3/16: “In Creative Writing today my poem was one of those discussed. 'I Will Be New' – It was one of the class’ livelier discussions. They picked up pretty well on the poem’s major pluses and minuses. The discussion was interesting and helped clarify the poem’s faults but none were news to me. I hadn’t thought the poem great anyway.”
3/19: “Wednesday we had individual conferences in Creative Writing. Got called out one by one to the hall and informed of our progress. Emblen’s complaint to me – no language studies! yeah yeah.” Give me a deadline. I will make the deadline. No sooner.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Monday, April 02, 2007
Tsing-Boom
from the diary: “Saturday 3/14/87
“Kinda boring day. Started reading another of the paperbacks from the huge stacks on my white dresser. Don’t know how many of them I’ll eventually read. Tsing-Boom, the one I’m reading, is a murder mystery. Bleh. It’s interesting but I’m not all that thrilled by mysteries. They all sort of meld into one another after awhile.”
I’ve tried reading mysteries now & then over the years. They tend to come in series and I like a good series. Right now I’m reading the Dave Brandstetter mysteries. Dave is a death claims investigator for an insurance company. Like I care. I am reading the series because Dave is gay and doesn’t have any trouble with it. He likes his boys femme, though he’d rather they didn’t wear dresses. “A femme in a black leather jacket”? He also smokes & drinks. A lot. I like author Joseph Hansen’s spare prose.
The problem with mysteries, however, is that I rarely find myself caring who did it. I don’t expend much effort trying to beat the author to the reveal, though I am disappointed when it’s hammer to the head obvious.
I don’t remember Nicolas Freeling’s Tsing-Boom. I suspect I read it merely because I liked the title. The lead character of the novel is “the Amsterdam detective Piet Van der Valk.” According to an obit for Freeling, after ten Van der Valk mysteries (which were so successful they were adapted for television and allowed Freeling to buy “a grand and romantic, if dilapidated, house at Grandfontaine, in the Vosges, France”) the author killed off his detective, “tired of the tyranny of having to write the same story over and over again.” Eventually, to placate his fans, Freeling drafted Van der Valk’s widow into the crime-solving business. Tsing-Boom was the eighth Van der Valk novel.
“Kinda boring day. Started reading another of the paperbacks from the huge stacks on my white dresser. Don’t know how many of them I’ll eventually read. Tsing-Boom, the one I’m reading, is a murder mystery. Bleh. It’s interesting but I’m not all that thrilled by mysteries. They all sort of meld into one another after awhile.”
I’ve tried reading mysteries now & then over the years. They tend to come in series and I like a good series. Right now I’m reading the Dave Brandstetter mysteries. Dave is a death claims investigator for an insurance company. Like I care. I am reading the series because Dave is gay and doesn’t have any trouble with it. He likes his boys femme, though he’d rather they didn’t wear dresses. “A femme in a black leather jacket”? He also smokes & drinks. A lot. I like author Joseph Hansen’s spare prose.
The problem with mysteries, however, is that I rarely find myself caring who did it. I don’t expend much effort trying to beat the author to the reveal, though I am disappointed when it’s hammer to the head obvious.
I don’t remember Nicolas Freeling’s Tsing-Boom. I suspect I read it merely because I liked the title. The lead character of the novel is “the Amsterdam detective Piet Van der Valk.” According to an obit for Freeling, after ten Van der Valk mysteries (which were so successful they were adapted for television and allowed Freeling to buy “a grand and romantic, if dilapidated, house at Grandfontaine, in the Vosges, France”) the author killed off his detective, “tired of the tyranny of having to write the same story over and over again.” Eventually, to placate his fans, Freeling drafted Van der Valk’s widow into the crime-solving business. Tsing-Boom was the eighth Van der Valk novel.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Creative Writing Class with Don Emblen, part III
from the diary: “Saturday 2/28/87
“I realized what animal Don Emblen reminds me of – a Galapagos Tortoise.”
3/1: “I typed up three poems for First Leaves [the campus literary annual] an’ sealed ‘em up in an envelope. Actually I typed up five but then I reread the submission guidelines Don E. had handed out. It said ‘three literary works.’ So I’m sticking with the three I’ve handed in, the ones he’s handed back with ‘try First Leaves’ on them.”
3/3: “Don gave the class copies of [‘a poem about a dead pet … by … a fellow faculty member’].” In critiquing the poem I wrote all over it – maybe I even rewrote it, as that’s one of the ways I figure out what a poem is doing. Said Don, “’Steve will be surprised and delighted to receive your critique. I wasn’t surprised but I was delighted by the depth and length of your critique.’”
3/11: “Creative Writing today was intensely boring.” It was probably a workshop day; that is, the poems of classmembers are handed around and you’re supposed to say intelligent things about the poems, especially suggesting improvement. This is a common form of creative writing pedagogy. It don’t do much f’r me.
One of Don’s assignments was a “word study.” I chose to research my name. It’s very English, first middle last. Ingersoll, for instance, comes from a place in Derby’s called “Inker’s Wall” (more recently I’ve read it’s “Inker’s Hill”). Didn’t find an explanation of who/what “Inker” was. I also did some work trying to figure out the origin of the queer construction “ough” which appears in so many words and has so many pronunciations. It goes way back.
“I realized what animal Don Emblen reminds me of – a Galapagos Tortoise.”
3/1: “I typed up three poems for First Leaves [the campus literary annual] an’ sealed ‘em up in an envelope. Actually I typed up five but then I reread the submission guidelines Don E. had handed out. It said ‘three literary works.’ So I’m sticking with the three I’ve handed in, the ones he’s handed back with ‘try First Leaves’ on them.”
3/3: “Don gave the class copies of [‘a poem about a dead pet … by … a fellow faculty member’].” In critiquing the poem I wrote all over it – maybe I even rewrote it, as that’s one of the ways I figure out what a poem is doing. Said Don, “’Steve will be surprised and delighted to receive your critique. I wasn’t surprised but I was delighted by the depth and length of your critique.’”
3/11: “Creative Writing today was intensely boring.” It was probably a workshop day; that is, the poems of classmembers are handed around and you’re supposed to say intelligent things about the poems, especially suggesting improvement. This is a common form of creative writing pedagogy. It don’t do much f’r me.
One of Don’s assignments was a “word study.” I chose to research my name. It’s very English, first middle last. Ingersoll, for instance, comes from a place in Derby’s called “Inker’s Wall” (more recently I’ve read it’s “Inker’s Hill”). Didn’t find an explanation of who/what “Inker” was. I also did some work trying to figure out the origin of the queer construction “ough” which appears in so many words and has so many pronunciations. It goes way back.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
“Philip’s not going to talk to me anymore.”
from the diary: “Thursday 2/26/87
“Yesterday and today were Club Days. We had the [Gay & Lesbian Student Union] table pretty well manned yesterday. I sat in for a couple hours – 12 to 2.
“Teresa made a lovely banner and taped up some nice rainbow flags. … Philip, the custodian at the library, walked by at one point – shortly after I’d arrived. He said, ‘What are you doing in there?’ I said, ‘Sitting.’ He gave me an odd look and kept walking. I thought, ‘Oh, well. Philip’s not going to talk to me anymore.’
"Today at lunch [Philip] sat down at the table in the cafeteria where I was eating and said he was real surprised. He’d never suspected. He asked about my family. I got the feeling he was fishing for ‘the reason’ – the gensis of my [homosexuality]. He seemed satisfied when I said my parents are divorced. But he’s not rancorous or condemning, rather more bewildered. He asked me if I didn’t think I’d cause AIDS. I said something about you can catch herpes, too, if you’re not careful; you can fall down the stairs and break your head. He told me the library could be mine when he left. He was giving it to me.
“And I thought he wouldn’t talk to me?”
“Yesterday and today were Club Days. We had the [Gay & Lesbian Student Union] table pretty well manned yesterday. I sat in for a couple hours – 12 to 2.
“Teresa made a lovely banner and taped up some nice rainbow flags. … Philip, the custodian at the library, walked by at one point – shortly after I’d arrived. He said, ‘What are you doing in there?’ I said, ‘Sitting.’ He gave me an odd look and kept walking. I thought, ‘Oh, well. Philip’s not going to talk to me anymore.’
"Today at lunch [Philip] sat down at the table in the cafeteria where I was eating and said he was real surprised. He’d never suspected. He asked about my family. I got the feeling he was fishing for ‘the reason’ – the gensis of my [homosexuality]. He seemed satisfied when I said my parents are divorced. But he’s not rancorous or condemning, rather more bewildered. He asked me if I didn’t think I’d cause AIDS. I said something about you can catch herpes, too, if you’re not careful; you can fall down the stairs and break your head. He told me the library could be mine when he left. He was giving it to me.
“And I thought he wouldn’t talk to me?”
Friday, March 30, 2007
Creative Writing Class with Don Emblen, part II
from the diary: “Wednesday 2/18/87
“Creative Writing was boring. [Prof. Emblen’s] in-class assignment was to look up words from two poems – find which one are ‘native’ and which are ‘latinate’. How boring. I had no desire to plow through the dictionary doing any such thing so I lent my dictionary to Jeni and tried it w/o. Emblem talked about iambic pentameter and ‘strongly suggested’ that we try writing some iambic pentameter poetry. Bleah.”
2/28: “I realized what animal Don Emblen reminds me of – a Galapagos tortoise.”
“Creative Writing was boring. [Prof. Emblen’s] in-class assignment was to look up words from two poems – find which one are ‘native’ and which are ‘latinate’. How boring. I had no desire to plow through the dictionary doing any such thing so I lent my dictionary to Jeni and tried it w/o. Emblem talked about iambic pentameter and ‘strongly suggested’ that we try writing some iambic pentameter poetry. Bleah.”
2/28: “I realized what animal Don Emblen reminds me of – a Galapagos tortoise.”
Thursday, March 29, 2007
in the bookstore
from the diary: “Sunday 2/15/87
“Hung out at Copperfield’s for an hour. Looked at poetry books. Felt alternately encouraged and discouraged by them all. Look at all this poetry to read! Wow! But nobody buys poetry. Look at all the starving poets, the crazy poets! How beautiful much of this is, how hard to understand so much of it is. Will my poetry ever be noticed? Will I make a living as a writer? How can it all be read? It’s hopeless. Bleh.
“It’s better to take it in pieces. Read what I can, when I can – find what enjoyment, fulfillment as comes. Write what I can, when I can – don’t fret over the future, don’t fret over critics that haven’t noticed, editors that pay no attention, just write what needs be written and don’t worry about it. Life comes in pieces, doesn’t it? Nothing comes all at once – life doesn’t come all at once.”
“Hung out at Copperfield’s for an hour. Looked at poetry books. Felt alternately encouraged and discouraged by them all. Look at all this poetry to read! Wow! But nobody buys poetry. Look at all the starving poets, the crazy poets! How beautiful much of this is, how hard to understand so much of it is. Will my poetry ever be noticed? Will I make a living as a writer? How can it all be read? It’s hopeless. Bleh.
“It’s better to take it in pieces. Read what I can, when I can – find what enjoyment, fulfillment as comes. Write what I can, when I can – don’t fret over the future, don’t fret over critics that haven’t noticed, editors that pay no attention, just write what needs be written and don’t worry about it. Life comes in pieces, doesn’t it? Nothing comes all at once – life doesn’t come all at once.”
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Creative Writing class with Don Emblen, part I
from the diary: “Friday 2/6/87
“I’m disappointed in Don Emblen’s Creative Writing class. Apparently we’re not going to do any in-class writing. He gives no assignments cuz, he sez, writing is a solitary business.”
Thurs 2/12: “I’ve ‘finished’ revising the first poem I turned in to Emblen, Creative Writing. Started out called ‘The Smile That Died’ – a tacked on title since most poems in my notebook aren’t titled – now called ‘Can’t Be Put Back Together’. I handed a poem in Wednesday – ‘Encountering the Divine’. We don’t have class again till next Wed. cuz of presidents’ birthdays, but I’ve typed a couple short poems – ‘Blah-de-blah’ and ‘New Suit’ to turn in then. Also gonna hand in revised ‘Smile’. “
I visited Don this January and got some of his books. As I’m reading my old diary not just for the books in it but for my development as a writer I have included talk here at Dare I Read about writers I’ve met & writing classes I’ve taken. Don, also known as D. L. Emblen, besides poetry, had written a biography of Peter Mark Roget, creator of Roget’s Thesaurus and coedited with Donald Hall (now U.S. poet laureate) a textbook for writers called A Writer’s Reader -- perhaps two Dons on a book cover was deemed too much.
“I’m disappointed in Don Emblen’s Creative Writing class. Apparently we’re not going to do any in-class writing. He gives no assignments cuz, he sez, writing is a solitary business.”
Thurs 2/12: “I’ve ‘finished’ revising the first poem I turned in to Emblen, Creative Writing. Started out called ‘The Smile That Died’ – a tacked on title since most poems in my notebook aren’t titled – now called ‘Can’t Be Put Back Together’. I handed a poem in Wednesday – ‘Encountering the Divine’. We don’t have class again till next Wed. cuz of presidents’ birthdays, but I’ve typed a couple short poems – ‘Blah-de-blah’ and ‘New Suit’ to turn in then. Also gonna hand in revised ‘Smile’. “
I visited Don this January and got some of his books. As I’m reading my old diary not just for the books in it but for my development as a writer I have included talk here at Dare I Read about writers I’ve met & writing classes I’ve taken. Don, also known as D. L. Emblen, besides poetry, had written a biography of Peter Mark Roget, creator of Roget’s Thesaurus and coedited with Donald Hall (now U.S. poet laureate) a textbook for writers called A Writer’s Reader -- perhaps two Dons on a book cover was deemed too much.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
So Well Remembered
from the diary: “Sunday 2/1/87“All I did today was lie around – finished James Hilton’s So Well Remembered, and began Make Believe: the story of Ronald and Nancy Reagan. … Waiting listlessly for school to begin tomorrow.”
You’ve heard of Shangri La, haven’t you? James Hilton invented the place, a sort of heavenly Tibet, for his novel Lost Horizon. I wanted to read Lost Horizon. Then So Well Remembered fell into my lap. And I read that instead. No, I don’t remember anything about So Well Remembered. Useless, aren’t I? On the other hand, the whole novel is on the web via Project Gutenberg, so if you want to do your own research …
I was amused to find this So Well Remembered cover image on the web. The copy I had looked just like it -- there used to be an attractive dustjacket, no doubt.
Ronald Reagan was famous long before he became president. My mother hated him. Had she hated him as an actor, too? I don’t think so. But I got the idea no pleasant thoughts survived his appearance as a sympathetic witness before McCarthy’s House UnAmerican Activities Committee. Laurence Learner’s Make Believe gives the Reagan story from its defining fantasy – that by putting on roles Reagan thought he was doing heroic things, pretending to do and actually doing being little different in his mind.
Monday, March 26, 2007
gays in space
In doing research for another book I won’t be getting to for awhile I came across this account of a 1988 science fiction convention. There was a panel titled, “Alternate Sexual Lifestyles in F & SF” and among the panelists was Samuel R. Delany. The author of the convention report complains, “[T]he panelists … seemed to want to talk only about homosexuality (or perhaps bisexuality, if pressed). Any attempt … to ask about any other aspect of sexuality was fairly quickly shunted aside and the discussion returned to homosexuality. What is disheartening about this is that I get the impression that the committee wanted a panel on homosexuality and was afraid to use the word.” OK, yes. When I read Worlds Apart I was more hoping for Gays in Space than “alternate sexual lifestyles”. Just because I’m tired of the standard het scenario doesn’t mean I’m looking for just anything else.
Anyway, my favorite bit about Delany goes, “In response to someone's wondering why ‘straight’ porno films (aimed at men, presumably) always have a lesbian scene, Delany observed two things. One, the ‘lesbians’ in these scenes don't act like any lesbians he knows (this was met with general agreement from the audience), and two, ‘if you desire X, why shouldn't you desire 2 X more...especially if you rub them together.’”
Anyway, my favorite bit about Delany goes, “In response to someone's wondering why ‘straight’ porno films (aimed at men, presumably) always have a lesbian scene, Delany observed two things. One, the ‘lesbians’ in these scenes don't act like any lesbians he knows (this was met with general agreement from the audience), and two, ‘if you desire X, why shouldn't you desire 2 X more...especially if you rub them together.’”
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
from the diary: “Tuesday 1/27/87“Reading Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern.”
Thursday: “I was sitting in front of Merv’s Little Super on Mendocino Ave [Santa Rosa], waiting for the bus, reading bits of Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, when I hear a roar, I look up, the bus is sweeping past. … Once, at the beginning of the school year I timed the bus in its circuitous route past Kaiser and County Administration. It always seemed like a long time and I wondered if I could walk to the JC from [the bus stop at] Coddingtown [mall] faster than the bus. The bus timed out to 10 or 12 minutes. Later I timed it walking – that took 17-20 minutes. So I had a chance today of catching that bus. I had a chance. … And, yes, I beat the bus [to Coddingtown]. Not by much. I got there and looked, looked – no bus. I thought sure I’d missed it. But no. It just then crossed Guerneville Road.
“… Finished Moreta this eve with Peanuts [pet cat] lounging quietly and contentedly against me.”
I enjoyed Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, a sci-fi take on the fantasy of riding dragons. Every seven years this other scary planet passes near Pern and spits a nasty pestilent Thread across the gap. Only the fire breath of the Pernian dragons can burn away the Thread before it digs into the earth and sterilizes it. It seems bit of a stretch to expect a few flapping reptiles to protect an entire planet, but I bought it at the time. After reading Moreta I wondered if my tastes had changed and McCaffrey had always written that badly or if it was just, you know, a bad book. It didn’t make me want to read any more Pern or any more McCaffrey.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
pile of reading
The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga, edited by Ilya
Japanese-style comics rather than Japanese comics
Emma by Jane Austen
I like Austen’s prose, she can be quite funny, but Emma herself is rather annoying
A Public Space, Summer 2006
good stuff
Small Town, Summer 2003
a friend has a poem in this
Whispering in the Giant’s Ear: a frontline chronicle from Bolivia’s war on globalization by William Powers
I was thinking I hadn’t read any geo-political type books lately and wanted to?
World Poetry: an anthology of verse from antiquity to our time, edited by Katharine Washburn, John S. Major & Clifton Fadiman
if this were 900 pages I’d be done with it already
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
I read between 4 and 12 pages a week
Living Free: the story of Elsa and her cubs by Joy Adamson
sequel to Born Free; delightful if occasionally tiresome (I feel like I’m reading the diary) account of the lion cub who went back to the wild
Japanese-style comics rather than Japanese comics
Emma by Jane Austen
I like Austen’s prose, she can be quite funny, but Emma herself is rather annoying
A Public Space, Summer 2006
good stuff
Small Town, Summer 2003
a friend has a poem in this
Whispering in the Giant’s Ear: a frontline chronicle from Bolivia’s war on globalization by William Powers
I was thinking I hadn’t read any geo-political type books lately and wanted to?
World Poetry: an anthology of verse from antiquity to our time, edited by Katharine Washburn, John S. Major & Clifton Fadiman
if this were 900 pages I’d be done with it already
Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
I read between 4 and 12 pages a week
Living Free: the story of Elsa and her cubs by Joy Adamson
sequel to Born Free; delightful if occasionally tiresome (I feel like I’m reading the diary) account of the lion cub who went back to the wild
Friday, March 23, 2007
what's new
Wednesday was a pretty day so I walked up to Euclid. The last block before North Gate (UCB) has some restaurants and a bookstore. And the walk up the hill provides some nice views of the Bay. I had a chef salad at Stuffed Inn and sat and read & wrote. Then I crossed the street to Analog Books (formerly Signal Books, formerly Collected Thoughts) to see if they had any new literary magazines. Now that I’ve finished with my year’s worth of New Yorkers I seem to be making my way through the lit mags I’ve been buying. Gotta keep myself supplied. I’ve seen Golden Handcuffs Review and have to confess my pleasure in the title, conventional though it looks. Plus which we have to admit that price is a consideration. At $6.95 and fat it seems a good value. I was also attracted to the special “San Francisco Writers” section, despite my indifference to Michael McClure.
Also picked up Zone 3, which has a white cover, at the center of which is a small color photo of someone’s hands. It was rock bottom for a lit mag these days -- $5. I had heard of very few of the writers inside but decided what the heck. I was going to get a coffee & cookie at the café so crossed back over and stepped inside. It was crowded and noisy. I’ve been riding the borderlands of a headache since Tuesday night (evidence of progress!), so I changed my mind and turned for home.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Worlds Apart
from the diary: “Monday 1/26/87“[P]icked up a book I requested from the library -- Worlds Apart -- gay SF short fiction.”
Social arrangements in science fiction were so conventional, so 20th Century American standard. SF authors could extrapolate technology, could picture themselves on other worlds or bopping between dimensions, but anything other than boy-girl (note the order) was just beyond their imaginations. It always seemed to me that should not be so.
The stories in Worlds Apart, as I recall, weren’t exactly gays in space. Rather, they offered variant sexualities. Which was okay, but not what I was hoping for. Of the authors included I’ve gone on to read more Samuel Delany and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Jewelle Gomez read for the Poetry & Pizza series.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Galapagos
from the diary: “Monday 1/26/87“Finished Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut.”
For a few years I gobbled up Vonnegut. Then I hit Jailbird, a book I think I didn’t get all the way through, and I wondered if Vonnegut was no longer writing what I wanted to read. After what seemed a long pause I picked up Galapagos and enjoyed it. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was Jailbird. I’ve read a few Vonneguts since. I had Player Piano on my shelf for ages. Vonnegut’s first novel. When I read that I found another Vonnegut not to like.
I remember reading Cat’s Cradle on a flight to Hawaii (a vacation with my dad’s family when I was in junior high). I loved the tiny chapters and Ice 9, a doomsday material that would instantanteously freeze solid all water into which it came in contact and all water to which that water was connected. Since it’s rare to have water here on earth not connected to other water, once Ice 9 touched its first puddle it wouldn’t be long before all water on earth was frozen up. Scary, right?
I bought used copies of Vonnegut’s books from the comic store my brother and I frequented. The comic store had a bookcase of used science fiction. I don’t remember what first turned me on to Vonnegut. I read Slaughterhouse Five twice. In eighth grade a student teacher saw me reading Breakfast of Champions and delightedly showed me the illustration of the asshole (for some reason she was unamused when I responded by showing her the illustration of the cunt). The asshole illo appears on this cover of Stop Smiling.
I liked the way Vonnegut would have characters recur in different books, mostly minor characters, the books not being sequels exactly as a new book would rarely build on the plot of an earlier book.
Galapagos, as I recall, had a milder doomsday than Cat’s Cradle. The human race evolves into harmless penguin/seal-like marine animals and they/we are last seen sporting in the waves.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Fuzzies and Other People
from the diary: “Tuesday 1/20/87“Read Fuzzies and Other People, [H. Beam] Piper’s long lost sequel to the other two Fuzzy books. I enjoyed it. Much better than Tuning’s Fuzzy Bones.”
Little Fuzzy, the first of Piper’s Fuzzy books, was a gift, I believe. I think it was one of the books Mom read to my brother and me before bed. She did that long past our being little kids. It was a family thing, more fun than TV. And she was good at it. Fuzzies are big eyed, silky furred humanoid aliens, natives of a planet thought to have no sentient life. Their existence creates a problem for those who want to use the planet’s mineral resources without having to spare a care for the planet’s biosphere.
I remember finding the big eyed Fuzzies hypnotically cute – those cover illustrations! Little Fuzzy and the sequel Fuzzy Sapiens were published in the 60s. A third Fuzzy book was rumored. A carbon copy of the manuscript was finally discovered in a trunk 15 or 20 years after the author’s death. Two new Fuzzy books by other authors had been published by the time Fuzzies and Other People turned up. I read one of them, Fuzzy Bones. It seems it left me cold.
Of all the Fuzzy books Little Fuzzy is the one I remember most. Worrying about whether the Fuzzies would be legally recognized as sentient beings and thus entitled to protection from the depredations of ruthless corporations! What would happen!
Monday, March 19, 2007
Thinner
from the diary: “Friday 1/2/87Rode the bus to San Francisco to visit a friend. “On the way there & back I got 2/3 way through [Stephen] King’s Thinner.”
I think I read all Stephen King’s books up through Pet Sematary. I did not care for Pet Sematery. I got tired of it yet it kept going and going, page after page after page. I decided King no longer listened to editors and his books were published however long he wanted them. But I heard Thinner was tighter, a more focused thriller. It was shorter. I liked it well enough. Not so well that I had to read more King, though. Unless another has slipped my mind entirely I do think this is the last King novel I’ve read. Other than that the main character is cursed to lose weight – and lose weight and lose weight until he threatens to evaporate – I don’t remember the book’s plot.
Thinner was originally published under a pseudonym, the
Sunday, March 18, 2007
The City and the Pillar
from the diary: “Thursday 1/1/87
“finished The City and the Pillar last night – by Gore Vidal. It was pretty good. HEY! Nobody died! The ending was kinda tragic. But nobody died – not even a minor character. Not bad.”
Of the gay fiction I’d read in the preceding few months the following books included the death of at least one gay character: The Collected Stories of Tennessee Williams, Dance on My Grave, The Front Runner, Solstice. Not like I was supposed to take any message away from that.
In fact, in the first version of The City and the Pillar the main character kills someone. As the glbt encyclopedia says, “Vidal had gone against tradition by having his protagonist kill his boyhood love rather than expiate his own supposed transgressions through death.” Gore Vidal himself writes, “At the time it was generally believed that the publishers forced me to tack on a cautionary ending in much the same way the Motion Picture Code used to insist that wickedness be punished. This was not true. I had always meant the end of the book to be black, but not as black as it turned out. So for a new edition of the book published in 1965 I altered the last chapter considerably.” I remember seeing the word “revised” on the cover of the copy I read. I remember thinking that was a good thing, as though I were reading the most up to date version. It probably was a good thing.
“finished The City and the Pillar last night – by Gore Vidal. It was pretty good. HEY! Nobody died! The ending was kinda tragic. But nobody died – not even a minor character. Not bad.”
Of the gay fiction I’d read in the preceding few months the following books included the death of at least one gay character: The Collected Stories of Tennessee Williams, Dance on My Grave, The Front Runner, Solstice. Not like I was supposed to take any message away from that.
In fact, in the first version of The City and the Pillar the main character kills someone. As the glbt encyclopedia says, “Vidal had gone against tradition by having his protagonist kill his boyhood love rather than expiate his own supposed transgressions through death.” Gore Vidal himself writes, “At the time it was generally believed that the publishers forced me to tack on a cautionary ending in much the same way the Motion Picture Code used to insist that wickedness be punished. This was not true. I had always meant the end of the book to be black, but not as black as it turned out. So for a new edition of the book published in 1965 I altered the last chapter considerably.” I remember seeing the word “revised” on the cover of the copy I read. I remember thinking that was a good thing, as though I were reading the most up to date version. It probably was a good thing.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
more musings on the diary
from the diary: “Tuesday 11/25/86
“It’s odd, isn’t it, how I’ll never be sure what was the most important incident in my life by reading this diary. It’s interesting, but the immediate conflicts get dealt with, relationships evolve and change and basically all that gets recorded is what comes quick to mind when I sit down to write. I suppose this constitutes the shavings and leavings of particular moments and reflects only a little the more complex patterns of my continuing existence. So what, eh?”
“It’s odd, isn’t it, how I’ll never be sure what was the most important incident in my life by reading this diary. It’s interesting, but the immediate conflicts get dealt with, relationships evolve and change and basically all that gets recorded is what comes quick to mind when I sit down to write. I suppose this constitutes the shavings and leavings of particular moments and reflects only a little the more complex patterns of my continuing existence. So what, eh?”
Friday, March 16, 2007
Collected Stories of Tennessee Williams
from the diary: “Monday 11/24/86“Started reading Tennessee Williams’ Collected Stories. Not bad.”
The story that sticks in my mind is the one where the hero yearns to be dismembered and eaten by the man of his dreams. Yuck? Williams was good at atmosphere, I recall. I’ve read his poetry, too.
In an Amazon review J.E. Barnes says, the stories “reflect the degree to which Williams internalized the shame and self hatred he experienced as a homosexual male in a predominantly heterosexual and anti-homosexual society.” One story, for instance, finds its elderly main character choking to death on a hustler’s cock. In a New York Times review Reynolds Price looks on the bright side, The best stories “move with a leisurely, even archaic, nobility of pace and tone through unblinking scrutiny of those few tendencies of human nature that empowered [their author] - the irreparable damage one person can inflict on his or her companions, the tyranny and persistence of physical desire, the pathos and peculiar grace of the walking wounded.” Empowered by the irreparable damage one person can inflict on another? It’s often the case that one writer’s summing up of another is truest of himself. Just saying.
The next day: “Went to [Best of Two Worlds, a comic shop in Santa Rosa] with Juan. He sez he’s been trying to show that my grand revelation – ‘That you’re homosexual.’ – has not affected our friendship. Oh. Kay. He asked me if it showed. ‘Oh, you mean coming up to the desk [at the library where I worked] and shaking my hand?’”
Juan was a friend I made on the bus. I got acquainted with him while commuting to Day Treatment. He was taking the bus to school. We hung out together some when I started at the JC in the fall.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Dance on My Grave
from the diary: “Sunday 11/23/86
“Just finished reading Dance on My Grave by Aidan Chambers. About a love affair between two teenage boys. But just as much about the reaction of one to the other’s death. Good but kinda depressing.”
I was trying to find gay fiction that wasn’t … um … tragic? I was not having much luck. As Michael Cart in his essay on young adult fiction says, a kid is looking for “the shock of recognition, the sudden, amazing realization that one is not alone, that there are others like me out there. [And] acceptance, [the hope] for happiness … for being loved and cared about ‘like everyone else.’” Cart calls the death in Dance on My Grave, “seemingly obligatory.”
I still remember Hal riding behind Barry on his motorcycle, Hal wrapping his arms around his daring boyfriend, the motor revving, the wind … ah love!
“Just finished reading Dance on My Grave by Aidan Chambers. About a love affair between two teenage boys. But just as much about the reaction of one to the other’s death. Good but kinda depressing.”
I was trying to find gay fiction that wasn’t … um … tragic? I was not having much luck. As Michael Cart in his essay on young adult fiction says, a kid is looking for “the shock of recognition, the sudden, amazing realization that one is not alone, that there are others like me out there. [And] acceptance, [the hope] for happiness … for being loved and cared about ‘like everyone else.’” Cart calls the death in Dance on My Grave, “seemingly obligatory.”
I still remember Hal riding behind Barry on his motorcycle, Hal wrapping his arms around his daring boyfriend, the motor revving, the wind … ah love!
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Fup
from the diary: “Monday 11/10/86“I was bored. Had Veteran’s Day off from school and work. I didn’t study. Did cut some more hedge – only the [neighbor]’s side left to do. The hedge trimmer is screwing up. Read Fup.”
Fup is a short novel by Jim Dodge, a Sonoma County writer. Fup is a duck (Fup duck!), a pet. Fup, the book, was published by a small local press, and the book became a local bestseller. A New York publisher caught wind of the novel waterfowl and reissued it. I’d heard the buzz and was curious. Says Dodge, “I only want to be famous for a 100 miles. I had my moment of American fame with Fup -- People Magazine, Good Morning America -- and found it distracting to the point of distortion.”
I do like the idea of reading the local author. I remember being a bit disappointed. Many people love the book. There are several editions, it seems, and a few different covers. The picture I found (above) looks like the edition I read. Other more colorful covers can be seen here.
Then that Friday: “Geoffrey called at about six … He was going to come and spend the weekend [while Mom was away]. But he has a touch of the flu, and besides he’s still hung up on Daniel. Could we just be friends? He hopes so.” And that was that as far as my first boyfriend went. Two weeks from my asking him “to be my boyfriend” to him saying, “Could we just be friends?”
Did I read nothing in September and October? So far as the diary mentions it.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
what’s new
Last night I went to Moe’s to hear Paul Vangelisti. He read with Debra Di Blasi, who I don’t know, but I liked her reading well enough. I bought Vangelisti’s first book, air, which is either back in print or the publisher found a full box in his bedroom, I wasn’t sure which. It was published in 1973. I also picked up 6X6, a poetry mag out of New York. I think I have another issue or two of it around here somewhere. It’s bound with a rubber band. Good until the rubber decays. Maybe that’s when the poetry expires. There are six poets, each poet with six poems.
And I’ve had my eye on The Mammoth Book of Best New Manga, an anthology of non-Japanese manga (Japanese-style comics). I felt like buying things so I took that from the shelf, too.
Monday, March 12, 2007
The diary, 6/6/86 – 10/14/86
This journal is a stenography notebook. The spiral binding is at the top of the page. Every time you turn a page you have to flip the whole book over. This makes it hard to browse. A lot fewer books mentioned in this diary.
What happened? I quit Day Treatment for college. A friend from DT convinced me I didn’t need to take that antidepressant anymore (though I would occasionally dip into the bottle when feeling overwhelmed). After a decent experience with the summer school class I got a job at the SRJC campus library and took on a full-time load of classes during the fall semester. I joined the campus gay club, which was quite small, and seemed always threatening to evaporate. I also began attending a gay youth group in not-very-nearby Marin; this involved long busrides &/or carpools, as I had no car. And, yes, I had nongay friends and we would hang out, play boardgames, watch movies, go for long walks. Still going to poetry workshops and Russian River Writers Guild readings. More things going on, less time to read. Plus, of course, much reading time having to go to reading for school.
movies mentioned:
Labyrinth
Piranha 2: The Spawning
Return of the Living Dead
My Beautiful Laundrette
The Fly
Return to Oz
Club Paradise
Legal Eagles
TV:
People are Talking
America’s Top Ten
What happened? I quit Day Treatment for college. A friend from DT convinced me I didn’t need to take that antidepressant anymore (though I would occasionally dip into the bottle when feeling overwhelmed). After a decent experience with the summer school class I got a job at the SRJC campus library and took on a full-time load of classes during the fall semester. I joined the campus gay club, which was quite small, and seemed always threatening to evaporate. I also began attending a gay youth group in not-very-nearby Marin; this involved long busrides &/or carpools, as I had no car. And, yes, I had nongay friends and we would hang out, play boardgames, watch movies, go for long walks. Still going to poetry workshops and Russian River Writers Guild readings. More things going on, less time to read. Plus, of course, much reading time having to go to reading for school.
movies mentioned:
Labyrinth
Piranha 2: The Spawning
Return of the Living Dead
My Beautiful Laundrette
The Fly
Return to Oz
Club Paradise
Legal Eagles
TV:
People are Talking
America’s Top Ten
Sunday, March 11, 2007
States of Desire
from the diary: “Thursday 8/28/86“Still reading States of Desire.”
The following day: “Finished States of Desire, which was good but faintly depressing.”
Edmund White traveled the country, finding sex with men in every region. I like White’s prose style. I continue to read his work. But the gay identity that consists not of loving men but “tricking”, that is, sex sex sex, mostly with strangers, I still find, at best, uncongenial.
White’s adventures did not thrill me with the possibilities. On the other hand, as this description at Edmund White’s own website suggests, the book probably exposed me to a range of gay life I hadn’t yet much seen in those sociological tomes: “gay engineers, gay computer experts, and gay cowboys … a gay timber baron from Portland and a ‘big-wig’ (literally as well as figuratively) in the Florida drag world. Here are: handsome lifeguards in Chicago—those ‘bronzed demigods . . . who lord it above us on their white wood towers’ [ellipsis in orig]; a Hollywood host who has just spent ‘a typical L.A. day, driving 150 miles assembling the twelve ingredients for supper’ … gay Cubans in Miami, a gay lobbyist in Washington, D.C., and even a self-appointed gay Mormon prophet in Salt Lake City …” I’m sure they all didn’t sleep with (sleep with?) Edmund White.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Tom Jones
from the diary: “Wednesday 8/27/86
“Pretty much spent the day at home. Started Tom Jones and States of Desire.”
Two days later: “… reading s’more Tom Jones, which is good but which I can’t read great portions of at one sitting – oh, well, I planned to renew and renew it. The library’s not likely to yank it from me cuz someone’s requested it.”
9/13: “Still reading Tom Jones.”
In my memory the library had instituted its renewal limits by this time. Guess not. Once I started the fall semester, however, I saw there was no way I would be able to keep up with Tom Jones. I remember contendedly chuckling away over the book while soaking my feet before bed (conquered athlete’s foot that way and learned to like it). There are essays Henry Fielding throws in at the beginning of each “book” (the text is divided into sections, which, I suppose, were originally published as separate volumes). Fielding even says if you don’t like your narrative interrupted just skip the essays. But they were fun. Some of the easiest essays I’d come across. So I didn’t want to skip them. Yet they stopped the story dead and it was hard to get myself into the swing of the narrative again. It was a fat book besides, and I was a slow reader. I don’t remember how far I got. Not halfway, I think.
Published in England in 1749, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is often called one of the first novels. Not that I really know what people who say that mean. The full text is available online.
A few years ago I found a cheap paperback. I much prefer a hardcopy book to scrolling along on a computer. So someday, soaking my feet before bed some chilly winter night, I’ll chuckle along to Tom Jones again.
“Pretty much spent the day at home. Started Tom Jones and States of Desire.”
Two days later: “… reading s’more Tom Jones, which is good but which I can’t read great portions of at one sitting – oh, well, I planned to renew and renew it. The library’s not likely to yank it from me cuz someone’s requested it.”
9/13: “Still reading Tom Jones.”
In my memory the library had instituted its renewal limits by this time. Guess not. Once I started the fall semester, however, I saw there was no way I would be able to keep up with Tom Jones. I remember contendedly chuckling away over the book while soaking my feet before bed (conquered athlete’s foot that way and learned to like it). There are essays Henry Fielding throws in at the beginning of each “book” (the text is divided into sections, which, I suppose, were originally published as separate volumes). Fielding even says if you don’t like your narrative interrupted just skip the essays. But they were fun. Some of the easiest essays I’d come across. So I didn’t want to skip them. Yet they stopped the story dead and it was hard to get myself into the swing of the narrative again. It was a fat book besides, and I was a slow reader. I don’t remember how far I got. Not halfway, I think.
Published in England in 1749, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is often called one of the first novels. Not that I really know what people who say that mean. The full text is available online.
A few years ago I found a cheap paperback. I much prefer a hardcopy book to scrolling along on a computer. So someday, soaking my feet before bed some chilly winter night, I’ll chuckle along to Tom Jones again.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Talking Animals and Other People
from the diary: “Friday 8/22/86“Been reading a good book, Talking Animals and Other People, autobiography of animator Shamus Culhane.”
I was a big fan of animation. It seemed to me the place where you could realize things that could never be in real life. If the Oz books were made into movies I thought they should be animated movies. A gangly pumpkin-headed man built from sticks? You wouldn’t have to plump him up to make him a costume for a meat person. A sawhorse brought to life by a sprinkling of powder? No need to built a puppet to dangle in front of a blue screen. And animals talking? It looks natural.
Since the images depicted are limited only by what the artist can draw an animated world seemed the perfect place for exploring unknown regions of the mind. Such is rarely the case, of course. Typical animated films are no more interesting than your typical live action films. How much this has to do with the inelastic imaginations of the creators, how much to do with the expectations of the money men and their wish to sell the product to an audience – too weird and nobody wants to buy, right? – how much it has to do with something else I haven’t thought of, who knows?
The review in the NYT praises Culhane’s look back at his career (only a glance at his personal life, it says), “Much of what [the book] reveals is disagreeable, and one of its great merits is that it offers such an unsparing view of a world that was all too often subject to strain, squalor, brutal internal politics, harsh labor relations.” Not unlike the sweaty shops where comic books were cranked out, I suppose. I understand there’s long been an overlap between comics artists and animators. Culhane “has the knack of explaining technical matters clearly … [and] is equally concerned with esthetic issues, from the use of backgrounds inspired by Victorian illustrators to the lessons to be learned from the movie-making innovations of an Eisenstein or a Pudovkin.”
Culhane worked for Disney and claims credit for the “Heigh ho, Heigh ho” marching dwarves sequence in Snow White. “He had good reason to resent Disney's authoritarianism, and to know how unfair he could sometimes be, but he admires his dedication and his abilities too much to let fly against him.” And who knew that “toward the end of the making of Snow White … [the animators were so keyed up for a week they poured out an] avalanche of pornographic drawings in which Snow White, the dwarfs and even the old witch performed feats ‘that Krafft-Ebing would never have dreamed of.’” What private collection has those drawings?
Thursday, March 08, 2007
African Short Stories
from the diary: “Thursday 8/14/86
“I lay around today reading African Short Stories.”
This probably is the anthology edited by Chinua Achebe & C. L. Innes. Can’t know for sure cuz I didn’t list author or publisher in the diary. Nor did I say anything about it, any of the usual critical commentary like “good” or “liked”.
I was trying to write short stories and I was reading short story anthologies in hopes reading stories would help my own. If you want to be a writer, declared several advisors (mostly how-to books), you should start by writing short stories. Short stories not only are good training for building a narrative, capturing character, developing a style, but they are a lot easier to sell than a novel. If you grow a career in short fiction publishers & agents will come calling. We see you can write, they will say. Show us your novel.
“I lay around today reading African Short Stories.”
This probably is the anthology edited by Chinua Achebe & C. L. Innes. Can’t know for sure cuz I didn’t list author or publisher in the diary. Nor did I say anything about it, any of the usual critical commentary like “good” or “liked”.
I was trying to write short stories and I was reading short story anthologies in hopes reading stories would help my own. If you want to be a writer, declared several advisors (mostly how-to books), you should start by writing short stories. Short stories not only are good training for building a narrative, capturing character, developing a style, but they are a lot easier to sell than a novel. If you grow a career in short fiction publishers & agents will come calling. We see you can write, they will say. Show us your novel.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Aphrodisiac
from the diary: “Tuesday 8/19/86“Jeff came over. That is, I met him on the way to the library (to return Aphrodisiac: fiction from Christopher Street -- a good little collection of gay fiction) … [Jeff] wandered around with me, came back here. We played a couple [board] games.”
I was both embarassed by and defiant about carrying this book around. Cover pic showing man’s bare torso (stopping short of the pubes), and with that title, didn’t it scream? It was literary fiction, not porn. I don’t remember anything about the stories. What can I say? Christopher Street was a gay literary magazine out of New York.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
The Front Runner
from the diary: “Tuesday 8/12/86“I went downtown. … Got The Front Runner (a novel about a gay relationship) on Chris’ recommendation from the S[anta] R[osa] library.”
Chris was the leader of a gay youth group in Marin that I had recently connected with.
Two days later: “I’m reading The Front Runner, a 1974 novel by Patricia Nell Warren about a track coach and his star runner who fall very in love. And it’s a good book, too.”
And then: “I finished The Front Runner. But Billy had to die? And Delphine committed suicide? Oh, come on. The ending was semi-happy, but the endless tragedy of gay lives gets awful tiring. Actually, Delphine’s suicide irked me the most because he seemed more a stereotype than a real character. At least there was important, relieving resolution to Billy’s death. Oh, well. The book had me in a powerful grip, and a book has to be purty dern good to do that.”
A lot of people love this book. Rave some Amazon reviews: “truly remarkable,” “very much the right book at the right time by the right author,” “heartbreaking, insightful, beautiful, painful,” and so on. I had asked Chris if she knew about good gay novels. Everybody loves The Front Runner, she said.
Author Patricia Nell Warren maintains her own website. She has written two sequels, neither of which I’ve read. Many times Warren has been asked why she, a lesbian, wrote a gay male love story. “She started outlining The Front Runner as a story about a lesbian coach and one of her runners, who became lovers,” says an Outsports interview. But, “’When I finally looked around at real life I thought, nobody will believe this because there aren’t any women coaches in track. … [I]f you were going to have a cliff-hanger story about being outed on the way to the Olympics, if you were a woman athlete, you’re automatically suspect by many people anyway.’”
Monday, March 05, 2007
The last New Yorker
In 2004 I sent in a subscription to The New Yorker. Kent had said he would read it, I’d read and enjoyed the magazine in small doses (though there was one point a friend had passed her subscription to me and I let the issues gather dust in my room for a year or two before finally throwing them out), and the subscription offer was real cheap, the “professional rate”. When the issues started showing up I would flip through them, look at the cartoons, read a poem, scan the movie reviews, then they would fall into this pile or that pile and the next issue would crowd in.
When I switched to a parttime job last spring I began to clean up some piles and in doing so collected the New Yorkers. Was I going to throw them out again, lightly read, as I had that friend’s batch? I decided to give reading them a try. I could always change my mind. I didn’t read them in chronological order (unusual for Glenn, typically obsessive about that sort of thing) and I let myself skip or skim articles, particularly ones about the 2004 presidential election (we know how that depressing thing turned out), and the Iraq War (I never wanted to be an expert on Iraq), but I read all the fiction, and most everything else.
Kent never did read much (though I see the last two I read are serving as bathroom distraction right now). As I finish with them I dump the issues in the recycle bag. I finished the last issue of the subscription. The Oct. 18, 2004 issue. It’s not, as I said, the last I received, the subscription ran out in 2005, it’s just the one that was on the bottom of the pile. It calls itself “The Politics Issue”. Yes, I mostly hopped over the article on “How George W. Bush reinvented himself.” I like Clive James’ poem “Exit Don Giovanni”; am thinking about copying it out. It would be the second poem I’ve copied out from the subscription issues (the first appeared in an article as an example of a song by an Eskimo tribe).
In this last issue there’s an article on a Boston charter school that tries to give the extra to students struggling. One of the students profiled is Rousseau Mieze, a goodlooking, smart black boy whose struggles with school seem more to do with boredom and the difficulties of living poor than with understanding the assignments. He writes poetry, which seems primarily influenced by rap music, and there are excerpts in the article.
My life yo I’m thankful
On the real I feel I’ll tank though
I feel like death is hangin’ on my ankle.
Mieze tortures language for his rhymes here. The subject is serious, isn’t it? But I get the feeling the language is enjoying its torture and the seriousness is shot through with humor. Humor helps, people.
You be the minority, preferably black?
The new social profiling is green in fact.
Mieze is worrying about college. If you can’t show the school that you’re a consistent high achiever then the financial aid that makes school possible won’t come through. Mieze’s grades are middling.
He’s stepping with some newness
What problems? He can do this.
I find that couplet utterly charming.
When I switched to a parttime job last spring I began to clean up some piles and in doing so collected the New Yorkers. Was I going to throw them out again, lightly read, as I had that friend’s batch? I decided to give reading them a try. I could always change my mind. I didn’t read them in chronological order (unusual for Glenn, typically obsessive about that sort of thing) and I let myself skip or skim articles, particularly ones about the 2004 presidential election (we know how that depressing thing turned out), and the Iraq War (I never wanted to be an expert on Iraq), but I read all the fiction, and most everything else.
Kent never did read much (though I see the last two I read are serving as bathroom distraction right now). As I finish with them I dump the issues in the recycle bag. I finished the last issue of the subscription. The Oct. 18, 2004 issue. It’s not, as I said, the last I received, the subscription ran out in 2005, it’s just the one that was on the bottom of the pile. It calls itself “The Politics Issue”. Yes, I mostly hopped over the article on “How George W. Bush reinvented himself.” I like Clive James’ poem “Exit Don Giovanni”; am thinking about copying it out. It would be the second poem I’ve copied out from the subscription issues (the first appeared in an article as an example of a song by an Eskimo tribe).
In this last issue there’s an article on a Boston charter school that tries to give the extra to students struggling. One of the students profiled is Rousseau Mieze, a goodlooking, smart black boy whose struggles with school seem more to do with boredom and the difficulties of living poor than with understanding the assignments. He writes poetry, which seems primarily influenced by rap music, and there are excerpts in the article.
My life yo I’m thankful
On the real I feel I’ll tank though
I feel like death is hangin’ on my ankle.
Mieze tortures language for his rhymes here. The subject is serious, isn’t it? But I get the feeling the language is enjoying its torture and the seriousness is shot through with humor. Humor helps, people.
You be the minority, preferably black?
The new social profiling is green in fact.
Mieze is worrying about college. If you can’t show the school that you’re a consistent high achiever then the financial aid that makes school possible won’t come through. Mieze’s grades are middling.
He’s stepping with some newness
What problems? He can do this.
I find that couplet utterly charming.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Solstice
from the diary: “Monday 8/11/86“Reading a novel by Joyce Carol Oates: Solstice. It’s good.”
Joyce Carol Oates writes a lot. Many of her stories have a fantastic or magical realist flavor, and they are often dark, even creepy. I think this is still the only of her novels I’ve read. I have read several short stories, mostly as I’ve run across them in anthologies. I probably read this one for the gay aspect. “Imperceptibly, hardly aware of what is happening to them at the deepest level of feeling, [the two women] move, or are moved, toward love, and ultimately beyond it, arriving at last at a near-fatal obsession with each other.” (That’s from Celestial Timepiece.) Doesn’t exactly sound life-affirming. Probably will never be an Oprah choice.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies
from the diary: “Friday 8/8/86“The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies by Rito Vusso [sic] came in from the Solano Library an’ I bin reading it tonight.”
This was the third book on gay subject matter that I had to get via interlibrary loan. Like the other two (Reflections of a Rock Lobster and One Teenager in Ten) The Celluloid Closet came from the Solano County Library. What was it about the Solano County Library? It’s not like Sonoma County’s library had no gay books. Huh. They did tend to be rather more … sociological? … than cultural. I read a lot of dense texts trying to figure out what the gay thing was.
I suspect Vito Russo’s reading of the queer killer stereotype informed the protests in San Francisco over the filming of Basic Instinct in 1991. I refused to see Basic Instinct for several years. Yes, I did succumb when I was bored and the DVD was kicking around. By that point, I figured, nobody was making money off my eyeballs.
If you want to read a review, here’s one.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Christmas in March
My s’mom sent me an Amazon gift certificate for Xmas. Amazon has much more than books these days. But I knew I was going to get books.I’ve been working my way through unread Baum books. Recently I read John Dough and the Cherub and I’m in the middle of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. I’ve had Santa Claus for years and the time just never seemed right. Twenty years ago I got Twinkle and Chubbins and late last year I finally read it. I’ve been thinking about rereading the Oz series. I’ve read all the Baum Oz books more than once; yet there are non-Oz Baum books that I haven’t read. Oughtn’t I read them first? I mean, if I ever intend to. Twinkle and Chubbins is a collection of fairy stories set on the prairie, the main characters being a girl, Twinkle, and a boy, Chubbins. The Oz Club did a nice hardcover. But they didn’t bring back into print the sequel, Policeman Bluejay. The University of Nebraska Press’s Bison Books imprint has remedied the situation, bringing both the short stories and the full length sequel into print in a paperback, calling it Twinkle Tales. I figured I might as well get that.
I’ve been curious about the small poetry presses I’ve been watching birth on the internet. Steve Mueske’s Three Candles. Reb Livingston’s No Tell Motel. Both have recent anthologies. I was leaning toward The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel. But I guess I decided to go with Digerati: 20 Contemporary Poets in the Virtual World because I’ve been following a few more of the poets in it. I read Seth Abramson’s blog, for instance. And Paul Guest’s. Both are on my blogroll. (As are Steve Mueske and Reb Livingston, by the way.)The books arrived yesterday. Twinkle Tales is nicely done. Digerati: 20 Contemporary Poets in the Virtual World isn’t quite. All of the design seems just a bit off. I like the colors and the cover photo but the fonts clash and the text inside seems to have been captured as it floated by. It’s a print on demand book. Print on demand books don’t look as good. But then it’s always been a struggle for a tiny press and p.o.d. offers opportunities that just weren’t available before. Not for us working stiffs. Anyway, I’m happy enough to have it in hand and am looking forward to the read.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
I Never Loved Your Mind
from the diary: “Thursday 8/7/86
“Mom and I exchanged animosities tonight. She was pissed at me for not turning over the paper to her right when she asked for it and I was pissed at her for crabbing at me. According to her I ‘had no right to be offended.’ Since I’d had all day to read the paper I had no right to be reading it just when she wanted to be reading it. I don’t think she would’ve cared if she had known that it would’ve taken me four minutes tops to finish and hand it over. She just wanted to be petty. She was looking for something to grouse over and found it. So I threw the paper on the floor, said, ‘Here! Read it!’ and fled into my room with Paul Zindel’s I Never Loved Your Mind. Mom came to my door as she was going to bed and said, ‘Good night.’ I, of course, still feeling offended, despite my having no right to the feeling, said nothing. So she said, ‘Don’t do this.’ Sounded like something I could’ve said. When she told me I had no right to be offended I told her to leave me alone and I’d do the dishes tomorrow. I wasn’t actually as angry as I tried to make myself sound. She was lighting into me because she had no one else so I returned the favor.”
I loved the title: I Never Loved Your Mind … and I liked Zindel’s The Pigman. The publisher’s description at Amazon: “At 17, Dewey Daniels is fed up with his boring high school and decides to drop out, taking a part-time job at Richmond Valley Hospital. One day he catches fellow dropout Yvette Goethals stealing hospital supplies, and it's lust at first sight. But Yvette and Dewey are like night and day: she's a vegetarian and couldn't care less about a romantic commitment; he loves cheeseburgers and can't get Yvette out of his mind. By the time these two get through with each other, will true love ever be the same?”
I was probably disappointed the book was completely het. If it had had a hint of queer representation I would have made note? Truthfully, I remember nothing about it.
“Mom and I exchanged animosities tonight. She was pissed at me for not turning over the paper to her right when she asked for it and I was pissed at her for crabbing at me. According to her I ‘had no right to be offended.’ Since I’d had all day to read the paper I had no right to be reading it just when she wanted to be reading it. I don’t think she would’ve cared if she had known that it would’ve taken me four minutes tops to finish and hand it over. She just wanted to be petty. She was looking for something to grouse over and found it. So I threw the paper on the floor, said, ‘Here! Read it!’ and fled into my room with Paul Zindel’s I Never Loved Your Mind. Mom came to my door as she was going to bed and said, ‘Good night.’ I, of course, still feeling offended, despite my having no right to the feeling, said nothing. So she said, ‘Don’t do this.’ Sounded like something I could’ve said. When she told me I had no right to be offended I told her to leave me alone and I’d do the dishes tomorrow. I wasn’t actually as angry as I tried to make myself sound. She was lighting into me because she had no one else so I returned the favor.”
I loved the title: I Never Loved Your Mind … and I liked Zindel’s The Pigman. The publisher’s description at Amazon: “At 17, Dewey Daniels is fed up with his boring high school and decides to drop out, taking a part-time job at Richmond Valley Hospital. One day he catches fellow dropout Yvette Goethals stealing hospital supplies, and it's lust at first sight. But Yvette and Dewey are like night and day: she's a vegetarian and couldn't care less about a romantic commitment; he loves cheeseburgers and can't get Yvette out of his mind. By the time these two get through with each other, will true love ever be the same?”
I was probably disappointed the book was completely het. If it had had a hint of queer representation I would have made note? Truthfully, I remember nothing about it.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Helliconia Winter
from the diary: “Sunday 8/3/86“I’m reading Helliconia Winter, the third and last Helliconia book.”
When I wrote about Julian May’s The Many Colored Land I may have been remembering the Helliconia books. Now that I’m faced with writing about the Helliconia books … uh … I don’t remember anything about them. Except maybe I found them kind of boring? Yeah, I remember subdued landscape covers …
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Crisis in American Institutions
from the diary: “Thursday 7/17/86
“I’m going to the JC library tomorrow to study the book that Linda (Collins, our instructor) has on reserve: Crisis in American Institutions.”
Friday: “I checked Crisis out of the JC library today. They let me take it out over the weekend. It’s due at 9:00 on Monday. Good thing the bus gets there so early, I guess.”
The college course I signed up for summer of 1986 was not my first college course – I’d taken a Creative Writing Workshop and a Sign Language Class, both of which met in the evenings at the local high school – but it was the first at the JC campus and was an experiment – would I, could I start going to college? That is, would college be a way out of the hole I was in? Mom was hopeful. I was dubious, having always hated school, but there were plenty of things I wanted to learn and people told me college was different and what did I have to lose? Maybe I could even get a job on campus? Mom had a buddy who was an instructor and, should I decide to enroll in the fall, she promised to put in a good word at the library.
What was the course? Social Deviance. As I would tell people, “I figured I knew something about it.” The instructor thought a better name would have been “Social Variance,” which does sound nicer. Crisis in American Institutions was the text and it was my first exposure to textbook pricing. The current 13th edition retails for $75.00. I’m sure it seemed similarly steep in ’86. According to the “card catalog” description at Amazon, This book “[p]resents articles on such social problems as corporate power, economic crisis, sexism, racism, and inequality.”
I quit Day Treatment to go to school. I was told I could visit and I did. But I think I only did that once. I liked the class well enough. One day there was a panel of homosexuals talking about homosexual stuff, available to answer questions, la. I don’t think I asked any. On the day of the panel I brought a bouquet of daisies and handed out a daisy to everyone in class. A couple of the boys refused theirs. It was, like, totally obvious I was coming out, eh?
For my term paper I interviewed the pastor of the local Metropolitan Community Church. He said I had pretty eyes. He said I would hear that a lot. I haven’t heard it since. Teacher gave the paper an A- (A+ for content, presentation “variable”).
“I’m going to the JC library tomorrow to study the book that Linda (Collins, our instructor) has on reserve: Crisis in American Institutions.”
Friday: “I checked Crisis out of the JC library today. They let me take it out over the weekend. It’s due at 9:00 on Monday. Good thing the bus gets there so early, I guess.”
The college course I signed up for summer of 1986 was not my first college course – I’d taken a Creative Writing Workshop and a Sign Language Class, both of which met in the evenings at the local high school – but it was the first at the JC campus and was an experiment – would I, could I start going to college? That is, would college be a way out of the hole I was in? Mom was hopeful. I was dubious, having always hated school, but there were plenty of things I wanted to learn and people told me college was different and what did I have to lose? Maybe I could even get a job on campus? Mom had a buddy who was an instructor and, should I decide to enroll in the fall, she promised to put in a good word at the library.
What was the course? Social Deviance. As I would tell people, “I figured I knew something about it.” The instructor thought a better name would have been “Social Variance,” which does sound nicer. Crisis in American Institutions was the text and it was my first exposure to textbook pricing. The current 13th edition retails for $75.00. I’m sure it seemed similarly steep in ’86. According to the “card catalog” description at Amazon, This book “[p]resents articles on such social problems as corporate power, economic crisis, sexism, racism, and inequality.”
I quit Day Treatment to go to school. I was told I could visit and I did. But I think I only did that once. I liked the class well enough. One day there was a panel of homosexuals talking about homosexual stuff, available to answer questions, la. I don’t think I asked any. On the day of the panel I brought a bouquet of daisies and handed out a daisy to everyone in class. A couple of the boys refused theirs. It was, like, totally obvious I was coming out, eh?
For my term paper I interviewed the pastor of the local Metropolitan Community Church. He said I had pretty eyes. He said I would hear that a lot. I haven’t heard it since. Teacher gave the paper an A- (A+ for content, presentation “variable”).
Monday, February 26, 2007
God Save This Honorable Court
from the diary: “Friday July 4, 1986“I read God Save This Honorable Court by Laurence Tribe.”
End of June the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled (in a 5-4 decision) that sodomy laws were not unconstitutional. Laurence Tribe was the lawyer arguing before the court that sodomy laws should be struck down. Back in the 80s he was frequently mentioned as a likely Supreme Court nominee should the White House go to a Democrat. In the Wikipedia article on Tribe there's the assertion that when “he testified against Robert Bork, [Tribe made] lasting enemies in the U.S. Senate”. Had Clinton chosen Tribe, the article implies, Tribe would not have been confirmed.
Of God Save This Honorable Court the NYT says, Laurence Tribe “combs the history of the High Court for a set of interesting but unstartling propositions … A single Justice … can affect the Court profoundly. The narrow literal interpretation of the Constitution prized by conservatives is largely a myth. Most Supreme Court Justices … turn out to be pretty much what their benefactors wanted. ... And, perhaps most important, the Senate has both a long tradition and constitutionally mandated duty to scrutinize all High Court nominees closely.” These remain true, don’t they? Truisms, maybe? One might tack on a couple more. Howabout: Conservative judges are activist judges.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk
from the diary: “Thursday 6/26/86
“Just finished The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.”
I remember Harvey Milk. I grew up 50 miles north of San Francisco but our TV stations were SF TV stations so the news tended to be SF news. And Harvey was telegenic. There’s a TV news report that appears in the Oscar-winning The Times of Harvey Milk in which Harvey, an SF supervisor, highlights the need for his pooper-scooper legislation by marching across the Civic Center lawn and stepping in dog poo. He lifts his foot, aghast, as though it all happened spontaneously, the offending poo half-squashed against the sole of his shoe. I saw that report as a kid when it first showed and I totally fell for it. Wow. There must be poop all over the place in San Francisco!
I also remember the Briggs Initiative, the first time one of the religio-right’s coffer-stuffing take-it-to-the-voters ballot attacks on the queers made it into my consciousness. Dangerouscitizen.com says, “In crafting the initiative, Briggs had used extremely broad language. Any teacher found to be 'advocating, imposing, encouraging or promoting' homosexual activity could be fired. This meant walking in a gay pride parade, assigning a book by a gay author, or attending a meeting about gay rights could cost a teacher his or her job. Casting the issue as a matter of free speech, opponents pointed out that a teacher could be fired simply for opposing the Briggs Initiative itself.” While I wasn't owning up to gay feelings at the time (I wasn't yet 13) I was a confirmed free-speecher and was appalled that one's thoughts, one's mere opinions could get one fired. I remember walking around my paper route fuming about it. Harvey Milk, was the most visible out-gay elected official and he traveled the state fighting the Briggs Initiative, even facing John Briggs in live debates. I probably saw one of those -- ours was the kind of household that tuned in to things like that. I'm pretty sure Mom was solidly against the Briggs Initiative, though I can't recall any particular incidence of voiced opposition. She was a schoolteacher and had to sign a loyalty oath (instituted during the McCarthy era and still required) to work in the California public schools. She wasn’t impressed with that, I know.
The Briggs Initiative was defeated. Three weeks later Harvey Milk was assassinated.
I remember watching the silent candlelight march that took place that night. (The mayor, George Moscone, had also been gunned down by right-wing supervisor Dan White.) I remember the White Nights riots after Dan White was patted on the head by the courts and given a tokenfive year sentence seven year sentence (of which he served five). Police cars were set on fire and their sirens screamed and screamed. The City Hall’s glass doors were bashed in.
The Mayor Castro Street is a good read. I’ll read it again sometime.
“Just finished The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.”
I remember Harvey Milk. I grew up 50 miles north of San Francisco but our TV stations were SF TV stations so the news tended to be SF news. And Harvey was telegenic. There’s a TV news report that appears in the Oscar-winning The Times of Harvey Milk in which Harvey, an SF supervisor, highlights the need for his pooper-scooper legislation by marching across the Civic Center lawn and stepping in dog poo. He lifts his foot, aghast, as though it all happened spontaneously, the offending poo half-squashed against the sole of his shoe. I saw that report as a kid when it first showed and I totally fell for it. Wow. There must be poop all over the place in San Francisco!
I also remember the Briggs Initiative, the first time one of the religio-right’s coffer-stuffing take-it-to-the-voters ballot attacks on the queers made it into my consciousness. Dangerouscitizen.com says, “In crafting the initiative, Briggs had used extremely broad language. Any teacher found to be 'advocating, imposing, encouraging or promoting' homosexual activity could be fired. This meant walking in a gay pride parade, assigning a book by a gay author, or attending a meeting about gay rights could cost a teacher his or her job. Casting the issue as a matter of free speech, opponents pointed out that a teacher could be fired simply for opposing the Briggs Initiative itself.” While I wasn't owning up to gay feelings at the time (I wasn't yet 13) I was a confirmed free-speecher and was appalled that one's thoughts, one's mere opinions could get one fired. I remember walking around my paper route fuming about it. Harvey Milk, was the most visible out-gay elected official and he traveled the state fighting the Briggs Initiative, even facing John Briggs in live debates. I probably saw one of those -- ours was the kind of household that tuned in to things like that. I'm pretty sure Mom was solidly against the Briggs Initiative, though I can't recall any particular incidence of voiced opposition. She was a schoolteacher and had to sign a loyalty oath (instituted during the McCarthy era and still required) to work in the California public schools. She wasn’t impressed with that, I know.
The Briggs Initiative was defeated. Three weeks later Harvey Milk was assassinated.
I remember watching the silent candlelight march that took place that night. (The mayor, George Moscone, had also been gunned down by right-wing supervisor Dan White.) I remember the White Nights riots after Dan White was patted on the head by the courts and given a token
The Mayor Castro Street is a good read. I’ll read it again sometime.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
The Seven Mysteries of Life
from the diary: “Thursday 6/5/86
“Am reading The Seven Mysteries of Life by Guy Murchie. Engrossing but long.”
6/12/86: “Still reading The Seven Mysteries of Life.”
6/13/86: “Finished 7 Mysteries. Liked it. Synthesis book.”
OK. What do I remember about this book? I don’t remember much about this book. Had something to do with science … Helpfully, there are reviews on the net.
At Amazon Bugs Patrick helps out with “the *seven mysteries*: Abstraction, Interrelation, Omnipresence, Polarity, Transcendence, Germination, and Divinity.”
P. K. Paraskevopoulos says, “Firstly, you are led to realise that your concept of life is too narrow and prevents you from realising that life pervades everything - from particles and atoms to complex organisms - and that the Earth itself is a complex live organism. Then you see that all life is interrelated. For example, you realise that the most distant relationship among people is, approximately, 50th cousinhood, which means that all people are related and gives a new meaning to concept of `the brotherhood of man'.”
Another reviewer says, among the other explanations is “how sand is deposited on beaches.” Huh. I wonder if it’s from Guy Murchie I got the beach formation idea, rather than The Blue Planet. Twenty years on it’s hard to tease out where I picked up one thing or another.
At Thymos.com Piero Scaruffi has a more thorough overview. Among the things Scaruffi picks out (and I remember some of this) is this bit about the non-inertness of nonliving things, “Life is inherent in nature. Murchie describes sand dunes, glaciers, fires, etc as living organisms, the life of metals and crystals. The question is not whether there is life outside our planet, but whether it is possible to have ‘nonlife’. … The laws of Physics describe the social life of particles. Electrons obey social laws that we decided are physical laws instead of biological laws thereby granting their behavior a different status from the behavior of bees. But this is an arbitrary decision. Mind is a universal aspect of life and energy.”
I do remember being asked about it while I was reading it. Have you ever tried to describe to someone a third person’s argument and having the person to whom you are describing start to protest, to pick holes, to disagree? This was one of those books that taught me not to try. No way could I do justice to Murchie’s ideas. I didn’t want to be put in the position of advocating for them, but I did like thinking about them. After much frustration I learned to say, “If you want to know, read it yourself.”
I’m now reading through the diary that covers 6/6/86 thru 10/14/86.
“Am reading The Seven Mysteries of Life by Guy Murchie. Engrossing but long.”
6/12/86: “Still reading The Seven Mysteries of Life.”
6/13/86: “Finished 7 Mysteries. Liked it. Synthesis book.”
OK. What do I remember about this book? I don’t remember much about this book. Had something to do with science … Helpfully, there are reviews on the net.
At Amazon Bugs Patrick helps out with “the *seven mysteries*: Abstraction, Interrelation, Omnipresence, Polarity, Transcendence, Germination, and Divinity.”
P. K. Paraskevopoulos says, “Firstly, you are led to realise that your concept of life is too narrow and prevents you from realising that life pervades everything - from particles and atoms to complex organisms - and that the Earth itself is a complex live organism. Then you see that all life is interrelated. For example, you realise that the most distant relationship among people is, approximately, 50th cousinhood, which means that all people are related and gives a new meaning to concept of `the brotherhood of man'.”
Another reviewer says, among the other explanations is “how sand is deposited on beaches.” Huh. I wonder if it’s from Guy Murchie I got the beach formation idea, rather than The Blue Planet. Twenty years on it’s hard to tease out where I picked up one thing or another.
At Thymos.com Piero Scaruffi has a more thorough overview. Among the things Scaruffi picks out (and I remember some of this) is this bit about the non-inertness of nonliving things, “Life is inherent in nature. Murchie describes sand dunes, glaciers, fires, etc as living organisms, the life of metals and crystals. The question is not whether there is life outside our planet, but whether it is possible to have ‘nonlife’. … The laws of Physics describe the social life of particles. Electrons obey social laws that we decided are physical laws instead of biological laws thereby granting their behavior a different status from the behavior of bees. But this is an arbitrary decision. Mind is a universal aspect of life and energy.”
I do remember being asked about it while I was reading it. Have you ever tried to describe to someone a third person’s argument and having the person to whom you are describing start to protest, to pick holes, to disagree? This was one of those books that taught me not to try. No way could I do justice to Murchie’s ideas. I didn’t want to be put in the position of advocating for them, but I did like thinking about them. After much frustration I learned to say, “If you want to know, read it yourself.”
I’m now reading through the diary that covers 6/6/86 thru 10/14/86.
Friday, February 23, 2007
The diary, 3/12/86 – 5/24/86
I can’t talk about the diary the way I talk about published books, other people’s books. When I read the diary it fires emotions that cloud what’s on the page; there is much, in other words, that is going on in my head that is not going on on paper where others can see it. I have thought about using the diary as material for a memoir or novel; I doubt that will happen. Working with the diary would be like trying to groom Sutra – he turns and bites the brush, then the claws come out.
The diary covers a lot of ground for a two month period. I got on an antidepressant, I started going to Day Treatment at Community Hospital in Santa Rosa. I made some progress toward escaping from my “mind-forged manacles” (Blake). But I also did a lot of rattling of them and moaning as the hard cuffs dug into my wrists. In my mental image of the time I rarely left the house; yet the diary records friends who drop by and parties I go to, poetry readings and town wanderings.
movies mentioned:
Pretty in Pink
Prizzi’s Honor
Mrs Delafield Wants to Get Married
The Naked Prey
Kiss of the Spider Woman
The Last Picture Show
Harold and Maude
THX 1138
Teen Wolf
Eddie and the Cruisers
Altered States
The Brother from Another Planet
Brazil
TV shows:
I Love Lucy
Donahue
Hill Street Blues
Austin City Limits
MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour
St Elsewhere
Washington Week in Review
Leo and Liz in Beverly Hills
The Last Precinct
Miami Vice
The diary covers a lot of ground for a two month period. I got on an antidepressant, I started going to Day Treatment at Community Hospital in Santa Rosa. I made some progress toward escaping from my “mind-forged manacles” (Blake). But I also did a lot of rattling of them and moaning as the hard cuffs dug into my wrists. In my mental image of the time I rarely left the house; yet the diary records friends who drop by and parties I go to, poetry readings and town wanderings.
movies mentioned:
Pretty in Pink
Prizzi’s Honor
Mrs Delafield Wants to Get Married
The Naked Prey
Kiss of the Spider Woman
The Last Picture Show
Harold and Maude
THX 1138
Teen Wolf
Eddie and the Cruisers
Altered States
The Brother from Another Planet
Brazil
TV shows:
I Love Lucy
Donahue
Hill Street Blues
Austin City Limits
MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour
St Elsewhere
Washington Week in Review
Leo and Liz in Beverly Hills
The Last Precinct
Miami Vice
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Endless Enemies
from the diary: “Tuesday 5/6/86Caught a cold so “I lay around and drank peppermint tea, threw back vitamin C tablets, and kyolic garlic capsules, read Endless Enemies -- all about the U.S.’s shitty foreign policy.”
The next week I wrote: “Finished Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World by [Jonathan] Kwitny. He argues very convincingly by just showing that the best foreign policy is noninterventionist, in which the U.S. supports the principles that make it great rather than worrying endlessly about the latest dictator and whether he’s a ‘friend’. We’re the biggest economy in the world, he says. Everybody wants to be our friend – if only we (our govt) didn’t make itself such an asshole around the world.”
In his Amazon.com review Robert Carlberg says, “Jonathan Kwitny, a former NYT reporter, describes in excruciating detail U.S. foreign policy disasters in Zaire, Angola, Iran, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Cuba, The Philippines, China, Lebanon, El Salvador, Vietnam, Korea, Ethiopia and elsewhere -- and frankly after a couple hundred pages of this I was simply too dispirited to continue reading. I'm probably naive or idealistic or both, but I want to believe my country stands for the principles expounded in our Declaration of Independence. Reading this exhaustive, carefully-researched, emotionally-detached and factual account to the contrary turned out to be painful and destructive to my civic pride.” Another reviewer adds, “Although this book is over 15 years old, everything it states still seems … to be true.”
It hasn’t gotten better, eh?
Says William Blum, “The section on U.S. involvement in the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 was largely excised from a 1986 Penguin Books edition due to a libel suit brought against Kwitny by former New York Times reporter Kennett Love.”
And, finally, and you might call this ironic, Kwitny, the NYT review insists, is no leftwing socialist. He’s a free market purist! “[W]hen a free-market economy is allowed to compete openly with a Socialist one, the former wins the battle every time. … But the United States won't let that competition happen … For a variety of complex reasons, mostly having to do with either misguided ideology or sheer greed, this country keeps obstructing the free play of developing economies.”
Kwitny’s thesis would be one of the supporting documents for my contention that even if what Iraq really needed was Democracy at the Point of a Gun, the U.S. government (especially the Bush regime) was not going in there for democracy’s sake. After all, if Bush believed in democracy he would support it here.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
The Redundant Male
from the diary: “Saturday 5/3/86
“Reading The Redundant Male. ‘Is sex irrelevant in the modern world?’ asked the subtitle. Halway through the book the answer seems to be, ‘Yes.’”
Before moving on to humans authors Jeremy Cherfas and John Gribbin review reproductive strategies among other animals. Russell Bell summarizes thus, “In some genera asexual species dominate and, in many environments, have displaced sexual species entirely. They find the illustrative examples such as the Jacana, a tropical American bird whose females mate with multiple males, the males incubating the eggs (the males build nests to encourage a female to give them an egg.); hermaphroditic snails and fish (they switch between sex as their relative population warrants, or do both at once.); an insect like the Ascaris Lumbricoides, a parasitic worm whose male lives only in the cloaca of the female; the stickleback, a fish whose male makes the nest and chases the female away after she lays her eggs and raises the fry alone; crocodiles and turtles whose eggs develop into males or females depending upon their temperature (but with an opposite relationship between the two.)” I recommend another review of varieties of reproductive strategy that appears in Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, pub’d in 2004.
Then they ask, with the advent of effective birth control (& female autonomy) what is the advantage of having men? Men don’t help much with rearing the kids. Women could make the gecko’s choice, just make more of themselves. What with all the wars, graffiti, and missing the bowl, aren’t men just not worth the trouble?
Lionel Tiger in his review in the New York Times asks, “Does the apparent shift in the sexual balance of control condemn the male sex to a kind of shiftless and baffled exclusion from committed participation in the central biosocial process? To paraphrase Marx, have men become alienated from the means of reproduction? In strict behavioral terms, the authors' answer is yes. Given the broad evolutionary canvas on which they draw their picture of contemporary sexuality and kinship, the threatened self-sufficiency of females for reproductive purposes might be expected to drive men wild.” Poor things.
“Reading The Redundant Male. ‘Is sex irrelevant in the modern world?’ asked the subtitle. Halway through the book the answer seems to be, ‘Yes.’”
Before moving on to humans authors Jeremy Cherfas and John Gribbin review reproductive strategies among other animals. Russell Bell summarizes thus, “In some genera asexual species dominate and, in many environments, have displaced sexual species entirely. They find the illustrative examples such as the Jacana, a tropical American bird whose females mate with multiple males, the males incubating the eggs (the males build nests to encourage a female to give them an egg.); hermaphroditic snails and fish (they switch between sex as their relative population warrants, or do both at once.); an insect like the Ascaris Lumbricoides, a parasitic worm whose male lives only in the cloaca of the female; the stickleback, a fish whose male makes the nest and chases the female away after she lays her eggs and raises the fry alone; crocodiles and turtles whose eggs develop into males or females depending upon their temperature (but with an opposite relationship between the two.)” I recommend another review of varieties of reproductive strategy that appears in Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People, pub’d in 2004.
Then they ask, with the advent of effective birth control (& female autonomy) what is the advantage of having men? Men don’t help much with rearing the kids. Women could make the gecko’s choice, just make more of themselves. What with all the wars, graffiti, and missing the bowl, aren’t men just not worth the trouble?
Lionel Tiger in his review in the New York Times asks, “Does the apparent shift in the sexual balance of control condemn the male sex to a kind of shiftless and baffled exclusion from committed participation in the central biosocial process? To paraphrase Marx, have men become alienated from the means of reproduction? In strict behavioral terms, the authors' answer is yes. Given the broad evolutionary canvas on which they draw their picture of contemporary sexuality and kinship, the threatened self-sufficiency of females for reproductive purposes might be expected to drive men wild.” Poor things.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
writing group
Sunday evening I had two poets over for workshop. Haven’t done workshop in years. Kent opened us a bottle of chardonnay and that probably helped loosen the ol’ tongue. I’m not a fan of workshop, really. I like it for community but I’ve never felt it returned value commensurate with the effort, time, anxiety put into it. I’ve learned what I’ve learned about revision through reading poems I like, yes, but mostly by sounding my poems, thumping them and shaking them, reading & rereading them, and allowing myself to cut them and mend them, to graft to them unwieldy limbs, to force march them down muddy roads, to let them take over and ride me. I’ve seen so many poems subjected to workshop that in reatction to critique only seem to get worse (mine included). I can’t remember any that improved. Such an event ought to stand out.There were three of us working the shop. Alan Bern (who brought his new book, Waterwalking Berkeley), John Selawsky (a poem of his is here), and myself. I had more fun that I expected. I think the key was that I got to talk poetry. The particular poem didn’t matter so much. I would read the poem and talk about what I saw there, what I liked and disliked, what I thought clever, what I found tiresome. Did I do most of the talking? Probably.
When I searched for poems by John online I was amused to see DIR appear among the search results. Was invoking his name a summoning? Who knew the man would walk into my house eight months later?
Monday, February 19, 2007
God’s Bullies
from the diary: “Tuesday 4/29/86“I’m finishing God’s Bullies, all about the ‘New Right’. Jerry Falwell and his cronies. Good book, icky people.”
On his website author Perry Dean Young writes, “I have to recall with some embarrassment and a little humor that I pushed my publisher to get this book out before the 1982 elections because I felt the religious right was a passing phenomenon, a mere blip on the national political scene. We needed to get the book out because the religious right would no longer be a force in future elections and my findings would no longer be relevant. Boy, was I ever wrong. Twenty-two years later, the religious right is now more powerful than ever. It is no longer a mere radical lunatic fringe, but a force that has quite literally taken over our government.”
Yeah, a lot of lefty commentators & bloggers seemed surprised by the ascendance of the Religious Righteous, as though they were some new phenomenon. I remember them clearly from early in Reagan’s reign. They never went away. Having deified George W. Bush one may hope the Rightites will crash and burn with him. Of course, Bushie hasn’t quite crashed & burned, has he? The steady downward march of positives in the opinion polls haven’t done much to thwart him. He sure as hell ain’t gonna resign.
Coming up to the 2004 elections I was predicting his ouster. After all, Gore didn’t really lose in 2000. No way would anybody who voted for Gore vote for Bush, and I was sure Bush hadn’t won more friends. As Young says, “We simply could not believe that a majority of our people had fallen for the lies and misrepresentations of George Bush and his administration. What made this defeat all the more painful was the fact that [we are] faced with one of the most immoral administrations in history. … And, yet, the people clamor for more of the same.”
Part of why I knew the Rightites never went away? I’ve been reading the gay press. The gay community has been the particular target of the Rightites all along. The homos seem to scare money out of the pocketbooks of little old ladies right into the sweat-damp pockets of the preachers. I guess most of the nongay left has been oblivious. Who cares about this gay stuff? As the relatively liberal Charles Barkely, in responding to the latest contretemps over gay men in the locker room, put it, “Gays don’t bother me.” But, then, he doesn’t much bother about them, does he?
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Spencer Selby
Spencer Selby is a poet. I’ve seen his work around and he maintains a helpful list of publications (many of them ezines) that feature “experimental poetry”. (I use the quotes because it’s the term Selby uses and because there always seems to be argument about what to call poetry other than the rhyming/conventional/mainstream/accessible sort; or, maybe, any sort?) It’s called Selby’s List.He lives near the Claremont branch and one day while helping him at the Circulation Desk I mused aloud about how familiar the name seemed, “Spencer Selby … the poet?” And he did a doubletake, for what poet expects to be recognized, and we’ve since been nodding acquaintances. He has a new book, Twist of Address, and he left a copy with me Friday. I hope to get the library to buy it. We talked about having him read as part of Poetry & Pizza but that hasn’t come together yet.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
You Don’t Look 35, Charlie Brown
from the diary: “Sunday 4/27/86“Dropped You Don’t Look 35, Charlie Brown in the library book slot.”
I loved Peanuts as a kid. I learned the word “depressed” from Charlie Brown. These were kids not involved in hilarious hijinks but ruminating about life. I bought lots of the mass market size reprints and they always said the strips inside were “selected from” some larger volume so I tried to find the larger volumes and sometimes succeeded. At one point, my ardor cooled and eager to get my hands on the new fave, I sold off my shelf-load of Peanuts to buy B.C. reprints.
A couple years ago I saw a batch of the Peanuts books in the Friends of the Library book sale, many of the ones I’d owned long ago, so I gathered them up. No, I haven’t reread them. But I see Fantagraphics has embarked on a project – reprinting all the Peanuts strips in a high quality format. Good for them.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
from the diary: “Saturday 4/26/86“Biked to [Rohnert Park] to see [David]. Sat around all day. Readed hiz copy of DARK KNIGHT, Frank Miller’s new batman comic. eh. Glad I dint shell out the bucks fer it. Ceptin’ it’s worth three an’ five times the coverprice now.”
The Dark Knight Returns was Frank Miller’s rehabilitation of Batman (or, The Batman, as the supposedly more serious formulation has it). I’ve never liked Batman. OK, that’s going a little far. I was always disappointed in Batman. He didn’t have any superpowers, just, as Jack Nicholson’s Joker said, “wonderful toys.” His villains didn’t have superpowers either, just goofy costumes. And lots of henchmen. Yeah, so I mostly knew Batman from the campy TV series. I liked Frank Miller’s noirish version of Marvel Comics’ Daredevil, a blind lawyer who ran around at night fighting crime. Daredevil has superpowers, but they are fairly mild – no rays shooting from fingers or eyes, no superduper strength, no ability to teleport or burst into flames. Daredevil has enhanced senses. Though he’s blind, his sense of touch is so extraordinary he can pick up the patterns of ink on paper so read, his hearing so acute he can judge the shapes of objects by the sound that bounces off them. Stuff like that. I hadn’t cared about Daredevil till Miller took him on.
The Dark Knight Returns is set in the future. Bruce Wayne is old. Yet still in fighting trim, it seems. I found I didn’t really care. Tim Burton’s movie rehabilitation of Batman seemed to owe a good deal to Miller.
If you want a minutely detailed synopsis ofBatman: The Dark Knight Returns there’s one here: Dark Knight Storylines
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Reflections on Gender and Science
from the diary: “Saturday 4/19/86
“finished Reflections on Gender and Science by [Evelyn Fox] Keller – good book, dense. Couple stories into Ward Six and other stories by Anton Chekhov – very contemporary, good stories, hundred years old but not dated. Began The Ape’s Reflexion by Adrian Desmond.”
I didn’t remember a thing about Reflections on Gender and Science until I googled it. A review in Psychology Today says, “Keller argues that … scientists tend to choose dictatorial rather than interactive models of nature.” Science is objective and pure; it is unemotional and gives one control over the phenomena studied – these are male gendered notions. We ought to be able to think up other ideologies of science.
“finished Reflections on Gender and Science by [Evelyn Fox] Keller – good book, dense. Couple stories into Ward Six and other stories by Anton Chekhov – very contemporary, good stories, hundred years old but not dated. Began The Ape’s Reflexion by Adrian Desmond.”
I didn’t remember a thing about Reflections on Gender and Science until I googled it. A review in Psychology Today says, “Keller argues that … scientists tend to choose dictatorial rather than interactive models of nature.” Science is objective and pure; it is unemotional and gives one control over the phenomena studied – these are male gendered notions. We ought to be able to think up other ideologies of science.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
“Good Fences Make Good Neighbors”
In an essay about the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Amos Oz makes an aside, “[A]s the poet Robert Frost reminds us, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’” Considering that Oz’s essay is about misunderstanding (as much as anything else) it’s a touch ironic that he attributes the good fences good neighbors sentiment to Frost. “Mending Wall” is at least as much a critique of it. Not an attack, no, but when Frost and his neighbor walk along the half-wreck of a stone wall that marks their property line, picking up fallen stones and putting them back, Frost gets to musing aloud about the purpose of the wall. “He is all pine and I am apple orchard. / My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. / He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.” In response to his neighbor’s unflinching refrain Frost says, “Before I built a wall I'd ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out, / And to whom I was like to give offence.” It seems to me the actual content of Frost’s poem (the whole here) would have borne Amos Oz in better stead than the quip.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Reflections of a Rock Lobster
from the diary: “Thursday 4/10/86“I just read Reflections of a Rock Lobster, Aaron Fricke’s story about growing up gay in Rhode Island. It also tells how he came to take a male date to his senior prom. I remember seeing him and Paul [the date] on DONAHUE. He appeared on DONAHUE again, I think, a couple years later, this was after his book was out, also after One Teenager in Ten was out, cuz I remember Donahue holding up the books. I got [Reflections] today from the library – it belongs to the Solano County library so I got in on an interlibrary loan. It had a big paper on the front hiding the cover, just like One Teenager but I took that off.
“[When Mom came home] I had Rock Lobster open in my lap and after she finished [telling me what she’d been up to] I said, ‘I’m reading a book by that guy who took a male date to the prom.’ I showed her the cover. I said I empathized with the way Aaron was treated in high school gym class.
“… Mom and I talked more really openly about sex than we ever have.”
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