A NEARLY NORMAL LIFE

JOURNAL # 2

In the last journal for Charles L. Mee’s A Nearly Normal Life I talked about what the book is about, how it was written, what it meant, and what I thought of it. In short, as I look back on that journal, I’ve already covered just about everything I want to talk about as far as the book in general. Thus, in this journal I plan to talk more about specific ideas, and things which happened in the book, along with the end "taste" that the book left me with. (Weather or not this plan is followed:well, we’ll see.)

In the first journal I believe I at least mentioned something along the lines of how the author finds himself through writing, which would have never happened if he hadn’t come down with polio. And thus, the virus actually in one way changed his life for the better. Now this is an optimistic view. This is the kind of view we like to see, we want to see, because it makes us feel better, it makes life seem more fair, not to random, arbitrary, evil, whatever. This is the view that uplifting books, movies etc. have on this topic. Now, I’d like to discuss the author’s view on this. It is a very interesting mix between this uplifting view, and downright demoralizing. He does both, and he does them both sometimes at the same time. For example, he did gain something out of the virus, he did recover. But at the same time he points to all the people who gained nothing, and lost everything. One example was another boy he saw in the hospital who came down with polio. The boy fought to get better, then would get, worse, then better etc. Almost immediately after the boy had reached one of his "betters" after a long struggle, he died. "The struggle was for nothing." As the Author puts it. (that’s not the exact quote , but it’s very close) There were others he saw who lived for months in iron lungs, only to die. He came to see the world as the arbitrary. Yet, he shows that even he wanted to believe the miracle movies, the stories, the idea that he or others could suddenly get better.

The author also shows a very strange mix throughout his life of very clear thinking, yet does things that would require extremely clouded vision. It is hard to show examples of his clear thinking, but lets say that he provides very persuasive, and clear arguments for whatever he believes in. Yet at the same time he destroys, or shows lack of his clear vision often. He puts a cannon with a confederate flag on the school lawn, says that he had several drugs problems throughout his life etc. In general, I guess what this all means is that, quite simply, the author is a very complex person, a real person.

One event in the story which is supposedly true I feel like mentioning. It is symbolic in no way whatsoever, and it has nothing really at all to do with literally criticism. I just found it entertaining and interesting. The author/kid is doing a school project on U.S. Russian relationships and he wants to say that the Russians are not going to re-try to place some new diplomatic treaty , but he has no proof of it. So, he actually Moscow through an operator, and asks for Bulganin. After "identifying himself" Bulganin actually gets on the phone, the main character asks his treaty question, and Bulganin says "No." As a result of this conversation, he becomes temporarily "famous" as he is in newspapers etc. and almost is kicked out of school, because the principle fears that the kid is going to make the school seem like communists. It’s obviously much more entertaining if you read the book. That is about all I have to say, hope you enjoyed reading this, and "Do Svidaniia." * *Russian for Goodbye.