Again I admire how descriptive he can be with words. In this book I enjoyed how he disguised some acts of the irishmen, which were brutal and gruesome at times, as a poet would. Sometimes I would read a passage and feel as though I had missed what actually happened to the characters. A few of these examples really jumped out. When they first stormed the post office, and every time someone yelled "God save the king!" they were massacred. Some of these deaths were described in a ways I didn't recognize as deaths at firsts. When the eighth orffice of an englishman was vomitting it took me a second to realize that was the gaping wound left from the bullet they just put into him
Another moment I found intriguing was during one of the firefights. The rebel staring at the girl dead in the street was getting turned on by the way she was lying there, and then the narration cut away from him until it cut back to him cleaning himself up. It never directly described what he had done, but the words chosen set the scene so well it was obvious what he had just done to himself.
Lastly, during the interrogation, the subtle descriptions of actions of charachters, before and during the interrogation and following firefight, made it so it was obvious they acted differently toward women. Rather then putting a bullet in her head or hitting her over the head with a guiness bottle, they chose to debate religous beliefs. Or when bicker about whether or not it was proper to find the woman's handbag, whom they had earlier spanked and kicked in the ass. They're such brutes the rest of the time I found their confusion in these moments, especially the confusion propogated by the one soldiers illiteracy rather comical. The sophistcated way it was written added to that.
P.S.
I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors. Writing this between layovers on a phone wasn't ideal lol
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While Queneau did disguise a lot of the actions of the soldiers with metaphors, I feel like there was a lot that he made very obvious and for the sake of humor. For instance the fact that the Irish Republicans had to take time out of their mission to stock up on booze, or the language that they used to address the women in the story. The way he uses tactful language to dress up much of the text and then punctuates it with almost sophomoric outbursts makes for a very fun read (in my opinion).
ReplyDeleteThis was interesting. I found it amusing as well, when he would say 'God save the King' and someone died. I wonder if there is a gender point to this; the men are obsessed with war and fights and they die :-) I'm not sure, just throwing out an idea. Foucault would kill me, but I wonder what this whole article says about the author :-)
ReplyDeleteWell Anatasia I think it says that the author has a very sarcastic manner about him, is very anti-war and distrustful of the intentions of humanity. He reminds me in a lot of ways of Kurt Vonnegut. Even his phrasing and the way he sets things up seems very similar.
ReplyDeleteI'm also curious of how Queneau views the author-function...I almost feel that by using the pseudonym of Sally when publishing the novel he was trying to detach himself from the text so as not to have his individuality influence the content. Maybe it was a personal experiment to see how differently readers would respond to the novel if they thought it was a woman author only to find out later that it was a man. The text is very risky, especially for the time it is published in and I think that Queneau is definitely playing with the role of the author-by literally treating it as an art of role-playing (playing the role of a woman named Sally)...which I guess could also comment on the theme of gender-that it is a role-playing activity/construction-which goes well with the content of the novel since much of it has to do with destructing generalizations men, women, power and sexuality. (and Alexander-def. can hear Vonnegut in Queneau now that you point it out...or the other way around...clearly he was influenced (:
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