Women & Power: A Manifesto — Mary Beard

(pub. 2017)

Two essays pub­lished in the London Review of Books in 2014 and 2017
In the Public Voice of Women, Beard shows the depth and breadth of the prac­tice of the silenc­ing of women. She begins with the silenc­ing of Penelope by her son Telemachus in the Odyssey. When Penelope enters the hall to ask that the singer to lit­er­al­ly change his tune, her young son Telemachus tells his moth­er to be qui­et and go back up stairs, Continue read­ing “Women & Power: A Manifesto — Mary Beard”

Being Against the Eternal Now

I have been com­ing to Oaxaca for 16 years now. I come for weeks or even months at a time, and yet I am so far unable to mas­ter the lan­guage. In spite of all the time I’ve spent going to din­ner, rid­ing in taxis, and attempt­ing to deci­pher the labels in the gal­leries and muse­ums. Despite months of Spanish lessons at home, I speak like a stunt­ed tod­dler: in mono­syl­la­bles, two words at a time. I am unable to coher­ent­ly express so much as, “I came from Seattle yesterday.”

Here I have no tens­es but the present. I can say “I going out now,” but can­not man­age “I arrived on Tuesday,” or, “I went to the Toledo muse­um this morn­ing,” or, “I would like to ride the hors­es tomorrow”.

In Mexico I have few futures.  I can man­age a sort of “fur­ther tense” using the present tense of ir (to go) and an infini­tive — loose­ly “I am going to” [do this thing]. Voy a scriber mañana. I am going to write tomor­row. Continue read­ing “Being Against the Eternal Now”

The Books Of January

Fiction:

Artemis — Anthony Weir

From the guy who brought you The Martian, one of the finest sci-fi adven­tures of the last 20 years, Artemis is anoth­er adven­ture in space. This time on the moon with lots of sci­ence: lunar shel­ters and man­u­fac­tur­ing in zero G and more than most of us need to know about weld­ing. It’s com­pe­tent and amus­ing, but in the end not near­ly as sat­is­fy­ing as The Martian was. In large part because I don’t buy the voice of the nar­ra­tor. She’s one dimen­sion­al, a stereo­typ­i­cal rebel­lious too smart, smart mouthed ear­ly 20-something char­ac­ter at odds with the Man. (Or in this case Woman.) At first I couldn’t fig­ure out what was both­er­ing me about her but then some­one point­ed out she has the sense of humor of a 12 year-old boy. Any woman that smart and that far out of on the edges of soci­ety should have a sharp­er, more sophis­ti­cat­ed sense of humor. The “ho ho I just made a sex joke” thing gets real­ly old, real­ly fast.
I hear that there were some very good short sto­ries released while this book was in the works. I’ll go find them.

* I don’t like girls who sound like they are just boys with dif­fer­ent plumbing *

Fresh Complaint — Jeffery Eugenides

Short sto­ries by the author of the won­der­ful MiddleSex. But these… well many of them don’t hold my atten­tion. In fact I had to go back and look at a sum­ma­ry of the sto­ries to be remind­ed of which ones were here. They are most­ly old­er sto­ries and the lack of mas­tery that Eugenides showed in Middlesex is evident.
Am I just being cranky or did these real­ly not meet expec­ta­tions? I am in ret­ro­spect unset­tled by the misog­y­ny of sev­er­al of the sto­ries. Nothing bla­tant just the feel­ing that the women in the sto­ries are not only not val­ued by the male char­ac­ters but also not val­ued by the author. And the last sto­ry in the bunch about a girl who “ruins” her­self and an inno­cent man to avoid an arranged mar­riage is just plain creepy because the girl sim­ply gets away with it and feels not a moment of remorse. I sup­pose you are meant to feel sym­pa­thy for the man ruined but all you feel a great deal of antipa­thy for the girl.

* this col­lec­tion should have stayed uncollected *

Charming Billy — Alice McDermott

The Charming Billy of the title is a dead guy whose wake is the set­ting for the reveal­ing tale of his life and loves. The tragedy of the “death” of his first love and his sub­se­quent mar­riage to a woman who devot­ed her life to him — drunk as he was. Like all McDermott the Irish Americans and plain old Irish shine out. You even like Billy who objec­tive­ly was more than a lit­tle bit of an ass­hole. Various points of view add up to an entire story.

* more Irish-American loves, laugh­ter, and tragedy *

NonFiction:

Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir — Amy Tan

A mem­oir, writer’s guide, and extend­ed philo­soph­i­cal mus­ing on what it means to be a daugh­ter. Through mem­o­ry and memen­tos Amy Tan exam­ines the truths and fic­tions of her child­hood and rela­tion­ship with her fam­i­ly, all with the under­stand­ing that these things are what makes her the writer that she is. Some episodes here are frankly ter­ri­fy­ing and many oth­ers will make you smile or chuck­le in recog­ni­tion. In many ways fam­i­lies are all alike. They cre­ate their sto­ries with the often unclear moti­va­tions of pol­ish­ing things up. But the unpol­ished ver­sion are always there under­neath direct­ing the fam­i­ly in its way. And that con­trast is what allows us to cre­ate our fic­tions and realities.

* a love­ly blend of mem­oir and mus­ings on the muse *

Jane Austen at Home — Lucy Worsley

I rarely read biog­ra­phy — pre­fer­ring to learn about a per­son though their cre­ative output.
Austen’s work’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the need to find a home — in par­tic­u­lar to make a good mar­riage is the lens used here to relate her life. Austen’s grad­ual falling down from the bois­ter­ous, com­fort­able home of her youth to the cramped and stingy home of her lat­er life is shown in  oppo­si­tion of the hap­py end­ings that she gives her heroines.
Maybe I’m just not good at read­ing biog­ra­phy. But I remain uncon­vinced that I have learned much about Jane Austen but instead heard a sto­ry that her biog­ra­ph­er wants to tell. Though real­ly — can there be biog­ra­phy with­out the fin­ger­prints of the biographer?

* rec­om­mend­ed to for those with a taste for fem­i­nist indignation *

Things that Make You Think

From the exhi­bi­tion “Guex Liu, Kuu ñun­ro, Totlalhuan” por Fernando Palma Rodríguez — shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Oaxaca. 
These are only a lit­tle taste of the many mov­ing constructions. 
It is amaz­ing what a cre­ative per­son can do with some qual­i­ty ser­vos and a cou­ple of Arduino boards.
Sewing machines and lucador masks.

The Books of December

More or less. I’ve got a lot of books to catch up on. Here’s the first batch.

 

Fiction:

Beartown — Fredrik Backman (2017)

Dropped it after just a cou­ple of chap­ters. I like hock­ey but not this much. And I don’t sim­pati­co with the char­ac­ters. The idea of an entire town’s future rest­ing on the backs of a bunch of high school­ers is just to famil­iar. Small town foot­ball and the pre­dictabil­i­ty of the thing…. Etc. Anyway I didn’t read it past about the 20% point.
* Just didn’t care what happened. *

 

Paris in the Present Tense — Mark Helprin (2017)

More aca­d­e­mics behav­ing bad­ly. And late life exis­ten­tial crises. There are some live­ly descrip­tions of music, a young woman, and Paris. The side kick is help­ful­ly vapid but don’t actu­al­ly know why I fin­ished this one. It’s been high­ly praised but I found it pre­dictable. And the end­ing well, it’s far too pat for me. Though the mur­der mys­tery from the mur­der­ers point of view is kind of amus­ing. The writ­ing is nice­ly competent.
* I read a lot of sto­ries about Paris lately. *

Poetry

On Imagination — Mary Rufle (2017)

I’ve read this twice and will read it again. There is a small goat with a sil­ver bell on a blue rib­bon around it’s neck liv­ing in Mary Rufle’s attic. How she (he? Rufle nev­er do says if her goat has a gen­der) got there is the mat­ter of the essay. On cre­ativ­i­ty, the muse, and what imag­i­na­tion actu­al­ly means.
Rufle says that ask­ing a poet to describe imag­i­na­tion is like ask­ing a fish to describe the sea. It is that in which the cre­ative swim and it doesn’t ever stop being a part of the thought process if not the entire thought process. She goes on to char­ac­ter­ize the rela­tion­ship between the thinker and imag­i­na­tion in star­tling deep ways.
It did feel a bit preda­to­ry to pay 8 dol­lars for what amounts to a mid-sized essay But I think that there is enough meat here to make me feel like I got val­ue for the money.
* I might by the paper copy just to have the illus­tra­tions done up nicely. *

Audio:

The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds — Micheal Lewis — Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris (2016)

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman invent­ed the field of behav­ioral eco­nom­ics. This book, sad­ly, isn’t about that, it’s a biog­ra­phy of an intel­lec­tu­al col­lab­o­ra­tion that derails in spec­tac­u­lar fash­ion and frankly it’s a lit­tle bit creepy. I’d have rather heard a lot more about the things that they are research­ing than the grue­some details of their lop­sided work­ing rela­tion­ship. When the end of a rela­tion­ship between two researchers is char­ac­ter­ized as a divorce… And while I appre­ci­ate the effect that the Holocaust, the German occu­pa­tion of France, and their expe­ri­ences in Israel after WWII had on the two men, I real­ly did­n’t need the in-depth his­to­ry lessons. If you’re look­ing for a book that will bring you up to speed on the var­i­ous tricks and illu­sions that your mind brings to the decision-making process (and that is what these two men were study­ing) look elsewhere.
* There must be a bet­ter resource than this. *

The Graveyard Book — Gaiman — Narrated by the Author (2008)

I love this sto­ry of Nobody Owens raised by his Guardian and looked after by the denizens of a ceme­tery after the (in true fairy tale fash­ion) gris­ly death of his fam­i­ly while he is a toddler.
* It mag­nif­i­cent­ly sat­is­fies the urge to be told a story. *

 

 

Lincoln in the Bardo — George Saunders (2017)

Also lis­tened to Lincoln in the Bardo — hav­ing read it recent­ly. The audio pro­duc­tion includes dozens (hun­dreds?) of voic­es and is fun to lis­ten to but if I hadn’t already read the book I would have been utter­ly lost. This one is best read in the for­mat it’s designed for — the large pages of the hard­back edition.
* so many voic­es, so much fun *