|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
43
| 
| 1556526822
| 9781556526824
| 1556526822
| 3.38
| 124
| Jan 01, 2008
| Aug 01, 2008
|
liked it
|
Polarised Lenses No novel polarizes opinion like “Lolita”. True or false? I thought I’d be on a sure bet, but if you assess the polarization by GR rating Polarised Lenses No novel polarizes opinion like “Lolita”. True or false? I thought I’d be on a sure bet, but if you assess the polarization by GR ratings details, this statement is wrong. Its average rating is about 3.8. 86% of readers like it (a rating of three, four or five). 34% rate it five, 29% four, while only 5% rate it one. I was going to contrast it with “American Psycho”. How’s this: Its average rating is about 3.77. 86% of readers like it. 30% rate it five, 34% four, while only 5% rate it one. (The main difference is that the four and five star ratings are more or less reversed.) What about “Ulysses”? Its average rating is about 3.77. 82% of readers like it. 36% rate it five, 24% four, while 8% rate it one. So I’ll recast my proposition: those who love “Lolita” adore it, those who hate it, vehemently hate it. Usually for moral, rather than aesthetic, reasons. The question is: why? American Factoid I thought “Chasing Lolita” might have the answers. It came recommended by Paul Bryant, a GR friend who is knowledgeable about these things. Paul’s and my opinions about “Lolita” and “American Psycho” (but not “Ulysses”) diverge. However, I assumed that, if Paul liked “Chasing Lolita”, it must at least argue the case for and against “Lolita” as well as Paul is able to. Instead, I found it to be a second-rate, almost pseudo-intellectual enterprise. Admittedly, I learned a few facts that I didn’t know (Vickers usually refers to them as “factoids”), although I probably would have known them, if I had already read the works in his very limited bibliography. Aesthetic Reaction My biggest gripe is that you can’t detect a subtle reading of the novel, whether pro or con. It doesn’t reflect an aesthetic response to the work as literature. It wants to capture the sense of scandal in the public response to it, whether or not people had read it (or seen any of the films based on it). It is mediocre and tabloid in tone. It is the work of a hack, a hired gun. (I was going to say “workmanlike”, but that would insult the working class.) Maybe Vickers can smell a controversy, but he reveals no passion of his own, and he doesn’t do justice to the passions of others. He plays it safe. He doesn’t want to alienate anyone. The most important thing for him is that you buy the book, regardless of which side of the fence you sit on, regardless of whether you intend to read it, as long as you give him your money. Ultimately, by trying to please everybody, Vickers pleases nobody. He’s like the first person to write a biography of a writer. It’s good that somebody bothered, but usually it doesn’t take long for somebody or something more distinguished to arrive. All Chase and No Catch What annoys me most is the way the book has been presented to us. The title “Chasing Lolita” is racy, as if he or we are “pursuing” the character herself, not “investigating” her innermost secrets (which it fails to do anyway). The book plays on the reader’s prurience, without satisfying either erotic or intellectual curiosity. The less said about it, the better. Take Me to Your Lolita I think there are three general responses to “Lolita” as a literary work. One, which is mine, is that every aspect of human behavior is a legitimate subject matter of art. To write about something, does not imply endorsement of the moral stance, nor does it imply that the author has some first-hand experience (i.e., the suggestion that Nabokov himself must have been a paedophile). The other two responses reflect the way you feel about the character, Lolita. You can see her as an innocent victim of a paedophile, and sympathise with her, so much so that you think her story should never have been told. She is a symptom of the premature sexualisation of children, and the whole issue of children’s sexuality and awareness of sexual behavior must be swept under the carpet, even in a novel intended for mature adults. Alternatively, while not approving Humbert Humbert in any way, you can treat her as a sexually precocious brat who deserves no sympathy. For those who have never read the novel, the last interpretation seems to be the one that prevails. The very word “Lolita” has become shorthand for adolescent girls who “prey” on men’s libidos, as if the men are somehow innocent and vulnerable and not in control of their sexuality. “It wasn’t my fault, she made me do it.” She’s jailbait of the most cynical and calculating kind. As if all girls aren’t equally deserving of protection from men who would prey on them, for the very reason that they are children. Humbert’s Story Part of Nabokov’s genius is that “Lolita” is actually Humbert’s story, and he tells it his way. The Lolita that we get to know is his creation, although in reality both Humbert and Lolita are obviously Nabokov’s creations. However, we the audience see Lolita with Humbert’s eyes. This puts us in an uncomfortable position. Do we empathise with Humbert, because we see things from his point of view? Are we compromised or criminally implicated as accessories, because we see and do what he does? Do we take his honesty for granted, because he is the first person narrator who is effectively us? Do we distance and protect ourselves from these moral dilemmas by treating him as an unreliable narrator? These are the sorts of question I was hoping Vickers would at least ask. Lolita’s Story The converse of the way Nabokov tells Humbert’s story is that we can’t know Lolita’s story. She doesn’t speak a lot. To the extent that she does, Humbert summarises or paraphrases her. We don’t know what words are on her lips or in her mind. We don’t know what she thinks about her plight. We witness her solely as object, and not as subject. We don’t know how much to sympathise with her, even though a natural temptation is to relate to her as the victim. On the other hand, there is a temptation for both Lolita and reader to empathise with Humbert in a perverse version of Stockholm Syndrome. Ultimately, the whole form and content of the story conspires against the person, the child that is Lolita. She is the one person in the novel who is most deserving of sympathy, yet she is the one who has been most demonized in popular culture. The Premature Sexualisation of Children What I find most disgusting is the people for whom Lolita is a cause (the crusade against premature sexualisation of children), yet at heart there is no personal sympathy for this one example. It’s as if Lolita had to fall, had to suffer, so that others might be saved. She is a lost cause, better focus on the plight of others. We can talk her down, as if she were a real tart, and we can use her name to demonize others. It’s OK, she’s only a fictional character anyway, as if real girls aren’t hurt, when they in turn get labeled “Lolita”. While I don’t condone the sexual abuse of children, I feel quite strongly that other aspects of premature sexualisation are equally deserving of condemnation, e.g., placing three and four year old girls in beauty pageants and grooming them for a lifetime of the presentation of self as an object of beauty, rather than as a fully-rounded person of intelligence, social functionality, energy and charm. As long as girls and women present themselves solely as objects of beauty and adornment, there will be men who cannot react to them in any other way. Humbert’s Aesthetics This social definition of beauty and sexual attraction is what really interests me about the novel. It’s very easy to judge Humbert solely as a paedophile and to assume that his sex drive is solely dictated by the desire to possess and defile a girl’s childhood and innocence. I think society has to make a genuine scientific attempt to understand the motivation of Humbert, if not paedophiles generally, as an objective sexual aesthetic that just happens to be taboo in our society in this age. Humbert describes his love of Lolita in terms of aesthetics, as well as an attempt to relive his unconsummated early childhood relationship with Annabel Leigh. It is too glib to treat Humbert as disingenuous and an unreliable narrator. That just avoids the real issue. So much of our culture is concerned with the polarity between youth and age, innocence and experience, naivety and wisdom, ugliness and beauty. These dichotomies are the immediate context of sexuality, yet we understand so little about them. As a result, we are condemned to perpetuate ignorance and guilt and lack of personal, social and sexual fulfillment. Not only is it important that science investigate this subject matter, it’s vital that art be able to portray and explore motivations and options (whether transgressive or not) openly and honestly and creatively. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 14, 2012
|
Nov 22, 2012
|
Nov 14, 2012
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||
40
| 
| 1451579683
| 9781451579680
| 1451579683
| 4.50
| 2
| 2010
| Apr 22, 2010
|
really liked it
|
Fledgling at Play I read this play, momentarily unaware that it was actually a companion to a fully-fledged novel. This might turn out to be fortuitous, Fledgling at Play I read this play, momentarily unaware that it was actually a companion to a fully-fledged novel. This might turn out to be fortuitous, because if I had read both works in reverse order, I might have been tempted to treat this work as secondary, instead of a creative act that stands and succeeds on its own merits. As you would expect with a play, the dialogue is the chief mode of communication with the reader. It’s possible that it is a distillation of the dialogue from the novel. However, there is no sense of it being disjointed or culled down from a greater whole. In fact, it propels forward like a very fast train or a jet fighter. I read it in one sitting, and upon putting it down, could only find it in myself to say, “Wow.” Extrapolation, That’s the By Word “Bloomsday”, as the title suggests, is an extrapolation on James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. Structurally, it takes Episodes 14, 15, 16 and 18, and transposes them in place and time to Boston in 1974. It’s not readily apparent why David has chosen this era, except that for many of us alive today, Vietnam represents our closest cultural experience of coming home from a long and winding war, apart from the excursions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran (which, for those who remember, don’t have the same resonance as the war that divided almost every first world country and transformed culture and politics forever). So 1974 mightn’t be contemporary, but it is as symbolic as the Trojan War was to Homer and Joyce. At its heart, “Ulysses” doesn’t just describe a city (Dublin), it describes a family. At a more macro level, it describes a nation at war with England and internally within itself. I suspect David selected Boston, not just because he resides there, but because it received a large proportion of the Irish emigrants who arrived in America in the nineteenth century. It therefore makes it a likely destination for the descendants of Leopold and Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, who feature in the play. “Bloomsday” therefore perpetuates Joyce’s concerns into the twentieth century and, by inference, to today. A Play on Words If “Ulysses” is the grandparent, “Bloomsday” is a legitimate grandchild. Just as the play is not an inferior distillation of the novel, it is not a dilution of the creativity of Joyce. It’s a courageous act to stand up and ask to be measured against Joyce or “Ulysses”, but I think David has succeeded in this work. It’s a work rich with wit, punning, wordplay and wisdom. I can indulge in this wordplay in short, sharp exchanges, usually with another swordsperson or fencer, but I doubt whether I could sustain the effort so successfully for over 100 pages. Besides, spontaneous exchanges are intrinsically ephemeral. David’s words are not just designed to endure, they are intended to be spoken by live actors on the stage. It’s the quality of work that should become a mainstay of every Bloomsday. Playful Allusions An allusion isn’t just a dry reference to something. Its etymology reveals that it derives from the Latin word, “alludere”, which means "to play, sport, joke, jest." “Bloomsday” is so rich with allusion, it’s difficult to track its inspiration. I felt that its feet were grounded in the Bible, Shakespeare and, obviously, “Ulysses”. But David’s notes also mention Poe, Hemingway and Frost. The more you look, the more you find. And it’s all gold, no fool’s gold. Except to the extent that, in this work, everybody plays the fool. Men and Women of Good Fortune As with “Ulysses”, the apparent focus of “Bloomsday” is men, in this case Rudy Bloom and Dr Thomas Dedalus, descendants of the protagonists of Joyce’s novel. Yet, as with “Ulysses”, it builds to a climax that is shared with women, if not wholly concentrated on them. “Ulysses” might be construed as a romance with Dublin at the centre, but it is also a love letter to Molly Bloom and womanhood. David extrapolates on this theme, and makes “Bloomsday” a celebration of women or woman as lover, wife, muse and mother. There could be no creation unless a child was first born of a woman. From that point onwards, Men play, ultimately, not just to please themselves, but to impress and/or seduce Women. Having seduced a good Woman, “Bloomsday” might just reflect Man’s effort to deserve, retain and maintain that Woman. In a way, “Bloomsday” is David’s way of saying thank you to the women in his life and in ours. For the rest of us males, he is our Cyrano de Bergerac (by which I don’t mean that he has a big nose). Acknowledgement David supplied a copy of this play to me for review purposes. I guess this makes me Christian de Neuvillette and you, if you are a woman, Roxanne. If only this joint effort could be as successful as Christian Grey. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Oct 21, 2012
|
Oct 21, 2012
|
Oct 21, 2012
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
37
| 
| 1585161551
| 9781585161553
| 1585161551
| 4.18
| 623
| 1976
| Jan 01, 1992
|
liked it
|
What My Oldest Daughter Claudia Believes (at Age 17, on 9 October, 2012) I believe that honesty is important; however there are some situations where i What My Oldest Daughter Claudia Believes (at Age 17, on 9 October, 2012) I believe that honesty is important; however there are some situations where it's better not to say anything at all. Sometimes the truth hurts more. I believe that religion started as a written story that acted as a code of morals to help people live a good and virtuous life, however some time in history the story got lost in translation over generations and people began to believe that it was true. I believe that I can live a virtuous life without the need to follow the principles of a religion. My parents said this to me only once as a young child, and it is one of the things I have never forgotten and taken to heart. I consider myself an atheist and I do not need a religion or a God to help me through life. However; even though I do not believe in the story surrounding Christianity and God, I believe that the principles or the Ten Commandments are very important to live a virtuous life – such as: no killing; respect family, friends and neighbours; do not steal; do not commit adultery; do not envy. As long as you have a sense of morals – with or without the help of religion, I believe that you can go far in life. Similarly, I believe that the fact that there are so many different religions that have different messages trying to compete for our loyalty, means that there is no right and only religion. If there were only one main religion, it confuses me why were more created with each trying to out-do each other. The fact that we do not have one universal religion and world view makes me believe that there is no religion. I believe that humans have no soul, and instead our consciousness and morality result from our brain and previous experiences. I believe that there is no life after death and no heaven because we have no soul. When we die, our body decomposes and is returned to the earth where we are recycled into a new organism. I am not scared of dying, as I believe that if you live your life to the fullest every day, you are then able to die a happy and satisfied person. I only believe in things that have hard facts and scientific proof. I believe in reason over faith. I believe that it was a fluke of evolution that humans exist and that we are living right now. We have advanced and created to the point where we have been able to support such sophisticated lives. It is the nature of humanity to try to control and manage the environment, to continue to survive. Therefore, this makes me believe that there is no celestial being that controls us. I believe in the importance of exercise and healthy eating. We have developed over time to become such a sophisticated society, however I find it extremely worrying that people are doing less and less exercise and are no longer concerned about their health and well-being. To me, this seems like a backwards step, as we came from ancestors who were constantly fit in order to survive. I believe that something must be done urgently about obesity because it will eventually cause the destruction of our population. I am passionate about teaching and helping others to live a healthy life. I believe in striving to perform all tasks given to me to the best of my capabilities and giving everything 100% effort. While it may seem annoying and worthless at the time, I know I will look back on that moment and realise I could have given more. I take this approach in my assignments, study and my sporting life, as I take everything seriously and give it my best shot. That way if I know I’m disappointed with my results, there is nothing to regret on my behalf. I believe that it is important to get out of the house and do something – either with friends, or just being outside and enjoying the world around me. The world is too beautiful to spend inside sitting on the couch and watching TV. This belief came from me through my mum, as she is extremely active and would rather be doing something interesting with us. I believe in the value of travelling and experiencing different cultures. It is important to not be narrow-minded, and it also helps appreciate and understand other people, while also realising that the world does not revolve around you. When I leave school, I am travelling to Paris and London with my family; and then I am going on my own trip to Greece and Italy with my friend Emma during the University Holidays, so I get so see more of the world. Similarly to this, I also believe in the value of learning history at schools, because it further teaches you this acceptance of other cultures. I believe that commitment is important. Whether it be in a team sport and training, or commitment to others in group work; there is always a bigger picture and your attitude will negatively or positively affect somebody else. I believe that bad things happen, and often they are uncontrollable and just bad luck. However; I think it is important to make the best out of each situation and take a valuable life lesson from it so you are better prepared. Things have happened to me, which at the time felt unbearable, but I found the strength to get through it, and I know that I am a better and more confident person because of it. I believe in the quote by the Dali Lama, “Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.” To me I find this really appropriate because it is very important to live your life with some flexibility and openness for change, as every day will not be the same and you never what to expect. However; while you should embrace the change, you should still retain the values you believe in, because they never need to change. I believe in Gay Marriage. Everyone should have the right to love whoever they want, and be able to express this love in a way they choose such as marriage. Everyone is equal, and someone should not be discriminated against because of their sexual preference. Cl**d** Gr*y* ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Oct 09, 2012
|
Oct 09, 2012
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
46
| 
| 0876900856
| 9780876900857
| 0876900856
| 3.53
| 15
| Jan 01, 1970
| Jan 01, 1972
|
did not like it
|
Lone Star Saloon What has this novel got going for it? Some friends whose opinions I value highly have rated it three to four stars. It's short. The prose Lone Star Saloon What has this novel got going for it? Some friends whose opinions I value highly have rated it three to four stars. It's short. The prose is both economical and accessible. It substitutes a young woman for Christ in the myth that God's son died for our sins. Um, I can't think of anything else. A Bar Graph of the Stars Most of the reviews I've done since joining GR have been of books I regard as part of my personal canon. As a result, the average rating has been high, so much so that friends have questioned whether I can write a negative review. I hope this will suffice. Why No More Stars? So why no more stars for this work? Firstly, I don't regard it as a work of metafiction, just because it inserts a woman into Christ's robes. There needs to be some level of literary inventiveness over and above that. Secondly, when Christ is inserted into this symbolic structure, his suffering is designed to highlight the magnitude and selflessness of God the Father's forgiveness. We can accept Christ's suffering, because we know it is functional in the grand design behind the Christian vision. Dodeca does not purport to be a part of the Holy Trinity or the Holy Quaternity, for that matter. There is no obvious tie of her suffering to God's forgiveness or anyone else's, for that matter. As a result, I found the focus on her suffering, which is primarily of a sexual nature, prurient and voyeuristic and degrading. There was no sublimation of her travails into a universal theme or a message that parallels the Christ myth. For me, it never lifted itself up from an exercise in what more offence could be heaped on this relative innocent. It was like selecting the most offensive 84 pages of the Marquis de Sade, stripping it of any merit, literary or philosophical or otherwise, and offering it for our delectation in some neon-lit window in Amsterdam. The Dodecahedron Is there some deep and meaningful significance in the concept of a dodecahedron? I do know that the only positive male character is called Hedron, so that if you accept the posibility of a Holy Duality, then you might get a Dodecahedron out of the amalgam of their names. But, honestly, so what? Doing the Maths A dodecahedron is a three-dimensional polyhedron with 12 equal faces, each of which is a regular pentagon. If you sit it on one face, then there is a parallel face at the top, and two sets of five faces, one on top of the other, so that the faces are assembled 1-5-5-1. Plato described the dodecahedron as the fifth classical element or platonic solid. It has been speculated that the dodecahedron is the quintessence of the universe and the basis of the Zodiac. Some suggest that Plato used the word "quintessence" himself in the sense that the dodecahedron was the fundamental building block of the entire universe. As far as I can tell, the word did not exist until much later in the early fifteenth century. The Online Etymology Dictionary suggests that the word is a "loan-translation" of the Greek "pempte ousia", which means "fifth being" or "fifth essence". Later, the Romans translated the Greek into the expression "quinta essentia", which the French translated as "quinte essence" before it entered the English language as "quintessence". So, Plato could not have used the term "quintessence" in the manner in which we have come to understand it (which originated in the 1580's). Therefore, you have to question the broader significance of the dodecahedron. Does the fact that there are 84 pages in the book have any significance? Mathematically, 84 is a product of the numerals 3, 4 and 7 (the latter of which is the sum of the previous two, and the product of 3 and 4 is 12). Well, again, so what? So one star it is and one star it remains. I'm sorry, but that's all, folks. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 22, 2012
|
Dec 07, 2012
|
Sep 16, 2012
|
Hardcover
| |||||||||||||
35
| 
| 0743477111
| 3.74
| 2,619,092
| 1597
| 2002
|
it was amazing
|
ROMEO AND JULIET: THE MUSICAL (A BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN PRODUCTIONS EXTRAVAGANZA) WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING: "Bruce Springsteen mixes Shakespeare’s best kn ROMEO AND JULIET: THE MUSICAL (A BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN PRODUCTIONS EXTRAVAGANZA) WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING: "Bruce Springsteen mixes Shakespeare’s best known romance with electric guitars, pianos, keyboards and saxophones." (Rolling Stoned) "Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, cars, bikes, gangs, bangs, brawls, literature, blood, sugar, death, magik, kitchen sinks, meatloaf, clowns. It’s got everythnig." (Grauniad) "E-Street Bard." (Village Voyce) "Star-crossed Lovers Killed by Loose Windscreen." (Notional Enquirer) "The Boss Updates Big Willie" (The Unyun) "Bruce Shakesteen or William Springspeare: You Decide!" (Variete) "I Haven't Seen It. Have You Seen My Backlog of GR Notifications?" (Paul Bryant) "Like." (Bird Brian) "Well everybody better move over, that's all/He's running on the bad side/And he's got his back to the wall/Tenth avenue freeze-out, tenth avenue freeze-out" (Richard) "This show sets the bar very high, almost out of reach of regular top-shelf drinking patrons." (Bruce Shakespeare, The Australian Shakespearience Dinner and Floorshow) CHORUS: Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. BRUCE: The midnight gang's assembled And picked a rendezvous for the night Man there's an opera on the turnpike There's a ballet being fought in the alley PRINCE: Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word, By thee, old Capulet, and Montague, Have thrice disturb'd the quiet of our streets, And made Verona's ancient citizens Cast by their grave beseeming ornaments, To wield old partisans, in hands as old, Canker'd with peace, to part your canker'd hate. BRUCE: Outside the street's on fire In a real death waltz Between what's flesh and what's fantasy And the poets down here Don't write nothing at all They just stand back and let it all be PRINCE: If ever you disturb our streets again, Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace. Once more, on pain of death, all men depart. BRUCE: In the quick of the night They reach for their moment And try to make an honest stand But they wind up wounded Not even dead Tonight in Jungleland CHORUS: From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows, Doth with their death bury their parents' strife. Enter Romeo, still love-sick for Rosaline. ROMEO: Rosaline, jump a little higher Senorita, come sit by my fire I just want to be your lover, ain't no liar Rosaline, you're my stone desire MERCUTIO: True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air And more inconstant than the wind. BRUCE: In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway Italian dream At night we ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines Romeo, still pining for Rosaline, discovers Juliet and becomes newly infatuated. ROMEO: Juliet, let me in, I wanna be your friend, I want to guard your dreams and visions Bruce realises he has competition for Juliet’s love and wants to elope without her parents’ permission. BRUCE: Together we could break this trap We'll run till we drop, baby we'll never go back Romeo pleads even harder, now he has learned about his rival, Bruce. ROMEO: I gotta know how it feels I want to know if love is wild Babe, I want to know if love is real Oh, Juliet, can you show me Juliet learns that Romeo comes from a rival family. JULIET: My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Juliet falls for Romeo regardless. JULIET: What ’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. Juliet decides she must confront Bruce and tell him they are not meant to be. JULIET: Bruce, the angels have lost their desire for us I spoke to them just last night and they said they won't set themselves on fire for us anymore Bruce persists, trying to hold onto the memory of their love. JULIET: I'm really sorry, Bruce I've gotta set you loose I know you've got a beat up old Buick And dreams of something better for me But, frankly, I just can't see it My vision for me can't be achieved In the back seat of a second hand Fiat While your friends hang around drinking Corona BRUCE: You say you don't like it But girl I know you're a liar 'Cause when we kiss Ooooh, Fire Juliet grows weak and almost falls. BRUCE: What is wrong, my love? JULIET: I have the worst headache. BRUCE: Here take some of these now, and again when you feel the pain coming on. Bruce gives her a small glass bottle of non-prescription drugs. Blue tablets. JULIET: How many should I take? BRUCE: No more than two every four hours. Juliet takes three tablets immediately. JULIET: It hurts me to say but you gotta know it There’s no point in remaining coy I can’t marry you, Bruce. I could never be happy with a boy From Long Branch, New Jersey No amateur actor or drama queen No busboy, bellhop or dead ringer For De Niro or a film student from Pomona Not for me, your guitar-slinging outlaw singer I crave more than an Asbury Duke or an E Street Loner. Romeo looks dashing in his open-necked shirt and film director scarf. Juliet has never seen anything like him. The love between Romeo and Juliet grows in leaps and bounds. JULIET: My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite. ROMEO: Beneath the city two hearts beat Soul engines running through a night so tender In a bedroom locked In whispers of soft refusal And then surrender. JULIET: I long for a real hot-blooded man An alpha male of the highest order A man of another world from here Someone from across the border I don't just mean New Jersey Or Philadelphia, PA You see, I love a Prince from far Verona With a flash suit and money to burn, A mansion and a real fast car A smart haircut and a leather-coated boner He’s waiting for me now I've got him in my view He's the rising son Of the House of Montague ROMEO: Baby this town rips the bones from your back It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap We gotta get out while we're young Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run CHORUS: Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast. Juliet feels no relief for her headache. She opens the bottle and takes another two tablets. It’s only an hour since her last dose. JULIET: I want to be a star Of the stage and screen I don't want a bit part Or a role that’s obscene I've had enough of men who work All week for minimum wages I want to be remembered Through time eternal...and for ages and ages My love’s a director who makes serious films Not just action flics designed to wow Even his money men are all agreed “Romeo, Romeo, we’re for art now” The moment he cast his eyes on me He sat me down and cast me on his couch He said he’d get my photo in the magazines And we’d drive around all night in limousines Romeo and Juliet resolve to escape in Romeo’s car. JULIET: Just so I could live in this promised land I turned my back on Bruce’s traveling band No more Buicks or Fiats for this Capulet Dear husband, I pledge to be your wife, Juliet So I can feature in a film cameo In the front seat of your Alfa, Romeo. Tybalt chases them on a motor bike. He crosses suddenly into Romeo's path and clips the front edge of the car. He loses control of his bike and falls to the thundering road. Romeo can't avoid running over the top of Tybalt and killing him. Still, Romeo rolls his car three times while taking evasive action, and both Romeo and Juliet are knocked unconscious when their heads hit the side door panels. ROMEO: I dreamt my lady came and found me dead (in that order). Juliet wakes first, only to look over to the driver’s seat, where she sees Romeo. She can’t tell if he is alive or dead. She realises that her headache has now become extreme. If she can treat her pain, she can try to help Romeo. She touches her forehead where it hit the inside of the car door and pulls her hand away, covered in blood that still seems to be flowing profusely. Tears form in her eyes and her eyesight becomes blurry. She reaches into her purse and takes another four tablets, in the hope that it will kill her pain. She lapses into unconsciousness. Shortly afterwards, Romeo awakes and finds Juliet still beside him. There is blood everywhere and a white froth has descended from her lips and dried on her chin. ROMEO: O my love! my wife! Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty: Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there. Romeo wipes the froth from her lips and gives her one last kiss. He lifts the left leg of his trousers and pulls out his knife. ROMEO: O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death! Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! Here's to my love! Romeo drags the knife across his throat. He drops the knife and holds his hand to the artery in his neck. He continues to feel the slow, regular pumping of his heart, until it pumps no more. Now, Juliet wakes again. Still groggy, she looks over to Romeo. Convinced by the abundance of blood that he has died, she shakes the rest of the tablets in the bottle into her hand and swallows them eagerly. JULIET: O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die. She kisses Romeo and dies. PRINCE: Never was a story of more woe Than this of Bruce, Juliet and her Romeo. Bruce lives alone and works his day job, almost like an automaton. His only salvation is the time he spends in his beat up old Buick. Every night, he drives the streets of Verona, haunted by the love he felt for Juliet and the guilt that it was the pills he gave her that took her life. Sometimes, through the tears in his eyes, he imagines that he sees her walking down the street, only to lose sight of her as she slips quietly down an alleyway. BRUCE: You're still in love with all the wonder she brings And every muscle in your body sings as the highway ignites You work nine to five and somehow you survive till the night Hell all day they're busting you up on the outside But tonight you're gonna break on through to the inside And it'll be right, it'll be right, and it'll be tonight And you know she will be waiting there And you'll find her somehow you swear Somewhere tonight you run sad and free Until all you can see is the night. APOLOGIES: Please don't sue me, Boss. How can I possibly argue that your lyrics deserve to be on the same page as Shakespeare, unless I shamelessly misappropriate them in the pursuit of parody, pastiche, spoof, send-up or lampoon? This isn't damning with faint praise. This is no piss-take. This is a full-on homage, a big hurrah, a laud almighty. I say, more kudos to the Boss! As the literary theorist Linda Hutcheon puts it (as quoted by my WikiLawyer), "parody...is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." I already have multiple copies of your albums on both CD and vinyl, even the boring ones. I don't need any more, until you release 50th anniversary editions with bonus disks I don't already have. [I really hope I'm still around in 2045, so I can be the first to buy "The Ghost of Tom Joad Uncut".] If that doesn't convince you it's not worth suing me, Brucewad, I won't have any money left to support this great music industry of ours that is being killed by illegal downloads. Please get your lawyers to spare my humble upload. And if they do come looking for me, they'd better be pretty damned fit, coz tramps like us, baby we were born to run. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Sep 08, 2012
|
Sep 07, 2012
|
Mass Market Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
32
| 
| 4.16
| 19
| Jun 16, 2012
| Jun 17, 2012
|
really liked it
|
Introduction This review has been pieced together from notes written by my friend and sometime accomplice Clem de Menthe before he went into hiding wit Introduction This review has been pieced together from notes written by my friend and sometime accomplice Clem de Menthe before he went into hiding with other members of Wikisucks in Icequador. As far as I can tell, once he had written them down on a sheet of lined A4 paper, he chewed them, until they were a soggy mess. He then turned them into ice cubes, using Troy DeNuthe’s special formula, where you half-fill an ice cube tray with water, freeze it, insert the foreign object (in this case, the soggy mass) and then pour more water on top, before freezing the full tray. He then sent me a coded text revealing that he had hidden his review in his fridge. I placed the ice cubes in a glass of rum and coke. I had to drink it really quickly, so that the ice didn’t melt too much and expose the paper pulp to the corrosive rum and coke mix. Luckily, some of the ice did melt in my drink, so it didn’t take me long to locate the paper, spread it out on my workbench, separate the work using my clinical tweezers, recognise the pattern of his words, expose it to a lamp and dry Clem’s review. I’m still not sure I got everything in the right order, but I think you’ll agree with me that his thoughts were worth preserving for posterity, if not necessarily in ice. "Just the Tip of the Icecube" (by Clem de Menthe) When I was reading Troy DeNuthe’s book, it suddenly dawned on me (the first of my Eureka moments) just how poor is our knowledge of ice cubes. So I looked up the Wikipedia entry for “ice cube”. Maybe I should have looked up the plural “ice cubes”, because the first page I got was the American rapper. (I just searched “ice cubes” now and it took me to the right “ice cube” entry straight away.) This sort of thing has happened to me before, so I knew that if I wanted more, I had to click on the link for “ice cube (disambiguation)” (BTW, I’ve never seen or heard the word “disambiguation” used outside Wikipedia. Maybe I mix in the wrong circles?). Another Eureka moment, for there waiting for me were three alternative meanings, one of which was “a chunk of frozen water in the shape of a cube”. So I looked it up and guess what? There were less than 1,000 words on this topic. Pathetic, isn’t it? I mean, we expect Wiki to contain everything there is to know about everything, but if they can’t get “ice cubes” right, what does that say about the authority of the rest of Wikipedia? What does this say about the very roots of epistemology in the twenty-first century? So, Eureka moment three: just a few minutes spent in the clutches of "Troy DeNuthe's World of Ice Cubes" is enough to establish that Troy DeNuthe knows far more about ice cubes than the entire Wiki community, which I assume is the whole world (apart from Troy). We cannot begin to tap the resource that is human knowledge, until we can extract from men and women like Troy DeNuthe the detailed knowledge of their individual areas of expertise. Until we do this, all the Encyclopedias and Wikipedias strike me as a fraud on the masses. They’re a farce, a joke. A travesty of wisdom, a mockery of knowledge, a caricature of erudition. This intellectual sloth cuts no ice with me. Wikipedia is just scratching the surface, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. I want to know what’s beneath the surface. What are they hiding from us? Is this some epistemological conspiracy? Who’s behind it all? Is it the I.C.I.A? Anyway, this is a quick snapshot of the world that Troy DeNuthe rides on into on his small but perfectly formed steed of a book, “Troy DeNuthe’s World of Ice Cubes”. A thousand words on ice are not enough, they do not suffice for a man like Troy, someone whose greatest passion is to [ed: this part was a bit difficult to read, but I think he wrote “suck ice”]. Wiki might give us the berg, but Troy gives us the cube. The full cube. Indeed, but for some private suggestions I propose to draw to his attention, the whole kit and caboodle. Forget about Wikileaks. This Wiki sucks, and Troy is just the man to achieve its true potential. A man of enormous [ed: perspacicity?], he is the Julian Iceage of the epistemological liberation movement. His work does not purport to be exhaustive. It’s just a preliminary building block, an ice block that is content to form the base of an igloo, a shoulder upon which giants of ice can stand (to quote the English band, Oasice). No doubt, there is more that Troy personally can impart in further volumes, and I propose to contact him with a modest proposal. However, hopefully, in “The World of Ice Cubes”, he was just [ed: sorry, I think Clem did actually say “breaking the ice”]. Ladies and gentlemen, we cannot tolerate this epistemological conspiracy any longer. We must entice Troy DeNuthe from his hiding place, encourage him to return to the source of this slow-moving glacier of insight, arm himself with an ice pick and deal a fatal blow to the head of the icebergoisie who sit by complacently while the rest of us endure injust-ice. Ladies and gentlemen, we must escape the darkness of our cubicles and embrace the ice cubes of enlightenment. "How to Improve Your Ice Sight Without Glasses: A Proposal" by Clem De Menthe The following notes appear to be suggestions for a proposed collaboration between Clem and Troy on a second volume of “The World of Ice Cubes”: Why ice cubes, not ice balls? Why are they the size that they are? Not bigger? Not smaller? Can you freeze hot water faster than cold water? Who invented the ice cube tray? What is the best size of ice cube tray? What are the relative merits of imitation ice cubes? I swallowed an ice cube, will I die? Would an ice cube melt in enough time for me to be able to breathe? "Haiku DeNuthe (Ice Cubey Dooby Do)" by Clem De Menthe Troy, beat exemplar, Zen master of frozen ice And cubic beauty. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Aug 11, 2012
|
Jul 02, 2012
|
ebook
| ||||||||||||||||
27
| 
| 9780615648422
| 3.71
| 14
| May 2012
| May 2012
|
really liked it
|
Bread and Circuses Snedwick P. Philebius is the Robert ["Woody Allen"] Zimmerman of their generation. Perhaps, Dylan stated the obvious when in 1965 he Bread and Circuses Snedwick P. Philebius is the Robert ["Woody Allen"] Zimmerman of their generation. Perhaps, Dylan stated the obvious when in 1965 he sang "even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked". Yet, who would have guessed how degenerate things could get since then? Bread and circuses were once a distraction from the main game of commerce and politics. Now, capitalism is all about generating bread, and politics has become a circus. Clown Time's Not Over, It's Only Just Begun In today's world, corporate executives and politicians alike have become clowns. These times call for a man or woman of courage, someone who will point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes and even the clown sometimes must have to stand naked. And, readers, Snedwick is that man or woman. [From now on, I will refer to Snedwick in the gender-free plural, because surely talent of these dimensions could not be encapsulated in a singular mortal being of just one of the three available sexes.] Erotically Attracted to a Protracted Tract Not only is Snedwick a cultural critic of great perspicacity, they know how vital erotica has become to the cultural and political discourse of today. "Clownfucker", as the name suggests, is a political and erotic thriller, a philosophical and fibromuscular tubular tract that Snedwick uses to penetrate the vagina of cultural modernity, work its way through cervical resistance and unblock the neuter uterus of morality, decency and popular taste. From Here to Internity Of course, today's metaphorical clown requires an intern, or better still, two interns, who ironically take it in turns, so to speak, to caress and pull him through his anti-hero's journey. In Snedwick's capable hands (and, indeed, their own), Alice and Traci are today's equivalent of the aptly named Mona and Fiona of Richard Condon's "The Vertical Smile", an hilarious novel and precursor to "Clownfucker", which I can't recommend highly enough. The Pubic Yearning of Erotica In the political satire "The Public Burning", Robert Coover, like Dylan, damns Richard Nixon and the culture of corruption that surrounded him. I can think of no greater compliment to pay "Clownfucker" than to say that Snedwick's genius is to add to Robert Coover's important work the pubic yearning of various sordid private enterprises. All the Presidents' Mien However, just as much as Coover, Snedwick's work reveals what really goes down in public office (not to mention public offices and orifices). And it didn't stop with Tricky Dicky. Ultimately, Snedwick's contribution to literature is that it adds a little comic Pecker (or a comic little Pecker) to the earnestness of Woodward and Bernstein, with some vital help from the Deep Throats of Alice and Traci. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jul 04, 2012
|
Jul 02, 2012
|
ebook
| |||||||||||||||
33
| 
| 0393310132
| 9780393310139
| 0393310132
| 3.73
| 4,065
| 1992
| Jan 01, 1993
|
it was amazing
|
In Her Own Write To paraphrase a less hyperbolic comment by David Foster Wallace, the point of this review is that “The Blindfold” is an extraordinary In Her Own Write To paraphrase a less hyperbolic comment by David Foster Wallace, the point of this review is that “The Blindfold” is an extraordinary novel. DFW described it as a “really good book” that is “clearly a feminist reworking of some of the central themes of [Don] DeLillo and his literary compadre, Paul Auster.” I don’t think this does justice to what Siri Hustvedt achieved in her own right. Nor does the following question from a “reader” on amazon.com: "Would this book have been published at all, had Siri Hustvedt not been married to Paul Auster, another completely overrated author?" As Iris Vegan (Hustvedt’s protagonist) might have said, "Stuff it up your ass." Unrequited Dedication? While Hustvedt was writing “The Blindfold” in 1992, Auster was writing “Leviathan”. She dedicated her work to her husband, while he dedicated his to DeLillo (who later reciprocated by dedicating “Cosmopolis” to Auster in an apparent act of bro-love). However, Auster included the character Iris Vegan in “Leviathan”. How meta-dedicated is that! First Things First (But Not Necessarily In That Order) “The Blindfold” is divided into four untitled sections of quite different lengths. By the time I’d got to the beginning of the third section, I was starting to wonder whether there was any relationship between them and whether the book would have been better called a collection of short stories. Was the fact that Iris Vegan was in each section enough to constitute a novel? However, I soon realised that this was indeed a tightly plotted novel where every intricate detail was very precisely described and located, like objects in a museum or art gallery. To paraphrase Iris, Hustvedt is a one-woman performance team, a juggler who works with objects. She moves the objects around, on the shelf or in the air or on the canvas. It doesn’t matter when or where we start looking. The point is to observe them all. Only once we have followed one entire sequence do we start to get an idea of the whole. Once you’ve detected the trend, you discover that you are contained or enclosed in a drama that intensifies with every word and that ultimately you don’t want to stop. Student Affairs The novel maps the course of a number of relationships that Iris forms over the course of three years, while she is a postgraduate English student at Columbia University. During the course of her studies, she develops headaches and suffers migraine auras. We never find out whether her affliction is the result of a physiological condition or the emotional stress that she undergoes. However, migraine auras can result in a disturbance of the patient’s sense of time. In the words of an actual patient, “The feelings of a pre-migraine aura are definitely one of 'otherness', with...temporal, aural and visual disturbances.” While the events are recounted by Iris in the first person eight years after they occurred, her condition allows Hustvedt to mess with time and the sequence in which events occur. It also raises the question of whether Iris is an unreliable narrator. For the first half of the novel, I was quite prepared for some tragic turn of events from a medical point of view. However, after a while I felt that Iris was quite normal, if a little intense, in the manner of a highly intelligent student preoccupied with her self and her role in the world (although the same could be said of a male). Before I move on, I want to dispense with one issue that threatens the appreciation of the novel as a whole. One of the relationships is with a college professor who is in his early 50’s. While Iris is 22 at the time and not a child, I assume that this relationship would offend the university’s sexual misconduct policies. The relationship is consensual and one which Iris consciously or unconsciously seeks almost from their first handshake. The professor displays reluctance in initiating the relationship and ultimately cannot handle the personal and professional guilt that threatens the future of the relationship. He commits an act that in most cases would warrant someone terminating the relationship, even though Iris understands the psychological cause of the act and is prepared to forgive him for it. Because Iris herself does not make any adverse comment on the propriety of the relationship, I don’t propose to comment on it adversely, especially because it seems to me (as a male of a similar age) to contribute to her growth as a person in the novel. Chronology Once you’ve finished the novel, it really is quite time-consuming to try and work out the linear chronology. If you can be bothered, it serves mainly to enhance your appreciation of Hustvedt’s skills as a story-teller. The timeline as presented is actually one that makes sense organically in the development of the themes of the novel. We witness the growth of Iris’ self in a logical, analytical manner, even if the timing is manipulated. Equally importantly, it builds to a climax which happens to coincide with the most recent and most important of the events in the narrative. Because the story concerns Iris’ psyche, it makes sense that the events are presented in this sequence, as if they are part of a professional character assessment or diagnosis. The Development of Female Identity In a way, the novel can be seen as a casebook on the development of female identity as illustrated by the example of one woman. As a male surrounded by one wife and two daughters, I’ve lost the ability to judge whether the casebook is representative of women at large. However, if either of our daughters experienced relationship problems in maturity, I would point them in the direction of the novel if advice by first their mother, then me or a professional proved inadequate. It really is that insightful, at least in my male eyes. An Eye on Your Own Identity What appealed most to me about the novel was the way in which it explored the role of looking and seeing in the relationship, not just between the sexes, but between any two people, or one person or subject (on the one hand) and an object (on the other hand). The very process of perception is described as if it were a more dynamic verb or action. How someone looks (actively) or how someone looks (passively) is just as important as what they ‘do” in some other sense. The eyes are indeed the window to the soul, and this is very much a novel about the soul, the essence of Iris Vegan. It’s no coincidence that Iris is a word that describes part of the structure of the eye, nor that it is the reverse of the first name of the book’s author. While there is a normal amount of dialogue, so much of the novel’s message is revealed by the way people look and see. However, equally importantly, Hustvedt is concerned with the psychoanalytical nature of “the gaze”, not just how a male gazes at a female, but how a female gazes at a male. Without reading like a textbook, the novel explores the type of gaze described by Lacan. The gaze is not just the process of looking, seeing and perceiving. It describes the relationship between subject and object. The subject can desire the object, he can aspire to possess and control the object, to make her or it a possession or a chattel. Conversely, the object can possess a power over the subject, especially when the object is aware that she is being gazed at. The object can capture or enchant the subject. Either way, there can be a power relationship between subject and object, particularly in the sexual context. It’s interesting that Hustvedt uses the concept relatively even-handedly, even though her principal interest is Iris. On the novel’s third page, Iris remarks, “Without any apparent reserve, he looked at me, taking in my whole body with his gaze.” Note that the act of looking involves a taking of something, the body, in fact. Yet, only a few sentences before, Iris “looked at the skin of his neck”. Midway through the novel, when she first meets Professor Rose, “I stared at him and he continued to gaze at me. This went on for maybe half a minute.” The relationship at the heart of the novel starts with a stare and a gaze. Within a few pages, the sexuality at the root of the gaze is made even more explicit: "He gazed at me and pressed his index finger into the hollow beneath his cheekbone. Then he nodded. It was the nod that unraveled me, with its suggestion of penetration, almost telepathy. I looked back at him and felt my jaw relax, my lips part. Who are you? I thought. He took in my whole face with a leisure that astounded me. We looked at each other for too long, and the impropriety made me tremble." The sentence is rattled off, almost innocuously, as if the word “penetration” relates to Iris’ mind, yet the reader can’t help but infer physical sexual penetration as well. As with the first example, the subject “takes” something (or some thing), this time the object’s face. The object is not just the thing looked at, but the thing possessed, as if it is a material object. The gaze can possess both the body and the psyche of the object. I’m Touched by Your Presence, Dear Hustvedt uses the gaze as a foundation for a more palpable or tangible relationship. Just as characters gaze at each other, they touch one another. Valuable items remain boxed up, “to keep them untouched by the here and now.” While sitting at a bar, Iris’ knee “grazes” a gun in a policeman’s holster. (Note the rhyme.) Iris "felt Tim beside me, the sleeve of his coat touching mine," the inanimate object almost an extension or projection of the animate self. At one point, the art critic (known only as) Paris promises he’ll "be in touch"; at another, the photographer George acknowledges a comment by Iris with the rejoinder, "Touche." More importantly, sexual encounters are described in terms of their sensual appeal: "Their intense wishes made me claustrophobic. They were always breathing on me, pulling, tugging, even begging for some mysterious gift they thought I could give them. But I didn’t really have it – the thing they wanted. I know they dreamed of sexual triumph, of some erotic cataclysm that would erase their need, and I know that by eluding them I became more and more a creature of their hopes, a vaporous being with blond hair and blue eyes. They weren’t to blame. Distortion is part of desire. We always change the things we want." Note how desire sometimes involves distortion, elusion feeds illusion. Tell Me, Tell Me, Tell Me, Do Within relationships, Hustvedt also explores the significance of silence and telling and revelation. Her longest relationship is with Stephen, who is carrying a copy of "The Portable Nietzsche", when she first sees him. Stephen maintained a reserve in their relationship. Secrecy undermines their intimacy: "Stephen was secretive. He enjoyed withholding information…I should have known that he was lost to me from the very beginning, but his body was magic then, and it drove me on. One look at his neck, his hands, his mouth, brought on a shudder of sexual memory, a pleasure that became a torment, because Stephen rationed his body..." His explanation of himself is quite Nietzchean: "I’m telling you what I can’t bear is the ordinary. I don’t want to bore myself, to sink into the pedestrian ways of other people – heart to heart talks, petty confessions, relationships of habit, not passion. I see those people all around me, and I detest them, so I have to be divorced from myself in order to keep from sliding into a life I find nauseating. It’s a matter of appearances, but surfaces are underestimated. The veneer becomes the thing. I rarely distinguish the man in the movie from the spectator anymore." Stephen’s attempts to elude intimacy end up ludicrous. They are not just self-delusion, they delude others such as Iris as well. In contrast, the ability to confide in George creates a confidence in their relationship, at least in the short-term: "George inspired telling. He was so easy in his manner, so kind and understanding, it was hard not to confide in him. But there was something else, too, something more important. George had a way of talking to me as if he knew me better than I knew myself, and in George this presumption was a kind of wizardry that turned loose thoughts and memories I had never spoken of to anyone before." This is a relationship that is not consummated physically, although George “takes” a photo of Iris that is regarded as a study in eroticism, as if he had captured her naked. George regards the photo as “extraordinary”, while Iris regards it as “an object of regret”. Having taken it, the photo satiates George. In his eyes, “It’s all there…everything I want.” He rebuffs Iris’ one advance: "I looked at George. He grinned. He was sitting on the floor with his camera in his lap. I knelt down and crawled toward him, looking at his lean arms and beautiful mouth. I lifted my right arm and extended my hand toward his face, but something in his expression stopped me. I have what I want, it seemed to say. Don’t come any closer. I dropped my arm and sat back, still breathing hard." Iris imagines George "stealing photographs in the darkness, his flash igniting the startled faces of those caught in an act they wanted to keep secret – a kiss or a fight or an illicit transaction – and then I saw George run from the spot like a burglar." Not just does George take photos, he steals them from the psyche of the object. Notes from Underground While George seems to thrive in the darkness, Iris has already had an experience of life in the demimonde or netherworld. After the rape of a resident of her apartment building, she starts dressing as a man in a suit in order to go to and from her night jobs. "It wasn’t so much that I looked like a man but that the clothes created an image of sexual doubt. With no makeup and my hair hidden beneath a fedora, I seemed to be either a masculine woman or an effeminate man..." At a crucial moment in the development of her sexual identity, she is able to experiment with a male persona. People cease to look or gaze at her as a sexual object. She evades men, by impersonating a man. She removes men from the picture, by removing herself as woman from the picture. Iris neuters herself, firstly as an act of self-defence, secondly as a stepping stone to personal and sexual confidence. While inhabiting this world, a world that reminded me of Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from the Underground” or Herman Hesse’s “Steppenwolf” (including the Magic Theatre), Iris is poverty-stricken, starving, hallucinating, bordering on the hysterical (in Freudian terms). Fortunately, her experience starts with a transgression of sorts and ends up as a transition,a journey, an Odyssey that prepares her for her next relationship with Michael (Professor Rose). [image] Giorgione’s “The Tempest” Loving You the Way You Want Hustvedt is also fascinated by the nature of desire. In some people, as we have already seen, it represents the lack of something, a want, a need, an absence, an emptiness, a [black] hole that the subject attempts to fill with the object. Ironically, when Iris doesn’t share the desire, she finds that the subject’s desire is even greater: "Men I cared nothing about called me…on them my indifference worked like an aphrodisiac. Because I didn’t want anything..." On the other hand, when she suggests that Stephen has never loved her, he responds: "I’ve always loved you…I just don’t love you the way you want." Yet again, Hustvedt has a poet’s eye for both the multiple meanings of words and their resemblance to other words. You have to want, to love and be loved; you have to want to be loved; and you have to be loved the way you want! When Iris experiences love with Michael, there is a different want, a new emptiness, a fear that they will lose each other, a desire that things stay the same, even though the truth is that they can’t. The risk is that this emptiness will become an evil, a source of cruelty and destructiveness, something that will bring about the end of their relationship. Walking the Last Stretch Blindfolded Just as the novel explores looking and seeing, it addresses blindness. With Iris’ migraine auras, she experiences black spots, blindness that starts with a hole and ultimately blacks out the whole, not just of the object, but the subject. "Only later was I able to tell myself that I had suffered a migraine aura. The following months were a time when the everyday became precarious. At any moment an ordinary thing, a table or chair, a face or hand, might disappear, and with the blindness came a feeling of that I was no longer whole. I had put myself back together and now my body was failing me." The negative connotation of blindness is the inability to look or see, or even to gaze. Paradoxically, the blindfold incident in the novel offers a positive connotation to blindness. Michael gives Iris a scarf. As they walk along the familiar streetscape back to her apartment, her confidence in her route leads her to tie the scarf around her eyes. In a scene that reminded me of the film “Trust”, she voluntarily embraces blindness. She must trust herself and/or Michael in order to get home safely. This key metaphor is pregnant with connotations: "He kissed me, and it was good not to see him. He could have been any man. The anonymity was his and mine. Like a child, I felt that blindness made me disappear, or at least made the boundaries of my body unstable. One of us gasped. I didn’t know who it was, and this confusion made my heart pound." Despite the danger of her predicament, she did not want anything. She did not want a particular person, a particular man, for what they could give her. She could not look, she could not desire, she could not gaze, she could not judge beauty, she could not detect an object, but equally she could not be a subject. She had lost her sense of self, at least her extreme self-consciousness. Her self had disappeared. It had become one with her surroundings, including Michael. That one, the “one of us”, gasped. She had everything, because she saw and needed nothing. Because she could not see, the two of them had become invisible and anonymous in her own mind (even if Michael could still see and gaze at her). I wonder whether there is a hint of Zen “non-attachment” in this scene. Like a Bat Out of Hell The novel does not end with the blindfold scene, which would have been a convenient romantic denouement. Instead, it sees Iris running away from the touch of the tiny, almost effeminate art critic Paris, to the IRT. He sees Iris as some kind of Odysseus to his Penelope, whether or not he knows that she was treated for her migraines at Mount Olympus Hospital. What should we infer from the ending? Did Iris simply elude the Judgment of Paris? A pessimist might conclude that Iris has returned to the darkness of the Underground. An optimist might hope that she has finally put the past behind her and is ready for the next stage of her journey as a woman who has constructed a female identity she can be proud of, and who has something to offer other women. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 09, 2012
|
Aug 17, 2012
|
Jun 30, 2012
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
22
| 
| unknown
| 2.67
| 3
| Mar 2011
| Mar 2011
|
it was ok
|
Yet Another Woodcock and Bull Story Doctor Rodney Woodcock, M.D. (known to his patients as Doctor Rod) started to tire of day to day practice at his Ho Yet Another Woodcock and Bull Story Doctor Rodney Woodcock, M.D. (known to his patients as Doctor Rod) started to tire of day to day practice at his Hollywood Clinic 12 months ago. Since then he's been looking for a new direction and he believes he might have found one. It's not that he's unhappy with the money or the patients. He knows he’s been lucky in his chosen profession. He’s already made a number of fortunes in his 45 years, prescribing drugs of choice to the stars, celebrity look-alike cosmetic surgery for their audiences. He wasn’t the first to build a multi-million dollar business that satisfied these needs, but he was the best. Still, the money he’s made out of these specialities could be tiny compared with the success he foresees in an area he himself has pioneered, professionally, personally and confidentially: body double genital sculpting. The beautiful thing is, it's a logical fit for his existing practice. Now he's almost ready to go public. He looks at the draft brochure his wife and business partner, Doctor Wendy Bull, has commissioned. “Not happy with the way your tits and dicks look? Want your private parts to be more photogenic? Witness something during a wardrobe malfunction you’d like to mimic? See an actor who's got something you want? Why should the stars get all the best parts? Now, you can have them, too. Call us to hear how the Woodcock and Bull Story can re-write the script for the next act in your lives. Then choose one of our industry-leading, medically proven photogenital techniques to achieve your dream facade.” “I don’t know, Wendy, something doesn’t look right.” “What are you thinking?” “Well, ‘tits and dicks’, for instance. Shouldn’t it be ‘tits or dicks’? No one patient could have both tits and dicks, could they?” “Well, not as much as the eighties and it's always been less common on the West Coast, but I see what you mean.” She crosses out “and” with her blue pen and inserts “or”. Then she looks at him and ventures, “Are you sure this is what you really want to do? Isn’t it time we gave back something to the people who’ve made us so frigging rich?” * “Who do you mean?” Doctor Rod knows his wife hasn't been totally happy lately as well. "Why would we want to give them anything they haven't paid for?" “Well, what about people who are beyond surgery, people who would benefit from therapy, patients whose systems are so clogged with chemicals and additives and bi-products they can barely lift themselves on or off the sex partner of their choice. Men whose arteries are so hardened they have a permanent stiffy**, but not in their pants. Can’t we do something to relieve their pain? Or at least manage it? Or keep them distracted?” “You mean, can’t we make money out of them some other way? If only we could figure out how to make money, without having them come to the Clinic. Maybe you could write a book or something.” “You can see right through me, Rodney, you should have been a radiologist.” “Ha ha, well I thought you were going to investigate a few ideas at the Faculty Library. How did you go with the Arterioschlerotic Literature?” “Nothing suitable, let alone erotic.I did come up with an idea though. I found a paper that might interest you...sex for the elderly wine connoisseur...before and after kidney stones.” “You’re kidding me?” “Well, actually, it was called ‘Non-Surgical Strategies to Help the Sex-Challenged Couple Manage Kidney Stone Afflictions’.” “You think you could make something out of that?" "I don’t know, I thought I could re-purpose it somehow. Maybe even fictionalize it. Elderly...rich...business entrepreneur...wine connoisseur... expatriate Australian mistress...fast cars...penthouses...international business trips...second wife dies unexpectedly...kidney stones...erectile dysfunction...Hollywood doctor...miracle cure...step-son finds out about mistress...mistress meets Hollywood doctor...step-son falls in love with mistress...Hollywood doctor falls in love with stepson..." "Aren't you the creative one!” “Yeah, I haven't worked out how to finish it yet, but I figure there has to be a market for medicorotica, especially in this town." "You wouldn’t want to do it under your name though." "I think I’d have to change the title, too. Something a little less technical, obviously.” “Oh yeah, what were you thinking of?” ...Six months later... "Rodney, would you mind looking at the mock-up of the cover? Something doesn’t look right.” "Mmmm..." "What?" "Well, see his right bicep? If you didn't realise it was a bicep..." Wendy's eyes light up, "It might look like a breast, his right breast..." "...and that might be a cleavage, which must mean..." "...the woman is fondling the guy's left tit?" "I still think it works," Rodney is encouraging. "They're quite nice tits for a guy." "I just hope he's not one of your patients." "Here, show me...I'd better have a closer look." Before handing the artwork to Rodney, Wendy checks the mock up of the back cover. "Well, at least he's only got one dick." * Wendy is a posh expatriate Australian who doesn't say "fuckin' rich". ** Wendy is a posh expatriate Australian who reverted to saying "stiffy" instead of "hard-on", when she found a new Australian cafe in L.A that served espressos and flat whites. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jun 02, 2012
|
Jun 01, 2012
|
ebook
| |||||||||||||||
21
| 
| 0749321784
| 9780749321789
| 0749321784
| 2.92
| 24
| 1992
| 1995
|
liked it
|
Do It Yourself Erotica Part 2 Rodney finished his coffee, waved goodbye to the waitstaff and ran away from the café without paying. Nobody called out, n Do It Yourself Erotica Part 2 Rodney finished his coffee, waved goodbye to the waitstaff and ran away from the café without paying. Nobody called out, nobody chased him, nobody phoned the police. He felt so good, so invigorated. He didn’t stop running until he was two blocks away. Then he looked back over his shoulder, just to make sure, and thought, “This is the sort of thing you can get away with when you own the place.” He slowed down as he approached the intersection, thinking that the “don’t walk” sign would turn to “walk” as he got there, only it didn’t. He came to a grinding halt. He had never come this way before. The intersection was unfamiliar to him. It had become overcast. He heard thunder in the distance. Only then did he notice a Japanese girl standing next to him, also apparently waiting for a green light. She must have been about 22. She had long dark hair, just like in a Haruki Murakami novel. She looked like she owned a black cat, cooked spaghetti twice a week and liked Rossini. Or was that a guy? Rodney inspected her more closely and thought, “If you had a twin sister, I bet you’d look just like her.” She turned and smiled at him, as if she’d heard his thoughts. She flicked the hair off her left shoulder to reveal a [pointy/ violet/ cherry blossom/ cauliflower] ear. Rodney had never seen anything like it, at least not perched on somebody's shoulder. He was unable to control his reaction. He just had to lean over and [lick/bite/ pick /shout into] it. Of course, she couldn’t resist his attention. She remained there, even though the light had turned green, until her whole body was excited and her nose [blew/bled/dripped/smelled] sex all over the place. She stood on her tippy toes, horny, wet, impatient, until Rodney let go of her ear and it stopped raining. Rodney looked into the girl’s eyes and knew immediately that her name was Isamu. “It means ‘vigorous, robust, energetic’,” she whispered coyly, as she slid to her knees. “I suspected it might. I could feel it in my…” “Balls?” Isamu suggested. “How did you guess?” Rodney asked, a little apprehensively, as Isamu ripped open his shorts with her [pearly/ incisive/ platinum-braced/ vampire] teeth. He looked down at her, while a droplet of sweat made its way across his furrowed brow and his testicles ascended nervously, but not as it turned out, beyond Isamu’s reach. She pushed her thumb and [two/three/four/fore] fingers into his groin, worked her way skillfully around the dual spheres and quickly levered them into the open, from which position she maneuvered Rodney into a shadowy arcade. It was just like “Blade Runner” in there. All he could hear now was the sound of commerce and a 70’s disco beat. Merchants looked at him and turned away. Their customers walked around him, spitting on the sawdust. A boy with a straw broom, who couldn’t have been more than 12, grinned at Isamu, squinted at Rodney and guffawed, “No fucky fucky for you tomorrow, white boy.” He made it sound like the lyrics of a Bee Gees song. Isamu threw him on a table that felt smooth and padded. He tried to get up on one elbow. “On your back,” she commanded. She held one hand over his mouth and with the other ripped his appliquéd Hawaiian shirt off his chest. Plastic beads shot everywhere like teenaged boys debating or whatever on a school camp. Isamu looked down on Rodney’s pecs, lifted her hand and quickly [slapped/pulled/squeezed/twisted] them until they [deflated/ reddened/ exploded/inflated and pressed her against the ceiling]. Unexpectedly, she climbed up onto the table and placed her feet either side of Rodney’s [sculptured/ heaving/ highly flexed/ flippy floppy] abs. Then, equally amazingly, she launched herself off the table, at least a meter into the air above her. Rodney watched her as she began to descend, then he started to scream. Mathematically, in the heat of the moment, he had worked out that her [moist/ runny/ steamy/ boiling] vagina was about to descend violently on his [flaccid/erect/cowering/poorly disguised] penis. He screamed again and again and again, for minutes, as she descended in slow motion, just like in “The Matrix”, you know that scene outside the lift well with the bullets and everything. Every part of his anatomy launched itself in self-defence at Isamu, even his [hairy/ knobbly/ too big/ two big] toes. She rebounded off his knee , then his hands (which had for a few brief seconds rebuffed Isamu like a shield of steel), until finally with a deft 360, she landed where he had most hoped and feared, except with his eyes closed, he was momentarily unable to detect which bit was measuring the circumference of his manhood. A grin emerged suddenly on Isamu’s face, which in most circumstances would also have been a clue, but then Rodney felt the embrace of her teeth. “How did you do that?” he asked from behind the face of his grimace. “Oh, Rodney, darling,” (for Isamu had also determined his name telepathically, as if in one of Murakami’s later period novels that Paul Bryant hasn’t read yet), “you have the [biggest/ most uncomfortable/ wobbliest/ flattest] cock I’ve ever [seen/ squatted on/ swallowed/ squeezed under my armpit].” Isamu’s thighs gripped his chest tightly until his belly button popped out and the colourless liquid contents of his stomach, the result of two bottles of Evian water, a flat white coffee and a literary product placement deal, fizzed anew like French champagne. Immediately, Isamu changed position to take advantage of this opportunity for refreshment. She propped up and nuzzled her [hot/cold/floppy/rock hard] labia against Rodney’s [sensitive/ probing/ bulbous/ aquiline] nose as her throat [drank/swallowed/gorged on/ choked on] everything Rodney still offered her in his current state. Seeing the moment for his intervention, Rodney twisted Isamu’s bra, until the little nameless sliding metal bit at the back broke and her [petite/ miniscule/ ample/ holy fuck I didn’t know Japanese chicks had such monstrous] breasts unleashed on his chest like someone patting two containers of upside down pineapple cake onto the crockery top of his sex tableau. He quickly grabbed the nipple on each of her breasts and started to rotate them in different directions, the left (his left) counter-clockwise and the right clock-wise. Needless to say, Isamu’s body fell apart in his hands, separated right down the middle. She slid inertly to the floor, stunned in the few moments before her inertness prevailed, then remained inert. He finally lifted himself off the massage table, showing no hint of emotion, grabbed his clothes and headed toward the curtain that opened into the arcade. He turned around as he was about to leave and saw Isamu’s anus on the table. It was all that was left of her, apart from all of the other bits on the floor. He briefly contemplated taking it as a memento, but thought better of it. What would his wife and two teenage daughters think? He looked at his watch and realised it was 3pm. He ran the whole way back to the café, where he put his clothes back on. It was time to lock the doors and go home. Soundtrack: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - We Call Upon the Author http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyGivD... "The Everyday Grinderman's Erratic Guide to Existencilist Erotica" This is one of two parts of the Erratic Guide to Existencilist Erotica. Part 1 is here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
May 31, 2012
|
May 31, 2012
| ||||||||||||||
18
| 
| 0312144350
| 9780312144357
| 0312144350
| 3.43
| 1,823
| Jun 1995
| Apr 15, 1996
|
did not like it
|
A Question for You, Reggie Hi, Reggie, I normally love Paul Bryant's reviews, but his review of "Topping from Below" has me perplexed. http://www.goodre A Question for You, Reggie Hi, Reggie, I normally love Paul Bryant's reviews, but his review of "Topping from Below" has me perplexed. http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... Does he take the novel too seriously or not seriously enough? Please help. Ian Reggie Responds Thanks for your question, Ian. Paul is one of my favourite reviewers on GR, too. However, when he takes the side of feminism in his reviews, he allows his normally astute views to be whipped into a frenzy (see "American Psycho"). Two passages from his review will show just how wrong you can be, when you allow your individuality and judgement to be subsumed by some fringe ideology that posits sexual equality as the norm, when we know damned well that everywhere there is passionate inequality and BDSM. First, Paul asks: "Does she [the author, Laura Reese] really think a woman would get into a sexual relationship with a guy who she thinks tortured her sister to death in order that she might be able to find out something incriminating?" Second, he complains about the doggy fashion (and by that I don't mean canine wardrobe): "Then later, this fiendishly horny novel gives us a detailed scene between our heroine Nora and M's Great Dane. That's right, it's a dog, not a euphemism." I don't know whether "euphemism" is the word that Paul was searching for. However, I will substitute "metaphor", in order to argue that the true appeal of "Topping from Below" is its recontextualisation of one of the great works of English literature. Is it realistic that a woman would sleep with the murderer of a close relative? Of course it is, it's been done before. What about Gertrude and that murdering bastard, King Claudius? And if that's not enough of a clue, Laura Reese makes her literary and historical intentions clear with the reference to the "Great Dane". Paul waxes desperate with imagination, but he misses the point that "Topping from Below" is a contemporisation of "Hamlet", a work of literature that risks losing relevance in the world of Facebook and Twitter. "Topping from Below" is "Hamlet" with whips and chains (OK, and, I suppose, symbolic, implied, literary bestiality). Laura Reese is a whiplash girl child in the dark, crying out, trying to focus our attention on the root cause of today's social problems. Yes, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. And the problems start at the top, on the top, with the dominants. We submissives have to fight back and exert control over those who would dominate us. Not just men, as Paul implies, but dominants of all eight or nine genders and/or political persuasions (especially female bondage monarchists, not mentioning any names, Mother). We are born free, and everywhere we are in chains. Submissives of the world unite. We must top from below! (Sgd.) Reggie Side In next week's column: Bird Brian asks, "Stuff Denmark, Reggie, WTF's going down in Greece? ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
May 21, 2012
|
May 21, 2012
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
25
| 
| 1582342121
| 9781582342122
| 1582342121
| 3.71
| 2,230
| Jan 01, 2001
| Apr 01, 2008
|
it was amazing
|
The Flaneur I first became familiar with the word “Flaneur” when a collection of Walter Benjamin’s writings called “The Arcade Projects” was published The Flaneur I first became familiar with the word “Flaneur” when a collection of Walter Benjamin’s writings called “The Arcade Projects” was published in 1999. It included a 1929 review called “The Return of the Flâneur”. In it, Benjamin speculates on the significance of the “Flaneur”, a French word meaning “stroller” or “saunterer”. It describes someone who walks the street, apparently idly, not intending to simply get from point A to point B, but seeking more to observe and experience the street and its surroundings. In Paris, not only does the Flaneur experience the streets or boulevards, he explores the shop-lined arcades that radiate off them and join other streets. What the Flaneur observes is the full diversity and complexity of modern life in the city. Seeing Beyond the Crowd The Flaneur is a spectator who joins the crowd that is moving with intent, but he remains somehow separate from it. He is both in the crowd and detached from it. He is both an individual and a member of society. He is both a participant and an observer, a witness to the sometimes opposing forces of tradition and modernity. Where these forces are in conflict, the Flaneur detects the paradoxes that result from their co-existence. The Flaneur sees both interaction and flux. "A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris" This is the sub-title of Edmund White’s non-fiction work. Outwardly, it presents itself as a guidebook to the culturally aware tourist. It starts tantalizingly: "Paris is a big city, in the sense that London and New York are big cities and that Rome is a village, Los Angeles a collection of villages and Zurich a backwater." I like the hint of argumentativeness and controversy planted in this otherwise innocuous first sentence. He then quotes a “reckless friend” who defines a big city as “a place where there are blacks, tall buildings and you can stay up all night” (although he admits that Paris is deficient in tall buildings). In the Footsteps of the Flaneur While I didn’t really appreciate it at the time, White was already starting to flirt with our expectations of a travel guide. I just knew him as one of the world’s greatest gay writers and a formidable intellect and writer of any gender or sexual persuasion. However, superficially, there was no intimation that this would affect his approach to his subject matter. Curious, I flicked quickly through the contents of the book. There were no photos or illustrations, the six chapters bore numbers rather than headings, and, shock, shock, there were no sub-headings in the body of the text. This guide consisted solely of thoughts and observations, all conveyed by words alone. Still, I was already seduced and captivated by these words. So I innocently walked up behind Monsieur White and followed him on his stroll. How was I to know where he would lead me? Cruising the Margins and Cracks of Paris Of course, where he took me was to the places where you could find the true character and secrets of Paris, the City not just of Light, but of Light, Darkness and Shade, a city where the Past, Present and Future live side by side, awaiting the Flaneur. What follows is a highly individual, informed, informative and affectionate tour through Paris’ intellectualism, sophistication, variety, foreigners, Jews, Arabs, blacks, gays, dandies, artists, jazz musicians, royalty, royalists, monarchists, town houses, temples, cathedrals, palaces and museums. While White sings the praises of Paris’ boulevards and grand design, it’s in the cracks that he finds “those little forgotten places that appeal to the Flaneur, the traces left by people living in the margin – Jews, blacks, gays, Arabs – or mementoes of an earlier, more chaotic and medieval France.” Paris as Palimpsest Paris is a work of art which is being constantly altered and added to, but scratch the surface and you will find that it is a palimpsest that reveals the former work that still resides below. It is the role of the Flaneur to impose a personal vision on this palimpsest, to use it not so much as a source of abstract or dry knowledge, but to create from it a picture or record of experience, a collection of impressions or mental snapshots or “instantanee”, of life lived and still being lived. Paris as Refuge Paris accommodates all tastes, from the most extravagant and luxe to the most commonplace, but it also accommodates life’s fugitives, those who are marginalized in other parts of the world. People who are scorned or cast out from elsewhere are welcome here. They put down roots and they start to grow and create, paradoxically within a short distance from cathedrals, palaces and museums, the institutions by which we know Paris. Ultimately, it’s these people who hold the greatest interest for White, not to mention the objects they surround themselves with and the record of their existence and their experience: "...these mental snapshots, these instantanees of fugitive life, these curving banisters and lacquered portals, these cold, empty quays beside the Seine where someone under a bridge is playing a saxophone – all the priceless but free memories only waiting for a Flaneur to make them his own." Be Your Own Flaneur We are lucky that Edmund White was one such Flaneur, because in making these memories his own and writing about them, he has also made them ours. However, I won't be content to be an armchair Flaneur. One day soon, December, 2012, I hope to be a Flaneur strolling down the boulevards of Paris. I’m sure there will be a few paradoxes waiting there for me to discover. I might even incorporate some of my instantanee as appendages to my review. Meanwhile, I'm getting in as much strolling practice as I can. Galerie: Here is a YouTube video reading of Walter Benjamin's discussion of Flaneurs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6-weV... Here is a little flanerie (well, sort of): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZes-V... And some photos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi2Au1... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 26, 2012
|
Jun 09, 2012
|
May 18, 2012
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
20
| 
| 0802134505
| 9780802134509
| 0802134505
| 3.40
| 173
| 1988
| Apr 19, 1996
|
it was ok
|
Do It Yourself Erotica Part 1 Rodney sat on the [chair/couch/banana lounge/bean bag] and signalled to the [barrista/waitress/unemployed actress/ online Do It Yourself Erotica Part 1 Rodney sat on the [chair/couch/banana lounge/bean bag] and signalled to the [barrista/waitress/unemployed actress/ online book reviewer] that he was ready for another [coffee/martini/line of coke/red cordial]. She laughed. “How are you going to pay for it? You just exceeded your [limit/time/credit/budget] here.” “Ha,” he laughed. “Would you believe this is all I’ve got left?” His thumb pulled down his [trouser belt/dressing gown/ bathers/ stockings] to reveal a massive [gun/wallet/not quite flaccid penis/ chest]. “You know that’ll get you nowhere with me,” she said. “Once bitten, twice shy.” Rodney looked her up and down, still interested, and responded, “Thrice smitten.” “You wish,” she said, as she twisted on the tips of her toes and headed towards the bar. Wendy watched the woman for long enough to see her turn around, hoping that Rodney hadn’t removed his thumb yet. Both women were in luck. Not suspecting who was watching very much, Rodney had revealed his [steely abs/ butterfly tattoo/ fast receding flaccidity/ three digit intellect]. Wendy had seen enough. Her [book/iPad /cocktail/bong] fell through her hands and struck the floor, not quite smashing, but reverberating like a [gunshot/slap on the face/smack on the bottom/Texan yodel]. By the time Rodney had traced the source of the commotion, all he could see was Wendy leaning over, revealing her [tight calves/ hot ass / voluptuous breasts/bare naked sex]. Rodney stood, gallantly, knowing that now there was no way he could hide his [weapon/wealth/ manhood/adequacy] from this woman he could tell must be Wendy, because it was written so above. When he arrived at her side, she placed her hand on his [public/private/ erogenous/discomfort] zone and enquired, “Is this for me?” Rodney didn’t have time to reply. By the time his mind had thought up a response, Wendy had gripped his [belt/gown/cock/ponytail] and determined to remove it and its attachments to her [penthouse/room/ cupboard/lair], where she would extract from them every last possible [pleasure/delight/ squirt/drop] she could imagine without [exploding/coming/ conceiving/deceiving] excessively. Wendy gathered her possessions and all her [wits/tits/bits/titbits] about her. Fortunately, no one else accompanied them in the lift up to her [penthouse/room/cupboard/lair]. It afforded Wendy a brief moment of opportunity to lower herself to the floor of the lift and assess how much pleasure could yet be retrieved in this private moment of opportunity from her [book/iPad /cocktail/bong]. The question proved to be academic or at least too difficult for Wendy and Rodney to comprehend in the fleeting shortness of the duration available to them. As Wendy knelt on all fours, Rodney proved unable to resist the temptation to [inspect his face in the mirror/slide his cock back inside his underpants/check his breath/scratch his balls]. No sooner had Rodney attended to his most immediate needs than the lift announced that they had arrived at their destination, “Hello, you have arrived at your destination.” Wendy dragged Rodney out of the lift by his [hand/ponytail/ earlobe/ nipple ring]. It was a short [walk/nudge/slide/drag] to her room, before she opened the door and [pushed/eased/dropped/flung] Rodney onto the parquetry floor. “I need to have a shower,” Rodney pleaded. “OK,” Wendy replied, thinking she might slip into something more [slippery/comfortable/ demure/sexy]. The door to the bathroom didn’t close fully, she’d wondered whether she should complain to the management, but still somehow now it attracted her attention. Inside, she could see Rodney, naked, soaping his [hands/anus/ navel/ penis], then caressing his thick dark [locks/chest hair/ nose/ penis]. “Can I help you with that,” she asked, “Would you believe I’m a [hairdresser/masseur/ elite escort/ patent attorney]?” He turned, surprised, in her direction, but didn’t need to say anything to make his point. Wendy slipped out of her [g-string/gown/body oil/lab coat] and joined Rodney in the warm shower. Almost immediately, they fell to the floor and embraced each other. Wendy arched her back and started to suck Rodney’s [earlobe/nostril/ sex/ left testacle]. Rodney [laughed/screamed/ cried/coughed] anxiously. What was she going to do to him? She took it in her hand and started to [pull/slap/squeeze/ scratch] him rhythmically. He couldn’t resist her master stroke. “Oops,” he ejaculated, as the [warm/ living/ magical/ holy] substance escaped violently and landed on [the ceiling/ the wall/ her midriff/ the nape of her neck where regrettably she could not see it]. He climbed up on [a ladder/his feet/ his knees/ the white enamel rim of the bathtub] and meticulously [licked/ wiped up/ toweled dry/pooled] his life-giving essence. “What about me?” she asked. He stretched her out on the warm wet tiles and began planting [kisses/ caresses/ little plastic soldiers/shrubs] all over her body. He lifted her hips with both hands and thrust his [slender/fat/ elegant/ knobbly]fingers into her [hollow/navel/ mouth/buttocks], before noticing that she had fallen asleep. She awoke in bed to the sound of [rain/Christian Television/ the blender/a power tool]. She was so happy, rested and dry, she wondered whether she had found a man who could fix [global warming/her weary soul/ a cup of coffee/the bathroom door]. She sighed, a signal that he took as an invitation to return to the inviting warmth of the bed that invited him so much. Soon he was next to her, looking her in the eyes, gently, lovingly guiding her hand towards [the glass of freshly squeezed orange juice/the cappuccino/the Saturday Arts and Book Review/his cock]. He loves me, he cares for me, he wants to please me, he wants me back again, she heard the former porn actress on the TV recite from memory. She drew him [close/out/in pencil/until he was monstrously elongated], raised herself a little and put her arms around him. He took her head in his enormous non-threatening hands and [cradled it/massaged it/tilted it back until it could go no further/swiveled it 365 degrees like in The Exorcist]. He took her mouth, lovingly, generously parted her lips and inserted more than a mouthful of [orange juice/coffee/ vegemite on toast/himself]. Then he guided her petite ski-slope nose all the way downhill into his [mouth/ear hole/ buttocks/navel]. She resisted, understandably, and mounted him instead. He remained on his back, ever considerate, determined not to crush her. He looked at [her eyes/ her breasts/ the walls/ his balls] in the ceiling mirror and noticed how vibrant and dizzy his world had become. She was going too fast, no she wasn’t, oops, yes she was. They came together that morning, again and again, hundreds of times, [their fluids mingled/their moans blended/ their minds united/their souls fused], so adhesively no mortal could ever tear them apart. When they awoke, it was mid-afternoon. “Darling, would you like to go to the [museum/ art gallery/ opera/ movies]?” “Yes, I suppose it’s our last day here,” Rodney replied. “It’s time someone else entertained us.” Soundtrack: Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Breathless http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjiRYS... "The Everyday Grinderman's Erratic Guide to Existencilist Erotica" This is one of two parts of the Erratic Guide to Existencilist Erotica. Part 2 is here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
May 18, 2012
|
May 18, 2012
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
19
| 
| 1612130283
| 9781612130286
| 1612130283
| 3.66
| 2,623,244
| May 25, 2011
| Jun 20, 2011
|
it was ok
|
Fifty-Five Shades of Graye When poet, personal trainer, dorm mistress and real estate agent Ana Stasia reads an opus-type review by the reasonably succ Fifty-Five Shades of Graye When poet, personal trainer, dorm mistress and real estate agent Ana Stasia reads an opus-type review by the reasonably successful middle-aged donut store franchisee Ian Graye on GoodReads, she finds him attractive, enigmatic and intimidating, if a little bit geeky. Convinced her first post on one of his threads went down badly, she tries to put Graye out of her mind - until he happens to turn up at the out-of-town sports carnival at which her daughter is playing a team coached by his athletic and amply-breasted wife, F.M. Sushi. The otherworldly, relatively innocent Ana is shocked to realize she wants this 55 year-old renaissance man, and when he warns her to keep her eye on the game, it only makes her more desperate to unclothe him. Unable to resist Ana’s outspoken beauty, wit, independent spirit and tits that are even bigger than his wife’s, Graye admits he craves access to her - but only every second weekend. Shocked yet thrilled by the prospect of Graye's fortnightly but otherwise erratic tastes, Ana hesitates until she detects the awesome swelling in his pinstriped potted pants. One Swallow Does Not a Summer Make Yet, and there is always a yet, for all the trappings of botanical and literary success – his multinational friends and followers, his vast girth, his loving cyber-family – Graye is a man tormented by the fact that he can’t get lavender or basil to grow for more than one season, he hasn’t read Dostoyevsky’s “The Demons” and he is consumed by the need to write excessively long book reviews on GoodReads. When the couple embarks on a passionate, physical and daring group read between weekend assignments (and/or assignations), Ana learns more about her own dark desires, as well as the real secret of the appeal of Ian Graye that is hidden away from public scrutiny. Can their relationship transcend their passionate physiques? Will Ana find something of Ian's permanently embedded in herself? Will this aspiring Head Mistress submit to the self-indulgent Master? And if she does, will she still find that the extra-curricular sub-missionary position is what she loves? Erotic, amusing, and deeply moving, "Fifty-Five Shades of Graye" is a tale that will obsess you, possess you, and distress you until you realise that Ana and F.M. Sushi were made for each other, they piss off that extraordinary wanker Ian Graye and indulge in hot lesbian sex for the rest of the trilogy. Soundtrack: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig Lazarus Dig http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxWS1u... ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
May 10, 2012
|
May 10, 2012
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
15
| 
| 0865475083
| 9780865475083
| 0865475083
| 4.25
| 2,936
| Oct 27, 1992
| Jun 26, 1997
|
really liked it
|
In a Lonely Tenement He awoke at 6am, and slid out of the bed in the 20’s studio apartment he’d leased for six months. It was still dark outside, but h In a Lonely Tenement He awoke at 6am, and slid out of the bed in the 20’s studio apartment he’d leased for six months. It was still dark outside, but he could see a sliver of golden glow in a crack in the curtains. He went over to it, and drew the curtains slightly apart. Across the gap in the horseshoe-shaped apartment building, but down one level, he could see the source of the glow. A woman, in her pyjamas, was prancing around her bedroom, well, between the wardrobe and her bed. She was trying to make a decision about which of two costumes to wear that day. The wind changed direction, and he heard her radio. It was playing John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”. He left the window, flicked on the lights in his studio and tuned the radio onto WBGO. When he returned to the window, he drew the curtains open and noticed that the woman was now wearing her choice of day clothes. It was then that she saw him. “Hey, what the fuck are you looking at, man?” she called out. “I didn’t see anything, honest, Maria,” he replied with a laugh. “You can see anything you wanna, if you come on down here for breakfast,” she said, “I’m gonna make some pancakes, maple syrup, Canadian, too.” “Sorry, Maria, I’ve got to finish my book. I’m on the last chapter. Today might be the big day.” “Good...tonight, you and I…you and I...we’re going dancing.” “It’s a date. I promise.” He left the window with a fleeting smile, turned on the laptop that sat on his writer’s bureau, then opened the fridge door to see what was in store for him. It was empty. Today, as he had expected, he would write on an empty stomach, he would know what it felt like to be a jazz musician, like one of his heroes, only he knew that, tonight, there would be a happy ending. And tomorrow, well, tomorrow, there would be pancakes. A Jazz Curator’s Egg For all but the last 30 pages of this book, I was prepared to say that it was the best book I had ever read about music of any description. My reluctance reflects the way the book is divided into two parts. The second part is a formal essay on Tradition, Innovation and Influence in Jazz Music. The first and most impressive part is a collection of semi-fictionalized vignettes about incidents in the lives of eight jazz greats. If Geoff Dyer had omitted the essay, I would have given the book five stars. Ironically, perhaps, because he saw fit to include it, I will only give it four stars. However, I will still say that the first part is the best writing I have ever read about music of any description. Figures of Eight The seven (out of eight) greats who get fully-fledged vignettes are Lester Young (tenor sax), Thelonious Monk (piano), Bud Powell (piano), Ben Webster (tenor sax), Charles Mingus (bass, composer), Chet Baker (trumpet) and Art Pepper (alto sax). In between these sections are short passages describing a road trip between gigs, a long day’s journey into night, in which Duke Ellington (piano, composer) and his friend and band member of 45 years, Harry Carney (baritone sax) drive, converse and compose. I originally included only Duke in my list of eight, but that is a product of ignorance on my part. I am less familiar with Duke Ellington’s music than the others and did not appreciate how crucial Harry was to his achievements. So it should be nine. Also, while the essay is more wide-ranging (which is part of its problem), John Coltrane (tenor sax) and, to a lesser extent, Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Miles Davis (trumpet) and Keith Jarrett (piano) are singled out for more extensive critical analysis. So in a broader sense there could have been 13. There is no real explanation of why these and not others (such as Art Tatum, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon or Louis Armstrong). Dancing about Architecture This relative absence of analytical detail is the essence of the appeal of the first part of the book. There’s a well-known expression that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” (even though it’s difficult to know who to attribute it to): http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/11/... Geoff Dyer’s writing forces us to reconsider just how much writing can add value to the experience of music. Ultimately, in communicating with each other about music, most of us only have words to use, and words can be such a blunt and imprecise instrument. In trying to do justice to the music he loves, Dyer has created a unique way of writing that is impressionistic and lyrical and inspiring. Just as John Berger opened our eyes to ways of seeing, Dyer opens our minds to ways of writing and, therefore, of reading and listening to and appreciating music. Improvising about Jazz Faced with the desire to write a book about jazz, Dyer had to abandon the techniques of conventional criticism (including metaphors and similes that he had previously used to evoke what he thought was happening) and embrace improvisation. What he came up with is just as much “imaginative criticism as fiction”. His raw materials weren’t just recordings of the music, they included other biographies, criticism, journalism and personal interviews with musicians, family and friends. Most importantly, as he was playing the music, he was scrutinizing photos of the musicians. His genius is embodied in the way he utilised these photos. We tend to look at a photo as a static image. It captures something at a unique point of time, as if we don’t know what happened before or after that moment. However, equipped with all of this context, Dyer starts to see more in these photos, in particular a Milt Hinton photo published in the book. He speculates that the “felt duration” of the photo extends to what has just happened or is about to happen. He also argues that a good jazz photo is not silent, that it is there to be listened to as well as looked at, that the best jazz photos are saturated with the sound of their subjects. What he aspires to do and succeeds in doing is to bring these photos to life. It’s almost as if the process of exposure of the film caught not just one moment in time, but many, not just vision, but sound as well. He turns photos into fully-fledged audiovisual works. Of jazz photography, he says: “A photograph of a jazz musician in full flight can bring us as close to the act – or vicarious essence – of artistic creation as a photograph of an athlete can to the act – or vicarious essence – of running.” Just Add Some Animation Dyer enhances the experience of listening to the music as well. Most of the music was recorded a long time ago, and most of the artists are long dead. He animates the musicians as well as their music. The music matters more to us, because the musicians matter to us. Dyer creates a sense of music as constant movement. Of Mingus, he says: “His thought was the exact opposite of concentration: that implies stillness, silence, long periods of intense absorption; he preferred moving very quickly, covering a lot of ground.” He quotes Charlie Parker: ”Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom…if you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.” The Importance of Improvisation Much music is recorded soon after it is first composed, so that what is captured by the recording is a snapshot of the work early in its chronological development. Sometimes, studio recordings sound tentative compared with live versions that reflect a history of playing, improvising and improvement. Improvisation is one of the key distinguishing features of jazz. Much jazz is instrumental rather than vocal, so it isn’t hamstrung by lyrics and expectations of the vocal performance. In his essay, Dyer writes equally beautifully about the role of improvisation in jazz: ”From time to time in his solos a saxophonist may quote from other musicians, but every time he picks up his horn he cannot avoid commenting, automatically and implicitly, even if only through his own inadequacy, on the tradition that has been laid at his feet. At its worst this involves simple repetition...sometimes it involves exploring possibilities that were previously only touched upon. At its best it expands the possibilities of the form.” Standards such as Monk’s “’Round Midnight” become “springboards for improvisation” and innovation: ”Successive versions add up to what [George] Steiner calls a ‘syllabus of enacted criticism’…this labile relation between composition and improvisation is one of the sources of jazz’ ability to constantly replenish itself.” The Importance of Tradition Just as Dyer emphasises innovation, he values tradition: ”The positive side of this relation to the past is that moving deeper into the tradition can be as much a voyage of discovery as moving forward through it: instead of following the river to its mouth we trace it to its source. As you move further back, so you are able to recognise the special traits of the predecessors; it is like seeing a photo of your great-grandfather and recognizing the origins of your grandchildren’s features in his face.” Note how Dyer reverts to photography for his analogy. Similarly, in his last sentence, he reverts to his image of what comes before and after: ”Ideas of forward and backward, the sense of past and present, of old and new dreams, begin to dissolve into each other in the twilight of perpetual noon.” Straight, No Chaser While I’m not sure I get what “the twilight of perpetual noon” means, there is some fine writing in the essay. The material about Coltrane deserved to be fictionalized, he is so important to both the dangerous and the spiritual facets of jazz. However, what remains is an essay that tries to pack too much into the last 30 pages. It resorts to lists and name-checking, some of it is both exhaustive and exhausting. It leaves us feeling the after-effects of a downer after the extreme high of the first 180 pages, which are unsurpassed. It left me wondering whether Dyer hoped that his impressionistic writings would enhance his more seriously critical material by association. Instead, all that five stars required was “Straight, No Chaser”. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Apr 27, 2012
|
May 02, 2012
|
Apr 27, 2012
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
11
| 
| 1105520714
| 9781105520716
| 1105520714
| 3.98
| 105
| Mar 12, 2012
| Mar 12, 2012
|
it was amazing
|
Anticipatory Injunction His Honour Mr. Justice Graye: This book passes itself off as the incomplete published works of a soon to be tried and true Renai Anticipatory Injunction His Honour Mr. Justice Graye: This book passes itself off as the incomplete published works of a soon to be tried and true Renaissance Manny. As we speak, it is safe in police custody, winging its way to this Court, in transit, sic, across Gloria's Mundi, but hopefully not air or sea sic. When it eventually arrives on one of this Nation's four shores, I will eagerly prosecute the Plaintiff's case for it, patiently listen to Defence arguments, sit on them briefly, get down, get up again, toy with Counsel, determine which of them was meant for the Theatre, inspect their vanity case in detail, file the Defendant's guilt edge, assess various pleas in mitigation and pronounce a sentence. Over the years, I've found there are myriad possible sentences. Regrettably, not all of them are perfect or suitable for the occasion. So, at this early stage, I haven't determined which particular sentence to impose. After all, Justice must be seen to be done. Ultimately, however, it's not the choice of sentence that counts, but how you pronounce it. If I can't pronounce it without a colonial accent, I will feign a French one, perhaps one of my favourite grave accents. Alternatively, I could try an accent with a lilt (appropriate to a situation where the long sharp blade of Criminal Justice must be buried to the hilt). If that doesn't work, I'll resort to a cute accent. And if that fails to make sufficient judicial impact, I'm afraid Justice will have to be seen, but not heard. Whatever, Justice will be well and truly done. Silence, Justice is in season and this Court is in session. Substantive Hearing (One Week Later) His Honour Mr. Justice Graye: The Facts The case of Rayner vs. Melbourne Airport Storage Pty Ltd and Comptroller of Australian Customs comes to me in odd circumstances. Mr Rayner is a UK citizen who resides in Switzerland. In his idle time, he writes reviews of books for a social networking and community website called “GoodReads”. He has published a collection of his reviews in paper form, which is the subject of these proceedings. Mr Rayner imported 20,000 copies of his book into Australia through Melbourne Airport, legitimately I must add. When they arrived, they were intended to be stored briefly at facilities owned by Melbourne Airport Storage, before being shipped to the Tristero warehouse in North Melbourne for distribution within Australia as required by the vagaries of the market. Upon arrival, the First Defendant drew the shipment to the attention of the Second Respondent, Australian Customs, as it is obliged to do. The Second Respondent proceeded to levy Customs Duty on the books. In accordance with accepted principles, it calculated the Duty at the rate of two percent of the market value of the books (rather than their retail value of $20 per copy). The total Levy with respect to the shipment amounted to A$17.50, which is not a large sum and initially (without the benefit of Counsel's guidance) seemed to me to be a generous assessment. The First Defendant paid this amount and has sought to recover it from the Plaintiff. The initial problem is that, when converted into English pounds at the prevailing rate, the Levy amounts to 35,000 pounds. Mr Rayner is reluctant to pay this amount. The First Defendant is therefore exercising its rights to retain the books as Bailee and refuses to surrender them to Mr Rayner, until he reimburses it for the Levy. Mr Rayner is seeking recovery of the books, as well as challenging the amount of the Levy imposed by the Second Respondent. Counsel I am extremely grateful to the two Counsel who have represented the parties and so ably assisted me in this case. While little differentiates their efforts, it is my solemn duty to assess the relative merits of their appeal. The Defendants were amply represented by Ms. Megan Fox. She was draped in an attractive little red number, cut off above the knee in such a manner as to more than meet my expectations of any Counsel. The Plaintiff was represented by Ms. Oedipa Maas. She was dressed more soberly in a navy blue skirt and ruffled white blouse, the top two buttons of which were fetchingly left open, in order to reveal, amongst other items, an elegant necklace which spelled the word W.A.S.T.E. I do not purport to say I know the significance of this symbol. At least, I cannot do so in open court. All I can say is that, on the whole, the arguments of the Plaintiff rewarded my close scrutiny marginally more than those of the Defendants. The Arguments As it turned out, the case largely turned on the assessment of the literary and financial value of Mr Rayner’s book. I will summarise the arguments now, as paradoxical as they might seem. Ms. Fox argued that the book had little literary merit, but that its financial value was not to be determined on this basis. She submitted that its value derived from its entertainment value. It was common ground that the book was highly entertaining. Ms. Fox submitted that the public appreciates entertainment value, no matter what the objective cost of production might be, let alone the literary or cultural value. She gave the example of televised nude female mud wrestling. This activity, of which I was not previously aware, apparently has an enormous following on cable television. It does not require a script, it needs little in terms of facilities, all it requires is ample-bosomed women sans clothing or other adornments and accessories. Ms. Fox struck me as someone who might add value to the sport. Nevertheless, the televising of the activity generates substantial revenue for the television network and the production company. Ms. Fox submitted that the value of Mr Rayner’s book should be determined on this basis. She hinted that the Second Defendant might wish to reconsider the amount of the Levy upon an audit of the sales of the book. Unfortunately, she tendered no evidence of Mr Rayner’s sales, nor was Ms Maas tempted by Ms Fox’s taunts to reveal any figures, other than her own admittedly attractive one. Ms Maas, on the other hand, suggested that the book's entertainment value derives only from its literary and humourous value, and that accordingly no financial value should be attributed to the book. Having read the book in detail, in fact cover to cover, I find that Ms Maas is correct in her assessment of the merits of the book. It is a good read, it is insightful, it is hilarious, it is something for which I would be happy to supply a blurb for the second edition. However, I also find myself agreeing with Ms Maas’ submissions with respect to its financial value. In fact, I find that, rather than having a retail value of $20 per copy, its market value is the princely sum of Nil. I do not mean this to detract from an assessment of the physical resources that went into the production of this analogue work. The argument of Ms Maas that most impressed me was her submission with respect to the co-existence of the GoodReads website. It costs a member nothing to join this website and to enjoy its privileges, if they can be called that. Thousands of book reviews, possibly millions, are hosted there, available for consumption, if not necessarily digestion, by a member, all of it for free. I infer that the proprietors of GoodReads derive some modest income from the activities on the website. However, once again, in the absence of admissible evidence, I cannot place a dollar value on the amount. Therefore, despite the visual appeal of Ms Fox’ arguments and despite the paradoxical fact that this argument as to value comes from Mr Rayner’s own Counsel, I must assume that one of Mr Rayner’s book reviews has no financial value, and therefore I must make the same finding with respect to the collection as a whole. The value of the whole cannot be any greater than the sum of its parts. This book cannot pull itself up by its own bootstraps. The Findings Having observed both Counsel extremely closely, I am compelled to find that the market value of Mr Rayner’s efforts is precisely Nil. Having found this, I must make the consequential finding that the appropriate Customs Duty on this shipment should be reduced to an equivalent amount, namely Nil. The result of this finding is that the First Defendant is entitled to a refund of the Levy paid by it, purportedly on behalf of the Plaintiff. If the result is that it has made no payment on behalf of Mr Rayner, then it can have no right of bailment against his goods. Mr Rayner is therefore entitled to the return of his shipment, without any payment on his behalf. I have no doubt that this will leave the Plaintiff to his apparent folly of trying to sell his books and recover his financial investment. Good luck to Mr Rayner. I should like to assist him, within the framework of appropriate remunerative arrangements. Orders I make the following orders: 1. that the Second Defendant amend its Levy to Nil and refund the sum of $17.50 to the First Defendant; 2. that the First Defendant deliver the Plaintiff’s books to him upon demand, at the offices of Tristero or at such other place in Melbourne as he shall nominate; 3. that, in order to make a contribution to the significant costs of the administration of Justice in this nation, the Plaintiff forfeit 4,000 copies of his book to this Court, to be made available for distribution to various Amicus Curiae and other Friends of the Court. I invite Counsel to join me in my Chambers for a drink or two and a little nibble. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Mar 19, 2012
|
Mar 28, 2012
|
Mar 12, 2012
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
8
| 
| 1600610706
| 9781600610707
| 1600610706
| 3.78
| 2,836
| Jun 30, 2008
| Jul 14, 2008
|
liked it
|
Child's Haiku in Wales Why am I unwed When my Dad's a zombie and His best mate's undead? Child's Haiku in Wales Why am I unwed When my Dad's a zombie and His best mate's undead? ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Feb 25, 2012
|
Feb 25, 2012
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
14
| 
| 0575077735
| 9780575077737
| 0575077735
| 3.78
| 1,179
| Jan 01, 2005
| Jul 01, 2006
|
liked it
|
The Frightenomicon This was only my second Rankin. I don't know whether I'll try any more. I'm too frightened. It cast me into some weird existentialist The Frightenomicon This was only my second Rankin. I don't know whether I'll try any more. I'm too frightened. It cast me into some weird existentialist quandary, possibly not even of its own creation. I thought I would love the sense of humour and the music references (and I did enjoy a few guffaws), but it was a bit like being in a bar with a guy who has a very similar sense of humour, except he thinks his sense of humour is way better than yours and he won't shut up or turn-take. For some reason, this novel reminded me of me. That guy in the bar might be me. And it made me sad. (How sad? Real sad.) Maybe I'm just feeling low, down, reflective and/or self-deprecatory. In other words, hung-over. The Ad Infinitomicon I thought this would be the ideal way to come down off a David Foster Wallace high. Instead, even moreso than "Infinite Jest" should have, it made me question myself and all (both?) of my pretensions (is it because Rankin shares some of my pretensions or because he doesn't have any at all?). Maybe I am not as [choose one: intelligent/ stimulating/ witty/ charming/ polite/ gentlemanly/ funny/ incisive/ succinct (or if not succinct, MJ, relevant)] as I think I am or pretend to be online or hidden behind my [choose one: veil/mask/3D goggles/x-ray specs]...and I realised it first by noticing the same qualities or lack thereof in someone else. But then maybe this is Dog's way of telling me to be less judgmental? Judge not lest ye shall be judged. Stop assuming the role of critic. Embrace the lowbrow. Embrace trash. Unselfconsciously. Without irony. Meta-free. This novel would demand a lot of my mettle. And my Stephen Hawkwind collection. The Reflectionomicon (You'll Be My Mirror, Reflect What I Am) My meta-free resolve didn't last long. I kept noticing what Rankin the author was doing, the way he was trying to write the story, at the expense of the story itself. Ironically, I stopped thinking about his story, and started thinking about mine. How to describe the feeling? It's like looking into a mirror and seeing the fat version of yourself, or if you're fat or muscular, the thin, tedious, gangly version. (The first name "Ian" is supposed to be Scottish for thin and tedious. I was once thin, but no more.) Worse still, it might just be a 20/20 vision of the fat version that you really are. (Well, surely that can't be right, not since I purchased my ab crunch machine with unique swivel action in four easy payments. Which reminds me, I must assemble it.) The Confectionomicon The book itself? It just kept coming at me, it bored down at me from the future in my quest to finish it. I was trying to focus on the book, but selfishly I kept thinking of me. Had Rankin created some kind of black hole that was emitting negative energy or black body radiation (aka "Hawkwind Radiation") in my direction? It was like having somebody shove a packetful of jelly beans down your throat and you stopped chewing half a packet ago. Then I realised I was the one holding the packet. Absurd, really. The following Postscripts were added a few days after my original review, once I'd finished the book and my prescription metacine had kicked back in. The Codicilinomicon I bought this book for $2. Another reason I bought it was that I thought it might be part of some continuum with Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon" (which I haven't read yet). I was fascinated by what the suffix "-nomicon" might mean. I still don't know, apart from the fact that the title of Stephenson's novel refers to the "Necronomicon", a fictitious work referred to by H.P. Lovecraft in some of his works. Anyway, I think that while I was in this weird time-space continuum, a little bit of Aleister Crowley or some occult personage penetrated my soft thinking machine and made me say some stupid, dumb, over-sensitive things, for which I apologise. The Milliganomicon I realised when I was looking at the back of the book for other people's inspiration that the "Morning Star" had called Robert Rankin "the English Spike Milligan". Up to this point, having learned that these stories had been converted into radio plays, I had been thinking that they sounded like "Goons-Lite", so it was interesting to see that I was not the only person who had formed some sort of view like this. For a moment, I questioned whether Spike wasn't English in the broad sense (he was born in India and educated in India and Burma, but spent most of his life in England, which in my opinion justifies the English moniker for him). Then I wondered whether putting the adjective "English" in the description was supposed to imply inferiority or an element of dilution (e.g., a "poor copy" of some characteristic of a racial grouping better or greater than the English, such as the Scottish, Swedes, Swiss, Americans or, better still, Australians). To illustrate this theory, imagine what you would think if someone described One Direction as an English Backstreet Boys or Shakira as a Colombian Beyonce. (Or for the oldies, Robin Trower as the English Jimi Hendrix.) Anyway, whatever, I still feel that Robert Rankin is a Lite version of something heavier that he is not quite. I don't want to demean him or his efforts. He's not bad, it's just that he's not great. But that's OK. Good on him for at least trying. Me, I'm on the road to recovery, and I'll tell anyone who comes to my hospital bed that I'm feeling great. Besides I have to get better in time for the "Gravity's Rainbow" group read. That'll really blow my mind. The Lexiconinomicon Here are a few laddish chuckle berries that appealed successfully to my sense of humour: "Pacey-pacey, Rizla...the worm of time turns not for the cuckoo of circumstance." "I straightened my shoulders, cocked my fedora to that angle that is known as rakish, straightened the hem of my trenchcoat and entered the bar in the first person..." "If the shirt fits, lift it." "I shook my fedora. And wondered what the world might look like if you were standing upon your head and viewing it between the straps of a tart's handbag." "The gilt was coming off the gilded youth." "I am Hugo Rune. I think therefore I'm right" "Who is to say who is real...you and I might just be characters in a book. "That is absurd," I said. "And if it were true, who is reading about us now?" "Perhaps a character in someone else's book. Who is in turn just a character in someone else's book. And so on, ad infinitum." Oh no, did Rankin mean this as some infinite jest? A meta-joke? "Pacey-pacey, Rizla...for surely as the quixotic seagull of haste besmirches the tart's handbag of time, so too does the spaniel of hesitance foul the footpath of destiny." "Pacey-pacey, Rizla...the knotted condom of self-congratulation may well be..." OK, that's enough. Oh, look, there was another one that I'll have to quote from memory, because I've hidden the book back on my shelves. It went something like: "The bright sunlight came in through the distant windows." I'm sure he wrote it for a laugh, but I still wonder how big a room in your home would have to be if it had distant windows. But I digress. The Haikunomicon Like a pint of large? Call in at the Flying Swan, Talk a little toot. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Apr 19, 2012
|
Apr 28, 2012
|
Jan 12, 2012
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
3
| 
| 0722160755
| 9780722160756
| 0722160755
| 4.36
| 90
| Jan 01, 1973
| Jan 01, 1974
|
really liked it
|
The Sydney Harbour Bridge Disaster DJ Ian: This is the BBC Foreign Service, tiddey pong, mate...How did that sound? Seagoon: Hold the script up to the The Sydney Harbour Bridge Disaster DJ Ian: This is the BBC Foreign Service, tiddey pong, mate...How did that sound? Seagoon: Hold the script up to the light – no, not a brain in sight. DJ Ian: This is DJ Ian broadcasting from Sydney on a beautiful morning at the start of the Sydney Festival. Today my guests are the members of the world renowned, but poorly renumerated, Goon Show. A healthy Sydney welcome to the Goons. Seagoon: Thank you. I think you mean "remunerated". DJ Ian: It is 2012, and dead on time, the Sydney Harbour is a hive of inactivity, as English immigrants bring their shattered bank accounts to the New World. Seagoon: Which reminds me, we were told we would be paid a pretty penny for this interview. DJ Ian: I’m sorry, I haven’t got a pretty penny. Bluebottle: Well, two ugly ones will do then. DJ Ian: Here, but can I have a receipt for them? FX: SCRIBBLE, SCRIBBLE. DJ Ian: What’s this? Maureen Shag? That’s not your name? Seagoon: No, that’s the name of my signature. DJ Ian: When did you arrive? Seagoon: At dawn, under cover of daylight ,we took up our positions with our teeth blacked out. DJ Ian: What’s it like for the Goons to be sitting on the foreshores of Sydney Harbour, sipping champagne and orange juice? Bluebottle: What foreshores? I can only see two. DJ Ian: What do you think of the Park Hyatt Sydney? You’re the first guests to stay here since the renovations were finished. Do you like the Harbour views? Seagoon: When we arrived the curtains were drawn. Bluebottle: No, they were real. I swear. Moriarty: I don’t like the look of it. Bluebottle: We can’t change it now, it’s the only one we’ve got. Eccles: I had one two, but the wheels came off. Seagoon: Well, we can’t stand around here doing nothing, people will think we’re workmen. DJ Ian: You’re not actually appearing in the Festival. What is the real purpose of your visit? Bloodnok: They’re going to build a Sydney Harbour Bridge. DJ Ian: We’ve already got one, right over our heads. Bloodnok: They’re going to build another one. DJ Ian: Where? Bloodnok: Right next to this one. Parallel in fact. DJ Ian: So how are the Goons involved? Bloodnok: We’re going to draw the prizewinner in the design competition. FX: TERRIBLE MASS CROWDS BRAWL. SMASHING GLASS, SCREAMS, DISTANT BAGPIPE AT SPEED Seagoon: Hear that? Celtic versus Rangers. Ken: In our midst if not sooner, rode two men wearing nude clothes. On a unicycle they were. Their bodies driven by legs and their legs driven by feet. DJ Ian: Those cyclists look like protesters of some sort. Bloodnok: Go away, or I’ll take my wig off…We’ll have to bring forward the announcement of the winner before they recognise us. Seagoon: They look like the enemy. Jympton: Ah, intelligence has established that the people attacking us are in fact the enemy. Bloodnok: So that’s their fiendish game, is it? Seagoon: Gentlemen, do the enemy realise that you have this information? Bloodnok: Oh no, we got ‘em fooled, they think that we’re the enemy. Seagoon: What a perfect disguise...Jympton, you were supposed to protect us. Why have you deserted your post? Jympton: It’s got woodworm sir. DJ Ian: So what are you going to do about the competition? Bloodnok: We’ll draw lots for it now. Eccles, write your name on fifty pieces of paper, and put them in a hat. Seagoon: Ken, can you choose a piece of paper. FX: THERE IS MORE PANDEMONIUM WHEN BLUEBOTTLE TRIES TO GRAB THE HAT Ken: Go away lad will you, I’m acting. Bluebottle: Oh, could I act wid you den? Ken: Yes, but keep quiet. Bluebottle: Can I be your stand in? Ken: Alright. Stand in that hole over there. FX: A RIPPING SOUND AS KEN OPENS THE WINNING ENTRY Ken: And the winner is...Eccles. FX: MASSIVE APPLAUSE FROM THE GOONS, ACCOMPANIED BY SILENCE FROM THE AUDIENCE DJ Ian: Eccles, have you ever built a bridge before? Eccles: Yep, I built the Ummmbababab Bridge in 1967…and I just finished the Forth Bridge. DJ Ian: When did you build that? Eccles: After the first three fell down. DJ Ian: Quickly, before the Press arrives, could I have an exclusive look at your drawings? Eccles: Let me just get them from my room. FX: ECCLES OPENS THE DOOR AT THE GRAND ENTRANCE TO THE HOTEL Seagoon: Typical colonial service, the door was opened by a heavily strained wreck wearing the string remains of an ankle length vest, a secondhand trilby and both feet in one sock. Eccles: Excuse me, can you tell me where I can get the plans for the Bridge? Doorman: I’d try my cousin, Abdul. He works at the Scented Jasmine Restaurant just around the corner in the Rocks. FX: SOUND OF ECCLES RUSHING TO THE SCENTED JASMINE Eccles: My information led me to a coffee-house, just off the main caravan route, where outside the sun purged the streets of shade. Inside, all was cool and jasmined…My attendant bowed low, touched his forehead in time-honoured Islamic salute and spoke. Abdul: The boiled fish and rice puddin’s orf mate. Eccles: I see…ahem, your accent is familiar, oh Arab Prince. Abdul: Yernnnn, I went to Kolidge in Kambridge, oh English mate. Eccles: What were you studying? Abdul: Cockney…I got it orf pat. Eccles: Did you? Abdul: He didn’t mind. Eccles: Your cousin told me you could help me get the plans for the Sydney Harbour Bridge? Abdul: I don’t have the plans, but I can sell you a map that will reveal their location. Eccles: It’s a deal. FX: THE RESTAURANT PHONE RINGS. ABDUL BRINGS IT OVER TO ECCLES Eccles: Hello? Seagoon: Hello? Eccles: Snap. Seagoon: Splendid, ring again tomorrow and we’ll have another game. FX: ECCLES RUSHES BACK TO THE OUTSIDE BROADCAST STUDIO Bluebottle: What is it? Eccles: I don’t know, but I got it cheap. Bluebottle: It’s a map. Where are the plans? Bloodnok: Ohh ha ha, go to this spot on the map, dig upwards for ten feet and you’ll find them buried up a tree. FX: SOUND OF ECCLES ASCENDING A PALM TREE AND RETRIEVING THE PLANS ACCOMPANIED BY A BOSSA NOVA NUMBER Willium: Hardly had that music ceased, when Eccles presented the new drawings to a meeting of high-ranking idiots. FX: THE SOUND OF A TILL RINGING Seagoon: What a lovely tune. Bluebottle: Like it? It’s the National Anthem of America. All the shops are playing it. Seagoon: Just think of how much money we'll make. FX: UNROLLING DRAWINGS Eccles: Nothing here. Seagoon: The drawings are on the other side. Eccles: Oh, that’s a clever idea, who’d have guessed? Willium: Sir, the gentlemen of the Press is ‘ere. I tried to hold ‘em back, but they burst through by puttin’ money in me hand. Newspaper Journalist: Eccles, what is your plan for the new Bridge? Eccles: My idea of a Bridge over Sydney Harbour would be made of nice string wood, and string, wid all nice glue, and it would have all dem nails in it… Macgoonigal: May I introduce myself, Sir, I am William J. Macgoonigal, poet, tragedian and twit, allow me to pen a verse of appreciation: Oh beautiful new bridge over the Emerald Harbour Which has caused the Maharajah of Pongistan to leave his home without armour, Incognito in his dress And he will pass this way in his journey to Inverness. Seagoon: What Grovelling Excellence… Bluebottle: Listen, someone’s screaming in agony – fortunately, I speak it fluently. Moriarty: You devils, this is a fraud, you’ll hear from my lawyer about this… FX: SOUND OF MORIARTY’S LAWYER TYPING A LETTER OF DEMAND Moriarty’s Lawyer: Unless you give me the plans for the new Bridge, I will be forced to charge my client a higher rate. Moriarty: If that’s not enough, I challenge you to a seething duel. Name your weapon! Eccles: I name my weapon Basil. Bluebottle: No! I don't like this game. We must save Eccles from a death worse than fate. Ned Seagoon, what are you doing, hiding down there? Seagoon: I apologise for my altitude. Bluebottle: It is low, Ned, could we sell you an extra three feet? Seagoon: Just what I need. FX: MORIARTY AND ECCLES THREATENING EACH OTHER, PERCHED PERILOUSLY ON THE BOARDWALK AROUND THE HARBOUR Eccles: See how you feel about this, Moriarty (fires his gun). Bluebottle: Got him, right in the credentials. Eccles: How about dat? FX: SPLASH Eccles: He’s fallen in the water. FX: THE POLICE RETRIEVE MORIARTY FROM THE HARBOUR, STILL BREATHING DEFIANTLY DJ Ian: What a morning! Would you like to go back to your room now? Bluebottle: It sounds naughty. Seagoon: It is. Moriarty: And there’s more where that came from... Bloodnok: Wait for me! Eccles: Oh dear, time for beddy byes. Where’s my dolly. Enchantress: Here I am darling. Andrew Timothy: Not a very good end, but tidy, don’t you think? ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jan 10, 2012
|
Jan 12, 2012
|
Jan 10, 2012
|
Paperback
| |||||||||||||
16
| 
| 9780088619451
| 4.03
| 98,694
| Jun 02, 1979
| Oct 20, 1982
|
it was amazing
|
HOMAGE [PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS]: Previously Unpublished Manuscript #1 Who am I? Who is I? Who is the I? Unlike my friends and colleagues, Pro HOMAGE [PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS]: Previously Unpublished Manuscript #1 Who am I? Who is I? Who is the I? Unlike my friends and colleagues, Professors Calvino and Galligani, I intend to tell you my name and perhaps to reveal something of my modus operandi (soon, too). This one sentence might already have supplied enough information or implication to let you work out or infer who I am? Have you guessed yet? No? Well, my name is Professor Uzzi-Tuzii, though my friends call me Julian. Not only is that my name, but that is who I am. Yes. It's true. I am Professor Uzzi-Tuzii. See how much I have revealed about myself, see how much I have revealed about who I am, about who “I” is! I is me. I am me. I could not be anyone else, could I? I am not and never was Italo Calvino. I am not the Reader, although it's also true I am a reader. Nor then could I be you (as if that is not self-evident to any strict grammarian), so put an end to that speculation. It will not help you to realise anything. It will only frustrate you, which in a way was an objective of the novel "If on a winter's night a traveller". I wish you could see the real me, sitting comfortably here on my swivel chair, on my polished timber floor, looking at my computer screen, surrounded by the music of time. You might learn a little more about me, just by being able to see me. To know the real me, to see the real me, might make me a sight for sore eyes. I am no eyesore (though I appeal less with age). However, I am the remedy you need for your eyesight, I promise, if you will let me, that I will heal your vision, so that you might see. There are none so blind as those who will not see. So I will try to make you see. If you will. What am I going on about? Perhaps, you do not believe me? Perhaps, now, as I promised, I need to explain my modus operandi? Will the detail of my modus operandi overcome your skepticism? Will you only believe me, believe that I am I and I am me, if you know what I do? Do you honestly believe that I cannot be what I am unless I reveal what I do? Or what I did? Oh, what unbelievers we have become. Are you ready? Believe me, I would tell you, I will tell you everything, if you would only believe me. I only say this, I only make this diversion, because some do not believe me. Some believe I am unreliable. Some believe, without seeing me or knowing me, that I am an unreliable narrator. How unfair! How hurtful! Do I deny you? No, of course, I don’t. How could I deny you? I don’t even know you. You must remain innocent, unless and until proven guilty. So I must believe in you, if I am to find you guilty. In order to tell you what I did, there is one other thing I must tell you about who I am, or more precisely who I am not. I am not William Weaver, I am not the translator of "If on a winter's night a traveller", the book you might be reading or would be reading if you were not reading my addendum. That probably goes without saying, though I think it needs to be said. I am not Ermes Marana, the translator of the fictitious book "If on a winter's night a traveller", the book within the novel "If on a winter's night a traveller". Would it help if I explained, there is no such translator? You might already think that he was a fiction, that he wasn’t real, that he was a figment of Italo Calvino’s imagination. I have no doubt that, when my friend Italo learned of his apparent existence, he passed him off as a figment of his imagination. But he is, in reality (if that makes sense), a figment of my imagination, well, a figment of the imagination of those around me. At this stage of my story, the book must be making less sense now than when I started? I apologise, yet I have to argue in my defence that this often happens during the telling of a story. You, the reader, perhaps the Reader, have to let me get on with my story. I have to tell it at my pace, which at my age lacks apparent haste, but you have to cooperate. You have to do your bit. So, can we resume? Perhaps, before we do so, now might be a good time to refill your glass of red or to make a cup of tea... [Editor’s Note: The manuscript breaks off here. It is not known whether this is a piece of fiction.] Previously Unpublished Manuscript #2 So how do I start to tell you my story? Italo Calvino never had any such doubt. You should have seen him laugh when I told him about the line from Doctor Who, “First things first, but not necessarily in that order.” He enjoyed starting a story at the beginning so much, he couldn’t help doing it over and over. So I will start at the beginning, in his footsteps. When my story, indeed your story, began, I was in my thirties and at the height of my career as an academic, author and public intellectual as they used to say in those days. Before I met your mother, I thought I could have any woman I wanted, and I almost did. To my great regret, I persisted in this belief after I married Maria, though it was my great good fortune that I never acted on any of my impulses. This story partly concerns just how close I did come. Being an author of fiction, I looked on writing as an act of love, an act of seduction. I caressed meaning out of words as I would caress a woman. I stopped when I met your mother, well, I mean, for a while she became the exclusive focus of my thoughts and caresses. Then, six months after our wedding, at the end of the academic year, I agreed to teach a Creative Writing Course for Masters of Fine Arts students during the three month break. For the first time in many years, there were no male students, there were only ten female students, all of them young, intelligent, attractive, and available, or so I thought at the time. They absorbed information and guidance quickly. Each of them gazed into my eyes, as if they wanted to know the full contents of the dark pool that lay behind. At night, while I caressed your mother skillfully, if not lovingly enough, I could only think of these other temptations. They progressed so well in their studies that we soon came to their practical exercise. Each of them was to write the first chapter of a novel that they would finish after the course. I selfishly came up with the idea of the subject matter, and every one of them agreed compliantly. They would write in the first person, and that first person would be me. They would appear in the chapter under their first name. And each chapter would feature an object that would have significance in the story. Madame Marne: suitcase Brigd: trunk Zwida: pencil box Irina: instrument case Bernadette: plastic bag Marjorie: phone Lorna: mirror Makiko: white maple cane Amaranta: fireplace Franziska: sheet of paper I was hoping that this artifice would disclose some secret feelings towards me, within the limits of what they could say, knowing that their writings would be scrutinized by their (jealous) classmates. Instead of me seducing them with my words, I wanted them to seduce me with theirs. I could hardly contain my excitement. Your mother started to suspect something was happening and cooled to my touch. Then one day, the deadline arrived and all of the students handed in their work. I had insisted that the project be surrounded by secrecy, so much so that I even banned carbon copies (this was before personal computers and laptops). I didn’t even think to photocopy each manuscript at the office. I took them straight home that night and began to read them, one after the other. I know now that, soon after I went to bed, Maria woke and entered my study to read whatever it was that had so fascinated me late into the night. She only had to read a few pages to know what I was up to. She packed her bags and every single one of those manuscripts and disappeared. When I awoke with the sun, I thought your mother had gone to work early and someone else had stolen the manuscripts. I couldn’t think of a motive, unless one of my colleagues had guessed my plan and was determined to frustrate it. Probably that damned Italo Calvino. It was only late in the day, when Maria phoned me to say that she was staying at Italo’s for a few weeks, that I guessed what must have happened. I quickly forgot all of my carnal designs. I was more concerned about what Calvino was doing to my wife, your mother. My colleague, my friend was sleeping with my wife. What better way to best your rival than to sleep with his wife? For all my education though, it was an agitated guess. Jealousy made me err. Italo had no intention of sleeping with your mother. I found out afterwards that he counseled Maria to return to me as soon as possible, especially only days later, when she learned that she was pregnant...to me, of course, with you. It must hurt you to know that, at the time, your mother’s first thought was to have an abortion. Why perpetuate this bond with the fiend that I had become? Italo managed to convince her what a mistake this would have been, and you know what joy you brought to your mother’s life. Still, Italo did do something that I held against him for a long time. He read the manuscripts from beginning to end, even before I had finished them. When, much later, I found out, I felt cheated, as if I had bought a first edition, only to have a friend whisk it away and read it before I had opened it. Sometimes, only you should be the one to smell the scent of those first-opened pages. Not only did Calvino deprive me of this pleasure, he decided to put these manuscripts to much better use than I had intended. He had been planning a novel, the progress of which had stalled at outline stage. These manuscripts provided exactly what he needed. He needed the first chapters of ten stories, told in different voices. What could be better than ten stories told by ten separate students? All he needed to do was insert metafictional interstices. He was planning to write just the interstitials. Of course, he contacted each of my students privately and obtained their signed consent, on the basis that, when they finished their work, he would help promote their literary careers. He did what he had bargained to do. Of the ten, six now have successful writing careers, which I attribute more to Italo’s assistance than my guidance. Despite my pleas, Maria stayed with Calvino for more than four months, by which time it had become quite apparent to everyone that she was pregnant. Her return coincided with the launch of Calvino’s book. Maria returned home to me, resplendent in pregnancy, the morning of his launch party. We attended as an ostensibly happy couple, although I did appear quite sheepish and it took me many years before I actually read his book. My failure to do so is also the reason it took me so long to put all of the pieces of this puzzle together. My students had promised Calvino confidentiality, if only to keep his involvement secret from me. Most importantly, Calvino had wanted your mother and I to repair our relationship, free of any external publicity or pressure. I don’t know what would have happened if I had read his book straight away. I probably would have thought of him as a consummate manipulator. You see, his book wasn’t just a quintessential exercise in metafiction. He was trying to teach me a lesson. He was trying to teach me to love your mother more, not to love her obsessively, but to love her as she deserved. He saw love as the driving force of life itself. Love is the light that keeps darkness at bay. Stars shine and create light, but there is much interstitial darkness. It is the role of love to fill the gaps. When your mother died many years later, I learned that Italo had given her a signed first edition copy of the book for each of you and her. It was their plan to give the two of you your copy when you turned 30, when you had already learned something of life yourselves. When she died, I committed to perform this task on her behalf. You know how upset I was when your mother died. I always felt that I had never loved her enough. You cannot overcompensate in love. An excessive act of love cannot make up for an omission to love. All you can do is love as someone deserves to be loved. I felt so guilty about that time before you were born, that I planned never to write fiction again, at least until the two of you had reached the age of eighteen. I had realised that fiction is too selfish to be compatible with parenthood, after all you two were your parents’ greatest act of creation. By the time you reached eighteen, I had got out of the habit. Only now, in my old age, is the desire to write fiction returning to me. The inscription in your first editions varies in only one word, your first name. Indeed, Italo had two special editions of the book printed with your names reversed in the body of the text where they both appear. In one edition, it reads “Ludmilla”, in the other it reads “Lotaria”. So my beautiful twins, our beautiful twins, I present to you the gift of Italo Calvino and your parents. Italo inscribed your first edition with these words: “The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death. Your life is a story that must be told and only you can do the telling.” Your father learned this lesson the hard way, but I am eternally grateful to your mother and my good friend, Italo Calvino, that you will have the opportunity to tell your stories. Literary Executor’s Note: The above manuscripts were found with Professor Julian Uzzi-Tuzii’s last Will and Testament and two signed first editions of Italo Calvino’s book, "If on a winter's night a traveller". Professor Uzzi-Tuzii died on 8 May, 2012. He was survived by his twin daughters, Ludmilla and Lotaria Uzzi-Tuzii, who turned 30 five days later on Mother’s Day, 13 May, 2012. The Executor of Professor Uzzi-Tuzii’s Estate made the gift to Ludmilla and Lotaria on behalf of both parents. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 03, 2012
|
May 08, 2012
|
Dec 22, 2011
|
Paperback
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
43
|
| 3.38
|
liked it
|
Nov 22, 2012
|
Nov 14, 2012
|
|||||
40
|
| 4.50
|
really liked it
|
Oct 21, 2012
|
Oct 21, 2012
|
|||||
37
|
| 4.18
|
liked it
|
Oct 09, 2012
|
Oct 09, 2012
|
|||||
46
|
| 3.53
|
did not like it
|
Dec 07, 2012
|
Sep 16, 2012
|
|||||
35
|
| 3.74
|
it was amazing
|
Sep 08, 2012
|
Sep 07, 2012
|
|||||
32
|
| 4.16
|
really liked it
|
Aug 11, 2012
|
Jul 02, 2012
|
|||||
27
|
| 3.71
|
really liked it
|
Jul 04, 2012
|
Jul 02, 2012
|
|||||
33
|
| 3.73
|
it was amazing
|
Aug 17, 2012
|
Jun 30, 2012
|
|||||
22
|
| 2.67
|
it was ok
|
Jun 02, 2012
|
Jun 01, 2012
|
|||||
21
|
| 2.92
|
liked it
|
May 31, 2012
|
May 31, 2012
|
|||||
18
|
| 3.43
|
did not like it
|
May 21, 2012
|
May 21, 2012
|
|||||
25
|
| 3.71
|
it was amazing
|
Jun 09, 2012
|
May 18, 2012
|
|||||
20
|
| 3.40
|
it was ok
|
May 18, 2012
|
May 18, 2012
|
|||||
19
|
| 3.66
|
it was ok
|
May 10, 2012
|
May 10, 2012
|
|||||
15
|
| 4.25
|
really liked it
|
May 02, 2012
|
Apr 27, 2012
|
|||||
11
|
| 3.98
|
it was amazing
|
Mar 28, 2012
|
Mar 12, 2012
|
|||||
8
|
| 3.78
|
liked it
|
Feb 25, 2012
|
Feb 25, 2012
|
|||||
14
|
| 3.78
|
liked it
|
Apr 28, 2012
|
Jan 12, 2012
|
|||||
3
|
| 4.36
|
really liked it
|
Jan 12, 2012
|
Jan 10, 2012
|
|||||
16
|
| 4.03
|
it was amazing
|
May 08, 2012
|
Dec 22, 2011
|
Loading...
