What Is Art? Art Is Words

"A fine memoir is to a fine novel as a well-wrought blanket is to a fancifully embroidered patchwork quilt. The memoir, a logical creation, dissects and dignifies reality. Fiction, wholly extravagant, magnifies it and gives it moral shape. Fiction has no practical purpose. Fiction, after all, is art." -Julia Glass

A memoir is based on a real story, something that actually happened while fiction is something created from a sliver of an idea. Fiction can be based off of real events, but ornaments are added to make it what it is, which is fiction, not real. Memoirs take the cold, hard truth and write it into a book without any sugar-coating. Glass is comparing memoirs and fiction to blankets and quilts to illustrate how she differentiates between the two. A blanket is just a blanket, with nothing added, nothing changed and worn from use. A patchwork quilt, however, has patches and other things added onto it, taking away from its base which is essentially a blanket. But covering it in the decorations makes it into something that isn't real, that distracts from the raw story.

Glass, in the last sentence of the quote, says that fiction is art. She is suggesting, in a way, that art isn't real, that it has no real purpose other than to be pretty and solely for entertainment purposes. A memoir is art as well because writing is an art form and taking something that happened in real life and writing it into the form of a book is art. Glass believes that, because fiction is not real and it isn't based on anything that actually happens in the real world, that it has no real purpose. Fiction may not be based on real events, but it can hold a deeper message, something abstract that can be demonstrated in real life, like rebelling against a corrupt society. Glass doesn't count fiction as real because it distorts the true story, but it highlights it in a way. A quilt is just a quilt, but with patches, it becomes beautiful and something to treasure.

Memoirs display the story of a person or a situation that happened in real life and present it to the world so the people will be made aware. The "blanket" is just a simple piece of cloth to use to keep warm without any accessories, without anything to take away from its one purpose. Glass believes in the cold, hard truth and facts rather than fiction because fiction takes away from what is real. She believes that it blows up the truth rather than just state it like memoirs do. Fiction is for entertainment and it can also tell a great story like memoirs do. Both genres are forms of art and they both have their respected purpose. Just because memoirs display real-life events doesn't mean that fiction can't. Fiction just adds interesting plot lines that appeal to the people in order to get their underlying meaning out.

Memoirs are art, too, Glass. Fiction and memoirs go hand in hand in the fact that they are both written words displaying a message.

Spring Is Dead

Chapter 20: ...So Does Season

Season is important to a scene in a movie or book because it wouldn't make sense for something bad to happen in the sunshine summertime. It can, but the cold and dark winter season seems more appropriate. Foster talks about the season holding a specific meaning like spring is usually associated with babies and flowers blooming. 

Boy, do I have some irony for you.

In Unearthly by Cynthia Hand, Clara Gardner finds out that she's an angel-blood, part-angel and part-human. Her mom is a Dimidius, which means she is half angel while Clara is a Quartarius, which is only a quarter angel. Angel-bloods only live until they are 150 years old. Clara's mom is slowly creeping up to that age, but Clara is unaware that her mother is going to die soon.

Clara starts to notice that her mom is not doing well when she starts moving slower and she gets bags under her eyes. Her mom never tells Clara or her younger brother, Jeffery, who is also a Quartarius. Near Christmas time, her mother tells her that she is nearing the end of her life and that she has a few months to live.

The irony comes in when spring time rolls around. Clara's mother deteriorates fast and she can't even get out of bed by the time March is upon them, when the sun is staying out longer and the weather is warming up. Clara's mom dies a few days into March, despite what Foster says about winter being the time of death and darkness. Clara's mom dying goes against the set "rules" for the seasons in novels. But her mom dying could also be taken as a sign of rebirth because Clara has a lot of things that she knows nothing about and she has to figure them out on her own, helping her grow into a stronger person. 

Seasons are important to setting, a dastardly word according to Foster. They have to make sense with what is going on in the story or else it just sounds weird or the imagination gets confused on how to picture the moment. It has to be set perfectly or it just won't work. 

I never really enjoyed reading scenic parts of a book because I'm more of an action scene kind of gal. I see the value in them though because they set up the whole action that I like. In Harry Potter, when some dark things happen (which is all the time), it's usually the winter time. Did you know that it snows in every Harry Potter movie? Every one. Crazy things happen at any time in Harry Potter, but they're wearing jackets when they're fighting Voldemort and his army, so there's that.

The seasons are important to a book because without them, what would the characters be wearing? What would even be happening without the season to set the mood? You need the seasons and the weather in order to set the scene which leads up to the action shot, which are the best parts, to me anyway. 

What if I wrote a book where there were no seasons? That would be hilarious. 

I could be famous.

No one steal my idea. 

Teenage Girls Are Changing The World

Chapter 4: Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before? 

Frequent readers, like myself, tend to pick up on similarities between the many books that they have read. Characters may have the same personality or a plot may be heading in the same direction. Foster says that it's all about where the reader looks. If you read a certain book and then read another, you may be able to pick out specific details if you were really looking for them.

I read a book recently called The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau. I had no idea what the book was about since I didn't even bother to read the summary on the inside flap; I picked it up and bought it when I saw that the author and I share the same name. I thought that it must be good since I, in the form of another person, wrote the book. I also saw a review on the front cover that said "fans of The Hunger Games will love it." I am a huge fan of The Hunger Games, so I had to make sure that the review wasn't lying. 

As I was reading it, I noticed some similarities in plot between it and The Hunger Games, hence the review. In both books, killing to attain glory or to win a prize is present. Both of the main characters happen to be similar, too; they both are teenage girls who want to fight the system and change society for the better. 

Foster mentions authors that purposely draw on other works to make the readers think of characters or situations in a different light. With The Hunger Games and The Testing, the characters are similar, both being teenage girls and all, but since their personalities are different, the methods that they used to change their separate worlds were different. They essentially had the same goals, but the authors used their separate character's wills to make them their own. 

Being able to see deeper connections within a text helps the reader grow intellectually because they are able to pick small details and have them mean something, rather than just be words on a page.

Me, I used to have a hard time connecting things. For English assignments and things of the sort, when we had to connect a snippet of a poem to something in real life or another work, that would be difficult for me. After reading this chapter, it made me realize that finding connections isn't as hard and complex as I was making it and now picking out things shouldn't be so frustrating. Since I read a lot of fiction, I'll just connect everything to a book I've read, like I'm doing for these blogs, so they'll be relatable to me and to other people. 

This is probably the most beneficial summer assignment I've ever done. 

What Are You Thankful For?

In Thomas C. Foster's chapter called Nice to Eat with You: Acts of Communion, he is sorting out the distinction between a meal in real life and a meal in literature. He is also sorting how a meal in literature is described, communion meaning different things.

A meal is never just sitting down and eating the food with mindless chatter circulating throughout the room. At least, in literature it isn't. In any book that I've read, a big dinner scene usually signifies a climax or a turning point in the plot. Foster talks about it in the same way, mentioning that there has to be a very good reason to write a meal scene.

In the novel Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, Ethan Wate, the protagonist, and his girlfriend, Lena Duchannes, are invited to a dinner by Lena's uncle, Macon. The dinner seems innocent enough, it being Thanksgiving and Lena gets along with her family, more or less. She is on the fence, however, about Ethan going because she comes from a family of Casters, a wizard or witch in a simpler term. She attempts to prevent Ethan from attending, but he ends up going with her.

The day of the dinner, Ethan encounters Ridley, Lena's cousin who happens to be a Siren, which is someone who is able to use spells to lure people, usually men, into doing things they wouldn't normally do. She accompanies Ethan to Macon's house where she isn't allowed and puts a spell on Ethan to where he can't move or breath. Already, the dinner is hitting rocky soil.

Foster answers a question about the dinner potentially turning sour. He explains that the act of eating a meal with someone is personal and sacred, at least in religious terms. When you eat with someone, it usually means you like them, which is what the author mentions. In Beautiful Creatures, the family is uneasy around Ridley because she is a Dark Caster, someone who uses their powers for evil deeds. Lena knows Ethan is paralyzed and the meal takes a downward spiral when Lena's powers get out of control due to her high levels of emotion.

Every meal is a communion, says Foster, and I agree. Any act, really, of coming together and enjoying an experience together is a communion. In literature, a meal introduces the reader to the characters' relationships with one another. The reader can always tell if something big is going to happen from the way the characters act at a meal. It's all about the emotions, the tension that's been building leading up to the meal.

I don't recall the characters in Beautiful Creatures actually eating the food.