Medium is the Massage

After reading The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, I thought that if anyone was to make updated versions of the book's pages, it'd only make sense to make them actual webpages.  In fact, it was really interesting to see that much of the bool still reflects our relationship with all the new forms of media that have emerged since then.

Anyways, here's the page.

Lolita

"...but in the middle of the night she came sobbing into mine, and we made it up very gently.  You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go."

This passage marks the end of Part 1 of Lolita, a passage which to me highlights the true character of Humbert Humbert more than any other.  More than anything else, Humbert wanted control, and throughout the book he makes attempts to assert his control in extremely unsettling ways.  Just before the passage, Humbert had told Lolita that her mother was dead.  In his narration, Humbert makes it very clear that his timing of informing Lolita of her mother's death was coldly calculated.  However, the book makes a far darker implication about the death of Charlotte.  In chapter 20, soon after Humbert and Charlotte are married, Humbert mentions that while one can't plan a perfect murder on their own, random chance can help them.  Several chapters later, Charlotte is "accidentally" hit by a car as she was about to mail letters revealing Humbert.  Earlier, Humbert states that he was unable to bring himself to drown Charlotte.  With the news that Charlotte would expose him and end his relationship with Lolita, I feel like it wouldn't be out of the question for Humbert to push Charlotte in front of the car, especially after learning that he murders Clare Quilty.  Regardless, having Charlotte out of the picture was always a part of his plan. When he finally lets Lolita know that her mother is dead, Humbert has put himself in a position where he is literally the only person she can turn to.  He acknowledges this in the passage, and instead of treating her like a human, continues to rape her that night.

It is with some difficulty and hesitation that I classify Lolita as a love story.  For me, a love story has to have two primary components:  one of the main characters needs to have romantic feelings towards someone, and at some point those feelings need to be expressed through selfless actions.  It was very difficult to tell through most of the book whether Humbert actually had romantic feelings towards Lolita, or just desires of sex and control.  Near the end he seems to feel regret for all the terrible things he's done to her, and gives her money to help with her future regardless of her feelings towards him.  At this point, Lolita is past her "nymphlet" stage and pregnant, so that leads me to believe that his emotions and actions in that passage were actually fueled by romantic means rather than purely sexual ones.

Humbert is a manipulative and unforgivable monster, but his core is just as human and complex as the rest of us.  To me, this is the most unsettling aspect of the book.

The Big Sleep

The pulp novel I chose to read for this week was The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler.  The book was pretty clearly in the detective genre, and felt like I was reading the script to a noir film.  Not surprisingly, after I finished reading the book, I checked on Wikipedia and found out that there was a 1946 film with Humphrey Bogart based off of the book.

There were quite a few "detective genre" markers throughout the book.  Most obviously, the protagonist, Phillip Marlowe, is a private eye.  He's hired to investigate a financial claim that spirals into a bigger and bigger story.  He almost completely fits the archetype of a noir detective - always smoking or having a drink, sharp wit ("Are you attempting to tell me my duties, sir?" "No. But I'm having a lot of fun trying to guess what they are."), and always ahead of the cops.  Another staple of the genre is a sexy, seductive woman that tries to tempt the main character.  This ends up playing significantly into the end of the book, when Carmen's failure to do so helps Marlowe to solve the whereabouts of Rusty.

Many of the characters in the book are involved involved in some sort of ethically questionable activity or another, including blackmailing, bootlegging, peddling smut, gambling, homicide, bribery, and cover-ups.  There's quite a few actions that Marlowe has to take throughout the novel that provide as strong genre markers as well.  He interrogates almost every character he runs across, trails multiple people's cars, searches people's houses, searches crime scenes, and searches dead bodies.  At the end though, he solves the case through the big picture rather than small material details.