The
book does what the title says, it transforms the reader, or at least it
transformed me and that of my writing, also it transforms the text. This text,
while reading it and discussing it in class has shows a new form and inspired a
new style of writing for myself, which I used in some of my pieces. I love the
way this text mixes idea, which reflect/mirror each other, it use of repetition/retelling,
and last the thoughts of identity. The work of Spahr also explore awkward
connections and pre written rule/norms, maybe even a connection to the text or
of the written history or how people write or how ‘they’ specifically write, maybe
even the ways or kind of writing that is used in this book. Also when reading
this text it almost seems aware that it’s a book to some level.
Thought
out the book there is repetition of words, sentences, and stories. Words that
are repeated makes the words feel less important, like it was used and then
reused, until there is a different meaning or no meaning behind that word. For
example, the word “Occupation”, found on
p.31, this word is supposed to be a serious word, maybe even something that happens
once over a period of time. Repeating this word, give the idea that it happens
more than once, which is true, occupation happened and will happens all the time,
the word is not new, it’s not a new idea, it has been around a while. When
reading, I realized that stories/idea was always repeating talking about
history, education, their relationship and how that relationship relates to
other ideas in the text, like the island, the ‘native’ people, and how their
relationship does not fit into a dual community or average way of thinking. This
text is very cycling, it keeps circling around various ideas but as it moves
forward it transform, it changes. Great example which show this, “for some
reason they could not understand, writing that used fragmentation, quotation,
disruption, disjunction, agrammatical syntax, and so on.” What come after is
either nothing or something different, for example, “entered into their body
and changed it.”, “with a somewhat pious and note very well thought out sense
of class politics.”, and “in an anthology”. This make me think that these are
important, highlighted by the repeated nonsense that is use over and over,
maybe like juxtaposition.
The
last thing I want to point at in this text is identity, it is so ambiguous just
as the island is never name, neither are the characters. There are three people
which I believe are two male and one female because of this, the text give a
clue talking about the sparrow or the documentary of a group that live in the Amazon,
plus they watch on the music channel’s soap opera, all pointing to the idea
that they are two male and one female. Still we never know who is talking,
because they always use ‘they’. It so interesting, by using they, they erase
the preset judgments and gender rule and role that people have.
To
end this, here is the perfect passage to summarize, found on p.64, “like their
brain’s interest in something as mundane as a kaleidoscope’s colorful, hanging
patterns or the image of a drop of water falling and when the water below
splashing up a little after the drop of water falls into the stillness of the
standing water or the shifting patterns of traffics on a busy highway that are
just similar enough to put them into a trance yet changing enough for them to remain
alert, interested.” This is the text, the story; this is what Sparh is doing.
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