The last two pages on beauty

The last two pages give an interesting take on beauty. After Howard has blown almost every chance of restoring his family, and marriage and career, he has nothing to say about his theories and actually contradicts them. In the end, Howard, a man for whom words dictate his entire life and his inability to really communicate with anyone, is utterly speechless and is forced to at last realize the truth about what is art and what is beauty. He is forced in his tenure speech to talk about the actual painting, to talk about actual beauty, to say - as Victoria so mockingly suggested - 'I like the tomato.' This is especially true when he only sees Kiki in the audience. He recognizes the beauty in her and that he has lost her. This is the first time I think we get a straight-forward definition of beauty - it is the mind's recognition of the loss of something needed or desired. Howard cannot see the true beauty in Kiki and the beauty she brought to his life until she is lost. For the first time, Howard and the audience are able to recognize something with beauty and love for what it really is.

The painting, he finally admits, says something and it says "I love this woman." This is what he finally tries to say to Kiki - ironically when it is so far too late. He finally explains that paintings and art can speak to us and say things, however he does not really recognize this until the very end. In some ways, Howard brought this all on himself, intentionally or unintentionally destroying his own life. It may be possible that Howard felt guilty or troubled by the fact that he may have been better off than his parents. Perhaps, he felt that because his father was such a disappointment to him, he could not ever fully succeed - as shown with his procrastination with his novel, his deliberate intimidation in his classes, his avoidance of his father for years and thus his distance with his own family.

The last bits On Beauty

Claire views the affair in a different light that Howard, believing and claiming she is the victim of a female malady of self-imposed destruction. However, she is a completely self-obsessed woman. In order to make herself feel better about her own life, she purposefully and successfully destroyed the happiest marriage she knew.

Claire also gives us a commentary about the politics of the university. She says that anything beautiful is suspect of objectification. At the end of the novel, Zadie Smith de-objectifies what is beauty and what is not. Zadie recognizes that there is a conflict between being able to talk about beauty and having to objectify and define it. This is best represented with Howard, who is the first to say there is no definition of beauty, and is completely above it, yet is the first person to pull down his pants when a beautiful woman comes on to him - one of whom is a student. What is ironic about this is that Monty is also sleeping continuously with another student, Chantelle.

These are the moments that question what or who an intellectual is. Monty, who is defending intellectual purity is only doing so to defend his own reputation after sleeping with a student. At the party when Zora finds out that Carl and Vee are in love, Carl tries to tell Zora that Vee slept with Howard and while Victoria freaks out about it, Jerome figures out what Howard has done. Carl, who sees all the lies and deception recognizes that the intellectual atmosphere they are trying to create is nothing but smoke and mirrors. They think they are intellectual and are intelligent but have no idea what is going on in their own lives. Consequently after this, Carl does not return to Wellington, having seen everything and the falsity of the intellectual world. He says, "You have your college degrees, but you don't even live right. You people are all the same."

There is also a lot of racial tensions and conflict at the end, especially between Levi and Kiki. When Levi steals the painting, he accuses his mother of being a black woman sell out who does not pay their housekeeper even minimum wage. Zadie Smith points out that there is no morality in any of these characters, despite their claim to it. Levi steals, Kiki underpays immigrants, Zora sells out her father for her academic achievement, Howard cheats, Monty cheats, Carlene keeps secrets from her family, Monty sleeps with students, etc. At the end, there is the down spiraling of beauty as well. At the end, Kiki moves out, Howard, who can no longer work at the university, lives with the children, who are furious with him but still talk to him.

What happens to beauty on the last two pages??

Literary Theory with Chris

Literary theory encompasses the varying ways to read and make meaning of a text. From the 1920s to 1950s, there was the idea of "New Criticism." It was a way of seeking out contradictions in a text and figuring out how those contradictions unified the text and created meaning. These contradictions are there for a reason, and create meaning rather than canceling each other out. In this way of thinking, you look at just the text itself, centered around what the author meant. With the evolution of literary theory, this notion of authorial intent loses its importance. In the 1960s, there are cultural revolutions in America, England, and France. A lot of the ideas carried over into the study of English literature. Some of these ideas included psychoanalysis and studies of the unconscious. Such Freudian views are supposed to direct our thoughts and actions so that we understand the latent contents of dreams (books) in order to understands ourselves(books). This idea developed into the Psychoanalytic theory of literature. A similar thing happened with Feminist theory, in which we read texts to discover hidden (or not hidden) meanings about female desire, empowerment, equality, sexuality, gender politics, and POWER. Queer theory also develops, focusing upon gender issues, power, hetero-normative ways of thinking, etc. Basically, Queer theory asks 'How is queer identity constructed in a text?' Deconstruction is a theory that came about in the 1970s. It maintains that there are a lot of privileged oppositions in the world, and that speech is always privileged over writing. Accordingly, we privilege the faculty of reason over all else. Historically (in the West) reason has been used to judge what makes a human a human. Thus, we are logocentric-- historically, Westerners have judged "others" as lacking the faculty of reason, privileging out culture over others'. Beyond this, the work of deconstruction looks to question these ideas of opposition and privilege. It is a way of questioning how language discloses meaning.

Literary theories thus quickly become charged with political meaning. This is really the beginning of the Academy as a political space; it has come a long way from New Criticism. Such ideas come up against a lot of criticism for those who say that we should not be looking for such political elements within texts. We are now looking for cultural significance rather than the intentions of the author. Within the larger picture, each text has a cultural meaning. Texts are now seen has having larger social significance, and we cannot analyze them without analyzing the culture as well.

The definition of "text" also emerges and expands. Text is now thought of as including poems, novels, plays, films, television, digital images, art, CD's, music, clothing, graffiti, advertising, etc. A text is a thus a cultural artifact and can be interpreted in some way. This also causes trouble because we are dealing with so many different texts that can be brought into the classroom and studied. Thus, the classroom becomes highly politicized. Conservatives do not want all this "stuff" contaminating the "real art/text" of the academy.

Common to all these theories are ideas of power, subjectivity, political significance, cultural significance, and types of representation. With so many different theories, we are able to analyze texts from a variety of perspectives.

On the beauty of "On Beauty"

Class discussion notes from Friday 4/17 and Monday 4/20

A lot of what we discussed of this novel this round was the poem written by the character Claire Malcomb and about its meaning and beauty. The poem, entitled the same as the novel uses a repetition of lines, pronouns, and subjects to blur the line between the beautiful and the non-beautiful, portraying the idea that true beauty is impossible to know.

This connects to what we discussed about Smith's characterization of both sides of the culture war: the Belseys on the liberal no-great-art left and the Kippses on the conservative only-great-great art right. Throughout the novel, both the left and the right contradict themselves and feed off of each other. For example, Howard a man who preaches there is no real genius, no real great art, and no real great beauty falls into an affair with the stereotypical beauty, a woman like himself, white, petite, and intellectual. By the same token, Monty Kipps, a man who preaches against all things liberal, progressive and in some sense anti discriminatory finds himself best friends with a homosexual male. However not only do these sides contradict themselves, they also blur their own lines of distinction, as shown especially through the relationship of Kiki and Carlene. Kiki who was initially greatly offended at Carlene's idea of living for whom instead of for what, later finds herself screaming and Howard that she "gave her life" to him in their marriage. This whole novel, plot and theme asks us as readers to reanalyze the boundaries that we think are so concrete around us.

This is also shown in Claire's conversation with Zora about Carl and the upcoming faculty meeting. Claire asking Zora to speak on behalf of Carl and the other poets in the class who are not students at Wellington implies that Carl does not have a voice, that he could not persuade them on his own. What is strikingly ironic about this is that Carl is the only person in that class who does have a voice. He attracts tons of attention and recognition at the Bus Stop, and is the only true poet of the class, as well as the only self-made intellectual. He learns, not for the university, resume or grades, but for the betterment of himself. This is something which contradicts the emphasis places on the intellectualism valued highly by both the Belseys and the Kippses.

A thought for the future is are the sides really that different? How do the families defy certain social expectations? How do things end up?

Even More On Beauty

We are called in this novel to investigate the left, and the liberal. We get the feeling that perhaps she may be anti-left insofar as she makes Howard appear to be an ugly person. When Howard is talking to the curator at the museum, for example, he talks down to him and acts superior. Yet Smith shows him in a light that makes it unattractive. His attitudes prevent him from making anything that is truly beautiful, including himself.

The epigraph at the beginning of the section chapter called "Anatomy Lesson" is a quote by Elaine Scarry, which says, "To misstate, or merely understate, the relation of the universities to beauty is one kind of error that can be made. A university is among the precious things that can be destroyed." In this chapter, Zora originally threatens the Dean French to expose her father's affair with Claire in order to get into a class. In this instance, the university is not something that defends or creates beauty at all. The accrediting of grades is something that prevents the protection of true beauty.

When Zora and Carl speak before Zora starts her second year at Wellington, one can see that the true beauty and intellectualism is much truer and real outside of the university setting. In their conversation, Carl comes out seeming as the best type of student, self-motivated not by grades or transcripts or future expectations but only by desire to learn more. This is a true kind of beauty. Every student has the desire and potential to be like Carl however sometimes maybe the social structures prevent it. In this way, at times we are dead in our education.

Howard is also one who feels dead, the living dead, with his own intellect, personal life, and beauty. He tells his students that "beauty is a mask that power wears," a Western myth and preaches the anti-beauty. This shows how Howard is dead in both his personal and work life, saying the same lines "for six years straight" so repetitively that he probably doesn't believe it anymore.

As we read the rest of this novel, it will be crucial and difficult to tell which side of the culture war is winning.

More On Beauty

WHAT IS BEAUTY??

The model beautiful
















The real beautiful







There are many different kinds of love and beauty in our world today. People who are in love may or may not turn their loved ones into objects -- of love, of passion, of physical beauty or of many other things. In our culture, beauty has been impoverished to include only things of physical, skinny, model type attraction. This beauty is only visual beauty, that which we see. However, real beauty is actually a juxtaposition of lines and contours.

There is a battle between objectified, conventional beauty and non-conventional beauty is present throughout On Beauty by Zadie Smith. For example, there are many differing impressions of Kiki's beauty in the novel. For example, Zora thinks that her mother has let herself go, while Mrs. Kipps calls her beautiful, and does not mean to offend her when she says she is a large woman but carries it well. Thus, we can see that Carlene Kipps focuses more on the non-conventional beauty while the majority of the Belseys focus on conventional beauty.
There are many other people who are objectified in the novel such as Carl, the man with whom Zora accidentally trades Discmans with at the Mozart concert, and with Claire, Warren's wife who Jerome and Kiki meet at the fair. Claire is also the woman with whom, we later learn, Howard had his affair on Kiki. Initially he lies to her and tells her it was with another random woman from Michigan but this is not true.

At the Mozart concert, we learn a little more about each of the characters. Howard sleeps through most of it, and the only comments he makes are facetious toward his wife's lower class, and of Mozart. Meanwhile, Kiki and especially Jerome are very moved by the music and point to its clear genius. This leads to another argument, as we discussed earlier about what is genius and how we can define it. Howard does not think it was moving and wants to know how to define genius. He is a parody machine, making fun of genius and high art. Meanwhile Carl is listening in to the conversation and thinks of how Mozart dies before it is completed and was finished by someone else. It is this section of the music that was not written by Mozart that Kiki finds so beautiful, and yet this actually redefines genius as collaborative. However, why does this matter to us so much? Perhaps it has to do with defining and understanding the structure but perhaps it is also that we wish to define the "great man." However, the "great man" theory is that which is plaguing our culture about what is art, greatness, genius, and beauty.

Later, we also find out about Howard's relationship with Claire. Claire is described as being much more "beautiful" and intellectual than Kiki. This is threatening to Kiki because these are things she has always worried about in her marriage, especially being of a lower social class than her husband. Kiki frequently feels that she is left out and made fun of for being less of an intellectual and this is one of the main reasons she is so upset when she finds out Claire is the person he had an affair with. She is also upset by the fact that it was more than a one night stand, it was three weeks.

On Beauty

In her interview Zadie Smith states that novels are both political and moral, but that we cannot hit people over the head with our morals. However, she believes that we can use art as an analogy for morals, and that being a good person helps us to make good art. Good art is moral in that it reflects the author's morals; it is someone being truthful in how they see the world. She believes that this is difficult due to self-deception, as the blind spots we have in life are the same that can blind us in art. Zadie Smith is a very relevant example of the "Culture Wars," where there is so-called reverse discrimination, authors and great artists are elevated simply because of their ethnicity and gender.

Zadie Smith vs. 'Zadie Smith'
There is a difference between the real author and the name brand author asked to stand as a symbol for their ethnicity. On the left, they say her first novel was the best book ever written about London. While the real Zadie Smith denies this, the right side claims that it is only the best novel because of her ethnicity and gender. This calls us to question what is great art and artistic genius. If a book is truly moral, it will show us what is moral, even if the author his or herself does not stand within this perception. If it is not moral, we may find that the very thing they criticize is the mirror image of ourselves. There is no totally good or totally bad people, there are only real deep characters. These deep characters, with whom we can identify, has both good and bad qualities. In order to get the full morality of the character, we need to see both the good and bad of a character, which is exactly what we need to do in real life.

In the novel, we encounter this same sort of multicultural dilemma. Jerome is the mediator between the left, his family, where they believe there is no great art, in that everyone can be an artists, and the Kipps family on the right, who believes that only a select few are great artists such as Shakespeare, and Bronte.

In the first part of the novel, we meet the two families the Belsey's who live in the States, with their children Jerome, Zora and Levi, who are very lenient, non-Christian, liberal, and very lax with their children. The eldest son, Jerome, leaves to go back to London to work for Mr. Kipps, a professor who lives very closely with his two children Michael and Victoria and his wife. They are very religious, family oriented, and conservative. Mr. Belsey is white, Kiki is black and their children are mixed but lighter skinned. The Kipps are all dark, from Trinidad.

There is also a big rivalry between Monty and Howard. Both are art professors of the Renaissance of Rembrandt, and while Monty has finished his book, which will be on the best seller's list, Howard's book will be a scholarly book that libraries buy and no one reads. In an interview, Howard criticized Monty's analysis of a painting publicly, but in response, Monty points out that Rembrandt had the wrong painting.

Jerome left to go work for his father's arch-rival, perhaps, according to Kiki, to get his father's attention. Furthermore, perhaps he does not respect his father as much because he had an affair and Kiki stayed with him. Perhaps also he is just different from the rest of his family, or he thinks that the Kipps' family is better than his. In his family, his father cheated, his mother is constantly upset, and he does not truly want his family at this moment. He wants to be a part of this other, "better" family, at least at this moment.

The Wrongs of Women: Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft and the Wrongs of Woman



This is another work that calls us to analyze what we value, whether that is with art, careers, family, or our own life goals in general. I liked this piece a lot better than her first part of the novel, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," because for me, Maria was much easier and more interesting to read. Wollstonecraft brings a fresh take to her theories as she gives a real life example of the "wrongs of women." In this second volume, the life of the main character Maria is filled with sadness, despair, and poverty due to her gender. She, as well as all the women around her is treated poorly and brutally by husbands, fathers, masters, and all other males in her life. This is also true of her good friend in the story Jemima.

This novella, in my opinion, was also probably much more interesting to write. As an English major, and thus obsessive reader and writer, I am constantly analyzing the words and works from the perspective of narrator and writer. For me, as for Wollstonecraft, it was much more interesting to prove her points beneath the surface, through the thoughts and actions of her characters than through the explicit criticisms of the treatise of Volume I. This is why I enjoyed Maria so much better than the Rights of Women. Wollstonecraft seemed to address the "wrongs of women" with satirical irony, in proving how these wrongs are the circumstantial fault of the wrongs of the men in their lives. And I love irony.

Art and Lies

AS A SIDENOTE: I really wish we had spent more time on this, I liked what we read of this novel! I think I would have preferred to do Mary Wollstonecraft in one sitting, and continued here with Art and Lies.

Homework for Friday: Do a close reading of a particular passage from Handel or Picasso. What question does it stimulate you to ask? What does it answer?

This is a passage from Handel's first section, towards the end, as he addresses British society's acknowledgment or lack thereof of the individual. Handel states,

"It's awkward, in a society where the cult of the individual has never been preached with greater force, and where many of our collective ills are a result of that force, to say that is is to the Self to which one must attend. But the Self is not a random collection of stray desires striving to be satisfied, nor is it only by suppressing such desires, as women are encouraged to do, that any social cohesion is possible. Our broken society is not born out of the triumph of the individual, but out of his effacement. He vanishes, she vanishes, ask they who they are and they will offer you a wallet or a child. 'What do you do?' is the party line, where doing is a substitute for being, and where the shame of not doiing wipes away the thin chalk outline that sketches Husband Wife Banker Actor even Thief. It's comforting, my busy life, left alone with my thoughts I might find I have none. And left to my own emotions? Is there much beyond a childing rage a sentimentality that passes for love?" (24).

For me, this passage stimulates a lot of questions. It seems as though the narrator, Handel, is not only questioning himself and his society, but his reader as well. This passage asks each of us to identify who we are in terms of something more than our actions and dreams. "Doing" as he less than tenderly explains, is not a substitute for being, it is an action associated with it, but they are not synonymous. We cannot be defined with the money we make, our by our friends or children or families, or jobs, or wants. In my opinion, and perhaps also in Handel's we are defined by our thoughts and emotions. In what we think and feel. It is THESE things that influence how we act and what we do. It is not the action that counts, but rather the thoughts, motivation, and intellect behind each action and each decision that define who we are and what we value.

Handel, as with the other two narrators in Art and Lies, has a name with an allusion. Our narrator Handel refers to the great George Frideric Handel, a famous English and German composer of the early 18th century. He, like our Handel, was a man who put things together in an uncommon way to make peace and harmony. Our Handel does the same thing in his ability to question us while soothing our minds. We as readers can easily read this passage and hear Handel's criticism of himself and of his society. We can sense his resentment at their shallow existence, none knowing who they are or what they truly mean. We can easily listen to the top most surface harmony of the song, hear only the chorus, and completely ignore the question to the reader. The passage does not give answers, not for himself or for his readers, regarding the path to Self-discovery. He later mocks this "path" in saying he gave a philosophical book to a friend only to have such friend say, "I'll try and fit it in." How shall I live? Is the question he repeats throughout this passage and chapter. As someone defined by their "wallet or child" or as something more.