Final Paper

Full Circle is a Happy Ending

When I was six years old, my favorite stories were The Hobbit, the Chronicles of Narnia, Through the Looking Glass (but not Alice in Wonderland, which frightened me), Perloo the Bold, Calvin and Hobbes comic strips, Dinotopia, and my dad’s old collection of Spiderman comic books from the early 70s. I didn’t like stories that were set in “the real world” because I already lived in “the real world” and knew enough about what that was like, thank you very much. Fantasy books which lingered in the real world a little too long were less beloved to me. I didn’t really care about what the children were doing in the Professor’s house; I just wanted to enter the wardrobe and see the Faun carrying his parcels in the snow. These books had to include animals that talked, magic, epic journeys, prophecies, characters that were like me but also impossibly noble and self sacrificing (and characters that were so irredeemably nasty that one couldn’t possibly find a single saving quality), and legendary battles of good and evil where evil always succumbed to the forces of good. When I was six, happy endings were mandatory. If a book didn’t have a happy ending, I would take the offending item off my bookshelf and hide it in the back of my closet. It was a zero tolerance policy. I’m ashamed to admit this, but I once tearfully begged my Grandpa to throw away a movie that ended so sadly that I couldn’t bear its continuing existence in my house. Poor Papa had rented it…he pretended to throw it in the trash and retrieved it later when he thought I wasn’t looking.

. For myself at age six, the world of fantasy and its stories were fun because it felt removed from the constraints of reality. The differences between good and evil were as easy to recognize as the difference between black and white, and the good characters always got their happy ending.

If they didn’t, it wasn’t a story worth reading and rereading. Let the closet have it.

Somewhere (it would be near impossible to pinpoint exactly where) in my experience of growing up, I began to favor the stories that ended unhappily. I have a few guesses as to why. The first has to do with a naïve perception of stories that ended horribly as being better literature because “they weren’t written for kids”. In school, the advanced reading books had endings where the characters you loved the most received the worst fates; where despondent Edna Pontellier swims to her death, John the Savage hangs himself after engaging in a soma orgy, Charlie loses his artificially gained intelligence and morns the loss of Algernon, and George has to shoot Lenny. In my mind, the distinction became very clear: unhappy endings equaled good literature and happy endings only happened in Disney movies and naïve fairy tales. If I was going to be any sort of good writer, I had to write stories with unhappy endings.

The second reason was that I was gaining life experience. In losing my own naivety, I began to realize that distinguishing between good and evil wasn’t as easy as seeing black and white. I started to favor the stories that were a more direct representation of the “reality” I existed in. I learned in the real world, self revelations didn’t take place over night after a descent, and a lot of the time the people who most deserved the happy ending didn’t get it.

            But you shouldn’t judge me too harshly. I was still operating under the illusion that unhappy endings existed.

            Frye writes that convention of the happy ending in romance may seem “faked, manipulated, or thrown in as a contemptuous concession to a weak-minded reader” (134). However, as Frye points out, this formula of a romance is a more obvious illustration of the underlying archetypes that romantic fiction typically follows. But while romance follows set formulas, there are always worlds of possibilities contained within these streams of stories. The reader is aware that ironic, or more “serious” literature could never employ a conventional happy ending because it would be forced or even dishonest. However, they may not be aware that romantic stories demand it for the characters that survive until the end of the story. The characters that populate romance novels demonstrate an intense desire for the happy ending, and through their incredible struggles and will to survive the descent, the survivors are always rewarded. But what does a happy ending traditionally entail? Why is it necessary to the conventions of romance? A happy ending for a romance novel is not merely essential, it is the only logical conclusion to the five elements of perfect romance: story, revelations, quest, and apparent death. The happy ending is a cyclical return to the start renewed and almost always coincides with two changes of personal state: the reclamation of identity and the loss of virginity. In the happy endings of romance, sexual union mirrors the uniting of opposites necessary for the recovery of identity.

STORY:

“Literature is an aspect of the human compulsion to create in the face of chaos. Romance…(is) the area where we can see most clearly that the maze without a plan and the maze not without a plan are two aspects of the same thing” (Frye 31)

As Dr. Sexson said, the story is the most important element of romance. The act of storytelling takes the receiver across the boundary lines of time. Once seduced, we forget the machinations and this world for the more colorful, the sacred, the dream time outside of time. We are prevented from living too much time in this world, yet receive the enormous bonus of extensions on our own experience. Through the powers of storytelling, the receivers are both outside of time and adding time to their own natural lives. But the naïve receiver of stories doesn’t know this. The naïve receiver of the story simply listens, wide eyed and open mouthed, as the storyteller seduces him into dream time. As a simple naïve receiver of the story is merely entertained by the storyteller, in order to move to the next level of appreciation he must observe the mechanism of the story itself.  

The mechanism of the story requires the romance to move both vertical (in the up-down-up motion) as well in the motion of the gyre or vortex (we express this in the phrase “we so inevitably use when summarizing a romantic plot ‘it turns out that…’” (Frye 91). In this cyclical movement, the characters move from the idyllic world to the world of descent and ascend back again with reclaimed identity. As the upward journey is either a journey of return to the creator or “the creative power of man returning to its original awareness” (Frye 157) and “virginity is an appropriate image for attaining original identity: what is objectively untouched symbolizes what is subjectively contained” (Frye 153) there is a strong connection between identity, virginity, and the divine. Virginity and identity are powerful sources of movement in romance because they both revolve around the same concept of creation. The mechanism of romance illustrates that divine creation, human recreation, and self formation have the same shape, and like the romance itself all of these elements return us to the start.

But why is it so important to recognize the mechanism? In journeying towards our own identity, we must escape this reality in order to find and understand ourselves. It is when we realize that romance is not a trite form of storytelling meant to amuse, but life itself that we are free to move up…and laugh. The whole thing of life is unreal. The next step of moving up or across (depending on your view) is to recognize that we are no more real than the characters in stories. When the story comes to an end, we come to an end. We too follow the machinations of romance and gyre back around to arrive exactly where we started.

REVELATION

“The more important stories are also imaginative, but incidentally so: they are intended to convey something more like special knowledge, something of what in religion is called revelation. Hence they are not thought of as imaginative or even of human origin, for a long time.” (Frye 7)

In romance, identity and reality are irrevocably linked to the movement of the story itself. As the story cycles from the idyllic world, to the descent, to the ascent back to the changed beginning, it is also a reflection of the movement of identity. In romance, the loss of identity begins the narrative. When the release from the external circumstances that forced the departure from identity finally comes, the narrative cycles back to the return to the state of identity. For romance, illusion “is an order of existence that is best called alienation” (Frye 54), and as “romance often deliberately descends into a world obviously related to the human unconscious” (Frye 57), by descending into the dream world and carrying the knowledge of its revelations out again, we have regained our identity. It is only through descent into dreams that we can truly know our waking selves.

Just as involuntarily acquired self knowledge is more terrible than death itself and something to be avoided at all costs, death is preferred over the involuntary loss of virginity. As woman is the physically weaker gender of our species, she must employ fraud tactics in order to stand as equal to the force her male counterpart possess. In order to teach the man the knowledge of love (which she always already possesses as woman), the female must employ fraud and secrecy in order to convince the hero that he is acting on his own initiative. In other words, the female must employ lies to create an illusion wherein the man learns lessons without his knowledge (sounds similar to the role of the storyteller perhaps?). Human imagination itself “is always a form of “lying”, that is, of turning away from the descriptive use of language and the correspondence form of truth” (Frye 46). We see this pattern again and again in romance: whether it is Sheherazade teaching her captor compassion through stories, or Princess Budhir fooling her husband with her male disguise. Until her identity can be recognized, the woman works in secrecy. When that time comes, she loses her virginity as the “happy ending” to the romance. But why? What is the connection between virginity and identity for the feminine?

For the female, “virginity is to a woman what honor is to a man, the symbol of the fact that she is not a slave” (Frye 73). However, with this social connotation comes an underlying illustration of the kind of power the female wields in romance. While her virginity is often associated with the “stresses and complications she has to go through before marriage”, the correctly timed loss of her virginity after marriage results in a recovery of her identity. However, an untimely “taking” of her virginity results in partial or total entrapment in the world of descent, doomed to wander horizontally without the vertical ascent and reclamation of the self. Woman is avoiding “the one fate which really is worse than death, the annihilation of one’s identity” (Frye 86). As she carries the knowledge of how to love intrinsically and men have to be taught how to love, the loss of her virginity corresponds with the recovery of identity and resulting happy ending.

            In romance, revelations are remembrances. As all we are is the sum of our memories, the break and resulting recovery of memory is often employed in romance as the conflict that moves the hero to reclaim identity. Individuation—the bringing of opposites together—is the pivotal moment at the bottom of the descent’s bottom. In the uniting of opposites, identity is finally reclaimed and the ascent out of the dream world begins. This darkest part of the process by which a person becomes his/her true self mirrors the bringing together of opposites of sexual union. In Arthurian lore, the lance and grail (representative of male and female, respectively) is one example of the influence of this pervading image in romance. In Gaiwan and the Green Knight, the conquest of womanhood represents the fulfillment of the task of life. By recognizing her uniquely feminine features, the male reconciles the opposites within himself and achieves individuation. At the bottom of the bottom, romance forces the hero to confront the aspect of the self that is not himself—and in reconciliation with the opposite, individuation is possible. The hero begins the ascent that converges in identity and his happy ending: often a sexual union that is literally the bringing together of opposites in gender.

QUEST

“Great literature is what the eyes can see: it is the genuine infinite as opposed to the phony infinite, the endless adventures and endless sexual stimulation of the wandering of desire. But I have a notion that if the wandering of desire did not exist, great literature would not exist either” (Frye 30)

Perhaps that’s the truly remarkable commentary on the power of romance: by simplifying the moral facts into polarizations of good and evil, it’s better able to convey the complexities of this world. The paradoxes, contradictions, and unexplained coincidences all point to the one certain answer romance offers: the answer to the question is that there is no answer. We must accept this life as a mystery to be experienced rather than a problem to be solved. In an effort to reorder the natural world into art, human culture focuses on the “polarizing in romance between the world we want and the world we don’t want” (Frye 58). The simple polarizing formulas betray more about the reality of this world than reality itself. We would like to believe that imagination, when left to its own devices, produces original and fantastical work. However, this is not the case. Imagination is more inclined towards conventions and formulas than the fanciful. The actions described are external, not internal. However, these formulaic plots describing external events layer in such a way to describe our human internal structure: "The realist, with his sense of logical and horizontal continuity, leads us to the end of his story; the romancer, scrambling over a series of disconnected episodes, seems to be trying to get us to the top of it" (Frye 50). The happy ending is the natural conclusion to a story of coincidence and polarity precisely because “ends in much the same place that it begins" (Frye 51). This seems to point to the function of romance is to lead us back to the beginning; back to our role as the wide eyed listener, the child with naive wonder and innocence.

In Daphnis and Chloe, the world associated with this innocent child stage--the pastoral setting, the seasons of spring and summer, and the animals--are all connected with the innocent stage according to Frye. Daphnis and Chloe must eventually leave the idyllic for a world of conflict (and adventure, but of a less exciting variety). They endure a winter apart as well as unhappiness caused from a momentary apparent unequal birth. However, all is restored by the end with the mystery of birth solved, and the plot climbs out of the nightmare world of discontent to the top again--the happy ending. It returns to the same state of happiness depicted at the start, but innocence is lost. To fulfill the conventions of romance and complete the mandatory happy ending, the woman must lose her virginity: "That thing that they do must be something sweet, something that wipes out the bitterness of love" (Morales 179). The bitterness of love is the conflict of the romance, the loss of virginity the resolution. As Frye discusses, the stresses and plot complications associated with the virgin before her marriage are at the center of the conflict of the romance. Once she has passed out of the virginal world, we lose interest. She's happily married and having happily married sex, and we don't need to hear about that.

So if the ending of a romance is a spiral-like return to the beginning, how does loss of virginity at the end parody the virgin at the beginning? Romance proceeds toward an end that echoes the beginning, “but echoes it in a different world, the beginning in the demonic parody of the end” (Frye 49). It is a parody, not an exact replica: “The past is not returned to; it is recreated” (Frye 175). If creation is to memory what resurrection is to death, than sexual union and the loss of virginity functions as an act of physical recreation (resulting in a child), and well as creation of identity. Normally, man is the subject, women the other. But in romance, the roles are reversed because woman functions as the story itself: she is the object of the quest because she is the opposite, the path by which to reclaim the lost identity. One way this concept is illustrated is through woman’s association with the world of nature (viewed as “the other” from man’s perspective). In romance, the cycle of womanhood reflects the cycle of the seasons, and the hunt is a symbol of the masculine erotic pursuit with the object of pursuit’s identity (the deer, the feminine) encompassing the surrounding forest. With individuation at the very bottom as a mandatory element, the “quest romance takes on a spiral form, an open circle where the end is the beginning transformed and renewed by the heroic quest” (Frye 176). Woman is always the object of the quest, whether it is literally stated or not, because she represents the opposite required for the happy ending.

APPARENT DEATH

As the polarizing formulas of romance take us from one extreme to another, we descend from the idyllic pastoral world of naivety to the world of adventure, which involves “separation, loneliness, humiliation, pain, and the threat of more pain” (Frye 53). A necessary element of this descent is the apparent death.

Similar to how the movement from the idyll world to the descent is reminiscent of the “up and down” movement of romance, the movement from life to apparent death and back to life follows the same characteristic: “the center out of which everything proceeds, around which everything revolves, and back into which everything in the end must return.” (Zimmer 40). As a sleeper moves from consciousness to the dream world, the characters of romance must descend to a world where the reality differs from the one they originated in. In the dream world of descent, madness, pain and fear reign supreme; but so do revelations. Through the element of apparent death, romance demonstrates how the story itself is the governing force: you end when the story ends, but when the shell (death of the body) is no longer here the story still continues on. Romance wants to take us beyond death; and in order to complete the cycle convention, there must be a substitution for death so that “passing from death to birth” is possible for the same individual (Frye 89). In cycling back to the beginning and restoring the shell for the end of the story, substitution for death is an integral part of the happy ending for romance

There are some strange connections between death and woman’s sexuality; when Balan and Balin prepare to fight, Balan states “We came both out of one tomb; that is to say one mother’s belly, and so shall we lie both in one pit” (King and Corpse 149). The deity Cupid holds domain over the world of sexual love, “the hungry desire satisfied only by death” (Frye 154). Following the romance convention of cycling back to the beginning at the end, through inspecting sexual desire and death we see that beginnings and endings are one in the same: the mother’s womb is both life giving and a tomb, and sexual desire is not satisfied by creating new life—it can only be satiated by the end of life. In the world of reality, death appears to be the inevitable end. Through romance and myth “ the feeling that new life is inevitable comes to us from myth and fable. The latter is therefore both more true and more important” (Frye 132).

In a world where the creation of new life is associated with ever hungry time, virginity is associated with unchanging, perpetual youth, and timelessness. This impossibility of renewing virginity with the cycle of seasons is one reason for the emphasis on preserving virginity: “As winter turns to spring, nature shows a power of regaining her youth that does not exist for individual human life” (Frye 120). In this sense, the concept of virginity renewed with the cycle of the seasons and the resulting freedoms that accompany this change illustrate its power in romance. In a world where virginity is perpetually renewed, every experience is fresh and unique. Similar to how the storyteller seduces the receiver into the story until they lose all concept of time, in a world with renewed virginity time loses its association with destruction and instead becomes an expression of limitless freedom.

HAPPY ENDING

Through these enormous extensions on our lives, we, the receiver of these stories, are the real heroes on a quest for revelation. In the great quest of man, the heroes are not determined ”so much by virtue of what one does, as by virtue of what and how one reads” (Frye 157). By reading these stories and looking past what is obvious, we are getting a glimpse into the real hidden beneath layers of semblances. In romance, man is the straight line but woman the spiral; woman is round, fullness, the cycle of the seasons, the vortex of the romance story itself. In her is contained the power of individuation; to bring together opposites to reclaim identity—and by the same token, reclaim the power of the divine. The human creation and divine creation mirror each other until the blank white wedding sheet stained with the blood of her reclamation of identity reflects the virginal page before ink, the deflowering of the paper with words. By observing the patterns in the machinations of stories, we are observing our own inner clockwork. Through romance, we realize that it is only through lies that we can truly access the real.

            This would seem like the logical end to this paper, but we haven’t come full circle yet.

“A mythological universe is a vision of reality in term of human concerns and hopes and anxieties: it is not a primitive form of science. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, man first acquires a mythological universe and then pretends as long as he can that it is also the actual universe” (Frye 14)

Just as the universe of myth is centered around man, so too was the tangible universe believed to revolve around man, the mortal inhabitant of an indifferent world that is so fond of his stories. Stories offer escape from this reality, if only to create the illusion of understanding and order by reordering the tangible world of a man into art. For those of us who are the recipients of this art, we are left to see past the illusion of understanding to the real beneath.

This is where I’m forced to reflect on my previous views (and identity) to see how I’ve been changed (and I say forced because I’m embarrassed of my narrow views). Before this class, if I heard the word romance awful images come to mind. Most involved the seediest of second hand bookstores overwhelmed by the presence of every Nora Roberts and Nicolas Sparks that has happened upon their shelves. Tattered and creased with use, these little sections of paperbacks were either studiously avoided or openly mocked by customers in mind. I scoffed at them. Formulaic “escape fiction” was hardly the fare of serious readers. However, the concept of literature governed by formulas and the need for escape through art is not an odd concept. As Frye points out, the same building blocks and conventions reoccur throughout a wide tradition of literature beyond these shallow modern conceptions of romance. The art that deals with romance—with the grand adventures, the interplay of light and dark, and even the most misunderstood element (love)—is art irrevocably linked to the elements of reality that man most wants to understand and structure. In other words, not only is every work of art romance, but so too are our lives. In displaying the elements that most demand our attention to escape to, the threads of myth and stories betray the preoccupations and needs that weigh most heavy on the collective mind of mankind. On this great adventure, we all want the same thing: the happy ending.

I know I certainly wanted it as a child. Actually, I believe I demanded it from my stories.

Happy endings must come at the end of something ”…if they happen in the middle of the story, or an adventure, or the like, all they do is cheer things up for a while” (Rushdie 202). So as a writer, I will listen to the naïve child I carry with me, as well as the scholar who is only beginning to learn the machinations of stories and this world. I will try to give the reader a little bitter with the sweet in the best mirrored image of this world. The best of art reflects life, beautifully. Let art have the promise of happy endings, if only we realize that happy is as temporary as the hard times and our tapestry of life and art must hold true to its nature of chiaroscuro. As Soraya says, “There is a limit to how much rain a person can enjoy” (Rushdie 210). We need a balance of both; a time of hardship to feel happiness, a time of silence to enjoy song.

           

Works Cited

Frye, Northrop. The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1976. Print.

Morales, Helen, ed. Greek Fiction: Callirhoe, Daphnis and Chloe, Letters of Chion. London: Penguin Classics, 2011. Print.

Rushdie, Salman. Haroun and the Sea of Stories. New York: Granta in Association with Viking, 1990. Print.

Zimmer, Heinrich Robert, and Joseph Campbell. The King and the Corpse. [New York]: Pantheon, 1948. Print.

Epiphany in the Library

As per usual, I had a mind blowing (but not quite in the same sense as Sati), body tingling epiphany after I turned in my final paper. I think I can answer the two main questions of this class (What's the use of stories that aren't even real? Why do we study them?) because I finally got what Dr. Sexson has been saying all along.
Thank goodness for blogs.

Here's the first: moving up and in a circular pattern at the same time is not the vicious, all consuming circle, but a transcendent SPIRAL. Both movements are necessary for the changed beginning.

Second: After turning in my term paper, I ate dinner with my boyfriend for a few hours before heading back to the library. While we dined on spinach and Sunny D, he talked about learning the bass and his recent investigations into music theory through the help of wikipedia. We discussed our plans for the summer. Both of us have wanted to try making music for a long time, but as I've only played a few instruments before at a mediocre level and he hasn't yet had an opportunity to learn one, we're starting at the very bottom. But that's ok. All we have left to go is up, right?

He's is an obsessive music listener, and over the past few weeks I have watched him become an obsessive bass player and now internet researcher. He's told me that he's starting to hear music differently since he's been learning more about how it's made. And when he thinks about how he wants to make music, he's better able to hear the inner workings of the piece.

His excitement is a little infectious. I was sitting at the library today trying to grade papers when I also began to hear differently: I was truly listening to music that I've heard so many times before that I go on antpilot when it comes up on my ipod shuffle. As I did my own internet research, I started to listen to music as if I were hearing it for the first time.

As I began to listen to the machinations of music, I heard it in a way that was more beautiful: I started to hear like I read. I had moved up, closer to the beginning and the end. By learning how the thing itself works, I was learning how to become more naive.

That's when I realized that the beginning is the end because by learning the machinations of the thing itself, art and life, you return to a changed state of naivety. You experience it for the first time in a new way, shaped by your experience in the descent into the real world. As a child, every experience is fresh and unique. You are in a constant state of wide-eyed wonder. But the more time you spend in this world, the more you lose your original identity and go on antpilot. You become more object-like unless you can understand the paradoxical secret: that in order to conquer time, you must lose track of time while losing yourself in stories--stories that extend and save the identity of the person hidden under the animal mask of the ANTpilot. Stories allows us to access the real hidden under the layers of semblance. Because I'm beginning the journey to understand the machinations, I can ascend back to the beginning and hear the music as though it were the first time. It's the same sort of wonder as the naive listener, but this time it's an achieved naivety. It comes full circle, turns out.

Mind blown.

Wayne Oofster's Grand Adventure.

Wayne Oofster ordered his usual drink at the local bar. The bartender, noticing Wayne looked blue, asked what was the matter.

            “I just found out I have been diagnosed with a brain cloud and only have a month to live.”

            The bartender was a little shocked to hear that type of news from one of his best customers, but the look on Wayne Oofster’s face told him that it must not be good. He placed the small Dirty Shirley in front Wayne, “It’s on the house.” Then he walked away to tend to two hot college chicks who had just seated themselves at the end of the bar.

            Wayne watched as the two girls flirted with the bartender while the old man enjoyed every minute of it. Wayne tried to drown his sorrows in his fruity cocktail drink and listen to the loud music playing in the background. It was some country western song about some guy wanting his girl to love him like his dog does. Yeah, he definitely picked the right bar to hang out in. Then the miracle occurred. The jukebox switched to a more mellow song. Wayne Oofster recognized the lyrics “Live Like You Were Dying”. That’s it! He had always wanted to see the country yet had never had the time to travel because of his work at the peanut butter factory.

            He chugged his drink and told the bartender thanks.  He had always wanted to see the world’s largest frying pan and the town dedicated to the Andy Griffith Show in North Carolina and what with his fatal diagnosis and all, now seemed like the time.

When he opened the door to his modest farmhouse, Lola, his faithful old black lab, greeted him at the door with a bark. “Want to go on a road trip, Lola?” She responded with yet another bark.

He packed his bag and jumped into his 1973 farm truck and hit the road.

His son had given him a cell phone for Christmas last year and, after thinking for a few moments, Wayne had placed it in the cup holder of the car and turned it on. The thing had only been turned on once since he had received it and that had been the time his son had attempted to show him how to make a call. His son, Robert, lived in LA and carried anywhere from 3 to 5 of the stupid things at any given time. No sooner than Wayne had pulled out of his driveway did the cellphone begin vibrating as if possessed and screeching. He flipped it open and mashed buttons until something happened.

            “Hullo?”

            “Dad. Finally. Have you left yet?” Robert sounded exasperated.

Wayne reported that he was just leaving the house but the words were barely able to leave his mouth before Richard launched into a diatribe in which he explained that his mother (Wayne’s ex-wife) was considering leaving her new husband (the man she had left Wayne for) because she thought he was a ‘low-life’ and he was already asking to borrow money from her. Apparently she (Susan, to be specific) had stated that she needed to talk to Wayne, immediately. She wanted him back. Wayne pulled the phone from his ear and mashed buttons until it fell into darkness and silence. There was the thought of disabling it with a pistol.

            As he drove Wayne considered his life since Susan had left him. They had been at their high school reunion when he received the bad news. She had gone off with Tommy Smith, her old high school flame, in his convertible and come back with rumpled hair and a flush in her cheeks. He knew it was over. After they had split and she had sold their old farmhouse he had floated into a brief affair with a waitress from the local diner named Babette. Babette had tired blonde hair and always wore a pink sparkly cross around her neck. Babette had made him feel 20 years younger for about two weeks and then it had just begun to feel exhausting. He thought it ironic that his relationship with Babette represented the consummation of 45 years of unfulfilled yearnings and he finally realized all he really wanted was lunch.

            Anyway, Susan ran off with Tommy Smith and Babette was too much and now he was alone in the car with the only woman he had ever truly loved – Lola. She stared out the window at the scenery and didn’t complain. Once, Susan had told him she would leave him if he continued to eat burgers. She ate yogurt and would threaten Lola with spoonfuls and Lola would growl and leave the room. Susan wasn’t here anymore, though, and Lola didn’t mind if he ate burgers three times a day. Wayne was about fifty miles outside of Minneapolis when the old truck started making incredibly alarming cat noises. MEEEOOOOWWWWW. He slowed down a little and the sound went away. When he thought the sound had completely stopped, he sped up again. MEEEOOOOWWWW. This was just what he needed. He was dying and trying to see the world while his old ford was apparently transforming into a creature of the feline persuasion. As luck would have it, there was a small little local shop on the side of the road a few hundred feet ahead. It wasn’t much, but it had a licensed mechanic and root beer floats.

“Alright, Lola, let’s get rid of this damn cat racket so we can get on the road.” Lola hopped out of the car with her tongue lolling out of her mouth. Lola was Wayne Oofster’s best and only girl and they had spent every day together since the day he found her outside the peanut butter factory. She was stray and hungry and had been searching for left over peanuts to eat. Wayne hadn’t had a dog since his old coon hound died 4 or 5 years back so he took the scruffy little pup home and had cared for her ever since.

The mechanic’s shop was empty. The only furniture in the waiting room was a small child’s rocking chair that was sure to splinter into a thousand very dangerous pieces under the pressure of adult weight. The sign for the root-beer floats was the only thing that was painted and, as it was brown, it didn’t add too much color to the room.

“I’ll be with ya in a second,” yelled a woman in the back.

Wayne stood there, waiting for a few minutes and contemplating the dirty white walls and filthy cement floor. Finally, the woman walked up behind the counter. She was gorgeous! She had straight teeth and wore a pair of blue jeans with flattering, well-earned, holes in them. She had a tank top on that resembled dirty dishwater although it was clear that it had, at one point, been white. It was casual, yet it showed just enough cleavage to keep Wayne Oofster interested.

“How kin I help ya’?” She asked.

“My car seems to be making a noise,” he responded, feeling a little embarrassed, “something like a ‘MEEEEEEEEEEEEOW.’

Lola and Wayne followed her to his car where she popped the hood and stood over the engine for a few minutes while making reassuring noises. “Hmmmm”. “Oh, yeahhhh”. “Interesting”. “I see”. Then she turned to him and said, “I know exactly what yer prob’em is, sir. You have a small hello kitty bobble head stuck to your thermostat. Every time you reach a certain temperature, the dadgum contraption goes off.”

Wayne Oofster was extremely happy to hear that it wasn’t anything too major.

Although he was a little embarrassed that his hello kitty obsession had been discovered, he was grateful for the womans unassuming demeanor. She introduced herself as Glenda.

“I can fix this here problem, but it will take about a week for the parts to come in,” she said. “I’ve got a spare bed out in the maintenance shed, you can stay there. It’s at least 6 hours to the nearest motel.”

Wayne tried to conceal his joy.

Glenda had successfully caught Wayne Oofster’s eye. She was tall, but not too tall. She wasn’t skinny and her curves hugged her in all the right places. Her supple body gave off the strong odor of gasoline, the preferred perfume for any man. Wayne knew that this was something big. But now, he had to make her feel the same about him, as his softness was overwhelming compared to the fierce lioness next to him.

Wayne made himself comfortable in the bed behind the shack and eventually made his way to Glenda’s house for the dinner she had invited him to. He was surprised that she lived by herself in such a remote place and was eager to get to know her story. He licked his fingers and smoothed his eyebrows, rubbed some dirt into his hands to look tougher, and rolled up one sleeve to place his recently purchased pack of Marlboro Lights in.

Upon his arrival, Glenda asked him to wash his hands and asked him not to smoke inside her house, “a disgusting habit!” He then moped around the house with his tail between his legs. Glenda was never going to think of him as a real man!

They ate leftover fried chicken.

Wayne tried to get to know Glenda, but she was quite apt at dodging the personal questions, and by the end of the evening, all he had gotten out of the deal was some cold chicken and a few tequila shots. Glenda was proving to be a challenge to impress and to get to know. Some woman! Wayne grumbled on his way back to the shack. Not even so much as a hint towards her marital status. How was he supposed to know if she was up for grabs, or some man’s slice of pie?

It was exactly this idea about women that Glenda perceived in Wayne, and the exact reason she had decided to avoid personal questions. She knew that if he knew she was single, he would come at her like dog in heat. Speaking of dogs, Lola did seem like a fine lady, and perhaps if that dog loved Wayne so much, maybe he wasn’t as much of an old-fashioned misogynistic prick. Glenda had a good feeling about Wayne, but she knew that he needed to be taught a thing or two.

Wayne awoke to a sharp knock on the door, which felt like minutes after he had finally fallen asleep.

“Wayne! Wayne! It’s Glenda! Put on some pants and come out here!”

What the hell, Wayne grumbled, as he was pulling on his khaki slacks and buttoning his orange plaid shirt. He opened the door to Glenda and almost lost what little composure he had. She was dressed in all black leather, except for the tight jeans underneath her taut leather chaps. She had a leather jacket, outfitted with a logo Wayne couldn’t read in the faint morning light, and diamond buttons. He stared.

“Come on Wayne. Something’s been stolen and we’ve got to get it back.”

Again, without the personal details, Wayne thought.

“And since your car is in my shop, you’re just gonna have to hold, as we cruise my old motor hog down to Sturgis.”

            What a way to see the country, Wayne pondered as he clung tightly to Glenda’s svelte waist. 

They were cruising down interstate 35, setting a fast pace towards South Dakota, when Glenda pulled off the interstate and got onto this little dusty back road. 

“Where are we headed Glenda?” Wayne asked a little nervously.

“Well we need to get some gas and I decided its high time for us to get some grub into our bellies.  Now you see this here road leads on up to this teensy weensy town known as “Dead Dry Gulch”.  It didn’t used to be called that but once the crick dried up and all o’ the cattle died from lack of hydration, well, there weren’t no other name worth callin’ it.  Not to mention everyone just plum forgot it’s real name.  So as I was saying, I’m hungry and I know about this greasy old joint that serves the best fried pork chops you can get this side of the Mississippi.”

Pork chops did sound delicious, Wayne thought, but “Dead Dry Gulch”?  Seriously, who would name a town that?  It just didn’t sound like a safe place to look for gas or food.

“Are you sure this is a safe place to look for gas and food?”

“Of course I’m sure, plus who ever said this trip was gonna be safe?  We are on a hunt for that thing someone stole so nothin’ is gonna be safe for us, nothin’!  Ya hear!?”

Good lord!  What is it with this woman and her ambiguity?

“Speaking of “that thing” and that “someone”, what are we trying to recover from this so called thief?

“Now Wayne, if I told you that I just don’t think I could trust you to stick with me on this little, shall we say, quest that we have embarked upon and I really need an ally for later on when we encounter the bad guy.”

Good grief, Wayne thought, if only I could get some sense out of this blasted woman.  

When Wayne finally stopped pondering the reason for their quest he realized that Glenda had stopped the dusty Harley on the side of the road and was busily looking at the exhaust pipe, from which copious amounts of steam appeared to be issuing.

“What’s going on Glenda?” Wayne asked worriedly.

“Well you see this thing-a-majig?  It don’t work no more.  Jeez, if only I had taken this darned thing into the shop for a quick tune-up before we had left.  Oh well, Wayne we are just going to have to walk.”

Glenda got up gracefully from the ground and glanced at Wayne to see his reaction to her words.  Wayne looked stunned.  Completely flabbergasted.  His face had turned a ghastly shade of red and a little vein near the corner of his left eye was pulsating, threatening to burst with every throb.  And in the instant Glenda saw poor Wayne’s face, she realized she was in love.

Plodding down the road feeling very regretful and downhearted, Wayne kept thinking about the odd little choked up feeling he had had when Glenda had looked at him.  Her gaze had softened as it scanned his face and she had become, in that moment, a truly beautiful woman.  Wayne’s heart felt a little tighter and his palms were getting sweaty as he thought about how much he wanted to kiss Glenda.  With the moon shining on her hair and the gentle gleam of her skin, he could think of nothing else.  Nothing, that is, until he heard the sharp sound of a “YeeeeeeHaaaaaaaw” and the crack of a whip against his backside.

            “Dang nabbit!” Shouted Glenda.  “ It’s the Gloopy Gloppy Mud Band from Dead Dry Gulch.  I knew I shoulda paid for those pork chops last time I was here!  Run, Wayne, Run!”

            “Okay, firstly Glenda, how can they be the Gloopy Gloppy Mud Band if there is no water in Dead Dry Gulch?  And second, where am I supposed to run to?!?”

            “Shoot I forgot they changed their name, they are now known as the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and all I can tell you is to run, just run as fast as you can, ‘cus if they catch you, well there is no sayin’ what kind of horrors they will inflict upon the both of us.”

            Running as fast as they could, Glenda and Wayne tried desperately to escape their would be captors, but to no avail.  In the end, the band of desperado cowboys caught the couple with their backs up against a tree.

            “Hey Glenda, long time no see.” said the leader of the band.  “We’ve been waiting for you.  We knew you couldn’t withstand those nasty pork chop cravings you get and that it was only a matter of time before you back on our turf.  Tie them up boys and make sure those knots are tight, we don’t want this little puddin’ cup escaping again.”

            While the rogues were tying up Glenda she tricked one of them into getting real close to her face by pretending she wanted to tell him something.  When the man got so close to Glenda’s face that she could have kissed him, she leaned forward and chomped down hard on his nose.  So hard in fact that when she finally let go a little piece of his nose fell off of his face and onto the dirt between them.  Well of course this little act of violence caused a huge ruckus and with all of the mayhem ensuing, no one noticed when Glenda whispered “run” to Wayne and when he then proceeded to sneak away into the night.

            Wayne ran quietly off into the darkness, never pausing to think of what was happening to Glenda because he knew if he did, he would lose all courage to continue on.

            Days and days passed.  Wayne decided that it was safer if he slept during the day and then continued on with his arduous journey under the cover of night fall, but this style of travelling was taking its toll on his aged body and he was feeling more and more exhausted.  Finally, one evening he came upon an all-night diner and feeling he could go no further without first nourishing his body, decided to rest a while and enjoy a semi-warm cup of stale burned coffee as much as any sane human being can.  He stepped through the door.

            “Welcome to Charlie’s Diner!  My name is Meg and I am here to help you!” said an overly enthusiastic young woman with far too much hairspray in her poor, wilting bouffant. 

            “Can I just get a cup of joe, please?”   Five seconds later the aforementioned coffee was deposited in front of Wayne and he was busy loading it with sugar when a glimmer of gold caught his eye.  Taking his mind off of Glenda and the nasty coffee for a moment, Wayne realized that the shiny gold thing he had seen was a hat.  A gold hat.  And not just a gold hat, which was amazing in and of itself, but a gold umbrella hat.

            “You look like a man who has traveled many miles.” The owner of the hat caught him staring. “Pretty flashy hat, isn’t it?” Wayne just nodded and bent over his coffee. He wasn’t in the mood to talk. Fortunately for Wayne, Umbrella-hat man was. The gold-wearing man walked over and shifted his ample weight into the stool next to Wayne. “I know it’s a peculiar piece of head gear” he conceded, caressing the brim lovingly. “And in fact, it’s a rather peculiar story. You see, in the folly of my youth I invested in peanut farming to support my real ambition: tight rope walking. While the latter was my real dream, the peanut factories began to really take off and eventually grew to monopolize the entire peanut making industry! Well, I had finally had enough money to pursue my ambition, so one day I loaded up my beautiful wife and our young son in our Izuzu and drove to the two highest buildings in the state. We wrapped the wires taut at the top and I was just beginning my walk across with my customary gold umbrella in one hand and my young son on my back when a mighty gale force wind brewed out of depths of the plains and swept the infant from the safety of my back! Thinking quickly, I threw out the golden umbrella to the child and screamed “play paddy cake!!” and the boy held out his hand obediently, bless him, and grasped that golden handle. I watched, helpless, as my only son and heir to the peanut butter factory floated out over the buildings and out of sight, safe but beyond my grasp. Now I wear this hat always, as a sole beacon of hope in my dark search for my child. Have you seen him? Do you know anything of my golden umbrella boy?”

            “I’m sorry, I don’t.” Wayne said. “But I’ve lost someone of my own, someone very important to me. I’d be happy to help you find your son if you would only help me get back my Glenda.” And he explained the whole long story to Umbrella-hat man.

            “I will help.” Umbrella-hat said. At that moment, Lola the black lab burst through the doors of the café, panting and exhausted and more than a little miffed at being left behind. With much tail slapping and joyous barks, the loyal companion bounded to Wayne’s side. The three set out together to make the long drive back to Dead Dry Gulch in Umbrella-hat’s gold Izuzu.
            They followed Lola’s excellent nose to the lair of the Nitty Gritty Dirtband (though human noses would have sufficed as the smell was somewhat pungent). As the three companions crawled on their bellies through the sagebrush, Wayne caught a glimpse of Glenda’s hair floating like a halo around the golden sheen of her shoulders. Her hands were cruelly bound behind her. The band’s leader, No Good Saul, was sitting back on his haunches, carving into a prickly pear with a bowie knife and flicking the spines at her.

            “Now, listen up puddin cup. I know you know where it is. Just tell me and we’ll let you ride off into that pretty little sunset, off scotch free.” Glenda responding by hucking an enormous filmy loogey into his mustache. He flicked the spit off his foomanchu and glared at her, dark unruly brow drawn into point above his nose. “That’s it, sex kitten. We’re gonna have to resort to unpleasant measures, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down. That wasn’t very ladylike.” And he stood up and pressed the bowie knife to her jugular.

            “Well, that’s alright, cause I ain’t much like a lady.” Glenda replied, and at that Wayne felt his heart swell almost to bursting. He didn’t even notice the clamminess of his hands as an inhuman cry boiled out his mouth. Flinging himself out from behind the sagebrush, he snatched a doo rag from Glenda’s back pocket. Any other time he would have nearly fainted from being so close to touching that tush of perfect proportions, but Wayne Oofster was a man of focus at the moment. “Sick em Lola!” He cried, and wrapped the doo rag around the offender’s neck as Lola went for the vulnerable spot in the man’s crotch less leather chaps. No Good Saul dispensed of, Wayne cut Glenda free with the bowie knife that almost took her life, but there was no time to even embrace. The rest of the Nitty Gritty Dirt band was as stirred up as a hornet’s nest in August heat.

            “There’s no way out of this, Sweet Thang. Just tell us where you hid the Golden Umbrella and we won’t bury yall up to your neck in an ant pile.” One member held out a jar of honey and grinned toothlessly.

            “Did you say golden umbrella?” Umbrella-hat man popped up from behind the sagebrush. The band’s attention turned to that peculiar golden hat, and Glenda grabbed the nearest can of gasoline and threw it on the fire. Wayne grabbed the nearest motorcycle, and with Glenda sitting behind and Umbrella-hat and Lola in the sidecar, he rode away from the smoldering camp and out of Dead Dry Gulch.

            Glenda’s hands are around my waist…he thought. Glenda’s hands…he breathed in deep her smell of gasoline and grinned sheepishly. “So…Glenda…I just…I’ve been thinking. And there’s…ahhhh. Something I want to…uhm. To uhm. To…”

            One moonlight colored hand removed itself from his face and drifted in front of him, pointing. “If you don’t go over 45 mph right now, I’m driving.”

            “Did you say you know of a golden umbrella?” Umbrella-hat man asked eagerly, his peculiar hat bouncing in the wind.

            “Yeah, I found it when I was a young’n. It just drifted in one day when I was out in the yard, tinkerin with an old diesel tractor. And when I bit it, I knew it was real gold. Unfortunately, my pa’s got a mouth on im when he’s liquored, so most of Dead Dry Gulch knew it too. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s been after my golden umbrella for quite some time, but I’ve got it hid pretty well.”

            “Was there a boy, by chance, attached to said umbrella?” The man asked eagerly, leaning in. Wayne tried to ease the bike over 60, but his hands were shaking. There was something on the corner of his memory…

            “No, but there was some crude writing scratched into the gold. Some second owner. It said, property of Nells Oofster. But I figured if you let your gold umbrella get away, then you didn’t deserve to have one anyhow. Finders keepers.”

            “That’s my dad’s name.” Wayne said. “My dad is Nells Oofster.”

            The umbrella man gave a soft cry. Then he leaned in close and studied Wayne’s face in profile intently. Wayne swallowed and tried not to crash the bike. He was going 65 mph.

            “That’s it. You have your mother’s eyes. My son.” He cried out and embraced Wayne on the bike, and at that Wayne had to pull over and hug him back.

            “Don’t get too excited.” He kept trying to say. His mouth seemed numb. “I have a tumor, I have a brain tumor. I’m really sorry, you’re going to lose your son again.” He couldn’t look at Glenda.

            “No, no, no.” The man said. “You’ll be fine. It runs in the family. We’re healthy, but we have abnormal looking brains.” He tossed his hat into the air and embraced Wayne again. “You kept your promise. You did help me find my son.”

            After the long exchanging of stories between long lost father and son, Wayne left his dad at the fire with Lola to walk in the sage with Glenda. He couldn’t seem to meet her eyes, but when he did her face was blazing. He felt a cool hand slip into his, and he looked up. He didn’t know what to say.

            “But where is the umbrella hid?” Wayne asked finally. She was impossibly close. He could count the individual freckles on the bridge of her nose.

“Silly Oofster,” she said. “You don’t need to know the answer.” And after that, his mouth was too busy to do any more questioning.

Notes 4-9

Romance must become more mysterious and complex throughout

Whenever group presentations end, we will start Z-A the performance of final papers.

Whole purpose of storytelling is to take across boundary lines
Not merely telling stories--educating.
In Sexson's story, the woman used storytelling powers to affect something more utilitarianism and practical: "help my sister"

The answer: you cannot answer the question.
Myth--when something is decided it cannot be taken back.

You become so involved in parrot's story you forget the frame
They entertain and instruct--it prevents you from living in that otherworld all the time where horrible things happen
Stories pass the time--become involved in the story

The saving powers of fiction

The Mechanism--how the thing itself works, how the story works
Naive receivers of the story, to be entertained--moved to the next level by looking at how the story works and are moved to another level of appreciation

Will suspension of disbelief
Once seduced, we forget the machinations and this world for the more colorful, the sacred, and dream time outside of time.

"I only wanted to please"---the storyteller.

Notes 4-4

For next class period please read the real story of Aladin and all of The King and the Corpse

Laughter is an expression that moves you up or across (Alice in Wonderland reference: the mad hatter moving one seat over for the clean bowl--you replace those before you). It is a movement to another level of consciousness--silence to laughter is transcendent.

Kali is the goddess of destruction and death
Silence-laughter-dance (Shiva)
Seeing into it--Eliot sees ancestor dancing and then returning to the earth to nourish the next set of dance.

Beings afflicted by desire and the appearance of things must realize that life is trouble, and only death is not.
Dancing takes on the same character as laughing.
The world is continual coincidence
(pg 295) King and Corpse: the knot of life

The whole thing of life is unreal. That is the next step of moving across, or up depending on your view...we are the stuff of dreams and arrive exactly where we started, but to tell the story differently is to know the start as the first time.

Read Jill's blog about Radiolab--the worst returns to laughter.
The shell is no longer here but the story goes on because of love.
When the story comes to an end, you come to an end.
"I don't want to talk about it"--what the storyteller does to make you want to hear about it.

Solomon and the learned secret of illusion
Stories are an enormous extension on your natural life. An immersion in dreamlike stories both saves and extends.

Notes 3-30

Read Jennifer the Charmed and Oranda's blog.

Oranda laughed--she liberated herself from her own obsession; her need for high brow literature.
Jennifer: ecstasy being the outcome of hysterical laughter.

The interruption of Arabian Nights by Sheherazade--shows him 1001 versions of himself, and now he has learned compassion, empathy, love.

Everyone in Don Quixote humors him.
If royals behaved well they wouldn't be interesting.
"You should always tell the truth, but tell it slant"--Dickinson.

(pg 262) King and the Corpse: "Everything has been down there all the time..."
Last four episodes of King and Corpse--enter the womb.

Hysterics--hysterectomy--removal of the uterus.
Hysteria-- an uncontrollable condition where the womb detaches itself and wanders about the body, causing mayhem.

"Writers to the Sea"--multiply events in the play--laughter is liberating, pushes you to a new level of experience.
Our lives are romances, for those that can recognize it.
(pg 167) Frye: "One of the things that..."
In a classroom, we have the mutual sharing of ignorance.

One of these days, "the destroyer of delights" will come
Laughter is not an incorrect response--engages until it is the only genuine response to life. Life is to amuse...from seeing the WHOLE business of life. Laughter is the affirmative reaction.

(pf 21) Abu Kassam's Slippers

But most importantly, MARRY SOMEONE WHO MAKES YOU LAUGH.

Notes 3-28

The Adventure and Love aspects--two integral components of Romance.
Jessica presents the language of "A Clockwork Orange" to the class. Read it!!!
Anthony Burgess wrote on James Joyce and Shakespeare.

Proust and Dickens--The Arabian Nights is a necessary education in romance.
--comes from the naive aspect of literature
--is located in our own psyche--no specific land
Sheherazade is the most motivated storyteller because her very life depends on it.

"Fiction in the Archives"
Jinn--we get the word genie

Stories of relations with nature--those are the worlds that create charmed states--plants
Vladamir Nabokov and his place of ecstasy: to be among butterflies and their food plants.
Fold one side of the magic carpet on the other and observe the pattern...
Remove the barrier that prevents him from communicating with the light holy winged creatures (angels, genies) floating around the head of the magician.

Oranda and her blog--by getting rid of demand to like the story, enjoys it--with laughter.
Frye (pg 129) expression of laughter--it is a game.
Finnigans Wake--jokes and puns surround the reader

The story that Sheherazade is SPINNING.
Qamar al-Zaman must learn to laugh.