs Mills was in front of me in that purple suit and the uberhair so I tapped her and she turned around and it looked like the crypt keeper (you then pointed out to me that this was the new headmistress).

apart from that, the decor was changed to be absolutely tacky and white and disgusting. Apart from a rickety blue staircase besides the one going upt o the rs rooms. I dont know what this means but have they done this? I am quite distressed about it xx

Re: barstow

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I've finished it now, and the sheer love for it remains. Again, I can't articulate the appeal, but it's out there and shamelessly outrageous and maybe that's it - the utter disregard of boundaries, both in life and literature.

(Read it long enough and you start talking like it; run on sentences and flamboyant use of adjectives all over the shop.)

That dream is very cohesive. I wouldn't say she looks like the crypt keeper exactly, but she has inherited the purple suits and eighties bouffant hair. The stairs towards the RS rooms remain untouched but the decor everywhere else is tacky yellow. Disgusting is certainly the word.

It's good to hear from you again. :) x