RussBear’s Comments (group member since Dec 17, 2008)

RussBear’s comments from the LGBTQA Group Books group.

I'd like to nominate a book that covers the "T" in the LGBTQA Book Club: It's Stone Butch Blues, by Leslie Feinberg. I've read so much about this book through the years but have never found the time to read it. It's now considered a "queer classic." All of the books that have been nominated by this club so far have had an obvious slant toward gay men so this book would be a different twist since it covers lesbianism and transsexualism.

Tom wrote: "This is my second time through the novel, and this time it seemed easier to get the hang of the dialect and peculiar word order. But I do find I have to read the text slowly, and reread some of the..."


Tom,

This photo might help you

http://www.iol.ie/~atswim/atswim/gall...

It's from Jamie O'Neill's website

A soundtrack for the Revolution…

While I was reading At Swim tonight, the lyrics of an old song by the Cranberries called “Zombie” kept popping up in my head. It’s appropriate since the song is about “The Troubles,” or the British occupation of Northern Ireland.

These lyrics kept haunting me tonight

It's the same old theme since 1916.
In your head, in your head they're still fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are dying...

I found the video for the song on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJEySr...

By the way, this is a wonderful novel to read for the month of March since St Patrick’s Day is only one week away. :-)

I’ve made it through the first seven chapters and I am thoroughly enjoying this book. It was a struggle at first, though, because O’Neill is trying the capture the early 20th century, lower-class Irish brogue on paper. But once my internal ear adjusted to it and started to pick up some of the lingo, the book has become easier and easier to read.

My most dominate impression so far of At Swim, Two Boys is that O’Neill is most definitely a James Joyce wannabe. (That’s probably too flippant and I don’t mean to degrade O’Neill’s talent.) Nonetheless, this novel is kind of rip off, or recycling, of Joyce’s novel Ulysses, the quintessential Irish novel. He is actually mimicking James Joyce’s writing style and borrowing heavily from the motifs found in Ulysses. (I’ll admit I’ve tried to read Ulysses twice and could only make it half way before I gave up. It can be a daunting and frustrating novel because Joyce uses a more loose form of stream of consciousness in some places. Some people say Ulysses is the greatest novel ever written while others say it was a literary joke that makes no sense and is unreadable.)

If you’ve at least attempted to read Ulysses, you’ll remember that in the very first chapter two characters, Buck Mulligan and Steven Dadaleus, go for a swim in Dublin Bay at the famous Forty Foot in the shadow of a tower. (Sound familiar?) O’Neill has used this famous scene as a basis for At Swim, Two Boys.

Besides the allusions to Joyce, I’ve also noticed other reference to Oscar Wilde and Gilbert and Sullivan, who must be a few of O’Neill’s other literary heroes. In one brief passage I chuckled because O’Neill referenced Wilde’s quip that “Work is the curse of the drinking class” when discussing the Irish love for liquor. (That’s one of my favorite Wilde bon mots.) O’Neill also references Gilbert & Sullivan when he calls the clergyman a “model of a modern major bishop,” tipping his hat to the song from HMS Pinafore “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.”

Hummm… O’Neill is giving me a workout. He’s making me remember things I haven’t read or thought about since I took English Lit in college. I can't wait to see what will happen next.

I would like to suggest "The Naked Civil Servant" by Quentin Crisp. Even though I read this book more than 10 years ago and enjoyed it, I think it's ready for another read. It's a gay classic.