more "Sonny's Blues"
Tuesday we had a fantastic discussion using the agenda method originated by my undergraduate literature professor. It's pretty simple but effective...if folks read. Everyone comes in and makes comments, offers questions on the reading and I write all the stuff like a fiend on the board. Then the readers choose which items to discuss and we're off.
I keep saying in class that I've read this story a gazillion times and I still learn something new each time. Tuesday, that happened again when I learned two things I'd never noticed before. Readers said that not only does the narrator remain nameless but all the male characters are unnamed, except for Sonny and Creole. So we made a list. And the only characters who are named are Sonny, Creole, Isabel, and Gracie. Everybody else is nameless. Why?
The other observation was that every time characters in the story are having a deep conversation or revelation, they're looking out the window. And it's true! The narrator is looking out the subway windows when he reads about Sonny at the start; the folks on Sundays look outside at the darkness they see; the narrator and Sonny look out the window when they have their first honest talk about Sonny's drug use...but the huge scene at the end when the narrator listens to Sonny play, there is no looking-out-of-windows. Does that mean we need to look inward...or look AND listen to others for the answers we need?
When we were talking about Baldwin's use of dark and light imagery, someone said, "That's too deep," and it wasn't a good kind of "deep." You know, when someone says, "Wow, that's deep," and you both marvel at the complexity of something. This was more like, "That's just too much thought about all that." And I remember when I was first studying literature, I used to complain in class that analyzing just ripped apart the piece, took away its art, somehow...as if to respect a piece of artwork, one just has to experience it, not analyze it. Something must have changed because today I make my living studying literature. Today, I think that studying literature just means creating new stories. We make up stories about the stories. And we do that so we can make the story we read ours in meaningful ways.
"Sonny's Blues"
I wonder if I'll ever get tired of teaching this story, reading it with others? I'm tired right now cuz I didn't get enough sleep last night, so I'm not thinking too creatively. I think Baldwin was ahead of his time in describing family dynamics of addiction, for instance. "Sonny's Blues" was published in 1957 (just two years after Alcoholics Anonymous started up) when there was so much less known about addiction and significantly fewer treatment options were available. As we say in AA, an addict who keeps on using has one of three places she or he can end up: jail, insane asylum, or grave. Not much of a choice, eh? So it's nothing short of heroic that Sonny shows up every day and doesn't take that hit of heroin. And that's what Sonny himself says when he and his brother have that first honest conversation about drugs, when Sonny gets out of jail and the brother thinks of searching Sonny's room for drugs. Sonny has just come back to the apartment after listening to the street revival, and he tells his brother that listening to the woman's voice on the corner felt something like heroin. Sonny talked about needing to be in control and the brother asked Sonny if that's what Sonny needed...to be in control when he played piano. Sonny replied that "
they think so," that others believed they needed drugs to play the music. The narrator asks Sonny what Sonny believes and Sonny replies, "It's not so much to
play. It's to
stand it, to be able to make it at all. On any level....In order to keep from shaking to pieces" (2007).
I think my favorite part is when the brothers are discussing Sonny's desire to play music and the narrator keeps pushing Sonny to do the supposedly responsible thing and get a real job ("Can you make a living at it?") and Sonny says, "...sure, I can make a living at it. But what I don't seem to be able to make you understand is that it's the only thing I want to do." The narrator replies, "...you know people can't always do what they
want to do --" and Sonny says, "
No, I don't know that...I think people
ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?" (2001) I think the brothers represent the struggle of any artist: how do you pay the bills and still create, still follow your passion if your art isn't what pays the rent and puts food on the table?
Spring 2006-introduction
Hey - my name is Dr. Shattuck, and I'll be your co-pilot for this flight. Since we have approximately forty co-pilots in this class, we should be able to get to wherever we wanna go. English teachers are not supposed to write "wanna," but I like to write that word when I feel like it, because it sounds right. Ya know?
How else should I introduce myself? I'm fifty-one years old. Yup. Got a thirteen-year-old son. I'm a single mom. I love teaching, reading, writing. My son says I'm a geek. In eighth grade, I was voted one of the most popular, so I can't be too much of a geek. Geekiness is good, though. What else? That's enough. I'm looking forward to reading your blogs this semester!
