Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Pet Milk, Stuart Dybek
The author captures the city of Chicago perfectly with the radio stations and how the such a diverse city is stil segregated and the smallest turn of a knob like turning a block to a whole new country within Europe. Traveling the subway and how quickly you move from one sight to the next in a blink. I found the subway ride like the whole story and how one thought leads to the next in this marathon of reminders our brains calculate with thoughts and memories based of of some visual, scent, and/or sound building, building, and building. The direction we can try to control but is way more fun to walk directionless down avenues and alleyways exploring.
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I like your interpretation of the techiques used throughout Pet Milk. While I concentrated on the relateability of the author's words ("dressed in our proper business clothes and still feeling both a little self-conscious and galmorous, as if we were impostors wearing disguises..."), you brought to light other more subtle aspects of the story. You mentioned that the whole story is like the subway ride--it jumbs from one thought to the next. I didn't even think of this while reading the story, but now that you mention it, it is obvious that the writer wanted us to make this correlation. You also noted that our brains make connections at the presence of certain visuals, scents and/or sounds--the whole premise of the story stems from the visual of the Pet Milk, which leads to various memories of the narrator.
ReplyDeleteThe narration of the train ride stood out for me too. Like when he was describing the buildings--that stood out to me for some reason. Interesting how you described the train ride being like the story...as the narrator was being reminded of one memory to the next...the narrator grew up riding this train route lots of times--maybe that explains why he was able to relay such great images on the train ride. Anyway, that train ride in the story is a lot more exciting that some other train rides we have around here....!!! Another reason why it stood out!!!
ReplyDeleteTotally. Just like our memories, riding the train through Chicago, there are a billion things to look at, a million different alleyways we can explore and relive.
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