More on The Following Story

Within The Following Story one of the most beautiful parts of the book is Maria Zeinstra class lecture which is sat in on by our main character who is depicted as Socrates throughout the book. Socrates is completely transfixed with Maria who seems to be completely uninterested in him (except for vengeful reasons) this is proven in the way he sees her completely mundane lecture this is shown in the end paragraph on page 40.

"'Now she is gnawing a hole in the carcass." And so she was. The excavator, mother egg-bearer, lover, murderess, mama, chewed a lump out of the ball of rat ad regurgitated it into the hole she had extracted it from. 'Now she's making a food trough.' Carrion pellet, egg chamber food trough."

Such disgusting and uninteresting descriptions are used in the lecture yet to Socrates he might as well be hearing angels singing.

More fantastic quotes from The Following Story are...

"Life's a bucket of shit htat keeps being added to, and we have to drag it around with us till hte end." (p44)

"I wanted to tell her that, too, but unfortunately conversatons consist for hte most part of things one does not say." (p51)

"(Father Fermi: 'But you as a classical scholar out to know that death is a woman')" (p112)

"That is another thing I have learned: when women are out to get something, they are capable of mobilizing foreces that men, for all their so-called strenght of purpose, cannoth match." (p22)

Don't read this blog!

I woke up completely perplexed, at a loss, lost, confused, and freaked out at myself yesterday morning because I had awoken to tears on my face. What the fruck was what came out of my mouth immediately- yes fruck. I was crying, blubbering, mourning, weeping, sobbing, boo hooing with absolutely no reason!? Yes, yes I am a girl, but regardless this is still very out of the ordinary, a phenomenon, a joke! If I had been watching lets say The Notebook and glanced down to see tears falling to my lap I confess I wouldn't be very surprised, but this!? I quickly, hurriedly, and rapidly tried to remember my dream to hopefully prove to myself that I was not loony, crazy, nutty, wacko, one flew over the cuckoo's nest! Yet nothing came to mind! No dream, nata, zip, nilche, completely dreamless! I was going to have to be checked into the nut hut! Tears but no reason! Not even a crazy, psycho girl reason! This is going to be a very anti climatic blog but I still have no reason! I must be dieing, I decided and went and made some coffee and went to the Cat versus Griz Basketball game to which I nerdily brought along my T.S. Elliot book of poems just in case I saw Professor Sexson so I could... flash him?

Professor Sexson's Reply.

This is what Professor Sexson replied with...


Abby: If I were you, I would put this series of emails into your blog, showing how you had resolved to engage this impossible book for the "A" it would bring, and then actually confronted a single page and then had a revelation about how "terrible" High Brow is. This isn't silly at all; it's a compelling account and an honest one of a confrontation with the most high of "high brews." It would be an entertaining and educational read for your peers----ms

Random Burst triggered from The Following Story.

"Once I was at Alonso Carnero's side I had forgotten what I wanted to say. All I could come up with was: 'What are you thinking about?' He shrugged and said: 'About the fish in the sea.' And Naturally that made me think of them too, of all those unseen, unresponsive life-forms in the thousands of meters beneath us. I shuddered, and went to my cabin." (p74) The Following Story by Cees Nooteboom

This is why I can never go too far out into the ocean (swimming that is) or into a lake for that matter. Call me a wimp but there is nothing more annoying than enjoying a nice swim and having a wisp of disgusting sea weed come up caught in your toes. Gag!!! This may also have something to do with why I hate eating meat besides fish and haven't done so in four years now. Lets say you sit down to Christmas dinner to have your nice meal of fried chicken and an array of other fried things- if your family is Southern of course- and you take a large, tasty bite of your fried chicken only to find yourself spitting it up into your napkin because- of course- there is ANIMAL FAT in your food!!! I am no Peda extremist, it is just a pet peeve that has driven me to the point of being unhealthy (vegetarian). Another thing that is as upsetting as sea weed getting caught in my toes (the unknown mysteries of the sea that is- it all ties in), and unwanted animal parts in my mouth is when you are pitter pattering along in your comfy socks on a nice wood floor and you suddenly step right in a puddle of water- that my peers, is worse than animal fat, and the scary mysteries of the ocean combined.

James Joyce can go kick rocks.

These are a series of two emails that I sent to Professor Sexon, the first one I was full of hope for the book Finnegan's Wake and then after sending the email I proceeded to 'crack the book' only to find 'BINK BANK BONK' in capital letters in the middle of the random page I had flipped to. 'BINK BANK BONK' really? Don't get me wrong it's funny but its almost mocking at the same time. Stupid James Joyce has written 'BINK BANK BONK' and I now have to find a deeper meaning of it? Yes I am having trouble with just the first page, so no I most likely will not be reading Finnegan's Wake for this class and, as a person lacking religious interest, I find it astonishing that I, in my heart of hearts, know I would much rather read the Bible.


HOPE:

Professor Sexson,

You said in the course description that anyone who could read Finnegan's Wake and do so in a way that satisfies you would receive an automatic A in the class. Now I am not committing to anything quite yet because if I did I would most definitely be pushed to the edge, purposefully wreck my car, and be found crying whilst on hallucinogenics circling the book in the middle of the road. However I can't help brainstorming ideas of how I would go out proving to you that I read the book and actually got something from it.
So from what you have mentioned in class I have gathered that there is a little bit of 'everything' in this text from hell-- a little romance, comedy, tragedy, etc. Maybe I could try to find each one of these themes in the book and describe what makes that part of the book whatever theme I claim to see?
Also I could use each day that I have to blog as a summary of whatever pages I have read in the book? Say every 50 or so pages I read I blog them?
Just ideas I wanted to share, I hope I am not wasting your time, I am just having trouble deciding how to go about reading and hopefully somewhat mastering this monster-tard book within the time given.






HOPE CRUSHED:



Professor Sexson,

I just attempted to master a page. ONE PAGE! It was like a different language. I will be reading this same page for the rest of the night trying to understand what it means and it probably means something stupid like 'pass the salt'. I am sorry to bother you again or question your genius but I am curious why you assigned this book? Was it to show us just how terrible High Brow is? I am sure you get a lot of silly e-mails from all your Literature students-- we do like to write-- so I will make this the last of the silly ones.

Thank you again for your time,

Abby Teeter

Kahani

I just Khattam-Shud Haroun and the Sea of Stories, I liked it. The story, as I said before, reminds me to no end of the childish Lemony Snicket books except that there is a happy and satisfying ending in Haroun's adventures and it doesn't go on for thirteen painfully, tiny embarrassing books that I always feel ridiculous buying from the bookstore. However my complaining about the thirteen stupid Snicket books does not mean that I don't think there should be a sequel to the Salman Rushdie novel, maybe just two or three progressive sequels though-- that is a healthy amount. Or another idea-- I saw when I had a little sneak at another students blog-- could be to make a movie of this book! I'm sure it would get slaughtered though, just like the Golden Compass did... O.K. no more listing of my embarrassing juvenile readings.

Glued together by dispair

I'm not sure if anyone else in this class reads embarassing children books, regaurdless I will be the first to confess-- I have read all thirteen or so of Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events books. In doing so have found a lot of similarites between them and Haroun and the Sea of Stories. They both have a humorous morbidity to them that I picked up on in the first paragraph when Salman Rushdie describes the city as being "sad" so sad that the city had forgotten its name. He describes the fish in the "mournful sea" located by the sad city as "glumfish" these glum fish "were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy even though the skies were blue". This is so pathetically sad that you can't help but smile when you read it, I know I did, but the part that actually made my burst out a little squelch of a joyous giggle was when Salman Rushdie describes the shacks that the poor live in...

"The poor lived in tumbledown shacks made of old cardboard boxes and plastic sheeting, and these shacks were glued together by despair. And then there were the super-poor, who had no homes at all."
(p18)

I can't quite put a finger on what makes this so funny, maybe it is how he writes so nonchalent about people living in cardboard shacks that are glued together by dispair, I'm not sure.