You might think about the questions: What are you thoughts about Gessner's childhood crisis? What do you think about Gessner's ideas about the compulsion to write? What is the relationship between eating and being (and writing) (and (a)theism) (and...) in the essay (in your own thoughts and your own life)? How does narrative function in this essay relative to the explication and analysis? What do you think about the tone? Asking questions about this piece beguiles me more than any of the others. Those who have written already have done extremely well so if my questions don't move you respond to them. (Side note: is this literature even though it's a personal essay?)
You might respond analytically by showing the relationship between how it's written and what it means. You might evaluate the story: does it succeed in what it seems to try to do? Do you like it? Respond to the short story personally: can you relate? How? Compare the story to others you've read. You might think about As I Lay Dying and King Lear (or other literary works or films). Respond by extending the story in someway: a sequel and prequel. Write a letter or poem or script in response.
Show that you have read the story, have thought about it, and have understood something about it (or even have made of use of it in some way).
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6 comments:
I find David Gessner's piece both terrifying and thought provoking at the same time. I'm very impressed at his attempt to take nothingness and nonexistence head on.
One of the things I found most striking about his story is when, as a young child, he ran around the house screaming, "Nothing is nothing!" when meaning to say "Everything is nothing" (Gessner 89). This strongly reminded me of Vardaman and how he seems to notice very profound things but is unable to articulate them to any character in the book.
I think at some point in our lives, we all struggle with not only death but also nonexistence. What is special about Gessner is that he seems to live his life from the premise that one day, he will not exist.
I think the main question that this story asks is "Why do we write knowing that one day our work won't exist?" Gessner says that he writes "to fill me up while I am here." He also says, "...my work is the something I made out of nothingness." Even though Gessner is an atheist, I think that this aspect of creation of something out of nothing has divine connotations.
As I writer, I agree with Gessner that writing gives me purpose in life. But I think that there is something important that he missed. I write to touch the minds and hearts of other people. If my work doesn't do that, then it's worthless. I too don't for a second believe that my work will be immortal or ever have a chance to last as long as Shakespeare but if I can inspire emotion and new perspectives in other people here and now, my work has meaning.
I'd like to hear what answers other people have to the question, "Why do we write knowing that one day our work won't exist?"
I have mixed feelings about this piece. I respect what Gessner has done in his effort to explain existence, but i don't think that i can truly agree with everything he says. I was also a little uncomfortable with all of that pig roasting and...whatnot.But i'm also pleased that Gessner recognizes his privelage in having the opportunity to write about this and consider his existence: "i did not have to concern myself with helping to put food on the table, which freed my mind for other terrors" (92).
I know what Gessner means when he describes "the feeling"(88) -- the terror of coming to grips with the idea that none of this is real. Nothing, not the words i write on the page that will only exist if i remember to think about them or anything. Perhaps this is all just in my head, which is itself not real, but abstract.
To get around this feeling, humans find ways to occupy themselves, and to make meaning out of what they are. I suppose that was the idea behind the family history bit (south vs. north, land in germany, etc). Gessner expresses the way that writing might be an attempt to "immortalize" oneself. Then he kind of bashes in his own idea by saying that it's all pointless, looking back over the history of the earth : "Hard to believe the words of Shakespeare would survive a supernova" (98).
I agree with Gessner that writing is most definately not a good way to try and live forever. That's not to say it doesn't have it's uses. As Ali pointed out, it can be meditative, and healing for someone at that exact moment. It fills you up when you're empty. This is a motif we are discussing in "King Lear". This is also similar to As I Lay Dyiing, in which each character has such obsessive behavior. Writing for Gessner could be like horses for Jewel, bananas or fish for Vardaman, or pregnancy for Dewey Dell. Gessner might find some way to center himself around his writing so that he can get through the bad stuff.
Ali, i think that's why people write sometimes. To have a solid rock to lean against. Writing can help you know yourself, and to deal with issues you face in your life. It's like having a focal point so that you know where to look at any given time.
"If the world does not exist, then we will make our own world."
Reading "The Dreamer Did Not Exist" was a strange relief on several levels. While I respect and see why people say that writing is about words-living-on and reaching-out-to-people, things that I'm sure I've said before, it was such a *relief* when, as I read, I began to think of writing more and more of a physical way of coping with how empty I am. (He says toward the beginning, "A series of angry but self-asserting grunts, maybe. A howl or a pounding on my chest.") I'm relieved to be give permission to just admit that I feel completely terrorized by this topic all the time. I'm relieved that somebody's saying that writing doesn't make you immortal - because I think it's something I needed to hear, anyway. And I'm also glad when he points out that his anxieties and my anxieties are very much the product of "not hav[ing] to concern myself with helping to put food on the table, which freed my mind for other terrors."
However (she says as she tries to sort through all of these new thoughts,) particularly toward the end I felt sort of let down by the way Gessner spoke of his nonexistence and the inevitability of death. I felt sort of confused and upset that he was trying to come off unconcerned with his atheism in the end (With "When I die, I am gone. *Kaput. Poof.*") He admits to being glib in the end, but I wanted to hear some of the honest fear that reading this left me with. Or maybe, he's just not afraid anymore. (But I doubt it.) His final paragraph before section 12 lets me down, but I think I can understand that he can't give me his conclusions complete and vulnerable as they come.
Allie, I thought of Vardaman often when Gessner described what things were like when he was little. Right from when he talks about Macker's death, Vardaman kept coming to mind.
Allie I've been thinking about your ideas related Gessner's atheism and his ideas about creation, and also his lack of discussion about the affect of his words on other people. Personally, I don't think he missed the idea (that writing is to affect other people) at all, I just think he would disagree. While it's of course to each his own, there is a very conspicuous lack of lets-all-bond-over-these-words in his writing - particularly when he talks about his lack of desire to partake in the religious discussion, and then the discussion on memoir. I think to Gessner, and I think to me, oddly, writing and community has got a lot more to do with what can't be communicated than what can be. Gessner seems to be talking about this when he quotes Tenaya Darlington (page 97) saying "'The whole affair is testament to the power of fire, ... the strange sense of community it awakens.'" Community comes up, but not in talking about the words, but about something physical - though I guess I'm beginning to see just how physically relevant writing is to me, at least. I also guess that the idea is that 'god' created things, so Gessner wanting to create gives his desires a divine connotation - but I think that, since he doesn't believe in god, creation is once again just about creating some physical, in this world. I think it's probably frustrating to an atheist for someone to insist that something is religion-oriented when, to them, it's not.
(First of all I wanted to apologize for this being late. My internet tends to spazz out at the most inopportune times)
About The Dreamer Did Not Exist...
When Mr. Cook first described the premise of this story as a retelling of childhood experiences dealing with the realization of self, I got really excited. I still remember certain aspects of this epiphany in my life when I finally began to grasp the concept of 'me.' In reading Gessners piece, I think I was hoping that I would read about an experience similar to mine, and I was surprised when I didn't.
Surprised is not quite the right word though. I was surprised and scared and fleetingly condescending and concerned and self-conscious. To Gessner as a child, the thought of dying or not existing was so frightening that it completely consumed him. I found it selfish that he immediately connected his own nonexistence with that of the rest of the universe. I find this type of thinking along the same lines as "if I don't believe it, then it doesn't exist." Of course, this concept is not so simple, but I think that it is just part of my personality to accept that things die and life goes on.
I think I may have found Gessner's freakouts unconvincing because when I was younger, I was faced with a much more pressing existenial crisis.
My parents often liked to tell stories of how they met and got married and blah blah the normal stuff. However, when I was younger, my mom also thought I would be interested to hear about the tiny events in her life that led her to where she is now and contemplate the consequences of alternate decisions. Like one example: staying in Ohio and marrying her high school boyfriend. Now, of course, kids don't usually like to think of their parents being with anyone besides their proper significant other (now I know times have changed but this was in 1998 and I'm old-fashioned). However, my mom seemed to enjoy including me in her adventures into an alternate reality, and was sure to remind me that I would have never been born.
Not died. Not dropped out of existence. No. I would have never existed. Never even lived to die. You can imagine that my seven-year-old self was unable to find comfort with this subject. So I did the only thing I could: I accepted it. I learned to see that every single other person around me, on the planet, ever in the history of the universe, has the same exact problem. We are all here by chance, and so why should I bring light to my own situation when there are other more pressing problems such as which shirt goes best with my leopard print leggings.
And so, when reading Gessner's own childhood conflicts with existence, I was torn. Did I disagree with his reaction? Did I consider his outbursts with the same wise and condescending detachment as Gessner's older self? Or did I worry that I had gotten it wrong when I was so quick to accept the whims of the universe when it came to the creation of my existence? I don't really have an answer, but maybe that's the point. Maybe Gessner's hoped that his readers would use his story to contemplate their own version of "the feeling." That's really what the story did for me, and I spent the rest of my time on his piece wondering why our reactions were so different and cringing at his repeated references to "the pig." It made me really glad that I am a vegetarian.
Like Courtland, when I heard Mr. Cook’s description of “The Dreamer Did Not Exist” I immediately had recollections of my own realization. However, mine was not the realization of self, but more accurately the realization of death. This realization of the finality of death is very similar to Gessner’s own internal conflict about life being “nothing”. Gessner’s method of telling his tale, jumping back and forth from the past to the present (although at first not so clearly the present) as well as sprinklings of rational though throughout the piece really gave me an overall better understanding both of what he was trying to say but also to its relevance. Why it mattered to me.
His solution to this inherent “emptiness” that surrounds him also allowed him to search for what is the purpose of human existence. He argued that writing is by no means a way to live for ever, but the comfort some find in expressing opinions that will be read for generations (maybe). This self placed value on some sort of keepsake or value is what seems to be the driving motivation for a large portion of people’s actions. Preserving one’s own stake in the world is very important that proving your life wasn’t just “nothing”.
Gessners essay or rather life story was a bit absurd I thought. As Courtland points out he is selfish in relating his belief in existence to the existence of the rest of the universe. "Everything is nothing" was the phrase he screamed whenever "the feeling" consumed him. Apparently everything that existed around him was not actually there. He states later in the essay his desire to become a writer, to maybe make him more solid. Writing does make him solid on paper but if "everything is nothing" than how can the paper that doesn't really exist make him or his words any more solid than the wispy nothings that he seems to exist in. He does address this by saying that even Shakespeare can't survive a supernova. I understand his need to write, and linking that to peoples need for expression and existence. He seems to be thinking too much, occupying himself with cavernous ideas of existence that never end. He reminds me so much of Darl. Darl constantly questions and contemplates everything about his families journey and life. They are dissimilar in the way they ended up because Gessner actually did something, found an outlet for his questions whereas Darl, well went crazy.
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