by Mary Wollstonecraft
Sean wrote: "Dick-lit? Would it be fair to assume that that isn't literature written by guys named Richard?"
Apparently, it's more complex than that. ]]>
bookshelves: feminist-studies
Vindication of the Rights of Man, Wollstonecraft's lesser known essay, was a polemical response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, which in itself was a critical response to the political motivations behind the French Revolution. The central issues that Wollstonecraft takes with Burke's book is the way in which it seems to advocate inequality, further oligarchic control, and dismiss the popular reason of the Enlightenment as an irrational and reckless response to (what Burke considers) justice.
Both of the essays contained in this edition rail against the way in which power denies certain individuals the right to a life of equal opportunity and happiness, which is what makes reading them in conjunction such a redeeming experience. Of course, her major work here is Vindication of the Rights of Woman, mainly because it established her as one of the first major feminist writers, and because it elaborately lays out her views on subjects ranging from class distinction, parenting, national education, and most importantly, the unfortunate social role that women seem to play in the world.
For the most part, Wollstonecraft's ideas are not terribly complex, and her writing isn't as difficult as that of some of her contemporaries. Aside from some of the slightly tangential details that occupy most of the latter half of the book, the first, stronger half, basically concerns itself with the issue of blind female obedience as brought on by early indoctrination. Education systems are solely to blame here, not to mention a certain domestic etiquette that hinders the independent growth of female thought. While this isn't exactly an earth-shattering epiphany to the modern reader, it certainly was a large part of the problem when it came to women's rights in the Eighteenth century. Not only were women basically denied the same political, social, and financial opportunities as men, but they were furthermore distracted by a certain lifestyle that seemed to flat out eschew any activities or duty that even remotely resembled independent thought. Her solution to a life of social oppression goes as follows.
"Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavour to keep women in the dark, because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play thing."
To be perfectly honest, I cannot see how anything more elaborate or complex than that can be ascertained from this book. It displays a fair share of redundancies, but then again, the joy of reading Wollstonecraft is to be found in the tone of her vitriolic writing style. She also put action into praxis through the act of writing the book at all, which was a notable accomplishment in itself.
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Jimmy
read and liked
Conrad's
review of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed:
"Guns, Germs and Steel occasionally felt like monday morning quarterbacking, but Collapse is superb. In GG&S, Diamond tried to explain how technologies that evolved in some places did not in others, how some communities thrived due to excess food and ...more "
"Guns, Germs and Steel occasionally felt like monday morning quarterbacking, but Collapse is superb. In GG&S, Diamond tried to explain how technologies that evolved in some places did not in others, how some communities thrived due to excess food and ...more "
by Thomas Pynchon
Erik wrote: "Does that make you a Cubs fan, Jimmy? I'm one. It hurts, but the spiritual growth is unsurpassable."
Yeah, although I'm not a huge sports fan in general. I do have fond memories of attending Cubs games. And Wrigley Field is all sorts of fucking amazing. I specifically remember disliking the few experiences that I had with White Sox games. ]]>
Jimmy
read and liked
MyFleshSingsOut's
review of Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions):
"I read this in the Austin central library one afternoon and neglected a stack of books I'd greedily grabbed up while roaming around the third floor (where the philosophy and science stuff is).
The author doesn't feign "neutrality"...more "
"I read this in the Austin central library one afternoon and neglected a stack of books I'd greedily grabbed up while roaming around the third floor (where the philosophy and science stuff is).
The author doesn't feign "neutrality"...more "
bookshelves: currently-reading, fiction
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by Luigi Pirandello
MyFleshSingsOut wrote: "Jimmy, did you know anything about this "audio play" Kaufman did called Hope Leaves The Theater?:
http://www.beingcharliekaufman.com/index...
..."
Wow!
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bookshelves: drama
The theater of Luigi Pirandello relentlessly begs the question, within a theatrical context, of what is realistic and what is fictional drama. An appropriate, recent example of Pirandello's influence at work is Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, NY, a film in which the main character Caden's attempt to make a theatre about "everything" results in a sort of solipsistic confusion about what he is actually experiencing and what is merely an acted out rendition of his past (or present for that matter). Kaufman, who does have a slight background in the theatre himself, took this theme and reinvigorated what was an already innovative idea.
This of course makes for a very theoretical type of theater. And Pirandello, once he has laid out his main concept, spends much of the time within his plays musing on exactly what makes staged performance, theater. Take Six Characters in Search of an Author for example. A theater group is putting on Pirandello's own play, Ille Gioco del Parti (the Game of Roles). The play is interrupted by a quarreling family of six. The father of the family explains that they are in search of someone to finish their story. After explaining their background and current conflict, he pleads with the director of the play to complete this real-life drama. Pirandello tactfully juxtaposes the actors doing the Pirandello play, and the characters who almost seem to invade the theater with their dramatic reality. So the question that keeps coming up here is, well, to put it frankly; what is reality? Pirandello was part of a theater movement called anti-illusionism, or theatricalism. This movement rejected realism in favor of dreamlike symbolism. It shows too. Despite the fact that the father's character defends his family's actual situation and how steeped in reality it is, Pirandello is still trying to make the point that this is yet another layer of some sort of theatrical drama. The odd thing about this play is that the actual situation and history of the family seems irrelevant after a point. It is rather the questions about theater that Pirandello poses that makes Six Characters in Search of an Author such an engaging play.
The other two plays in this Penguin edition, Henry IV and So It Is (If You Think So) are concerned with the same basic questions. Although in these plays there is a more solid emphasis on how madness can play an important role in determining what is real and what is imagined or fictionalized. Henry IV is all about a man who is diagnosed by his family as insane, in light of which an historically based fiction is created to appease his delusions. The question here is, is he actually mad, or is he the one placating his family's madness? So It Is (If You Think So) assesses the reliability of personal testimony as truth. One family, the Agazzi's, are obsessed with the mysterious lives of another family, the Ponza's. Regardless of the source of truth about the Ponza's living situation, the Agazzi's would never be content. Once again, this is Pirandello questioning the reliability of language as well as personal testimony.
Pirandello's epistemology is so utterly pessimistic and distrustful that his plays can be a bit long-winded. Despite the playful brilliance of this content, his trademark, endless meta-questioning tends to overwhelm most of the dramatic elements. It's almost unfortunate in a way because it seems as if some of his plays could actually be written as theoretical essays on theater rather than actual plays. Still, Six Characters in Search of an Author is a delightful piece of modernist theater, and was an incredibly innovative play for its time.
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Jimmy
read and liked
Justin's
review of Godless: The Church of Liberalism:
"Same old same old from our favorite horse faced ultra conservative Ann Coulter. When she's not shrieking the usual conservative rhetoric (liberal want to kill babies, outlaw Christianity, force mass gay marriages etc...) she's accusing liberal of bet...more "
"Same old same old from our favorite horse faced ultra conservative Ann Coulter. When she's not shrieking the usual conservative rhetoric (liberal want to kill babies, outlaw Christianity, force mass gay marriages etc...) she's accusing liberal of bet...more "