haha the scene where daenerys takes a bath and the water, like, flows up inside her uterus or whatever? you get the impression ol Grrm doesn't know a...morehaha the scene where daenerys takes a bath and the water, like, flows up inside her uterus or whatever? you get the impression ol Grrm doesn't know a lot of women. Strange, considering how much he likes to write about rape! Still, I'm gonna read the next one. So.(less)
This was hit-and-miss but China Mieville is still the only writer I want to read right now. I like my Mieville grim, instead of all madcap and- he act...moreThis was hit-and-miss but China Mieville is still the only writer I want to read right now. I like my Mieville grim, instead of all madcap and- he actually used this word- "rompy." Well, he said "romp."
I'm sorry I stopped using you, goodreads! I think I've forgotten how to use you.(less)
Fuuuuuuck yes! Apparently, I bought a beat up old cheap & stainy copy of this a few years ago, but I just refound it again right before we moved a...moreFuuuuuuck yes! Apparently, I bought a beat up old cheap & stainy copy of this a few years ago, but I just refound it again right before we moved across the country. I wrote a lot about it in my book reviews column for Aorta issue four, so I don't super feel like getting into it again, but the short version is that Kathy Acker's superimposition technique- here she tells the stories of some murderesses in history at the same time that she tells her own autobiographical stories, as well as a bunch of porn- is as startling and makes me feel as excited here in her early work as it is in her later/eighties work like Great Expectations, even if here it's a little more ramshackle and blunt. I cannot say enough good things about Kathy Acker. God damn. (less)
OH MAN it crushes my poor cold heart to sand to have to tell you this, because I used to borrow this book from the library over and over and over when...moreOH MAN it crushes my poor cold heart to sand to have to tell you this, because I used to borrow this book from the library over and over and over when I was in fifth grade and it's one of the things that really made me like books so goddam much, but it's just all about like "Native American people are mysterious and magical," which is not an okay theme. So sad! I was so stoked when I found it in a little used bookstore in Kokomo Indiana, because when I was little I think I just thought Laurie Stratton was so grown up- she called her siblings "the children" and her mother "Mother," and had a boyfriend, and learned to astrally project herself long distances- but man, what a downer, to be like "I can do magic shit because I'm secretly a Navajo alien or something." Um, spoiler.(less)
Ugh I thought I'd be able to gloss over the normativities and just enjoy a trashy novel, but I was wrong. The villain is
-a sex worker -a vegetarian -an...moreUgh I thought I'd be able to gloss over the normativities and just enjoy a trashy novel, but I was wrong. The villain is
-a sex worker -a vegetarian -an herbalist -sex positive
whereas the hero is
-a fry cook -who was saving himself for marriage until his One Beloved died -who doesn't do anything weird.
Boring. I was rooting for the villain the whole time, except she sucked. Plus pretty much nothing happened: SPOILER Odd finds somebody got killed, so he goes to a hotel, where there are some creepy people. THE END. I keep wanting to know what happens in this series, but trudging through its individual volumes is killing me. Dean Koontz's Frankenstein is workin for me, though.(less)
Wow, it seems like a lot of people didn't notice that this kinda sucked! Weird. It read to me like he wrote The Botany of Desire, decided that that fr...moreWow, it seems like a lot of people didn't notice that this kinda sucked! Weird. It read to me like he wrote The Botany of Desire, decided that that framework- a loose structure in which he can just talk alternately interesting and totally self-serving shit for a whole book- and figured he'd give it another go, but this time as his MAGNUM OPUS. And I was pretty into it, for the most part, but in a lot of the parts where he thinks he's being super even-handed, he's actually often being a boring middle-aged white liberal dude with boring tenured college professor politics. I mean, have you read the part in this book where he decides that animals shouldn't be killed, declares himself a vegetarian, gets stressed out, decides that being a vegetarian is stepping on your friends' toes, then says a bunch of total fucking nothing for twenty minutes (I listened to the audiobook- which, by the way, makes this book sound super preachy even if it isn't, because of the narrator's tone of voice) and decides that vegetarianism isn't a viable way of life? Even though, I don't know, something like a million billion people have been living that way for pretty much forever? Just admit it, Mike: you like eating meat, don't want to make the effort to stop, convinced Peter Singer to concede that, sure, if you're going to eat meat, it's better to eat meat that's been ethically raised and slaughtered (aduh), and decided that that settles it: Pete Singer said you don't have to be a vegetarian, so let's just-
OH MAN after the vegetarian part- we are about three quarters of the way in at this point- Mike decides that he's going to be a hunter, so he writes two hours (it is a trip for me to listen to a book because I do it so rarely, but I am driving across the country and it is a wide country) of the most florid, masturbatory prose I have ever had the privilege of consuming in any medium. ON and ON and ON and ON about the great natural dance, and how probably when you shoot an animal it releases THC (the active ingredient in marijuana; a cannabanoid, which is a science word!) into your brain, 'cause it sure feels like getting stoned. And the beauty of how time slows down when you look through a rifle sight, and how now he is better than people who hunt in their real lives. Thanks for that, Mike. Also thanks for your total lack of solutions for people who can't afford or don't have access to organically grown local fuckin cows that got to play dress-up whenever they wanted up until Temple Grandin killed them. Actually, thanks for your total lack of solutions to anything (besides 'get your friend to clean the pig you shoot,' SPOILER).
It's just... The Botany of Desire was pretty fun! You do better when you tell me about Johnny Appleseed, Michael Pollan, than you do when you try to tell me how to eat. Also I know you did it first but Eating Animals does a better job of explaining about how animals are tortured in american corporate agriculture. The student has become the teacher! O-oh!(less)
You guys. Oh. My. God. Do you know this book? Okay, basically, this guy- J Michael Bailey- and a couple other people who blurb this book, or whom he c...moreYou guys. Oh. My. God. Do you know this book? Okay, basically, this guy- J Michael Bailey- and a couple other people who blurb this book, or whom he cites in this book, they are in charge of deciding how to frame and classify transsexuality in the upcoming DSM V, ie the official Dungeon Master's Guide of Psychology. Okay.
So, notoriously, to anyone who cares at all about trans people, these folks are clearly wingnuts. But since they have PhDs in psychology from respectable schools, and people who are trans/care about trans people don't, these people get to just make shit up and call it science. You guys, it is AMAZING. This book? Apparently this book is still, seven years later, considered the definitive study/work on transsexuality. But seriously?
Seriously.
This book is like the fucking I Ching of heterosexist, cissupremicist bullshit. You can turn to pretty much any page and find something completely fucked up, based on the assumptions you can expect from a straight white guy who really, really thinks he's doing good work but who really, really actually is just propping up his own place in the hierarchy of gender and sexuality.
It's amazing.
In the introduction, he's like "there's this guy who works at the makeup counter in a store near where I live, and you can tell by looking at him that he's a total fag, and that he totally takes it in the ass, and that he got beat up when he was little, and all this other stuff. And maybe this guy is going to become a girl!" Because when you take out the cusswords, that makes it science! What the fuck is that "maybe this guy is going to become a girl" part, you are asking yourself, and I'm asking myself, too, because it doesn't go anywhere. This person doesn't transition in the book. J Mike is just thinking that maybe it'll happen, because one kind of trans women is just gay men- like J Mike- assumes this guy is- who are SOSOSO feminine that they have to become women. And they were that feminine when they were little. Or something.
The he tells us about how, in the last couple decades, different fields of science have separated out gender and sexuality, but that's wrong, and actually gender and sexuality are pretty much the same thing. He backs up his point not with any numbers or science, but just 'cause he can tell. It's obvious! Come on! Well, okay, actually, he does back it up at one point with this evidential gem: one time he and his ten-year-old son went to the movies, and his son heard some dude talking like a fag behind them, and he (the son) was like "dude! Dad! That guy's a fag!" And J Mike was like, "I know, son, I know, and maybe he will transition."
That's the kind of evidence we get in this book. Like sometimes J Mike will make up a survey, and give it to some gay men he met in bars, or through personal ads, or he will make up a survey and then give it to some trans women he met in a bar, and that will suffice for evidence for him. Except, y'know, 1. Self-reporting is WEAK SCIENCE, and two, when the self-reporting doesn't support the privileged things J Mike is trying to argue, he just explains that the gay men and trans women (who are men, by the way; "hang out and you'll get used to it") are LYING and that his thesis is right. Which is WEAK SCIENCE.
We could talk about how in the introduction he says "somebody should write a book about masculine women and trans men, but this is not that book," except then he brings up masculine women/trans men whenever his ideas about them support his theories, but I don't want to talk about it.
The first third of the book is about boys who are feminine, and the main thing we learn is that J Mike thinks queer scientists who are actually invested in these kids' lives are too wishy washy, arguing that these kids are fine and it's the culture that oppresses them, but that also right wing people who think these kids' parents should just make 'em man up are also wrong, so the correct thing to do with a feminine son- the middle path, the neither conservative nor liberal answer, the only fair thing to do- is to absolutely refuse to let these kids express any kind of femininity at all, no matter how much they beg or cry, no matter how much it breaks their parents' hearts to see the pain in their children's eyes. This, somehow, is different from the right-wing, conservative idea that you shouldn't let boy children express femininity. Also, the reason that the parents he's talking about are talking to him about this stuff in the first place is that they've TRIED that and it didn't work, and also, the main proponent of refusing to support your feminine sons, this guy Zucker, he's quite happy to admit that he has no idea whether being mean to your kid will work.
Also, J Mike and Zucker, they're not sure what "working" would even look like. Your kid growing up straight? Your kid not growing up trans? Here J Mike asserts that "nobody is arguing that it's okay for kids to grow up and transition." HEY J MIKE I AM ARGUING THAT. Are you a callous asshole who thought it was okay for your kid to be inconsolable when you refused to let him do things he liked to do, or do you just think other people should be?
So that's nice, and then in the second third of the book, J Mike explains to us about gay men, from his position of authority as someone who hangs out in gay bars and posts personal ads. This is stupid. Dear J Mike: you've done sociological research on the gay men who hang out in bars and answer personal ads, not an actual representative sample of gay men. I'm sorry to have to break that to you. The only, only reason I can think of that other scientists haven't called him out on this- unless they have and he just doesn't care- is that other scientists care little enough about gay people to consider J Mike's findings critically. Because, oh my god. OH MY GOD J MIKE.
He makes tons of generalizations, then he takes a minute to cut down the cardboard cutout version of social constructionism without actually looking deeply into it, and then he just basically calls gay men fags in academic language for a while. Good times.
So then in the last third of the book, he ties the first two together. First, and most famously, he tells us that there are two kinds of transsexual women: one, the hot kind, who are feminine as hell when they are little, and then giant fags, and then SUCH giant fags that they become women. So they can have sex with straight men. Then there are the other kind of trans women: "autogynephilic" trans women, or trans women who aren't hot for anybody except themselves. As women. (And then, toward the end of the book, there's a throwaway line about how after "autogynephilic" transsexuals transition, they tend to become lesbians. HOWEVER that has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING, OBVIOUSLY, and if we are making up categories in which to place trans women, it makes a lot more sense to go "trans women who like men vs. trans women who like, uh, themselves" than it does "trans women who like men vs. trans women who like women," doesn't it, J Mike? NO.)
Now, autogynephilia has long been a controversial thing, with its supporters and self-identifiers as well as those- like me- who think it's a pretty transparent logical trap to force trans women into. I mean, here is something that seems like it would BLOW J MIKE'S FUCKING MIND: lots of cis women are sexually into the idea of being women! Inconceivable, right? J Mike's whole argument- and his friends Anne Lawrence, who's been kicked out of medicine for conducting inappropriately sexual examinations of her patients, and K Zuck, the one who thinks you should be mean to your kid all the time without exception- is that "autogynelphilic transsexuals" transition because they're SO SO SO HOT for the feeling of being women. And that "homosexual transsexuals only transition because they're SO SO SO HOT for straight dude cock (eg J Mike Bailey cock).
This makes sense if you believe that trans women transition for sexual or paraphilic reasons- y'know, if you believe that thing that J Mike asserted in the first couple pages and then never really backed up?
I don't know whether it just didn't occur to J Mike that trans women might transition AND ALSO have sexualities, instead of transitioning solely because of their sexualities, but I kinda don't care, either. Well, that's not true. I care. But I'm so, so jaded to this kind of thing that it's hard for me to even muster a bunch of capitals, because do you want to know the root of this failure to even think about women's sexualities? It's patriarchy. It's misogyny. Women don't have sexualities, right, J Mike? And anyway, trans women are a kind of men, right, J Mike?
So basically, all of J Mike's arguments are built on platforms that don't work, or are full of shit. I mean, here is another thing to think about: trans women are actually women. They transition because, in some real, legitimate way, they are women whose bodies developed (or tried to develop) into men's bodies, which felt wrong because they are women. See, logically, how much easier that is? FUCKING OCCAM, J MIKE. The only reason I can think of for this not to be completely, super a hundred percent obvious to J Mike is that, when he looks at a trans women, all he can think about is her cock: whether she has one, whether she's gotten rid of it, how big it was, what she did with it, if she has any videos of what she did with it, or still pictures or anything... I mean, he goes pretty deep into some titillating descriptions of one trans woman- the only one he seems to know who fits into his "autogynephile" category.
I mean, people are obsessed with trans women because of their junk, right? That's what everybody who doesn't know any trans women wants to talk about all the time. And J Mike? You don't know anything about trans women. You know about this one woman, who I won't name because oh yeah! You never said you were gonna change anybody's name anywhere, so as far as I know you used her real name. And then you know about some trans women she introduced you to, and you know about some other trans women you met in bars, saw and decided were trans women, approached, and got consent to interview from. That is called a nonrepresentative sample.
You have not described me or anyone I know in your book, J Mike. You have created and supported catch-22 categories for you to lump trans women into, with no regard for their lived experiences unless their self-reports of those experiences support your theory.
So... so yeah, I guess I digressed there a little. I mean, the last third of the book is J Mike talking about how, once you accept that trans women all fall into these two categories based on who they are wanting to fuck- to be clear: men or themselves, with absolutely no acknowledgment of the fact that, actually, trans women he studied often prefer women, and also, with absolutely no acknowledgment of the fact that lots of trans women (I am talking about myself here) are queers who will and have fucked men and women- then these categories make so much sense, and clarifying his categories, and jacking off over how smart he and Ken Zucker- the guy who thinks that making children cry as often as possible is good parenting- are. He gives no consideration to the fact that his two categories are MADE UP.
So it just blows my mind that this counts as reputable science- or, if (hopefully) this has been reputed (which seems unlikely as this fucker is, as of this writing, in charge of telling the psychological community about me), then that it ever did count as reputable science. It's bad science, and it's science based on cissexism and patriarchy and misogyny, which, let's be clear, are all on the same basketball team.
Fuuuuck, somebody who knows what they're doing, write me a grant proposal so I can not work for a month and write critical annotations to this ridiculous, appalling piece of writing. I bought it from a used book store because hopefully in twenty years it will be a hilarious, campy relic of the bad old days. And I do feel optimistic that that will happen, if only because I know so many trans women who are smart, strong, activism-oriented, and- most importantly- don't hang out in fucking bars all the time.
...
Okay. Edited to acknowledge that it looks like there WAS some controversy around this book. I think the points that I made still stand, though, since, y'know, people who think that The Man Who Would Be Queen makes a lot of sense and is full of rigorous science are still in positions of authority in the psychological community. So. (less)
Hey, goodreads. Remember how seriously I used to take you? I would tell you every time I finished a book, and then I would tell you about the book. I...moreHey, goodreads. Remember how seriously I used to take you? I would tell you every time I finished a book, and then I would tell you about the book. I guess I haven't been doing that as much lately. Kind of like how Chuck Palahniuk has been phoning it in for three books now, huh?
Because look, this was the last one of his books I hadn't read. Now I have read all of them. And Chuck? The only reason I didn't give this one five stars is because it wasn't Rant, which I have built up in my head to be your grand achievement, or whatever the French word is. But Diary was great! Remember when your writing used to be transgressive not because of vibrator jokes, but because of the grim tone and the overwhelming, almost-but-not-quite cartoonishness of the immorality of all the characters? This was fun! You did interesting things with the plot- I don't even want to say what because it would give it away! The fact that you think girls are icky was expressed interestingly, instead of boringly! The metaphysical stuff was fun, the repeated staccato phrases didn't get overwhelming or boring, and there were homos.
Thumbs up, Chuck.
So here's what I think: Snuff, Pygmy and Tell-All are Chuck's humor trilogy. Y'know how he likes to write in trilogies? Diary is part of the horror trilogy with Haunted and... something else, I forget what. Well, Chuck, your humor trilogy has failed. Please write a second horror trilogy! Or keep doing sci-fi, like Rant! Because when you are on your are on. Finishing this one is kinda bittersweet. (less)
This read like it was from 1953. I'm not sure what to tell you. The language around race reads like a white person wrote it in 1953, which is pretty u...moreThis read like it was from 1953. I'm not sure what to tell you. The language around race reads like a white person wrote it in 1953, which is pretty uncomfortable, and I'm not super excited about the dingy glamour of urban addicts' lives, so that wasn't the most exciting thing for me, either. But I think the important thing here is that this laid the groundwork for so much awesome stuff that would come after it, and invented a lot of narrative stuff, that it's still pretty badass. I mean, it's old and I hate old things but I still didn't get bored and put it down. (less)
Well, this has been huge at my store. I'm guessing it's been huge everywhere? I mostly picked it up 'cause I found a pretty cheap used copy at a books...moreWell, this has been huge at my store. I'm guessing it's been huge everywhere? I mostly picked it up 'cause I found a pretty cheap used copy at a bookstore in West Philly I'd name for you if I could remember. And it was good! Usually when I suck it up and read something popular I'm reminded about why book people tend to have better taste than television people. Like Jersey Shore was this hugely popular show, but I couldn't get five minutes deep into before being like "I know these people, I avoid these people, I don't want to watch them on TV." Whereas when a book is popular there is usually SOMEthing to it.
So yeah. Maine! I am moving to Maine soon! I think I'd been only vaguely aware that this was set there before I picked it up, so that was nice. Although they're pretty rural in the book and I'm gonna be in Portland. Still though, I'm not the New Englandest person you're ever going to meet, but I've spent a minute there, and the New England stuff all rang true. And I think it's pretty amazing how Ms. Strout sustained a whole book about the emotional and sexual lives of the AARP set; that's pretty hardcore and I give her credit for engaging so directly with mortality, regret and loss. So well done there.
So... Elizabeth Strout is an MFA professor. You know my feelings about MFA programs. What this book reminded me was that, when you do all the MFA writing program things well- the telling details, the crushing epiphanies, the building tension- what you are doing is hiding the fact that these are the MFA writing program things. You make it look like there just happens to be a theme about how some bodies are big or fat and some are small or skinny, and like that's something that's just part of all the stories, that just happens to create a cohesive theme- instead of beating everybody over the head with it. So she does mostly a good job of camouflaging the MFAness of her writing, but sometimes she doesn't.
Like, okay. Every time the outside world shows up, in the form of a yoga-doin', soy milk drinkin', meat avoiding young person? I don't believe it. For a second. Maybe some people talk about their soy hot dogs this way, and drink lots of straight soy milk, but they're not in my life. Which is a shame about this book! Otherwise it goes so well, but whenever one of these people that Ms. Kitteredge Just Doesn't Understand shows up, I feel like I'm reading something I wrote when I was twenty and Very Interested In Showing Other Perspectives, in a pretty messed up way. "I've never talked to one, but I'm gonna write from the perspective of a Mexican immigrant!" Good luck with that, kid. So... yeah, so that was a shame.
It doesn't ruin the book, though. It just keeps it from being a perfect book. (less)
Tim said that Wells Tower is his favorite author ever ever now, which is a pretty big deal, and he's been pushing this book pretty hard basically sinc...moreTim said that Wells Tower is his favorite author ever ever now, which is a pretty big deal, and he's been pushing this book pretty hard basically since it came out, so I read it on a plane a few days ago. And it was good, I liked it, but Wells Tower hasn't become my new favorite author evar or anything. A friend wrote it off as something like "men having men's feelings," which I think is a pretty unfair reduction, but which might be part of why it didn't hit me as hard as it's hit some people. I mean, dude can write, and he does a really good job of walking the line between gross/ridiculous and heavy- kind of like Etgar Keret a little bit, although I guess not that much, because these stories are longer and go deeper than Keret's. Is what she said- although it seems to me like there's less underpants kinds of talk as the book goes on. And that was the stuff that i liked the best: when it was clear that these guys have their problems and they've fucked up but it's not all bleak, or ONLY bleak.
Do you want to hear the best part? Don't read any more if you don't want to read the best line in the book. Seriously, ready? This one guy is talking about filling out an online dating application, and the question is "If you were an animal, what animal would you be?" He answers "A bumblebee trying to fuck a glass marble." (less)
After hearing her name a million times, I finally got ahold of one of Dodie Bellamy's books! It felt like... um, not like coming home, because that's...moreAfter hearing her name a million times, I finally got ahold of one of Dodie Bellamy's books! It felt like... um, not like coming home, because that's a pretty boring way to put something. But it made sense to me; the whole thing is a meditation on the discomfort/awkwardness that comes from the necessity of writing experimental- or "experimental"- fiction. It makes sense that she's the lady one who hangs out with Dennis Cooper and Kevin Killian and those folks. I'm trying to think of a way to say "she does kind of a lady version of what they do" that doesn't sound kind of, like, grounded on bullshit assumptions of what a "lady version" f something would be, but she does spend time interrogating exactly that subject- what it's like to be the mostly straight woman who grew up as a writer among queer men writing in a style they came up with. Ish. Anyway, she is funny and bad ass and smart and I bought a ton of her other books from Small Press Distribution when I finished this one. W000t.(less)
I don't understand what the fuck people like about this book. Here's what I got from the first 150 pages (of 600), before I gave up: people who go to...moreI don't understand what the fuck people like about this book. Here's what I got from the first 150 pages (of 600), before I gave up: people who go to book stores are idiots; smugness is a virtue, as is feeling superior to everyone else all the time; misogyny is no reason not to publish a book; who cares if you spell a word wrong every few pages; Pete Bagge's art has been extremely influential; and transsexuals aren't real people, they're punchlines. Good work, Alex Robinson. Fuck all of these things that you taught me, though. Ew. (less)
Sigh. Oh Chuck. You're just convinced that you've found the magic formula, and you can churn out a book every year or two indefinitely, aren't you? I...moreSigh. Oh Chuck. You're just convinced that you've found the magic formula, and you can churn out a book every year or two indefinitely, aren't you? I mean, this isn't as bad as Pygmy, or even Snuff, but it's on the same level as them. Ugh. First, it is barely a book; if we acknowledge that every new chapter has half a blank page to mark it, this is like a 150-page book. Second, why is the repetetive verbal tick in this book (they are in all of your books, Chuck) some random three-animal-noise blurt followed by a celebrity's name? That's stupid.
Third: this was your chance, Chuck. As the gay dude who represents straight dude masculinity in his books- and the one who I think still sells well enough that maybe you keep churning 'em out in an effort to keep the publishing industry afloat?- writing about a woman, from another woman's point of view, in the style of the gossip column- that famous, old-timey domain of ladies and gay men- you could have really made a point. Any fucking point! Something about camp and old-timey Hollywood glamour, or something about queeniness, or... I don't know, anything! But in every one of your last few books, I totally root for you to do something smart and awesome (because you did in Rant, which still fucking stands up, I read the synopsis on Wikipedia and get totally pumped), and then you don't really do anything.
I liked this. I read it a while ago. It made me miss New York, even though I was in New York 30 years after these things happened, and it reminded me...moreI liked this. I read it a while ago. It made me miss New York, even though I was in New York 30 years after these things happened, and it reminded me of why Patti Smith isn't my favorite singer- there's this restraint that smacks of poetry and intentionality in everything I've seen her do, which is not what I'm looking for in rocknroll. It works in a book though.
I was ready to give her hell for being the straight person who writes a memoir of her gay friend, appropriating that oppression, but then it didn't really read like that. She just loved her friend a lot and misses him and also, she says she really didn't even understand or approve of the hardcore gay kink shit he was doing, and that's the stuff you'd use to appropriate oppression, titillate and sell. So nice job, Patti Smith. (less)
Ms. Bender has outdone herself. She is my favorite and I love her and we are in love and we are gay married, so take from this review what you will, b...moreMs. Bender has outdone herself. She is my favorite and I love her and we are in love and we are gay married, so take from this review what you will, but.... like, I have loved her other books, and I always say that she's a short story writer more than a novelist (like Lorrie Moore or Amy Bloom, although pretty unlike those two otherwise), but I may stand corrected. I mean, this one makes An Invisible Sign of My Own (which, by the way, was supposed to become a terrible movie, wasn't it?) look kind of one-dimensional.
Also, it feels like... okay. Aimee Bender does this thing where stuff in her stories wouldn't happen in the real world, like a narrator's boyfriend turns into a newt or whatever. In short stories, it works because that metaphor, the literalization of a subtext or whatever, doesn't have to go deep enough to sustain three hundred pages. You've got a setting, and then that metaphor, and then you twist it, and then maybe you twist it again: thirty pages, fifty pages, you're done. In her last novel, there wasn't as much, like... I don't want to call it magical relaism, mostly 'cause compared to what Ms. Bender does, "magical realism" feels a lot less interesting and contemporary, especially now that it's thirty years after the heyday of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Maybe just magic? But in An Invisible Sign of My Own there wasn't that much magic happening. It was there, but it was subtle; the focus was on gore, and feelings, and surreal neighborhood/community weirdness. It was way more surreal than unreal.
In this one, though, the hook is something unreal: Rose can taste the feelings people were feeling when they were making the food she eats. Every day growing up she tastes the desperation her mother is concealing. It's pretty brutal. But so instead of that unreal thing making the story into a magical farce or surreal odyssey or whatever, it kind of becomes just a thing in the novel that might as well be a hypersensitivity on the part of the narrator or something; the story isn't about this magical thing, although it is about the sadness- the PARTICULAR sadness, if you feel me- that comes from this magic thing. It would be a different story if Rose couldn't taste folks' feelings, and the other unreal thing that happens in the story- which I'm not going to tell you about- would feel a lot more out of place without it, but it's just a hook. It's not the whole story.
So I guess the amazing thing is how that weird hook is just a thread in the majestic tapestry (puke, puke) of suburban feelings that's otherwise totally relatable and sweet and brutal and true to growing up a sad kid. Y'know?
Also, it's interesting how that makes this a food book. How hot are food books right now? Everybody has a total boner for sustainable agriculture, and whatever Michael Pollan has to say about vegetables, and urban farming, and local food, and all that stuff, which makes its way into The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, without actually making it a part of that zeitgeist. I mean, I groaned when I realized how much Rose would be talking about the farmers who are growing the food that tastes organic or not organic, or desperate or, because I was like Oh boring, another book about sustainable organic local food: I GET IT, BORING. It's not a dominant theme or anything, but it is there, which makes this book feel pretty 2010. So.
What else can I tell you... Aimee Bender's sentences are always beautiful, every single one of them, and the final paragraph is astounding and amazing (although it might not seem that way if you remember that I told you that, so try and forget it; it's understated amazing, not punch you in the face amazing, although I guess it's a little bit punch you in the face amazing too). A hundred stars!(less)
I don't feel like I learned anything, and it's hard to give this book any stars 'cause of all the misogyny and beating up women, but I've gotta say, t...moreI don't feel like I learned anything, and it's hard to give this book any stars 'cause of all the misogyny and beating up women, but I've gotta say, this scratched a certain trashy itch. And I guess I did learn something about GG Allin, about whom I've always only had vague conceptions. But yeah...it's poorly written, extremely short, pretty much totally stupid, and narratively flat, but totally trashy and fun. If you're not grossed out by GG eating his own shit and throwing it on people. (less)
Dunno why I'm compelled to keep reading these. I don't like the lady luck character; I'm not super interested in the Las Vegas thing; I kind of hate J...moreDunno why I'm compelled to keep reading these. I don't like the lady luck character; I'm not super interested in the Las Vegas thing; I kind of hate Jack. I keep reading them, though, so... haha, I don't know what to tell you. Somebody sold the first three of these to the book store so I'm burning through 'em. I should probably give this two stars, except it's competent, and the two-page spread where Jack's wife- cough, spoiler- dies is really effective. I don't know. I like comics. (less)
This is fine, and I was into it, and I like the fairy tale thing (obviously), but it seems kind of weak for a story- um spoiler- to culminate in the h...moreThis is fine, and I was into it, and I like the fairy tale thing (obviously), but it seems kind of weak for a story- um spoiler- to culminate in the hero, who is a caricature of cocky masculinity, throwing a minor villain, who is a caricature of 'politically correct' feminist lady, headfirst down a well. And then not really resolving anything with the main villain, even though obviously it is a comic book so you can't resolve everything in book one. So two stars, except one more because I was into it enough while it was going on, and I liked the retirement home concept. (less)
Loading...
