Cathy Jacobowitz's Blog

Comment on Racist humor in The Pale King by Johnny Wink

Along with Cathy, I’m not buying that Ms. F. Chahla Neti-Neti gives the fictionalized DFW a blowjob because she’s Iranian. Fortunately, I don’t have to buy it. I can buy instead that she’s giving him a blowjob because she grew up and got educated in a crooked way that led to her feeling like she needs to do things like this. That’s the way it was laid out to me in the footnote. If somebody gives somebody a blow job in a novel, that somebody’s got to be from somewhere. I just can’t see the r...

Comment on On Stephen Brophy by DJB

Thank you Cathy for the lovely and fitting tribute to Stephen. He was my trusted friend for over twenty years. Our birthdays being only five days apart, we celebrated together almost every year (inevitably I gave him a DVD and he gave me a book). In later years, I gave him some of the film posters that hung in his Fenway apartment.

Stephen was lovable and maddening and somewhere around 2007, we parted ways after I’d voiced concerns over something I felt was detrimental to him. We didn’t have...

On Stephen Brophy

I knew Stephen Brophy for about fifteen years, but I only knew him well in the past three or four. It was my great pleasure to have coffee with him several times a month at Pavement and later in his apartment at our co-op. He was my neighbor, my friend, my mentor in radical politics, and my advisor in love and life. So I want to tell you a little about my experience of this extraordinary person.

Stephen believed in the power of the word. To the end of his life, he refused to use the word “ac...

Trump hates literature!

This is what has befallen the Little Free Library near my house since it was erected by the Mass Historical Society about two months ago.

Its glass door was broken. Its replacement Plexiglas door was broken. Its replacement cellophane door was ripped from the staples. A large quantity of water was dumped into the library, damaging its floor as well as the books inside.

Who does this to a little free library? Who?

(a) Drunken Red Sox fans?
(b) Trump!

I consulted T, who replied, “I’m thinking...

Top five lines of dialogue in “Les Revenants”

“Les Revenants” is almost certainly the only French zombie series in which one dead person turns to another and asks why they don’t look like zombies. It is no barrel of laughs, though. Creepy, anguished and highly recommended.

Fan art by Pixiris on Tumblr Pardon. (I’m sorry.) Calme-toi. (Calm down.) Ça va? (Are you okay?) Je suis désolée. (I’m sorry.) Ne t’inquiète pas. (Don’t worry.)

Lines that might as well be in the top five

Est-ce que je suis morte? (Am I dead?) Ils sont morts tous....

Artistic responsibility

I wrote this originally for the Race & Fiction Writing member page, but I’m moving it here since it’s something I really care about. Emoji smiley face.

A few of us discussed the matter of Dana Schutz’s painting at the April meeting. For me, the issue comes down to artistic freedom versus artistic responsibility. (One of our values being “both/and,” I’ll note that these are not necessarily in opposition.) Something I realized after the meeting was that while I had taken pains to present both p...

March to fascism no. 3 and last

I had my best laugh of the week yesterday while listening to NPR. In a solemn voice, the presenter read out the recent Presidential tweet about “the very sacred election process.” I guffawed aloud upon hearing this. Thanks, Trump!

Anway, I’m retiring my three-post March to Fascism tag. See, when I started it on January third, I really thought we all needed to keep a sharp and educated eye on the White House in order to recognize and call out signs of incipient despotism. That turned out to be...

Comment on Gang initiations and NPR by Joseph Shephard

Who determines the reality of gang initiations? Will it be the victim in this case or the couch potatoes at Snopes who google for the answers they want? A real investigation would pull up the trial transcripts which at the moment I can’t find but then again that might be a special skill or might require getting past a paywall. I had a family member who was killed by a gang member who was going through an initiation process like this. I am not sure if the victim was truly random or known but t...

School of white-supremacy magic

It must be said, in the current political climate, that I don’t use “white supremacy” on this blog to mean explicit racism as espoused by the white nationalists who’ve rechristened themselves the alt-right. I use it in the accepted academic sense of

a historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations and peoples of color by white peoples and nations of the European continent; for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of we...

Personal mottos of 2017

I’m not following you, I was going in this direction anymotherfucking way.

Currently my Twitter bio. Said by a homeless woman with a gift for language who hangs out on my street.

Don’t punch girls and I don’t punch a clock

I’m not really cool enough to use hip-hop lyrics as mottos, but it’s true that I don’t punch a clock. Or, as I put it to my neighbor this afternoon, “I have an expensive twenty-hour-a-week not-working habit.”

Pecan, mince, humble

This one is courtesy of my friend J., respon...