Death Kit:: Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag, I really want to like you.  

I do!  I really do.  You get referenced in "La Vie Boheme," you had a torrid love affair with Annie Leibowitz, your body of work spans just about every medium of the English language, you used your words for anti-war activism, and, what's more, you've got that funky gray streak in your hair that someday I hope to rock just like you.  

But Susan, what the fuck is this?  

(spoiler alert, FYI)

The plot, as you structured it--a man who doesn't feel like he inhabits his life, who kills a man and is not held responsible for it, who falls in love with a blind girl, whose relationship with her becomes obsessive, then reclusive, then self-destructive--enables all these keenly felt, finely written mediations on sight/blindness, living/dying, isolation & loneliness.

But then, as we near the end, everything gets kind of.... bendy... and that's when it hits me.  "Oh--man, this is a dream isn't it?  Yup.  Totally a dream.  Damn it, Susan!" and then you have to keep on following him through 10 pages of coffins, knowing you've been had.  

I don't know what I was expecting from you, Susan Sontag, but I am pretty sure I was expecting more than "PSYCH!!! HE WAS DEAD THE WHOLE TIME!  That whole book was just a suicide hallucination, suckerrrrr!"  

And, maybe in 1967 this theme wasn't totally over-exploited and overdone, the modern deus ex machina that it is today--but even so, doesn't making the whole thing fake sort of undermine the really interesting relationships and tensions you worked so hard to construct?  And what about the bits where he was dreaming?  He was hallucinating bizarre dreams?  Isn't that a little redundant?  The story up until the end was subtle.  I felt cheated.  I thought there would be a better explanation.  

A story about the problematic unreality of reality had my attention.  A story about the unreality of unreality seems, well, obvious.

I really wanted to love it.  And I didn't love it.  Actually it made me kind of angry.

But I will keep reading you, Susan.  

I still like you, and I guess I liked Death Kit, because you do beautiful things with words.  

There is possibly nothing more pretentious than blogging about Ulysses.

So I'll start off with his friend Ezra Pound, to set the mood before moving in.  I'm a little obsessed with this one right now, it's very easy to sing-song it in your head like some sort of nursery rhyme mantra.

Salutation
O generation of the thoroughly smug 
and the thoroughly uncomfortable, 
I have seen fishermen picknicking in the sun, 
I have seen them with untidy families, 
I have seen their smiles full of teeth 
and heard ungainly laughter. 
And I am happier than you are, 
And they were happier than I am; 
And the fish swim in the lake 
and do not even own clothing.




---


So, Ulysses has been haunting my bedside table for, oh, I don't know--2 years now?  I started my Joyce infatuation because we read Dubliners in one of my English courses, and studying his style embodied everything that I loved about literary criticism in my fledgling, freshman, newly-declared English Major Brain.  I immediately went out and annihilated Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, pleased that his method of fusing puns with politics could be applied even to his own life.  


Then, I bought Ulysses.
And.  As you might have gathered, it has been a bit of a slog.
Not that it isn't great, because obviously it's Joyce, so it's brilliant, but I definitely would have preferred to read this in an academic setting, since I ended up putting double the effort into reading and research.  My knowledge of Parnellian politics and Irish history needed a boost, and I found myself turning to JSTOR to give me increasing help, just so that I could know why these words were worth reading.  His style of prefabricated language, and overwhelming dedication to idiom are, of course, ground-breaking, but make for weary reading.  


It's all worth it, though, for the section written in play format--the brothel scene which is played alongside Stephen's and Bloom's respective nightmare hallucinations--various family and other characters who turn up to admonish their brains.  [It is clear that Joyce was tripping balls at the time.]




I finished earlier this week, and have been relieved and confused.
This is my life Not Reading Ulysses.  I'd imagined this day would come, and had naively assumed that reaching this point would lead to some kind of finality.  It clearly needs more study and breakdown (which is definitely not what this post is all about) but it seems to me that finishing these literary epics are a kind of geeky milestone--and at the same time, incredibly humbling, because finishing the book is only the beginning of the work your brain has settled in for:  reading is the Finnegans Wake* of...y'know... reading.


Ugh.  Also hooray.  Also, ugh.




*My friend Joel and I theorize that no one has ever actually read Finnegans Wake. Everyone I know who says they started it can claim about 20 pages before they put it aside.  I suspect that the final chapters, and the tell-tale last sentence/first sentence structure, are purely myths and every lit.crit. on the subject is based on urban legends and campfire stories.  

from "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole.

"You must begin a reading program immediately so that you may understand the crises of our age," Ignatius said solemnly. "Begin with the late Romans, including Boethius, of course. Then you should dip rather extensively into early Medieval. You may skip the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is mostly dangerous propaganda. Now that I think of it, you had better skip the Romantics and the Victorians too. For the contemporary period, you should study some selected comic books. [...] I recommend Batman especially, for he tends to transcend the abysmal society in which he's found himself. His morality is rather rigid, also. I rather respect Batman."

Audrey Niffenegger -- Her Fearful Symmetry

Open letter to Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry:

Why do I keep reading you?  Your plot is not altogether captivating, your tone is inconsistent and only occasionally engaging; you have moments of poise and clarity and brilliance that I love, but not enough to really keep me intrigued--you make pop culture references that seem foreign and forced, and the result is awkward, like meeting your mom at a bar.

I guess I mostly keep reading because you are eerily applicable to my life every time I decide to pick you up and give you one more shot, 30 pages at a time.


Bizarre.

I recommend The Adventuress as a more engaging example of Niffenegger's opus, especially because it foregrounds her impressive illustration work.

Genderqueering Yr Bookshelf

I'm on a personal conquest for GenderPossibility these days, and thought it'd make a good theme for a post.  A lot of my academic reading this semester got me thinking about my interpretation of gender, and how we, as a [western] society, consume and produce gender, and what that means for my own identity and what choices I make, have to make, and want to make, about my own gender performance.  Here's my genderqueer recommended reading list:

Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink Or Blue by Leslie Feinberg
We read a couple of excerpts from this for class which prompted me to go out and buy the book so I could read the whole damn thing.  It's basically a collection of speeches and papers that sie has given at various events, peppered with personal anecdotes from folks challenging the gender norm, their stories in their words.  It is an extremely powerful book, partially because since they are hier speeches, they are very emotional and make empathetic appeals for action and empowerment.  Hier introduction, which argues for gender perception outside of the binary and outside of a clean, simplified spectrum, ("Merely answering woman or man will not bring any relief to the questioner.  As long as people try to bring me into focus using only those two lenses, I will always appear to be an enigma.") is so damn brilliant that I think everyone in the world should read it.

Exile & Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation by Eli Clare
This is lifted directly from my FemTheory course reading.  Clare is an astounding author who brings these intersections together in ways that will surprise, unsettle, and teach you.  He talks a lot about being critical of the Gaze, about recognizing power relations, and about questioning your assumptions and motives, but manages to relate it to economics, education, even agriculture and the environment.  I've never read such an inclusive text that highlighted so many interlocking systems of oppression.  Definitely worth reading.

Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and The Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein
Bornstein is so funny, and so magnificent, and so honest, I don't know who wouldn't enjoy this book.  I'm currently still reading it, so can't give a total account yet, but the story of her transition told along with genderexplosive tales of her friends and colleagues is fabulous.  She is critical of the gender norms assumed in the name of "passing," and goes in-depth to explore where we develop them.  Her book is stylish and important.  Check it out.

This is all I have for now, though of course I am open to suggestions.  I'm attending the Trans/Womyn's Action Camp this summer in Oregon, so hopefully I will be able to expand my reading list there. 

Kathy Acker Double Feature

Best to start things off strong, eh?  I'll do two books in this first post!

Kathy Acker:
Don Quixote  and  Rip-Off Red, Girl Detective (+ The Burning Bombing of America)

Don Quixote is the book that really won me over for Kathy Acker.  I'd read Pussy King of the Pirates, and I'd loved that, but after Don Quixote I was an Acker Monster, needing to absorb as much frustration and spite and spikey words as possible.  If you're coming at Acker unprepared, I think I suggest Pussy (haha...) to start, because it follows a more coherent plot--if Acker ever follows a coherent plot?  You have to go into it with the understanding that she tells stories in exploding dream format; one thing leads to another and that other may or may not make any sense.  She wants you to give up linear plot structures, give up syntax and grammar, and just pay attention to the shapes and feel of words.  It's important.

So, onto Don Quixote specifically.  This is great because it follows the protagonist Don Quixote (in this version, a woman) through an abortion and its aftermath, masterfully culminating 37 pages in, with her death (social? moral?  Acker wants you to consider this).  We are then told to examine the culture surrounding women, women in literature and women in fiction.  The second part is introduced with the all-caps epigram: BEING DEAD, DON QUIXOTE COULD NO LONGER SPEAK.  BEING BORN INTO AND PART OF A MALE WORLD, SHE HAD NO SPEECH OF HER OWN.  ALL SHE COULD DO WAS READ MALE TEXTS WHICH WEREN'T HERS.

Acker then takes us through an eerie tour of the history of literature --including! I was so pleased to discover: a rewriting of Catullus 8, from the POV of a brokenhearted Russian with Ackers creative explitives added to the latin.  Love!  Lovelovelove.

The book is also interspersed with some political commentary on Nixon, which may be a bit dated for the modern reader, but still good snark and certainly not irrelevant to modern politics.

The tone of the original Don Quixote is carried over, but Acker's pseudo-feminist re-writing infuses it with a higher sense of urgency, spending much time reflecting on what this idealist's role is in the world. I think the reason I liked Don Quixote more than Pussy was that in it I found, among other things, a critical discussion of activism in an apathetic time.  It seemed to exist on a much grander scale with higher stakes, while Pussy was more internal and emotional (which, of course is not a bad thing at all).


Rip-Off Red is Acker's first work, and was published posthumously.  I recommend it for people who are already Acker fans as a glimpse into the progression of her work and style, because first-time readers will get All Kinds of the wrong idea about Acker from this.

Firstly, because it follows a (gasp!) linear story line!  Don't worry--there are plenty of foggy dream sequences to confuse you, but mostly there is just Sex Scene after Sex Scene.  Mon. Dieu.  I feel compelled to warn readers that this book was TOO AROUSING to read in public.  At least in the beginning, until I got used to it, and until the sex started getting all... incesty (it's cool! It's a dream sequence.  At least, I think).

It's a pretty straightforward mystery, almost film-noir-ish in her attention to shadows, costumes/textures, and her insistence on the "toughness" of her detective image.

The edition I had also includes a set of essays called The Burning Bombing of America written roughly the same time as Rip-Off.  They go well together, because here we have the erratic, probably drug-induced, almost tourettes-y spasmodic verbal vomit that we know and love.  One section is entitled "Abstract Essay Collaged With Dreams," and another is called "OUTER SPACE MESSAGES / TOTAL CHAOS!" so, yeah, it's pretty much what you'd expect.  They are about chaos, and they read like chaos.  Best described, I suppose, as the internal monologue of the people on the ground during the destruction of an urban area.

Acker's chaotic poetry trumps realism any day.