Summary of “A Horse and Two Goats” by R.K. Narayan

“A Horse and Two Goats” is about a misunderstanding between an Indian and an American.

Muni, an old man who lives in Kritam, a small village in India, is waiting around a statue of a horse for his sign to go home with his two goats when a car stops in front of him. A man gets out of it and tries to talk to Muni in Englisch, but Muni doesn’t speak Englisch and can’t understand him. He tries his best to understand what the American – as he says – wants to tell him and answers in Tamil. The American thinks that Muni is the owner of the horse statue which he wants to buy spontaneously, so he tries to make a deal with him, but Muni thinks he wants to buy his goats. Finally Muni goes home without his goats but with the money the American gave him while the American waits for Muni to come back and help him load the statue into his car.

The Exhibition

I was very fascinated by the photos that showed so many different sides of America and its people. The exhibition had a well chosen balance between photos that showed people and photos that showed cities or landscapes, all together they imparted a very interesting image of America. It was great to see America and its social changes and development from different points of view and through the eyes of different people who lived in different times.

To me the photo series by Nan Goldin which we saw as a slide-show was very interesting. She documented parts of her own life here, and you get to know different sides of her. On the one hand there is the average-looking woman, who seems to be pretty normal and who stands for the average American, on the other hand there is the exhausted woman, who is addicted to drugs and leads a very inconstant life. This woman stands for so many other Americans who get into contact with drugs and degenerate totally. While seeing her photos you can follow Nan Goldin through the changes in her life, through all the ups and downs. You see self-portraits and photos of the life around her, friends and boyfriends. In my opinion Nan Goldin stated herself as an example for many American lives and people and for decay because of drugs. All her photos are authentic real-life photos that enable you to get a very close look into her life. I think this is a very good method of documentation. To me Nan Goldin’s photo series is very interesting and fits in the exhibition very well.

Review of Moon Palace

The most important thing at first: If you’re not interested in stories about finding the own identity and growing by incidences out of order, you shouldn’t even try to get along with Moon Palace, because that’s just what it’s all about.

You can describe the novel by Paul Auster as a documentation about finding out who you are and who you want to be. The example for this quest for identity and meaning used in Moon Palace is Marco Stanley Fogg, a young man who doesn’t know where he belongs. I don’t really want to talk about the story here, even though this is common in reviews. In my opinion it’s just an average “protagonist-gets-lost-but-after-all-finds-his-place-in-life”-story.

Probably you already noticed that i’m not really thrilled by the novel. There are some descriptions of not really important things that make it hard to keep on reading, because you’re asking yourself why you’re doing this. In addition to the uninteresting story, which is just not suspenseful to me, this didn’t make Moon Palace one of my favourite books.

I like the way Auster structured the story. There are seven chapters which can be split into three blocks. Each block focuses on an other person, the first one is about Marco, the second about his grandfather Julian Barber and the third about his father Solomon Barber. With this interesting structure Paul Auster could’ve made much more out of the whole novel.

Summarized I can just repeat what I said at first; If you’re interested in stories like this, Moon Palace is as it was written for you and you can manage it to go through the boring parts, too. But if you’re not interested – better not try it, you will only discover that you’re wasting your time.

“Landscape with Moon” by Ralph Blakelock

The landscape painting “Landscape with Moon” by Ralph Blakelock is painted with oil on canvas, it was created around 1885-1890. It is 20 x 30 inches big and can be found in the Hunter Museum of American Art.

The viewer sees an unclear landscape, on the left side there are some trees, black and very dark green prevail here. In the middle there seems to be kind of a lake, you can even anticipate the opposite bank, where more trees and bushes are visible. On the right side there is one more tree and this side is brighter than the left one. At the middle you can see the moon, hidden behind some branches of a tree. It’s painted in yellow and green colors, not in white or gray like you could expect.

This special choice of colors create a surreal and dreamlike mood. The painting could maybe look calm and peaceful, if there were more colors than only green, yellow and black, but like this an undefined eerie and spooky atmosphere occurs. The fact that you can’t really see something but the trees, the lake and the moon clearly intensifies this impression.

Thomas Effing – Good Man or Monster?

In my opinion you can’t make a clear decision whether Effing is a “good man” or a “monster”. In the last lessons we figured out that he has got both positive and negative character traits. The fact that there ARE good character traits makes me think that he can’t be a monster, because monsters don’t really have good character traits. The other way round – a good man having some bad character traits – is more probable and possible. The bad character traits make him even more human, a man with only good ones would seem unnatural and unreal.

In the end I would tend to call Effing a “good man”, but everybody has to form his own opinion here.

Kitty Wu: Encounter with Marco

I met Marco again on a beautiful afternoon in October. He sat on a bench in Abingdon Square, in the middle of kids that were running around like lightnings and having fun at the playground. He was writing something, even though I don’t know how he was able to concentrate there.

I could’ve just stayed there watching him doing his paperwork while he wasn’t noticing me, but on the other hand I really wanted to talk to him again. I sat down on the bench and trying to find a good start for a conversation I said “Hello there, Mr. Writer,” and added “It’s good to see you up and again.”, which was just oh so true.

I couldn’t really classify the confusion or whatever I saw in his face, I wasn’t sure whether he was happy to see me or not. However, after this short moment of hesitation he told me that he was not writing, but translating something to earn some money. That what just what David told me the day before, and with him I found some new stuff to talk about. I wanted to keep the conversation fresh and fluent, to make him notice my interest in him.

After a while of enjoyable chatting and getting to know each other better, I thought it was time to change the external circumstances of our talk, I wanted it to become more than just an accidental encounter in a random park. So I started to shiver a bit and fortunately Marco noticed it straight away and proposed to go up to David’s apartment. He looked kind of surprised when I nodded and agreed his suggestion, so I think he didn’t notice that my shivering was just a trick.

What has changed since 9/11 ?

The terror attacks in New York caused an enormous change in the way of thinking in the minds not only of the Americans, but of the bigger part of people in the entire world. The important feeling of security and protection, which every western government is trying to evoke within the minds of its population, was damaged badly. In my opinion there was kind of a prevalent view of America as a steadfast and invulnerable superpower that cannot get in danger easily. With the attacks destroying the World Trade Center – an important symbol for both the economy and wealth of America – this unconcern broke down just like the two towers in the middle of Manhattan.

Realizing America’s government huge loss of power George W. Bush reacted very angry and intense. He decided to invade Iraq, because he judged the country as a danger for international security, even though he couldn’t adduce enough evidence for this heavy judgment.

Even though the political situation in the entire world went through a huge change the change of people’s minds is more serious and persistent and will leave an even bigger mark in history.

Comment on “Mosh” by Eminem.

I really like the meaning of this song because of its severe criticism on the government of the Unites States.

First you can hear the Pledge of Allegiance. I think it can be linked to the American Dream, too, because it stands for liberty, religion (“one nation under god”) and company.

But the rest of the song is a calling to deal with the problems in America and not to accept all the “blood for oil”, which means war. Eminem offers the people to be their leader, to lead them “trough the darkness”, caused by the government. He uses strong expressions like “fuck Bush” to show his anger and to make people think about the problems he mentioned.

In my opinion the song demonstrates the failure of the American Dream, because the keywords I named before can’t be found in realitiy.

Born In The USA.

I’m currently working on the song Born In The U.S.A. by Bruce Springsteen

with Birte, Gesa and Dennis.