At first The Descent of Alette was very difficult and almost troublesome for me. The quotation marks seemed a bit unnecessary and I didn't really know what to think of the poems. However, as I continued reading through to the second, then third, and finally the fourth book my feelings towards the work changed completely. It is not your typical "feminist" collection of poems and the subject is not an overly popular one either: the descent to hell. Notley creates vivid and fantastic imagery coerced with an intriguing pursuit of self-discovery that makes it impossible to put the book down.
Despite the numerous dichotomies that she brings up such as male/female, animal/human, darkness/light, etc, she is always the central character in the story and the one who experiences the most transformations (both physically and mentally). She blurs the lines between these categories. Another interesting way in which she blurs lines occurs between book one and book two. The first book reveals her gloomy observations of tormented people on the subway; a subway with a monotonous and depressing course. She holds conversations with some, and questions others, but what appears to happen is that all the people become incorporated inside herself. This transforms her "I" into a plural representation of self. I feel that if Notley didn't do this, Alette wouldn't have been able to have entered and dealt with each room, or cave, in the second book. I'm glad she did this. For while I recognize that this book is very much about Alette's struggle to discovery herself and answer her own life questions, it needs to be universal in some sense as well, otherwise readers would not be able to relate to the book.
One particular point in the book really made me think. Alette is conversing with the woman with the basket and asks her why she is following Alette. She replies with "To tell you this: There are few books by us women, because it wasn't to be books it was to be something else...books ruined us...created time...distanced us from the perpetuation of our beautiful beginning moment...only moment created death" (70.) She is stating that books and documentation of any form created death and the concept of time, without them life would just be a continuing progression and everyone would exist forever in the immediate moment. I believe this statement supports the idea that there is something outside the sphere of humankind that existed before, and exists beyond what we know. It was not created by humans and therefore cannot necessarily be destroyed by them, but is still unreachable in some way (due to the tyrant mainly.)
While Notley's book is excruciatingly dark and depressing, it is fascinating all in the same time. Her animalistic imagery is intriguing and the action is exciting. Even though it is probably one of the most different collections of poetry that I have encountered, I have definitely enjoyed reading her work.
I really like what you said about how in order for Alette to defeat the tyrant and discover herself, she needed to have a small part of everyone else inside herself. I can’t believe that while we were talking about in this book, nobody brought up the topic of the typical “Hero’s Journey,” the basic formula for most works like this. It was our comparisons of Alette to the Harry Potter books that got me thinking about this; Rowling’s series is a prime example of this formula, and I think that Notley used this to an extent, as well. In the journey, the protagonist goes on a “road of trials” (and I totally just looked this up on Wikipedia; it’s been three years since I’ve talked about this stuff in class, I had to!), in which he or she goes through a transformation. One can obviously draw comparisons to Alette’s journey through the caves here, where she is constantly being transformed, being basically recreated with parts of everyone she encounters along her way to the tyrant.
ReplyDeleteThe universality of Alette’s journey really does help so that readers can relate to what is going on in the book. I highly doubt that many people reading this book have found themselves on a never-ending subway ride, in which they have to end up defeating a tyrant so that they can go back home, but I’m pretty sure most people have had to go on a journey of sorts to find themselves, to find a greater understanding of their world.
When I first started reading The Decent of Alette I was very confused. I had no idea how I was supposed to read the text. Was I supposed to stop after every word, was I supposed to have a different voice after every quoteation mark? Were these just random thoughts from random people? So many questions. But as I stuck with it I soon found out that the quoteations didn’t really matter much. And by the third part of the book my brain had tought itself how to read the book and make sence of it. I find it rather amazing how a writer can write so differently and confusing but yet still have faith that the human mind can teach itself how to read the book like the writer hopes you would. I personally think Notley was writing the way she was because she wanted to prove to the world that it was a new begining for writers and that she had free range on how and why she was going to write the book as she did. She was stepping outside of her normal zone of writing and she was proud and ready for it.
ReplyDeleteAs I read through out the book the dream like writing never changed. It felt like I was in a dream this whole book. The way things were written, the characters that were introduced, the different places Alette went and discovered. Everything was so very dream like, and I feel Notley did this because she was on a journey of self discovery and I think everyone who has been on that journey thus far in life can tell you that when the journey starts out it does feel almost like a dream, and continues to feel almost as a dream until you finally have found who you are and what is ment for you out of this world. And this is exactly what Notley was trying to prove with Alette.
One other point I wanted to mention was that Notley has a lot of bionarys in this book. Dark vs light, male vs female, above ground vs below, human vs non human, and dream vs reality. She does such an amazing job with how she puts all these bionarys in her text and also does a rather fasinating job on how she would like the reader to inturpet it. All and all I can admit I enjoyed the reading, after I got past the difficult beginning I had a much funer time with the rest.