A Different Look At Literature

           Franco Moretti’s article “Graphs, Maps, Trees” takes a look at literature that we are not used to seeing. He takes a very analytical, almost scientific approach to literary history. Some of the advantages of this article are that it lays out a very detailed history of the trends of literature. It uses graphs and figures to give a picture of what Moretti is explaining. Using graphs is helpful in that it gives us a visual image of the decline and rise of novels throughout history. It makes the article easier to understand because there is hard data with specific dates and number of novels per year. This gives a very clear picture of how novels changed in abundance through the years. He also gives graphs of the novel genres as well, adding more information to the history of novels. By giving dates he also compares novel production to events in history, helping us see the correlation between historical events and novels. Such as in Japan when novel production declined during time of political censorship.

            Some drawbacks to this analytical approach to literature is that it is just facts, numbers and dates. Yes, sometimes novels and history went together, but that is not the only thing that was influencing the authors. Sometimes literature tries to oppose the thinking of the time, and bring about social change. Some people can be turned off by all the graphs and figures; they just would rather read words only. Moretti even points out that the amount of literature is too much to study, only certain pieces can be considered, so some generalizations have to be used.

            Another interdisciplinary project could be to study the effects that reading certain types of literature has on the brain. Studies could be done to see how different genres of literature affect the brain. Then studies could be done to compare reading a book to watching a movie and the different changes that happen in the brain during both activities. It would be interesting to see of there would be similar changes during reading as when watching a movie. I think reading would be more activating to the brain because when reading you have to create the images in your mind, and movie watching creates the images for you.

            Another way to approach Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story could be to examine the effects that having only textual conversations with others would affect a person’s psyche. In the book “verbaling” is a rare thing, so to see how not talking actually affects the brain would be a good study to conduct.

M Butterfly

            In the movie M Butterfly gender and ethnicity play a big role in how the characters interact with each other. Rene Gallimard is a Frenchman in China in the 1960’s. He begins an affair with Song Liling after he becomes intrigued by her performance in the play Madame Butterfly.  In the play Song plays an Asian woman that falls in love with a white man that leaves her. She is so in love that she kills herself to rid the pain of the loss. This idea appealed to Rene because he was a white westerner that would love to have the perfect woman fall for him. Rene starts to believe that Song is his own butterfly, seeing Song as the perfect woman.

            Rene is either unaware or purposefully ignoring the fact that women were not allowed to perform in plays at that time in China. For in fact, Song is a man, and throughout their entire affair Rene never realized it. Rene believed that Song, his butterfly, was the perfect woman, and he was so in love with the idea that he failed to notice the signs that Song was a man. Song never undressed in front of Rene, but he convinced Rene that Chinese women were very modest. Song made up many things about Chinese women, all which Rene believed and that added to his romanticized image of Song. A good line from the movie is when Song tells a government official “only a man knows how a woman should act.” This shows that women were inferior to men, and that men dictate how women are supposed to act. As Song acted out a woman, he embodied the quote so well that Rene believed his butterfly was perfect. Gender roles are generalized, women are modest and obedient, and men are lustful and ignorant. Rene is blinded by his own lust and grandiose idea that he had the perfect woman. Song, being a man, could easily act out the perfect woman because he knows how men think women should act. Unfortunately for Rene, Song was a great actor.

            Ethnicity is also another topic in M Butterfly. The Eastern Asian culture is seen as submissive to Western culture. Song is a representation of the Chinese seeming to need Western culture to save them. Rene feels as if he is protecting Song, and is going to rescue her and bring her to France, where everything is better. Song, on the other hand, is perfectly happy in China and needs no rescuing. The West feels like a big brother to the East, needing to watch over and protect. Song portrays the Chinese as being very traditional and modest, another generalization of Eastern culture. The traditional and modesty of the Chinese is very similar to the modesty that Song portrays as a Chinese woman. The gender and ethnic roles that Rene and Song fit into are one of the main issues that this movie addresses.

Literature in Super Sad True Love Story

           In Gary Shteyngart’s bok Super Sad True Love Story the theme of literature in the social online networking era is depicted in many ways. Books are now obsolete; everyone carries around apparats where information is a moment away. Lenny is one of the few people left that actually reads physical books. Many young people think “that books smell”(52).  Therefore Lenny uses Pine-Sol on his books to make sure that they do not smell. There seems to be disgust towards books from the new generation. It stands out because I have never thought that a book smells, usually a new book actually smells good. I can see a similarity in today’s youth. Not very many people read for enjoyment anymore. For many of the youth the only books they read are the ones that they have to for school. Lenny has a large collection of books that he cherishes. He wants to make books relevant again someday. Even now books are on the way out, with online texts and eReaders, you can read books without ever turning a page. This passage relates to the theme of the novel as a whole in that the youth are disconnected from the past and find books as disgusting artifacts.

            Another passage in SSTLS that relates to literature and literacy is on page 144. Eunice is talking to Precious Pony about the time when she saw Lenny reading a book. She was so surprised that he was reading an actual physical book that she did not even know how to react. So she pretended that she did not even notice.  What surprised Eunice a lot was that he was reading every word of the book, not just scanning it for important information. This shows that not only do the youth not read books; they do not even fully read the articles on their apparats. They just scan the words for things that stand out. This reminds me of today, with websites like sparknotes.com that just summarize entire books in a few paragraphs. It allows students today to not have to read a book for a class, and instead just get a summary, which unfortunately is usually enough to get by. Eunice also sees Lenny as being really smart because he is able to read a book. It seems that many people in SSTLS are illiterate and are unable to read at all. So anyone that reads books is very intelligent and somewhat “old-school” in their way of life.

            A short thought from Lenny about his friend Noah and the news brings up another idea of literature (159). Lenny reminds Noah that some time ago, reporters actually went out into the field to verify the stories that they were reporting on. Noah acted as if Lenny was an old man from a time long ago. In a world where reporters do not even need to verify a story, what can be trusted as true news? Also in a world of apparats, if a reporter took the time to verify a story by the time he published it, the story would be old and no one would care. In the age of instant information there is no time for stories to be verified, and the people just trust most of the news they get off of apparat streams. It seems that most of the news in SSTLS is in the form of opinionated rants. News today is opinionated, but it is not over the top like many of the streams in SSTLS. This relates to the theme of the entire book in that society has taken a turn for the worst. The news is unverified and it is the best that is there.