Thursday, April 9, 2009
Fast pace...
The part of this book that stood out most to me is how much it made me concentrate on it and read at a fast pace. Before I knew it, I would be 50 or 100 pages into the reading and feel like it had only been 10 or 15 minutes. I find it rare that a book is able to hold my attention that well, as with most of our other readings I have had to force myself to pay attention and finish the readings. I also notice that I read it with a beat in my mind, similar to what the presentation group played in class on tuesday, but still faster than that. This book reminds me slightly of the movie Forest Gump. It is essentially a nobody who is involved in a number of historical actions. He is part of medical testing, when he is injured in the factory and they are trying to use him to replace the ice-pick lobotomy. At the end of our reading he is part of what I assume to be a socialist rally, at least from the context of the book, and the presentation of the group that mentioned Eugene V. Debs, a socialist candidate for president in the early 20th century.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree that this is definitely a quick read. Very rarely will I find myself reading a book that doesn't feel like it takes eternity to finish. I have a hard time relating the style of his writing to jazz music. Honestly, I would have never seen the relation between the writing and the music if the last presentation group hadn't of brought it up. But I find it fascinating nonetheless. When you read the book with jazz music in the background the tone seems to do a 180 for me. At first I would read it as though it were more solemn, but when people mention the correlation between his writing and jazz, the tone takes on a more whimsical, less austere perspective.
ReplyDeleteI was wrong about the socialist rally. It seems I neglected to read the back of the book, as it states he was at a communist rally. The fact that I confused these is somewhat embarrassing, but it also makes me notice something about the style of the book. Ellison does not deem it important to discuss the actual ideals that the narrator is involved with and speaking about at the rally, but rather just the personal effect on the narrator.
ReplyDeleteSo I can totally relate to what Austin was saying about the fast pace of the book. Unlike Henry Adams, Invisible Man reads incredibly fast. And to keep up with all the action that is happening, the reader has to pay very close attention to the plot of the story. If not, then something important will be missed. In fact, I found myself going back to make sure I hadn’t missed an important element of the plot because the action progressed so fast.
ReplyDeleteAlso, snaps to the presentation group who presented the idea that Ellison wrote with a sense of jazz music in his writing. After the demonstration, I read the book with that thought in mind and realized that it truly did take on the jazz beat.
wow, I am wishing right now that 100 pages would go by in ten or fifteen minutes.
ReplyDelete