Envy is the most embarrassing of the deadly sins, the one sin of seven that few would admit to, let alone identify as ruling their lives. But envy is Envy is the most embarrassing of the deadly sins, the one sin of seven that few would admit to, let alone identify as ruling their lives. But envy is a widespread disease: an abiding force within social media, gossip, work; often framing how a person looks at and presents themselves to the world. Kudos to this book and its author for creating a protagonist who so fully embodies envy's toxicity, in how it can dominate a person's goals and their perception of who they should or could be.
Jhanvi is a trans woman who has returned to San Francisco after a few years in Sacramento. Her mission: marry someone in the tech industry, use their workplace's healthcare benefits to pay for feminization surgeries, and then hopefully flourish in her newly updated body. A friend and fellow Stanford graduate - and a sexting buddy as well - is her first mark. And so on his doorstep she arrives, ready to convince him of her plan. Unfortunately, she hasn't reckoned with his roommates, or his own ambivalence to this project, or the distance between a goal and reality.
The book provides windows into the mind of an independent lady desperate to upgrade her life and into the world of wealthy young tech workers, idealistic and performative and superficial beyond belief, with money to burn on the most insubstantial of ideas. These techies are at first incredibly easy to mock; sardonic Jhanvi is just as easy to root for. At first. Slowly, my allegiances began to realign... these pretty idiots may be laughable, but Jhanvi herself is revealed to be just as unappealing. Perhaps even more so. Her mission and her envy consume her. Her new, rather unwilling roommates are operating from an embarrassing combination of social justice-induced liberal guilt and starry-eyed sex-positivity, but Jhanvi is coming from a place of almost complete self-absorption and a near-total disdain for the inner lives within nearly everyone inside of her orbit. A shallow techie still deserves agency and still needs understanding, despite their shallowness; a broke and lonely trans woman can still be monstrous, a grifting manipulator, despite how genuinely sympathetic her cause may be. It can be a challenge to root for anyone who thinks the world revolves entirely around them and their needs.
I was impressed with how ugly Naomi Kanakia was willing to make Jhanvi; she's so understandable and yet so completely awful at times. My God, the vicious things she thinks about the people she is trying to grift. This is a brave, highly intelligent iconoclast who has redefined herself in an unfriendly world; this is also an often thoughtless liar who has carelessly abandoned her supportive Sacramento community in order to manipulate a social circle that isn't her own. And yet I continued to root for her; I love an arrogant underdog. I appreciated the dark night of the soul (and body) that the author gives her, during one extended and grueling sequence. From which Jhanvi returns unbroken and even more determined. She may be a villainous person in so many ways, but she remains the heroine of this book, never the villain. There are no villains in The Default World.
Kanakia also scores numerous points in other directions: the way race and outsider status can be weaponized, used to guilt-trip; the marshmallow-like traits of certain well-meaning, tediously passive men who find it impossible to say the word "no"; my least favorite privilege, Pretty Privilege; the unspoken disqualifying rules at sex parties; the mindless group-think of some progressives. I particularly enjoyed the novel's take on how identity is often formed in opposition to other identities; how an in-group is often defined by how it is different from the out-group. Jhanvi sees her new tech friends as the default world that she yearns to enter; those friends define themselves as outside the default world of conformist normies.
The story reminded me of the decade in my life that started in the mid 90s, living with a bunch of friends in a wholesome anarchist collective that gradually turned into a loathsome hipster party house. So many people, so much performative grandstanding; visions of how to build a better society; rejection of the mainstream, of normies. The drugs the sex the music the parties, the random interlopers, the fun. Of course, there were many differences between my scene and the scene within this book (just as San Francisco then is so different from San Francisco now): although about the same age, my friends were struggling punks and broke activists, not overpaid and overworked technocrats; my deadly sin as a grouchy outsider with a 9-to-5 job wasn't Envy, it was Wrath. That said, the many similarities between this world and my old world were haunting. Both worlds decidedly rejected the default world, yet lived in it still.
the back cover describes its interior as "droll" and that's a perfect summation of the book's charms. quite droll. I like droll. this epistolary novelthe back cover describes its interior as "droll" and that's a perfect summation of the book's charms. quite droll. I like droll. this epistolary novel is very, very droll. Prof. Jason Fitzger is a droll creation: incredibly pretentious, long-winded, full of complaints, full of himself, and fortunately of a rather kindly and generous disposition despite all of that. the way he either consciously or - even more drolly - unconsciously sabotages the subjects of his letters of recommendations was an ongoing joy. one can't help but laugh at him while feeling increasingly affectionate towards him, exactly as the author intended. the drollness of it all did take a turn into genuine emotion, genuine tragedy, at the end. I shed some tears, which was very surprising for me and not very droll. fortunately, the tragedy didn't feel cheap, it deepened the story and it deepened the professor as well. good job, book!...more
summary: rich New Yorkers do boring things and think boring thoughts; a reader is likewise bored.
I thought I had ordered a 4-star eclair, delicious ansummary: rich New Yorkers do boring things and think boring thoughts; a reader is likewise bored.
I thought I had ordered a 4-star eclair, delicious and decadent and made with a certain level of skill and authenticity. The dish arrived and it was a doughnut. But it had a dazzling exterior, colorful and vivid, and so I thought, okay this is a doughnut but that coating really catches the eye; perhaps this will be a 3-star doughnut at least? I took a bite and it was on the dry side, unremarkable, the whole thing was not remotely interesting but it was edible at least, inoffensive. Ok, a 2-star dish, fine. But then the next morning... the stomach ache! For such an insipid meal, it turned out to be nauseating to think about afterwards. Ugh, I particularly dislike experiences that are even worse to remember the day after. Especially when there is so little to actually contemplate... 1 star!
Remind me to never follow the New York Times' book recommendations. I should have known better just by reflecting on their daily recommended recipe, which usually starts my day off with a sneer. So basic. I mean really: chicken with potatoes... pasta with broccoli... one-pot spaghetti... eggs steamed in a microwave. Anyway, there is a certain bougie woke crowd to whom NYT book reviewers appear to cater: affluent, self-satisfied liberals who require the entertainments they consume to mirror the opinions they hold, reading moralistic tales lacking any flair or technique but that come outfitted, sack-like, with the most au courant of progressive ideologies. Their bog-standard virtues signaled, oh so strenuously. And so it is with Pineapple Street, despite its eye-catching exterior. Self-impressed and scolding, faddish in its politics, inanely virtue-signalling, zero style, shallow themes, predictable plot, dull characters. A null. Literally inspired by a NYT profile of young one-percenters who are redistributing their riches. Inspired by some fluff article... no surprise there. Apparently written in a mere four months; also no surprise.
I'm a class-focused progressive but that didn't help with digesting this book. I prefer food with spice. The novel depicts class tensions in the blandest and most uninteresting way imaginable; the taste was so blah. I like mayonnaise and syrup and vanilla is great too. But a whole dish composed of those ingredients is a horrible idea. No matter how bright the food coloring is that has been added to tart it up.
It was disheartening to learn that the chef in question is a leader in her field. An executive editor and vice president at Knopf! Good grief! To think that she is in a position to encourage the creation of even more flavorless dishes....more
You will now read my story. My story will help you and guide you into Cairo. Every time you read my pages, with every word and every phrase
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You will now read my story. My story will help you and guide you into Cairo. Every time you read my pages, with every word and every phrase, you will enter a still deeper layer, open and relaxed and receptive. I shall now count from one to ten. On the count of ten, you will be in Cairo. I say: ONE As you focus your attention entirely on my tale, you will slowly begin to relax. TWO As you consider your role in this tale, your identity as a spy, your body and your mind become warmer, sleepier. THREE The sleepiness becomes a dreaminess. The dreaminess becomes a dream. The dream becomes a story. The story becomes many stories. Are you in these stories? Are you the protagonist? Who is the storyteller? FOUR Who are the characters in this story? Are they spies like you? Are they friends and lovers, are they enemies and conspirators? Their identities are beginning to blur. My stories are beginning to blur. FIVE The blurriness is spreading to the whole of your body, your memories, your reality. What is the waking world and what is the dreaming world? What is this place called Cairo? What is there? On the count of six, I want you to go deeper. I say: SIX You are bleeding now, from your face, from your mind. This is the sleeping sickness, the Arabian Nightmare. Your body is beginning to sink. SEVEN You go deeper and deeper and deeper, you sink into this dream within dreams. Are you lost in this story? EIGHT I am the storyteller and I am dead. Who is telling this story? Perhaps you are now the storyteller. Who are these characters around you? Perhaps they are projections of your own self, splintered and separated. What is this sick dreaming, this dreaming sickness? Perhaps the dream is your reality. With every breath you take, you go deeper into this dream reality, into your sickness. NINE You are dreaming you are awake. You are bleeding your self. You go deeper into these stories, into the Arabian Nightmare. On the mental count of ten, you will be in Cairo. Be there at ten. I say: TEN
If you're reading this so-called review, you are different from many of the people around you: you are a reader. Apparently, reading for pleasure is dIf you're reading this so-called review, you are different from many of the people around you: you are a reader. Apparently, reading for pleasure is declining; it has increasingly become a niche activity. Your niche does not make you better, but it does make you different. You are, in this particular way, outside of the mainstream - despite how well you may blend in with that stream. Pleased to know you, brother or sister outsider! The criminally underread Ken Greenhall is solely concerned with illustrating the outsider perspective. You should read him. He gets you.
Except for this excellent historical novel, Greenhall is primarily known - if he is known at all - for writing quasi-horror. His outsiders are either quirky mystery-solvers (Childgrave, Deathchain) or psychopaths (Hell Hound, Elizabeth, The Companion). No matter the health of their mental state, all of his narrators hold the mainstream world and its denizens at arm's length. These narrators often comment ironically on the bizarrely boring behavior patterns of normies; depending on the book, they then will shrug and ignore them, or easily manipulate them, or scornfully reject them, or sometimes just kill them.
Lenoir is another of Greenhall's outsiders: a black man in 17th century Europe, first a slave to art dealer/swindler Mr. Twee, then a freedman able to travel on his own. And travel he does - but still saddled with the friendly, gay, utterly amoral, extremely self-interested Twee, who has treated the enslaved and then freed Lenoir as, basically, his friend. Lenoir, an artist's model and occasional practitioner of juju (white magic only though!), starts in Amsterdam, travels briefly with an actor's troupe to Rotterdam, and ends the novel in Antwerp. The book is less about adventure and more about a fish out of water who wouldn't go back to his first home even if he could (despite his longing for it, and for his children); it is about a black outsider looking at the strange world of white Europeans, consciously and continuously rejecting being a part of that world, but still of it, still in it. Much to his frequent wonder, or amusement, or confusion, or chagrin. As the saying goes, white people are crazy.
Although a fictional creation, Lenoir himself is based on actual person: the model for Rubens' Four Studies of the Head of a Black Man (1883).
The story is both lightly comic and deeply melancholy. As always with Greenhall, the prose is superb. Despite this being a historical novel, this is not a lush portrait of a fascinating era in Europe. The details are often there, but this is a rather stripped-down and streamlined narrative, as detached and distant as Lenoir himself - but as thoughtful and as soulful as well. Despite two extremely tragic murders, the book is also highly amusing. Lenoir both understands and misunderstands the people around him regularly: he sees the heart of them, but often can't fathom why they must do the things they do. The novel is a study of an outsider who sighs rather than shouts at life and its fortunes and catastrophes. Sometimes that's all a person can do....more
the book is a wall of sound a wall of words it took me over two months to read it, unheard of for me. you open the book you go to a chapter you read the chapter you fall into a black hole it takes forever to read it is a timeless experience you come out of the chapter and you wonder, where has all the time gone? gone... gone... gone... the book is an echo chamber of ideas but each echo comes back louder louder LOUDER and then the idea is discarded. BOOMon to the next one! or maybe not discarded, maybe looked at from another angle all kinds of angles looking look looked let's look at that idea from behind a one-way mirror, the idea doesn't know you're looking at it, keep looking you sneaky horny thing, your breathing gets shallow and rapid, maybe the idea will undress. or maybe the idea will become something different, transformed. transubstantiated? transcendentalized? transmogrified? the ideas are still there, just turned into new ideas, one shape into another, at dizzying speed, the book is dizzying, I'm getting a headache, my vision is blurring and so are the pages, my mind it hurts. the book is layered with ideas like a room stacked full of pillows, some comfy some not, each pillow is an idea, some soft some hard, just throw yourself into the pillow room, into Ratner's Star, have fun with it, it's pain-free after that first time. "Ideas" are like words, their meanings "change" over time, now is as good a time as any, as ever, what is "time" anyway, let's switch things up! I like talking like this so I will, just listen.
"But when he put quotes around words for commonplace objects, the effect was unsettling. He wasn't simply isolating an object from its name, he seemed to be trying to empty an entire system of meaning."
the boy is a genius he is a boy genius, a wunderkind, a Nobel prize winner, his skills with maths is amazings. he is not a curious boy but he is a horny boy like all boys well I suppose he is curious about things that make him horny so he is not completely not-curious. he is here to solve a mystery the aliens have communicated with earth but what is it they are saying and are they even aliens. the first two-thirds of the book is set above ground on a campus for scientists trying to solve this puzzle there are so many characters all buzzing around the boy it is a beehive he is a drone, a horny barely curious drone with a mystery to solve. in the last third of the book he moves underground he and his mentor and a sexy author and four other characters and suddenly the book feels much smaller but the ideas remain big and flexible and ever-changing and the perspectives suddenly shift, it's not just the boy it's all of them, these underground folk, their perspectives blur into each other fade into each other dissolve into each other, sometimes in the same long paragraph, he thought this and she thought that and the reader is like What? I thought I was reading him? but now I'm reading her? and who is having sex with her, the mentor or the boy? the mentor comes out from underground and then he goes into another hole in the ground, he crawls into a hole that he has dug in that hole in the ground, just like the other mentor. ah the fate of all such mentors to all such boys. also living underground was an Asian scientist specializing in bat guano, a Dr. Wu, I liked this scientist not just because he's Asian but because he thought he was going to die and he didn't, he reminded me of me, I root for bat-loving Asian scientists who think they are going to die but don't. "Words" are like people, both die, but do they really, I mean really for "real" in reality, like if you repeat a word enough times, it loses "meaning" and it dies like a person? I don't like listening to that so I won't, just stop talking.
Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes was a Brazilian historian, professor, essayist and political activist. He was also considered to be the greatest film critic Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes was a Brazilian historian, professor, essayist and political activist. He was also considered to be the greatest film critic to have emerged from Brazil. In 1977, he wrote P's Three Women; he died shortly after its publication. This was his only novel. And what a novel! This was an entirely original experience and is highly recommended.
"P" is Polydoro and this poor gentleman hates his name, so let's be respectful and stick with P. He recounts three stories about three of his romantic partners: Helena, Ermengarda, and a young woman known only as "Her." And so this novel is essentially three unconnected novellas, only linked by sharing the same protagonist. P as a young man flirted with fascism, but by the time he shares these stories, has mellowed into a contemplative, erudite old man and former businessman.
Helena was the first love of his life and what a tangled web she wove. Ermengarda was his wife during his middle years and what a tangled web she wove. "Her" was his last wife, a December-May romance, and what a tangled web she wove. Poor P! Destined to be taken in by women whose cunning often easily fooled his book-smarts.
I loved these three tales. They proceed similarly: P recounts the story of a relationship, one in which he often comes across as seeing both sides of that relationship. And then he pulls back the curtain to reveal that each of these women have their own quite separate existence and he is but a pawn in their often shocking schemes. Helena has a passionate love of her life, but as P comes to learn in his later years, it was certainly not him. Ermengarda rules their married life with an iron hand until she insults his poetry (LOL), after which P decides to set some boundaries; Ermengarda has a particularly devious plan to win back ownership of their marriage. And "Her".... let's just say, still waters run deep, and a young lady may not be so enchanted by a much older man after all. Poor P, a born cuckold!
Gomes is a fantastic writer. Such vibrant and eloquent prose. The characterization is rich and surprising, the plot twists even more surprising. What a heady, multi-leveled, yet still somehow light and fun experience this novel turned out to be. Is it all an allegory for 1980s Brazil?
I still can't get over how that one character accidentally died. Oops! Planning a dramatic fake-suicide while depending on servants to revive you in the nick of time, when those servants have also been warned not to disturb your precious rest... is not a nice way to go. Sad LOL.
into the past, into the darkness. it was a sweet home back then, as sweet a home as slavery could have allowed, a refuge surrounded by cancer. but thainto the past, into the darkness. it was a sweet home back then, as sweet a home as slavery could have allowed, a refuge surrounded by cancer. but that cancer is no benign tumor, to be kept at arm's length, condescended to; it is malignant, always. it will invade, kill the body, each of the parts dying one by one. out of the past and into the present came the cancer, and it made itself a new home. a cancer is not so easily removed, even if the doctors say: the surgery was successful, it was cut out, it is officially no more! it changes shape, it metastasizes into something different. it reconstructs itself. Morrison knows this, so do Sethe and Paul D; it will take generations to cure this sickness.
a child dies, a child is reborn: Beloved. she is the fog of memory, of regret, of violence, made solid, no longer a recollection or abstraction, come from the past to destroy the present. she is what happens when the body and mind are broken down: a symptom of the cancer, not the cancer itself. she will hurt the worst those who love her the most...
the story has no storyline, the movements of past and present overlap, combine, become one. the stories and memories bleed into each other, in the mind and in the flesh, the blood flows in all directions. a tree of scars, a longing for colors, all the tragedies still alive. what was then what was now, what will be, what can be. can the body survive this cancer? one can only hope, or pray. the last few pages of Beloved hint at survival, at a new life, new paths, new hopes. perhaps the prayers have worked? keep praying....more
oh to live the life of the Ivory Tower, Tower of Babel, such freedoms such explorations such openings of the mind and spirit and body. all
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oh to live the life of the Ivory Tower, Tower of Babel, such freedoms such explorations such openings of the mind and spirit and body. all of the body's openings, always opening, dilating, expostulations outward and penetrations inward are par for the course. a course on microscopy, the lens focused on the viewer, its participants both students and professors, all of them horny and big-mouthed. but big-minded? maybe not so much. language and identity are both tools and weapons, to be wielded or discarded per each project's demands. the old die, the young live, and all of them want to fuck or be fucked. and yet there is a certain asceticism, an austerity present as well. at least when it comes to the messy world outside of that tower; heaven forfend such gross things should intrude on cloistered lives. the life of the Ivory Tower is an insular, incestuous one, the whole family of friends and foes and colleagues and lovers all together in one great big bed. oh to live in such a place!
simply read The Rebel Angels and you shall! Robertson Davies is an ingenious writer, full of wit and verve and occasional bits of genuine compassion. but only occasionally. The Rebel Angels is a book of the mind, but only if you consider pornography to be art of the body. these petty little people, I loved reading about them. such silly creatures, mainly useless but certainly eye-catching, like ornate and fragile Christmas ornaments kept up year-round, gathering dust. only the student Maria Theotoky felt fully real to me, dynamic, someone who could actually learn and grow, someone I could actually know. she is the flame around which all these clumsy moths fly, hopelessly and helplessly drawn to something bright and warm. I fell in love with Maria. I guess I am just as bad as any horny, big-mouthed professor, just as prone to temptation as any typical Ivory Tower denizen. perhaps these residents of the tower are human and relatable after all, no matter if they themselves feel otherwise. okay, I feel for them, I can admit it. but they do go on, don't they. they babble on and on in their eccentric little Babylons. shall they ever escape such closed circles?
ah the pretensions of youth! ah the pretensions of this book. who includes entire sections of dialogue in French, assuming the reader will be able to ah the pretensions of youth! ah the pretensions of this book. who includes entire sections of dialogue in French, assuming the reader will be able to translate it? this book does. who sets up a gormless youth as the epitome of Finding Your Bliss, strenuously trying to pretend he's admirable while also sneakily saying that he's a born loser? this book does. who creates a physically passionate romance that is supposed to be the central relationship of the story and then has it abruptly end without even bothering to give any kind of reason for that ending, other than the implied Lost Cause Loser Can't Find His Bliss Even When It's Right In Front Of Him? this book does. well, it is nicely written; Dyer is talented. and it is very evocative of a certain time in one's life that could best be described as a liminal space. extra star awarded for the fine prose and the ability to portray the aimless 20s of people who are trying to find themselves. otherwise the book was rather a pretentious waste of time.
REVIEW POST-SCRIPT 10/9/22
I'm reading Albert Murray right now and a point he makes about certain writers is apt:
"Indeed, what most American fiction seems to represent these days is not so much the writer's actual sense of life as some theory of life to which he is giving functional allegiance, not so much his complex individual sensitivity to the actual texture of human experience as his intellectual reaction to ideas about experience."
Dyer is British and Murray was writing about American writers, but his comment is still a perfect fit for this book....more
The man is a construct of materials and memories, his physical signifiers and the intangibles that are signified; what shall happen if thos
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The man is a construct of materials and memories, his physical signifiers and the intangibles that are signified; what shall happen if those mundane wonders, those conceptual signs... slowly... disappear?
The man is materials and memories, signifiers and signified; what if those mundane signs disappear?
The man is memories signified; what if those signs disappear?
the girl writes a dream journal of her life, the life of her parents, the lives of her sisters, one dead and one alive; life in San Francisco's Chinatthe girl writes a dream journal of her life, the life of her parents, the lives of her sisters, one dead and one alive; life in San Francisco's Chinatown, lives before a suicide and lives that must go on after that death.
it is a dream journal: its narrative winds its way backwards and forwards, like a dream does, memories shifting to show characters and places from different times, recollections that don't progress in a tidy order. dreams can be confusing if you try to apply logic to them, if you search for linear narrative rather than emotional truth or unspoken meaning.
it is a dream journal: and so despite the unstable quality of its un-narrative, the girl writes as a journalist would write. the emotions are there but reported on only lightly, carefully. the dry prose does not soar or sing, just as a sweat shop or a visit to a cemetery or a kitchen sink in a Chinatown apartment do not soar or sing. these are just facts of a life and so are reported on matter-of-factly.
perhaps this dream journal is the way that the girl deals with change and with trauma; perhaps that is the way for many of us. we construct stories of our lives that move in and out of memories and plans. we don't reconstruct our reality or our tragedies as things that soar or fall, all highs or lows, an opera, but instead view our lives as events that have happened, some of which we could control but many of which we could not. perhaps we can only control our reactions to such tragedies, to our lives, and sometimes we can only barely do that.
the girl chooses to react as a good journalist would report on a story: perhaps sympathetic but mainly striving for objectivity, and always aware that even a reported story can never fully encompass that story's complete reality nor its characters' complete lives....more
well at last I have read something that could be considered The Great American Novel, while also being um incest porn? a surprising book!
Who was Earl well at last I have read something that could be considered The Great American Novel, while also being um incest porn? a surprising book!
Who was Earl Thompson? This portrait of America during the Depression, and its author, were complete unknowns to me. I actually have no recollection of how my mildewed and battered, torn and tattered paperback even came into my possession. The book was apparently A Big Thing when it came out, yet I've read nothing about it. Why is that? The author's talent with the prose is amazing: as poetic and as earthy as Steinbeck, with an interest in the same themes, the same era; but Thompson is somehow more empathetic, more alive in how writes about people, places, and times. There is no remove, no distance between author and subject, of the kind that I've experienced with Steinbeck. Thompson is right there in the dirt with his characters. The book feels beyond lived-in; it reads like an autobiography that was written while events were actually occurring, rather than being reminisced about when older and wiser. There is a palpable energy in this book, a livewire sort of aliveness that makes every description sing and sting, every person both Dickensian grotesque and fully recognizable, every horrible occurrence feel like something out of a rural gothic horror and also like something the author personally experienced, full of the kinds of details and character traits that make each and every scene feel completely authentic.
On top of all that, despite all of the despair on display, all of the broken lives and crushed dreams, this book is really, really funny. Sometimes the humor is meanly sardonic, other times warmer, based on recognizable human foibles and physical flaws; never in a way that feels like the author scorns who he is writing about or even the repulsive places where they struggle to eat, let alone get ahead. To me, the ability to illustrate the tragically humorous folly and smallness of life, while not actually being contemptuous of those lives, is the mark of a truly brilliant book.
...and yet, this masterpiece is impossible to recommend. Just have to get this out of the way: besides the over the top sadistic violence that occurs frequently, I'd say fully a third of this book details the extremely explicit fantasies or actions of our pre-pubescent hero and his sexual desires for his mother. Emphasis: extremely explicit. Wild to imagine this book being reprinted in our modern times. Jack alternately hints, begs, pleads, and demands the satisfaction of both his curiosity and his needs. He's constantly ogling her or finding ways to place his hands or mouth on her belly, breasts, groin, anywhere, when she's awake, when she's asleep, most usually in the twilight state in-between. He guilt trips and scolds her, molests her when she's out cold, he practically assaults her on more than one occasion. For a period of time he sleeps with an oversize makeshift pillow that has been fashioned into a pretend-person, fucking it furiously whenever he can as he imagines it as his mom. At one point, his degenerate step-father aids him in his goal (an especially grueling sequence); more frequently, stepdad gets in the way of young Jack's dreams, much to the boy's chagrin.
SPOILER ALERT: lil' Jack's dreams come true.
...and yet, the boy is indeed the book's hero, not just its protagonist. Take away his demented obsession with his mother (a hard thing to subtract, I know) and we are left with a portrait in pragmatic courage, dogged individualism, and the refusal to be cruel despite the cruelty surrounding him. This is a boy who is at first abandoned by his mother to the care of his grandparents, then taken up by her and her ne'er-do-well alcoholic husband in the second half of the novel as they traverse America, a boy with no education, very little in the way of guidance (his grandparents do try; they are the book's most genuinely positive and kind characters), constantly neglected and abused and lied to and barely fed and forced to not just survive with next to nothing, but often to support his parents... and yet he retains his intelligence, empathy, strong opinions, an ability to see beauty in life when it does appear, and most of all, a drive to achieve happiness throughout it all. "Scrappy" does not begin to describe him. "Ferocious" is a better adjective, but it is still one that makes him sound harder than he is. I'd use "spunky" but that is just a little too cutesy for a kid who makes it with his mom before he even reaches his teens.
One is tempted to see the relationship between mother and son as an allegory for America at its lowest point. Say, the boy representing the stubborn optimism of an American people that will always cling to its hopeful dreams in the face of their struggles, despite those ambitions being, essentially, the longing for the obliterating comfort of a return to mother's embrace, to the womb itself? Perhaps that would make the incestuous activities so fervently described easier to handle? The author places their actions and the many depredations occurring around them within the specific socio-political context of farmers-turned-itinerants living in the heartland of a supposedly liberal country; a country that dehumanizes its own people, reduces them to beggarly recipients of public welfare or scorns them as deplorable trash, but never deigns to view them as actual human beings. Certainly the portrait of an America hopelessly divided between an elite minority and everyone else, where everything is commodified including the smallest of spaces and especially the bodies of women - an almost Marxist analysis that upbraids the flaccid "good intentions" of liberalism while detailing the evils of capitalism at every turn - all of that critique is front and center. Often coming directly from the mouth of Jack's pro-union yet anti-New Deal grandfather. The story may be the story of America trying to find itself and failing, writ small. Mom & son could very well be metaphors for all I know. But I'm not a particularly deep thinker, so I didn't spend a lot of time trying to see them or their story as such.
Instead I saw a portrait of a woman both weak and strong but mainly weak, a kind-hearted person whose unrealistic dreams of a better life than her parents lead her on an inexorable path to larceny and prostitution, and finally into the arms of the only person who has persistently declared his undying devotion, her son. Instead I saw a portrait of a boy who refuses to buckle under the yoke of a society that embraces fixed identities and destinies, a boy who sees through all of the bullshit, who refuses to be fooled, and yet who maintains his own secret idealism at his core, insisting to himself that he will create his own destiny - society and those who would stop him be damned. The narrative of the book is teeming with human insects, praying mantises eager to mate and to kill, but the book itself is teeming with human life and the need to be alive, the struggle to survive, making a life wherever and however one can make it. The book despairs but somehow, magically, does not depress. It is too busy being alive to be depressed....more
The sad thing is that I finished reading the book almost two weeks ago, and I still don't know what to say. Not sure how I would describe the book, orThe sad thing is that I finished reading the book almost two weeks ago, and I still don't know what to say. Not sure how I would describe the book, or even my experience of the book. I dunno, it was a mainly pleasant experience and a mainly pleasant book? A mysterious book but I wasn't completely absorbed by its mysteries? Wintry and forbidding but in a fun, approachable way? Charming but forgettable like an amusing person at a party whose name I will be unable to recall 10 minutes after the conversation? The protagonist was fine, the supporting characters were fine, and I'm in favor of positive depictions of sex with extremely overweight people. Er, um, I dunno. I'd recommend it because it's a well-written and occasionally compelling diversion. Ok now I'm just stringing words together. The book is not bad. This is not a bad book. The book is not a bad one, as far as books go. Did Jääskeläinen write this as an enjoyable diversion, as something relaxing to do inbetween other more distinctive projects? He seems like a dry but kind and humane fellow who is quietly amused by us human beans.
Two things were pretty striking to me. The first, a strange book that infects other books, causing their narratives to be rewritten if it comes anywhere near them. Not a great book to have in a library. Cool idea! The second, a large gang of dogs that (view spoiler)[slaughter a malevolent spirit (hide spoiler)]. Didn't know dogs could do that. Good dogs!...more
I almost feel guilty giving this one 3 stars, it's so minor and self-indulgent. but it was such a pleasure at times! this is basically wish fulfillmenI almost feel guilty giving this one 3 stars, it's so minor and self-indulgent. but it was such a pleasure at times! this is basically wish fulfillment in novel form. two bachelor twins own a bed & breakfast on a Canadian island full of country types and lesbians from the big city, a community that is also home to a highly opinionated local paper. the brothers' b&b attracts idiosyncratic book-lovers much like the idiosyncratic book-lovin' brothers themselves. there's no plot to speak of, and this isn't really a novel. it's a series of anecdotes and life lessons spun by the sweet-natured brothers alongside various slices-of-life written by their guests. interspersed between are lists of books & authors, and a recipe for muffins. tolerance & kindliness, gentle humor, and plenty of animals are the main items on display. the strongest part is an extended story of a Jewish girl growing up in an anti-semitic environment. that was very moving - and also infuriating, of course. outside of that chapter, the whole thing was really light & cute. I easily forgave its frequent dips into corniness and obviousness. it's a gentle, homespun book and a lovely experience overall. it also helps that I could totally live on this island and be friends with these guys. or, if not that, I could see myself taking an extended stay at their bed & breakfast, helping myself in their kitchen, strolling around the island, reading the days & nights away in the occasional company of other insular, book-lovin' eccentrics, plus a parrot and a cat.
Egan studies the effects that trauma and loneliness have on the forlorn homo sapien, forever living in the past, bound by the past, enacting the past Egan studies the effects that trauma and loneliness have on the forlorn homo sapien, forever living in the past, bound by the past, enacting the past all over again. What is a keep but a fortress? And what does one do with emotions perhaps best left unexamined? They are put away, imprisoned. And so this study of loneliness and the gaps & traps that hinder human connection features both fortress and prison. Egan tells her tale in three threads: the story of the keep and the story of the prison intertwining, their tragic protagonists connected in the worst sort of way; a story of an emotional and mental prison that entraps the story's third protagonist follows upon their heels. The author plays with time and narrative, genre and perspective. Genre in particular is just a trapping for her, used when needed. The most effective parts of the novel occur when her play with the gothic genre is front & center, especially a tense and emotional sequence set under the keep, when our band of characters decide to explore some recently discovered tunnels. Unfortunately, the rest of the novel was a pallid and uninvolving experience for me. Too much in its head at times. An ambitious and well-written book, but two of the three perspectives - a pretentious hipster and a snarky convict - just rubbed me the wrong way, and I really did not appreciate their company. They taught me nothing except for new ways to be annoyed. But I did like the third perspective - a young mom & teacher with problems, trying to pull her life together - and I wished the whole book was about her. Just when her adventure seems ready to begin, the book ends. Alas!...more
beautifully written and surprisingly life-affirming, while also being as strange, sly, and sexed-up as Carter usually tends to be. this story about anbeautifully written and surprisingly life-affirming, while also being as strange, sly, and sexed-up as Carter usually tends to be. this story about an infamous woman with wings and the journalist who falls in love with her is delivered in 3 parts: the first, set in England, recounts her upbringing and the many misadventures of her young life; the second, in St. Petersburg, is mainly focused on the journalist's transformation as he joins a circus starring the object of his fascination, and also explores the lives of several of that circus' performers; the third, in Siberia, has the circus falling apart and somewhat coming together after the troupe is waylaid by a band of outcasts.
this is a slim book but per usual for the author, a dense one. as always, Carter's writing sings. it is a peculiar song, not for everyone. prose of the highest caliber, fantastical in subject matter and ornate in style with numerous scenes playing out as if directed by Fellini or de Sade, always playful even if the joke is a killing one, her stories delivered with a sardonic knowingness that can make the reader wonder if this is all some sort of put-on, and highly aware of how the intersections of gender and class impact all of humanity - especially women of the working class. above all things as an author, Angela Carter is a feminist.
I wonder what that phrase even means anymore to people, this label "feminist author" - is it an automatic turn-off? I know it is for some, as if being considered a feminist author equals a certain stridency, a demeaning of men, a dry and tunnel-visioned perspective devoid of warmth and unable to understand the multiplicity of realities that women and men live in. but the label is still one that does not have to mean any of those things, at least not automatically. a feminist author is a person who understands the challenges that women face in this world, who understands the roles that women are often forced into, who advocates for those women by revealing their challenges and by highlighting the strength of women who live in those roles - and outside of them. especially outside of them. Carter always celebrates the outsider, the malcontent, the women who push back on boundaries. she understands the separatist and she empathizes with the murderess.
there is such a modern sensibility to Carter's feminism. her heroine Sophie Fevvers is bold, brash, and brave, emphatically lower class in outlook and delivery, craving and dropping that money, and always looking out for, supporting, and advocating for other women. she is no great beauty and not one for pretenses, but she carries herself as if she were queen of the world. Carter's story ignores any traditional male-centered narrative device that may be expected: it is the hero who adjusts himself to the heroine's world; it is the heroine and her faithful mother-surrogate who must come to their own rescue, time and again. Carter's brand of feminism embraces both the maudlin and the morbid, sexuality in all of its forms, women in all of their forms, and she highlights all of the struggles and victories, no matter how large or how small. from the grandmother forever bent over a stove to the waif beaten by her lover to the woman who had enough and chopped up her husband to bits. these are all complicated heroines to her, worthy of their own stories. nor is she a misandrist: her men can often be monsters but they can also be caring, kindly, capable of change. Carter's feminism is one that sees the world of women and men from all directions, often through a highly critical lens. and yet, in this novel, she seeks to uplift and not to upbraid. Carter is a feminist who embraces potential.
I was so happy to see that uplift and that potential! she's one of my favorite authors, but her stories are often chilly and sometimes sadistic. they've wowed me with their brilliant prose, hallucinatory imagery, the challenging and norm-breaking ideas on display; they've also disturbed me with their often surreal visions of how brutalized, objectified, and commodified women can be. I was hesitant to dive into a book with an annhilating world view. fortunately, the book was a tonic. in his review, George mentions her story "Puss-in-Boots" from The Bloody Chamber and how excited it made him to read her novels. I was surprised by that story: it had such a light, sunny spirit that it felt like an outlier in her works. I'm so glad I was wrong about that... over time, Angela Carter clearly mellowed, understanding not just the evil in the world, but the kindness as well, the potential for change and for connection. this turned out to be just the book to read to raise the spirits....more
Angela Carter depicts a range of women (and one fluidly-sexed hermaphrodite) striving to be - or just simply being - fully themselves. Sometimes that Angela Carter depicts a range of women (and one fluidly-sexed hermaphrodite) striving to be - or just simply being - fully themselves. Sometimes that self is passionate and loving, other times murderous, animalistic. Sometimes men are important to them, sometimes not so much. These women have little in common with each other, outside of their disinterest in conforming to conventional notions of femininity. Atypical examples of strength. The feminism is not subtext, it's the whole point. But this is not friendly or easy feminism: no saints are in sight.
Mostly fabulous, with some eh. 3.5 stars, rounded up. Even when the stories aren't top notch, the writing always impresses. Favorites are in bold.
"The Fall River Ax Murders" - Lizzie Borden is a woman with problems; she solves those problems with 40 whacks, and then 41 more. This is a portrait of misery: a miserable family, a miserable town. Rather a miserable read as well.
"The Kiss" - The women of Samarkand are a dreamy lot, as was Tamburlaine's wife. This is a slim, elegant trifle. I'm not sure why it needed to be written, but it's quite pleasant.
"Our Lady of the Massacre" - A Lancashire whore finds acceptance and a new life within an Algonquin village. But the English will do as they did: the tribe is massacred, and so a third life must begin. This was a marvelous tale: the redoubtable, no-nonsense heroine was impressive and Carter's portrait of the Indian community was sensitive and real. I wanted this story to go on much longer.
"Peter and the Wolf" - A girl raised by wolves causes different sorts of feelings to arise in a cousin aiming himself towards priesthood. An absorbing tale that ends with a strange epiphany. Carter touches lightly on the natural world vs. the civilized world, sexuality, faith, and how we turn our memories into stories.
"The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe" - Carter muses at length on the unconscious influences Poe's actress mother and later his child-bride may have had on him. This is a very meta story and the creativity is often dazzling. Unfortunately, it is all rather... unconvincing.
"Overture and Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night's Dream" - More musing by Carter, this time on grouchy Oberon, maternal Titania, a surprisingly shaggy, horny Puck, and the unnamed changeling in Shakespeare's play who is at the root of the Oberon-Titania quarrel. The changeling is given an identity here: the Golden Herm, a hermaphrodite, and much of this exceedingly postmodern anti-story is about how the Golden Herm enchants all. This was a fascinating plunge into gender deconstruction. I love how Carter takes ostensibly loveable faerie characters and makes them fearsome, alien. The story also features an enjoyable mini-treatise on the contrast in fairy tales between enchanting English woodland and forbidding German forest.
"The Kitchen Child" - And so life is created in the kitchen of a great English manor: someone has poked the rotund cook while she prepared her lobster soufflé! Nine months later: a child! But who was this secretive poker, who is the kitchen child's father? Perhaps it was the just as rotund visiting Duc who enjoyed not just the soufflé, but its maker... Man oh man, I loved this one! Not since the author's equally cheeky, witty, and life-affirming version of Puss 'n Boots have I smiled so much during one of her stories. Smiles and good cheer from beginning to end. Thank you, Angela Carter!
"Black Venus" - Carter imagines the life of Jeanne Duval, Creole mistress to the transgressive poet Baudelaire, and provides it a refreshingly upbeat albeit still syphilitic ending. This is perhaps the author's most well-known short story. Gender and race collide, a crash made all the more disturbing due to sexuality and colonialism, and because of paternalism, all the more inevitable. Never has a woman calling her man "Daddy" made me twitch more. The author's prose is at its most gorgeously purple and overripe; her points remain carefully aimed and deadly sharp....more
I thought this would be a chilly psychological murder mystery with a classic French Existentialism™ gloss. Instead I read a haunting character study oI thought this would be a chilly psychological murder mystery with a classic French Existentialism™ gloss. Instead I read a haunting character study of a child filled with angst and dread, trying and failing to make sense of the disorienting world around him, never understanding the true nature of his existence in this meaningless, absurd, and often deadly world. Which is basically French Existentialism in a nutshell. Beautifully written, mysterious and moving and humane, and so very sad....more
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