Paradox and Midnigh

Tripp is nothing like Portia or Amory Blaine. He is reckless where they have been reserved. He lives outside the restrictions of everyday society instead of being smothered by them. He also presents a few contradictions to the way that we normally think about other people. Tripp is, surprisingly, a professor. This blew my mind when I first fully realized it. Professors are supposed to be these quiet, reserved people, who maybe have a family or maybe spend a good chunk of their time reading and doing research in their respective fields. They are not supposed to get stoned, get their students drunk, or have affairs with their boss's wife. That is simply not the kind of behavior that we expect from professors. The affair brings me to another point. What do all of these women see in Tripp? He is an aging and not very successful author and professor. He is stoned much of the time and admittedly breaks more promises than he keeps. Why do these women still want relationships with him? What is wrong with them?

Tripp seems to be a guy with some serious paradoxes of character. This seems to be reflected in the way that he describes things as well. He often uses paradoxical adjectives, or adjectives that don't seem to fit what he is describing. This happens a lot more when he is stoned than when he is not, which I guess could be a way to show us how his perception of things changes under the influence of weed.

The midnight disease seems to be a recurring theme in the book thus far, but what is it, exactly? It seems to be a blanket term that Tripp uses to refer to all of the terrible afflictions that writers seem to carry around. It reflects the depression, anxiety, and tendency for life to generally screw itself up when you most need everything to be OK. I wonder if the midnight disease is solely the affliction of writers, or even if writers become writers because of this ungainly burden. Hannah Green is a functional writer, and she does not seem to bear any marks of this depression, although her unexplainable attraction to Tripp can be seen as aversion of the disease I suppose. The stuff that Tripp carries around in his trunk, the dead dog, the tuba, the mangled body of the snake, are almost physical manifestations of the disease that he carries around all of the time. James Leer has this affliction in a pretty terrible way, especially indicated by his suicidal tendencies. He is a complex and layered character, and I don't think that we will ever really get to the bottom of his lies and stories and half truths. I started off the novel felling kind of sorry for him, but now I don't know enough about who he is to form a real opinion. Miss Sloviak is another character who tries to hide who she is, although her disguise is more physical and easier to see through.