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"What gives these plays their extraordinary power [...] is the way the playwright builds his own representational difficulties with these overdetermined stories and figures into the plays themselves. Rather than trying to make these figures 'new' to an audience that 'knows' them only too well, Shakespeare's strategy is to portray their desire, and inability, to be new even to themselves..."

this chapter being titled “you do not need to be an expert on everything” and starting with the story of a guy who argues too much on the internet. once again i am in this picture

there are red lines in my brain between this book and le guin's carrier bag theory of fiction essay but i don't have quite the words for it yet

how can i read this decapitation as a sex thing

“Am I Aeneas because I killed Turnus?” i’m going to punch a brick wall

just remembered a specific piece of lore that i think gets revealed later and ohhhhh i'm sick i'm ill

some days i can find the grace within me to read spenser’s portrayal of women in good faith and analyze where it’s sometimes radical for the time period, because it wouldn’t be fair to judge a writer from 1596 by modern feminist standards. but some days i am so tired. i think britomart (lady knight) and radigund (amazon) should fuck each other

oh the amazon hates men because one rejected her? oh so now she wants to kill all the knights? she hates men soso much? that’s what our plot is now?

maybe it's a little comforting that people of every historical era ever have been like "society is devolving bring back the good old days"

the part of my brain going "you don't have to reduce your goodreads goal; why does it matter to you if you don't finish it when it reflects a start-of-the-year goal and ultimately goodreads is just some website not a mark of personal value or even really of how much you read" vs the part of my brain going "but i sure could use a win"

"For a legend is a cultural product which depends upon the naturalizing or 'forgetting' of its own history as a manufactured thing."

"Richard III, Troilus & Cressida, & Antony & Cleopatra are legendary figures... long before Shakespeare takes up the task of giving them life on the stage. But when he does, he seems concerned less to merely reproduce cultural mythology than to demonstrate... what it is like to be subjected to and by the extraordinary determining force of infamous names."

every scene of this play is richard going https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fC7_...

sansa is literally not even thirteen i'm going to retch

i think these guys have all got brain damage from hitting each other in the head with spears that’s what i think

the only thing that happens in this poem is knights run into each other

the thing is that brutus and sicinius are literally right. that guy needs the guillotine

forgot how much this play is like “watch this conservative shoot himself in the foot over and over while his equally conservative but more discreet friends beg him to stop”

lartius is like “aufidius went to antium” and coriolanus is like “did he mention me? tell me exactly what he said” fucking unbelievable i’m homophobic now

"Eviction is a ubiquitous problem for black women, one that sociologist Matthew Desmond takes to be the undernoticed analogue of mass incarceration for black men, which constitutes a deep source of systemic injustice and disadvantage. 'Poor Black men are locked up while poor Black women are locked out,' Desmond argues."

(re last update) “Women’s subordination casts them in terms that are functional and relational […] a woman is often expected to play the role of a man’s attentive, loving subordinate […] women’s conduct vis-a-vis men is taken unduly personally (by them and on their behalf). So women’s indifference becomes aversion, ignorance becomes ignoring, testimony becomes tattling, & asking becomes extortion.”

this book is soooo smart it’s making the point that misogyny doesn’t come from men personally hating women but from patriarchy controlling women’s actions (obvious) specifically by talking about how men don’t have to hate ALL women—just the ones who have the audacity not to serve as subordinates, caretakers, and side characters to them. except she’s saying it better than i am

me: nonfiction books don’t have cliffhangers
the last line of chapter 1: “For the sake of illustration, enter Rush Limbaugh.”

imagine if i could stop starting new books. but i'm really excited about this one