Comments

I liked this class. I liked the fact that we were discussing the books in class and it was opened to different interpretations. The novel that I would drop is "The Carpenter's Gothic ". Personally I found it hard to follow but one the other hand It was the first time I was reading a novel entirely written in a dialog's style. It is always good to discover writing style that we don't know. Of course,  all I say is from my perspective. There are some passages that I found boring and didn't see the point. The end was also unexpected! the main character died in a way as ridiculous as there persue of the father's money. I think the author wanted to show that by running after money, they forgot to live and pay attention to what really matter.  But the style is still not appealing to me. But i recognize that Gaddis is a virtuoso in writing stories using dialogues.

There is a novel that I would recommend. When I read Kafka I immidietly think about it. The styles are similar.  The novel title is " Foam of The Daze" by Boris Vian ( 1920- 1959).  It is a "Science fiction romance that mingles bittersweet and surrealist absurdity with a melancholic meditation on the frailty of life".  Here I paste the sumary ("Raymond Queneau called it the "most poignant love story of our time," and Julio Cortázar said of its author: "I can't think of another writer who can move me as surreptitiously as Vian does." Boris Vian (1920-1959) was a songwriter, trumpet-player, poet, playwright and pataphysician, but is best remembered for his 1947 novel, Foam of the Daze, a jazz-fueled science-fiction romance that mingles bittersweet and surrealist absurdity with a melancholic meditation on the frailty of life. It tells the tale of Colin, a wealthy young dandy, and Chloe, his newly wedded wife who develops a terrible illness: a water lily in her lung. The supporting cast includes Chick, an obsessive collector of Jean-Sol Partre memorabilia; Colin's libertine manservant Nicolas, a Jeeves for the jazz-age; the philosopher Jean-Sol Partre himself, Vian's rib-poking tribute to his friend Jean-Paul Sartre and the pianocktail: a cocktail-mixing piano whose individual notes are tuned to liqueurs that mix incredible cocktails. Michel Gondry's film adaptation of the novel, to star Audrey Tautou, will begin production in 2012. " )

The reason why I recommend it is that Vian uses his unique style to talk about issues of society. It is a postmodern novel. It critics society and make fun of the rules using things like metamorphosis, different dimension like in an oneiric sphere. The story is timeless. This novel regroups the theme of all the novel that we have read in class ( racism, alienation, prejudice, religion, dehumanization, romance etc...) It uses tales and true events and true Characters, like people in real life for instance you can see the allusion to the Philosopher Jean- Paul Sartre ( Jean-Sol Partre) in the novel. I think a class would have a lot to say about the novel and would enjoy to discover Boris Vian style.