Rebecca Solnit’s Hollow City deals with the gentrification of the old bohemian San Francisco. Between the displacement of people’s homes and jobs by the upper class, and the incoming age of technology and corporations, San Francisco lost its uniqueness, being replaced by a more typical and unoriginal capitalist, and upper class run society. In doing this, all the hard working and lower class artists and individuals were forced out of their homes and neighborhoods, for their inability to afford the increased prices of living. Hollow City projects the end of life for bohemians and it’s miserable consequences for American culture, showing the great city of San Francisco disappearing and turning into “another sector of corporate monoculture” (Ferlinghetti), when San Francisco used to be so celebrated by it’s multiculturalism and diversity.
Tripmaster Monkey, by Maxine Hong Kingston, tells a story of a young Asian-American boy, just out of college, trying to survive as an artist in the city of San Francisco. As an aspiring poet and playwright, Whitman Ah Sing is living the life of the bohemian artist that is being displaced in Hollow City. He is also dealing with the cultural dilemma of being a bi-racial male in America. Lucky for him, he is living in one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, but it is slowly being taken over by corporations and upper class citizens trying to glamorize and spruce up their city to enhance tourism and the image of San Francisco itself. Whitman is among the cultural and economic change that is occurring, and the novel shows the struggles of working hard in a developing city to become what he wants and dreams, despite the hardships.
Both of these books deals with the gentrification of the city, and the idea that San Francisco went from being a multicultural and distinctive city with free love and art everywhere, to a more corporate city run by the rich people that inhabit it. This whole process was, and still is, making it extremely difficult for lower class working artists and musicians to make it on the streets, a place they were forced to be, since they are no longer able to afford the living expenses of the newly exclusive and corporate city.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Sounds of Big Sur
Lesley Grove
LTEL 155B
Wilson
Nov 11,2008
Solitude in Big Sir
“Tiresome old sea, ain’t you sick
& tiered of all this merde?
This incessant boom boom
& sandy walk…
Just gloom booboom & green
On foggy nights- the fog is a part
Of us-
I know, but tired
As I can be listening to all
This silly majesty”
- “Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sir” by Jack Kerouac
San Francisco was the central location of the counterculture in the 1950’s. As a home of much of the beat generation, it was enriched with many views of art, music, religion, politics and dreams of our purpose in the world. All these ideas were expressed through the works of the beat writers of this time. Among one of the most innovative beats is Lawrence Ferilinghetti, the co-founder of the City Lights Bookstore. Located in North Beach, San Francisco, City Lights Bookstore was mainly known for publishing poetry and works of the beat authors such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, and Ferlinghetti himself. It is an independently owned bookstore dedicated to world literature, art, and progressive politics with an emphasis in works relating to San Francisco culture.
Many of the beats often resided in San Francisco, the core of the counterculture of this time, though they also spent a significant amount of time traveling the triangle from San Francisco to New York to Mexico, and all that lies between. Among one of these places connected to the San Francisco “contado” is the serene climate of Big Sur. San Francisco and Big Sur are connected by the twists and turns of Highway 1, which follows the coast South from Orange County, all the way North up to Mendocino County. Big Sur was an alternative to the fast-paced city life. Many artists and writers of San Francisco would retreat to Big Sur to gather their thoughts, relax and take in the beauty and serenity of the ocean with its rocky coastlines and the abundant wilderness it had to offer. Here, these beat authors could quietly write of the times they had while traveling and living in the city and around the world, while staying among the familiar scenes of the ocean with fellow writers for inspiration.
Among one of the writers to escape to the solitude of Big Sur was Lawrwnce Ferlinghetti. Since he owned a cabin in the coastal mountains of Big Sur, other beat writers made use of this space themselves. Jack Kerouac’s Novel Big Sur is based on the truth of his life as a famous writer and the weight it put on him. In the novel he goes to Big Sur to get away from the stress and madness of the city life and its expectations, to relax and forget about the world as he knew it. Instead of releasing his problems in Big Sur, he begins obsessively drinking, and ruining his relationship with all the people he knows and his appreciation for the beautiful things in life, like Big Sur.
LTEL 155B
Wilson
Nov 11,2008
Solitude in Big Sir
“Tiresome old sea, ain’t you sick
& tiered of all this merde?
This incessant boom boom
& sandy walk…
Just gloom booboom & green
On foggy nights- the fog is a part
Of us-
I know, but tired
As I can be listening to all
This silly majesty”
- “Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sir” by Jack Kerouac
San Francisco was the central location of the counterculture in the 1950’s. As a home of much of the beat generation, it was enriched with many views of art, music, religion, politics and dreams of our purpose in the world. All these ideas were expressed through the works of the beat writers of this time. Among one of the most innovative beats is Lawrence Ferilinghetti, the co-founder of the City Lights Bookstore. Located in North Beach, San Francisco, City Lights Bookstore was mainly known for publishing poetry and works of the beat authors such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, and Ferlinghetti himself. It is an independently owned bookstore dedicated to world literature, art, and progressive politics with an emphasis in works relating to San Francisco culture.
Many of the beats often resided in San Francisco, the core of the counterculture of this time, though they also spent a significant amount of time traveling the triangle from San Francisco to New York to Mexico, and all that lies between. Among one of these places connected to the San Francisco “contado” is the serene climate of Big Sur. San Francisco and Big Sur are connected by the twists and turns of Highway 1, which follows the coast South from Orange County, all the way North up to Mendocino County. Big Sur was an alternative to the fast-paced city life. Many artists and writers of San Francisco would retreat to Big Sur to gather their thoughts, relax and take in the beauty and serenity of the ocean with its rocky coastlines and the abundant wilderness it had to offer. Here, these beat authors could quietly write of the times they had while traveling and living in the city and around the world, while staying among the familiar scenes of the ocean with fellow writers for inspiration.
Among one of the writers to escape to the solitude of Big Sur was Lawrwnce Ferlinghetti. Since he owned a cabin in the coastal mountains of Big Sur, other beat writers made use of this space themselves. Jack Kerouac’s Novel Big Sur is based on the truth of his life as a famous writer and the weight it put on him. In the novel he goes to Big Sur to get away from the stress and madness of the city life and its expectations, to relax and forget about the world as he knew it. Instead of releasing his problems in Big Sur, he begins obsessively drinking, and ruining his relationship with all the people he knows and his appreciation for the beautiful things in life, like Big Sur.
Many other authors along with Jack Kerouac and Lawrence Ferlinghetti flead to the solitude of Big Sur such as Henry Miller, Hunter S. Thompson and Richard Brautigan. It was always and remains today as a quiet retreat, a beautiful pocket of ocean and forest, away from the crazy popular urban city of San Francisco, home to many artists and authors alike.
Bibliography
Discusses the history, climate, tourism, and demographics of San Francisco.
A review and summary of Jack Kerouac's novel Big Sur.
This site describes the route of Highway 1; the cities it passes through North and South Bound.
Kerouac, Jack. Big Sur. New York: Penguin Books, 1962
Jack Kerouac's novel including his experiance while staying in Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin in Big Sur, California.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Brautigan's Trout Fishing In America
Lesley Grove
Wilson
LTEL 155B
22 October 2008
Trout Fishing in America
In Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, this is the refrain we hear throughout the novella as a whole. “Trout fishing in America” is used to represent just about everything and anything one could think of in this very poetically written novella. Brautigan writes stories within chapters, many are personal conquests of travel, relationships, memories, or lessons learned, but there are also fictional anecdotes and characters that help get the point across. He spends a significant amount of time discussing trips out to nature that he or other characters have made, in which they could not escape their own haunting of the urban life.
There are many chapters in which Bruatigan touches on the idea that the media and technology we all deal with nowadays is dominating nature, and our minds, when we are out interacting with nature, always thinking about the urban life, never escaping the control it has over us. A big example of this idea is in the chapter “The Hunchback Trout”, where he repeatedly mentions feeling “just like a telephone repairman,” (Brautigan 55). He sees the trees surrounding the creek as “12, 845 telephone booths in a row with high Victorian ceilings and all the doors taken off and all the backs of the booths knocked out” (Brautigan 55). So he paints a picture of nature and technology together to help us understand his problem of not being able to escape urbanization, how he can be in one completely calm and serene place, yet still be so wrapped up in another. He even mentions “clocking in” several times, as if trout fishing was a job he needed to complete to do his part in society. Bruatigan, as well as most other people, can’t seem to get away from the working life, even in complete nature; we are still consumed by what is happening back home in the city from which we came.
Though Brautgan talks about technology dominating nature as a negative thing, he also speaks about it in a harmonizing way, where trout fishing represents the harmony of man and machine, as shown in his poem “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.” In this poem, Brautigan is hoping for a cybernetic meadow, forest, and ecology, “where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky” (Brautigan 1). The idea of bringing the two worlds together makes us “free of out labors, and joined back to nature” (Brautigan 1), where we can return to our roots while still having been brought up surrounded by all the capitalism and technology that we have.
Wilson
LTEL 155B
22 October 2008
Trout Fishing in America
In Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, this is the refrain we hear throughout the novella as a whole. “Trout fishing in America” is used to represent just about everything and anything one could think of in this very poetically written novella. Brautigan writes stories within chapters, many are personal conquests of travel, relationships, memories, or lessons learned, but there are also fictional anecdotes and characters that help get the point across. He spends a significant amount of time discussing trips out to nature that he or other characters have made, in which they could not escape their own haunting of the urban life.
There are many chapters in which Bruatigan touches on the idea that the media and technology we all deal with nowadays is dominating nature, and our minds, when we are out interacting with nature, always thinking about the urban life, never escaping the control it has over us. A big example of this idea is in the chapter “The Hunchback Trout”, where he repeatedly mentions feeling “just like a telephone repairman,” (Brautigan 55). He sees the trees surrounding the creek as “12, 845 telephone booths in a row with high Victorian ceilings and all the doors taken off and all the backs of the booths knocked out” (Brautigan 55). So he paints a picture of nature and technology together to help us understand his problem of not being able to escape urbanization, how he can be in one completely calm and serene place, yet still be so wrapped up in another. He even mentions “clocking in” several times, as if trout fishing was a job he needed to complete to do his part in society. Bruatigan, as well as most other people, can’t seem to get away from the working life, even in complete nature; we are still consumed by what is happening back home in the city from which we came.
Though Brautgan talks about technology dominating nature as a negative thing, he also speaks about it in a harmonizing way, where trout fishing represents the harmony of man and machine, as shown in his poem “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.” In this poem, Brautigan is hoping for a cybernetic meadow, forest, and ecology, “where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky” (Brautigan 1). The idea of bringing the two worlds together makes us “free of out labors, and joined back to nature” (Brautigan 1), where we can return to our roots while still having been brought up surrounded by all the capitalism and technology that we have.
Richard Brautigan is constantly borrowing experiences from his own life to really show us his roots and where we have all evolved from to get to where we are now. By making his writing personal we are able to connect with his writing and contemplate his arguments and points, because we know this is real and that not only are these Brautigan’s struggles, but they are our struggles too. We have to realize the difference between the urban life and the rural life, and that they are slowly merging together, whether for better or for worse. Unless we take a hold of it now, the two worlds will eventually become completely blended together and we will have no escape from either one.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Challenges to Young Poets
Lesley Grove
Wilson
LTEL 155B
10 October 2008
Challenges to Young Poets
Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem, “Challenges to Young Poets”, is an
Wilson
LTEL 155B
10 October 2008
Challenges to Young Poets
Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poem, “Challenges to Young Poets”, is an
example of San Francisco as a mongrel city. He is describing San Francisco as a
poetic city on the edge of social innovation and freedom.
In this poem, Ferlinghetti writes of the idea of being an individual and
standing up for oneself against the norm and harsh life of critics and false
personas. At the same time, he touches on the fact that everyone is the same, all
naïve and innocent, and living in an unfamiliar world which we are all trying to
get used to. He is reminding us to always question what is put in front of us, and
to walk our own path in life. This poem is also a list of ideas to keep oneself busy
and curious, which is the only way to really learn, by being inquisitive.
Through his poems, Ferlinghetti trys to give us the answers to living a
free life outside of the corrupt structure that gets enforced on each of us.
Ferlinghetti is representing San Francisco through all these ideas as if to say,
“all of San Francisco thinks as free and liberal as this, or at least they should”.
The poem, “Challenges to Young Poets”, suggests social innovation and freedom
both, because it is asking poets and people to engage in things that are out of
the ordinary and reaching the boundaries of making people feel uncomfortable
or out of their comfort zone, as a way to liberate them.
He is asking us to contemplate obvious things, as if we never thought of
it ourselves, which we haven’t, making all of his challenges and ideas intriguing,
and worth the effort it is to fight for the social freedom it takes to accomplish
these goals
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