Right off the bat Gornick grabs the reader in her first sentence “ A year after my mother told Mrs. Drucker she was a whore...” You immediately get this idea of Gornick's mother, that she is this feisty, outspoken woman (to put it nicely). Though we don't get much of a background or straight forward description of her, the reader gets an idea of her mother through her dialogue in the story. Before reading this story, I had expected the excerpt to have some sort of meaningful idea on mother-daughter relationships, but Gornick focuses a lot on Nettie in this passage. Through her comparison to Greta Garbo, Gornick lets you know that Nettie is very “Hollywood”. There is this glamour and allure to this woman that sets her apart from the other people in the apartment building and fascinates Gornick.
We are very quickly taken through Nettie's story with her husband's return, his abusive behavior, his death, and then focusing on the male visitors Nettie has at her apartment. Gornick then goes into the male visitors Nettie has at her apartment and the scene of her bursting into Nettie’s apartment, after which the story seemed to be cut off and the switch to Gornick and her mother walking through the streets seems abrupt. The last scene we see with Nettie however, when Vivian walks in on her and a man sitting at the kitchen table, Gornick describes the look Nettie gave her "She was calculating the impression this scene was making on me.." It would seem as though Nettie so apart of Gornick's family, that she had become concerned about the example she was setting for her, the way a parent would.
At first it felt like we had gotten different stories all mushed together into one passage, and I found myself wondering what is the connection here? Through the different stories she describes, the common thread I could see was her mother and how she acted throughout the chapter. Her mother seems to have this odd, complex relationship with Nettie, where she takes her under her wing and defends her yet I sensed that Gornack’s mother was intimidated of her in a way. There is a line in which they are describing the relationship between the two women after Rick’s death, “My mother could now sustain Nettie’s beauty without becoming unbalanced and Nettie could help herself to Mama’s respectability without being humbled” This connects back to the beginning of the story, when Nettie is praising Gornick’s mother for her domestic skills, and Gornick describes her mother as quietly envious of Nettie’s looks . Now that Nettie is widowed and vulnerable, there seems to come a balance in their relationship.
Where I felt connected most to Gornick is when she asking her mother begins telling her her what she thinks of the biography Vivian has given her. She describes herself getting angry and wanting to lash out at her mother over her opinion. I thought this frustration she describes with her mother and wanting to fight back against her domineering opinion was something that everyone has felt at some point or another with a parent or family member.
In a vulnerable moment at the end of story, we get this revelation from Gornick’s mother, “I’m jealous,” my mother blurts out at me,”I’m jealous, she lived her life, I didn’t live mine” In this confession , it seemed to tie together everything about Gornick’s mother, in that although this woman put up a tough exterior, being able to battle through words, there was something missing from her own life. I think this is why there is this certain tension between her and Nettie and why she scoffs at the books Vivian gives her; they both remind her of what she doesn't have.
Overall I enjoyed the very straightforward style of the piece. I like that there was a lot of reflection from Gornick’s older self yet we are also put in her mindset as a young child and how she was observing things at the time of the story.
The short biography before the excerpt notes that Gornick's Fierce Attachments is mostly about her relationship with her mother. Though the excerpt from the memoir is not even ten pages long, the reader still gets a good sense of what Gornick's mother is like; she's pushy, judgmental, and gosspiy. For example, after Nettie's boyfriend Rick dies, she starts to look after Nettie and protect her from the other tenants who gossip about her. However, she still gossips to her sister about all the men that come to her house.
ReplyDeleteThough the excerpt is split into two different memories, they both connect. On page 98, Gornick reflects on giving an autobiography of Josephine Herbst to her mother. She writes, “On and on she'll go, the way she does when she thinks she doesn't understand something and she's scared and she's taking refuge in scorn and hypercriticality.” This not only relates to the Herbst autobiography that Gornick gives her mother, but it also relates back to how her mother reacts to and treats Nettie. She never really understands Nettie; she is “impossible” for her to figure out. Thus, she is critical of her, even when they get closer after Rick's murder.
I also found it interesting how Gornick changes tenses during the second half of the excerpt. The first half is written in the past tense, while the second is written in the present tense; the present tense is used when it depicts Gornick as an adult, and the past tense is used when she is a child. It makes me wonder if Gornick switches tenses often in the memoir these excerpts were taken from.
Not only does Gornick set the scene to her environment by telling us the memoir was set in the middle of World War II, but she paints a clearer picture with certain descriptions she gives us. For example, one line that made me think she was living in the slums is when she is describing Nettie and says, “My heart began to pound. I had never before seen a beautiful woman.” (pg 92) This somewhat amazed me but really let you into the condition of her environment.
ReplyDeleteGornick is also quick to tell us the type of person her mother was. As was mentioned by Kerry, in the first line of the memoir she says that the last neighbor moved out after her mother called her a whore. We also see how judgmental her mother is when Nettie is describing her husband’s (who is Jewish) occupation of being a merchant marine, “Isn’t he Jewish?” she asks in practically disbelief.
Gornick’s mother just seems bitter at the world. We are told that she protected Nettie from gossiping neighbors but then she still makes inquiries about the men coming to visit Nettie to her sister. She doesn’t seem like she can be trusted and my favorite part of the memoir is when Gornick has had enough of the way her mother is speaking and tells her off on page 98. “You’re an ignoramus, you know nothing, only a know-nothing talks the way you do.”
I was intrigued with the two selections MAM made for the Gornick piece. The segments discuss different stories remembered by Gornick, however both characterize Gornick’s mother and their relationship. In the first portion, this is framed around Nettie the neighbor. We understand things about Gornick’s mother through the way she interacts with Nettie; we also understand how Gornick felt about her mother by the way she describes herself and her brother in these situation, doing things like blushing and asking her mother why she is talking that way about Nettie.
ReplyDeleteI was more interested in the second selection personally. I found that this perspective from the adult Gornick was more reflective and insightful into the true nature of her mother. Initially, she is shown as similar to how she was in the first chapter, making an example out of the derelict on the street to her daughter. However, in the end she becomes vulnerable when she admits that she wished she had lived her life. This section was especially interesting to me because Gornick literally shows the reader how she got to that point in her relationship with her mother. Before we get the vulnerable mother, we must first sit through the process. Gornick gives the audience this by explaining how her arguments usually go, including what her mother and herself would have said. Then at the end, she shows how their relationship has progressed, and shows how she is finally able to understand and get through to her mother. The entire time, Gornick keeps us in her mind with her, as if we are right there walking those silent blocks too.
Gornick does a great job of putting the reader into her shoes as a child. I have found this difficult to do because I want to reflect on what happened in my childhood and tell the reader what he or she should get out of my memoir, but Gornick is able to balance the reflection with the action of her character as a child. When Nettie's husband is killed, Gornick writes that it happened "in a bar in port somewhere in the Balitc Sea" (95). To me, this is what a child would say. "It was port somewhere." This struck me because she isn't "correcting" her child's perspective by saying exactly where it happened (as she may now know as an adult looking back). There are two parts where Vivian is running through the apartment building, and as a reader, I was able to picture this little girl running in a place where she was probably told a hundred times not to run. The first time, she collides with Nettie: "I was running down the stairs after school, rushing to get out on the street, when we collided in the darkened hallway" (91). This is a very childlike thing to be doing, and Gornick tells us this to get us into the mind of her child's character. She does this again on page 96: "I came flying through the door, a bundle of nine-year-old intrusive energy." I really like this line. I think it not only shows the pace and the excitement of the little girl, but also Gornick's realization as she looks back that this was intrusive and probably not appropriate. It is a subtle reflection that sets the reader up for the following scene where she sees something she was not supposed to see.
ReplyDeleteI felt that this memoir was particularly fitting for the current paper, since it tells two separate stories, meant to function together to tell a clearer, more emotionally story. However, unlike the technique used by Bechdel, where a story is presented, a second narrative is given to show an understanding of the situation, and then the primary narrative is returned to, Gornick's stories feel related only in terms of having the same characters. More than that, simply having the same characters does not very well link the stories. There is no behavior that seems to link the Mother seen in the first half of memoir, who is untrustworthy of the world around her and Nettie in particular, and the Mother in the second half, who is mean and unsympathetic to her daughter, beyond a general negativity and brashness. Gornick's character also seems to share very few traits in the second half, trying to be calm and composed and understanding, with the version of her we are presented in the first half, and I cannot see how the two stories interact in any way, despite my best efforts. Overall, it feels like Gornick has taken what could have been an interesting idea, and failed to stick the landing.
ReplyDeleteFrom reading Gornick’s memoir from Fierce Attachments, the ending quite honestly was not what I expected from the second passage chosen to present. However, this may be my favorite memoir we have read thus far. First of all, the progression is fantastic. Like others have examined, we get the author from many perspectives. We see the attachment to Nettie, like we discussed about in the Wolff exercise we did a few classes ago: “I yearned toward her. She radiated a kind of promise I couldn’t stay away from, I wanted…I wanted…I didn’t know what I wanted” (94). This is presented the desire of the character to us, the desire and question that we, as a class, are told over and over again to include in our own memoirs. Throughout the first part, I also wanted. I wanted the piece to captivate, which it did in a sullen way.
ReplyDeleteThe second part, was sort of a humor aspect, pertaining to the black male. However, from reading the ending of that selected passage, I wondered what exactly the black male had to do about the connection Gornick has with the book that she lent to her mother. What I personally found interesting with the ending, is sometimes I feel as though (at least for myself) I try to find a reflection in the actions of the other opposing character—not within myself. This reflection/ending was a reflection derived from Gornick. When she says, “you demean us all when you say that” (99), really incorporates her personal feelings towards her mother’s opinion towards the book. Personally, that’s what I lack in my writing—the connection.
What I really want to figure out, is the connection between the two chosen passages. Why these two and how do they work together to create a universal understanding?
I especially enjoyed this memoir excerpt for its raw elements. The scene is immediately set at the beginning and the reader knows Gornick’s mother’s characteristics right off the bat. A lot of the story is summary, but Gornick subtly adds reflection when discussing her mother’s outrageous attitude or her next-door neighbor’s, Mrs. Levine, extraordinary radiance. It is a nice change of pace to read something in which one gets a perfect picture of a person without having to be told about said person, but rather one can practically “see” their characteristics jumping off of the page. This is what Gornick does with her mother and, somewhat with, Mrs. Levine. I think Gornick highlights her mother in such a light throughout the story so she can reflect on how she used to see her, and to figure out why their relationship never bloomed past seemingly mild friendship. I also believe that she wanted to show the radiance of Nettie (Mrs. Levine) to highlight the bad features of her mother and learn about how she could have fierce attachments to strangers but not to her own family (her sibling is only mentioned once; she makes her family members seems like outcasts in her life).
ReplyDeleteI guess I missed out on responding for this one, huh? Serry, Korry! I mean, "Sorry, Kerry!"
ReplyDelete