This is your brain on books

Jeffery Karnicky brought up an interesting point in his article about the mentions of psychiatrists and the like, and the process of being analyzed. There are many moments in the novel when Renton discusses his experience with the world of therapy and address the questions that are often asked about his using, and how he cannot see the connection between his life outside of heroine and his use of heroine. It seems that this process of being analyzed is one that was created in the intellectual age of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries where people are boiled down into a simplified human soup created of very distinct flavors that interact in the same way every time. Karnicky explains the book overall to be similar to the process of questioning that occurs in counseling sessions. When breaking down the book to match that process I found that it mostly makes sense. I think that there is an intense difference that lies in the candidness of the character's stream of consciousness. It is repeated throughout the novel how the typical user has an affinity and talent for lying, thus leading me to believe that, although Renton mentioned his willingness to discuss his addiction problem, any user that less than willingly seeks out the help of a specialist would fall back on their talent in order to get the only thing a user cares about. It seems to me that this novel is much less of a session in a therapists office and more like one user talking to another. To me I feel like I am addicted to theses characters lives, and as readers we are all addicted to the "story" and the process of unraveling events and characters in our mind. Reading Trainspotting, I feel like the characters, at least Renton, is aware of this in the reader, and thus they do most of the work for us. In the stream of consciousness style of writing, the character is unraveling their own thought process for us, and the reader's comes in making sense of it all and attempting to draw connections between thought and action. In this story, however, Renton is well aware of our attempts to draw these connections, and her works to show us that they may in fact not be connected at all, and a character's specific course of action or inaction be due to other forces outside the character's psychology. Leaving me to think the questions are not why/what are the reasons for using heroine, but what are the conflicts outside these characters immediate lives that brought them to this addiction?

Popaholic

The pop-culture addiction that every character in the story experiences continues to control a lot of the novel. Sickboy for instance seems to have internal conversations with Sean Connery which leads the reader to consider the affect of the media on society. The narrative often digresses into moments of consideration on a movie or celebrity, and real life situations are constantly compared to fictional stories from movies, and thus lessen the weight of the reality at hand. The use of pop culture in this story is one of many ways in which Welsh abstracts the narrative. The characters all have nicknames which almost function as stage names. In scene where Renton visits Forrester there are many instances where Renton comments on their use of names, and the appropriate time to refer to a character by their "given name," that is their proper name. Rents is showing how they are characters and they are aware of that fact, they are functioning within groups of people under certain identities. In a sense they believe themselves to be celebrities based on the idea that celebrities perform and become their reputation and a part of a certain scene. In moments of high emotion, like when Leslie's baby dies, the characters address each other using the proper names, where in situations when the characters are seemingly enjoying themselves they are using their stage names.

The Trainspotters

Having seen the movie before ever reading the book, the storyline of Trainspotting is pretty easy for me to follow. However, through my reading I kept thinking to myself "how the hell could I have understood this without seeing the movie first?" The Scottish brogue (which I find to be the most fucked up version of the english language) that is extremely prevalent in the novel is hard to understand and difficult to form into cohesive scenes. The language paired with the delirium and chaos of a heroin addict's thought process makes for a confusing reading. The story switches point of view as often as the characters shoot heroin; a lot. And each narrator has a different style of narration which includes a shift in the phonetic language and accent. The narration overall seems to be in a stream of consciousness, helping to pull movement of the story out of proportion. It seems to me that Irvine Welsh is using the language to illustrate exactly the difficulty in understanding the thoughts and motivations of a heroin addict. It took me a bit of time to adjust my mind to the phonetic patterns in the novel, but once I got into the rhythm and began to understand the meanings of the slang words the language barrier was broken down. I started whizzing through. When I reached the chapter narrated by Nina, I found myself having a hard time adjusting back into the proper English. I think Welsh's decisions concerning the language of the novel works to mimic the patterns of drug use itself. At first the addiction is hard for an outsider to rationalise, but it is completely intriguing. Although the first few pages I was hard-pressed to understand what exactly was being described to me I was interested. The moments when I could piece together the situation I became excited and felt accomplished. This is much like the beginning stages of drug use. The soon-to-be user isn't yet comfortable with the drug or the lifestyle, but it is interesting and opens new doors of exploration in life. Once I found my groove in the story I did not want to get out of it, again like drug use. I was dependent on the patterns of the language to propel me forward. The user begins to really enjoy the drugs and does not see any need or reason to stop using. Then Welsh changes the game; he uses a language that I was (once) familiar and comfortable with, but at that point, after becoming accustomed to the patterns of the accent, it seems unnatural and uncomfortable, even boring. This switch in language even comes at a point in the story where Mark/Rents is 'seriously' considering quitting junk.  I am interested in seeing how Welsh continues these patterns through the rest of the novel, already knowing loosely how the arc of the story progresses.

Doctor Strangelove

The final parts of Bull's story seem to revolve around the assumption that all people in today's world lack clarity in their perception on their surroundings. Many of the characters in all of the works we have examined are not functioning at their greatest potential due to their use of substances like alcohol. In Bull's story this concept of reality being skewed by substance is accompanied by the idea that the every day person's decisions are skewed by those who are believed to hold "authority." Many of Bull's thoughts are filled with the assumption that Alan is looking out for Bull's best interest because Alan has authority. In fact, Alan even convinces himself that he had Bull's best interest in mind. This sense of authority over any and all situations is reaffirmed when Alan is at the Learning Jamboree and the narrator reveals that Alan, when not put in the leader position, will turn apathetic very quickly. Alan's control over his peers and patients adds to the question of his sanitlyness. These moments in Bull turn Alan into a character centered around actively manipulating everyone around him. He even tells the reader that his success lies within his very tight schedule. Every moment of his life is accounted for, creating the perfect alibi. Through these revelations, the reader is able to see the madness in Alan and his mastery of deception. Just like every other character in the story, and as Bull admits to the transexual prostitute, he is not what he seems. Will Self's use of Alan, the conscientious doctor, as the deceitful character makes room for the reader to question all the forms of authority in the story: If the doctor is a slimy pig out to get only what he wants, who else is using their subordinates as playthings? I think many of the authors we have studied this term would respond, "Everyone."

Cocks and Bulls

Bull's transformation behind his knee reveals his tendencies towards "femininity" in his past. These tendencies are extremely scrutinized by Bull, and reasoned as the catalyst behind his transformation. This addition in his gender identity opens this story up to the concept of simulacra. Bull is both male and female, making him also neither of the two. He becomes a character who loosely represents masculinity and femininity, but can do neither to their full potential. Bull's situation is real in the world of fiction, but the work of fiction also recognizes that this mutation is impossible. The story is a representation of reality, and the characters are representations of themselves.Bull's addition of a vagina, along with having a penis, makes his identity murky to the reader and the characters in the story. Because his identity is shifting and can no longer be pinned down, the reader becomes both a witness to this abnormality and a part of it. The reader steps into the story at the moment of realization of Bull's new sexual organ, creating a voyeuristic type character for the reader. The reader watches Bull's life shift and change, and the reader turns his situation into a fetish, needing to know how this addition works and feels. There are many moments in the story where the vagina is spatially juxtaposed against Bull's penis, especially in the sex scene between Bull and his male doctor. Involving an homo-erotic element to the story, it no longer becomes about Bull's journey through difficult and confusing times in his life. The story begins to shift and change into a type of love story, although very adulterous and alternative. The story itself is unable to be pinned down into one theme at the point of sexual intercourse between the characters. Much like in Carol's story of Cock, the inability for the reader to "type" the story and the character archetypes, Will Self is given room to further manipulate and skew  the concepts and actions throughout the rest of the story.

Pretty Little Thing

            Donna leaned against the door jam looking into the room where her husband was sleeping. Just from looking at her you would think she was no older than sixteen. Her pre-pubescent figure was potato-sack-shapeless. The cotton T-shirt she wore to bed, a faded blue Superman shirt, hung lifeless off her pointed shoulders where the tips of her hair dangled down from her pigtails. Donna took a long drag from her Camel Light 100 every time Sam took a breath.

            Sam came home drunk, again, like every night before that. And, like every night before, Donna noticed the same shade of lipstick smudged on Sam’s neck. Donna stood in the doorway and smoked and pictured lipstick stuck to the face of the poor slut who put it there. She pictured her to be young, something that most attracted Sam to a woman. The younger the better. Donna saw the two of them at the bar, Sam putting fives and tens on the counter, trying to keep the dumb slut interested. And Donna puffed and imagined herself standing over the two of them, drunk and reeking, sheets covered in dried cum. She imagined pulling the poor harlot’s shiny straw hair, ripping her away from her soiled dreams, and opening her throat with the tip of a chef’s knife, proud and shining.

            Donna smoked and leaned and imagined. Sam slept and sweated and foamed at the mouth. It was four in the morning and Donna hadn’t slept a wink. In fact, she hadn’t had a night’s rest in weeks, maybe months. She had lost track of time. Donna spent her days in their apartment, cleaning and brooding, while Sam answered phones and checked files for a drowning carpet company. Donna would often catch herself daydreaming while scrubbing dust off the shelves or vacuuming the rug, about Sam drowning too, stuck at the bottom of a bottle of Johnnie Walker. Sometimes she imagined him drowning at the bottom of their bathtub, but she always went back to cleaning.

Big Fat "Cock" Review

Cock  is the story of the unhappy and alcoholic marriage of Carol and Dan. Carol is the main focus of Cock. The story is centered on Carol’s journey for empowerment beginning with her experimentation with masturbation. He husband, Dan, is quite soft, mentally and sexually. He drinks too much and is unable to pleasure his wife. The singular reason behind their “love” is due to Carol having her first orgasm, which happened drunkenly with Dan. The incident happened mostly by accident, but is still the fuel behind their relationship. Because Dan became so deep into his alcoholism they both attended AA meetings, Carol’s concentrated on the effects of having an alcoholic partner.

The interesting part about the text is that the story is told by a person, their gender becomes a bit ambiguous throughout the story, on a train to a woman who is half way unwilling to sit and listen. This aspect of the story makes Cock seem like a myth or wives’-tale, which helps to increase the reader’s willingness and patience with the outlandish parts of the story, one being that Carol grows a penis.

Her character begins to be described in much more masculine terms as her penis grows. She also becomes much more sexually ambitious. These manly characteristics help to highlight the main themes of the book: gender inequality and feminine power. Carol becomes the head of her household as Dan slinks through recovery with his new AA buddy. She works as the pivot point in the story, always shifting and changing between the male point of view and the female point of view. Overall the story created an interesting dichotomy within women in our modern world. Will Self’s work usually presents the reader with a type of fiction that they are unable to relate to, but very much astonishes him, and makes him increasingly uncomfortable.

"Interview: Will Self"

This article appeared on EdinburghFestivals August of last year. The entire interview is conducted on a walk across London, something that Will Self does quite frequently. I found it quite interesting that he walks in order to be transgressive. He is placed in the category with "Situationsits" who used walking in order to declare their independence from the system. Will Self is a very strange individual and is quite passionate about many things like cities, walking, hating the Olympics, and being overly rational. The interviewee came as being in over her head and intimidated by Self. Throughout the interview Self repeatedly tells her that she should have brought a "waterproof" because it will rain and he "doesn't do wet." He focuses a lot of his attention on the rain and his dislike of being wet which was rather interesting. Self seems, from this interview, to be an obsessive and educated person, which leads him to be very crass.
http://www.edinburgh-festivals.com/viewpreview.aspx?id=3062

Mary Gaitskill and American Transgressive Fiction Writing

I am uncomfortable comparing Mary Gaitskill's work with the novels we have studied in class for the sole fact that the writing was mediocre. My entire experience with the piece was unsatisfying and I just really did not enjoy reading it. The descriptions were very topical and devoid of sensory clues, I never understood what the grand concepts like "souls" and "spirits" and "Gentleness" meant, and thus never felt anything towards the story. In novels like Crash and Nights at the Circus I was with the characters being moved by the same emotions they were being moved by and that connection comes down to the value of the descriptions. I don't want to feel like the author is telling me how to feel towards there words, which was everything I got out of "Mirrorball." I was extremely disappointed to not enjoy this story because Robin has hyped Gaitskill up to sky-high proportions, and I felt so much less. I feel we would have gotten a better sense of an  American trasngressive author from someone like Hubert Selby Jr. and his short story "Tralala."

Angels and Demons

There have been multiple and extensive allusions to the Bible in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. They were introduced in the very beginning when Fevvers if often compared to an angel, good and bad. There have also been many allusions to the story of Jesus made by Buffo the clown. In chapter four of "Petersburg" Buffo is continually compared to Jesus from his placement in the middle of the table to his and the other clown's roles in the social structure. The entire scene in the boarding house with Walser and the other clowns is very much like the scene of the Last Supper, which is directly reference in the start of the chapter. The first descriptions of him on page 116 draw him as wearing his insides out and he is seven feet tall. These descriptions are obviously absurd, but when paired with a comparison to Jesus the reader is willing the suspend their disbelief. Buffo is a clown with a lot of charisma and while he is explaining to Walser throughout chapter four about the purpose and truth about being a clown the group around him are described as being completely enthralled with everything he was saying. This to me seems to resemble the Apostles of Jesus Christ, those who truly believed his lessons and spread the word.

FACT OF FAKED

The theme of reality versus artifice is presented from the very first paragraph of the novel in which Fevvers is telling the story of her life from the very beginning to Walser. Her story is immediately related to the mythological life of Helen of Troy because they were both born from an egg. This grand statement sets the story up for the constant mixing of the fact and fiction of Fevvers' life. She sets her life story up by telling the reader of her nickname in the public, "the 'Cockney Venus'". This is distinction on her meaning as an artist and character in the story submits to the idea of sexual desire and her seductive powers. Although this name was given to her by the public, she admits that it is quite fitting, and also admits to being powerfully seductive. This can lead to multiple readings: she did spend much of her life in a brothel, which would be the easy explanation for why she has so much sexual prowess and is appears quite confident in her body, despite it's abnormalities. The reader can also use the reference to Venus to mean that she easily turns her fans onto her own personal myth. This myth being her birth from an egg. After accepting and explaining her comfort with the name "Cockney Venus," Fevvers declares that she might as well be named  "Helen of the High Wire." This is another allusion to mythology; the birth of Helen of Troy who was conceived by a Zeus disguised as a swan and Leda, wife to the Spartan King. This is another grand statement about Fevvers' character. Not only is it putting her again into the realm of myth and fiction, it is making large claims about her importance and breeding. Helen was the daughter of the King of Kings and the first lady to a very powerful nation, someone worth fighting long and bloody wars over. The theme of reality versus artifice from the beginning is quite prominent and will stay very prominent because in order for the reader to stay invested in the story they must accept her word as the most true thing, despite the fact that Walser questions her in his thoughts and Lizzie outrightly interrupts and stops Fevvers during certain points in the story.

"Martin Amis Writes Postmodern Man"

Elie A. Edmondson does an excellent job identifying and explaining the very postmodernist aspects in Martin Amis' novels. Specifically in Money, Edmondson breaks down the narrative revealing the techniques that Amis employs in order to manipulate the reader and obtain a certain reaction. What I thought was interesting in context of this weekends reading was the idea that Martin Amis (author) is using Martin Amis (character) to reveal the pattern and end of John Self's life as both character and person. During their conversation about the script that Martin Amis (character) is re-writing he reveals the author, Martin Amis', trajectory for John Self as a character. Martin Amis says, "The further down the scale he is, the more liberties you can take with him. You can do what the hell you like to him. This creates an appetite for punishment. The author is not free of sadistic impulses" (229) John Self replies to this by demanding Martin give him a deadline for the script. In that moment Martin Amis exposed John Self's fate and John Self demanded it happen soon. This is an exceptionally metatextual moment in this novel. Elie A. Edmondson uses this moment to show one side of the novel's postmodern aspects. She explains how John Self is so immersed in his own ego and capitalist nature that he views the people around him as commodities with monetary value and that "he cannot recognize when he himself is being manipulated" (Edmondson 5).

Money Money Money Money... MONEY

Being incredibly selfish, it is no surprise that John Self often turns the conversation of the narrative back to him. There is almost never a paragraph that does not refer back to the pains and successes of being John Self. He is often asserting his own face on the accomplishments of other, while denying he had an active part in his own failures. John Self's narrative voice is aggressive and confident, while also being cynical and self-conscious. On page 67 John Self is describing a tabloid he was reading after he returned from New York to London saying, "The other morning I opened my tabloid to find that, during my brief absence, the whole of England had been scalded by tumult and mutiny" In that one line, not even the whole sentence, John Self claimed the tabloid to be his, not any old tabloid or magazine, not a named tabloid, it was John Self's. Through very specific word choice he is taking credit for the publication of new, which he was completely uninformed of. He also is asserting that it was his leaving that drove the country to shit. He later goes on to explain that the problem of unemployment in England was the problem and says "I know how you feel. I haven't got that much to do all day myself. I sit here defencelessly, my mind full of earache and riot." While being completely full of himself, he then steps back to level with the rest of society in order to make himself seem more human. He undercuts the problem by twisting the meaning of "unemployment" by equating it with boredom and laziness, which are two things that John Self can identify with.

Money: director's commentary

From the start of the novel it is clear to the reader that the main character and narrator, John Self, is engaging in a conversation with the reader. It appears that John Self and the reader have a personal relationship, but it is not clear how this relationship works. The reader only know that John Self is comfortable explaining his inner thoughts to them. It is difficult to relate to John Self as the reader because of the fact that I don't feel like myself, I feel like I am put in the position of a character that I am unfamiliar with. Money feels like a movie with the director's commentary. You watch a movie and become involved in the story, but at the same time you have the creator of the story giving you the motivation and meaning behind the scenes. That is how I perceive John Self as a narrator. He lives his life like a movie, and in his book gives the commentary with it. As the reader it is difficult to adjust to the style, but it seems that as the reader once I have adjusted I will be able to become more involved with the story and characters.

Crash the film.

David Cronenberg's film adaptation of Crash was extremely disappointing and awkward. The novel presented the scenery, subjects, and characters through microscopic descriptions that then open up to reveal the whole image. This aspect of the novel did not transfer on film. I failed to feel the intense majesty that came with Ballard's description. Another thing that did not transfer at all was the internal conflict James was experiencing. It seemed to almost have been written out of the story all together. The characters, with maybe the exception of Helen Remmington, seemed to be all in with Vaughn and their messed up fantasies, whereas in the book I felt a lot more resistance from both James and Catherine.

The question of Vaughn's existence is an interesting debate within this novel. I have found myself questioning James Ballard's statements about the scars on Vaughn's body. Ballard more often than not describes the scars on Vaughn's body in extraordinary detail, but Vaughn would have needed to be completely naked for Ballard to know what his scars look like. Ballard describes "His hard stomach was marked by a fretwork of scars. On his right hip the scars formed a mould waiting for my fingertips" (149). No where did it say that Vaughn was not wearing a shirt. One could argue that this is Ballard merely fantasizing about Vaughn's scarred body, however his descriptions are consistent whenever he is describing them. Ballard also describes them to the reader in absolutes. When these lines are read there is no question that this is not what Vaughn's body looks like. This makes me believe that because Ballard claims to know everything about Vaughn's body and past injuries Ballard may be conjuring him up. I then have to question Ballard's knowledge of Vaughn's mind and personality, but that does not seem to work as well as the physical descriptions.

In Her Angles

He watched her as she bounced her leg against the wall of the M16 bus. He watched her heel tap the floor for a brief moment, only to spring back up again, bending her foot almost perpendicular to her toes. Not a perfect right angle. Somewhere between 180 and 90 degrees. He watched as her foot, shaped sweetly into the tiny ballet flat, as it created the most interesting angles against the floor if the bus. How they would grow from nothing, expanding and demonstrating larger areas. But they only lasted a moment before her foot fell into the empty space, closing the gap. Following the lines of her heel, up to her knee and onto her hip, he realized the many beautiful and skewed lines her body displayed sitting on the bench-style seat of the bus. How her calf and thigh met at her knee to form a perfect 90-degree angle, and her thigh met with her torso making another almost perfect angle. There was so much beauty in her geometry.  

XXX

Ballard has been intriguing me in this part of the reading with his descriptions of the normal goings on around him. He uses the people that make up the background of the story to casually reveal the taboo side of all man. At the start of chapter 17 when Vaughan, James, and Catherine were approaching an accident on the road Ballard describes the amount of people who were gathering to watch the scene saying, "the spectators leaned elbow to elbow on the metal rail" (152) watching from above. Ballard describes a seemingly simple event, but the fact that all of these people are stopping to leisurely watch as car accident victims are scraped off the road reveals that most people are at least fascinated by violence. Later in the chapter when the onlookers are leaving the scene Ballard is describing the aftermath of the event; "A burly man in a truck-driver's drivers jacket helped his wife up the embankment, a hand on her buttocks. This perverse sexuality filled the air..." (157). By placing those seemingly normal people in the same psychological realm as Vaughan, someone who in society would be considered a sexual deviant, Ballard is making the reader question his/her own sexual fantasies.

The scene at the carwash was also very interesting when thinking about character development in the novel. Vaughan from the start was a very demanding character, he took over the topic of the first sentence but didn't even appear in the novel until halfway in. He stormed into James' life, turned it on his head, and then had sex with his wife in the backseat of his own car while he was driving! That's wild, and James liked it. And Catherine, who had first been unfaithful to James, then reaffirmed herself to him, is now back to cheating on him in front of him. These characters seems to be using a much different level of reasoning than what is commonly accepted.

Considering Catherine

Catherine has been an intriguing character for me from the beginning; she was the one that really made me believe that they very well could be in some different made up world because her reactions to events were so outlandish and calm. However, she has been developing into a much more typical wifely character. She is accompanied in her new attitude by her secretary. Catherine's new reactions to James' decisions seem much more realistic now, but after seeing her in the beginning, she only seems to be much more complicated. James describes how his wife has become much more concerned with his sexual behavior despite the fact that she takes part in the same types of sexual experiences. She has even become a more loyal wife; James explains how she has rededicated herself to their marriage, while he is off screwing his scarred (both physically and emotionally) doctor.

The relationship between James and Dr. Helen Remington also interests me quite a bit. James seems to have predicted this new side of her before they even officially met. Upon reading his ideas about her int he earlier chapters of the book I wrote them off as his twisted visions of humanity projected on another damaged person. However, the sole fact that she was willing and able to get into a car with him to leave the impound lot makes her, and in turn all humans, seem much more intrigued with violence, death, and sex.

Do the characters come off as specific characteristics blown out of proportion, which is suggested of all satire in the Menippean Style essay, or do they seem like dynamic, round, and complex?

Crash: first reactions

Just as we discussed the first week of class, transgressive authors do not give the reader a moral or ethical standing to believe in, which does not allow the reader to protect themselves with the accepted morals in society from the reality of the story. J.G. Ballard is definitely one of those novelists. This story starts off with a bang introducing the themes of violence, extreme sexuality and self-mutilation. I certainly did not know how to feel about these seemingly contradictory concepts. It became apparent while reading the first four chapters that the sexual descriptions usually began with the wounds and how they look on the main character, then the nurses and how he imagines their life (what they are thinking about, the things they need to deal with) which he then inserts his own hyper-sexuality into, believing that they are often turned on by the destroyed people they need to take care of in an airport hospital, and then going into explicit explanations of his previous sexual engagements with his wife and their violent fantasies. The sexual descriptions in the story are extremely clinical, which creates a contrasting experience for the reader. On page 40 Ballard is talking about the X-ray technician, saying, "Her left breast rose inside the jacket of her white coat, the chest wall swelling below the collar bone. Somewhere within that complex of nylon and starched cotton lay a large inert nipple, its pink face crushed by scented fabric." This description does not read with the overtly sexual language that you would expect in an erotic passage, but rather it is more like a report. Ballard uses all of the medical terms for the body parts, which keeps the reader from becoming too entranced with the eroticism in order for them to remember the context in which the passage has arisen. These clinically described fantasies then read less perverted, but at the same time more disturbing.

Nonsense

The rhymed hirudins stubbed
Upwards
toward the
side vet within
the sheen church.
ripple relation
Hallelujah.
Some glossy syntax
from the replacement
major:
grown rectitude, he want
editorialize
raring circulation
bioengineering.
Test bungalows of
ingate silt and
the waning floor
of a 
maggoty shelf
fear. 

Natasha

From the very start Nabokov creates an interesting dynamic between the three characters within the story where they are all constantly lying to each other, or at lease unwilling to recognize the truth. He is very heavy handed, dropping hints about what is real in the characters life, which contradicts the things the characters are claiming as truth. This is especially evident with Natasha's character as she quickly says that her father is doing better. The fact that the excitement is left out of the statement make it clear that her father may in fact not be doing well at all, despite the fact that the reader is in the dark about her father's condition. The only character that is proven to have told the truth is the fever-riden father, whom is constantly in the midst of a wild fever dream or delusion. On the first page of the reading he claims that he is going to die the next day, but Natasha and Wolfe both write it off as sickly depression, when they are the ones deluded by their own visions of grandeur.