Literary Time Twists

Recently we've read selections from The Souls Of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois and also started The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James. Both of these are books with seperate and special places in my life.

In regards to the first, I read "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" for my old Sociology teacher, Dia DaCosta (now Dia Mohan) who left HWS after Spring '07 for Queens University in Canada. She was an amazing teacher, very dear to all of her students hearts, for the way that she demanded the best from us, regardless of our previous experience with the subject at hand and left us striving for comprehension hours after class. I took Intro to Soc and Sociology of Art and Culture with her, two classes on opposite ends of the spectrum of academic rigorousness. I read Du Bois in Art and Culture and am incredibly pleased to be able to revisit his writings. I find them remarkable. He was so coherent in his conscious study of the present, the past and the future. He speaks in such a voice that it's hard not to at once feel transported. It's a History lesson that doesn't grow boring, because as tough as the material it wrestles with is, it is full of Truths: reflecting both humanities actions and mentality. In that manner it is a literary time portal that is, although in essence very defined, in a bizarre way timeless and unidentifiable. By speaking against exemption, it gloriously embraces.

The second text, which I had sent to me from home, has pages which hold a bright joyous yellow tint to their edges. This copy was printed in 1993. It's small and portable, complete and unabridged, with a cover which is printed with such an image as you can't help but want to know more. A young girl, with her hair standing on edge, and her mouth in a startled 'O' is dressed in a remarkable purple dress and fleeing from an apparition chasing after her up the stairs. The ghost's face has such intention to its brow, yet its hair also reflects hers. This work has sat on my shelves since my Dad deemed it a piece I was ready to consume, yet I have never managed to do its pages justice. I'm glad, at last, for the excuse. What has struck me already with this work, is its twisting narrative, not in terms of plot, but in terms of time. We have an undefined present the author speaks from, where another narrator speaks of a past, which is not his own past, but yet another's. And even when the narration of this third narrator begins, it is still in language of hindsight. Its a very remarkable journey to put a reader through within nine pages! And within such a short time, the audience has been promised a great mystery story. I do admit that by having the female narrator speaking from such a voice that we are always feeling as if we are expecting something is a wonderful style for a mystery story. A perfect example is, "But these fancies were not marked enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of other and subsequent matters that they now come back to me" (p.12)

Adieu.