Sheep and Sexy Ears

        I was originally going to bail on the book this week and read the short stories instead but I read a few pages of the legends and was kind of thinking “eh” and then I read the back of “A Wild Sheep Chase” and immediately fell in love. Maybe it was the ears.

        What I really liked about this book was the small things. For example, I liked the fact that no one had a name. I didn't realize it at first and then I realized that the narrator, his pretty-eared girlfriend, and the other characters were either given nicknames such as the “The Rat” or “The Boss”. I've had a lot of nameless characters in my own writing and I find it to be rather nice because then it's not just “George” its “Man” and it's sort of cutting the character down to the root without any extra bells or whistles. And as Murakami noted "Herring swim around on their own will but nobody gives them names". People are people and nothing more or less.  Also, the characters themselves were so distinctive that I think it was impossible to confuse them. Who could confuse an extremely sexy-eared call girl with your ex wife who divorced you because you life was going nowhere?

        I liked the role that women played in this book. It seemed they possessed some sort of spiritual knowledge that the narrator lacked. For example, his dead ex girlfriend in the beginning was only off by a year when she predicted the age she would die. His pretty eared girlfriend even predicts the phone call about “lots of sheep and one sheep in particular” (49). She also seemed to have the sixth sense about which hotel they should stay in that would eventually lead them down the road to the sheep they were looking for. Without the aid of his girlfriend, the narrator wouldn't even gotten near the location of the sheep. This brings the matter of the quest itself, following a man who's basically coming and going nowhere in his life. This Nowhere Man is stuck on a random journey to find this sheep and it turns into a random fallout of events which I can only seem to grasp another search for the holy grail, but this time its a magical sheep.

         I think the sheep itself was kind of like the Moby Dick of this book. Everyone was looking for it, everyone wanted to harness its power or rather, be harnessed by its power. In the end it was all related in an odd sort of way, kind of like when you have a dream and everything falls together and then you wake up and you have that lingering feeling but the reason is gone. There was the constant thinking back to the whale penis, which again points back to Moby Dick, as well as the Dolphin Hotel which was going to originally be named Whale Hotel. In a sense, the narrator is the Ishmael of this book he's the last one left, with his friend the Rat dead, girlfriend gone, job gone, and nowhere to go. I think this really reflected on the book as a whole, about loss of self and loss of ideals.

Louis' Long and Laborious Lengthy Tale of Woes and Angst Muffinry

       I really loved the way “Interview with a Vampire” was written, though it was a little hard to get into at first. The beginning was really slow and a lot of Louis's descriptions were extremely long winded. I found myself seriously bored with the long winded description of New Orleans, traveling of Louis and Claudia in Europe, and Louis' repetitive angsty moaning about how no one understood him. I thought it was really interesting that once they got to Paris, Louis's musings switched entirely to the description of Armand. I think this really showed just how much Armand meant to Louis in terms of how their minds were alike. I really liked the relationships between the characters like Armand and Louis' bond. But on another note, there was so much man slash in this book. And it totally was ridiculous at some point I would have to put it down and start laughing historically with my roommate who has also read the series. Sometimes it did seem to be just Armand and Louis staring at each other forever and I was just leafing through it a bit thinking “When is something going to actually happen?!"

          Louis and Claudia's bond in particular caught me in particular and how they stayed together even though they were almost complete opposites. This is exemplified by little remarks on things that they don't see eye to eye where Claudia believes “Fire purifies” while Louis believes “...fire just destroys”. Claudia really manipulates Louis throughout the book with her . I think Louis becomes knowledgeable of this but he stays with her regardless even when he fears for himself. He stays with her even when the actor vampires threaten to attack and when he fears Claudia herself. This is reflected in Louis' musings where he thinks “would I awake, like Gulliver awake, to find myself bound hand and foot, an unwelcoming giant..?”

            After Louis turned Madeleine everything seemed to rush downhill from there. I couldn't put the book down after that. Louis' claim that “What has died in this room tonight is the last vestige in me of what was human...” seemed to spark the beginning of the end of his joys of life. I thought it was strange how the two people who meant the most to him at that time, Armand and Claudia, both led to his downfall.

           I thought the ending was a bit bitter. It just seemed strange to end it with Louis totally estranged from, life in general, that he had lost all connection with the world. It was like he was now a total robot who had detached himself to the point where he decided he didn't want to care for any one or anything anymore. I thought it was kind of ironic the only thing he decided to hold onto was his belief that life was precious even though he decided to still live on killing after all this time and all this regret as some sort of final retribution.

FEAR OF THE ZOMBIE APOCOLYPSE

This book really surprised me in terms of zombies and what they can do. It never occurred to me to think of a zombie with a mind still intact, let alone a zombie who can control other zombies with his mind. Most zombie stories that I have seen in both film and books tend to be more about action and less about characters. I think Monster Island had both dynamic characters as well as an action-packed plot which made it into a really good story that was believable. Also, Wellington's story wasn't overdone. There was grotesque description when needed but it wasn't overdone. This detail of all the zombie gore was lightened by dark humor throughout the book through characters like Gary's remarks and Kreutzer's “I don’t know if either of you has accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior...but now might be the time.”

At first I thought it was hard to keep up with switching between the first person narration of Dekalb and the third person narration of Gary. Deklab was easily relatable as well as underwent a lot of changes from a man who wouldn't shoot his gun a man who was slicing off zombie's heads. I think Gary was my favorite character and he was an interesting foil as well. When I finally got to the end of the book I was blown away when Deklab said “You’re probably wondering how I can know what he’s [Gary's] thinking. How I could write all those passages from his point of view, describing things I never saw or experienced.” That completely just made my day and it explained the strange switching back and forth of the storytelling narrator as well.

I thought that the zombies' lack of brains was a metaphor for humankind's fear loosing their humanity. I think zombies have become really popular because people sometimes feel like zombies when they feel like they are mindless slaves that can't control their instincts. The usual reason for a zombie apocalypse is usually an epidemic or some kind of genetic experiment gone wrong. This reflects our fear of science and bioengineering.  

Conventions of Genre of Horror

-Lots of lightning
-Creation of a monster
-Lab equipment
-Dark and ominous appearance of the sky/surroundings
-Events unfold that are impossible by normal human means
-Death and destruction
-People loosing their sanity
-Epic showdown against fantastical creature
-Blood
-In movies: sickeningly scary music
-Not sure what is real and what is a dream/made up
-Nighttime, Stormy
-Barren deserted wasteland with a castle

Knowledge and Monsters

My immediate reaction of picking up Frankenstein was that this book was nothing like what I had expected. I had watched Young Frankenstein and the Frankenstein movie and the book was totally different! I really enjoyed it once I got passed the preface. I really liked the classification of the monster. Because he had no name or physical description other than being hideously grotesque, it was up to the reader to basically picture the most horrible thing he or she could imagine.

Victor himself could be classified as a monster. While on the outside he is normal, on the inside he is consumed with intense hatred for what he has done. He rejects his own creation and his secrets that he keeps from his family and friends alienate him from the people most close to him. The monster's words “You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature...” seem to condemn Victor even more as an unloving maker. After the monster swears to kill the people that Victor loves, this isolates Victor even more and in turn this bars him from the once sublime and healing effect of nature.

The power of nature on mood is evident in both man and monster throughout the novel. This influence soon dissipates when Victor realizes the monster will haunt him wherever he goes. This leads the monster to isolate Victor and doom him to a life like that of the monster, one doomed by loneliness and eternal wandering. Their connection with nature is again reflected in this, the frozen Artic where Victor follows the monster, spurred by his hatred for what he has done. This desolate place has lost all of its beauty like monster and maker.

All of this boils down to Victor's conquest of absolute knowledge. Victor tries to find the secret of life. Walton similarly follows his obsession with knowledge to the North Pole. While Victor's creation destroys everyone he cares for, Walton is trapped between the ice floes. Victor's obsession drives him to his death but Walton falls back from his mission after learning from Victor's story and finding how destructive the quest for knowledge can be.