Secretary by Gaitskill - 11/14/08

I must say that when I first began to read Secretary by Mary Gaitskill, I did not know what to expect. It seemed like a typical story in which a family that is made of four characters, father (who is sort of a bum), mother (nagging wife and parent) and two children, (one (Donna) somewhat successful and the other (Debby) very lazy and who always has to live life being compared to her sister). However, I was pleasantly surprised because I did not see the twist coming in the text.

Mary Gaitskill manages to mix High culture and Pop culture. She accomplishes this by taking a revered place such as a law office and mixes it promiscuity at the workplace. Debby’s relationship with her boss is one that cannot be easily characterized because it is difficult to tell what both parties are feeling.

All in all, one would say that Gaitskill’s style of text is Transgressive Literary. This is due to the fact that she writes about topics such as Sado Masochism in the work place, which she does in the raw form and with such ease. I look forward to developing her sense of writing by reading other books by her such as Veronica.

Neuromancer & Individuality - 11/06/08

Neuromancer is one text that really explores the impact that technology has had and is having on the human race.  It is very interesting to see how we as human beings are being cloned and are gradually becoming zombies with technology improving on a day to day basis. One would think that with this much enlightenment we would be advanced and be open to try new things or at least seek individuality, however, that is sadly not the case.

We are now being controlled by the very things that we thought would set free. In the text of Neuromancer, we find that Case, the main character, has his nervous system damaged with Russian Mycotoxin to damage his nervous system and this makes him unable to jack into Cyberspace. The same can be said for mainstream media, once they go off script, they are blacklisted.

We as consumers of such media do not pay attention to what controlled and little information we are exposed to. We are told what “they” want us to hear and we do not have a clear alternative to defy them. I was exposed to music by a band Sonic Youth, and I found myself surprised at how much different it was to any kind of music that I had heard on the radio. They sounded and looked different, and the type of music they played was mostly instrumentals and had very few lyrics. In addition to that, the duration of their songs were approximately 7 minutes which is definitely longer than the average song that is played mainstream media.

One interesting discovery I made was that if they are different, interesting and exciting ideas out there, why are we being forced to fit into one mould? A question, I believe that should be answered by each of us.