Author: oliviaallison

Oversized Art: Blog Post 4

Reading the article “Oversized Art – Is Bigger Really Better” by Natalie P.  made me wonder: could New York City be seen as a piece of oversized art? Like a piece of oversized installation artwork, New York immerses people in an alternate world like nowhere else in the country.

New York is so crowded and overwhelming that it is hard to appreciate its beauty in the midst of all the hustle and bustle of the street. Walking on the High Line this Friday, elevated above the loud and congested sidewalk, allowed me to see New York in a different way.

From the High Line, New York City looked like a living mosaic. The ever-changing landscape of New York was put on display. Looking at the view from the High Line convinced me that New York itself is a work of art.

Union [By Tasmim]

Joan Miro was a Spanish artist who derived his artistic style from his passion for poetry and his view of the modern world. He combined abstract art with surrealist fantasy when he produced his murals, tapestries, and sculptures.

As the Sergeant explained how Joshua had passed in Vietnam, Claire stared at the prints above her couch with a forced smile. She questioned “Miro, Miro, on the wall, who’s the deadest of them all?” (McCann 112) This line immediately made me think of Snow White, and the famous line that belonged to the evil queen, “mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” I knew well the evil Queen asked her mirror that question to reassure herself that she was the fairest of them all. However, I was not sure who Claire was referring to when she had asked who is the deadest of them all. Was she asking about herself or her son? The group of women who had lost their sons in the war came together to share their stories as a source of comfort. None of them fully accepted the death of their sons; there was still a part of them that believed they would return. Maybe “Miro, miro on the wall,” is a representation of Claire’s hope. The hope that the mirror will respond back Joshua is not the deadest of them all.

The primary characters are Corrigan, Ciaran, Adelita, Claire, Jazlynn, Tillie, Gloria, Fernando, Blaine, Solomon and Sam.

There are about 70 connections between the characters throughout the book. There is not only human connection but also geographical connection as well. We begin from the top of the world trade center to the deep ends of the Bronx. They are all scattered throughout New York, and a series of events unite them.

I was most intrigued by the intersection between Ciaran and Blaine. To be clearer, it was not their meeting, but more so their attraction for each other that drew me in. I became more curious about Ciaran and why he felt an attraction to someone who was involved in his brother’s death. Maybe he realized she was not a bad person. During their meeting, Lara let the driver who hit the back of her car go without an argument, she confessed she was not the one who was driving the car that killed Corrigan, she returned Corrigan’s belongings and attended his funeral. All of her actions could have persuaded Corrigan that she was not at fault for his brother’s death or maybe he was just very drunk and wanted to kiss someone. The last two lines “There is, I think, a fear of love. There is a fear of love.” (McCann 112) of the chapter represents Lara’s fear of falling in love again because of her experience of Blaine. Blaine and Lara are two very different people. Through their actions, it’s easy to see Blaine does not care about anything else but himself and his pleasure, whereas Lara still holds her morals to some value. The experience she had with her former lover ended up killing two people hence she might not be ready fall for anyone else anytime soon.

 

Miro, Character Intersections, and Gloria

I) The title of the chapter of Let the Great World Spin about Claire is “Miró, Miró, on the Wall.” This is a reference Joan Miró (1893-1983) the modern Spanish surrealist painter, and the famous line: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” from the fairy tale Snow White. Later, Claire references this line again on page 112 saying: “Miró, Miró, on the wall, who is the deadest of them all?” The title of the chapter is a reference to Claire’s status as a well-off modern woman with a house full of exquisite art, who is grieving over her dead son to the point of feeling dead herself.

II) The Major Characters in Let the Great World Spin:

  • Corrigan
  • Ciaran
  • Tillie
  • Jazzlyn
  • Lara
  • Blaine
  • Solomon
  • Claire
  • Gloria, and other bereaved mothers
  • Fernando
  • Sam, and other computer hackers
  • Philippe
  • Adelita

Here is a diagram of all the connections between named characters in Let the Great World Spin so far. I counted 74 connections total.

Gloria is a quiet character in the first half of Let the Great World Spin. She interacts with many major characters, but has yet to come to the forefront.

Diagram of all the intersections between Gloria and other characters in Let the Great World Spin.

When Tillie is in jail, Gloria brings Tillie’s grandchildren, Janice and little Jazzlyn to visit her. Tillie recognizes Gloria from the projects, but she doesn’t even know her name.

Despite not knowing Tillie and Jazzlyn well, Gloria took Janice and little Jazzlyn in after their mother’s death and lives with them in a house in Poughkeepsie.

Why did Gloria take in Jazzlyn’s children? Why did she take them to visit Tillie? She was uninvolved with Tillie and Jazzlyn before the car accident. She could have stayed uninvolved.

Gloria is a powerful character. She steps in to help Janice and little Jazzlyn when they were forgotten. Yet, all we really know about her is that she lost three sons to the war, and that she wears flowered dresses. Who is Gloria?

Sources: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/joan-miro

 

Questions [By Tasmim]

As I began to read chapter one, my mind still lingered on the strange man balancing a thin bar in his hands just about to walk across the towers on a thin cable . I had a series of unanswered questions  both about him and his audience: did he make it? Did the people in the crowd who shouted “just jump” cheer him on? Why didn’t the author tell us what happened? These unanswered questions began to fade as I was transported from the busy streets of Manhattan to the somber neighborhood in Sandymount, Dublin. The geography and social environment allows the reader to recreate their own perception of the setting through the author’s description. I was no longer a part of the anxious crowd preparing to watching a circus act, instead I was in a home with two young boys listening to their mother playing the piano. I felt the warmth radiating from the small family as the mother held her two young children in her arms and kissed their cheeks. The bitterness of solitude took over me as I visualized the two boys sitting against the back of the closet, letting the suits their father had left behind, along with them, brush against their face.  I found myself growing attached to Corrigan as I read Ciaran’s expressive descriptions of him. In some ways he reminded me of my younger brother. How they both had a selfless nature, carefree in their own unique little world knowing no bounds. Corrigans behavior never matched with his age, not only his recklessness but also his ability to sympathize with others, “Corrigan wanted other people’s pain. He didn’t want to deal with his own,” (McCann 31). Corrigan’s personality drew me closer to him, I found myself wanting to become the person he was. I too wanted to engage with others, know about their life stories and troubles and not just stay inclosed in mine. As the two brothers grew older and reunited in Bronx, New York the story took a sudden turn. I expected Corrigan to be his usual self living in an area where he had people to help, but the ending blew the wind out of me. I sat there angry and frustrated as I was left yet with another question: why does it always have to be the good ones?

Look Up

There shouldn’t be a man tightrope walking between buildings in New York City, and there shouldn’t be palm trees in Dublin. It’s unheard of to float up in the sky like that, that’s too crazy. But it happened. Dublin is too grey, to far north for palm trees, they couldn’t survive in that climate. But they’re there.

In Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann takes us to the crowded streets of Manhattan where crowds stop and watch the tightrope walker. The watchers pause their lives just to wonder at the crazy spectacle. Others, described as “too jacked up for anything but a desk, a pen, a telephone” walk by the sensation without looking. These non-watchers couldn’t interrupt their routine to look up.

I often find myself, like the non-watchers, stuck in a preconception.

Corrigan and Corrigan’s brother struggle with reconciling their assumptions of how the world should be, with how the world actually is. Corrigan excels at seeing the humanity in others, but he can’t accept his own human desires. Corrigan’s brother is more attune to himself, but can’t always see beyond a person’s rough outer layer to the real person within.

It is a constant struggle to remind ourselves to look beyond what we want to see, beyond that first layer. After all, you never know when you’ll see something as novel as man on a tightrope way up in the sky or palm trees in Dublin.

Ethereal

Image from The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language.

My best friend’s voice is ethereal. When she opens her mouth, my heart is lifted as high as the notes she sings. Walking in a garden on a summer morning is ethereal. It is still quiet, no one else is awake, and it is beautiful. The miracles of art and nature, these things are ethereal.

Is Oedipus, the main character from a series of plays by Sophocles, ethereal? Stanley Diamond writes in his article “The Beautiful and Ugly Are One Thing, The Sublime Another” that “Sophocles etherealizes him [Oedipus] in a beam of light.”

Before reading Diamond’s article, all I knew about Oedipus was that he killed his father and married his mother. I thought Oedipus was reprehensible, not ethereal.

Is Oedipus quite as bad as I assumed he was?

I learned that Oedipus’s mistakes were due to a difficult and unavoidable situation and he was not wholly to blame for them. Still, I would not describe the incestuous murderer Oedipus as ethereal.

But, there is more to Oedipus’s story than unfortunate scandals. Towards the end of his life, Oedipus, even with his stained record, is accepted by Zeus, the king of the Ancient Greek gods. In this acceptance, Oedipus is released from his earthly problems and honored. He ceases to be cursed and becomes ethereal.

Perhaps, Oedipus is even more ethereal than my best friend’s voice, a garden at sunrise, or the miracles or art and nature could ever be.

Sources:

www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Oedipus/oedipus.html

www.ancient-literature.com/greece_sophocles_oedipus_colonus.html