Response Prompt #1

My sister recently gave me a book to read and it’s full of concrete details and imagery. The beginning of the book was a difficult read but eventually I realized how well written it was and caught on. This paragraph by Chuck Palahniuk’s book “Pygmy” is a great example of concrete details and imagery:

“For official record, squirrel maze of retail distribution center puzzle of competition warring objects, all improved, all package within fire colors. Area divided into walls constructed from objects, all tinted color so grab eye. All object printed: Love me. Look me. Million speaking objects, begging. Crown American consumer with power king, to rescue choose and give home or abandon here for expire. World label blow sharp into ear, loud into eye. Pander hand to take. Dying objects. All here, useful life winding down in clock ticks. Dying objects. Dying buyer. Dying slave woman “Doris”. Desperate how sad.” (Chuck Palahniuk, Pygmy, p 10)

Keep in mind this quote takes place in a Wall Mart coming from the mind of a thirteen year old Chinese secret agent spying on the United States. I believe the writer did a great job setting up a tone for this character. The word choice makes it sound as if a foreigner is making these statements because the author removes certain words from the paragraph. For example, instead of “Look at me.”, it says “Look me.” This paragraph brings me into the kid’s cold world and creates an almost robotic atmosphere. Even with the “flashy” imagery he uses you can’t escape the narrator’s precise, calculated, emotionless inspection of this Wall Mart. For instance, in the first sentence he uses the words squirrel maze and puzzle, the reader gets a sense of how overwhelming and confusing this store is to him. The sentence goes on to talk about “…warring objects, all improved, all package within fire colors.” When he refers to “fire colors” I got a sense that these objects were similar to how we the reader would view fires; bright, intriguing, and powerful. By the second half of the paragraph the writer turns a “Crown American consumer...” into a hopeless materialistic fool, creating a dramatic and dreary scene. Words like “dying” were used four times in four sentences further adding to the scene. Overall this book is incredibly descriptive and a great read.

Edward Zakoor

Response Prompt #1

Another author told me about Tom Robbins and the novel Still Life With Woodpecker. I fell in love with the way Robbins put a social commentary into a story. The excerpt I chose follows:

On the mainland, a rain was falling. The famous Seattle rain. The thin, grey rain that toadstools love. The persistent rain that knows every hidden entrance into collar and shopping bag. The quiet rain that can rust a tin roof without the tin roof making a sound in protest. The shamanic rain that feeds the imagination. The rain that seems actually a secret language, whispering, like the ecstasy of primitives, of the essence of things. (Robbins 69)

Robbins makes it feel as if you are actually in the rain “The persistent rain that knows every hidden entrance into collar and shopping bag” (Robbins 69). It makes you remember times when you were out in the rain trying to remain dry, but still rain finds its way past your outer protection and onto your dry, warm skin. Also he uses personification to make the rain appear sly “The quiet rain that can rust a tin roof without the tin roof making a sound in protest” (Robbins 69). It sneaks up on the tin roof. If you have ever been in a room with a tin roof during a heavy rainstorm you know what the protest sounds like. As well the rain finds its way into shopping bags and collars slipping in between the cracks. The syntax that Robbins uses is interesting. His use of fragment sentences illustrates how the rain is continuous. The sentences seem to fall on the reader just as “the famous Seattle rain” does (Robbins 69). Lastly the line “The rain that seems actually a secret language, whispering, like the ecstasy of primitives, of the essence of things” seems to me to be a metaphor (Robbins 69). Rain is water and water is a necessity to life. I interpret that line as saying that at the bottom of every living thing plant or animal is water.

Amanda Walsh (345)

Process Assignment #1 T.A.A.S.

As I was flipping through music articles, which is one of my hobbies, I came across an article of a band that I just went and saw in concert. I have was just introduced to them a few weeks before. While I was reading, they were said to be a punk band. They had certain details that revealed a more original feeling of music. These Arms Are Snakes are an array of different influences. I chose part of the semi-long article that described them as a post hardcore band with an old punk sound. I chose the best part of the article that describes the band for what they are. After I checked them out on Youtube and Itunes a few weeks back and seeing them live, helped me realize that this article was dead on with their sound.

"But, as much ground as it covers, post-hardcore may no longer be a suitable descriptor for the reach of today's crop of hardcore-descended bands. While keyboard atmospheres churn and throb behind wailing guitar, strangely melodic yelling, and a bass-and-drums attack built on finesse and aggression, These Arms Are Snakes is, along with various peers, heralding yet another philosophical sea change in a hardcore community that now bears little resemblance to its origins. Like The Mars Volta, Portugal The Man, Past Lives, and a growing contingent of colorfully diverse groups, These Arms Are Snakes embraces a dizzying array of influences." - City News, Music Profile: These Arms Are Snakes

By Saby Reyes-Kulkarni, September

This part of the article reveals the concrete detail in which their music is played. The guitar, bass, vocals, and micro Korg pianos are used by their effects and how they all fit together as a whole. The churning of the and throb of a wailing guitar is not even close to tangable. It shows the way the guitar is used in such detail that everyting just falls into place. It's how it sounds as you listen to it through their amps. The band has a stong melodic feel to their music. The vocals are in fact melodic so that every note is hit on key with passion. After reading this article and after I saw them life, this really stuck out to me as what their shows are actually like. Filled with energy, the singer runs around the stage and jumps through the audience with high energy while singing. He brings the band a more energetic feel. The guitar is stated to be "churned and throbbed" together using a vast amount of effects pedals. It helps the band bring out the unique sound that is intended. This part of the article uses concrete detail to show how everything pieces together as a whole with their unique sound. The words agression, melodic, churning, whailing, and attack, all make the band sound intense. Concrete detail is used in many ways. Using words to describe a sound is one of them. This is what I though the article was going after. They tried to mix and match sounds in which creates a sound within your head that you can hear. When I think of churning, I think of how the ocean sounds. When I think of melodic, I think of the melody and what's being played beneath that. When I think of attack, I think of something being threatened by something else, not being a sound. They are used as a feeling of each instrument. They are nothing that can be touched. The word dizzying makes me think of overwhelming amounts of music. To me, that's concrete detail.

Chinese culture has always interested me. For the past few weeks now, I have been reading the four volume series of The Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en, translated completely by Anthony C. Wu. This excerpt from one of the beginning paragraphs of volume one is a spoken poem by the narrator of The Journey to the West. In it, he describes the Ao-lai country, specifically, the center-point of the first part of the story, the beautiful Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, on which resides the hero of the story, the monkey king Sun Wukong.

Its majesty commands the wide ocean;

Its splendor rules the jasper sea;

Its majesty commands the wide ocean

When, like silver mountains, the tide sweeps fishes into caves;

Its splendor rules the jasper sea

When snow-like billows send forth serpents from the deep.

Plateaus are tall on the southwest side;

Soaring peaks arise from the Sea of the East.

There are crimson ridges and portentous rocks,

Precipitous cliffs and prodigious peaks.

Atop the crimson ridges

Phoenixes sing in pairs;

Before precipitous cliffs

The unicorn singly rests.

(Cheng’en, 66-67)

This passage demonstrates, in the most poetic sense, the importance of concrete detail. I personally enjoy how vivid and imaginative the description of the Mountain of Flowers and fruit. He places us at an all seeing view of the mountain, and through his description we can see the most significant of the magnificent features of this utopia. The line from the passage, “Its majesty commands the wide ocean when, like silver mountains, the tide sweeps fishes into caves”(Cheng’en 66), provides an excellent simile as he describes the enormous tides crashing into the side of the rocks, creating clear, silver mountains of water. When he describes, “Atop the crimson ridges, phoenixes sing in pairs…”(Cheng’en 67), we get a sense that this mountain is truly magical. He describes mythical creatures pairing up and singing in pairs, as if the very land on which they rest is so noble and perfect that even a creature as elegant as a phoenix must pay homage to it. He steadily implies that its splendor outweighs that of all other natural formations around it. The extreme detail that Cheng’en goes into to describe the scene is astounding, because he uses so few words. He is able to establish vivid imagery through simple descriptions, which leads the reader to appreciate his word choice and style. At least, this is how I feel when I read his poetic passages.

-Ron Cooks

Response Promt #1

Lately i've been really obsessed with the t.v show True Blood. When i found out that there was a books series the first thing i did was buy the first four books. I haven't had to much time to read them but i make as much time as i can. I am currently on book three and so far there are many examples concrete details.

"I swung the bat and went to stand beside Alcide. I swung the bat into position and waited for the next move. As my brother, Jason, had taught me- based on his many fights in bars, I'm afraid- i picked out one man in particular, pictured myself swinging the bat and bringing it to strike on his knee, which was more accessible to me than his head. " By. Charlaine Harris

There are many concrete details in this excerpt from the Sookie Stackhouse novel "Club Dead" that helps paint the reader a great image of what moments in the book. One good example of concrete imagery is " I swung the bat and went to stand beside Alcide. I swung the bat into position and waited for the next move." ( Harris) The scene that leads to this event takes place in a night Club in Jackson, Mississippi. While Sookie was working on her job she gets hit on by a werewolf and it turns into a bar fight, Sookie and her coworker against twelve werewolves. When she uses the words " Swung the bat into position" you can clearly picture her getting ready to swing at her target. She also gives a great example of who she is targeting when she says" I picked out one man in particular, pictured myself swinging the bat and bringing it to strike on his knee, which was more accessible to me than his head". Although, Sookie is not a much of a fighter she brings up really good ideas of get out of this situation alive. She uses her own common knowledge of the human body to plan out her own method of winning this uneven battle between the supernaturals.

I read this issue from the October 2009 issue of Dance Spirit and I thought it was the perfect example of concert detail. The article starts off by saying,
Dancing to the title song from the film Schindler’s List, Ida threw all caution aside physically-hurling herself to the floor, flinging and twisting her limbs in sky-high attitudes and skewed arabesques-and mentally, as well. She seemed to wring emotion out of her body with every gesture, leaving it all behind on the dance floor. Her interpretation was genuine and heartfelt. When her performance was over, the crowd, as if on cue jumped to its feet. By: Kate Lydon I feel as if this section of the article has a lot of concert detail and it makes you feel as if you were sitting there watching her dance. The author of this piece used a lot of wording like hurling, twisting, flinging, sky-high, and wring to get you to use your senses. When she uses the word hurling you can actually see the girl hurling her body into the air as she dances and this puts a visual picture in your head of what she is doing. The author also over emphasis about how high the dancer is jumping by saying she is jumping sky-high, and we all know she is not jumping that high, but it means that she is jumping very high up. The sentence “She seemed to wring emotion out of her body”, gives you the image of like wringing out a wet towel, but it’s the emotion wringing out of her body as she dances. Also the author mentions the dancer leaving it all on the dance floor which ties everything that she explained in concert detail before that. She also tops it off with the crowd jumped to its feet, and then you know for sure that everybody loved her. Also at the beginning of the article she says she threw all caution aside, and that gives you the clue that other dancers she was performing against might have had some caution while they were dancing and they didn’t leave it all on the dance floor like Ida did, and that’s why everybody loved her. All in all the author of this article did a great job of providing a picture of the dance piece Ida performed.

Response Prompt #1

When it comes to concert detail the best examples for are the the ones that cast suck vivid imagery you feel as though you are watching the scene itself on a stage, not reading it on a page. In the most recent novel I have read ‘Hair Styles of the Damned’ by Joe Meno there are many good examples of this imagery but the best by far would have to be:

“From the moment I did get my nose fucking broke, but backwards now, here’s what it must have looked like: A tone of hot red blood pouring up my chin, slipping back around the corner of my lips, up, up, up my nostrils. Blood, in very tiny specks and drops, rising like magic from the front of my Misfits “Die, Die, Die My Darling” black T-shirt. My teeth tightening themselves, the gritty-tasting enamel slipping magically back in place. My fucking stomach relaxing, my guts pulling themselves back together. The bridge of my nose deflating, like a balloon losing its air, folding back to its original straight shape. Me coughing, but backwards, the sound going back inside and down into my lungs with the blood. ” (Meno, 235)

There are many concert details in this excerpt, it being a part in the novel that just stimulates all of your senses at once. It transports you right to this exact moment in time. The first example of the great use of concert detail is the very first line ‘From the moment I did get my nose fucking broke, but backwards now, here’s what it must have looked like: A tone of hot red blood pouring up my chin, slipping back around the corner of my lips, up, up, up my nostrils’ (Meno, 235) I find this to be an excellent example because right off the back you know what you are in for from this passage, a scene of someone getting their nose broken, already your mind takes this idea and runs with it. Your mind starts to conjure up images of past injuries you have witnessed but as you read on and he begins to describe [the blood] slipping around the corner of his lips it just takes on a life of its own, in my mind at least, because the word ‘slipping’ just makes the blood feel reckless and unpredictable, even more so than it already is. My 2nd example is ‘my guts pulling themselves back together.’ (Meno 235) With such a bold word like ‘pulling’ it almost makes you physically feel the tension on his guts, the straining of an object when in reality they are a globby, liquidly mess. In my mind it just sets this hard image because as I said before, I picture guts to be kind of soupy and for them to ‘pull themselves’ is just such a raw image you immediately get in your minds eye. My 3rd and final example is ‘Me coughing, but backwards, the sound going back inside and down into my lungs with the blood.’ (Meno, 235) I find this to be an exceptional example because not only can you imagine the cough itself, I mean everyone knows what a cough sounds like but this cough also becomes an object. You as the reader can physically see it because you picture this thing actually moving back down into his body through his throat and then back into his lungs. This paragraph to me shows how Joe Meno can not only write well but how he can paint such a vivid image for you, it is almost as if he painted a picture of this scene or that he had filmed it, the words are that image provoking for me.

Anna Jakubik (422)