Resolved: Suffering makes you legitimate

Writing November 2007

I’ll start this by reading a passage from the Aeschylus play, Agamemnon--
"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."

Real anguish isn’t BS like your parents not buying you a car. Real anguish fucks with a person’s belief in the goodness of life. People who suffered have the potential to better understand human nature. Through pain, they’ve been exposed to their own breaking points and limitations. That’s what pain brings—unbiased self-knowledge, where your façade has been torn away, and you must stare at your real self.

Look at the people of Liberia, they just suffered two civil wars in about 10 years. There, it is said that every family had a son that was part of a militia, and a daughter that had been raped by a militiaman. This was suffering at its most extreme. Child soldiers, cannibalism, 200,000 dead. When these people suffered, they acted in horrific ways, which highlighted their most basic desires and instincts.

If you have not suffered, you have not had the chance to mature. The suffering know how vulnerable their lives are, and what they themselves are capable of. They understand the world to be a potential sham. Therefore, rather than living in spiritual muck, some of them attempt to find a meaning to life. Those who succeed in this have the potential to affect the world more than any one else could because they have a full understanding of the world.

Look at people like current Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former political prisoner who is now attempting to reform the country.

Abraham Lincoln, who dealt with depression his entire life, and yet saved the USA.

Malcolm X, the son of a minister killed by white supremacists,
Malcolm X who spent a considerable amount of the early portion of his life in detention centers and prison, and later became one of the last, great American heroes.

Finally, look at Cervantes,
who fought in a war,
crippled his left hand,
lived as a slave in Algiers,
then later, once freed from slavery,
became bankrupt,
went to prison because of money problems,
and had much trouble in living as a writer
until he wrote the legendary first novel, Don Quixote.

And in the prologue of this work, he acknowledged that his life of suffering shaped the story itself. This novel would go on to shape all of literature, and certainly influenced the style of our tongue-in-cheek literary group, the Philolexian Society.

Thank you all for listening.

A Brief Analysis of Three Literary Works

THE BIBLE
Well, as the Torah moves along, it drags on painfully. But the point of the books, of course, is to be a record. Anyway, the thing I love about it, in a literary sense, is that it doesn’t explicate itself. It asks the reader to analyze the passages because all it does, when it tells its story, is declare the details. It’s like Hemingway’s bare-bone style, but not as boring.

I believe that the best literature is the literature that simply paints a picture with words. “So-and-so did this, and this resulted from so-and-so’s actions.” It shows what the characters do and believe, but it doesn’t outline. In a way, the best authors are like God—as you read their stories, you don’t know what it is they are up to, exactly, but it’s definitely some ambitious shit.

Genesis, Judges, and the books of Samuel are among the most awesome examples of storytelling. I have written stories based on stories from these books, and I promise you I will write more based on these stories.

In the book of Job, God says some of the most mean, funny shit I’ve ever heard.

“The Golden Rule” is the most fool-proof rule ever. If everybody followed it, then all atrocities would stop…I think…the problem lies in how people interpret this rule…this is something to get back to, during a future entry…

Parallelism may be my new favorite literary technique.

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THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

- Awesome. Concise. About 260 words, and still one of the best writings ever, at least in English. Again: I love parallelism and repetition.

- Repetition/allusion/quotes/parallelism works best when each reoccurrence produces a different effect from the last.

When Lincoln says, “we cannot dedicate…we cannot consecrate…we cannot hallow…” each reiteration builds the power of his lines. And notice the word change. The three words (dedicate, consecrate, hallow) can all be used in the same place, though their meanings differ in slight but significant manners. Therefore, notice how he uses them successively. And with each word change, a picture forms about how important the sacrifices were. Each word adds a demension to his description of the effects of the soldiers' deaths. So, even though he pretty much says the same thing three times, each time produces a different effect.

When you write, don’t repeat for the sake of repetition. If you repeat the word “peaches” once, the second time must provide an effect different from the effect of the first. Otherwise, the second time might as well be cut. But if any reiteration can cause a different effect from the earlier statements, then the repetition carries real weight. To see what I mean, read this poem I wrote:

Fruits on a tree.
Peaches.
A woman.
Peaches.

See what I mean? Context means everything.

And, yes, I am horny.

***

CATCH-22


Profound. It’s definitely one of the most funny things I’ve ever come across, but what makes it’s humor striking is that it’s almost done about of desperation. As if no one could bare reading it unless it were funny. You see, it’s also one of the most bitter things I’ve come across. He's irreverent and respectful at the same time.

Great use of repetition. Heller repeats himself a lot, but never bores me. Context, context, context.

I feel that this book is pretty much beyond a serious attempt of analysis at this time.

I plan on rereading the whole thing by the time I’m thirty. Also, the Bible. And maybe Huck Finn.

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Irrelevant notes (perhaps the title of my autobiography)
- I only break my own rules when I’m writing for the sake of writing. But when I polish myself, I’m a freaking perfectionisto.
- “to be” verbs suck.
- The subjunctive sucks.
- Negatives suck. Never use them…d’oh.
- When people overuse “to be” verbs, the subjunctive, and negatives, they are (d’oh) being (d’oh) lazy.