Francesca Penchant
“No cérébrale could ever be happy as a Cinderella.”
Anita Loos's claim to fame is writing the worldwide bestseller “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”
The novel was tangentially inspired by H.L. Mencken, whom she was in love with in 1926, but who was smitten with a blonde—whom Loos subsequently burned to ridicule. (Loos's none-the-wiser husband asked her to dedicate the novel to him, which she did.)
Nita didn't understand how Menck could be fascinated by a female who was less intelligent, less charismatic, less funny, and less pretty than she, until finally she identified the one thing the blonde had less of that mattered: melanin in her hair.
The most fascinating part of “A Girl Like I” is Nita's early life, culminating in her Hollywood touchdown in 1915 at age 27, mother attached.
The leitmotif of “A Girl Like I” is the financial power-relationships between the sexes that Loos observed throughout her life. Her relationship with her father, an amusing alcoholic sponge, was formative. In fact, Nita supported both father and mother from the age of about fifteen. Loos punctuates the book with a friend's declaration: “You sure are flypaper for pimps!”
Loos writes in a precise and formal style; a style so grammatically correct and tortuously witty as to be delicious to bluestockings—or cérébrales—like I.
I wish Bell had analyzed more diverse stories—from different times, countries, genres. They felt sooooo similar—all late 20th-century American literary fiction. It made me crave something grotesque and bizarre and old, like Rabelais.
Classic
Haven't read much poetry lately, so I found the plot harder to follow, but I'd still recommend. Reminded me of 18th-century French libertine novels.
“I'm beginning to believe that one of the last frontiers left for radical gesture is the imagination.”
“...when I was ten years old and walking around times square looking for the weight of some man to lie across me to replace the nonexistent hugs and kisses from my mom and dad.”
Favorite quotes from The Complete Stories:
“The other side of alientation is freedom.”
—Benjamin Moser, Introduction to The Complete Stories
“Not being devoured is the most perfect of feelings. Not being devoured is the secret goal of an entire life.”
—Clarice Lispector
“What a talent she had for cruelty.”
—Clarice Lispector
This biography is a brilliant achievement. And Colette is the rare female French Decadent writer, like Rachilde.
Dream of Ursula Parrott as a creative, rebellious woman who wrote her mind, defied societal norms, drank, had lovers—and then lived happily ever after with her sister on their estate in Connecticut—instead of what really happened.
“The imperishable mystery of the masque, attractive and repulsive at the same time, demonstrates the techniques and the key images—and, above all, the imperious need—according to which certain individuals, on appointed days, contrive to make themselves up, to disguise themselves, to change their identity and to cease to be that which they are: in a word, to escape themselves.
“What instincts, what appetites, what hopes, what lusts, what maladies of the soul underlie the gaudily coloured cardboard of false chins and false noses, the horsehair of false beards, the shimmering satin of black masks, the white cloth of hooded cloaks? What intoxication of hashish or morphine, what loss of self, what equivocal and evil adventure, precipitates that lamentable and grotesque procession of dominos and penitents on the days when masked balls are held?”
Decadent writers, such as Jean Lorrain, describe strange and obscure thoughts and feelings that I thought only I had.
“‘She knows everything about the sublimation of loss, about suffering as the nourishment of genius, about pain's resonance as harmony in a work of art,' [thought a friend of Blixen]. And all the same, she yielded to the most banal human moods and impulses, pettiness, impatience, caprice, stinginess. She suffered from a craving for power in spite of her generosity. She toyed with human fates, in spite of a contempt for such toying. Yes, she suffered from self-contempt, in spite of her mighty, legitimate self-confidence and pride. She was a paradox outside of any moral category....”
“Walking up and down Aurora, friendless and without a drink in the middle of the night, can make you straight up want to put a gun to your head.”
—Lauren Sapala
“She focused on life's essentials: affection, music, friendship, dancing, food, wine, adventure, nature, labor, beauty, sex.”
I liked this book more because of its strange and intriguing subject than the quality of Andrew Bennett's scholarship, but I owe him props for exploring this difficult literary terrain.
My favorite chapter is the author's comparison of the poets Sylvia Plath and Stevie Smith—I'm grateful for the introduction to Smith. There's a movie called Stevie (1978) with Glenda Jackson about her life and poetry, which is on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZUqYFJvo8Q
Andrew Bennett explains the explosion of suicide in the plots of modern novels here: “The increase in the cultural prominence of suicide in eighteenth-century narratives is thus understood as contingent upon the era's emphasis on bourgeois individualism and on the development of the “modern” sense of autonomous subjecthood on which the novel feeds and that the form itself promulgates.”
This is a testament to human endurance. It's particularly inspiring to me because it was written by a woman. I'll reread it whenever I need extra strength.
“You don't have to look at yourself with their eyes. Ever.”
I love this book. Wise, funny Kate Bornstein guides readers through those hells and taboos that “normal” and “polite” people pretend don't exist.
Bornstein wants readers to stop proving themselves real whatevers (fill in your binary nouns): “Free your imagination from the institutions that enthrall you.” In other words, if you can free yourself from either/or thinking, you can expunge others' tyrannies from your brain, and lessen your suffering.
“On the eve of one of my fortnightly female-impersonation sprees, the reader probably supposes that I would be happy in anticipation. On the contrary, a great weight of sorrow and anxiety always oppressed me. There was of course an attraction which drew me to the city, but it was more than counterbalanced by the realization of the risks of my losing my then enviable position in life, and the dread of the danger I had to put myself in, in order to obtain the satisfaction of my instincts. A peculiar phenomenon was vivid images of violent blows in the face, since I had been the victim of such a number of times. But even apart from the dread of the real dangers, even if there were no such dangers, an overwhelming feeling of sadness and anxiety always came over me as the time to go forth on my peculiar quest approached.
“On the eve of a female-impersonation spree during this period, I always felt like a soldier on entering a great battle from which he realized he might never come back alive, or like a murderer on the eve of his electrocution.
“On such occasions I habitually sang to myself: ‘Why oh why should we be melancholy, boys,
Whose business 'tis to die?'”
“I want to be swimming in art, to be surrounded by other artists, to make things that are unwieldy and weird and learn from my mistakes, to devote myself to creativity.”
“Maybe I want relationships that are like dresses. I need room to twirl.”
“Last night, I held my own hand and imagined it was yours.”
Monsters Under Glass is a tour de force by Professor Jane Desmarais, editor of Volupté, the interdisciplinary journal of decadence studies. The general reader's unfamiliarity with such influential European fin-de-siecle authors and artists as Rachilde, Lorrain, Huysmans, Montesquiou, Redon, and Beardsley doesn't negate the importance of this book. Kudos to Desmarais for expanding the scholarship of Decadent literature!
“If they knock you down, you get up. If they knock you down again, get up. No matter how many times they knock you down, get up again.”
“Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.”
“Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness ... revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners....”
“There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.”
“Is there a law against carrying a can opener in your pants?”
This play is so well crafted and funny. Laughed out loud. Loved the absurdist vibe. I'm still thinking about the deeper themes—about corporate-think and political binaries.
One Million More to Go is one of those cool plays that spark conversation after the performance. Plan to read again.
Brilliant study of a lesser-known topic: American decadence. Good to learn about Saltus, Bierce, and others who were influenced by European fin-de-siecle writers.
“Mary Barbe embodies Juliette's ruthless answer to the innocent, wronged Justine.”
—Liz Heron
Introduction to The Marquise de Sade
I loved Basinger's “The Star Machine,” but this book wasn't as gleeful a read.
The inevitable problem with a marriage-movie book is that it studies a pretty conventional subject. It doesn't have the verve of a book about B horror movies, say.
To make matters worse, the Hays code made it impossible for American movies to express anything irreverent or unconventional about marriage between 1934 to 1968. So a lot of the films that Basinger examines have a conservative and narrow worldview.
But with a subtitle like “A History of Marriage in the Movies,” why did she analyze TV shows? Couldn't she have cut 100 pages and eliminated the sections about “I Love Lucy” and “Friday Night Lights”? That would have pizazzed the book up a bit, and made me feel less like I was wading through a pool of easily digested mush.
Merged review:
I loved Basinger's “The Star Machine,” but this book wasn't as gleeful a read.
The inevitable problem with a marriage-movie book is that it studies a pretty conventional subject. It doesn't have the verve of a book about B horror movies, say.
To make matters worse, the Hays code made it impossible for American movies to express anything irreverent or unconventional about marriage between 1934 to 1968. So a lot of the films that Basinger examines have a conservative and narrow worldview.
But with a subtitle like “A History of Marriage in the Movies,” why did she analyze TV shows? Couldn't she have cut 100 pages and eliminated the sections about “I Love Lucy” and “Friday Night Lights”? That would have pizazzed the book up a bit, and made me feel less like I was wading through a pool of easily digested mush.