art and lies: monday

Towards the beginning of class, the subject of trophy wives has been mentioned.  It is funny, because when reading this book I thought Kiki was a type of trophy wife for Howard.  I do not mean a traditional trophy wife, but one unique for Howard.  Howard seems to have some sort of disdain for his parents, specifically his father.  In my mind, I imagine Howard marrying Kiki partly because it was kind of like him revolting against his father, and that is what made her appealing to him.  I think the book said that she was good looking as well.  Now, it has become much more complicated for Howard.  His children have problems identifying with their race (and seemingly annoy him) and his wife has gained a large amount of weight.  A lot of things have happened where it seems like his life has gotten off the track he thought it would be on.  It's no longer just Kiki and him having fun as young adults.   Near the end of the section kipps and belsey, Howard talked about how he still loved his wife when he was 40 when other men had gotten divorced.  I'm not sure if he means he then stopped, or if he still does and for whatever reason had an affair.  

My feelings towards Howard are pretty odd; at least unexpected.  I think it is because I'm a guy, and most girls would get pissed reading this, but Howard seems miserable throughout this book which makes me almost sympathize with him rather then feel anger towards him.  I just finished kipps and belsey though, so maybe Howard comes off badly in the near future stirring  my hate towards him; but for some reason I feel just as sympathetic towards him as I do towards Kiki.  He is in this no-win position with his kids and wife; books and movies like this make me hesitant of wanting to get married.  I can picture him enjoying the fact that he is going to marry someone like Kiki; then there are a lot of side effects that he never considered he would have to deal with.  Now, his children say he is selfish and blow him off while Kiki has let go of her body; it seems to me like Howard is miserable.  He even mentally makes fun of his wife and children, he does it a lot when they see the Mozart concert.  When someone gets stuck in a position like that, what do you do?  I'm not really sure.  I do dislike Howard though.  In this book, I'm not really fond of any of the main characters.  Howard is overly condescending towards everyone, he even looks down on other faculty members.  Kiki is kind of annoying, I think because she acts differently when she is around different ethnic groups.  Mostly because a lot of the book is describing her thoughts, which there so numerous it gets kind of annoying.  Jerome is extremely feminine, and does not add much.  Levi seems absurd.  Zora attempts to act extremely scholarly, but kind of comes off like a doofus, which is how her father describes her.  There are not really any characters that I can relate to, or really like.  The character that draws the most interest from me is Victoria, she seems like she has a lot of sides to her, or at least strikes interest in me.  Especially how she acted with Howard at the end of the section, she had some sort of "coolness" about her that no-one else in the novel has.  She was almost flirting with Howard, and had the nerve to put on rap music at his party.  I feel like she might become more prominent later on in the book.