Spook by Mary Roach

This week I'm writing more on Spook as I've spent my long weekend immersed in magazines and trashy teen novels (don't judge me). I did make some progress on the book and just finished a chapter on the author enrolling in a school for psychic readings.

Her verdict is that both the psychic and the reader only believe that what is being said is true. It's not that the supposed fortune-teller is trying to deceive people; they honestly believe that they have a gift. This belief in themselves, in turn, stems from the receivers willingness to accept that the broad fortune that they were told is true. It reminds me of that one picture where a hand is drawing itself on a piece of paper. Let's see if I can attach that with my blog post to liven it up a little bit.

The only problem with this idea is that it applies to pretty much everything. We believe things because other people tell it to us, and since we accept them, they keep pushing the idea. The separation between a belief in the supernatural and the laws of gravity is scientific evidence, but people can slap "scientific proof" on everything. Every other month studies come out either denouncing soy milk or saying it has the same effect as skim milk (not that this concerns me since soy milk just plain tastes bad...) but you get my point. There are some absolute truths in which I whole-heartedly accept the scientific proofs, like the way the earth turns and the way a seed turns into a tree, but how much does this help us in our everyday lives? Actually, a good bit... With the knowledge that comes from things that are indisputably proven we can grow food, make shelters, stay warm, in essence, we can live. It's those things that concern our vanity, our curiosity, our boredom, and our lust that can't be proven.

Ok, that was an unorganized paragraph since it was just a train of thought, but this blog is just a series of things that I think after reading something, so I'm leaving it that way.

To continue with my mishmash of semi-epiphanies...

Should the knowledge that our materialistic existences has no solid reason or basis according to the way the world works stop us from pursuing them or is this another reason to? Is wearing the ridiculous concoctions passed off to us by designers just plain stupid or is it in fact a brilliant escape from life? Do we need to escape from life? Is it all that bad? Since food, shelter, and warmth is all set for spoiled littler suburban girls like me, is it wrong of me to decide that it's absolutely necessary to buy gold eye-shadow or is that what adds imperative hunting and triumph to my life?

Ok, I think I've reached my conclusion: Humans have an animal instinct to seek something, they want to find something, but that something has become hollow and useless since we are have everything that we need. We are the product of people who have thought everything out for us before. Unless we are brilliant enough to rise to a new level of thought (a quality only geniuses have, the rest of us just memorize what's spoon-fed to us) our existences are basically hollow. I don't know yet if I like living a pleasent and useless existence. I'm still weighing its pros and cons, I guess...

Now, how in the world did I get to this from reading Spook.....

Spook by Mary Roach

I've started my next outside reading book. This is a 295 page nonfiction book about the afterlife, but it's not agendized or boring. Mary Roach is incredibly witty and her diligence in research is kind of incredible when you take a step back and look at it. She finds out exstensive details about strange "scientists" weighing dying people or animals to detect if a soul is leaving the body or researching "ectoplasma". She manages to make an interesting information-packed book feel like a guilty treat. Here is a perfect example of Roach's writing:

"The loss [of weight after death] was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce. Which is, yes, twenty-one grams. Hollywood metricized its reference to the event for the simple reason that 21 Grams sounds better. Who's going to see a movie called Point Seven Five Ounces?"

There isn't a terribly deep book, but it does provoke some thought. For an example, I've determined that I don't believe in an afterlife and I don't think that there are any people that can communicate with spirits. The idea does make for sometimes very good stories, but that's about it. I find it strange, the way people keep believing arbitrary supernatural concepts only because people before them believed it. I mean, what good did the belief in ghosts, spirits, and true love do to our predecessors? What are some things I actually do believe in? Well I'm not all cynical, I think hard work will prevail in the end, and I think the corny saying, "Stay true to yourself" is actually worth following. I'm still taking a leap of faith here, but at least I'm not waiting for messages from the other side.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The most disturbing thing about this book was when I read the introduction. The ending, contrary to what I expected, is happy. The last lines show that Esther has been cured, and she feels as if she's being reborn. However, when I read the introduction, I learned that the author, Sylvia Plath committed suicide shortly after this book was published. That really puts a damper on any hopeful spirit that may have been born with the ending. Although the book is not autobiographical, it is a novel, I assume a lot of it is based on her life. She too had a mental breakdown and was well enough to complete and publish a novel inspired by it. But the convenient and inspiring ending is false. It's the most fictional part of the whole book because the real woman who really had these thoughts and feelings didn't get better. She killed herself.

Otherwise, the story went in a traditional and understandable arc. She keeps getting crazier and crazier until she is taken to a psychiatrist, Dr. Gordon, who she loathes. He gives her a shock treatment which goes awry, causes pain, and traumatizes her. Her attempts and thoughts of suicide are constant, and her reason why she wants to end her life is the strangest part. She doesn't want people to know that she's lost her mind, that she can't read or write any more. Finally, she makes an almost successful attempt at killing herself by hiding in their cellar and taking a bunch of sleeping pills. When she's found, she's barely alive and admitted into a mental hospital which is not much to her liking. A wealthy sponsor sends her to another, better institution where she has a female psychiatrist who Esther actually likes. This femal doctor, Dr. Nolan, helps her recover and administers successful shock treatments. In fact, her first shock treatment with Dr. Nolan is one of my favorite parts of the book because it's such a relief. It goes:

"All the heat and fear had purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air."

That passage is so refreshing after watching this girl stew in her destructive, incomprehensible, and disturbed thoughts for so long. She keeps getting worse and worse until she starts trying to kill herself and then finally the bell jar is lifted a bit! This isn't her first mention of that metaphor. The first time she said it, I was terribly relieved that Plath had deigned to explain to us the reason behind the title of the book. It's relatively annoying when authors choose a name that requires analyzing. I feel that it's a bit affected... Anyhow, the first mention that we have of the bell jar is when she's driving to her new, private mental institution and she can feel that her mother and brother are blocking the doors of the car so that she does not jump off the bridge that they are driving across. I wonder if they were actually doing that or she was just imagining it. Either way, it's pretty horrible.

"Wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air. Blue sky opened its dome above the river, and the river was dotted with sails. I readied myself, but immediately my mother and my brother each laid one hand on a door handle. The tires hummed briefly over the grill of the bridge. Water, sails, blue sky and suspended gulls flashed by like an improbable postcard, and we were across. I sank back in the gray, plush seat and closed my eyes. The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn't stir."

Her writing is so very good. The entire book is excellent. It's such an injustice that brilliant people suffer so much. It's so depressing that Sylvia Plath couldn't live a long and happy life when her writing was so incredible.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

I hadn't had any time to read during the school-week, but I started it last weekend and basically could not put it down. It's only 229 pages long, but I don't think that is particularly easy literature. Plus, I'm planning on reading more books this quarter. This weekend I hope to finish it.

So basically I'm halfway through the book as of Saturday morning. It starts out with the heroine Esther Greenwood in New York as a summer guest-editor to Ladie's Day, a magazine. She starts out the book being a slightly cold and removed person. She's fascinated with one of the other winners, the sensual and cynical Doreen, but she is somehow disgusted with Doreen's amoral behavior at the same time. Flashbacks to her earlier college life also show how her adoration for a smart, good-looking, athletic boy Buddy Willard turns into revulsion for his hypocracy. It turns out that his good-boy image is only a mirage as he had an affair with a random waitress. Her disgust for the world isn't emphasized very much, but I picked up on every grain of it because it's certainly something that I feel these days.

Her behavior becomes stranger and stranger as the book progresses. She starts to refuse human company, and when she does go out with Doreen, her vision of the night is somehow feverished and unfocused. Her boss at the magazine tries to get her to appreciate the wonderful opportunity that she is getting, but she seems to be losing her vison of what she wants to do with her life. She tells us of all the years before that she labored at her work to get perfect grades, to get every scholarship, and to win every competition. She knows that those are her skills and strong points, but she fears she won't be able to do anything once she gets out of college.

By the time she returns home to Boston, she's completely lost. She has chronic insomnia. She refuses to wash because of its futility. She decides she will write a novel and spends a whole day sitting in her nightgown staring into nothingness. She can't read anything (as in, she's unable to piece together words out of letters) besides headlines, and becomes fascinated with morbid stories. She makes one feeble attempt at suicide, but ends up only cutting at her legs because she can't bring herself to slash her wrists. At the same time, I feel myself reading this book with the very same morbid fascination that the character has. Watching this girl self-destruct is painful, but I can't look away.