9 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2021
  2. 387sp21.commons.gc.cuny.edu 387sp21.commons.gc.cuny.edu
    Phillips, “The ‘Partagé Child’ and the Emergence of the Modernist Novel in What Maisie Knew: | The Modernist Novel
    3
    1. tgrizzyyy 24 Feb 2021
      “Nothing was less new to Maisie,” we are told by the end of this extended sequence, “than the art of not thinking singly” (176).

      My annotations have been stringing together nicely as much like in the novel, Maisie is once again being used as the point of reference, the object of our study, without having so much as a say in it. From an outsider perspective, without being able to see her thoughts, one might believe her to be intellectually underdeveloped. Her thoughts are only her own in her head, outside of that it's all influenced by the pushing and pulling force of those around her.

    2. tgrizzyyy 24 Feb 2021
      She becomes a lure and a decoy for many of her mother’s adulterous suitors. Maisie is the center that holds all of these competing extremities in balance. And she is the intermediary through which they communicate, connect, and, of course, do battle.

      This furthers my earlier point of Maisie essentially being the "North Star" for much of the other character's aspirations as the only thing she's really used for is personal gain, adoration, or disdain. Rarely is she allowed to freely think or act, instead being a "bait and switch" to further the successes of both of her parents and their failed significant others.

    3. tgrizzyyy 24 Feb 2021
      This sense of the child’s as a problematic and problematizing interior

      I wouldn't necessarily say that Maisie is problematic in the slightest sense, but rather her parents are problematic and use her as a conduit to release their energies and negativity through. Her being seen as this "problem" is what causes her to self-reflect so often until she comes to the realization that she never was the actual issue.

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    387sp21.commons.gc.cuny.edu/phillips-the-partage-child-and-the-emergence-of-the-modernist-novel-in-what-maisie-knew/
  3. Oct 2020
  4. indivisible.commons.gc.cuny.edu indivisible.commons.gc.cuny.edu
    Blair on Ellison and Photography | ENGL 252: in/di/visible
    6
    1. tgrizzyyy 08 Oct 2020
      Ellison was himself a journalistic observer of the devastating riots that broke out in Harlem on August 1, 1943, in response to economic stagnation, ongoing institutional segregation, and police harassment of black World War II veterans;

      Another instance of drawing inspiration from real life situations, common theme of literature.

    2. tgrizzyyy 08 Oct 2020
      from the “Forgotten Man” of New Deal nation-building to the “Invisible Men” of Ellison’s writerly imagination.

      The idea of the "Forgotten Man" generally comes from circumstances in which deals in government (or businesses) are made that are seen as an overall positive, but has negative effects on a large portion of people. These people are often overlooked as their loss isn't seen as enough to overwrite the net gain. The Invisible Men of Ellison's imagination certainly work in a similar-ish kind of circumstance, however for them it's more of them being the "cogs of the machine", the workers behind the work that are ignored because the work itself is what people want to see.

    3. tgrizzyyy 08 Oct 2020
      Nowhere is this transformation more graphically attested to than in a binder among Ellison’s papers, undated but apparently part of his collection of working materials prior to 1944, and marked “Photographs Miscellaneous Invisible Men.”

      And here we begin to see the inspiration!

    4. tgrizzyyy 08 Oct 2020
      The narrator’s achingly durable hope as he is led, blindfolded, to the Battle Royal; the sense of “the veil” being “lowered,” rather than lifted, in images of the hallowed Founder of the college(7); the sightless eyes of the Reverend Homer Barbee; the summons of the veteran at the Golden Day to “look beneath the surface” and “come out of the fog” (Invisible 153); Emerson Junior’s anxious advice about “what lies behind the face of things” (188); the lobotomizing technician in the Liberty Paints plant hospital, who examines the narrator through the lens of “a bright third eye” (231); the “Cyclopean” glass eye of Brother Jack, bespeaking all he and the Brotherhood choose not to recognize

      A surface level interpretation of this ties back to the idea of visibility and invisibility for the titular character, but when you look into the idea of Ellison as a photographer as well, a conclusion can be drawn about his deep fascination with anything relating to optics. Eyes are a gateway to the world so his emphasis on it relates not only to his character, but to himself as well.

    5. tgrizzyyy 08 Oct 2020
      are jotted on his professional letterhead of the time, memoranda sheets that bear the inscription “Ralph Ellison, Photographer

      Much like the Invisible Man, Ellison held many titles as he strove for success

    6. tgrizzyyy 08 Oct 2020
      the benchmark for his aesthetics and novelistic style is jazz

      I could read the Invisible Man about 44 times and never in my life would I have attempted to relate it in any way, shape, or form, to jazz. Intriguing start

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    indivisible.commons.gc.cuny.edu/etexts/blair-on-ellison-and-photography/