No Guts No Glory

Palahniuk’s “Guts” is a rollercoaster ride.  The first portion of the piece is full of embarrassing anecdotes of boys trying to “get off.”  These masturbation stories, as we learn from Palahniuk’s essay, are meant to be both funny and scary because they involve nothing supernatural or even out of the ordinary.  These boys are using household things like vegetables, clothing, and pools to explore the limits of masturbation.  Part of the reason why the first two instances of masturbation are so funny is because we are not really invested in the characters.  One of them escapes unscathed but carrying with him the embarrassment of knowing his mother found the carrot, but the other one dies.  Why is it that we feel very little for the boy that dies with a noose around his neck, yet we feel sympathy for subject of the final story?

I think the most obvious answer is that the final story is the narrator’s story.  What begins as just another day pearl diving in the swimming pool becomes an incident that would radically alter the rest of his life.  His large intestines are literally sucked into the pool gutter and he is left trying to reach the surface for oxygen.  Palahniuk takes a moment of humor – a moment not dissimilar to the ones that introduced the theme of masturbation – and makes it serious.  But the piece does not come off as a warning to others.  How many people use pool suction mechanisms to masturbate? 

I think what Palahniuk was ultimately trying to accomplish in Guts is to shock people.  The subject matter alone is one that makes most people uncomfortable (and this, no doubt, plays a role in the humor of the piece but also in the fainting later on).  Is the story transgressive because the subject matter is so unexplored?  Masturbation is not something people tend to discuss, especially publically, and Palahniuk does so to the extreme.  A boy masturbating while his mother calls him down for dinner may be funny, but a boy who has to live the rest of his life watching what he eats because he destroyed his intestinal track is another. 

The style is informal.  Often times the author addresses the reader in the second person, which seems to implicate the reader in the story.  Are we all guilty of certain strange masturbation techniques?  Is that what he is getting at?  In addition, the sentence structure is short and choppy.  Most paragraphs are no longer than just a few sentences.  This structure helps control the overall pace of the piece.  

Circus thoughts, and Food.

The second half of Nights… remains consistent with the first in that it is also high allusive.  Carter’s allusions, which pervade every scene in the novel, refer to biblical passages, contemporary folklore, song and dance, and even pop culture.  These allusions complicate on a literary level a story that is already complicated in and of itself.  The plot is not strictly linear as Carter continuously refers back to the lives of certain characters.  These not so brief expository passages in Nights…, as when we learn the stories of The Princess, Mignon, etc, are not meant to interrupt the narrative.  On the contrary, the experiences of these protagonists inform the present story, and give us insight as to what Carter’s intensions are.  For example, the Princess’s and Mignons exploitation as women forces the reader to consider Fevvers’ own exploitation as a female character, or, conversely, her exploitation of men. 

The apes escape (legally) from the circus, Buffo the clown goes crazy and literally summersaults out of the circus, the Strong Man is revealed as weak, The Princess and Mignon fall in love, yet all this disorder – both productive and tragic – does not stop the inevitable from happening: all those members of the circus were to become trapped in route to Siberia, a train crash that leaves its members in a state of existential limbo.  The Princess and Mignon progress so much in the novel and emerge, like Fevvers, as powerful female characters, yet all three of these women are left helpless in the Russian wilderness.  Neither of the three, like the rest in the caravan, are able to transcend the life threatening situation they are in.  Does Carter purposefully undermine their progress?  What was the point of the novel if, after Mignon and the Princess find solace from the hectic world and their mutual love for each other, they are left to die, wandering in the icy dessert? 

I have a lot of thoughts that need further exploration, but I want to address the critical essay assigned for this class.  Abigail Dennis, in “The Spectacle of her Gluttony,” addresses the novels ambivalence.  The novel contains within it individual stories that introduce whole new sets of ideas and interpretations.  It is complex and highly metaphoric and allusive, and for this reason I would agree that Carters’ intentions are HIGHLY ambivalent.  I enjoyed trying to deconstruct the metaphors and to decipherer their meanings within the larger context of the story, but at times I found it difficult to grasp what Carter was trying to do.  I, however, am not sure I agree with Dennis’ interpretation Carter’s use of food, eating, and appetite, or her “literary food ethos.” (119)  Excessive eating certainly feeds into the Bahktian notion of the grotesque body, and Fevvers certainly indulges herself in ways that we are not used to seeing women portrayed (especially when we consider the archetypal Victorian female character), but is her overeating political? Dennis says:

The animalistic, carnal relish with which she attacks her food signifies an earthy sexuality, and her blatant disregard for feminine niceties, from basic etiquette to the Victorian habit of pretending that one does not, in fact, engage in the act of eating… (121)

…but should we understand her eating habits as a central detail of the story?  This added layer is fun to entertain, and knowing that Carter herself suffered with eating disorders throughout her life certainly adds credibility to the argument, but food/eating as playing a major function in the novel is something I am unsure I am willing to buy into.  

Carter's Artifice and Feminist Agenda

         Carter forces the reader to question the validity of Fevvers’ story from the very beginning, and it is precisely because of Walser’s investigation that we come to know Fevvers’ story.  He says: “Though do not think the revelation she is a hoax will finish her on the halls; far from it.  If she isn’t suspect, where’s the controversy?  What’s the news?” (11) Because we are primed with the seed of doubt by the narrator, subsequent moments of supernatural happenings – like the moment in which Fevvers sprouts her wings – become increasingly questionable.

         For example:

“She let out a great shriek,” said Lizzie, “that brought me up out of a dream – for I shared the attic with her, sir – and there she stood, stark as a stone, her ripped chemise around her ankles, and I would have thought I was still dreaming or else have died and gone to heaven, among the blessed angels; or, that she was the Annunciation of my menopause.” (24)

         The first things about this passage that caught my attention was its reliability – not even Lizzie knows if what she saw was really happening, or if the sprouting of wings was just a dream.  This ambiguity feeds back directly into Walser’s initial skepticism, and reinforces the potentially artificial nature of the story. 

         This particular moment in the story is very much concerned with feminist themes.  In many ways, Fevvers wings symbolize the beginning of her transformation from ordinary child to “…the pure child of century...[in a] New Age in which no women will be bound down to the ground.” (25) But what if this transformation never took place?  Does this debunk the story’s potentially feminist agenda?  Carter clearly intended for the reader to also question the verisimilitude of Fevver’s and Lizzie’s stories, but why?  Carter’s ambiguity suggests that the story could take place even if Fevver’s story isn’t true.  Perhaps Carter is suggesting that a winged woman does not do anything to directly change a woman’s role in society.  It certainly has changed Fevver’s circumstances by providing her with wealth and fame, but winged or not, she still endured certain female experiences – both bodily and at the hands of men – in which her wings played only a minor role.  For example, she grew up in a brothel and witnessed the way women were treated.  She learned from these experiences.  And this was well before she sprouted her wings. 

Malapropism and the meaning behind Carter's language

            One way to consider Carter’s “delicate malapropisms” in Circus is as divisive, and one that contributes to a feminist reading of the text.  In other words, Carter purposefully misuses words to alert the reader of both the subtext of the moment and satirical implications of the passage in relation to the story as a whole.  For example:

“Oh, her little plump thighs like chicken cutlets in her doeskin britches!  What a quaint figure she cut!  He was a Scottish gentleman with a big beard.  I remember him well.  Never give ‘is name, of course.  Left her his library.  Our Fevvers was always rooting about in it, nose in a book nothing but a poke of humbugs for company.” (40)

            “Chicken cutlets” and “doeskin britches” is diction most commonly associated with food, yet Carter uses it here to describe Ma Nelson.  This objectification of Ma Nelson, a heroic heroine in the story, by Carter suggests that she is mocking the kind of language men like the Scottish gentlemen use to describe women, and, furthermore, the way men perceive women: as meat.  This language informs the sarcasm we encounter in the subsequent sentence: “What a quaint figure she cut!”  We know that the two are directly related because the latter maintains the same diction is the former. 

            Lizzie, Fevvers’ companion in the novel, is telling this excerpt and we learn that Fevvers uses the library donated by the Scottish patron to educate herself.  This performance is ironic because a man who is clearly depicted as one of their many oppressors donates the library, an understood source of knowledge to the whorehouse.  This knowledge seems to be an important contribution to Fevvers’ feminism in the story.  And if the characters (whores) within the home are meant to represent all women in the world, Carter may be suggesting that education is the key to liberation.  Just moments earlier, Ma Nelson’s house is described: “Yet we were all suffragists in that house…it was a wholly female world within Ma Nelson’s door.” (38)

The final sentence of the chosen excerpt illustrates both Carter’s sarcasm and manipulation of words to connote certain intended meanings.  The use of “poke” is purposeful as it has sexual connotation.  But not sexual connotation in its grandest.  “Poke” suggests the meekness of man – his furtive attempts at intercourse; it suggests repetitive sexual shortcoming.  


Related moments:

1.     “The room, in all, was a mistresspiece of uniquely feminine squalor. (9)

2.     “She invitingly shook the bottle until it ejaculated afresh.” (12)

3.     “…every morning…I lit the fire…until…the drawing-room was snug as a groin.” (27) 

“…this lumber room of femininity, this rag-and-bone shop of the heart…” (69)

Amis and Shakespeare

Acting becomes a motif in Money.  The impetus for Self’s experiences in New York is work-related, and what he does for work involves actors.  Most of his time is spent tracking down and talking to actors – discussing their roles, their compensation, and what they will and will not do on screen.  But his occupation is merely a way of introducing acting as a theme in the novel. 

This theme is explored in several additional ways.  He observes people both in New York and London, describing them as actors or artificers in some capacity.  He warns (rhetorically) several times that one should always watch out not for the professional actors, but for those who act not as an occupation.  Why are they more dangerous?  Is Self calling himself out as just another actor in the novel? 

Martin Amis himself appears as a character in the story.  This suggests that the novel may be metafictional, in that it is aware of itself of an artificial creation.  Furthermore, is Self aware of his own artifice?  It seems as the story progresses that he becomes more aware that the world he is in, although real within the rules of the story, is made up.  Martin Amis, the character, seems to know way too much about Self as a character, yet self does not question this authority.  In fact, he reveres Amis almost unquestionably: what begins as a frustration with Amis becomes a strange admiration. 

This kind of logic coincides with Shakespearean logic: that we are all players/actors upon the world stage.  I don’t think it’s an accident that the bar Self frequents is called the Shakespeare – although in that particular situation I think we are meant to understand it somewhat ironically – or that Shakespeare in constantly referred to.  Amis and Self are calling our attention to that kind of Shakespearean logic. 

Begley and Amis in conversation

            If we had any doubts up to this weekend’s reading, now it is certain that Amis is painting a dystopian picture of society. In Jon Begley’s Satirizing the Carnival of Postmodern Capitalism… he suggests (among other possible interpretations) that Money may be a “dystopian representation of a collective postmodern condition.” (80) It is important to consider, however, that this “dystopian” world that Amis creates is one we experience through Self’s eyes.  He takes us to the darkest, most sex-obsessive, money-hungry confused places – both real places and to states of mind.  Yet Self also feels shame.  He does not pride himself in these compulsions, but rather runs away from them: drinking himself into stupors to avoid coming to terms with his behavior and understanding himself better.  Furthermore, in Begley’s essay, he considers Dostoyevsky and his view of character: As in Dostoyevsky, what is important for Amis is “not how his hero appears in the world but first and foremost how the world appears to his hero, and how the hero appears to himself.” (Bakhtin, Problems 47) Self appears to himself as he does to the reader and to the world – ugly, fat, greedy, drunk – and this influences our understanding and interpretation of the world around him.  Is New York really dystopian? Or is this feeling we get when reading the story just a product of Self’s point of view?

            The corruption is not contained in New York, however.  When Self returns home to London, he finds that London, too, had begun to adopt some of the capitalistic, “consumer culture and symptoms of global tinnitus, temporal disorientation, and psychic fragmentation.” (81) Describing his neighborhood in London, he says, “There has recently been a wavelet of fag murders in my neighborhood… Three weeks ago a girl was found strangles in a stolen car… That is the business, isn’t it, paid risk, paid fear?” (215-216) Did Self’s from his experiences in New York with him to England?  Is England really changing or is it just Self’s changing interpretation of his surroundings?  

            Lastly, throughout the novel we experience moments that are often strangely associated with money.  Self will describe a moment that seemingly has nothing to do with money in fiscal terms, resulting in money as motif in the novel (hence the title, I suppose).  For example: “They didn’t need prompting: you see, they really did think it was possible, likely, certain that money and fame had fingered them, that exceptionality had singled them out.” (184) In this way, money is not only how we understand it – as a physical, tangible means or currency.  In Money, money becomes a way through which emotions, actions, thoughts, and events are understood.  It becomes a new kind of currency.  Money pervades through boundaries in ways that only Self could illuminate.