John Tooke
American Fiction
Blog 4
There is a small dive bar fairly close to my house where, from time to time, I’ll meet a few friends for a drink. The owner is an older man with thin gray hair and glasses. He is very talkative and funny, especially after a couple pitchers. When he is not at the bar, he keeps himself busy by managing two other bars and cruising around with his motorcycle club. One night in particular, a friend and I were talking to him at the bar, as he was buying us drinks. I don’t know how we got on the subject, but the Vietnam War was brought up, and his part in it. He was an infantry soldier during the war and his eyes glazed over with memories as we asked him questions. I kept trying to ask him about how he felt about the response to the war back in the States; what he thought about the music and the art at the time. All he seemed to want to talk about, though, was being in “the shit” and doing drugs with his outfit.
My landlord and he brother came over to the place I was renting one day to fix a broken drainage pipe under the house. I had the day off, so I thought that I would help them out (they were quite old, and I knew that it would take them hours to do the work. I wanted to speed the process up). My landlord, cursing and cutting pipe, ended up having to go to the hardware store to get some PVC glue, and left his brother there with me. We started up casual conversation about all the generic things in life, like the weather and the news, until he associated a conflict in the Middle East with “Nam.” Turns out, he too was in the war, and we focused on the subject for a time. Like the bar owner, he seemed to have little interest in what was happening at home and focused on his experience in the jungle.
While reading Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, I though of the two vets. I even used their faces as the characters in the book. I noted that the memories of the war were carried with the veterans, and all that I have met, seemed delighted at the opportunity to talk of them. It seems as though there is something important and sacred about going through that type of experience. It is one you would want to share and one you would not want to forget, however awful it may be. These experiences made the men who they are today, for the better or worse, and I think they feel a certain obligation to tell their stories. In Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada, a character tells another that a man’s story is his “gris-gris,” meaning, in a way, that it is his soul, or his essence. I believe it is the same with these veterans.
John Tooke
American Fiction
Blog 3
“So he entered his heritage. He ate its bitter fruit…” (110). This is a line from William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses. Roth, ashamed of the history behind him, has no other choice than to dine at the table and sleep in the bed of his brothers. This shame is not his own, but he is forced to deal with it. It is his race. It is the “bitter fruit” of his skin color, and the “heritage” he cannot ignore. He is not allowed to. What really is “race” though? Is it a legitimate classification of people, and if so, what can it be based on? Surely, skin color cannot be sufficient enough to group a mass of people together as one. Merriam-Webster defines race as “a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock” and, “a class or kind of people unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics” (1). The first suggests a more genealogical and geographical look at a type of people, whereas the second focuses on the cultural aspects of a community. This is a very outdated method of classification. Race is simply a construct of a society that is attempting to organize its people into neat and orderly piles.
To be a little cheesy, are we not all part of the human race? This statement may seem a bit optimistic, but it is an obvious one (unless, of course, you are a Hammerskin or a Black Nationalist). Anthropology has advanced to a point where many misconceptions about the origins of humanity can be put to rest, but we still seem to be living in a world bent on recognizing the differences among its inhabitants. The easiest observation is the color of one’s skin, so naturally that is how people can be best classified, right?
Let’s go back to the definitions of race in the opening paragraph. The first talks of a family tree type structure. The problem here is that everyone’s family is a jumble of different nationalities, skin colors, and “stocks.” So can a person be classified by the end result of that mixture? It seems to be so. The second looks at the cultures of a people; their lifestyles and habits. This is an even less reasonable way to catalog people. There really is no specific type of person interested in a particular type of lifestyle. True, there may be more black people interested in a certain way, or a large number of white people leaning towards a likeminded type of behavior, but to classify people as such is an oversimplification. The 21st century is an extremely diverse one. With the internet and specifically, social networking, we have the ability to look intimately at different cultures and at what they each have to offer; greatly broadening our potential to expand our interests.
Race, however defined, seems like a needless generalization because we live in a world where these types of limiting boundaries are dissolving and soon, perhaps, classification won’t even be a necessity. The next time a survey asks your race, draw a box, check it, and beside it write “all of the above.” This is probably more accurate than any of the given choices!
“Race - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary.” Dictionary and Thesaurus - Merriam-Webster Online. Web. 22 Mar. 2011. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/race>.
Faulkner, William. Go Down, Moses. New York: Vintage, 1990. Print.
John Tooke
American Fiction
Blog 2
In Crèvecoeur’s Letters from American Farmer, the author describes America as if it were a utopia, comparing it to the wasteland of England. Land, opportunity, health, and the freedom that this brings is very much outlined in the letters. There was a certain satisfaction for the farmers at the time in cultivating the land, growing and raising their own food, and living a kind of lifestyle very different from their British counterparts. Nowadays, I believe that that kind of satisfaction still exists, but not nearly to the extent that it is established in the letters.
21st century farmers have it rough. The government is constantly on their backs either encouraging more production or less, and the quality of the food being produced is getting worse and worse. Pesticides, fertilizer, and preservatives are commonplace to ensure fast growth and extended life to meet the increasing demands of consumers who, for the most part are ignorant to the process. Just look at the produce in the grocery stores. Many of the fruits and vegetables can be compared to dyed candles. Even so called “organic” foods are not extremely different than what one would otherwise buy at a supermarket, and I suspect that the label is more of a marketing tool than a reliable description.
Grocery stores and supermarkets offer convenience. It is much easier to go to the neighborhood grocer than to seek out a farmer’s market, or produce stands. Even still, in crowded cities, “local” can mean nearly out of state. Thankfully, people have begun to compensate for the lack of locally grown food by simply growing it themselves. Home gardens have increased in popularity it seems, over the past few years. It doesn’t get more local than walking out to your back yard to make a salad.
My parents are among the home gardening community even though they live in a relatively urban part of town. My last visit to their home, I picked bags of grapefruit and tangerines from the trees and gathered a basket of eggs from the chicken house. I also left with a jar of homemade jam and jar of honey from their beehive. In a month or so, I expect to walk away with some wine made from their mulberry tree. In home gardens, like my parent’s, you know what is going into the food and you know where from were its coming.
The term “farmer” has taken on a new meaning, I believe. In Crèvecoeur’s time, the farmers were independently functioning business men that relied on their own techniques and hard work (or that of the slaves) to make a living with the land. Now, many “farmers” are corporations burdened by the government and consumers and trying to pump out as much food as possible to satisfy their schedule. Crèvecoeur’s vision of the American farmer is still present, though, in the local producers and the increasingly popular independent home gardeners.
John Tooke
American Fiction
Blog 1
It is about midday, and I am poised on a cement ledge that separates Riverside from the St. John’s River. I come to this particular spot often to relax on sunny days; losing myself in the soft rhythm of small, tea-colored waves. In the distance, the geometry of downtown is a distorted reflection in the dark mass and the high sun scatters across the moving surface. Sounds seem distant and muffled, as if absorbed in the tide. On occasion, a fish appears airborne and I can see its blank eyes before it slaps back under. I reflect on my experience with the river which, as a Jacksonville native, I have come to know well.
As a child, I would venture out in the same river with my Grandfather to fish. In the summer, he would go out nearly everyday; leaving right before sunset and returning in the evening. Fishing was never my thing, but I’d entertain him, from time to time, by coming along. The boat ride out to the “spots” was always my favorite part of these day trips. My eyes would water in the wind and the spray from the river would coat my face. Some days we would catch many fish and others we would return nearly empty-handed, but that was not the point. To be out on the river, away from the hustle of life; where school and duties where put in the back of the mind and worries could wait until docking was, as I came to recognize, a strong attraction to the sport. I didn’t have to think about cleaning my room or Johnny at school making fun of my shoes. I was separated. I set aside my life on sturdy ground for the uncertainty of the water.
“Is that the appeal?” I ask myself fifteen years later, “are we all so unhappy with our lives that we need constant escape?” Melville seemed to touch on this idea early on in Moby Dick. He describes the masses flocking to the shoreline, drawn by some unknown force, as if inspired by, not want, but need. Ishmael is no exception, who finds himself “going to sea” when he begins “to grow hazy about the eyes” (1). Is it the sense of adventure in leaving the predictability of ground, and a perhaps a mundane life, that attracts a man to the water, or is it the urge to put things in perspective in something large and indifferent? I believe that it could be both. Day to day life can sometimes become a changeless ritual that, though things become quite hectic, puts us in a state of familiar comfort. Going out on a boat, or even to the water’s edge takes us away from what is normal and forces us to acknowledge the insignificance of the problems and troubles that tend to grind away at our lives.
So, to answer my own question, I do not think that the case that we need to escape unhappiness is the draw to the shoreline, but the comfort in the idea that the rat race can be left on shore, even if only for a while, while we focus on the importance of something larger than ourselves. Sitting now, looking over the river, I can see what I think Ishmael saw. An escape? yes but not from unhappiness, necessarily, but from the things on shore that work to distract us from basic human vitality.
1. Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. New York: Bantam, 1981. 593. Print.
