Greg > Recent Status Updates

"Can one not imagine some golden-haired aristocrat sprung from an ancient family such as his, intelligent and endowed with every kind of prestige, concealing within him, unbeknown to all his friends, a secret taste for [male] negroes?" With death fast approaching, would Proust have written this, and S/M scenes that were surely shocking at the time to mainstream readers.

"Can one not imagine some golden-haired aristocrat sprung from an ancient family such as his, intelligent and endowed with every kind of prestige, concealing within him, unbeknown to all his friends, a secret taste for [male] negroes?" Only 15 years later Cole Porter famously writes "Times have changed..." Proust and Porter were ahead of their times, certainly.

"Can one not imagine some golden-haired aristocrat sprung from an ancient family such as his, intelligent and endowed with every kind of prestige, concealing within him, unbeknown to all his friends, a secret taste for negroes [men]?" We're in the early 1920's Paris, Proust is dying, and one wonders if he would have written this...or a later seen (I peaked ahead as soon as I left the library) involving S/M?

"The pleasure of those earlier walks [as a child] which was that of seeing, on the way home, the crimson sky...was now replaced by the pleasure of setting forth at nightfall...the moon was already alight and would soon bathe them [the now-adult walkers] in their entirety." The author had passed before this book was published: the 1st page telegraphs we are heading toward permanent darkness. A great opening page.

Very challenging read. I've made it to Purgatorio, Canto 25, and this is actually lovely: The soul, freed from its body,bears away its faculties, both human and divine....But memory, and will, and understanding are al more active than they were before...It drops at once on one bank or the other and there it first has knowledge of its road.' Just beautiful!

When the newly created Republican party stole the 1800 election by gerrymandering New York state and taking all electoral votes, Hamilton bravely stepped forward and suggested allowing elections by the American people! Naturally, the Republican Burr shot him dead for such an outrageous idea, but it's no surprise a Republican would freak at the very idea of actually counting citizen's votes.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Marshall, about 200 years ago, ruled that "a president could indeed be summoned [to Court]. Nothing in the Constitution forbade it, or in any statute...so like any man [the President, Jefferson] is answerable to the law...Jefferson was, literally, deranged by this decision...No President has ever behaved so; let us hope no president ever shall again." But here we are, again!

There is so much here, much more than I ever thought. There are stories buried within stories: it's like entering a maze. It's difficult to tell how deep one is within one set of stories, but that's the point, I suppose, that's the way the world works.

So I'm reading along, John Adams is pretty much being trashed by everyone in the book. Then on p.467 he is President! How did that happen? Is there a chapter missing?

So Franklin, in Paris, sucks up to Comte de Vergennes and trashes Adams, who takes off to the Netherlands. Meanwhile, the French navy does exactly what Adams wanted Vergennes to command them to do and turn the war to America's favor. Adams goes back to Paris to take Franklin to task, and all the while Franklin has been playing Vergennes. Fabulous reading.

Hamilton? Nope. Adams, Jefferson, Washington, two Franklins, Abigail, Richard Henry Lee, James Duane (?) etc., but no Hamilton. Perhaps because he was...dare I say....an immigrant and McCullough decided Hamilton didn't count for anything?

The author says some things should be left in the locker room. Agreed. To bad the author didn't follow her own advice. NOW I want to know who bought the naked picture of Mantle.

"The event at Donald Trump's Taj Mahal..." brings the entire book to a screeching halt. A book about a baseball legend, and the author can't just say "Taj Mahal." Yea, I know, Trump was respected at one time. But for future printings, let's hope the D.T.s are left out. Ugh.

Early on, Mickey slips back to the minors. He cries in public. His dying father screams at him, "Ah, bullshit, you come and work with me in the mines. I didn't raise a man. I raised a baby." Both father and son cry. Me too, it's only page 27, and I know there are some very high highs and some very low lows on the way. Fabulous story.

"The Crimes of Richmond City" by Frederick Nebel has never been published in book form. But I'm reading it! I found it inside Otto Penzler's "Big Book of Pulps" and this title is the closest I can find here on goodreads. "Richmond City" has no ISBN numbers, but consists of five Cardigan serialized stories published from 1928 to 1929. I've read the first story, it was sensational!

Just think: EIGHT new Michael Crichton books I didn't even know existed but have been republished by "Hard Case Crime". if I wasn't studying Mid-Century American Crime books this year, I'd never have found these!

There is an old 1960s pop song which has a title that sums up my feelings here. This book is a 'Kind of a Drag." For fun, name that band.

"Levin had been married 3 months...As a bachelor, when he had watched other people's married life, seen the petty cares,, the squabbles, had had only smiled contemptuously....in his future married life there could be nothing of the sort. And all of the sudden...". Well, it's no surprise his marriage is like everyone else's, it's hard work! Tolstoy gets everything right here. A beautiful book.

The regular person/celebrity relationship here takes center stage and is the best part of the book so far, stealing the thunder away from the gay relationship. And I love all the Aussie references.

I really shouldn't be too critical of Anna. Tolstoy does a beautiful job with her character: she is simply an exact product of her environment, her family, her friends. And she rebels. While men/husbands are free to have affairs, women are not, and when they do, there is hell to pay. A.K. wants so bad to be an independent woman. That's a great thing.

I am reading this naked in public, all the way through. Seriously. At the only legal, nude beach in the USA, just north of Miami. The cops patrol and take cameras and arrest masturbators.

I'm most surprised at how much I dislike Anna. But Tolstoy's descriptions of his character's emotions are stupendous. Vronsky is disgusting. So is everyone except Levin and Kitty. only 700 more pages till the train jumps track to hunt her down!

So, a person who can sing "any song...to the tune of the theme from Gilligan's Island" is an extreme version of whiteness? I'd say that person is, at worst, an extreme version of people whose fantasy is to live on a deserted island, as the author has already said most travel hoaxes involve lost islands.

Yes, it's important we remember the most expensive and longest trial in American history was the McMartin Preschool case in which there were no convictions. Seems to me today's sexual harassment issue is heading in that direction: to the point that, sadly, we just won't believe a thing anyone says..

Back in 1989, Rushdie writes here that there should be an increase "in observation, not...spectating, but in that of watchfulness and surveillance. Eternal vigilance is the price o' liberty."

Just a few pages in and this is already, absolutely shocking.

'Who knows which side presents a gentle slope, My Master said, and halted as he spoke, So one may climb without the aid of wings." But here on Earth we have no wings, so our decision is...well...who knows? Have we done the best we can" That's what I asked my self when I think about past problems, issues.

"A woman does not mask her love of balls (!!!), horse races, even gambling...but never try to make her say that she loves high society." But about men; "Your creditors are harassing you, your infidelities are driving your wife to despair... you listen to Wagner only when burning Chinese Cinnamon.,.yet your are an honorable man." Well, Proust takes aim at all. And who ever heard of opium called Chinese cinnamon?

This is getting seriously frightening. Oh, I should stop reading it RIGHT NOW.

WARNING: X-Rated:I laughed a lot and wanted to share.The author writes: "Daniel jerked himself (well, who else, as he is watching porn alone) until (ahem, what's this about until?) he shot all over his torso (oh, please, how about until he shot the ceiling lights out...something interesting...) I'm going through post-it notes like a maniac, reading it for my "worst line of the year" award.