"Possible Side Effects" by Augusten Burroughs

I wouldn't consider Augusten Burroughs one of my favorite writers, but he is one of the contemporary writers whose works I follow. And by follow I don't mean that I read all of his works as soon as they come out; what I mean is that I am in touch with what he has published, and do choose to read his work when I have the time, or when I feel like reading something that isn't too serious. I have read two of his autobiographies, "Running with Scissors" and "Dry." The former I found intriguing in a disturbing and compelling way; the latter I thought was enjoyable though a bit too contrived and overwritten at times. I also read his collection of stories/essays entitled "Magical Thinking," which was thoroughly entertaining, though some of his jokes were simply in bad taste. (Saying that he was responsible for the return of Elizabeth Smart to her family, jeering about her being raped, for example.)

I spent the last couple of months reading "Possible Side Effects," another collection of essays, and found it to be worse than any of the books mentioned above. I thought the stories were neither interesting nor funny. The jokes were so dumb you would laugh more watching sitcoms on CW. I remember very few occasions when I actually laughed or chuckled while reading this book. Mostly I just found his narrative infuriatingly obnoxious.

Burroughs is often compared to David Sedaris; their styles are somewhat similar, although I would say Burroughs's is much darker. I prefer Sedaris, because I find him overall more intelligent; his comedy derives from his witty view on uncommon and oftentimes unfortunate situations. I also find that Sedaris has a more intellectual approach to writing; Burroughs writing often sounds like a dictated manuscript of a stand-up comedy show.

But to judge Burroughs by comparing him to Sedaris would be unfair. Any criticisms I have for "Possible Side Effects" come from my experience reading the book alone. I kept waiting for a good story, or a good joke, but what I found were mostly pointless, badly written stories that neither entertain nor offer anything for me to think about. When I read "Running with Scissors," I thought Burroughs had an original voice, and I admired his courage to tread on such dark and risky territories. I don't find that in this book; even his unique voice lost its authenticity and sounds more like an imitation of a bitchy, stereotypical gay guy. I still believe that Burroughs has something to contribute to the literary world, but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who had never been exposed to him before--they may never want to read any more of him.

Essays!

I read some really interesting essays this month. There isn't much to say about them except that they are brilliant.

1. "The Essay on Criticism" by Alexander Pope, written in verse. Pope discusses different kinds of critics and criticism with a lot of humor. It is funny and insightful, and the message still current despite the age of the work. As always I have a harder time reading poetry than prose, but it didn't take long to get used to. The work itself is also not very long. Trust me it is a joy to read.

2. "The Uncanny" by Sigmund Freud. After reading the introductory guide to Freud a while back, I planned to start reading his works and came across this one. It discusses what it is about works of art that we find uncanny, combining literary studies with psychology. Parts of it are thoughtful and intriguing, parts of it redundant. But it is also a lot of fun to read.

3. "The Philosophy of Composition" by Edgar Allan Poe. This is an essay about writing which is included in a book called "Great Writers on the Art of Fiction" (James Daley, ed.). Poe talks about the importance of structures in writing, and how he puts together his famous poem, "The Raven." I recommend reading the essay, read the poem, then reread the essay.

4. Numerous essays from "Shakespeare After All." This is my new favorite book, written by Majorie Garber, who is an English professor and a Queer theorist. This book is a collection of essays based on every single one of Shakespeare canonized plays. I have read a few of these essays and they really are wonderful. Highly recommended.

"Jude the Obscure" by Thomas Hardy (the longer entry)

WARNING: THIS POST IS FULL OF SPOILERS, SO DO NOT READ IT UNLESS YOU HAVE READ THE NOVEL.

CHARACTERS:
Jude Fawley – The protagonist
Arabella Donn – Jude's first and last wife
Susanna “Sue” Bridehead – Jude's second wife
Richard Phillotson – Jude's schoolmaster; Sue's first husband
Aunt Drusilla – Jude's aunt
Jude “Father Time” Fawley – Jude's first son with Arabella


I had wanted to write a more thorough discussion of “Jude the Obscure,” because I love Hardy and am pretty certain that I will eventually do some sort of academic project based on his work. These blog entries are the only kind of note I am taking on the works I have been studying, so, for my future self's sake, I need to write a good one.

The reason I love Hardy is because, as I have said before, I believe a novelist is rare who is equally brilliant at plotting and characterizing, especially ones who deal with very serious themes. “Jude” is a great novel because it is well structured, filled with multi-dimensional characters, and together they explore the themes in an intelligent, insightful way. It is the themes and characters that I want to discuss in this entry.

Some of the obvious themes are education, poverty, and norms & deviance. These themes derive from the politics of the time in which the novel was written (late 19th-century). But things weren't much different prior to that time, and certainly they are not so different now; to many, education is still a luxury. People still have to pay an incredible amount of money to go to college, and while there are scholarships and financial aids, a lot of people are still denied a chance to pursue higher education for lacks of funds.

To Jude, education was his means to become somebody better than what he is―to escape, perhaps, the poor condition of his life and make something of himself. He sees education as valuable, and as something that will improve his class status. But it is not to be misunderstood that he only sees education as the means; education is, within itself, valuable to him. Jude expresses on several occasions his resentment toward Christminster and their incompetent scholars (1), but never once does he show any sign of having any regret toward being a learned man. When he realizes that he is too old to pursue his dream, he tries to pass it on to Father Time. This shows that he still believes in the scholarly life―if he can't have it, at least he wants his son to have it.

I have discussed education and poverty; let us now turn our attention to norms & deviance. This theme is explored through Sue, a woman ahead of her time. Like Austen's heroines, Sue refuses to let the rules of society constrain her. In fact, she is much more defiant of her place and time than any of Austen's characters. While Austen characters may appear headstrong and defiant, none of them actually succeeds in going to the extent that Sue has gone. Elizabeth in “Pride & Prejudice” may have been daring when she turns down the marriage proposal of her rich cousin Mr. Collins, a match which would have saved the status of the family, but she does eventually end up marrying the richest man in the novel, Mr. Darcy. While she chooses to marry him for his virtues as opposed to his wealth―she had turned down his proposal before she had gotten to know him―to the outside world she may appear merely as a woman who behaves properly following her conventions. In fact it is he who defied his conventions, for he had turned down at least two women, Lady Catherine's daughter and Caroline Bingley, whose social positions are more suitable to him than Elizabeth's.

Sue, however, is so headstrong that she refuses, time and time again, to marry the man she loves because she doesn't believe in marriage. As a learned woman, she possesses unorthodox insights that give her a rather pessimistic view of marriage. This is combined with growing up with an aunt who poisons her ear against marriage, making her believe that people of her family do not do well in matrimony. Unfortunately this brings about a series of tragedies, the greatest one being the deaths of her children. The town refuses to accept the “abnormal” and “amoral” status of Sue and Jude's relationship, causing them to have to move around. Father Time, seeing the family being turned away from many inns, thinking that it is their (the children's) fault that life is so difficult for them, which subsequently leads to his murdering his siblings and hanging himself.

It would be unfair to blame this misfortune on Sue's desire to fight for what she believes in; a more modern take on it would be to blame society for constraining her. It is, however, rather disappointing that she turns to God after the great disaster strikes. I do not believe that Hardy intends to make it the moral of the story that Sue should not have defied God and her norms to begin with, and that it is right for her to turn to religion. It is hard to imagine that Hardy would spend most of the novel developing idiosyncratic ideas just to reject them. Perhaps it is to lessen the controversial effects of the novel that Sue turns to God. I can merely speculate, and it is pointless to guess Hardy's or any author's intention. Perhaps we are meant to take Sue as a hysterical woman, whose actions do not necessarily reflect the morals of the novel.

I do not like Sue. Throughout the novel she is rash, childish, jealous, unreasonable, and somewhat bipolar. She agrees to marry Phillotson despite not loving him, but refuses to marry Jude (2). She jumps out of the window, afraid that Phillotson is trying to rape her when he had merely entered her room accidentally. She expresses her intense jealousy toward Arabella despite knowing Jude's history with her. Before they live together, she is unable to control her conflicting feelings for Jude, causing her to treat him one way and write to him in another. While I particularly agree with her view of marriage, I find her very much an unlikable character. Her only redeemable act is probably her going back to Phillotson who is so good to her and whose situation in life had suffered because he had willingly let her go to Jude. By doing so she eventually subjects Jude to a lonely death, and herself to an eternal unhappiness. As Arabella puts it: “[Sue]'s never found peace since she left [Jude's] arms, and never will again till she's as he is now!”

Arabella, on the other hand, is quite a fascinating character. She is a villain, yet I find her more likeable that Sue. Perhaps Hardy intends her to be an ambiguous character, as he gives her the last sentence of the novel, and offers her several moments to do the right thing, such as telling Sue to marry Jude fast. She has made many mischiefs, it is true, but she can often be read as comical, making it doubtful whether the mischiefs should be taken too seriously. Her greatest crime, perhaps, is when she tricks Jude into believing she is pregnant so that he marries her the first time. But as a young woman of her class, her desperation to get married is reasonable, and her action can be attributed to her youthful naivety. The second time Arabella tricks Jude into marrying her, he seems to submit almost willingly. At that point it no longer matters whether he falls for her trick or not; he had simply given up caring what is to be done with him. And despite having lost her interest in him, she still stays behind to take care of him, unlike Sue who deserts him.

Regardless of which is the better woman, the main part of the plot, which is summed up by the quote of Esdras that begins the first part of the novel, is about how Jude's life, full of promises, is ruined by women: “Yea, many there be that have run out of their wits for women, and become servants for their sakes. Many also have perished, have erred, and sinned, for women...O ye men, how can it be but women should be strong, seeing they do thus?” The quote also suggests that women have more power than men, and perhaps are even more powerful because of men's ignorance of their power. The novel can be read as anti-women; while Jude begins and consistently remains a likeable character, his wives do not. It is no surprise that a “bad” woman like Arabella would cause his downfall, but it is perhaps shocking that he is given the opportunity to start over just to have it destroyed again, this time by a seemingly “good” woman. According to the novel, then, women are disastrous, and loving them will only ruin men.

The most tragic aspect of this novel is the many glimpses of hope that occur sporadically throughout the novel, glimpses that are soon destroyed by subsequent actions. Is it the masochistic pleasure that I gain from reading Hardy's novel? Or is it simply because of its gripping plot and intense orchestration? Perhaps both. Most people will probably remember this novel for its shocking scene of the deaths of three children, but it also possesses many other aspects―the extraordinary characters, the universal and timeless themes―that beg to be studied in years to come.

Word Count: 1624


1. After mastering Greek and Latin texts, Jude later finds out that the scholars at Christminster lack the very knowledge he had worked tirelessly trying to acquire.
2. Unable to bear the difficulty caused by their being unmarried any longer, Jude and Sue finally get married after having attempted to do so many times. The wedding, however, does not appear in the novel, and is only referred to, making it an unimportant event despite the build-up.

Writing and Sex

(The following is a paper I wrote for a class in response to Barbara Kingsolver's essay about writing.)

In high school I was introduced to many authors, some of whom became my favorites, and some found their way on my blacklist. Among the second category was Barbara Kingsolver, whose collection of short stories entitled Homeland is one of those books my colleagues and I still refer to from time to time as one of the most miserable material we had had to deal with in our high school years. This was why I was so surprised that Kingsolver’s article about writing entitled “A Forbidden Territory Familiar to All” turned out to be my most favorite piece in Writers on Writing.

What disappoint me about most of the articles featured in this book is that they are hardly about writing at all. Some of my favorite writers, like William Saroyan and Annie Proulx, go on and on about things I find insubstantial. When I got around to read Kingsolver’s article, I felt that I had finally found what I was hoping for. Not only is the article about writing, it is also about writing about sex, which is something with which I constantly struggle. In it Kingsolver talks about the embarrassment she feels as she tries to write about sex, thinking about her mother and friends who will be reading the work. This is something that often crosses my mind as I write my raunchy, steamy, slightly if not totally pornographic stories featuring daring themes as infidelity and promiscuity. Having been studying queer theory for several years, my limitation as far as sex (the writing of it) goes is hardly inexistent. However far I go, somebody else probably has gone much further. But what about my readers? One of these days if I could publish some of these stories I have been slaving myself over, it would be an occasion to celebrate. But what would I say when my parents ask to read the work? And what about my friends and future lovers? Will they be reading my stories and think that these all come from my experience? Will my work be taken as serious work of literature or as oversexed gay-lit targeted toward closeted teenagers looking for horny figures to identify with? Some of these questions occupy Kingsolver’s mind. The only thing that stops them from bothering me is the thought that the possibility of getting published is still very far from me, and there is no guarantee that any of my work will ever see the light of any printing press. Kingsolver’s situation, however, is different; as a famous writer, whatever she is working on is on its way to the public, and that raises the stake even higher.

Kingsolver writes the essay with a lot of humor. She describes her struggle with using thesauruses to find a way to write a good sex scene. This I find to be honorable of her; I am certain that most writers use thesauruses but only few would admit to it. Describing action is probably more difficult than mentality, and to describe something that is so ridden with cultural shame as sex is even harder. It seems that the difficulty with writing about sex lies in the way society perceive it. As Kingsolver says, “sex takes place in private, and that’s surely part of the problem” (133). That explains the embarrassing part of it. But Kingsolver’s other challenge is making it beautiful. She says, “Making it beautiful is no small trick. The language of coition has been stolen, or rather, I think, it has been divvied up like chips in a poker game among pornography, consumerism, and the medical profession” (133). But why does it have to be beautiful? The fact that there is pressure to make it beautiful shows Kingsolver’s belief that sex is more than just another daily activity like brushing one’s teeth or tying one’s shoes, when in real life sex can really be unglamorous, boring and routine. The emphasis on the grandness of sex is put on us by society, and, being products of society ourselves, writers like Kingsolver and I simply cannot help it. We want to write a beautiful sex scene that describes good sex, but doing so is difficult, not to mention the embarrassment we set ourselves up to face.

Kingsolver’s conclusion is that we—writers—have to face the beast and “find a way to tell of its terror and beauty” (135). The conditions are that we “accept an uncomfortable intimacy with our readers in the admission that, yes, we’ve both done this. We must warn our mothers before the book comes out. We must accept the economic reality that this one won’t make the core English Lit Curriculum” (135). Having had Kingsolver’s work in my curriculum, it makes me wish that this ambitiously sexy work she is writing had ended up in my curriculum. In high school Comp Lit class many of the materials dealt with rape. I recall how uncomfortable we all felt with the rapes in Michael Dorris’s Yellow Raft in Blue Water, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits. Looking back, it seems that our curriculum served to make us even more ashamed and scared of sex instead of see it as a beautiful thing. The act of writing about beautiful sex itself, then, is in some way revolutionary. Many queer theorists deal with the issue of un-shaming sex, but what if sex is never seen as shameful? If our high school curriculum did not manipulate us into being ashamed of our sexuality, writers like Kingsolver and I would probably not have such a hard time writing about it. We, writers and readers, would all be able to deal with sexuality maturely at the age of eighteen or younger. Instead we live in a world full of sexual shame where writers come up with hundreds of other questions while trying to figure out one: how to write about sex?

(Kingsolver, Barbara. “A Forbidden Territory Familiar to All.” Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from The New York Times. Ed. John Darnton. New York: Times Books, 2001. 130-135.)