lady_stranger
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“You were not lying you liar.”

Powerful. Evocative. These are what I can tell of the novel of Francois Mauriac’s Vipers’ Tangle. Mainly, the story of the novel revolves around the character of a scarred old man who, almost all his life, has been living under misery, partly because of certain uncontrollable circumstances and partly because of his own decisions. That is to say, as people dislike Louis, out of spite, Louis, all the more, makes himself hateful to them. Now at sixty years old, when death seems to be looming over his shoulder, Louis decides to carry out his last attempt of revenge against the person who has hurt him the most, his wife Isa, by writing a letter to her to be supposedly opened after Louis’ death. The letter which Louis is writing, which is the story of the novel, eventually becomes Louis’ confession – his happiness, hurt, resentment and hope in life.

After reading the first page of the novel, I got so hooked with the story that I couldn’t put the book down. The story is sad, undeniably so. And the way the novel is written, as if we are reading the letter itself of Louis to his wife, makes the story somehow, personal in the sense that we are shared of the “secret” between Louis and Isa. (Though, we could also think of our reading the novel as a kind of intrusion to the privacy Louis and his wife. Nevertheless, whichever way you want to put it, reading the novel/letter becomes more interesting and intriguing.)

To a certain extent, one can say that this book is EMO. To prove my point, the above quote is just one of the many quotable lines we can observe in the book. However, Louis’ emo character has integrity and dignity.

This book is one of the few books that broke my heart. Read it!

spider_lily88
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This is a post to inform you of the third topic for the writing competition, valid for the November-December period. I--as long as people I've interacted with recently--have been on the lookout for so many good movies coming out, so the next challenge is for you to

Write a story about the worst experience one can go through when watching a movie (as in the cinema). The story can include the time right before going inside the theater, once inside the theater, and after. torture your character/s as much as you want! The more creative, the better!

Again, the story can be less but not more than 1800 words. Here again is the format for posting:


 

Title
Theme of the challenge (Fear in Broad Daylight)
Brief summary or teaser of your story
 

spider_lily88
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In her introduction to Tales from Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote,


"So these are the reports of my explorations and discoveries: tales from Earthsea for those who have liked or think they might like the place, and who are willing to accept these hypotheses:


          things change:
                    authors and wizards are not always to be trusted:
                              nobody can explain a dragon."


But this isn't about that book. Nope, this is actually about her other book, the first of the Earthsea cycle: A Wizard of Earthsea

Not a very good book review, I fear. I'm a bit rusty, not having written one in a while. All in all, however, I'd have to say I think the novel of discussion gets two-and-a-half stars from me. As for me, I do promise to write a better review next time!
 

spider_lily88

I usually refrain from writing end-of-semester posts, but because my last year in college turned out to be the farthest thing from what I expected it to be (not that I map-out my semesters beforehand, mind you), I think it is worth seeing in black-and-white.

This school year seems to want me to come full circle. I won't say I've changed myself overall for the better. It isn't so much me, but key circumstances around me which are looking more and more familiar. Last semester was freshman year once more: without the awkward makeup, the enthusiastic outfits, the first-year fears, the careless naivete.

I hung out with my block more: not too much, not too little, but just enough. Just enough to remember why I love having conversations with certain people, just enough to de-stress, just enough to know I was surrounded by people who were in more or less the same academic soup I was in (An alphabet soup, I suppose, each signifier a different form of resistance, a different hegemony, a different kind of sext).

I have not had a seven-thirty class in the morning since freshman year, and though I plan to find a way out of this timeslot, I still cannot help but draw a circle.

And perhaps because I had forgotten the rough edges of memory (Remember that not everything must be forgotten), rain flooded the veins of cities, and hearts, and minds, and all the secret little pathways we keep in the lines of our palms. In my first year of college, Nolledo and Saramago were my concerns: the electricity was cut-off, the wind howled about the house. After the initial assurances of being safe, the next concern was How are you going to do the paper? Paper, what paper, can you do a paper on Nolledo without understanding Nolledo? Can you explain the White Blindness and pour your heart out in the black and white of words when it is the black blindness of a storm that surrounds you?

Now the circumstances are different: more cunning, more dire. A cold slap on the face--there is no attempt to dramatize or romanticize, there is only the acknowledgment that without an apparent reason we (We, we, you, you, I, I) survived. Yesterday I heard my brother curse from the sala as I  was setting the table. He was upset and befuddled because my copy of Kafka's The Metamorphosis mysteriously got wet. A part of me was upset (though I decided not to confront him. Who needs extra stress?), and then I thought of Trina, andazillusionizes, and Max Pulan: all the words that couldn't be saved, all the memories seeped in rain, smelling of dampness and the sweet cold of pulp. And later, I thought of the houses and the rafts and the hunger and the soul-eating desperation that prowled above and below the floodwater. And Kafka was okay, he was all right. I understood, and he understood, too.

My Lit 127.2 class will be held in CTC 302. I don't know about you (and I already toldkeishinreverie this), but places hold more meaning to me now--far, far more meaning than letters and gift-wrappers and scented candles. Places of significance are instant pathways to my soul, because they envelop my whole being. CTC 302 was where the most magical (sabaw, green-minded, mind-fucking, academically-challenging, Lord I'm only in freshman year but I'm already failing because I'm lost in the garden of forking paths and the actuality and potentiality of the fucking mango seed is having a bitch fight with the way Shakespeare screwed the Aristotelian plot line over to give birth to Lear) moments happened, and I can't help but smile, I can't help but smile.

I don't know what second semester will be like. I do not want to know. I just want to take it as it unfolds(wings of a butterfly, of a Samsa-turned-beetle, of an ending hovering in the sky). Full circle, full circle, it wants me to come full circle.