Tiah Beautement's Blog, page 102

On romance & feminism

Waite says that romance novels are the place in our culture where "women are seen enjoying sex, desiring a partner, and having orgasms that are about feeling orgasmic rather than merely looking orgasmic." Grant puts it succinctly, "romance is one of the few places where a woman is a subject in sex, rather than an object." As often as one is likely to see a romance trope that feels old and regressive, one will read a scene where the hero cannot wait to pleasure the heroine with oral sex. Looking around at pop culture at large, there is no other...

On Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five - I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and time. – - I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still. Another thing they taught was that nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died he said to me, “You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.” I told him that was one of the things I learned...

On the world's canaries

After her first book, Close to the Machine, was published in 1997 Ullman started to write more. The book, a "cult classic", was one of the first to really convey the appeal of code. But it's a curious mix – alongside the clear passion for the problem solving and possibilities is Ullman's unease at how much it could change our lives. She would build programmes for clients, who would then ask her how they could keep track of their employees' keystrokes, or databases that would also give government agencies access to private health information. Even just the way computers would...

On Case Histories

Kate Atkinson, Case Histories - Imagine if you could knit time, Christ, her needles would be clacking day and night. . . And anyway, where would she ever find the time to make time? There was no time. That was the whole point. – - She regarded Theo with horror and he was tempted to reassure her that fat wasn’t infections. – - Country children used to walk five miles to school in the morning and five miles home at night without complaining. Or perhaps they did complain but no one ever recorded their comments for posterity. That was how...

On rape in fiction

Here we have Batman, in a physical state that left him spectacularly unable to defend himself, at a phase in the story which was supposed to represent the lowest low from which he’d have to fight his way back… and no one, in what was supposed to be the most godforsaken horrific hellhole on the face of the world, thought to take advantage of the vulnerable newcomer? Are we supposed to believe all these men, who sometimes tear people’s faces off for fun, who never ever get out of the prison, are entirely chaste? Or is it that all the...

On The History of Love

Nicole Krauss, The History of Love - When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT. - ‘What can I do for you I love you so much,” and I always wanted to say, but never said: Love me less. - When I was little, I thought that the pages on the floor were words she would never be able to use again, and I tried to tape them back in where they belonged, out of fear that one day she would be left silent. -...

On working for free

The problem in journalism is not that people are writing for free. It is that people are writing for free for companies that are making a profit. It is that people are doing the same work and getting paid radically disparate wages. It is that corporations making record earnings will not allocate their budgets to provide menial compensation to the workers who make them a success. - Sarah Kendzior, Managed expections in the post-employment economy

On fierce

I like the word, fierce – the way it aligns itself with nakedness and solitude: - Ian McCallum, Fierce

On saving daylight

A Native American chief is known to have summarized his opinion of daylight saving . . . "Only the government would believe you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom, and have a longer blanket," he said. - Travers Korch, The finacial history of daylight savings

On Judy Blume's Dennie