Revisiting the Definition of 'Coming of Age'

As I mentioned in my first blog post, now that the course has concluded, I am revisiting my concept of what "coming of age" means to me. To start, I asked some friends what they thought coming of age means.

"It's when you get old." -A. Robison

"It's some significant event that occurs between the time you are born and the time you die." -L. Hague

"Coming of age is when years show up on your front porch and knock on your door." -A. Robison

"I don't know." -L. Hague

"Combing of age is when you flop the hair growing on the side of your head over your bald spot." -A. Robison

If anything, after reading the course literature and living through the past semester, I can say that "coming of age" has become more nebulous instead of more well defined.

I am reminded of a comment I made on Jonny's blog where I doubted whether middle school literature staples The Pigman and The Outsiders could be considered coming-of-age novels on par with Catcher and Portrait. I must say that I am reconsidering my stance a little bit. Especially after reading some books by John Green (yes, I'll promote him every chance I'll get) I realized that there is much more to offer by coming-of-age novels than a journey.

In terms of coming of age itself, I could best say that it is whatever you make it out to mean to you.

Ramblings on Sag Harbor

I can't say Sag Harbor was the most enjoyable book I've ever read. The narration was consistently disillusioned and flatly nostalgic, without the vitality of some of the other narrators we have read.

At the same time, I did like some parts. Benji's narration, while unenthusiastic, told a compelling story of a boy's summer vacation. I liked all the insights that Benji shared about his life, friends, and family.

Perhaps one reason for the difference in tone is that Benji does not give us attributes to root for as Jason does. Jason is a poet and a bullied kid with troubled parents. Benji is a kid... who does things. There is less arc and defined structure in Sag Harbor, instead opting for partially-related snippets.

Novelizing the Coming-of-Age Process

Mr. Mitchell recently linked us to an article suggesting that Black Swan Green could do well to be elevated to the same heights of notability as The Catcher in the Rye, while disclaiming that part of Catcher's fading popularity owes to the fact that the book is touted by the authority figures of coming-of-agers today, robbing it of its (for lack of a better word) rebellious appeal.

I like the article's summary of the situation. Catcher is indeed bogged down with issues relating to its age (both direct and circumstantial), a problem that BSG manages to avoid. We can see the drawn-out effects of the direct issues in how Portrait carries baggage from the Irish independence movement that requires footnotes every few sentences of certain sections. On the other end of the spectrum, Housekeeping effectively occurs in a vacuum other than Monopoly, magazines, automobiles, and trains.

However, while I thoroughly enjoyed Black Swan Green, I would not consider either it or Catcher the "coming-of-age cure-all". I don't see the need to hold one novel on a pedestal as "the coming-of-age novel of an era". Both Catcher and BSG hit home at points, but at the end of the day neither changed my life.

As an alternative, I would propose merely collecting the Coming-of-Age Greatest Hits. Some books may not directly document a coming-of-age journey, yet they could still take their place in the pantheon of "formative literature". Each book we have read in our course itself has brought its own subset of contributions to the table. The Bell Jar's primary focus was mental illness for at least half its run. Catcher itself only elapses over three days or so. Housekeeping is rich with understanding of transience, both in the natural world and personal world. I would personally nominate the works of John Green as exploring a number of issues associated with "growing up", including coming to grips with the truest loss of innocence, death. The collected advantages of sampling a variety of coming-of-age novels are the greatest strengths that our semester-long CoA course offers.

Maggotry

[Reflective mode enabled.]

For me as a reader, the chapter "Maggot" is the point when Black Swan Green "gets real." I've read plenty of books about the whims and whiles of uncool kids but "Maggot" gives BSG some deep roots into the kind of dark suffering and challenges endured by Holden and Esther.

On a personal level, I can relate to Jason for a number of years in my past, though I have never had it as intense (at least as recorded in my memory, years after the fact).

Even 20-30 years after the events of BSG (set in 1982) and an Atlantic Ocean away, harassment I have experienced generally falls along these lines:

• Being devalued in action and words for not upholding a (sub)standard of masculinity (including the haphazard misapplication of words like "gay", much as Jason experiences). In particular, this can be further broken down:
• not having an interest in sports
• valuing honor, decency, respect, and good behavior
• having a calm, reserved demeanor—tending to act meek rather than brutish
• taking an interest in schoolwork, science, etc.
• general lack of conformity (like not having blue as a favorite color)
• Being fat and lacking athletic ability.
• Not giving a damn to fit in with the aforementioned athletic, self-appointed "cool" group.

I have seen this pattern both during my six years attending a small rural school district in North Kentucky (aka Indiana) and here at Uni High. Which brings me to...

Story time! I was fairly derided from when I started Uni as a subfreshman until an incident freshman year in our English class. Without going into detail, the following day I asked to speak in front of the class and denounced what had occurred. After that exact point, some sort of knowledge rippled out that, pardon the phrasing (I can't think of anything better), I "was not to be messed with," at least that harassment was no longer intended for me myself to hear, see, and feel. Or, depending on the person, I may have been regarded genuinely better. (I did get some apologies.) Yet, even though I was no longer a target, I don't think the root problem went away, even to the present day. I still see the same attitudes applied to all manner of people and ideas, except I am not in the crosshairs.

Not to make this a gripe session... All I can say is that I am looking forward to participating in the Day of Silence, technically today as the clock ticks.

Art as Counter-Transience

A thread I have seen tying the five course books so far together has been the use of art (particularly writing) as a method to preserve fleeting, transient moments or experiences.

Stephen is all about being an artist by the end of Portrait. Admittedly, he is focused more on capturing something with his art than a moment in time.

I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use--silence, exile, and cunning. (Joyce 268-289)

One of the most tender moments in Catcher (and one of my favorites) is when Holden writes the composition for Stradlater about Allie's baseball mitt (hence preserving him) and he recounts Allie's death to us for the first time. In this quotation, he expresses his sentiment to Phoebe:

"I like Allie," I said. "And I like doing what I'm doing right now. Sitting here with you, and talking, and thinking about stuff, and--"
"Allie's dead--You always say that! If somebody's dead and everything, and in Heaven, then it isn't really--"
"I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake--especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all." (Salinger 171)

Also worthy of mention from Catcher is the Museum of Natural History:

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way--I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it. (Salinger 121-122)

In Black Swan Green, Madame Crommelynck describes her childhood home, Zedelgem Château:

“Do you still own it?”
“It no longer exists. The Germans built an airfield where you see, so the British, the Americans . . .” Her hand made a boom gesture. “Stones, craters, mud. Now is all little boxes for houses, a gasoline station, a supermarket. Out home who survived half a millennium exists now only in a few old heads. And a few old photographs. My wise friend Susan has written this. ‘By slicing out this moment and freezing it . . .’ ” Madame Crommelynck studied the girl she’d once been and tapped ash from her cigarette. “ ‘. . . all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.’ ” (Mitchell 157)

Even in the books without explicit reference to art as amber, the novels themselves function (and excel) as vessels of a specific time and place. (It could be said that such an effect is inherent to all art.) The Bell Jar chronicles Esther being dragged through mental illness and depression. In class, I recall a mention that Housekeeping, as written by Ruth, preserves both Edmund's house and transient imagery, such as the wind blowing leaves around the house.

Symbolism in Lucille

Housekeeping has taken a while to digest. I think I finally have a tidbit worthy of sharing as a blog post.

“They seem to be nice children.”
“Very quiet.”
“Not as pretty as Helen was.”
“The one has pretty hair.” (31-32)

There was a little silence, and then Sylvie hesitantly put her icy hand on my head and said, “You're Ruthie. And you're Lucille. Lucille has the lovely red hair.” (45)

There is a fairly good case that Lucille's red hair is a symbol related to her eventual flight from Ruth and Sylvie. I have been musing how transience is also to some degree a trait in the Foster family tree.

I constructed this family tree diagram and categorized each member using colors.

Key:

Domesticity

Death

Transience

Absence

(We get the full name "Lucille Stone" on page 217.)

I'm not sure we can equate the deaths with transience (especially considering that Edmund Foster built the house) but they are related phenomena, overlapping, for example, when Sylvie walks out onto the train bridge. My original plan was to include absence with transience but Molly and Reginald to our knowledge don't move around. Fisher is a complete unknown, so I matched his type with Sylvie.

Sylvie's hair is light brown (11). Reginald Stone is "apparently a pale fellow with sleek black hair" (14). No one else in the family has red hair that we are told. Red hair is a recessive trait, technically, and it is unlikely that Robinson took formal genetics into account as she crafted her fiction novel, so we don't know where Lucille's red hair actually came from. To use a similar analogy, transience/premature death/absence/weirdness would be a dominant trait in the Foster line that Lucille does not have.

In Defense of Esther, sort of

Both in class and on our blogs, I see some looking down upon Esther Greenwood. One interpretation of the novel says she is coldhearted and presumptive in her mental dealings with others. This has some support but there is more to the story.

There are times when Esther is flat out rude, particularly at the height of her mental breakdown. The one that comes to mind is her reaction to her mother's birthday gift of flowers. However, while she is still in New York, her critical eye is in high gear and she makes plenty of downbeat judgements, likely owing to the cloud over her mental state.

A common talking point is Esther's views on Buddy. Perhaps I trust the narrators of first-person novels too much, but I highly doubt that Esther's views of Buddy stem from some immaturity in the sense of a character flaw. At worst, Esther is in the midst of an internal mental struggle that she has to sort out, in which case we should sympathize with her, not deride her. At best, she is completely justified. In the text, she talks about his remarks towards making her a housewife. We see his initial rejection of poetry and his attempts to make inroads, with the publication of his poem and Esther's nightly poetry readings to him. Esther's decision making is impaired by this point, so perhaps she should have given Buddy the bad news without waiting for him to get better. Her reason seemed to be in his best interest. Then we have his label as a "hypocrite" which has been beaten to death. Along the entire spectrum, we cannot excuse Buddy for his hypocrisy (as Esther does justify in the novel as a double standard) any more than we can excuse Stradlater for being a prick.

Framing The Bell Jar

Something about The Bell Jar prevents me from fully considering it a coming-of-age novel. The book reads like a description of the process of a mental breakdown, happening during and because of coming-of-age.

The book does start out with coming-of-age elements, but it drops them almost completely about halfway through. The Marco episode at the end of chapter nine marks the beginning of the novel's transition. It is completed in chapter ten, where we see Esther's behavior reveal itself while she narrates fewer "coming-of-age" musings and actions, as she tries and fails to write a novel and read Finnegans Wake. We read chapters that chronicle mental disruption, suicide attempts, and therapy, but that are not quite applicable to coming-of-age per se.

It's not to say that the two are unrelated. Unarguably, Esther's coming-of-age dilemma leads to her downward spiral. I could best describe what I sense about the book by saying "We don't get anything out of Esther." She lays out the contributing factors of her coming-of-age trauma, but her primary active role in the novel is breaking down. It's also not to say that we don't see her personal developmental issues showing through her mental condition—we do, such as her fleeting romance of the sailor—but they take a backseat.

In chapter 18 we suddenly see the dismal tone of the previous eight chapters lift just as Plath's metaphor of the bell jar does. We must remember that we do not see Esther getting better from sorting out her problems or overcoming some obstacle. Psychotherapy, including electroshock therapy, alleviates the six month breakdown. We do see coming-of-age progress with her fitting for birth control, the Irwin experience, her plans to return to college, and the hospital exit interview that the book leaves us imagining, but these feel like breadcrumbs.

We can reveal the structure of the novel further by comparing Esther to our good friend Holden. He too suffers some sort of mental breakdown and ends up in an undisclosed medical center (Salinger 1):

I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy.

With Holden, we see a journey where Holden is a dynamic character, trying different things to pass the three days as another expulsion comes to pass. One of his most pronounced changes, if not the most occurs after Phoebe shows signs on the surface of wanting to follow Holden near the end of the novel.

Esther's nine pre-meltdown chapters contain a number of flashbacks before the technical position of the summer internship narration. Two entire chapters are flashbacks before the summer of 1953. If you said The Catcher in the Rye is Holden swimming laps, The Bell Jar is Esther briefly standing at the top of a high diving board (Ch. 1-5, 7, 9), thinking about how she got to the pool in the first place (Ch. 6, 8; parts of 3 and 5), executing a bellyflop (Ch. 10-17), then swimming to the pool edge and getting out, without telling us where in the pool she is going to next (including possibly back to the diving board) (Ch. 18-20).

"It killed me."

I am fascinated by Holden's vocabulary. "I really am." I love how everything either kills him or gives him a bang.

"I got a bang out of it" is reserved for special situations and has a fairly clear meaning--a sense of amusement or "kicks". At one point we read that Holden gets a "big bang." In the first few chapters of the book Holden describes how Mr. Spencer got a "big bang" out of buying an "old beat-up Navajo blanket." I found 8 instances of the word "bang" used in this way or a variation.

"It really does" and associated variations are often repeated. It seems to be some cross between a nervous tic and a joke. Early in the novel I wondered if this phrase is a red flag when Holden is being an unreliable narrator, but as I kept reading no obvious pattern of inaccuracy emerged. I found 49 instances of "really am/is/isn't/was/do/don't/does/doesn't" when used as a standalone sentence, phrase, or interjection. (I may have missed some linking verb combinations.)

"It killed me" is the least clear of Holden's sayings. Does it express frustration or amusement? Both? Either, depending on context? Holden uses it frequently during his late-night conversation with Phoebe, and he evidently has the highest regard for her. On the other hand, we have this quote from Holden's conversation with Lillian Simmons and Commander Blop:

Then she left. The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to've met each other. Which always kills me. I'm always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.

The subtext of the novel is crucial to interpreting this phrase. I found a total of 34 instances of "killed/kills/kill" used in Holden's characteristic way.

The words "phony/phoni-" appear 49 times in the text. Similarly, "crumby" appears 21 times and "lousy" appears 50 times. [Update: A quick search reveals that "goddam" appears in the novel 245 times.]

"Nobody." as a stand-alone sentence appears twice in the novel to great effect. (A third is used by Holden in his drunk phone call to Sally but it does not fit the same pattern.)

"[...] Am I late?" I told her no, but she was around ten minutes late, as a matter of fact. I didn't give a damn, though. All that crap they have in cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post and all, showing guys on street corners looking sore as hell because their dates are late--that's bunk. If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late? Nobody.

I thought probably I'd get pneumonia and die. I started picturing millions of jerks coming to my funeral and all. [...] Then I thought about the whole bunch of them sticking me in a goddam cemetery and all, with my name on this tombstone and all. Surrounded by dead guys. Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.

I found a 1959 article in the journal American Speech which indicates that contemporary reviewers of the novel found that Holden's language "struck the ear of the contemporary reader as an accurate rendering of the informal speech of an intelligent, educated, Northeastern American adolescent." (You can read it here from a UIUC network or here to log in from home.)

To conduct my word and phrase counts, I copied the full text of the novel from a pdf e-book into a text document, though which I could search using Notepad++.

Portrait, Ch. 5: A Departure

To say the least, chapter five (or "V" if you want to be particular) stands out from its four predecessors.

One notable change is the wealth of dialogue we find in the long first section of the chapter. The writing in this section depends quite a bit more on showing than telling compared to the rest of the book. Both the dinner scene in chapter one and the sermon in chapter three are primarily dialogue, but in those two instances, Stephen is merely observing and listening. Starting with the memory of Davin in chapter five, we get much more of Stephen himself speaking than in the rest of the novel.

I would proposition that we don't see much active character development of Stephen in chapter five. Instead, we have a lot of exposition. In chapter five we see Stephen in college, thinking like an artist, defining beauty, rejecting faith, obsessing over "her," and detesting Ireland's state of affairs. We don't see journeys like we do at Clongowes, in the red light district, at Belvedere, and on the beach.

I also question Stephen's emotional maturity, based on what is presented. His critical thinking skills are definitely honed by this point, as is his manner of speaking, yet he still thinks too often of Emma, and the concluding letters reveal an almost dismissive disgust with his family and the world around him, while showing a preoccupation with his own writing.

From a personal standpoint, I had difficulty holding my attention to chapter five. I theorize that the changes in the writing style itself (which felt, to me, flatter) are the underlying causes. Here is an example (p. 223):

—Rhythm, said Stephen, is the first formal esthetic relation of part to part in any esthetic whole or of an esthetic whole to its part or parts or of any part to the esthetic whole of which it is a part.

I enjoyed the previous portions of the book because they balanced a narrative with Stephen's process of discovery, foibles and all. Chapter five is all talk, no resolution—unless Joyce crafted it as one big ironic send-off to the novel.

Stephen's Self-Awareness

During class discussion last week, a thought occurred to me about Stephen Dedalus' character in terms of what we read on the page: How self-aware are the statements that are made? In other words, at what level of self-identification are Stephen's thoughts represented in Joyce's writings? In looser terms, what context (within the character of Stephen) do we have for interpreting the writing?

Three examples popped out as candidates for my question. The first is the children's party (p. 71). The narration describes Stephen:

But when he had sung his song and withdrawn into a snug corner of the room he began to taste the joy of his loneliness.

Is he in fact an enigmatic loner, or does he want to be one, merely the odd kid in the corner?

The second is Stephen's first poem and the accompanying mirror-staring (p. 74). Joyce writes:

After this the letters L. D. S. were written at the foot of the page, and, having hidden the book, he went into his mother's bedroom and gazed at his face for a long time in the mirror of her dressing-table. 

Does this represent narcissism in Stephen (as a literal interpretation could support) or is his mind elsewhere, engaging something more innocuous like daydreaming or introspection?

The final instance where I posit self-awareness is Stephen's first prostitute encounter at the conclusion of chapter two (p. 108).

With a sudden movement she bowed his head and joined her lips to his and he read the meaning of her movements in her frank uplifted eyes. It was too much for him.

Is Stephen truly enraptured or does he attach significance to this event artificially, especially in contrast with the beginning of chapter three?

Most of the rest of the book (at least from what we've read) appears to be fairly literal with Stephen's thoughts, so perhaps these isolated cases are me projecting a more modern style of writing onto the text.

Going of Age

I have let the question concerning the true meaning of coming of age simmer for the past three weeks, and I am ready to report the results of my introspective homework.

I would define coming of age not as a point to be reached, but as a general set of changes that tend to happen around a certain time in an individual's life. These changes reflect an increased sense of independence and self-definition in someone. On a personal level, someone coming of age will experience more agency in their thoughts and actions, coupled with the feeling that "things will never be the same."

Highly structured definitions aside, an often-repeated idea I see from reading the blogs is the nebulous nature of coming of age. Not only is the concept left open-ended, but everyone has a set of milestones that stand out to them in their own mind. There is no universal coming of age. In addition, defining and measuring coming of age matters the most to the person in question, internally. Outwardly, society progresses us fairly smoothly and uniformly.

I intend to revisit this topic later on, at the conclusion of the course. The next four months will surely offer more insight on the subject both in the course literature and from life in general as a second semester senior.

P.S. A note on the blog title: I just wanted to come up with something witty, unlike "Evan's Spring 2013 Coming-of-Age Novel Blog." A quick search reveals that similar web entities exist with titles like "Fast-Forward / Rewind" but my title has a key difference: instead of using the slash to indicate a distinction, my title is a portmanteau of the two actions, seemingly in different directions, as some sort of symbolism or literary what-have-you.

P.P.S. I am a bit anxious about writing for this blog, for reasons outlined in my post Writing is Hard from my Non-Fiction Writing blog. Literature explication has always been a struggle for me.