Thomas

I have a LOT of mixed feelings about this book. I think I'm going to try and separate my thoughts into a few categories: 1) as a topic; 2) as an academic text; 3) the author's voice and presence; and 5) gut reactions.

1) As a topic. As a topic, it's interesting. I spent a lot of time in the library stacks trying to find and understand myself when I was an undergraduate, and I read a lot of stuff this book cites. Especially CJ Pascoe's work. This book takes some issue with the diametric opposition of hetero and homo, and sort of dances around bisexuality. There's a section on the concept of sexual orientation as a congenital, fixed, trait. “Born this way.” Ward doesn't have much interest in it, and takes time to explain its rather weak standing in capital-R Research and the protective haze that surrounds it. Ward draws a line to the “homonormative” gay folks for putting this line in place.

I don't really know much about that. I can see where Ward is coming from, as someone who in general doesn't believe anyone is 100% gay or straight. And, I guess, as someone who in general is not a big fan of labels, and who thinks our (the LGBTQAI+ community in general) fascination with subdivision and labeling is probably a little more damaging than it is healing. But, I can also recognize that as a relatively vanilla gay white guy, that's easy enough for me to say.

The cultural angle of the book, centering the discussion on straight white men, is another interesting angle. Personally, I really like exploring this specific subset, as I think Ward is right in denoting the pernicious influence of white superiority in many of these contexts (military, frat, etc). Ward essentially says that whiteness facilitates the creation of a context by which homosexual activity can be understood as straight. Ward doesn't use the word “context” but throughout, I thought a lot about Goffman's facework theory and the idea of cultural contexts, and I think these things are in play in a big way in these environments.

However, I think the research question (if, indeed, there is one) gets lost in Ward's tangential exploration of her personal life and experiences. I'll talk more about that in the next section and section 4.

2) Did you notice what I just did there - say that I'll talk about something in the next section? That's a sin that a lot of academic texts commit. I'm sick of it. It's bad writing, folks. This book commits it over and over again and suffers from too much scaffolding. The first chapter lays out the rest of the book, along with the thesis and supporting points of each chapter. Each chapter strings together its sections by referring to the next in the same way I just did. This is not good writing! I find it hard to blame Ward for this because it's a sin I see in academic writing all the time. Are editors telling their writers that their readers are too dumb to get through a text without their hands being held? With all this scaffolding, Ward's book is only 211 pages long. Believe me, I can keep an idea in my head long enough to get through!

That aside, I bumped on the writing frequently. Is this an academic text? It isn't an ethnography. It isn't exactly a sociological study (though Ward refers to it as one). Having images denoted as figures does not an academic study make. There are endnotes, which I appreciated, and this is the most studious element of the work. It does read like a very long literature review, which is fine! It gets its point across. However, I can't help but feel like there was a better academic text inside of this somewhere.

Now, maybe this is intentional. I have edited academic journals and (especially the last time), I've thought a lot about what “academic” writing is supposed to look like. Why does it have to look a certain way? So, I'd be inclined to give this a little more grace if it weren't for the author's voice (see the next section — see how annoying that is?).

3) The author's voice. Ward talks about herself and her personal life a lot. On the one hand, this has given me the absolute best understanding of what it means to be gay versus being queer. On the other, it is very much so presented as a versus. Ward repeatedly voices her frustration and pity on the gay movement and, to be frank seems really condescending and rather privileged about it at times.

Pg 200: “I am not suggesting a direct causal relationship between the cultural turn to gay love and the emergence of heteroflexibility discourses, but rather a convergence of mutually complementary forces. As the gay movement continues its transformation into a PAC-funded celebration of homonormative love, it becomes more difficult to conflate naughty, casual, and disavowed homosexual encounters with gay identity, as gay identity is now so commonly represented by the image of out, proud, and respectable gay couples.” Tell me how you really feel!

Ward talks frequently about the damage that the view of homosexuality as a congenital trait does to the overall queer movement. She talks a lot about the kind of relationships and sex she likes, and the kind of behavior she finds ‘exhiliarating' while vaguely side-eyeing the plain gays that just want to go to work and go home and have a regular fuck now and again. I don't really get her frustration. I don't understand why Ward believes that sex is inherently and always, ALWAYS, political. Why does every liaison have to be about sending a message to somebody? She seems to contradict herself at times with this, by saying that by ascribing meaning to men's non-homosexual-homosexual behaviors, that we're putting a meaning onto them that they have not taken upon themselves. One of her key points is that men who have sex with men (MSM) who say they are not gay... Are not gay! So why does she devote so much time to judging non-queer folks?

This is a significant cause for my bridling at thinking of this as an academic text. Ward is happy to tell us about her time viewing pornography (for science! though this is really the least of my concerns, I simply am not sure I'd ascribe quite as much meaning to hazing porn videos as Ward does), her fetishes, and her judgments on gay vs queer culture. That does not feel academic, to me. At some points, I was wondering, ‘why is Ward sharing this with us, what are we supposed to take from it?'

4) Gut reactions. I had a few. Particularly about the gay vs queer politics that book talks about on and off throughout. But I had one that I'm not super proud of, and I'm thinking through its source. I am not 100% sure that a lesbian feminist sociologist is the best person to try and interpret the dynamics of gay or queer men. Problematic take, right!? It was a gut reaction, and when the thought went through my head I put the book down to think about it for a minute. I'll tell you where it came up the loudest. Page 139. Ward is comparing surfer bros and leather-clad bikers and cowboys. She contends that these forms (the surfers) are desirable for white MSM because leather-clad bikers and cowboys have higher associations with queer culture.

Let me put it bluntly: I don't buy it. My actual thought? “Has Jane Ward looked at a surfer bro and a leather-clad biker dude next to each other before?” Not to be too stereotypical, but they don't look much alike! I think there is an element of truth in the “simply buddies” thing, but I think that is but one element and not the most significant. It's little things like this that add up and make me wonder, “okay, has Ward talked to a gay guy about this?” She probably doesn't have too, but I hope my gut reaction is understandable.

It's also worth noting that Ward addresses this head-on in the closing chapter, which IMO is the best chapter of the book (in particular, this discussion takes place at 204-206). There is another place in the book (unfortunately I can't find the page rt now) where Ward talks about the particular importance that a feminist lens can bring to this examination, and I found it super interesting. I came away wanting to read more from that lens.

I'm still thinking a lot about this book, Ward's arguments, and the way in which she presents them. I don't fully understand why she chose to discuss so much about herself in this, but she clearly made that choice and feels it is important. I may come away with a deeper appreciation for this after more thought. But, while I found the topic super interesting, I think I'd have valued a modern-day take on Howard's “Men Like That” (which Ward references here), compared to this amalgamation of personal essay and literature review.

A brief, but engaging, examination of the battle of Alesia and more generally the context and events leading up to it. The book is short - Goodreads reports 96 pages, though my copy was 142 pages - and so full of pictures the actual text is short and digestible and could easily be read in one sitting if the reader desired. I enjoyed the several maps that are included and used this to acquaint myself somewhat with the context before I begin Carolyn Hammond's translation of Caesar's Commentarii.

A stunning critique of our systems and how we allow, and benefit from, their designed system of taking from the poor to prop up the rich. Those with experience growing up in poverty and working with the impoverished will find much to be furious about, and just as much to be inspired by.

I wrote a longer review / reflection with my thoughts on the book from the perspective of someone who has worked on homelessness for some years here: https://www.thomasbates.info/field-notes/book-review-poverty-by-america

I found this fascinating. I've read books where the narrator is unreliable, but less often do I see a narrator that essentially deludes himself in thought in the way this book's does. The men in the book are driven by petty squabbles, lust for money and possessions (including, in their eyes, women), and take their country on a descent with their feuds. I found the commentary of educated elites vs “commoners” striking and unfortunately, apt today globally.

I may add more to this review when I get to a full keyboard.

Another read for work, though I hesitate to log this because in truth I skimmed it aside from a few particularly relevant chapters (notably, the Sparkline sections and the chapter where Tufte lights up powerpoint). This is certainly a very pretty book to look at, with a great variety of charts, pictures, and views on how various types of evidence come together (or don't). That said, the age of the text shows.

Tufte repeats a theme throughout the book - words, numbers, charts, pictures, these are all pieces of evidence, and should live within the same universe. Sparklines are a terribly interesting example of this. They have certainly been standard in the financial world as long as I can recall, but when I think of how to apply them to things like homeless services and other domains, I get a little finicky. Tufte notes that these typography-sized charts are able to stand on their own, unadorned by labels and grids and such, because the text around them provides the context. That is very interesting, but I wonder. The most powerful example of these is the glucose chart - but it is adorned with a variety of labels (or at least, the colored points - which I like).

I found myself very curious to apply these to datasets I work with - I just wrote a 6 page memo with a variety of graphs and charts that I grated my teeth at when e-mailing them out. How could I have improved these with some of Tufte's theory? How could Sparklines have been used? If I want to do this, though, I have to have some capacity to MAKE them, and that is a question even Tufte doesn't know how to answer. On page 61 he notes that it is cumbersome (in 2006) to produce these, people need a page layout software (ie Word, though I think he's probably really talking about InDesign), a graphic design program (which again, I think could be collapsed into InDesign), and a statistical analysis software capable of generating a chart that could be resized in the other softwares. This is a bit of a mess. It is no easier, so far as I know, in 2023. The most time consuming part of my 6 page memo (other than the actual data analysis) was figuring out how to make the charts align properly in MS Word. We still haven't figured this out, and Tufte doesn't make any meaningful suggestions. The one suggestion he seems to make is going back to the MS-DOS days, where everything was in one program. I think that ship has probably sailed. I am also skeptical of all these functionalities living in one software - I'm concerned it would be a software that does many things poorly instead of one thing relatively well.

I did particularly enjoy Tufte's hatred of powerpoint. Though, in the nearly 20 years since this book's publication, I wonder if we're starting to slowly move past it. I think if I e-mailed out a 2-page technical memo ahead of a meeting it might cause a row of seizures (though I would certainly prefer it). This certainly comes from the era of powerpoints as content rather than powerpoints as an aid to content. I think many of us (but not all) have gotten better about this. A recurring problem that I've had when trying to break past powerpoint is how to show large tables of data on a screen - I need something that I can intuitively zoom in and out of, but that is a tall order when you can break a table across multiple powerpoint slides for emphasis.

An interesting text - if you walk into someone's house and this is their coffee table book, ask to see the incredible fold out of Minard's map of the retreat of the French army from Russia. Tufte is clearly in love with this graphic, and for good reason.

Starting dedicated Stephen King month (November 2023, for whatever reason) with this book. I saw the movie years and years ago and remembered the big plot points, but had no idea the book moved in and out of different perspectives, news clippings, etc. I found it pretty riveting!

I'm wondering if a book being readable is the same as it being good. This book is very readable, in that once it is picked up, you can easily read big chunks of it. That said, I had to make myself pick it up. I think the magic system is interesting - though towards the end it gets pretty incomprehensible.

There are no likable characters in the book. Big chunks of the book are an extended marriage spat in a relationship that is as-near-as-makes-no-difference domestically violent. Both partners are variously emotionally abusive to one another, and then every other character enjoys meddling in the marriage. The society is set up in a way that seems to condemn itself.

I think a good editor would have slashed about 100 pages of this. I'd cut big chunks of the marriage spat, and I'd probably cut about 50 pages of the ending where the magic system gets really convoluted and hard to follow.

An early short story from Cormac. The bones and features are there, but we're still a ways off from his best work.

Wow, beautiful and crushing.

“Because the days are yoked together, one starts and another is inevitably on the way, and then another , and another, and they must be endured. Because man is a pathetic creature, he cannot raise his knife and say, “I can no longer endure myself.” He will solve nothing by sticking the knife into his belly. Because the days come and go like an endless herd tromping through an open gate.”

I picked this up recently because I wanted to read this before watching Luca's adaptation with Daniel Craig. Also because I have been reading a lot of [a:Cormac McCarthy 4178 Cormac McCarthy https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1611995562p2/4178.jpg] and [a:Ernest Hemingway 1455 Ernest Hemingway https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1654446435p2/1455.jpg] over the past year or so but am desperately sick of reading straight relationships and reading [b:Love, Leda 63577939 Love, Leda Mark Hyatt https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1669140290l/63577939.SY75.jpg 99499818] made me yearn to read more gay writing.I am not sure that was a thing much rewarded with this. Burroughs is an odd character (most famous, probably, for shooting and killing his second wife with in a drunken “William Tell” act, I guess), referring to himself as a ‘homosexual' and being a big fringe politically, or so it seems. Truth be told I know nothing about him other than, except a brief look at his Wikipedia page that I took after finishing this book, trying to see if the author was gay or not. I recognize the differences of time and all of that. Queer, my understanding written in the 50's but published in 1985, is from a different time. Burroughs grew and developed in a different time. But I certainly see no love for the idea of being gay. Everything is very cold.I've also learned that this book is a semi-follow-up to [b:Junky 23940 Junky William S. Burroughs https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1386920565l/23940.SY75.jpg 24861], which I haven't read. It seems clear that this is vaguely autobiographical. Burroughs does himself no favors. At the start of the book, I find myself relating to Lee very much. He is anxious and insecure, but also putting on a show. He is attentive, and presses his eyes on those he watches. Burroughs does not write this pleasantly: “Lee watched the thin hands, the beautiful violet eyes, the flush of excitement on the boy's face. An imaginary hand projected with such force it seemed Allerton must feel the touch of ectoplasmtic fingers caressing his ear, phantom thumbs smoothing his eyebrows, pushing the hair back from his face.” (p23.).Lee is also highly sensitive to even the slightest of slights. There is a lot going on in his head, though the writing doesn't delve too far into it. Page 32-33: “In the dark theater Lee could feel his body pull toward Allerton, an amoeboid protoplasmic projection, straining with a blind worm hunger to enter the other's body, to breathe with his lungs, see with his eyes, learn the feel of his viscera and genitals. Allerton shifted in his seat. Lee felt a sharp twinge, a strain or dislocation of the spirit. His eyes ached. He took off his glasses and ran his hand over his closed eyes.”That use of strange, biological-clinical language again. Desire and fantasy are ectoplasmic and amoeboid. You don't feel any love, here. Just a sort of animal lust. Of course lust happens all the time, and Lee is eyeballing boys left and right the entire book. I struggle to understand Lee because his desire for Allerton is so all-encompassing but at no point does he display or evidence thoughts of love for him.About midway through, Lee starts trying to basically buy Allerton's time. He is really pressuring his presence on him in a way that clearly makes Allerton uncomfortable. When Allerton says he must work, Lee experiences physical pain: “Now Allerton had abruptly shut off contact, and Lee felt a physical pain, as though a part of himself tentatively stretched out towards the other had been severed, and he was looking at the bleeding stump in shock and disbelief.” (p50.) His solution is to offer to pay Allerton not to work. Lee seems immune to the social discomfort of this, and when it is refused he goes home and lays on his bed and cries. A few pages later he is accompanying Allerton to get his camera back from a pawn shop and is happy to spend out money to get this thing for Allerton. He does not understand why Allerton is so cold to him, does not understand that his actions are not being understood as loving or even affectionate. Lee says to himself: “I liked him and I wanted him to like me,” Lee thought. “I wasn't trying to buy anything.” (p53). I understand trying to find some way to express a feeling for someone, I really do. But this is a profound misunderstanding of people, of himself, from Lee. He starts panicking and desiring to leave the country, to travel somewhere else. Now there is a feeling that I know well.I guess this is turning more into a summary and less into a review. It's because I really do not understand Lee's character at all. I felt kinship and understanding to him at the start of the novel, but became more and more alienated the whole way through. To points of complete disgust. There's a line where, discussing Yage and telepathy, he tells Allerton that he could change anything about him he didn't like. How do you say that to someone you love? If you believe that, you don't love them. And so, of course, Lee is obsessed with Allerton and lusting for him, but I don't believe there is a real love there.The ending pretty well perplexed me. It quite grinds to a halt.Burroughs has a lot of interest to say in the Appendix, in previous editions this was his original introduction. I'm not sure what to make out of it. I understand parts. On page 131 he says, “I glance at the manuscript of Queer and feel I simply can't read it. My past was a poisoned river from which one was fortunate to escape, and by which one feels immediately threatened, years after the events recorded—painful to an extent I find it difficult to read, let alone to write about. Every word and gesture sets the teeth on edge.” That I can relate to.Very similarly on page 135: “I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from Control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out.”Overall I find this a very odd and unpleasant book. Lee is a lost person, who I think does not know quite how to love and I think it's possible the contexts of gay life at the time has made it impossible for him. It's hard to say without knowing the character's backstory from Junky, though I'm skeptical it is relevant. This is a pretty stark contrast from writers like Christopher Isherwood which well-capture love, in my opinion, even if it is often tragic.I'm not sure I'll read more Burroughs. But I'm glad, I guess, to read a character that I think is more messed up than I am, at least.Highlights/notes:* p2 - What Lee looked for in any relationship was the feel of contact.* p7-8 - Actually, Moor's brush-off was calculated to inflict the maximum hurt possible under the circumstances. It put Lee in the position of a detestably insistent queer, too stupid and insensitive to realize that his attentions were not wanted, forcing Moor to the distasteful necessity of drawing a diagram.* p15 - The result was ghastly.   As Lee stood aside to bow in his dignified old-world greeting, there emerged instead a leer of naked lust, wretched in the pain and hate of his deprived body and, in simultaneous double exposure, a sweet child's smile of liking and trust, shockingly out of time and place, mutilated and hopeless.* p23 - Lee watched the thin hands, the beautiful violet eyes, the flush of excitement on the boy's face. An imaginary hand projected with such force it seemed Allerton must feel the touch of ectoplasmtic fingers caressing his ear, phantom thumbs smoothing his eyebrows, pushing the hair back from his face. Now Lee's hands were running down over the ribs, the stomach. Lee felt the aching pain of desire in his lungs. His mouth was a little open, showing his teeth in the half snarl of a baffled animal. He licked his lips.* p24-25 - [Allerton] was forced to ask himself: “What does he want from me?” It did not occur to him that Lee was queer, as he associated queerness with at least some degree of overt effeminacy. Allerton was intelligent and surprisingly perceptive for a person so self-centered, but his experience was limited. He decided finally that Lee valued him as an audience.* p32-33 - In the dark theater Lee could feel his body pull toward Allerton, an amoeboid protoplasmic projection, straining with a blind worm hunger to enter the other's body, to breathe with his lungs, see with his eyes, learn the feel of his viscera and genitals. Allerton shifted in his seat. Lee felt a sharp twinge, a strain or dislocation of the spirit. His eyes ached. He took off his glasses and ran his hand over his closed eyes.* p45 - (Baked Alaska and Lee's dish idea.)* p50- “How about dinner tonight?” asked Lee. Allerton said, “No, I think I'll work tonight.” Lee was depressed and shattered. The warmth and laughter of Saturday night was lost, and he did not know why. In any relation of love or friendship, Lee attempted to establish contact on the non-verbal level of intuition, a silent exchange of thought and feeling. Now Allerton had abruptly shut off contact, and Lee felt a physical pain, as though a part of himself tentatively stretched out towards the other had been severed, and he was looking at the bleeding stump in shock and disbelief.* p50 - (TB: around this area, Lee begins to really press on Allerton. He starts offering him money to spend time with him, but it's not phrased like that. He says things like, “I subsidize non-production. I will pay you twenty pesos not to work tonight.” He is surprised and hurt when Allerton rejects this. It doesn't stop him from repeating it a few times later.)* p51 - He got up and walked out. He walked slowlly. Several times he leaned on a tree, looking at the ground as if his stomach hurt. Inside his apartment he took off his coat and shoes, sat down on the bed. His throat began to ache, moisture hit his eyes, and he fell across the bed, sobbing convulsively. He pulled his knees up and covered his face with hands, the fists clenched. Towards morning he turned on his back and stretched out. The sobs stopped, and his face relaxed in the morning light.* p52-53 - He forced himself to look at the facts. Allerton was not queer enough to make a reciprocal relation possible. Lee's affection irritated him. ... [Lee] had no close friends. He disliked definite appointments. He did not like to feel that anybody expected anything from him.. He wanted, so far as possible, to live without external pressure. Allerton resented Lee's action in paying to recover the camera. ... “I liked him and I wanted him to like me,” Lee thought. “I wasn't trying to buy anything.”   “I have to leave town,” he decided. “Go somewhere. Panama, South America.” ... A feeling of cold desolation came over him at the thought of arriving in another country, far away from Allerton.* p56-60 – (TB: an extended “routine” from Lee, initially to Allerton and his chess partner and implied lover, Mary, and concluded after they have left. Lee is telling stories and it isn't clear to me if he is sharing memories of real things or just making things up. It is basically irrelevant as the ‘routine' on Corn Hole Gus's Used Slave Lot - a fantasy(?) of Lee taking a slave boy and seeking to trade him in for a pure Beduin. These are children, by the way. In the appendix/original introduction by Burroughs, he describes these as flights of fancy, routines, Lee settling into his writing. Okay.)* p65 - (TB: Lee is so pining for any attention from Allerton that he contemplates buying a stake in the bar where Allerton keeps a tab, so that the man could not ignore him. Awful.)* p72 - (TB: At a point in the story where Lee and Allerton are more or less traveling outside of Mexico by themselves, Lee sets up a contract where Allerton will sleep with him twice a week. This feels abhorrent and unreal. Why would Lee want this if he loves Allerton? Doesn't he want there to be some warmth? At no point does Allerton ever express anything but disgust for Lee. Anyway, on page 72 Lee shows him where to buy sex from women where they're at, and encourages him. I really don't understand Lee at all. Isn't he haunted by that thought? It's so bizarre.)* p79 - [Lee] had an arm around Gene's shoulders. They were both wearing swimming strunks. The sea was glassy. He saw a fish rise in a swirl of water. He lay down with his head in Allerton's lap. He felt peaceful and happy. He had never felt that way in his life, except maybe as a young child. He couldn't remember. The bitter shocks of his childhood had blacked out memory of happy times.* p80 - “While we are in Ecuador we must score for Yage,” Lee said. “Think of it: thought control. Take anyone apart and rebuild to your taste. Anything about somebody bugs you, you say, ‘Yage! I want that routine took clear out of his mind.' I could think of a few changes I might make in you, doll.” He looked at Allerton and licked his lips. “You'd be so much nicer after a few alterations. You're nice now, of course, but you do have those irritating little peculiarities. I mean, you won't do exactly what I want you to do all the time.” (TB: Holy shit, can you imagine someone saying this to you? This is insane! How can you think that way about someone?)* p113 - I have dreamed many times I was back in Mexico City, talking to Art or Allerton's best friend, Johnny White, and asking where he was. Dream about Allerton continually. Usually we are on good terms, but sometimes he is inexplicably hostile, and when I ask why, what is the matter, his answer is muffled. I never find out why. (TB: this is from the last chapter, 2 years after the events of the book, and notably the writing has changed from third-person to first-person. Anyway, I recognize these dreams. Have had them. But for Lee to think that hostility from Allerton could be inexplicable demonstrates no insight.)Appendix, Burroughs's original introduction:* p131: “I glance at the manuscript of Queer and feel I simply can't read it. My past was a poisoned river from which one was fortunate to escape, and by whicih one feels immediately threatened, years after the events recorded—painful to an extent I find it difficult to read, let alone to write about. Every word and gesture sets the teeth on edge.” * p135 - I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from Control. So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out.

This was an impulse buy. I read this several years ago at the height of my Francophile days when I was able to speak French about half as well as I could read it. Now I can read it okay and speak it only when drunk, and quite poorly.

My mom told me a week or two ago that she wanted me to think about going to Paris again. This is something I have wanted to do for years but I have never traveled internationally and not much domestically. You read Baldwin and Hemingway and Hugo and the others and see Paris as this imperfectly perfect place. Somewhere that a lost person can go to figure things out. I am not convinced any such place really exists outside of the mind, but in the same breath I'll say context matters. Anyway I'm filling out passport paperwork again and maybe I will save enough to go and cheaply.

I thought a lot about tortured artists reading this. Hemingway spends a lot of time beating himself up over his thoughts and actions, in a way I to which I can relate. I struggle to relate to his infidelity and his brutishness. But he is also pretty petty and sensitive to displays of wealth in ways that I understand.

That's beside the point. What I mean is, we have this idea that great suffering produces great art. There seems to be a lot of validity to that. I wonder about the origin of that suffering and the ability for a person to be well and to protect themselves and continue producing. It is one thing to go through external circumstances or to navigate the interior struggles of love and loss and pride and shame. Hemingway talks about people all around him and even to an extent talks about trying to be a friend to people (Fitzgerald et al), and yet we get a sense that he is pretty isolated in his darkest thoughts.

Time and culture are pretty different now, but we still see men struggle to express their emotions and feel badly when doing so. So much great art is the product of suffering, isolated people pouring blood onto the page privately. I don't think you need be unhealthy to produce great art. Surely you don't have to isolate and punish yourself for your feelings under the guise that by virtue of suffering you will write well. Possible that Hemingway would disagree. I certainly haven't written any novels so what the hell do I know? Seems like a raw deal, though.

Not sure where this thought goes, but I am thinking even in films like Michael Mann's Thief or Heat. Mann loves a man on a mission, a man of purpose and work (very masculine stuff here, folks). But in these cases the person has isolated themselves from great love, at least to an extent or at least until the crux of these films. The pain of the isolation and the longing for belonging are the inciting elements. A Movable Feast and Hemingways other works are largely WWI and following years affairs. Thief and Heat were 1981 and 1995 respectively.

We are now in 2024, in mere days 2025. What do these stories look like if the love is not only a vulnerability but a support and strength?

I thought about this watching Whiplash (again) last night. There's a scene in which Teller's character breaks up with a girl he's seeing. Because he believes that to be great – one of the greats – he must do it alone. She says, “and you think I would keep you from that?” And he says some 19 year old version of yep. What a mistake, what a tragedy, to believe that we are stronger alone. That art must be solitary and suffering. It would be a terrible thing to be true.

—

A few weeks ago I was talking Hemingway with a friend and she asked if I'd heard this rumor that he was actually gay. I said no and found it pretty hard to believe. I thought it was possible he was actually a hound.

Then I re-read this and I am not convinced he didn't love Fitzgerald, at least in a way. There are many forms of love. But the way in which Hem describes Fitz on pages 149-150 of my battered Scribner classics edition is quite affectionate:

“Scott was a man who looked like a boy with a face between handsome and pretty. He had very fair wavy hair, a high forehead, excited and friendly eyes and a delicate long-lipped Irish mouth that, on a girl, would have been the mouth of a beauty. His chin was well built and he had good ears and a handsome, almost beautiful, unmarked nose. This should not have added up to a pretty face, but that came from the coloring, the very fair hair, and the mouth. The mouth worried you until you knew him and then it worried you more.”

Listen. I've written a lot of stuff about people that I find very fair, and it sounds a lot like that. This was nuts to read right now. You cannot tell me that Hem didn't feel like kissing Fitz with that description, I simply will not believe it. He even throws in the “on a woman” disclaimer. Hem, you can't fool me, old buddy. I have been there.

Not that I am interested in a straight/gay dichotomy. I find it not useful today and in the 1920's the socio-cultural understanding of gender and sexuality would be so different as to render it even less useful. I believe in love, and lust, and I don't know which Hem had for Fitz but that is some very pretty writing.

Closing with a few lines that stood out to me on this read:

* Not a line but a thought: wrote a big “Fuck you Stein” re: Gertrude's thoughts on “homosexuals.” Fuck off.
* A line about the writing of Sherwood Anderson: “...I liked some of his short stories very much. They were simply written and sometimes beautifully written and he knew the people he was writing about and cared deeply for them.” (emphasis mine; I flagged a lot of Hem talking about his writing style.)
* “We're always lucky,” I said and like a fool I did not knock on wood. There was wood everywhere in that apartment to knock on too.”
* “Memory is hunger.”

I picked this up from the bookstore after loving [b:Love, Leda 63577939 Love, Leda Mark Hyatt https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1669140290l/63577939.SY75.jpg 99499818] so much. I have been trying to read a little more poetry. Like my recent review for Rupi Kaur's [b:The Sun and Her Flowers 35606560 The Sun and Her Flowers Rupi Kaur https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1499791446l/35606560.SY75.jpg 57044162], I have no idea how to review poetry. I don't know what good poetry looks like or what bad poetry looks like. All I know is that sometimes words are strung together and they give me an emotional reaction. So that's what I'm rating this collection on.I liked them! Some are depressed, some are lovesick, some are funny, some are farcical. In some, you can imagine the poet sitting at a typewriter and hitting his head against it trying to make things come out. I can understand that, at least to an extent. None of them hit me in any way comparable to how Love, Leda, did. They are not really personal (to me), but they're nice to read.It was lovely to read poetry written by a man about a man in a romantic or yearning way. I am pretty sure I've never had that experience before (at least, not knowingly). You do certainly feel the 60's England of it all. Some of the yearning is written in very rigid gender roles and that is a bummer. Still, there is an emotional thing that it sort of communicates. It comes across most starkly in “‘Let Him Go In My Mind'”, “Oral Pictures of Love” and “True Homosexual Love” (and the age certainly in the title of that one). In some of these, words like man and girl are juxtaposed in a transferencial (cannot believe I just wrote that sentence, what a snob I sound like). In some, Hyatt writes about being a wife or a woman to the object of the poem.It's a pretty interesting way of writing, to read in 2025. You wonder what is poetic license, the author communicating the ideas that go along with those concepts, and what is just a reflection of the author's understanding of gender constructs at that time. Still, if you're willing to empathize with the words, I think you can understand them. Two of those were some of my favorites (favs in a table below).Then again, another one of my favorites is this little ditty:when cornflakes fart boy how I singAnother one that gave me a big chuckle:“I LOVE MY ARSE TO BE SUCKED”——————————I love my arse to be suckedit makes me come awfully niceand I stretch the body open..................................................................you and today's fixed fantasiesreport you are bored by shitthat's because you're fucking weird..................................................................you write ugly poems to deathand you are a whore for wordsyou're a lovely tragedy..................................................................balls on your stupid wordshave games with your bloodless wifeand let imagination go..................................................................now if you really careand honestly understandthen gently dieNow, I have absolutely no idea what that is saying (other than the first two lines, I guess). But it is hilarious. I haven't read much poetry, but what I have didn't ever have the words “you're” and “fucking” and “weird” in that order. Gave me a good chuckle.It's impressive and admirable. Hyatt was illiterate until adulthood and worked with others to get his writing together. I think that is fascinating. He had a hard life, and it ended badly. But I am glad that he gave us these things. It is sad that they were not widely available for generations and only have been rediscovered and put out in the last year. Still, I very much appreciate being able to read these and read about queer experiences over time. Sometimes, despite all my reading and schooling and all of that, it feels like we tumbled out into the world over the last 30 years. It feels like so much of our literature deals with AIDS and oppression that having stuff about regular old love and heartbreak and cornflakes is rare. That's probably just a side-effect of me being so poorly read. I'm glad at least that I'm reading more of this.Some other favorites that I haven't mentioned in the review so far:- Daggers, p74- Poem. p86- Dear Friend Go Away, Please, p106-He is a Rose, p155-Queers, p35-“Two queers live on a hill”, p80

I hesitate to log this as it is certainly more of a reference book. I took a 3-day training for change management certification and received this book as part of that. I found the training really great - so much so that it overshadows the book significantly. The training covered everything in the book and more usefully, I think. The book feels a bit dated at times, though I admit I mainly skimmed it.

Like many Vonnegut books, this is an almost rambling (coherently so) account from the protagonist about the circumstances of their life. Vonnegut is one of my favorite writers when it comes to satire, and this one explores guns and violence, the bomb, and to an extent small town life. It not my favorite of his writings, but I still enjoyed it.

Probably closer to a very strong 3.5/5. I had a good time with this!

A lot to think about with it, as usual. Vonnegut's satiric style is biting and anything but subtle, but when the writing is this good, who needs subtlety? The themes around the first industrial revolution devaluing muscle power and the second (ongoing in the book) devaluing brain power/know-how are fascinating to read today. In 1952, I imagine Vonnegut would have been thinking mainly of very early computation and then robots in automotive plants (as one example). 70some years later we're well into that, and into the emergence of a technology that got its start back in the 50s and is now sort of blasting into popular knowledge. A lot of the discussions I have around AI are tinted with fear of how emerging technologies could replace people. The little scene where an Engineer invents a gizmo that puts him and all 71 of his counterparts out of their jobs hits pretty well in that context.

It's interesting to see that, from the very beginning, Vonnegut uses outsiders as a way to poke and prod at assumptions and ask very pointed questions. The interludes with the Shah, while pretty well divorced from the main narrative of the story, are great vignettes of life and opportunities for Vonnegut to interrogate ideas.

I'm rating this as a three (or 3.5) because it didn't really smack me upside the head with inspiration. It was a fun read with a lot of ideas that really haven't aged a day. But, it won't be an annual re-read like Slaughterhouse Five.

Wow! Another certified Vonnegut classic. I have yet to read one that I haven't liked. When I was debating what book to read next (choices were this and [b:South and West: From a Notebook 32842454 South and West From a Notebook Joan Didion https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611917690l/32842454.SX50.jpg 53445066] by Didion), unanimous support for this across two Discord servers. One friend said this is their all time favorite Vonnegut.Vonnegut is one of my all time favorite authors. I read Slaughterhouse-Five once a year (very white-bread, I know, sue me), and I have the big Library of America set that I'm working through. I love his voice and his pleading for us to be better. To listen to our better angels. [b:Slaughterhouse-Five 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut Jr. https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440319389l/4981.SY75.jpg 1683562] comes nearly ten years after this work, but there is a lot of it in here.“An eighty-eight was set up in it, and the gun was manned by boys about fifteen or sixteen years old. There was a success story for Heinz's late wife—boys that young, and yet with men's uniforms and a fully-armed death trap all their own.”Hard not to think about Slaughterhouse-Five, the Children's Crusade.There's also just a lot about what Vonnegut says right up front as the moral: be careful what you pretend to be, because that's what you become. Act as if ye have faith, and faith shall be given to ye. Put it another way, Leo McGarry says on the West Wing, fake it til ya make it. It's the flip side of that same coin. I love it.It is of course frustratingly prescient because we humans make the same mistakes on a schedule that'd make a stationmaster jealous.Jones wasn't completely crazy. The dismaying thing about the classic totalitarian mind is that any given gear, though mutilated, will have at its circumference unbroken sequences of teeth that are immaculately maintained, that are exquisitely machined.Hence the cuckoo clock in Hell—keeping perfect time for eight minutes and twenty-three seconds, jumping ahead fourteen minutes, keeping perfect time for six seconds, jumping ahead two seconds, keeping perfect time for two hours and one second, then jumping ahead a year.The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths, truths available and comprehensible even to ten-year-olds, in mose cases.The willful filing off of gear teeth, the willful doing without certain obvious pieces of information—That is how the Nazi's took a functioning republic into one of the deadliest totalitarian regimes in history. It took about 53 for Hitler to end democracy in the Weimar Republic, apparently. He gained power in January 1933. Dachau opened in March.The willful filing off of gear teeth. A valuation of ignorance. A valuation of national pride over all else. A revulsion to immigration, civil liberties, hope, and love.It is hard to read this book and not feel a little depressed about where we are in 2025, 64 years later. As hard as it is, I basically refuse to be a pessimist. I don't know how or why I have that resistance in me. But I still believe that this world can be better today than it was yesterday, and tomorrow, today, and so on. Not all better, and some days maybe not net-better. But I think and hope it is a cumulative thing. And if I don't believe that, then I don't know what the point of it is. So, I will choose to believe it.

One of my projects this year was to finish reading all of McCarthy's works that I hadn't yet. Without checking, I believe I'd read most or all of The Border Trilogy, The Road, Blood Meridian, and The Passenger series. I started on this because The Road is my favorite novel, and I am fascinated with the way that McCarthy writes. But really I started it because The Passenger and Stella Maris totally stumped me, they simply made no impression. So I felt I needed to go back through the collection and return to them, eventually.The play, screenplay, and “novel in dramatic form” (I have no idea what that means, as it is indistinguishable from a play to my eyes) were challenges. No Country for Old Men is a novel, adapted into one of the best films of the 2000s by the Coen Brothers. Adapted almost word for word. Yet, I have trouble imagining the play and stageplay (and this novel) as successful adaptations. Part of that is because The Counselor (a screenplay) is not very good, and the film adaptation might be one of the worst film adaptations of the 2010s if it weren't so bland and forgettable.While not as bad as those, Sunset Limited certainly feels flat. It is a two-man play where the symbolism could not be any more direct. The characters are called White and Black. One is a white man, one is a black man (guess which is which). One is a suicidally depressed atheist, the other is a reformed criminal and believer in the Man Jesus (guess which is which).For the first half, we dance around a little bit the direct confrontation of suicide. The Sunset Limited is the euphemism used for a character seeking to jump in front of a speeding train. That character has done the math, the train outruns the neurons (evidence of a kind of McCarthy verbiage that I like in his novels, but seems to struggle here).As the pages dwindle you start to grow concerned that the story may not have a resolution. Ambiguity in endings is very Cormac, and he fulfills the brief. I do wonder if we are supposed to believe that a thing happens between the final closing lines, but I am also disinterested.Ultimately, it comes down to a pretty rote discussion between an atheist and a believer, and it doesn't do much for me. Because the discussion feels less about faith and doubt, and more about worldview. It isn't White's lack of faith that isolates him in his community. He clearly detests himself. So what does it matter whether he believes in god or not? Plenty of believers detest themselves. It felt like we were missing the point a little because Cormac wanted to poke at these ideas of faith and doubt alongside sociological worldview in a way that I don't think exactly works. And I think when he does this poking in a different way, elsewhere (The Road), he is much more thoughtful about it, and more interesting.I did flag some interesting exchanges, my favorite is probably on page 118:>BLACK: The point dont change. The point is always the same point. It's what I said before and what I keep lookin for ways to say it again. The light is all around you, cept you dont see nothin but shadow. And the shadow is you. You the one makin it.Earlier in the book, Black spoke of the light as a quasi-physical thing, a thing with weight. I like this thread of connection to “carrying the light” in The Road. This is also the line that most clearly gets at White's context, I think. That it is not a lack of faith that has led him to this deeply cynical, self-murderous place. It's that he has brought himself there, maybe hurried along by things we don't know about.Maybe part of my response is that White and I are very different kinds of faithless. I do not think that people are evil. I think we live in a world that hurts. We try to stave off the pain; we form connections, we fall for people, we mourn together. Some of us are lost. I don't know if it is forever. But I think hurt, lost, people hurt other folks, too.There is another exchange. White is asking Black why he lives in the slums (my word):>WHITE: Well I still don't get it. Why not go someplace where you might be able to do some good?>>BLACK: As opposed to someplace where good was needed.I don't know how to connect that to any point that I'm making, if I'm trying to make one. But I like it. It makes me think about purpose. Black feels that he has a purpose, and I think that's important for us. Not in a theological way, but in a way that we have a sense of belonging to one another. A responsibility, or commitment. I don't have any idea what my purpose is, but my lack of faith doesn't mean that I feel life is a waste of time. I hope it isn't. I can't look my friends in the face and think life a waste of time.Yet, that is not exactly explored here. Every conversation feels like it is skirting around these ideas in favor of this belief / disbelief dichotomy.I think I could ramble on a lot about these things and go nowhere. So, anyway, I think the book feels very flat. Similar to his other screenplay/play works, I think these themes are explored more fully and thoughtfully in his novels.As an aside, there is a lot of literature out there on suicide from a theist perspective. There is less written for the atheist. The best book I have read towards this is [b:Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It 17802953 Stay A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It Jennifer Michael Hecht https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1368813378l/17802953.SX50.jpg 24904624] by Jennifer Michael Hecht. I found it in the UIC Library in 2013 and it saved my life back then.

Wow! I picked this up from my local library following a Small Press book club discussion of “At the Edge of the Woods” by Kathryn Bromwich. That book features blurbs comparing it to Shirley Jackson, an author I've never read. Members of the book club who had were nonplussed with the comparison and spoke highly of this and another book, Hangsaman also by Jackson.

I checked both out from the library and read this first as it was shorter and I'd heard about this one before. I am surprised at how gripping it was! I was frequently questioning what was going on, what had happened, trying to figure out the backstory. It was enjoyable when I did find out. The back third of the story is pretty different and I feel like I will need to sit with it for a while before coming to a full conclusion. I finished the book about 5 minutes ago and thus have not had time to cook on it. I had fun reading this!

I found this fascinating to read. I have read very little African fiction, most of that being Afro-Futurism. Most recently on that list is [b:Binti: The Complete Trilogy 40382407 Binti The Complete Trilogy Nnedi Okorafor https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1535553295l/40382407.SY75.jpg 62682909], which (perhaps strangely) I found helpful as a sort of primer.It's not a happy book, but the story is interesting as many “slice-of-life” tales interwoven as Okonkwo experiences his life over a generation with his people. I found a lot to relate to in his overwhelming drive not to be like his father - perhaps this story is the other side of that knife. One wonders what Unoka's father was like, and what Nwoye's life continued to be. It's a compelling look at how the motivation of “I will not be like my father” can be shared by a father, son, and grandson, and all have different causes and manifestations.I loved Chinua's writing style, the language at once sparse and rich. There is a lot to be uncomfortable, mournful, and even angry within the writing. Okonkwo is terrible to his wives and children - but this is a view as to how Okonkwo's generation existed and how Okonkwo existed within himself. The overriding drive to demonstrate no fear - itself creates the biggest fear of his life and ultimately destroys it (as well as the lives of several others). It is so tangible and sad.

DNF. Giving myself credit anyway because I got halfway through and 200 pages felt like 400.

I read this in elementary school the first time. I remember being entranced with the series and had many of them back then. I itched to re-read this one recently and thankfully the library had a Kindle copy. It does what it says on the box! Short, quick to read, and pretty ludicrous if you stop to think about the plot. But it's a kids book, so why would you?

This is quite a stunning delve into the Marvel movie world. I follow Joanna Robinson's podcasting work and have been excited to read this for some time. Even so, I wasn't prepared for just how thorough this is while being totally gripping and endlessly readable.

There are some humdingers in this book, especially concerning the early days of Marvel's cinematic efforts and how figures like Ike Perlmutter fit in. It is so clear that some folks have no sense at all of what an audience wants to see - one of the most astonishing bits of this book was a quote citing executives wondering, who wants to see superheroes fight each other? Baffling.

My favorite piece of “little” trivia is that Kenneth Branagh thought aloud about not calling Mjolnir by its name, instead calling it Uru, because he found "Mjolnir" hard to say. Can you imagine!? There are several bits of Branagh in one chapter that I loved, actually.

I couldn't put this down. In a recent The Big Picture podcast, Sean Fennessey said that comic book movies are “dead as disco.” I doubt that very much (and he could have been dryly joking), but they are clearly in a fragile state right now. This book helps illuminate how Marvel came to totally dominate our cultural experience and the price it's paying for that and for the constant demands of more and faster. It also makes clear just how indispensable Kevin Feige is to the whole concoction, if there was ever any doubt.

I felt worried as I read the prologue, not knowing where this was going or what was going on. In the end, I'm still not sure what the prologue and epilogue are doing, but I liked everything in between them.

The first 1/3rd is pretty slow, but as things start to ratchet up, the story and discussions become much more interesting. I was not expecting a translated piece of Soviet-era science fiction to be quite so funny, but I was frequently chuckling at Don Rumata's bristling against people. There's a scene around page 190 where he comes up against some bureaucracy and calls the bureaucrat a “blockhead,” which gave me quite a giggle. He does that a lot.

I feel like the satire or speculation, which sort of simmers throughout the first 2/3rds, shows itself plainly in the final third and does so quite well. I particularly enjoyed some of Rumata and Reba's back-and-forth. I think if this were summarized at all, the best selection of pages to communicate the core ideas are probably pages 214-218, the conversation between Rumata and another character where the book's title shows itself and those ideas are explored.

I think I would benefit from a re-read somewhere down the line, as I'm sure the pro/epilogues have significance, but I'm not sure what it is.

Quite a good examination of why technical projects in government fail. I shook my head and sighed a lot recognizing discussions, mindsets, etc., that I've encountered too. The author connects to a lot of useful examples and even some methodologies, but ultimately this is a book that seeks to inspire further research rather than provide a practical starter kit. That's not a bad thing — the book introduces the reader to user-/human-centered design, agile methods, and on a simpler level the idea that traditional process is not always the best process.

This was one of the most bizarre and intense books I've read in recent memory. About halfway through, I thought, “I'm going to have to re-read this as soon as I finish it.” That thought wasn't anxiety, it was thrill. I'm going to do all I can to resist that urge and give it some space before a re-read. I loved this but couldn't tell you at all what I thought about it in detail yet, 5 minutes after finishing it.