Benjamin Fasching-Gray > Recent Status Updates

Romance with an African American librarian!

He surprised me with being 100% on Gloria Richardson's side at Cambridge, at least in his memory. The draft for his speech at the March on Washington is awesome, putting police brutality at the forefront and calling the Civil Rights Bill too little too late. Now to read how they talked him into watering it down.

first formal political protest of his life: petition to de-segregate the local public library !

I’m already blown away. The prose, the premise... so good!

Sometimes I think "why doesn't he shut up if he can't make any sense?" Other times I think, "it's kind of musical, like an Irish Duke Ellington." Then I think, "that's funny." Like the geometry lesson part I just finished, that was funny. And sometimes I think, "In the future, everyone will talk like this."

"I am going to tell this story as though Negroes were ordinary human beings, realizing that this attitude will from the first seriously curtail my audience." Yes! Never fear curtailing the audience!

Mein Schnelltest war positiv, und Hans Castorp besucht eine Sterbende nach dem anderen und ich halts nicht aus. Atemnot der tatsächlich eine Panikattacke war, jetzt gehts mir schon besser, aber ich muss pause von der Berghotel nehmen. Bis bald, Behrens und co.!

I am so sick and tired of history repeating itself

supposedly these last few pages were about a boy failing to guess the color underwear some girls are wearing... this book has some cool insults and curses in it.

wait, so keeping your wife locked up at home is resisting assimilation?

I was chugging along with the SF intrigue when Cherryh starts in on this detailed she-rapes-him thing from his POV focused on his feelings and I cannot. I manage a page and have to stop but Cherryh is still going. So harsh!

OK, but story of o and the image are glass clear. Emmanuelle or i am curious yellow would have been a bit more challenging?

This introduction is fire!

i've been team Andrea Dworkin for a while. this porn essay did not free me of that.

First essay: 100% right on

the norms of the law do not set
the norms of rational belief

"... false rape accusations are, today, a predominantly wealthy white male preoccupation. ... The anxiety about false rape accusations is purportedly about injustice ... , but actually it is about gender, about innocent men being harmed by malignant women." I don't think that's right. I think powerful men are afraid of 'false' accusations because they know there are real cases against them.

So funny: “ then his thoughts turned Egypt and the tenth plague. It seemed to him that if the little Egyptians had been anything like (his own son), the plague must have been something very like a blessing in disguise. If the Israelites were to come to England now he should be greatly tempted not to let them go.”

Levinsky in the Catskills ... amazing! More Auntie Yetta with the big gold teeth.

I don’t need sean to tell me that shem is a sham

Really enjoying this. A couple cool things in the last few chapters: main character starts reading Dickens, and then coincidentally runs into an acquaintance who is suddenly in the position to act as benefactor. Pure Dickens! Right after the Dickens reference! Love it. The second thing is what can only be described as a queer relationship, if platonic, involving yiddish theater fandom. Holy smoke.

Like Hitchcock, Joyce just has to put himself in every book. Shem the Penman! Har Har!

I made it to the “mamafesta.” No idea what is going on but it makes me laugh and after 100 pages I have to admit I am “reading “ it.

The "kissing incident" is absolutely bonkers. I'm enraged.

I liked the really early stuff that actually rhymes, and now that I'm into "Leaflets" and the late 60s, some of the poems are excellent.

Finished "Tell My Horse," equally amazing... Hurston weirdly patriotic here and seems to miss the point about Haiti's debt when she contradicts a Haitian who says Haiti does not owe anything to any other nation. The historical episodes are absolutely riveting, and the explorations of Haitian folklore, religious practice and secret societies are substantially darker than "Mules and Men."

Finished "Mules and Men." Mindblowingly cool. It's not written like a collection of folklore, it's written as if we're accompanying Hurston on her ethnographic adventure. And it does get adventurous, particularly when her life is threatened at a job site. The hoodoo stuff towards the end is just as exciting, with one fantastic wizard battle that I loved.