So I'm reading this book The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free, which is a pretty delicious report on basically (for my money) *the* New YoWow.
So I'm reading this book The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free, which is a pretty delicious report on basically (for my money) *the* New York fantasy--to live by one's wits, in Woolf's formulation, elegantly and sparely, surrounded by writing and women and brilliance and glitz. Right!?? That is the fantasy. Hubba hubba.
And because the Barbizon is where Mademoiselle magazine housed its summer guest editors, and because in the summer of 1953 Sylvia Plath was one of the lucky girls selected, there is a nice big Sylvia chapter that I could hardly get to the end of before I needed to reread The Bell Jar.
I had read The Bell Jar for the first time many years ago. I read it when I was a very young woman. Maybe still nineteen, even. And I was in and out of, at that time, hospitals. Soaked through with the awful knowledge that I was known by no one and couldn't be seen because it wasn't worth anyone's effort. I felt the constant unbearable weight of the disgusting itch and bulge and stench of the body crushing me and I despised it; not infrequently I found I badly wanted to die. I never did, of course, but reading this book at that age was . . . I didn't get it. Because I was in so much private pain I couldn't extend the generosity of imagination to understand anyone else's and Esther Greenwood struck me as melodramatic, privileged, and self-absorbed. Her issues seemed the issues of someone petty and shallow, not the ugly, alone-in-Florida misery I was experiencing. She was lucky, she was lovely, she was uplifted, and I had no compassion for her and very little curiosity.
And so for more than twenty years now I have been saying I read The Bell Jar too late--I thought it was a book for very very young women and that I had just been a little too grownup to be patient with it. I thought that if I'd read it when I was a soppy frivolous teen I could have connected with it better maybe.
And so holy crap it came as such a revelation to find out how wrong wrong wrong I have been for so long. This book is a bullet, and a heart and a brain, and when you read it it just kills you, it just pulses there in your palms, the bloody essential organ of pain that was Plath's young womanhood. It is incredible.
And it is so funny. It is so so funny. I had no idea when I read it the first time, how to read it. This is a really, really beautiful piece of work that it feels terrible, terrible to read, knowing.
I'm sorry I was petty and shallow and vain, Sylvia. Self-absorbed and melodramatic. I'm sorry you were, too, and I'm sorry that this is all there is of you now, this brilliant excruciating record of your beauty and what it meant to you. It means so much....more
Well this ol' book was written by a real white feller back in 1974 and while he doesn't do anything to hog wild he is weird about the one Jewish and tWell this ol' book was written by a real white feller back in 1974 and while he doesn't do anything to hog wild he is weird about the one Jewish and the one Italian character who show up. I did enjoy reading it and the illustrations are these extremely from-life pencil drawings with expression capture skills that I am frankly still staring deeply into. Very weird drawings in some ways although of course in some ways just very skillfully executed traditional drawings. Anyway this book does have a smidge of poopiness as mentioned above but mostly it's a pretty sweet collection of memories this author has about a friend of his he had when he was young and who grew up to be a Reverend, you find out at the end.
I maybe would have gone down to three stars after the stuff with the two non-WASP characters but there's this, toward the end, which I think is some very strange and fine writing:
"I'll say this much for Miss Kelly--she wasn't mean. Her role in life was not an easy one, with Soup and me around. So afterward, when the waste basket was empty, Miss Kelly told Soup what a good job he did. She said that she liked him a lot. Then the said that when she liked somebody, she called him Soup. But if she didn't like someone, he got called Luther no matter who was listening!"
I like this because it would be easy in a book like this to leave the teacher unsympathetic (most of the grownups in this book are not superstar grownups), but I like that he has this awareness of what she's up against and that what she brought to meet it took some effort on her part. And I really love this funny little business about how she'll call him Luther if she doesn't like him. Luther, or "Soup," after whom the book is named, hates the name Luther, and I like that Miss Kelly let him know that who he is is determined by how he acts, and that she'll respect his desire to be known as the person he wants to be known as--called by the name he's chosen--if he lives up to it. I think that's pretty good for a book this simple.
Soup also gets a new pair of boots which he is excited are orange and squeaky. "It's like having birds between your toes," he says. Pretty weird. Pretty good....more
Many years ago when I worked in the basement at Strand, we had this super nice regular named Mary Birmingham. Mary Baltimore. I always mix it up but MMany years ago when I worked in the basement at Strand, we had this super nice regular named Mary Birmingham. Mary Baltimore. I always mix it up but Mary either Birmingham or Baltimore and she just had the friendliest best energy when she came to pick up her books and this was one of them and I've meant to read it ever since.
It's good! I think stories like this are amazing to teach children. The art is wonderful, sketchy watercolor and vivid. Love....more
This is a very now-feeling book, vibes-wise on the parent's style, but it also feels very classic and is full of really lovely moonlight and chilly evThis is a very now-feeling book, vibes-wise on the parent's style, but it also feels very classic and is full of really lovely moonlight and chilly evening city sidewalk walking. A very lovely little book....more
Terrific. Pretty twisted premise tbh but in execution it somehow works and is a sweet weird funny triumphant story. You will wish to have a tiny fuzzyTerrific. Pretty twisted premise tbh but in execution it somehow works and is a sweet weird funny triumphant story. You will wish to have a tiny fuzzy elephant mouse of your own and it is a little painful of a read because of that. Idk if this would have been good to read to small me, I think I would have been too focused on what happens to the other mistakes, and it would have gutted me to look at the illustrations of the little animals waiting on shelves to be picked. Tbh it guts me a bit now. But idk! It is also good and very beautiful. But if you have a child who is . . . soft like I was (am) maybe skip it....more
This was pretty great. I liked the illustration style a lot and there's a real sweetness to the lesson Violet and her Dad learn about what it means toThis was pretty great. I liked the illustration style a lot and there's a real sweetness to the lesson Violet and her Dad learn about what it means to have to do something and how.
I think I need a new shelf for Kids Books, it seems like I might be reading more of them now that I find myself laying hands on them in the library all the time now. It's as easy to check it out to myself as it is to shelve it, and I love the effect this is having on my reading....more
These are very enjoyable, though there are unfortunate blips that mar the experience. Few enough of the blips that the experience is still largely enjThese are very enjoyable, though there are unfortunate blips that mar the experience. Few enough of the blips that the experience is still largely enjoyable, but the blips are there and they are ugly.
This book has a much more digital look to it than the other Monsieur Jean collection I read and I liked the look of it considerably less. But I am still interested in this character, somehow, this selfish, self-satisfied, white male artist, and I think Dupuy and Berberian make some good fun of it.
This book is kind of getting dragged on here, which this might be the first book in my personal feed I have seen be involved in a fight like this. I fThis book is kind of getting dragged on here, which this might be the first book in my personal feed I have seen be involved in a fight like this. I feel for the people whose feelings are hurt and whose sensibilities have been offended, including the author. It's one of those books you just hope the writer keeps digging, gets to that place where they can see not only the ways they intended to let us in on the unlikable qualities of the characters but also become able to see the ways the author doesn't seem aware they are letting us know about other potentially even more unlikable qualities in other characters, and in themselves.
What a jumbled-up sentence. Well, I'm not going to edit it. You know what I mean though. We write unlikable characters with a finger pointed and then the readers read it with their eyes getting totally poked out by all the fingers pointing back at the author. That seems to me to be one of the biggest potential rewards of writing, is looking back and being like holy crap I tried to make THIS character seem like a turd and it just revealed what a huge TURD I was about that stuff, yikes. And then you write more characters who you try and love a little more even if maybe they are still turds.
Idk. Ultimately I am giving this four stars because I think writing a novel still seems impossible and to skillfully plot and put one together just impresses me, so there's three stars for that, and then this is a book by a trans man about a trans man and that is a solid gold star for me, all other issues aside.
I look forward to their next work and trust that they are digging in and gaining insight through this book's complicated reception.
I've had some astrology recommend recently I look into my heritage, and so I am lazily snooping around in it and this book was fun to read. There is aI've had some astrology recommend recently I look into my heritage, and so I am lazily snooping around in it and this book was fun to read. There is a photograph of a Twelfth Century Norwegian chess set and pictures of old tools and graves. ...more
Sarah Leavitt's mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer's and Sarah tries to keep track and take note of the procesAw, wow. What a beautiful piece of work.
Sarah Leavitt's mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer's and Sarah tries to keep track and take note of the process. She begins a bit late, perhaps, for the reader, who wished she could have known Midge a little more before the Alzheimer's began. Nevertheless, I found myself shocked several times by what Leavitt had managed to communicate, depth of feeling-wise, with tools you maybe wouldn't assume could get such a job done: these scratchy little hard awful drawings; these extraordinarily mundane vulnerabilities, humiliations; a woman I never knew at all.
She manages it, though. This is a very true story, it's almost a graphic pathography? It's incredible....more
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