20th century Yan blog

     Forgive me as I speak upon a similar topic as I did previously. Had I known that we were going to read one of Virginia Woolf's novels (I did, I just forgot), I wouldn't have chosen mental health as my main subject in by previous blog. Virginia Woolf, in my opinion, is one of the most fascinating authors ever. From her writing style to her real-life experiences, the more I study her the more interested I get. Last year my English class read her essay " Death of a Moth " and my group decided to turn the essay into a "movie trailer" for our finals project (you can watch it here  if you'd like). Because the essay was quite vague, it was hard to have a lot of scenes with a moth (you can see in the trailer, the "moth" was made out of paper and drawn with a pencil by me), and most importantly, the was written close to her suicide (she actually died a year before this was published) and she expressed a lot of her own feelings through the moth. Thu...

    Howie, the main character and narrator of Nicholson Baker's 1988 novel "The Mezzanine", is on the autism spectrum. I mean that not as a slight at Howie as a character, or Nicholson Baker's writing, in fact, I believe this is more of a compliment to Baker's writing style as well as an observation of one of the most interesting parts of the novel: Howie's mind and how it works.       I'll be honest, when I heard the novel we were going to read was about "a man going up an escalator", I wasn't exactly feeling positive about if I'm going to be interested in the novel, and though it wasn't action-packed like the books I've usually read, one thing stood out to me and made me want to continue to read further: Howie's "rants". While quite a lot of his rants were relatable like plastic straws and things being stuck in the vending machine, a few were quite...unique and speaks about things I've never done or even though...