When Augustine of Hippo was beatified he was not yet known as the father of the memoir. His contributions to the modern Church led to his sainthood, while his decision to title his book about his early life Confessions has led to our present-day glut of tell-all non-fiction. Because of St. Augustine, the generic requirements of the memoir are a descent into chaos or dissolution followed by an epiphany that leads to life being turned around and righted. Sometimes the protagonist triumphs over adversity, sometimes over his or her own self-created demons. Either way, the progression is time and again toward a happy ending.
What to do, though, if one is a serial memoirist? How many conversions can one have in one's life, after all? Augusten Burroughs solves this problem by going over the same material over and over again, hacking away at it from slightly different angles. So does Mary Knarr. Elizabeth Wurtzel solves the dilemma by developing various addictions and psychological problems. Another option is to come up with a gimmick and then write about the ways that gimmick changed one's life: have zero environmental impact for a year and write about it, live strictly according to the Bible for a year and write about it, etc.
Once upon a time, a woman droned in a cubicle in lower Manhattan feeling bored and adrift. She like to cook, though, and had heard of this new thing called blogging, so she decided to spend a year cooking every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking and writing about it, and about her life. The end result was first a popular blog, then an entertaining book, then a movie starring Merryl Streep, and finally a book contract for more memoirs. Cleaving, Julia Powell's new work, is the result of the new career engendered by the success of her blogging experiment.
It's a book about butchering, both literally and metaphorically. Having completely butchered her marriage by entering into an obsessive affair, Powell decides to hide from the complications of her life, and perhaps work out some aggression, by apprenticing as a butcher in a Catskills meat shop. The book describes her years of butchery with intense honesty, not only about the feel and smell of meat and the techniques involved in preparing it for the grill or oven or pan, but also about her sexual proclivities and indiscretions. Confessions, indeed.
Julie and Julia was an entertaining read because of its breezy insouciance, because of Powell's ability to at once take her task seriously and with a grain (or pinch) of salt. Cleaving, on the other hand, is full of high seriousness. Meat cleaves to bone as we sometimes cleave to one another, and the only solution is to become expert at wielding a cleaver, breaking down carcasses and breaking our own and each others hearts. Relationships, marriages, are hard, no matter how much we love and are committed to each other. This is old news. Infidelity makes things harder, and can be something we learn from that brings us closer or can be something that tears us apart.
Powell is great at describing her obsession with her lover, her need for him, and at the same time her love for her husband. She is great at describing the pain this causes everyone involved. She is great at chroniciling the fevered time of chaos and loss. She's not so great at resolution, perhaps because her career as a serial memoirist requires a sequel, maybe a year spent at a processing plant to help her, you know, process. We end this installment with her still with her husband, but with her still pining for her lover, and with her husband still seeing the woman he began seeing while she was cheating on him. She claims a certain amount of happiness, but maybe it's just resignation.
In other words, Cleaving feels incomplete. It captures the descent, but not the phoenix-like rise from the ashes. It reads like a confession told not because the events led to a new understanding, but simply from a desire to confess. Although the experience of writing the book was undoubtedly cathartic for Powell, there isn't much in it for anyone else. Except, of course, some recipes, and a new understanding of why tenderloin is overpriced.
Showing posts with label reading is fundamental. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading is fundamental. Show all posts
Friday, December 4, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Tax Dollars at Work
I discovered the most magical place several months ago. It's a large building filled with books. Once you find the book you want to read you can borrow it for free, and when you're done you return it so that the next person can read it. You can also borrow DVDs, audio books, music CDs. It's so sustainable it's almost a collective, more socialistic than health care reform. It's the public library.
Back in college and grad school I went to various libraries all the time, but I'd somehow forgotten that they existed. I got into the habit of buying the books I wanted to read and then giving them away, because my house is full of books and I just don't have room to keep too many more of them. For some reason I just assumed that I'd have a long wait for any newly-published book, and that it wasn't worth it. The new penuriousness led me to the library last month, and I have to say that I've been pretty stupid all these years.
My taste in literature is clearly not shared by the other residents of my small city, because I've never yet had to reserve a new book and wait for it. And I'd completely forgotten how libraries subscribe to each and every periodical, and how they provide comfortable chairs for you to slouch into while reading all the magazines and newspapers you can handle in one sitting. There's even pencils and paper lying around in case you want to write something down. There's free WiFi, but there's also every reference book imaginable, so you don't need to rely on the vagaries of Wikipedia for information.
The bast thing about the library, though, is that it's free because my school taxes pay for it. I don't have children and have previously gotten incredibly annoyed each fall when my ridiculously high school tax bill arrived. At least now I can feel as if I'm getting a benefit for all that money. In fact, this is perhaps the only instance where I can hold in my hands a physical manifestation of my tax dollars at work.
Also, don't buy into the myths. If you see someone you know at the library and want to have a short conversation, go for it. I've never once been shushed.
Back in college and grad school I went to various libraries all the time, but I'd somehow forgotten that they existed. I got into the habit of buying the books I wanted to read and then giving them away, because my house is full of books and I just don't have room to keep too many more of them. For some reason I just assumed that I'd have a long wait for any newly-published book, and that it wasn't worth it. The new penuriousness led me to the library last month, and I have to say that I've been pretty stupid all these years.
My taste in literature is clearly not shared by the other residents of my small city, because I've never yet had to reserve a new book and wait for it. And I'd completely forgotten how libraries subscribe to each and every periodical, and how they provide comfortable chairs for you to slouch into while reading all the magazines and newspapers you can handle in one sitting. There's even pencils and paper lying around in case you want to write something down. There's free WiFi, but there's also every reference book imaginable, so you don't need to rely on the vagaries of Wikipedia for information.
The bast thing about the library, though, is that it's free because my school taxes pay for it. I don't have children and have previously gotten incredibly annoyed each fall when my ridiculously high school tax bill arrived. At least now I can feel as if I'm getting a benefit for all that money. In fact, this is perhaps the only instance where I can hold in my hands a physical manifestation of my tax dollars at work.
Also, don't buy into the myths. If you see someone you know at the library and want to have a short conversation, go for it. I've never once been shushed.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Away from the Fray
I'm back, after a little over a week spent nearly entirely off-line. I just felt like a break from my computer, and I have to say that staying away wasn't really all that hard. I did answer email because ignoring that would have felt like not picking up the phone, and also because I have to email for work, but for 10 days I didn't blog or read blogs, didn't check on Facebook or Twitter, didn't go to any websites for news or reviews or for anything. I was completely status update free.
I've spent most of my life without the internet; I'm old enough that I didn't even own a computer until well after college. This habit of getting up in the morning and immediately sitting down in front of the keyboard to find out what happened overnight is relatively recent, even if it feels as if I've been reading Slate and Salon forever. I have to say, though, that old media also does the trick. It's still possible to read the newspaper and be caught up. Being informed does not have to equal immediacy. Roman Polanski was just as arrested 12 hours after the fact as he was the second the story broke.
The truly freeing part of the past 10 days, though, has been my freedom from posting anything, anywhere. I write this blog mainly for myself, because I like to write and because writing this helps force me to engage with various topics and helps me to think about things. However, after 20 months, I do go through periods where thinking about new things and then writing about them is a chore. It can be hard to have something to say several days a week, and to remove that pressure for a week felt great. This is precisely why I don't Twitter: I'd drive myself crazy with the pressure to be interesting a day long, and no one is interesting all day long. I'm barely interesting two or three times a week. Taking some time to recharge offline helped me to see that, yes, I do like the time I spend here or on Facebook or wherever, but that I have to see it as leisure and not as work. I have to treat it as leisure and not as work.
The ability to keep up with everything and everyone is an opportunity, but going away once in a while is also an opportunity. Away from the computer I got more book-reading done, spent more time outside my house, spent more time with the living and breathing. I'm back now, recharged, but an offline respite is definitely something I highly recommend.
I've spent most of my life without the internet; I'm old enough that I didn't even own a computer until well after college. This habit of getting up in the morning and immediately sitting down in front of the keyboard to find out what happened overnight is relatively recent, even if it feels as if I've been reading Slate and Salon forever. I have to say, though, that old media also does the trick. It's still possible to read the newspaper and be caught up. Being informed does not have to equal immediacy. Roman Polanski was just as arrested 12 hours after the fact as he was the second the story broke.
The truly freeing part of the past 10 days, though, has been my freedom from posting anything, anywhere. I write this blog mainly for myself, because I like to write and because writing this helps force me to engage with various topics and helps me to think about things. However, after 20 months, I do go through periods where thinking about new things and then writing about them is a chore. It can be hard to have something to say several days a week, and to remove that pressure for a week felt great. This is precisely why I don't Twitter: I'd drive myself crazy with the pressure to be interesting a day long, and no one is interesting all day long. I'm barely interesting two or three times a week. Taking some time to recharge offline helped me to see that, yes, I do like the time I spend here or on Facebook or wherever, but that I have to see it as leisure and not as work. I have to treat it as leisure and not as work.
The ability to keep up with everything and everyone is an opportunity, but going away once in a while is also an opportunity. Away from the computer I got more book-reading done, spent more time outside my house, spent more time with the living and breathing. I'm back now, recharged, but an offline respite is definitely something I highly recommend.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Would You Like Some Meth with Your Canned Ham?
You live in a small town in rural Iowa, or Missouri, or Kansas, somewhere in the Midwest where the sun rises and sets over the corn and your father and grandfather somehow made a living from the land, either farming it or working at a processing or meatpacking place. Year after year nothing changes, until you wake up one day and realize that half of your town is addicted to meth. All around you friends and neighbors are either using or making it, or both. How did this happen?
For an intimate look at meth in one small rural town, read Nick Reding's Methland. Reding spent three years living among the residents of Olwein, Iowa, and his ground-floor account of the ways meth spread through and ravaged one community, and the ways that community is trying to rebuild itself, is both engrossing and eye-opening. I won't give away the entire plot, because the book really is worth a read, but I will say that the culprit is both expected and unexpected. The culprit is agribusiness.
The consolidation of smaller family farms into conglomerates displaced people from their traditional livelihoods. This isn't news. Those who didn't farm went to work in plants; while the unionized meatpacking plant operated in Olwein, people could make a living. The shifts were long and the work was repetitive, and many meatpackers relied on speed to get through the day or the week, but the wages could support a lower middle-class life. Union plants were closed, though, and what processing work remained was non-unionized, the wages less than half what they used to be. Using meth became an antidote to despair; dealing meth became an antidote to economic hopelessness.
Food still needed to be processed by cheap labor. For various reasons, Mexican cartels cornered the meth market. Illegal immigrant labor became their distribution network. Illegals can move about undetected, transporting the drug with them. In this way the labor practices of agribusiness both created and sustain the rural meth market. As Reding shows, 20 years ago meth could be a homegrown operation, with a local dealer in control of both manufacturing and distribution. These days the local dealer is just a middleman. Meth manufacture is as consolidated as the production of ground beef, utilizing the same labor force.
Do solutions exist? Read the book to see what Olwein's civic leadership has done to stem the tide. Obviously, the real solutions are economic; only the creation of decent legal jobs can effectively combat an underground economy. Can that happen in Missouri, in Iowa, when more and more of our labor needs are exported each year? I guess that remains to be seen. In the meantime, Olwein awaits.
For an intimate look at meth in one small rural town, read Nick Reding's Methland. Reding spent three years living among the residents of Olwein, Iowa, and his ground-floor account of the ways meth spread through and ravaged one community, and the ways that community is trying to rebuild itself, is both engrossing and eye-opening. I won't give away the entire plot, because the book really is worth a read, but I will say that the culprit is both expected and unexpected. The culprit is agribusiness.
The consolidation of smaller family farms into conglomerates displaced people from their traditional livelihoods. This isn't news. Those who didn't farm went to work in plants; while the unionized meatpacking plant operated in Olwein, people could make a living. The shifts were long and the work was repetitive, and many meatpackers relied on speed to get through the day or the week, but the wages could support a lower middle-class life. Union plants were closed, though, and what processing work remained was non-unionized, the wages less than half what they used to be. Using meth became an antidote to despair; dealing meth became an antidote to economic hopelessness.
Food still needed to be processed by cheap labor. For various reasons, Mexican cartels cornered the meth market. Illegal immigrant labor became their distribution network. Illegals can move about undetected, transporting the drug with them. In this way the labor practices of agribusiness both created and sustain the rural meth market. As Reding shows, 20 years ago meth could be a homegrown operation, with a local dealer in control of both manufacturing and distribution. These days the local dealer is just a middleman. Meth manufacture is as consolidated as the production of ground beef, utilizing the same labor force.
Do solutions exist? Read the book to see what Olwein's civic leadership has done to stem the tide. Obviously, the real solutions are economic; only the creation of decent legal jobs can effectively combat an underground economy. Can that happen in Missouri, in Iowa, when more and more of our labor needs are exported each year? I guess that remains to be seen. In the meantime, Olwein awaits.
Monday, April 27, 2009
A Change Is Gonna Come
It's been hard to spend time in front of the computer when summer has arrived inexplicably early and I can sit on my porch for hours reading, particularly when I'm reading an engrossing book. Here's a little rhetorical game: name the most important change that happened in America in the 1960s. Student protests? Civil rights? Sexual revolution? A movement from the "conformity" of the 1950s to various "freedoms"? That's what I would have thought, but I would have been wrong. What's true is, in a sense, the reverse: the most important, most lasting, change to emerge from the 1960s was the conservative movement, the rise of the right. The lasting effect of 1960s liberalism was almost 30 years of conservative Republican rule. Without the upheavals of the 1960s, Nixon would in fact have become a political footnote. Reagan might never have seemed so darn sensible.
Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of American Consensus, finally out in paperback, provides not only a lively history of the 1964 Presidential race, but demonstrates how wrong have been assumptions about the results of that race. Johnson won in a landslide. Goldwater was a raving fanatic. How was it, then, that within a year of his historic victory Johnson was beleaguered, how was it that ultimately his Presidency is remembered as "failed"? Perlstein charts the grassroots growth of the conservative movement, demonstrating that Goldwater lost as much because of an ineffective campaign as because of any love for Johnson, and showing how, as early as 1962, the seeds of conservatism had begun to germinate.
Many accounts of the early 60s discuss passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Bills as culminations, victories in a long-fought struggle. I've read many an account of Mario Savio on top of the paddy wagon in Berkeley birthing the Free Speech Movement, and of the mop-topped Beatles revolutionizing pop music. Hidden underneath these accounts, though, is the fact that for many Americans these events were not triumphs but confusing tragedies. The Great Society? The War on Poverty? Government, overreaching. The British Invasion? Long-hairs, their guitars blaring noise. Free Speech? Ingrates, coddled by state-provided education. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act became law. Shortly thereafter, our first summer of riots ensued. Americans watched Harlem erupt in flames live on TV. The fact that government could not legislate consensus was demonstrated even as Johnson intensified his attempts to do just that. Most Americans abhorred upheaval, preferring perhaps not conformity so much as stability.
Goldwater turned out to be a terrible campaigner, articulating his ideas with statistics and boring recitations of the logistics of military hardware. By the end of the 1964 campaign, though, a politician emerged who was able to couch conservative notions in an emotional pitch, who was able to talk about "us" and "them" without sounding like he wanted to blow up the world or blow apart America society. His name was Ronald Reagan. His role campaigning for Goldwater was his springboard to the California Governor's mansion, and the rest, as they say, is history. Hopefully it is a history Perlstein will undertake. Now that he has shown how a movement was born and grew, perhaps he'll next describe its apotheosis.
Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of American Consensus, finally out in paperback, provides not only a lively history of the 1964 Presidential race, but demonstrates how wrong have been assumptions about the results of that race. Johnson won in a landslide. Goldwater was a raving fanatic. How was it, then, that within a year of his historic victory Johnson was beleaguered, how was it that ultimately his Presidency is remembered as "failed"? Perlstein charts the grassroots growth of the conservative movement, demonstrating that Goldwater lost as much because of an ineffective campaign as because of any love for Johnson, and showing how, as early as 1962, the seeds of conservatism had begun to germinate.
Many accounts of the early 60s discuss passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Bills as culminations, victories in a long-fought struggle. I've read many an account of Mario Savio on top of the paddy wagon in Berkeley birthing the Free Speech Movement, and of the mop-topped Beatles revolutionizing pop music. Hidden underneath these accounts, though, is the fact that for many Americans these events were not triumphs but confusing tragedies. The Great Society? The War on Poverty? Government, overreaching. The British Invasion? Long-hairs, their guitars blaring noise. Free Speech? Ingrates, coddled by state-provided education. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act became law. Shortly thereafter, our first summer of riots ensued. Americans watched Harlem erupt in flames live on TV. The fact that government could not legislate consensus was demonstrated even as Johnson intensified his attempts to do just that. Most Americans abhorred upheaval, preferring perhaps not conformity so much as stability.
Goldwater turned out to be a terrible campaigner, articulating his ideas with statistics and boring recitations of the logistics of military hardware. By the end of the 1964 campaign, though, a politician emerged who was able to couch conservative notions in an emotional pitch, who was able to talk about "us" and "them" without sounding like he wanted to blow up the world or blow apart America society. His name was Ronald Reagan. His role campaigning for Goldwater was his springboard to the California Governor's mansion, and the rest, as they say, is history. Hopefully it is a history Perlstein will undertake. Now that he has shown how a movement was born and grew, perhaps he'll next describe its apotheosis.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Compound Life
What is it about those zany fundamentalist Mormons? They just fascinate me. Big Love got me started; before that show, I'd never given LDS or the FLDS a thought. At heart, all religious stories are fantastic and unreal. To have faith is to suspend disbelief. So, while some people believe in trans-substantiation, others believe Joseph Smith found some golden plates in upstate New York, translated them, and became a prophet. People believe what they believe, no sense going there.
It's when the Little House on the Prairie garb comes out that I become fascinated. Who are these people who believe in sacred underwear? Why do they wear prairie dresses and sweep their hair up into beehive wings? Why do they listen when the Prophet tells them to marry off their barely post-pubescent girls and leave their sons on the side of the road? Why do they obey when music is banned?
Escape and Stolen Innocence, two women's accounts of their life in the FLDS and their escape from it, help to provide some answers. With no contact with the outside world, and having been told from birth that outsiders are evil and the Prophet's way is the only way to the celestial kingdom, it's easy to see how an unquestioning mindset evolves. It's easy to see how and why people live as the FLDS lives, when no other option, no other life, ever presents itself.
To a heathen like me, life on an FLDS compound feels like fiction, so perhaps it makes sense that the most enlightening book on FLDS I've come across is David Ebershoff's The 19th Wife, a novel. Ebershoff entwines two stories: the fictional account of Ann Eliza Young, 19th wife to Brigham Young who leaves the church to prosyletize against polygymy; and the story of Jordan Scott, a contemporary "lost boy" who was banished from a fundementalist compound when he was 14, whose mother, herself a 19th wife, has been accused of murdering his father. The murder mystery and the historical fiction unfold together, and through both well-researched narratives I've learned more about the FLDS mindset than I did from any factual account.
Can I ever really understand why people who live lives so different than mind do what they do, believe what they believe? Probably not, no matter how much I read. However, if I can devour a good murder mystery during my attempt at understanding, so much the better.
It's when the Little House on the Prairie garb comes out that I become fascinated. Who are these people who believe in sacred underwear? Why do they wear prairie dresses and sweep their hair up into beehive wings? Why do they listen when the Prophet tells them to marry off their barely post-pubescent girls and leave their sons on the side of the road? Why do they obey when music is banned?
Escape and Stolen Innocence, two women's accounts of their life in the FLDS and their escape from it, help to provide some answers. With no contact with the outside world, and having been told from birth that outsiders are evil and the Prophet's way is the only way to the celestial kingdom, it's easy to see how an unquestioning mindset evolves. It's easy to see how and why people live as the FLDS lives, when no other option, no other life, ever presents itself.
To a heathen like me, life on an FLDS compound feels like fiction, so perhaps it makes sense that the most enlightening book on FLDS I've come across is David Ebershoff's The 19th Wife, a novel. Ebershoff entwines two stories: the fictional account of Ann Eliza Young, 19th wife to Brigham Young who leaves the church to prosyletize against polygymy; and the story of Jordan Scott, a contemporary "lost boy" who was banished from a fundementalist compound when he was 14, whose mother, herself a 19th wife, has been accused of murdering his father. The murder mystery and the historical fiction unfold together, and through both well-researched narratives I've learned more about the FLDS mindset than I did from any factual account.
Can I ever really understand why people who live lives so different than mind do what they do, believe what they believe? Probably not, no matter how much I read. However, if I can devour a good murder mystery during my attempt at understanding, so much the better.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Sex Ed, The Final Frontier
This primer was written a mere 40 years ago. Oy vey.
What is male homosexuality?
Male homosexuality is a condition in which men have a driving emotional and sexual interest in other men. Because of the anatomical and physiological limitations involved, there are some formidable obstacles to overcome. Most homosexuals look upon this as a challenge and approach it with ingenuity and boundless energy. In the process they transform themselves into part-time women. They don women's clothes, wear makeup, adopt feminine mannerisms, and occasionally even try to rearrange their bodies along feminine lines.
Aren't some people just naturally that way?
Being naturally that way is one of the many explanations homosexuals grope for in an attempt to understand their problem...They prefer to consider their problem the equivalent of a club foot or birthmark; just something to struggle through life with.
This explanation is a little tragic. It implies that all homosexuals are condemned without appeal to a life some of them say they enjoy so much. Actually for those who want to change there is a chance.
How?
If a homosexual who wants to renounce his homosexuality finds a psychiatrist who knows how to cure homosexuality, he has every chance of becoming a happy, well-adjusted heterosexual.
What do homosexuals really do with each other?
The usual homosexual experience is mutual masturbation. It is fast, easy, and requires a minimum amount of equipment. The chaps simply undress, get into bed, and manipulate each others' penises to the point of orgasm. Three to five minutes should be enough for the entire operation.
Surely there must be more to homosexuality?
There are dozens of variations but they all have this in common: the primary interest is in the penis, not the person. A homosexual may have as many as five sexual experiences in one evening - all with different partners. He rarely knows their names - he is unlikely to see any of them again. Besides, few homosexuals use real names. They generally go by aliases, choosing first names with a sexual connotation. Harry, Dick, Peter, are the most favored.
Some gay guys write their telephone numbers on walls...They go home and wait for the phone to ring. It never takes long. Another gay guy calls, they quickly exchange qualifications, and make a date. A few minutes later there is a knock on the door, penises are produced, and another homosexual affair is concluded. Elapsed time from portal to portal, about six minutes.
Isn't that kind of dangerous?
Homosexuals thrive on danger...
But all homosexuals aren't like that, are they?
Unfortunately, they are just like that. One of the main features of homosexuality is promiscuity. It stands to reason. Homosexuals are trying the impossible: solving the problem with only half the pieces...The homosexual must constantly search for the one man, the one penis, the one experience, that will satisfy him. Tragically there is no possibility of satisfaction because the formula is wrong. One penis plus one penis equals nothing. There is no substitute for heterosex - penis and vagina. Disappointed, stubborn, discouraged, defiant, the homosexual keeps trying. He is the sexual Diogenes, always looking for the penis that pleases.
That is the reason he must change partners constantly. He tries each phallus in succession, then turns away remorsefully...
What about all the homosexuals who live together happily for years?
What about them? They are mighty rare birds among the homosexual flock. Moreover, the "happy" part remains to be seen. The bitterest argument between husband and wife is a passionate love sonnet by comparison with a dialogue between a butch and his queen. Live together? Yes. Happily? Hardly.
The other part of these "marriages" that doesn't fit in with happiness is that the principles never stop cruising. They may set up housekeeping together, but the parade of penises usually continue unabated. Only this time, jealousy, threats, tantrums, and mutual betrayal are thrown in for good measure. Mercifully for both of them, the life expectancy of their relationship together is brief.
Are there any other parts of the body that appeal to the homosexual?
One more and possibly the most intriguing of all - the male vagina. To possess this organ, the essence of femininity, is the consuming wish of some homosexuals. To overcome the obstacles of genetics, anatomy, physiology, to finally become a woman, is worth anything. Precious few succeed.
You're perhaps wondering about female homosexuality. While the men have their own chapter, the women receive only a brief mention in the chapter on prostitution. That's right, lesbians are prostitutes. Again, oy vey.
What is male homosexuality?
Male homosexuality is a condition in which men have a driving emotional and sexual interest in other men. Because of the anatomical and physiological limitations involved, there are some formidable obstacles to overcome. Most homosexuals look upon this as a challenge and approach it with ingenuity and boundless energy. In the process they transform themselves into part-time women. They don women's clothes, wear makeup, adopt feminine mannerisms, and occasionally even try to rearrange their bodies along feminine lines.
Aren't some people just naturally that way?
Being naturally that way is one of the many explanations homosexuals grope for in an attempt to understand their problem...They prefer to consider their problem the equivalent of a club foot or birthmark; just something to struggle through life with.
This explanation is a little tragic. It implies that all homosexuals are condemned without appeal to a life some of them say they enjoy so much. Actually for those who want to change there is a chance.
How?
If a homosexual who wants to renounce his homosexuality finds a psychiatrist who knows how to cure homosexuality, he has every chance of becoming a happy, well-adjusted heterosexual.
What do homosexuals really do with each other?
The usual homosexual experience is mutual masturbation. It is fast, easy, and requires a minimum amount of equipment. The chaps simply undress, get into bed, and manipulate each others' penises to the point of orgasm. Three to five minutes should be enough for the entire operation.
Surely there must be more to homosexuality?
There are dozens of variations but they all have this in common: the primary interest is in the penis, not the person. A homosexual may have as many as five sexual experiences in one evening - all with different partners. He rarely knows their names - he is unlikely to see any of them again. Besides, few homosexuals use real names. They generally go by aliases, choosing first names with a sexual connotation. Harry, Dick, Peter, are the most favored.
Some gay guys write their telephone numbers on walls...They go home and wait for the phone to ring. It never takes long. Another gay guy calls, they quickly exchange qualifications, and make a date. A few minutes later there is a knock on the door, penises are produced, and another homosexual affair is concluded. Elapsed time from portal to portal, about six minutes.
Isn't that kind of dangerous?
Homosexuals thrive on danger...
But all homosexuals aren't like that, are they?
Unfortunately, they are just like that. One of the main features of homosexuality is promiscuity. It stands to reason. Homosexuals are trying the impossible: solving the problem with only half the pieces...The homosexual must constantly search for the one man, the one penis, the one experience, that will satisfy him. Tragically there is no possibility of satisfaction because the formula is wrong. One penis plus one penis equals nothing. There is no substitute for heterosex - penis and vagina. Disappointed, stubborn, discouraged, defiant, the homosexual keeps trying. He is the sexual Diogenes, always looking for the penis that pleases.
That is the reason he must change partners constantly. He tries each phallus in succession, then turns away remorsefully...
What about all the homosexuals who live together happily for years?
What about them? They are mighty rare birds among the homosexual flock. Moreover, the "happy" part remains to be seen. The bitterest argument between husband and wife is a passionate love sonnet by comparison with a dialogue between a butch and his queen. Live together? Yes. Happily? Hardly.
The other part of these "marriages" that doesn't fit in with happiness is that the principles never stop cruising. They may set up housekeeping together, but the parade of penises usually continue unabated. Only this time, jealousy, threats, tantrums, and mutual betrayal are thrown in for good measure. Mercifully for both of them, the life expectancy of their relationship together is brief.
Are there any other parts of the body that appeal to the homosexual?
One more and possibly the most intriguing of all - the male vagina. To possess this organ, the essence of femininity, is the consuming wish of some homosexuals. To overcome the obstacles of genetics, anatomy, physiology, to finally become a woman, is worth anything. Precious few succeed.
You're perhaps wondering about female homosexuality. While the men have their own chapter, the women receive only a brief mention in the chapter on prostitution. That's right, lesbians are prostitutes. Again, oy vey.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Sex Ed, Continued
Today we consider a local favorite, prostitution. David Reuben, M.D. has much to say on the topic; this is the longest chapter in the book, perhaps because the prostitution chapter also contains information on lesbians, while gay men have an entire chapter of their own. Why? you ask. Obviously because prostitutes hate men and so do lesbians. Prostitutes are therefore lesbians. It's all very logical. We'll leave the lesbianism for our next lesson and get right to the trickin' and the whorin'.
How does a girl become a prostitute?
Most girls become prostitutes because they like it. The transition from a "straight" girl to a straight "girl" is usually a gradual one. It starts with run-of-the-mill promiscuity, maybe a divorce or two, then a job at a night club as a waitress or bar maid. Freelance sex with customers for gifts plus association with full-time hustlers who hang around the club often prompt a girl to put the pieces together and get in the life...
What causes the "demand"?
Let one of the girls tell her theory. Bonnie is twenty-seven; she has been playing for pay since she was nineteen.
"The only thing that keeps us in business is the American wife, God bless her. Those overfed, overdressed smug little bitches help me buy a new mink coat every other year. If all the wives woke up at once and gave their husbands what they wanted, I'd have to go back to waiting on tables at a beer joint. But I'm not too worried - business gets better every month. As long as the average woman thinks she has a golden vagina I'll be in good shape."
We next get a dissertation on the economics of the high-class hooker, how much she takes in versus how much she spends on hair, make-up, bedsheets, etc. According to our expert, after expenses she doesn't make very much.
If prostitutes don't wind up with much money, then why do they do it?
Virtually every prostitute is in the life because she wants to be. Obviously any woman who chooses to rent her vagina to a dozen men a day has a serious emotional problem...All prostitutes have one thing in common - they hate men.
Why is that?
The full answer is a complicated one related to the deep underlying emotional problems that drove them into the game. Basically, prostitution is an ironic form of revenge against all men, acted out on the johns...
What's a street whore?
Usually an overage hustler, an alcoholic hooker, or one that's on narcotics. They have become so dilapidated that they are willing to go for the price of a drink, a fix, or a cheap hotel room. They don't last long and are swept up by the police, usually within the hour.
Another class of prostitute works the bars; these hustlers are carefully segregated by the class of bar they frequent. The neighborhood girls hang around cheap corner bars; the club girls make themselves available at selected night spots. The more expensive hookers choose the more expensive cocktail lounges in fashionable hotels and motels.
What happens to prostitutes when they get old?
That's when things get tough for the girls. Some of the lucky ones have managed to save enough out of their earnings to go into a small business. One of the favorite lines is a ladies' ready-to-wear shop supplying fashionable clothes and fancy underwear to other hookers...
I'll never think of Victoria's Secret the same again.
How does a girl become a prostitute?
Most girls become prostitutes because they like it. The transition from a "straight" girl to a straight "girl" is usually a gradual one. It starts with run-of-the-mill promiscuity, maybe a divorce or two, then a job at a night club as a waitress or bar maid. Freelance sex with customers for gifts plus association with full-time hustlers who hang around the club often prompt a girl to put the pieces together and get in the life...
What causes the "demand"?
Let one of the girls tell her theory. Bonnie is twenty-seven; she has been playing for pay since she was nineteen.
"The only thing that keeps us in business is the American wife, God bless her. Those overfed, overdressed smug little bitches help me buy a new mink coat every other year. If all the wives woke up at once and gave their husbands what they wanted, I'd have to go back to waiting on tables at a beer joint. But I'm not too worried - business gets better every month. As long as the average woman thinks she has a golden vagina I'll be in good shape."
We next get a dissertation on the economics of the high-class hooker, how much she takes in versus how much she spends on hair, make-up, bedsheets, etc. According to our expert, after expenses she doesn't make very much.
If prostitutes don't wind up with much money, then why do they do it?
Virtually every prostitute is in the life because she wants to be. Obviously any woman who chooses to rent her vagina to a dozen men a day has a serious emotional problem...All prostitutes have one thing in common - they hate men.
Why is that?
The full answer is a complicated one related to the deep underlying emotional problems that drove them into the game. Basically, prostitution is an ironic form of revenge against all men, acted out on the johns...
What's a street whore?
Usually an overage hustler, an alcoholic hooker, or one that's on narcotics. They have become so dilapidated that they are willing to go for the price of a drink, a fix, or a cheap hotel room. They don't last long and are swept up by the police, usually within the hour.
Another class of prostitute works the bars; these hustlers are carefully segregated by the class of bar they frequent. The neighborhood girls hang around cheap corner bars; the club girls make themselves available at selected night spots. The more expensive hookers choose the more expensive cocktail lounges in fashionable hotels and motels.
What happens to prostitutes when they get old?
That's when things get tough for the girls. Some of the lucky ones have managed to save enough out of their earnings to go into a small business. One of the favorite lines is a ladies' ready-to-wear shop supplying fashionable clothes and fancy underwear to other hookers...
I'll never think of Victoria's Secret the same again.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Big Read
As the snow falls yet again I'm ready to hunker down and spend the day finishing The Big Rich, Bryan Burrough's account of the rise and fall of Texas oilmen and Texas oil money. In less than a decade, various "independents" or wildcatters amassed incredible fortunes, and in less than a generation most of those men squandered those fortunes. Burrough focuses on four oilmen: Cullen, Murchison, Richardson, and Hunt. It's a fascinating story, and a fun read. In a time when if not fortunes then at least savings have been disappearing, it's a book that can provide solace. No matter how much you've lost in the past year, it wasn't billions, after all.
For a time, these men had enough money to do whatever in the world they wanted. Hunt became a bigamist, with three families. Richardson helped Eisenhower achieve the White House and came close to convincing him to dump Nixon in 1956. A related story is that of Glenn McCarthy, who in five years blew through over $50 million (mid-century dollars - probably a billion today), much of it spent on Houston's Shamrock Hotel, and attempt to make Texas the center of the universe.
Richardson and Murchison enjoyed going to the races at Del Mar in La Jolla, so Richardson built his own hotel nearby where they could stay for the season, having whatever food they liked flown in - BBQ from Tulsa, steak and duck and pheasant from Texas, whatever. These were the first businessmen to own private planes and private islands. These were the men who invented Texas ultraconservatism. For a while, Hunt owned his own mini-media empire, the Liberty radio network, a kind of proto-Fox News. His rabid support of McCarthy led to Liberty's demise, but for a few years he controlled a certain portion of the airwaves.
With the exception of Richardson, whose heirs (the Bass family) expanded the family fortune, the riches disappeared. The post-WW II opening of Saudi Arabian oil fields led to an influx of cheap imported oil, and the federal regulation of natural gas did away with profiteering. The fortunes were lost in part due to economic change, in part to the ineptitude later generations of Hunts, Cullens, Murchinsons. I don't want to give away the plot, but suffice it to say that the undoing is probably more interesting than the building of wealth.
So yeah, I'm quite tired of snow, but as long as I have a big book to read, I'll make do.
For a time, these men had enough money to do whatever in the world they wanted. Hunt became a bigamist, with three families. Richardson helped Eisenhower achieve the White House and came close to convincing him to dump Nixon in 1956. A related story is that of Glenn McCarthy, who in five years blew through over $50 million (mid-century dollars - probably a billion today), much of it spent on Houston's Shamrock Hotel, and attempt to make Texas the center of the universe.
Richardson and Murchison enjoyed going to the races at Del Mar in La Jolla, so Richardson built his own hotel nearby where they could stay for the season, having whatever food they liked flown in - BBQ from Tulsa, steak and duck and pheasant from Texas, whatever. These were the first businessmen to own private planes and private islands. These were the men who invented Texas ultraconservatism. For a while, Hunt owned his own mini-media empire, the Liberty radio network, a kind of proto-Fox News. His rabid support of McCarthy led to Liberty's demise, but for a few years he controlled a certain portion of the airwaves.
With the exception of Richardson, whose heirs (the Bass family) expanded the family fortune, the riches disappeared. The post-WW II opening of Saudi Arabian oil fields led to an influx of cheap imported oil, and the federal regulation of natural gas did away with profiteering. The fortunes were lost in part due to economic change, in part to the ineptitude later generations of Hunts, Cullens, Murchinsons. I don't want to give away the plot, but suffice it to say that the undoing is probably more interesting than the building of wealth.
So yeah, I'm quite tired of snow, but as long as I have a big book to read, I'll make do.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
It Could Be Much, Much Worse
Once the media told us what we already knew yesterday, that we've been in a recession for a year, and the stock market crashed yet again, I started looking for some things for which to be thankful. For example, I may be underemployed and underfinanced, but at least I didn't grow up in hell.
For a vivid description of growing up in hell, check out Chris Abani's Graceland, a coming-of-age tale set in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria in 1983. Elvis, our 16 year-old hero, has lost his mother to cancer and is slowly losing his father to palm wine. Set loose on Lagos' mean streets, he dreams of becoming a dancer while he begs for spare change from tourists while doing Presley impersonations. Along the way he encounters every type of violence and cruelty imaginable, all rendered as part of the commonplace and everyday.
In contrast to this living nightmare are passages from his mother's diary, which he carries with him at all times. Before dying she collected traditional recipes, which serve as a reminder of the village life and culture from which Elvis has been displaced. On the one hand Elvis has the impersonal and random viciousness of life in the city, a life deranged by the aftereffects of colonialism, and on the other hand he has a document of hearth, home, family, love, a powerful world but one that has been lost to him.
Will he give in to ghetto life, become a low-level drug trafficer or dealer in body parts for transplant? Or will he choose the one escape left him, to leave Nigeria behind entirely and head to America, where his aunt has already moved? I'll let you read the book and find out for yourself. It's at once completely depressing and moving, and a page-turner as well. And you'll never worry about the stock market again, I promise you.
For a vivid description of growing up in hell, check out Chris Abani's Graceland, a coming-of-age tale set in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria in 1983. Elvis, our 16 year-old hero, has lost his mother to cancer and is slowly losing his father to palm wine. Set loose on Lagos' mean streets, he dreams of becoming a dancer while he begs for spare change from tourists while doing Presley impersonations. Along the way he encounters every type of violence and cruelty imaginable, all rendered as part of the commonplace and everyday.
In contrast to this living nightmare are passages from his mother's diary, which he carries with him at all times. Before dying she collected traditional recipes, which serve as a reminder of the village life and culture from which Elvis has been displaced. On the one hand Elvis has the impersonal and random viciousness of life in the city, a life deranged by the aftereffects of colonialism, and on the other hand he has a document of hearth, home, family, love, a powerful world but one that has been lost to him.
Will he give in to ghetto life, become a low-level drug trafficer or dealer in body parts for transplant? Or will he choose the one escape left him, to leave Nigeria behind entirely and head to America, where his aunt has already moved? I'll let you read the book and find out for yourself. It's at once completely depressing and moving, and a page-turner as well. And you'll never worry about the stock market again, I promise you.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Beast Without Burden
Even as the economy continues to tank, the business of business rushes onward. Perhaps you've heard that Tina Brown's website, The Daily Beast, launched this week. Can the magic that she worked on Vanity Fair and The New Yorker (and even the short-lived Talk) be translated to the Web? Follow the link and check it out for yourself.
The Daily Beast isn't quite a full-fledged webzine. It's an aggregator, meaning that the editors cull content from all over the web. Although the site contains some original content, as well as blogs, it's main focus is distilling what's news and buzzworthy onto a easily navigated homepage and providing links to those stories.
There are other aggregators out there. Some, like Digg, are reader-chosen; the stories most often "digged" by readers top the list. Others, like Huffington Post and Daily Beast, are "curated" by editors. I go to the Huffington Post not to see what's popular on the web, but to see what's new in liberal politics, just as I would go to Drudge to see what's new in conservative politics. Most curated sites cater to particular sensibilities, particular audiences.
I'm not sure what niche TDB is meant to fill or who it's intending to reach, but in its first week, the editors undoubtedly don't yet know what it's niche will be, either. Right now, it appears mainly to be a destination for people who like Tina Brown, which I guess means people like me, in that I have always enjoyed her publications. I sense it will be a place for me to go when I don't have the time to read longer-form content in Slate or Salon, and am interested in news beyond the narrowly political, financial, or gossipy. I'll give it a shot, in other words. It beats watching my net worth disappear day by day.
Since it's new, TDB is also currently ad-free, which is refreshing. It's design is clean, and right now it can be enjoyed free of clutter. Oh, and one feature really worth checking out: the Video Cheat Sheet, an accumulation of must-see clips from around the Web. It's worth a visit just to find the view-worthy in one place. Why watch the Dow plummet when you can catch Bill Murray's SNL cameo from last night instead?
The Daily Beast isn't quite a full-fledged webzine. It's an aggregator, meaning that the editors cull content from all over the web. Although the site contains some original content, as well as blogs, it's main focus is distilling what's news and buzzworthy onto a easily navigated homepage and providing links to those stories.
There are other aggregators out there. Some, like Digg, are reader-chosen; the stories most often "digged" by readers top the list. Others, like Huffington Post and Daily Beast, are "curated" by editors. I go to the Huffington Post not to see what's popular on the web, but to see what's new in liberal politics, just as I would go to Drudge to see what's new in conservative politics. Most curated sites cater to particular sensibilities, particular audiences.
I'm not sure what niche TDB is meant to fill or who it's intending to reach, but in its first week, the editors undoubtedly don't yet know what it's niche will be, either. Right now, it appears mainly to be a destination for people who like Tina Brown, which I guess means people like me, in that I have always enjoyed her publications. I sense it will be a place for me to go when I don't have the time to read longer-form content in Slate or Salon, and am interested in news beyond the narrowly political, financial, or gossipy. I'll give it a shot, in other words. It beats watching my net worth disappear day by day.
Since it's new, TDB is also currently ad-free, which is refreshing. It's design is clean, and right now it can be enjoyed free of clutter. Oh, and one feature really worth checking out: the Video Cheat Sheet, an accumulation of must-see clips from around the Web. It's worth a visit just to find the view-worthy in one place. Why watch the Dow plummet when you can catch Bill Murray's SNL cameo from last night instead?
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Party Like It's 1959
Enough of politics (although I'm really looking forward to tomorrow night's debate). The most exciting news I've had in a while is the fact that Revolutionary Road has finally been made into a movie, directed by Sam Mendes and starring Leo and Kate Winslet, no less. Yates' is, I think, the best novel of the 1950s, of suburbia and conformity; it out-Cheever's Cheever. It's filled with bleakness, drunken-ness, and all around bad behavior, which perhaps explains why it's taken 45 years for it to be adapted for the screen. My assumption is that the success of Mad Men led the studios to think the time was right for this particular period film.
If you're not familiar with Richard Yates, he served in WWII, had TB, wrote a couple of great, minimalist novels and some of the best short stories of the 20th century, was an accomplished creative writing instructor, and drank himself to death. Read his collected stories and see that Raymond Carver didn't come out of left field. In fact, just read his collected stories; many of them are truly wonderful, ultimately better than any of his novels.
Revolutionary Road is the story of April and Frank Wheeler. Frank works in PR; he and April meet at a party in the Village, fall in love, marry. Despite their "artistic" leanings they move to the suburbs. They are predictably unhappy. They talk and talk to each other, drunkenly and manicly trying "communicate," to work through their angst. They decide that if they move to Paris everything will be different. They never make it to Paris. I'm not giving away the ending, just read the book for yourself. The title is, of course, ironic.
In times of trouble we long for the safety and certainty of the past, or yearn toward the better times of the future. We watch period dramas secure in our hindsight; we know better than the Wheelers, we know their plot has nowhere to go but to grief, we feel definite that we're smarter now. But are we? How many dreams were sublimated into mortgages during the past decade, how many aspirations swallowed by consumerist desires? We still want what everyone else has, we still need at the same time to feel different.
The Wheelers' story unfolds on the cusp of cultural, political, and generational change, a cusp we are today similarly balanced upon. We smoke and drink less, we no longer wear fedoras or girdles, we believe we are more enlightened about sexual and racial politics, but underneath the song remains the same: the more we strive, the more we compromise.
If you're not familiar with Richard Yates, he served in WWII, had TB, wrote a couple of great, minimalist novels and some of the best short stories of the 20th century, was an accomplished creative writing instructor, and drank himself to death. Read his collected stories and see that Raymond Carver didn't come out of left field. In fact, just read his collected stories; many of them are truly wonderful, ultimately better than any of his novels.
Revolutionary Road is the story of April and Frank Wheeler. Frank works in PR; he and April meet at a party in the Village, fall in love, marry. Despite their "artistic" leanings they move to the suburbs. They are predictably unhappy. They talk and talk to each other, drunkenly and manicly trying "communicate," to work through their angst. They decide that if they move to Paris everything will be different. They never make it to Paris. I'm not giving away the ending, just read the book for yourself. The title is, of course, ironic.
In times of trouble we long for the safety and certainty of the past, or yearn toward the better times of the future. We watch period dramas secure in our hindsight; we know better than the Wheelers, we know their plot has nowhere to go but to grief, we feel definite that we're smarter now. But are we? How many dreams were sublimated into mortgages during the past decade, how many aspirations swallowed by consumerist desires? We still want what everyone else has, we still need at the same time to feel different.
The Wheelers' story unfolds on the cusp of cultural, political, and generational change, a cusp we are today similarly balanced upon. We smoke and drink less, we no longer wear fedoras or girdles, we believe we are more enlightened about sexual and racial politics, but underneath the song remains the same: the more we strive, the more we compromise.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Poem of the Week (or month, or year)
We Did Not Make Ourselves
By Michael Dickman
(from this week's New Yorker, and my apologies because the formatting isn't perfect)
We did not make ourselves is one thing
I keep singing into my hands
while falling
asleep
for just a second
before I have to get up and turn on all the lights in the house, one after the
other, like opening an Advent calendar
My brain opening
the chemical miracles in my brain
switching on
I can hear
dogs barking
some trees
last stars
You think you’ll be missed
it won’t last long
I promise
____________
I’m not dead but I am
standing very still
in the back yard
staring up at the maple
thirty years ago
a tiny kid waiting on the ground
alone in heaven
in the world
in white sneakers
I’m having a good time humming along to everything I can still remember
back there
How we’re born
Made to look up at everything we didn’t make
We didn’t
make grass, mosquitoes
or breast cancer
We didn’t make yellow jackets
or sunlight
either
_____________
I didn’t make my brain
but I’m helping
to finish it
Carefully stacking up everything I made next to everything I ruined in broad
daylight in bright
brainlight
This morning I killed a fly
and didn’t lie down
next to the body
like we’re supposed to
We’re supposed to
Soon I’m going to wake up
Dogs
Trees
Stars
There is only this world and this world
What a relief
created
over and over
Monday, June 16, 2008
Call Me Ishmael
I have no idea where or when, but at some point I read the claim that all stories begin one of two ways: "A stranger came to town," or "I {he, she, they, etc.} set out on a journey." I couldn't fall asleep last night, so instead of counting sheep, or counting weeds in my yard, I lay there trying to figure out whether or not this is true. Does every story really begin one of those ways?
Set aside all memoir, biography, and autobiography - generic convention means all of these begin with the setting out on a journey. To narrow this down, I worked my way though a syllabus for a 20th Century American lit class I once taught. Here's what we have:
Sister Carrie: she set out on a journey
In Our Time: he set out on a journey
Their Eyes Were Watching God: a stranger came to town, then they set out on a journey
The Sound and the Fury: everyone avoided setting out on a journey, except Caddie, and her setting out ruined everything
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: strangers who had set out on a journey came to town
On the Road: I set out on a journey, then kept journeying trying to replicate the joys of that first journey
In terms of the fiction from that class, the journeys have it. But then I realized that's because I was teaching American literature, which is classically about journeys, movement, lighting out for the territory. The Europeans are much more the "stranger comes to town" types.
Here, though, is the question of the day: can you think of a story that doesn't begin either of these two ways?
Set aside all memoir, biography, and autobiography - generic convention means all of these begin with the setting out on a journey. To narrow this down, I worked my way though a syllabus for a 20th Century American lit class I once taught. Here's what we have:
Sister Carrie: she set out on a journey
In Our Time: he set out on a journey
Their Eyes Were Watching God: a stranger came to town, then they set out on a journey
The Sound and the Fury: everyone avoided setting out on a journey, except Caddie, and her setting out ruined everything
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: strangers who had set out on a journey came to town
On the Road: I set out on a journey, then kept journeying trying to replicate the joys of that first journey
In terms of the fiction from that class, the journeys have it. But then I realized that's because I was teaching American literature, which is classically about journeys, movement, lighting out for the territory. The Europeans are much more the "stranger comes to town" types.
Here, though, is the question of the day: can you think of a story that doesn't begin either of these two ways?
Monday, May 19, 2008
Foundation Myths
I'm a sucker for pop history, so I always greatly anticipate Tony Horwitz' books. His most recent, A Voyage Long and Strange, doesn't disappoint. A visit to Plymouth Rock leads Horwitz to contemplate the 130 years or so of exploration and colonization of the new world that took place between Columbus and the Pilgrims, and to wonder why most of us know so little about it. Horwitz retraces the steps of Coronodo, De Soto, and John Smith, a voyage of discovery of our nation's founding myths, and the ways these myths have, over the centuries, become received as "fact."
Ponce de Leon wasn't looking for a Fountain of Youth; not even the Spanish were that gullible, although they were plenty gullible, spending years and expending men and fortunes schlepping all over the heartland looking for the Seven Cities of Gold. Sir Walter Raleigh never once set foot in Virginia, although his years of flirting with Elizabeth I had netted him title to pretty much the entire east coast. Roanoke's lost colonists weren't lost so much as abandoned; their leader returned to England to get fresh supplies and manpower, but because he hitched rides on ships more interested in piracy than colonization, and because of the war with Spain that culminated in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, it took him five years to return to the colony. At that point the colony had been abandoned, the settlers either massacred by or living with the natives.
Pocahontas may or may not have saved John Smith's life. Natives often put captives through a ritual where their life would be threatened, then dramatically saved, before adopting the captives into their tribe. Plus, Smith was a known exaggerator, Pocahontas was only ten at the time, and a similar story of near execution had been earlier been published by a Spanish conquistador. Pocahontas married John Rolfe, not John Smith. She returned to England with him, had children, enjoyed life in Tudor London. She fell ill and died a few days after they boarded a ship to return to Virginia; she's buried somewhere in Gravesend, England.
The Pilgrims didn't land on Plymouth Rock, which makes sense if you think about it for only a millisecond: who steers a wooden ship towards a rock? They weren't even called "Pilgrims" until the 19th century. Squanto and friends might have shown up to share a harvest meal with the Pilgrims, but this wouldn't have been the first Thanksgiving; that would have taken place almost a hundred years earlier, between the Spanish and the Plains Indians.
At any rate, Thanksgiving wasn't a national holiday until the Civil War, when Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November, 1863 as a day of Thanksgiving to recognize the sacrifices made for the Union. Lincoln didn't mention turkey or Pilgrims, and neither did FDR, when he moved the holiday back a week in 1939 at the urging of merchants eager to lengthen the Christmas shopping season.
There's plenty more to be learned from Horwitz' book, which I heartily recommend. I want to particularly thank him for teaching me something I've wondered during every drive through Rhode Island on my way to Provincetown: it's landlocked, so why is it called Rhode Island? Turns out Verrazzano thought the mainland was in fact Block Island. The terrain reminded him of the Greek island Rhodes. His name stuck although it was probably a good PR move in the way that Greenland was so named in the hopes of attracting settlers. Because really, would you move to Rhodeland, or Rhodia? I didn't think so.
Ponce de Leon wasn't looking for a Fountain of Youth; not even the Spanish were that gullible, although they were plenty gullible, spending years and expending men and fortunes schlepping all over the heartland looking for the Seven Cities of Gold. Sir Walter Raleigh never once set foot in Virginia, although his years of flirting with Elizabeth I had netted him title to pretty much the entire east coast. Roanoke's lost colonists weren't lost so much as abandoned; their leader returned to England to get fresh supplies and manpower, but because he hitched rides on ships more interested in piracy than colonization, and because of the war with Spain that culminated in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, it took him five years to return to the colony. At that point the colony had been abandoned, the settlers either massacred by or living with the natives.
Pocahontas may or may not have saved John Smith's life. Natives often put captives through a ritual where their life would be threatened, then dramatically saved, before adopting the captives into their tribe. Plus, Smith was a known exaggerator, Pocahontas was only ten at the time, and a similar story of near execution had been earlier been published by a Spanish conquistador. Pocahontas married John Rolfe, not John Smith. She returned to England with him, had children, enjoyed life in Tudor London. She fell ill and died a few days after they boarded a ship to return to Virginia; she's buried somewhere in Gravesend, England.
The Pilgrims didn't land on Plymouth Rock, which makes sense if you think about it for only a millisecond: who steers a wooden ship towards a rock? They weren't even called "Pilgrims" until the 19th century. Squanto and friends might have shown up to share a harvest meal with the Pilgrims, but this wouldn't have been the first Thanksgiving; that would have taken place almost a hundred years earlier, between the Spanish and the Plains Indians.
At any rate, Thanksgiving wasn't a national holiday until the Civil War, when Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November, 1863 as a day of Thanksgiving to recognize the sacrifices made for the Union. Lincoln didn't mention turkey or Pilgrims, and neither did FDR, when he moved the holiday back a week in 1939 at the urging of merchants eager to lengthen the Christmas shopping season.
There's plenty more to be learned from Horwitz' book, which I heartily recommend. I want to particularly thank him for teaching me something I've wondered during every drive through Rhode Island on my way to Provincetown: it's landlocked, so why is it called Rhode Island? Turns out Verrazzano thought the mainland was in fact Block Island. The terrain reminded him of the Greek island Rhodes. His name stuck although it was probably a good PR move in the way that Greenland was so named in the hopes of attracting settlers. Because really, would you move to Rhodeland, or Rhodia? I didn't think so.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The Mystery of the Missing
Charles Bock's Beautiful Children contains multitudes. Set in contemporary Las Vegas, the novel kaleidoscopes from the interiority of a stripper, a high school student, a casino manager, a comic book artist, various runaways, a 12 year-old, a mother. At its heart, though, is absence rather than presence. The action takes place on the day a 12 year-old runs away or just simply disappears, and revolves around the mystery of his disappearance and its aftermath. It's a novel about what's missing.
What's missing isn't just the literal, although the plot is driven by the repercussions of a child's absence and a large focus of the book is a group of teenage runaways. Ultimately Bock's focus is a state of disaffection - what happens when we live lives cut off from affect and affection. His characters swirl around one another but don't really connect. Lives intersect but don't intertwine. His characters constantly attempt to reach out to one another, or to anyone at all, through drawings, through conversation, through chat rooms, through pole dancing, but no means of communication proves effective. When the child Newell walks off into the desert he simply makes literal the ephemerality of interpersonal connections.
The text isn't depressing so much as it is sad. All of the characters are drawn with love, and are full of love, but the disconnect between interior and exterior proves to be too much for all of them. In that sense Vegas is the prefect setting for the novel, city of surfaces, false hopes, city of drift and manufactured glamor. Beneath those surfaces real hearts beat, real dreams live on beyond expectation; beneath our exteriors we are all beautiful children, damaged yet daring to keep trying, keep going. Connection isn't achieved but the hope for it remains alive despite the voids that lie at the novel's heart.
Will this book change your life? I don't think so, but it's awfully good, and awfully well-written, and awfully different than most of what you'll find in the New Fiction section of your local Barnes and Noble. It's awfully worth reading. Sometimes your heart needs to be broken just a little bit, to remind you that it's still there.
What's missing isn't just the literal, although the plot is driven by the repercussions of a child's absence and a large focus of the book is a group of teenage runaways. Ultimately Bock's focus is a state of disaffection - what happens when we live lives cut off from affect and affection. His characters swirl around one another but don't really connect. Lives intersect but don't intertwine. His characters constantly attempt to reach out to one another, or to anyone at all, through drawings, through conversation, through chat rooms, through pole dancing, but no means of communication proves effective. When the child Newell walks off into the desert he simply makes literal the ephemerality of interpersonal connections.
The text isn't depressing so much as it is sad. All of the characters are drawn with love, and are full of love, but the disconnect between interior and exterior proves to be too much for all of them. In that sense Vegas is the prefect setting for the novel, city of surfaces, false hopes, city of drift and manufactured glamor. Beneath those surfaces real hearts beat, real dreams live on beyond expectation; beneath our exteriors we are all beautiful children, damaged yet daring to keep trying, keep going. Connection isn't achieved but the hope for it remains alive despite the voids that lie at the novel's heart.
Will this book change your life? I don't think so, but it's awfully good, and awfully well-written, and awfully different than most of what you'll find in the New Fiction section of your local Barnes and Noble. It's awfully worth reading. Sometimes your heart needs to be broken just a little bit, to remind you that it's still there.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Memoir in Six Words
Can you describe your life in six words? The editors of Smith magazine asked readers to do just that, and a compilation of the best submissions has been published as a book, Not Quite What I Was Planning. Now everyone' s doing it, and you can too. Here are some examples:
Failure was apparently an option here.
Crawl, step, run, step, crawl, lay.
Making shit up as I go.
California, Pennsylvania, Jersey, Manhattan, Vancouver, Seattle.
Fat man in a sweater vest.
Here are a couple that I wrote:
I meant it at the time.
Play, Stop. No FF, no rewind.
Moved one place, then to another.
Too many books. Too little time.
Dog. Dog. Cat. Cat. Dog. Dog.
So, join in - see if you can write your autobiography in only six words.
Failure was apparently an option here.
Crawl, step, run, step, crawl, lay.
Making shit up as I go.
California, Pennsylvania, Jersey, Manhattan, Vancouver, Seattle.
Fat man in a sweater vest.
Here are a couple that I wrote:
I meant it at the time.
Play, Stop. No FF, no rewind.
Moved one place, then to another.
Too many books. Too little time.
Dog. Dog. Cat. Cat. Dog. Dog.
So, join in - see if you can write your autobiography in only six words.
Friday, February 15, 2008
What's New in Old Media
It's been a busy week, what with the work and the two inches of water in my basement, so I haven't had much time to read, but I did catch up on some magazines last night, and if you're not a subscriber, I want to highly recommend this week's issue of New York magazine. This publication went through a recent period of crapulousness, but in the past year it's gotten better and better. This particular issue is just great.
First, the magazine is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and doing so by every few months taking one section and writing and designing it as if it were 1968. This week features the 1968 Strategist - dining, nightlife, real estate, beauty, and shopping columns pulled from the archives and (here's the best part) laid out and designed just as they would have been 40 years ago. It's fascinating not only in that way-back machine kind of vibe (CorningWare is new! the Kodak Instamatic is both expensive and revolutionary!) but also in the use of graphics and fonts. Laid out in the middle of a contemporary publication design, you can really see the aesthetic differences between the two periods. Note that I didn't include a link, because this simply does not come through online. Go ahead, give some props to print and buy the issue.
In fact, to try to get you to buy the issue, I won't provide links for these other articles, not that you can't find them online if you desire. If you're interested in quitting smoking, voluntarily going insane, or want to know what suicidal ideation really feels like, then read Derek De Koff's "This Is My Brain on Chantix." All he wanted to do was stop smoking. Instead, he ultimately found himself in a bar chatting with and trying to pick up not a potted plant but the plant's shadow. Yes, you read that correctly.
Can anyone resist the story of a coke-addled hedge fund manager, his drunken wife, an internet psychic, and a male stripper named Tiger? I didn't think so. This week's issue also features a look into the death of Seth Tobias, the fight over his estate, and the wild, strange trip that was his marriage. Did Phyllis Tobias kill him? Did he secretly carry on an affair in Vegas with Tiger? Is it fun to lose $250 million in a year's time? Read all about it.
I'll be spending part of the weekend proofing the layout of my own print publication. I know this sounds very old media, but please help keep print alive. Here are just a few of the things new media can't provide: the smell of ink, the beauty of feature design uninterrupted by advertising, the pleasures of a story researched and written to last longer than a very short news cycle, and the paychecks given to press and delivery people. Buy something this weekend. Then read it.
First, the magazine is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and doing so by every few months taking one section and writing and designing it as if it were 1968. This week features the 1968 Strategist - dining, nightlife, real estate, beauty, and shopping columns pulled from the archives and (here's the best part) laid out and designed just as they would have been 40 years ago. It's fascinating not only in that way-back machine kind of vibe (CorningWare is new! the Kodak Instamatic is both expensive and revolutionary!) but also in the use of graphics and fonts. Laid out in the middle of a contemporary publication design, you can really see the aesthetic differences between the two periods. Note that I didn't include a link, because this simply does not come through online. Go ahead, give some props to print and buy the issue.
In fact, to try to get you to buy the issue, I won't provide links for these other articles, not that you can't find them online if you desire. If you're interested in quitting smoking, voluntarily going insane, or want to know what suicidal ideation really feels like, then read Derek De Koff's "This Is My Brain on Chantix." All he wanted to do was stop smoking. Instead, he ultimately found himself in a bar chatting with and trying to pick up not a potted plant but the plant's shadow. Yes, you read that correctly.
Can anyone resist the story of a coke-addled hedge fund manager, his drunken wife, an internet psychic, and a male stripper named Tiger? I didn't think so. This week's issue also features a look into the death of Seth Tobias, the fight over his estate, and the wild, strange trip that was his marriage. Did Phyllis Tobias kill him? Did he secretly carry on an affair in Vegas with Tiger? Is it fun to lose $250 million in a year's time? Read all about it.
I'll be spending part of the weekend proofing the layout of my own print publication. I know this sounds very old media, but please help keep print alive. Here are just a few of the things new media can't provide: the smell of ink, the beauty of feature design uninterrupted by advertising, the pleasures of a story researched and written to last longer than a very short news cycle, and the paychecks given to press and delivery people. Buy something this weekend. Then read it.
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