Author: pierce

This is coming from having read up through 261. Still thinking about the use of genres as I read the novel, and as I write this, and was trying to come up with additional ways to look at the  constant references.  One of the most compelling reasons I came up with for them has to… Continue reading Genre Allusions and the Desire for Moral Simplification

At this point I have only read up through page 217 of EL&IC, so I don’t have a full view of Tuesday’s reading to apply to this post.  Instead, I want to look closely at one section, the one headed “Why I’m Not Where You Are” (208-216).  Ignoring for now the red ink corrections, I… Continue reading Safari in Dresden

“You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget” (12) The Van Der Kolk / McFarlane reading provides an interesting lens to view McCarthy’s Road through;  obviously, sources of potential trauma are ubiquitous in this narrative.  It seems to me that there are two possible avenues in applying the… Continue reading The Road: Trauma of the Psyche, Trauma in the Landscape

I wrote this out in word and so the formatting is slightly FUBAR (SFUBAR) here. I am going to focus on the scene where the father makes a lamp from the bottle and oil / gasoline, up until the point where he breaks / is breaking the hasp of the trap door (136-137).  ALSO, replete… Continue reading The Road Screenplay: The Lamp and Breaking the Hasp

For my optional blog post make up extravaganza, (one post can be an extravaganza), I am going to look forward to The Road while also looking back (a smidge) at Parable of the Sower.  I actually read the entirety of The Road last night, but there shouldn’t be any spoilers in here. I want to… Continue reading Embrace Your Inner Cannibal! or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Eat Dead People

Lauren’s hyperempathy is something that could be glossed over, potentially, as a means of establishing reader sympathy, and furthering Lauren’s strength and vulnerability as a protagonist.  However, this “delusion” of hers begs further inquiry, in light of the seriousness of the novel’s other themes.  Lauren is gifted with a level of foresight which allows her… Continue reading Hyperempathy, Religion and Community

At one point in the novel, Jack says that he admires Wilder for his ability to get caught up in the sheer sensory pleasure of things, and then happily forget them in the wake of another new stimulus.  This quality of Wilder’s is one of the chief reasons that Babette and Jack turn to him… Continue reading Wilder, Mink, and the Fear of Death

Reading Lucifer’s Hammer, and noting the centrality of media to the plot (first half anyways), I am struck by the fact that the book conducts itself more in the aesthetic of a film than a novel. There is a strong emphasis on spectacle, which a few decades of summer movies has told us is predominantly… Continue reading Lucifer’s Sundae