Looking and listening.

This fall I read Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes and John Green's Paper Towns at nearly the same time, and I was struck by the similarity between two passages in the books. I thought it was interesting what these two quotes had to say about looking at and listening to the world.

From the Bradbury:

"He was marbled with dark, was Jim Nightshade, a boy who talked less and smiled less as the years increased...The trouble with Jim was he looked at the world and could not look away. And when you never look away all your life, by the time you are thirteen you have done twenty years taking in the laundry of the world.

Will Halloway, it was in him young to always look just beyond, over or to one side. So at thirteen he had saved up only six years of staring." (pp. 40-41.)

And, from John Green's Paper Towns:

"That was perfect, I thought: you listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you're trying to listen to." (p. 216.)

Hm. What do these passages say about too much looking at and listening to the world?

Comments

[Brian]

Interesting exercise, to bring these passages together. I've been meaning to read Bradbury. Would this novel be a good start?

In terms of answering your question, it would be my inclination to look at the year they were published to put this kind of exhaustion in national context, if there is any. How did such similar passages happen in '62 and '08? No easy answer there...

[Katharine]

my guess is that at some point John Green read Bradbury and that idea stuck with him and popped out subconsciously when he was writing his novel. I would think this happens alot with writers since most of them are voracious readers as well as wordsmiths. Listening makes you a good person, not a bad reminder for all of us.

[Citizen Reader]

Brian, Katharine,
I so love reading your comments. I can quite honestly say that you raise two points I hadn't thought of at all: that the time period/era might have something to do with the similarity, or that Green might have been influenced by Bradbury. They are both very valid points, and definitely probably have some part in the passages.

I would guess if you looked hard enough you'd find passages like this in lit from all eras, because I think it's particularly human to want to look, perhaps maybe even more than is good for us. I also thought it very telling that even when we think we are taking it all in (listening) we expose a bit of ourselves too. It's a very interesting thought tunnel to go down, either way.

Katharine, I particularly agree with your point about writers being voracious readers and being influenced--isn't the ebb and flow of ideas (even if the words differ) a beautiful thing to behold? Didn't Kurt Vonnegut have something in a book about loving Lot's wife because she just couldn't help herself but to look back (and was turned into a pillar of salt for her effort?). Amazing to watch ideas travel through the written word, into our consciousnesses, and back out again. Wonderful indeed.

[heidi]

since you're so secretive with your true identity, citizen, I tagged you on my post - seven random things you don't know about me....http://www.twokitties.typepad.com