Discoveries

I am finding the writing of reading commentaries a helpful process. Each time I've written one, I've figured out things about the text that I hadn't noticed, even during a thoughtful reading. In fact, I've started to mistrust my initial reaction to any text, whether my own writing or someone else's.

I've been working today on my commentary for Tahar Ben Jelloun's The Sacred Night. I finished reading it last week and wasn't sure what to write about it. I found something that happened about a third of the way through the book fairly disturbing and I had not been able to reconcile this event with the rest of the book. I found myself questioning the way this particular event was handled because the author is a man and the first person protagonist is a woman--a young woman at that particular point in the story. The particular event I to which I refer is a rape. I felt that the writer didn't handle the emotions of the narrator well. But in retrospect, I realize that the rape was more than just a rape. It served several purposes. I also came to believe today that this character is actually a representation of woman in the North African culture at the time in which the novel is set. All the difficult events that occur in her life represent the various ways in which women were and are treated in that culture (and to a lesser extent) in our own culture.

It was only in thinking about the book for several days, reading about the author and his life and other works, and then trying to write about the story that all the separate realizations and bits of information coalesced into a larger, more meaningful whole. It's kind of exciting. Now I just have to work on the form a little.

In addition, I just went back to Pete's email in which he sent me some sample reading commentaries that he thought were good. Rereading his email after getting over my initial reaction to his critique of my work (which was not wrong--it just worried me), I realize that his email response to my question was much more clear and positive than I had originally made it out to be. If I had quoted it before without looking back, I know I would have worded it quite differently. This was a pretty big discovery for me. I really have to remind myself that I tend to project my own lack of confidence in my work into other people's comments. As I've said all along, he couldn't have been nicer, but now I realize, he was even NICER than I perceived him as being. Nuff said, except... I'm a moron. But there is a cure for that involving going to Lourdes or something, probably.