Comments

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  Graciela Cristina Mené November 23, 2009 at 7:48pm

  Women suffer from the "temptations of the flesh", but not so desperately. Imagine a woman feeling as if she were to explode!
  I seriously think that there are some women who are in trouble due to this issue, especially those who never simulate the fact that they NEED to get married immediately, just to hide this desire in front of the people.
  Women do masturbate. It's an animal instict and women are animals. However, I think Anna would never write those words as a woman, but as Paul Auster himself. I recognize this as his own instinct, as if he were with Anna and those hands were Paul's on Anna' body. I cannot think of the act in complete isolation, but in company. It might be a masculine way of sexual desire.
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  Graciela Cristina Mené November 23, 2009 at 7:45pm

  You know that I haven't finished In The Country Of The Last Things yet. And yesterday, when I reached page 62, I found Anna not as Anna, but as Paul Auster. I have to contradict myself when I thought that the writer had to have studied the femenine points of view very well. Well, I think that he failed in the part of the masturbation. I think he let the masculine wishes flow naturally.
  The act of masturbation belongs to both women and men, but isn't is a very masculine way to confess?
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  Graciela Cristina Mené November 18, 2009 at 8:55pm

  You know that I haven't finished In The Country Of The Last Things yet. And yesterday, when I reached page 62, I found Anna not as Anna, but as Paul Auster. I have to contradict myself when I thought that the writer had to have studied the femenine points of view very well. Well, I think that he failed in the part of the masturbation. I think he let the masculine wishes flow naturally.
  The act of masturbation belongs to both women and men, but isn't is a very masculine way to confess?
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  Graciela Cristina Mené November 18, 2009 at 8:52pm

  Comment by Graciela Cristina Mené on November 15, 2009 at 4:23pm Delete Comment In the Country of the Last Things by Paul Auster
  I am still reading the novel, but I will give my first impressions of it.
  As my first comment, I’d like to share the idea that the author, Paul Auster,
  dealt with all the female points of view very well: sensations, impressions, sensitivities, sensibilities and even sexual matters. Anna Blume is nineteen when she decides to start the trip looking for her brother William in this unnamed, virtually nonexistent and almost ghostly country. Unnamed, because it is so insignificant that it doesn’t have even a name, virtually nonexisatent because nobody has ever known a country like the one mentioned in this letter, and ghostly country because it terrifies anybody so much.
  As Anna is very young and comes from a wealthy family, it turns into a difficult situation to live on the streets and to learn what extreme poverty means indeed. Paul Auster must have worked very much on what a young woman feels in between this terrible transition from having everything she wants to having thouroghly nothing.
  My second comment is, as a matter of fact, a question. To be the country of the last things, doesn’t it have a lot of things? And the first and the most impressive is that this virtually nonexistent country has a lot of well-organized groups, such as The Runners, The Last Leap, Eutahnasia Clinics, Assassination Clubs among others. All of them in search of death. Death has become the reason to live. There is a clear evidence on page 15, when Anna writes in her long letter: “Death is no longer an abstraction, but a real possibility that haunts each moment of life.” If death is not abstraction, it means that it is a concrete subject. As a conclusion, they have death. The second thing I consider this country has is shit. On page 30 Anna says that “shit is a serious business” because people, in that country, collect shit to supply them with energy. So, these people have also energy.
  Another topic to consider is memory. Memory, like the city, is in constant flux and constant decay. Anna thinks that she loses her memory for good (page 38). She thinks this way because it is the way to survive. And she writes this long long letter in order to keep all her memoir written in a bunch of pages, so when she forgets something, she can read and remember everything.
  The last thing I’ll be writing about today is about people’s beliefs. Anna’s new friend, Isabel, believes deeply in God, She thanks the glory of having met Anna. She thinks God introduces Anna to her because Isabel is constantly talking to him. Isabel is seriously thankful of what God gives her. Even in Isabel’s worst moments, she believes in God very much.
  
  I’ll be giving more opinions in short. I hope you agree with what I’ve written up to now.
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  Graciela Cristina Mené November 17, 2009 at 4:29am

  Lore, It's great that you are sharing some useful pages with us. I promise I'll be studying them at the weekend deeply.
  By the way, I'd like to share with you a very interesting page I found in the Net, probably you already know it. But, just in case....
  
  http://pagesperson-orange.fr/jeremytaylor/download.htm
  
  Well, I haven't been so smart with the blog. I hope, then, you can enjoy the page as well as I do
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  Viviana April 16, 2009 at 9:32am

  Welcome Lorena!
  
  Hope you´ve enjoyed and participated in our first blog post.