In Search of Moby Dick: The Quest for the White Whale

an ethno-cultural-historio-contemporary-travel adventure kinda book

by Tim Severin

Pretty exciting and educational, especially the descriptions of the specialized hunting skills of the islanders Severin stays and speaks with. I appreciate that Severin isn't out to discredit Melville but to sort fact from fiction in the quest for determining if such a whale, or whales, such as Moby Dick existed, through his investigation of the various ways in which these whales have come to reside in maritime history, myth and legend, and the public imagination.

Severin is also interested in how Melville developed the tale of Moby Dick, how he arrived at/gleaned information and experience that informed the novel. As far as his encounters with and relationship to the islanders, Severin's writing comes across as mostly objective, respectful, allowing people, environments and situations to speak for themselves, in a sense...

Written in 2000, it's interesting, and disheartening, to consider how things have changed in the last 9 years that seemed to have negatively, rather than beneficially, impacted the islands' inhabitants and their cultures, particularly the loss of the substantial food source afforded by hunting whales. While local governments have been banning hunting and promoting whale watching instead, what efforts have been made to replace the loss of food and bartering material whales had provided?

In addition to how government changes are effecting/re-shaping these cultures, there have been fewer and fewer whales frequenting the waters around the islands in recent years...

Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her

I always heard that Nancy Drew was written by a guy. After reading this, I have learned that while that is partially true, it's not the whole story. Nancy Drew was an idea generated by a male publisher who wrote a bunch of treatments, then hired a writer to flesh out the stories. She developed the characters and followed the plot outlines creating by the male publisher but actually wrote the books herself. She was on a schedule where she wrote about one a month for a long time. While the books were credited to Carolyn Keene, they were actually a collaboration. Carolyn Keene never existed. They were total hits and they kept doing it for years. Then the publisher guy died. His daughter took over his publishing industry, which was kind of unheard of at the time, and kept the arrangement going. This book follows her success as a female CEO on a publishing empire and I kind of skipped over that part because I'm not really interested in females-in-business as feminist-success-story. Still it's pretty cool that this happened and totally interesting in light of the character "Nancy Drew". Later on another woman starting writing the books. Also at some point the early books were re-written, so that while the books you may have read in the 70s were probably the same books your mom may have read in the 50's, the books your mom read were Not the same as the books your grandma read, even though they were titled the same--so there are multiple versions of the same title depending on the year they were published.
If that all sounds confusing, yet interesting, then read the book! It can be done in one or two evenings, especially if you skip over the boring parts.
Writing style is not compelling and the author isn't strong on analysis but if you don't know this history and are a Nancy Drew fan, it's pretty satisfying on that level alone. I'm just excited to discover that Nancy Drew was a frankenstein creation whose character was influenced by several different independent women.

The Hours

So, if you read my other post, you are probably not surprised that I did go ahead and read this one--rather than Mrs. Dalloway again... I don' know how I feel about it. I kind of HATE the writing style--it takes a lot of liberties with the narration and since it's based on 1. history and 2. another novel it seems a little disrespectful with its representations.

There's also a few contrived spots--like there is this whole part about winning a Pulitzer Prize, and then it won the Pulitzer Prize. There's a scene where Meryl Streep the actress is spotted by "Clarissa" in New York and then a few years later, Meryl Streep plays the character Clarissa in the movie version of the novel. Those things really annoyed me, but ok, might not be the fault of the author per se.

I guess what I like is that it's a meditation on death, mortality and suicide. So it's the themes I'm drawn to more than the writing-style or work itself.

George Pelecanos

I never read crime fiction. In fact, I hadn't read any type of fiction for years. Then I watched The Wire. It was an obsession. Consumed, I watched the entire series in a few weeks. I devoted entire Sundays to it. Then it was over. My free time was too free. It became indeterminate, homogeneous, empty and anxious. Thankfully, Steve Dore recommended George Pelecanos.

George Pelecanos was a writer/producer on The Wire. He writes crime fiction set in DC. Its a lot like The Wire; realist stories of people- mostly men- caught in social, civic and institutional decay. His writing style is taught and mesmerizing. He also has stellar taste in music, which plays a significant contextual element in his work.

So, now I've got a new Sunday routine. I read a George Pelecanos book. I've read nearly everyone in Brighton Hove library. They have all been good. Some, like The Night Gardener, The Turnaround and Hard Revolution, have been superb.

Update. Today I'm reading Pelecanos' Hell To Pay. Here is an example of his themes and style:

Friends, relatives, police and print and broadcast media heavily attended Joe Wilder's showing at a funeral parlor near the old Posin's Deli on Georgia Avenue. At one point, traffic had been rerouted on the stripe to accommodate the influx of cars. Except for a few aquaintances and a couple of black plainclothes homicide men assigned to the case, few came to pay their respects to Lorenze Wilder on the other side of town.

The boy and his uncle were buried the next day in Glenwood Cemetary in Northeast, not far from where they had been murdered.

Because of the numbing consistency of the murder rate, and because lower-class black life held little value in the media's eyes, the violent deaths of young black men and women in the District of Columbia had not been deemed particularly newsworthy for the past fifteen years. Murders of young blacks rarely made the lead-off in the TV news and were routinely buried inside the Metro section of the Washington Post, the details consisting of a paragraph or two at best, the victims often unidentified, the follow-up nil.

Suburban liberals plastered Free Tibet stickers on the bumpers of their cars, seemingly unconcerned that just a few short miles from the White House, American children were enslaved in nighmare neighborhoods, living amid gunfire and drugs and attending dilapidated public schools. The nation was outraged at high school shootings in white neighborhoods, but young black men and women were murdered without fanfare in the nations capital every single day.

The shooting death of Joe Wilder, though, was different. Like a few high-profile cases over the years, it involved the death of an innocent child. For a few days after the homicide, the Wilder murder was the lead story on the local television news and made top-of-the-fold Metro as well. Even national politicians jumped into the fray, denouncing the culture of violence in the inner cities. As the witness at the ice-cream shop had mentioned the loud rap music coming from the open windows of the shooter's car, these same politicians had gone on to condemn those twin chestnuts, hip-hop and Hollywood. At no time did these bought-and-sold politicians mention the conditions that created that culture, or the handguns, as easily available as a carton of milk, that had killed the boy.

Virginia Woolf's Nose: Essays on Biography

So I picked this one up the other day...reflecting on why I keep reading biographies and memoirs...it also ties into my current examination of Virginia Woolf. Hermione Lee has written several prestigious full length biographies and she also wrote Biography: A Very Short Introduction --so she is clearly an expert on the subject. Her essay about Virginia Woolf reflects a complex understanding of the medium.
She starts off with the claim that biography is fiction. Her opening sentence plainly states,"Biography is a process of making up or making over". Secondly, she notes that facts are facts and do indeed exist and can be uncovered and documented. To illustrate her point she recalls an experience where a minor event in her life was once recounted (incorrectly) in another person's biography. Realizing that this tiny experience of having a moment in her life misrepresented is just a microcosm of what those who are 'biographised' experience on a much larger scale, she notes that biography is often felt as a betrayal by the living subject --and/or for those whose lives intersect with someone who has been biographised. She then quotes Ted Hughes as having once said "I hope each one of us owns the facts of his or her own life".
She writes:

"No wonder that such strong emotions of blame and anger can circulate around biography, or that it is likely to be seen, in the worst cases, as a form of betrayal. For those with an investment in a life-story (whether as relatives, descendants, friends lovers, colleagues, admirers, scholars or devoted readers) a kind of despair can be felt if what's judged to be an inauthentic version of the life gains currency and prevails."

She goes on to explore Virginia Woolf's life-story by reflecting on The Hours, in both movie and book form.
I was really fascinated by The Hours when I saw it, which was troubling because I didn't think it was that great of a movie. Still, I have watched it several times and think of it often. There are some kind of bad parts in it-- I actually think the whole movie is kind of a mess--yet still, despite the bad acting and melodrama, it captivates me as a profound meditation on suicide, life and mortality. I have read Mrs. Dalloway twice and yet it is The Hours that is stuck in my head. This is kind of a drag, honestly, and I feel a nagging urge to keep re-reading it until it is rectified.
Reading Lee's essay, I am reminded that The Hours was based on a novel by Michael Cunningham that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999. I never read it. I'm thinking I should, but will probably just read Mrs. Dalloway again. First I will finish this essay by Hermione Lee and probably search out more of her writing on Woolf.

Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill

my favorite living writer has a new book of short stories out. i've read several of the stories multiple times but haven't finished them all. some great stuff in this one. she just keeps getting better. i don't know how to evaluate fiction for a blog. maybe will write more about it later. just wanted to recommend this for summer reading.

Here's The Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice by Maureen McCormick

there is a rather large pile of books in every room of my apartment, waiting to be read. i am actively reading 3 of them, and sort of procrastinating reading a handful of the rest with others piling up in the meantime. so it is hard to explain why i decided to read this one over the three day weekend, but i did and i enjoyed it. i don't really know why i read this type of thing. i sort of think it's the same reason i watch julia roberts' movies--i like to keep track of popular narratives of femininity, i'm interested in how they function i guess and also sometimes find them entertaining in their absurdity. it all just seems very unreal and extreme. marcia brady, the character, is one of those creations. this book is interesting, in that it gives the woman behind the role of 'marcia marcia marcia' a voice. it goes through all this self-help-type stuff and there is also some jesus involved, but ultimately it is a story about a woman struggling to navigate a career/life in relation to a frozen feminine ideal that she represents. if you are a brady bunch fan, it's also interesting on that level. not a 'great book' or well written or profound, but still comforting to know that behind these flimsy cardboard-cutout versions of 'the perfect woman' there are real women who are profoundly alienated by the ideal they helped create and what it represents. it made me want to read a book written by one of the spice girls. but, no...there is too much on the shelf for that!

Israel, Palestine, Zionism and Anti-Semitism in the aftermath of WWII

I'm currently reading Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Evil. As a German-Jewish, female political theorist, she had a unique perspective on Nazi war crimes during the Holocaust, especially because she was a long-time friend of German philosopher and Nazi Martin Heidegger. Adolf Eichmann was a top Nazi leader who was prosecuted in Israel in 1961 and sentenced to death. His crimes against humanity included the organization of the mass deportation of Jews to concentration camps for extermination between 1940-45. This book was one of the first to look at the concept of evil as an ordinary occurrence. In other words, the genocide of Jews during the Holocaust could not have happened if the atrocities hadn't become a banal part of everyday existence. The Nazi "Final Solution" to exterminate the Jews, as if they were vermin, was systematic, cold-blooded and bureaucratic. Orders were followed without question.

I've read many, many books on the Holocaust and have known Holocaust survivors. I was raised in a traditional Jewish family. I still value my Jewish upbringing, and identify myself culturally as a Jew, but I'm not religious. I've always liked how in Judaism there is an emphasis on social justice and community. I've always been fascinated by the stories of how people survived the Holocaust, perhaps because I know that if my ancestors hadn't immigrated to America around the turn of the 20th century, I might have been sent to a concentration camp. One of the phrases I heard over and over again as a child in regards to the Holocaust was "never again." Never again should something as horrifying and inhumane as the Holocaust occur.

Many Jews escaped to Palestine or moved there upon gaining their freedom from the concentration camps. The formation of the state of Israel in 1948 came about as a way to provide security to the hordes of traumatized Jews. Many countries had turned Jews away during Hitler's regime (including the United States), and so Jews felt they needed a "home" of their own. The demand to create a Jewish homeland had been growing throughout the early 20th century, due to Zionist beliefs. I haven't read a lot on Zionism and only know what I've been told in my family. From what I can gather, Zionism initially was a left-wing labor movement, which grew out of communism and socialism, that advocated for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It didn't have the racist overtones that it has today. I think the original idea was that Jews and Arabs would share the land peacefully. Many secular Jews were attracted to Zionism because it advocated a collective lifestyle through the kibbutz. Even after Israel had been granted statehood and the Israeli-Arab territorial conflicts intensified, the kibbutz was considered an ideal form of living for many American Jews. I had a hippie cousin who went to live on one in the early '70s, and there were Jewish camps for kids in the U.S. at that time that were based on the labor-Zionist/collectivist model.

What has disturbed me deeply, as I've seen radical Zionist views become more nationalistic and racist (i.e.- pro-Israel = anti-Arab), has been the avoidance of many American Jews in dealing with the plight of Palestinians and Arab Americans. The tunnel vision of many American Jews understandably arose after the Holocaust. I don't think people who haven't experienced the Holocaust first or second hand, or who haven't read a lot about it, can understand how traumatizing it was to the Jewish people. There is such a huge fear of being abandoned, of having no place to call home, because so many governments preferred to see Jews die in the gas chambers than become citizens in their countries. So the state of Israel represents the survival of an entire group of people. Unfortunately, many American Jews think there are many Arab countries who would take Palestinian Arabs in if needed. And that's exactly what disturbs me. Diaspora, or the displacement of a group of people, is never a positive experience.

On top of this, there has been an increase in anti-Semitism against Muslims. Anti-Semitism is a term usually meant to signify discrimination against Jews; it has now come to represent racial prejudice against any Semitic group, including Arabs (although this is still debatable - see my comment). I recall one especially upsetting experience - I called the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and B'nai B'rith to ask what I could do to stop the discrimination of Arab Americans after 9/11. In my mind, "never again" applied to all groups of people, not just the Jews. I was shocked when I was told they couldn't help me.

After seeing photos of Arab prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib, I tried again to see how I could work with these Jewish groups to stop the inhumanity. I saw the photos of Iraqis being tortured and immediately thought of the photos I had seen as a young girl of Jews in Auschwitz. I read the news accounts of the Arab prisoners' experiences - systematic, cold-blooded and bureaucratic. Those who carried out water boarding, abuse and psychological terrorism were just following orders. One woman I spoke to told me these Jewish groups couldn't help because to do so would be to show support to Arabs and that would mean they weren't supporting Israel. I don't see things so black and white. Why does being pro-human rights mean choosing sides in the Middle Eastern conflict? Both groups are supposedly humanitarian and in support of civil rights for all.

In the intervening years, as Israeli terrorism has increased against innocent Palestinian civilians, and more stories of the tortures at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay have come to light, I've been appalled. So I've been spending a lot of time in contemplation around the issues of discrimination and tolerance. Unfortunately, some people think the U.S. is in cahoots with Israeli terrorists and radical Zionist groups, and therefore American Jews must be behind Israeli terrorism and anti-Semitism against Arabs. This seems far-fetched to me, but I can understand the thought process that would make these connections, given all that's transpired since WWII. What's even worse is that anti-Semitism against Jews is on the rise and people are reverting back to old stereotypes of Jews, especially because of the economic downturn (i.e. - "the banking industry is run by Jews", "Jews are greedy capitalists", etc.). So now we have increased anti-Semitism in America against Arabs AND Jews. Who does that benefit? Are we just doing as we're told or are we thinking for ourselves?

Below are videos showing different points of views on the current Middle East situation and Zionism by two contemporary philosophers, Bernard-Henri Lévy and Slavoj Žižek.

more vampire nonsense

if you've been following what i've been reading, then you'll remember i read the first two twilight books awhile back...i didn't like the second book as much as the first, which i enjoyed reading but didn't think was actually good...so i didn't buy the next one as it's STILL not out in paperback yet...it took about 9 months to get them from the library...so i just read the last two books and while i enjoyed reading them, i now feel my brain is full of ketchup rather than blood. i needed to read crap for awhile i guess. i'm gonna try to get back on track. i'm reading a bunch of non-fiction really slowly...and am about to try and blast through a research project on the IWW so it might be awhile before i have anything to report. i'm also really immersed in the greenwood histories of modern nations series (currently reading about the history of spain and el salvador) as well as the "a very short introduction" books. i picked one up on post-colonialism that is excellent. also been slowly reading chick flicks (thanks kanako) and need to get back to feminism and war, i've only ready about four chapters in that one. the vampire books really messed my brain up. i was sidetracked. i'm gonna go read some virginia woolf to cleanse.

I'm writing something about band logos, specifically in punk and hardcore. (I'd appreciate any suggestions...) This is what I've been reading:

This Ain't the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk - Steven Waksman

Still working on this but it has great and detailed sections on the Runaways, Black Flag, the SST label vibe/the move from Damaged to My War, Iggy & the Stooges... It does get a little ridiculously analytical in places - even for me - and I have a pretty high tolerance for such.

Radio Silence: A Selected Visual History of American Hardcore Music by Nathan Nederostek and Anthony Pappalardo

Lots of great pictures and examples of graphic design, but most of the text is about the music and music scene and not as zeroed-in on visual style as I'd hoped. But there's a great little essay
in here about the Minor Threat "Salad Days" 45 pointing out how the band photos on the back portray the members involved in the culture of being in a DIY hardcore band rather than the spectacle... ie laying out a record cover, practicing in the basement, talking to people at shows...

"Crypto Logo Jihad: Black Metal and the Aesthetics of Evil" - Daniel van der Velden
Article about the unreadability of death metal band logos.
PDF here

Also, a while ago I also read this amazing article, "Jews, punk and the Holocaust: from the Velvet Underground to the Ramones – the Jewish-American story" by Jon Stratton which ties the nihilism in early punk and proto-punk (Velvet Underground, Stooges, Ramones, etc) to this generation - Jews and non-Jews - dealing with the Holocaust. "today your love - tommorrow the world..." (Popular Music, 2005, 24)

White Bicycles by Joe Boyd

White Bicycles, Joe Boyd's memoir, has been on my reading list since it was published in 2006. Finally, several coincidences motivated me to check the book out from the library a week ago. I just finished it. It was an entertaining and enjoyable read, although not "the best book about music I've read in years" as the Eno cover quote states.

If you aren't familiar with Joe Boyd, he was a music producer, manager, promoter and all-around mover and shaker in the sixties. He got his start as a Harvard-educated New England folkie and blues/jazz buff, booking tours and serving as production manager for the Newport Jazz and Folk Festivals, then ran the UFO Club and Witchseason Productions in London. Some of the musicians and bands, among the many, with whom he's been involved in some capacity include: Geoff & Maria Muldaur, Lonnie Johnson, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Coleman Hawkins, Bob Dylan, Paul Butterfield & Mike Bloomfield, Tomorrow, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Move, Nico & John Cale, Shirley Collins, Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and Nick Drake.

The title of the book is a reference both to Tomorrow's single "My White Bicycle" and to the white bicycles used by the Dutch Provo group (Tomorrow's song is itself a reference to the Dutch Provos). Tomorrow were a great '60s psychedelic rock band who had a 1967 hit with a song titled "Revolution" - the band included Steve Howe who went on to Yes and Twink who went on to the Pretty Things & Pink Fairies. The Provos, a radical collective who gained seats on the Amsterdam city council in the mid-'60s, initiated a free transportation service using bicycles. The bicycles were painted white so users would know which ones were free to use.

Boyd's self-stated ambition was to be an "éminence grise", a powerful decision-maker who operates under the radar or as a middle-man. The book documents his role in bringing people together, setting up deals for tours and records, making music and even producing the documentary film Jimi Hendrix. He was a shrewd businessman in addition to being a pivotal force in radical, underground '60s music culture. More than anything, he wanted his musician friends to have Top 40 hits and they often got them. I was more interested in the music than the business side of his life, but I learned a lot about the music business I never really understood before. He worked at a time when major labels were smaller and both labels and musicians were interested in taking risks on how music was made, produced and distributed. According to Boyd, "In our glorious optimism, we believed that 'when the mode of music changes, the walls of the city shake.'... Today, when the mode of music changes, the walls of the city are covered in corporate ads sponsoring superficially subversive artists." Boyd goes into great detail so that his life story stands out dynamically.

The book's chapters are fragments of memory told through long and colorful anecdotes. Boyd takes us on a journey through pivotal moments in music history while recounting his experiences. There is a somewhat chronological flow as Boyd moves through his years in New England and on to his time in '60s Swinging London and early '70s Los Angeles. His years booking bands with John Hopkins (Hoppy) at the UFO Club come across as exciting, just as one would guess. Hoppy, a Cambridge Univ. graduate, started the London Free School in 1965 with Barry Miles, who owned the Indica Gallery and Bookshop, and the next year they co-founded the underground UK paper International Times. Hoppy and Miles helped organize The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream, a 1967 happening/benefit for IT that was documented in Peter Whitehead's film Tonite Let's All Make Love in London. I watched clips from the movie for the first time on YouTube recently and was astounded. Afterwards I did some research and realized Hoppy and Boyd had co-founded the UFO Club. The UFO Club, which opened in Dec. 1966 with Pink Floyd (back when Syd Barett was in the band) and films by Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger, became the center of underground music and culture in London until its close in Oct. 1967. There were often light shows, similar to the Fillmore. Even AMM played at the UFO Club. According to Boyd, "Yoko Ono [who had previously exhibited at the Indica Gallery in 1966] cast her Bottoms movie mostly from UFO audiences, who signed up for it in a book by the door."

While living in England, Boyd often flew back to the U.S. for music business. One of these trips was to attend Woodstock with the Incredible String Band, whom he produced and managed. After a string of disappointments, he moved to L.A. in 1971 after he was hired by Warner Bros. to produce music for film. While there he had his first and only #1 hit, as the producer for "Dueling Banjos" from Deliverance. He makes light of his successes, taking an honest stock of his legacy, by describing the many mistakes he's made along the way. He seems to have a clear and pragmatic perspective, which I found inspiring. Boyd doesn't succumb to sentimental nostalgia.

Intertwined in the flow are mentions of his connections with notable sixties figures, such as Richard Alpert (Alpert, later Ram Dass, was a psychologist at Harvard when Boyd met him). Altering his consciousness played an important part of Boyd's life, it seems, because he mentions getting stoned in almost every chapter. It got to the point where I had to laugh, because I realized this was a reflection not so much of Boyd but of the sixties. Towards the end of the book, Boyd takes a serious turn in discussing how drugs and alcohol were abused. I could feel his sorrow over the deaths of Hendrix, Sandy Denny and Nick Drake (who Boyd surmises died from an accidental overdose of anti-depressants). Boyd recognizes he's lucky when he writes that he "disproved at least one sixties myth: I was there, and I do remember."

Hopes Dies Last

I've heard several interviews with the late radio host, commentator and oral historian Studs Terkel. I've also read several articles about him. So I knew he was a good egg. (Admitedly, I would think that from the name alone- which sounds like a character from the Preston Sturges film- and from his friendly mug)





















But, despite having his autobiography in storage, I had never read anything by him until last week when I read Hope Dies Last.

Hope Dies Last is an oral history of the idea of hope. It was published during some of the darkest days of the Bush administration. When Bush was at the height of his popularity. The USA was just about to invade Iraq, the Senate was rubber stamping Bush's legistlation etc. It was a time of little hope for anyone on the Left. Studs book was an attempt at intervened to dispell this hopelessness. This is why its subtitled Making a Difference in an Indifferent World.

It would be impossible to summarize Studs oral history. Impossible to summarize how all the remarkable people he interviews perserve to make a difference in an indifferent world. He interviews so many remarakble people who have done remarkable things in an indifferent world from many organizer's, to Pete Seeger, to teachers to citizens of Japanese origin internee in US concentration camps during world war II etc. etc. He also interviews a truly repellant human being-- the man who dropped the atomic bombs on Japan and shows a twisted sort of pride at the murder of tens of thousands.

Now there is a different president in Washington. One that is better then the Bush administration in many important ways. But his administration is still fucking up the world with its horrendous economic policy. An economic policy that as David Harvey points out is strengthening the capitalist class instead of bailing out the people who are loosing their homes. This president speaks of the audacity of hope. And I can't help but think that when Obama was an organizer in Chicago he was influenced by the discourse of hope of Studs and his interviewees. But the big difference is that Obama speaks hope as audacious in-itself. Studs and the remarkable people he interviews, see it as a necessary means, a source of inspiration for making the world a better place.

Read this book. Don't just take it from me. Take it from Studs.

Let Me Stand Alone, The Journals of Rachel Corrie

Let Me stand Alone

In my mind you are still 23.
Trapped in your youth by death.

Today you would have turned
30 had you not stood

with hope

in the way
of a CAT bulldozer
using your thin
blonde frame
to stop
the demolition
of the Nasrallah family's home.

You wedged yourself
between destruction
and life.
that makes sense
to me
but not to the driver
who drove over your body
cracked your spine
and murdered you.


Your diary was given to me
by your family. They wanted
to share
who you are.

were.

I read your words and watched you grow.

this poem you wrote when you were 11
hung me out to dry:

There are few things which have
the pride and the shyness of a soft, wet trillium

I know you would be different now.
An even greater, more brilliant writer
activist
neighbor.

I string together this shitty poem
for you. In honor of your big 30.

you love
i mean
loved poetry

we miss you

"Letter To My Daughter" by Maya Angelou

Maya's life is mostly behind her now. Having lived a uniquely amazing life thus far as an brilliant storyteller, writer, feminist, activist, and pillar in the civil rights movement, she felt it important to share her knowledge with her daughters, "...I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish-speaking, Native American and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you." Considering all her life experience she patches together a crazy quilt of "flash non fiction" memories and learned lessons. I read this book in one sitting. I found it uplifting and full of love. I've never had a mom that has written to me more then two simple sentences, until now. I appreciate how Maya evolves mothering and family to include me and you. She shares her innermost lessons, sets her side of the story straight, tells of intimate details of her past, and does it all while holding you warmly with her words. Thanks MOM! And HAPPY BIRTHDAY! (April 4, also MLK's assassination)

Resexing Militarism for the Globe by Zillah Eisenstien

Kanako's Notes (the personal is the political):

1989. 3 pm, One dry hot day in Ft. Bliss TX, one of the worlds largest army bases, stuck between the south side of El Paso and northern slums of Juarez MX, is where my dad pulled the car over because Taps was playing over the base's loud speakers. He saluted towards the location of the post's 500 sq ft American Flag in his heavy camos leaving the engine running, the driver's door open and me and my sisters and our brother in the car. This happened everyday but on Sunday. No matter what any uniformed officer was doing, when taps was playing they all had to stop and salute in silence. Anyway, this one dry hot day my dad, after saluting to the flag that we couldn't even see from where we were mind you, bragged, " The Military is the first place that people from all races could work as equals, women too. I work with black, Mexican, Korean, all kinds of people. Isn't that neat?" I rolled my eyes and smashed my forehead against the car window until it hurt a little and stared at my weirdly angled reflection, my fist pressed against my chin, one eye squinted shut, and a big ol' frown on my lips. I knew deep inside that there was a catch. That getting to work for this army sucked hard and that most of my friends parents joined because they were broke and it was the best possible solution to their disenfranchised lives. I also didn't (this is my 14 year old brain) think this shit was equal for women, they were totally out numbered and not allowed to fight on the front lines as of yet.

Eisenstien breaks women's "equality" in the military down in her article like this, "Women in the military may make the military look more democratic as though women now have the same choices as men...(but) this is because there is less democracy, if democracy means choice and opportunity...this stage of patriarchy often requires women to join the army in order to find a paying job or a way to get an education..."

Eisenstien then goes on to break down some percentages of women in uniform. The largest percentage of women present in a current military are Nepalese women in the Maoist movemen (30 percent). I personally support armed resistance against violent oppressors, especially for women, I'm not sure where Eisenstien stands on that one.

Eisenstien then briefly touches on the fact that in Iraq, so many men are held hostage by US forces that women now must do men's work and attributes the fact that women lead many city councils now in Rwanda due to the massacres.

Eisenstien goes on to inform us that reports of domestic violence and sexual abuse from military families doubled after 9/11.

Zillah dissects the way war is masculinzed, preached as by dudes for dudes... then states, "If we give up the fixedness of both sex and gender then we are left to examine the changeability of sexing gender and gendering sex. This does not erase sex of gender but rather demands an accounting of their politicized contextual meanings...the practices of gender will change even though the authorized essentialized views of femininity and manliness can remain static", in relationship to the way women participate.

Zillah also investigates how the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are sold to the masses partly by being marketed as a way to "liberate" the women there. Zillah calls bullshit on that notion, since the women there are now dead or with less/no ability to move about and I'm as freaked out by her the way "feminist" notions where appropriated by the US killer's marketing machine to pull the blinders on folks. I would also like to add that the environmental toxification of the Iraq and Afghanistan's peoples' homeland by these attacks are irrevocable and that these women and their children's health will suffer indefinitely.

The section on rape in war made me barf. Eisenstien describes the way in many cultures how the victim of rape is shamed/blamed after the heinous attack and the act also affects the women's father and brother by emasculating them. Eisenstien explains "The enemy nation is demasculinized while the victor is remasculinized." Then Eisenstien gives a slew of statistics such as "Over 500,000 girls and women were raped in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Tens of thousands of girls and women have been raped in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, and East Timore...at least 37 service women had sought sexual trauma counseling from civilian rape crisis organization after returning from war duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait."

Patriarchy, suicide bombers, and war

In this section Zillah describes the the way female suicide bombers are judged differently then men, i.e. "It is assumed that politics cannot sufficiently describe the action of women so there must be something else to the story, some other reason for their action. So their acts are described as ones of 'personal despair'...Whereas male suicide bombers are explained in terms of 'psychosis of martyrdom' given the ...'hopelessness of deeply stagnant societies,' female bomber as explained in terms of jilted love, and failed marriages." Zillah thinks this double standard is inappropriate and believes "The female suicide bomber denies traditional gender essentialism; she denies hetero-normative gender in its usual construction."

Zillah is aware of the complexities and differences that exists within a race or a gender, but when a brown women is on a poster for air force advertisement she becomes a "decoy for imperial and fascistic democracy." Eisenstien ends by stating, "Domestic violence and sexual rape are gendered constellations of a politics of war and terror. So are the new diverse gender expressions of women lives in all colors. Without naming and seeing these new configurations of racial and sexual inequities, the resexing and gendering of war cannot be uncovered in its newest forms. Until then the bartering of democracy in the name of women's rights and freedom will continue to mask the destruction of democratic possibilities."

Punk Rock: An Oral History by John Robb

i have read about two hundred pages of this in the past week and i have to say, it's one for the fans!

you don't get a lot of second-hand analysis of what it all meant, but rather a reflective play by play account of how it all went down by those who were there.

in case you don't know who john robb is, he was in the membranes, this is about the english punk scene...

as with any oral history, my favorite part is listening to those involved track their influences. studying aesthetic lineages in punk is one of my favorite pastimes. it involves hours of research and hanging out, studying the private record collections of people who have been around longer than you, asking them questions, listening to how they discovered what means the most to them and learning how what they unearthed evolved into their own art and how it provided them with the tools to create a meaningful existence and try to change things via participation...to be more than a consumer...to realize your place in history....that history forms you ...and then to try and use that same methodology to impact future history...to use being in a band or making a fanzine as a way to create the world you want to exist...and to recognize that this is totally possible because it has happened before and it will happen again.

there is something i miss about the pre-internet times. people used to come over and hang out because i have a lot of records and they were interested in the stories behind them. now i post anecdotes online for whoever to read, but i am less upfront in some ways, because who wants to share intimate details and acquired knowledge with faceless strangers? i used to have entire friendships based on talking about records. now it seems like people are vultures, waiting to get 'your list' so they can go home and secretly download it and wait to mention it to you again after they have read the wikipedia page!!!! like, 'hey have you heard this'...hmmmm, maybe (quickly google) then they come up with some kind of 'informed anecdote' and formulate an opinion based on being indifferent and detached...i feel like people are so dismissive these days. i hear people dismiss the sex pistols (johnny rotten, so amazing!) or subway sect (Vic fucking Godard!!) or the damned (the Captain!) or sham 69 (jimmy pursey's first sentence in this book: I Was Born Punk!!!!!) or generation x (Tony James!) or the ramones or patti smith even and i'm like, seriously get over yourself! what Do YOU LIKE? duran duran? donovan? the shirelles? i like (some of) that shit too, but it does not compare to punk! i mean, if they are young kids in groups starting their own scene then this would be a healthy rebellion, but most usually they aren't. they are just consumers who aren't in bands. or if they are in bands, they don't challenge the status quo, they uphold it. that's not punk. it's poser.

i'm not saying that pop music isn't ever transformative or meaningful...but it is punk that gives us an entry point into the culture. pop keeps us on the outside looking in, fulfilling our prescribed roles as consumers...fans. punk demands that we act and question 'the way things are'...to get out of the audience and destroy the stage! at its worst it's cacophony and aimless, ignorant rebellion. at its best a means of active resistance, a meaningful life, community, participation. you win whether it's good or bad then, innit. as a style it might be tedious, but as a method it's always fresh because it allows the dispossessed, often in the form of the kid, to intervene in the world (i.e. start a band) however they see fit at the moment they are alive.

anyhow, there are still aesthetic evolutions, but they are less linear and the chronology is sorta confusing, in that anyone can reference any tradition from any time period sorta instantly....which is really overwhelmingly exciting yet simultaneously so daunting as to make you not even care enough to try...well that is sometimes how it makes me feel. i wrote about this recently, but who cares how many mp3s you have on your hard drive if you can't even listen to them? the upside is we get these extreme trends like all the awesome screamers-influenced bands of the early 2000's. but sometimes it just comes off like pastiche or tribute bands.

and what will future oral histories have to tell us?

"I remember when that one blog said bla bla bla and then I downloaded bla bla bla and that's how it all started"

boring.

so this book is reminding me that the stories and how we tell them to each other are what it's all about....if we don't do anything except check email or listen to 'demos' on myspace and watch everything on youtube and occasionally see people we know at 'the bar' then really, what is happening?

i want to use the internet for storytelling, i try to do that, but it seems like people are looking for instant gratification rather than impact. i have a lot to say, all the time about everything...i want it to sink in. i think books are best for that kind of storytelling. but friendships can be good for that as well...

"remember that time we all drove to portland to see unwound and then the car broke down.... and someone had a gun in the back yard and the cops came.... and then your mom got pissed because we were late but she didn't know that we lied to her... and then i bought the zero's record but left it at the 3rd street house and then the frumpies wrote that single based on 'cosmetic couple'..." etc so much better than 'remember when we checked our email and then went to work and then went to the bar and then came home and checked our email again'.

i like the idea of doing stuff just so that you can have something to remember later...that has always worked for me as a motivating factor. pretend your life is a movie and you are a fictional character. that is what this book is reminding me...the difference between real life and a mediated, virtual existence. punk to me=real life living. to be alive, to be open, to care enough to fuck shit up.

oh, and that i fucking love the clash:

let fury have the hour/anger can be power...don't you know that you can use it?



WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO NOW!?!???

library books

Two new books arrived for me today through interlibrary loan. This is what I am hoping to be reading in the next couple weeks:

Networking Futures: The Movements Against Corporate Globalization - Jeffrey Juris

and

Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists and Vacant-Lot Gardeners Are Inventing the Future Today - Chris Carlsson

http://www.networkingfutures.com

http://www.processedworld.com/carlsson/nowtopian/

Girls Like US

hi i just started reading this over the weekend, the only good thing about being sick is getting around to all those books stacked up next to the bed. so far it's really interesting despite the human interest feature writing style. probably more to say later.

A Vocabulary for Feminist Praxis by Angela Davis (Feminism and War, CH1)

here are my notes on chapter one,a vocabulary for feminist praxis: on war and radical critique by angela davis. i am paraphrasing some of her language here without decoding, please let me know if there are terms that you don't know the definitions of and i can try and help with that, chapter one notes:

how can feminism help us meet the challenge we face in translating widespread dissent against the wars in the middle east into 'a sustained movement that can effectively counter the imperial belligerence of the USA'?

-the school of feminism she belongs to is interested in questioning the 'tools we use' to critique and transform. this tradition comes from social movements against racism, imperialism and supports labor struggles, etc

"it is now important to imagine a world without xenophobia and the fenced borders designed to make us think of people in and from a southern region outside the USA as the enemy. it is now important to imagine a world in which binary conceptions of gender no longer govern modes of segregation and association, and one in which violence is eradicated from state practices as well as from our intimate lives--from heterosexual and same sex relationships" she adds that we must also imagine 'a world without war'.

next claim: idealism is necessary, but not enough.

in her version of feminism:

"Feminist critical habits involve collective intervention as well. The feminist critical impulse, if we take it seriously, involves a dual commitment to use knowledge in a transformative way, and to use knowledge to remake the world so that it is better for its inhabitants--not only for human beings, for all its living inhabitants. This commitment entails an obstinate refusal to attribute a permanency to that which exists in the present, simply because it exists. This commitment simultaneously drives us to examine the conceptual and organizing tools we use, not to take them for granted" (20)

Claim: this version is more radical than the imperialist Laura Bush version.

This more radical feminism is a feminism

-that does not capitulate to possessive individualism

-that does not assume that democracy requires capitalism

-that is bold and willing to take risks

-that fights for women's rights while simultaneously recognizing the pitfalls of the formal 'rights' structure of capitalist democracy

this means we are not fighting for the equal rights for women to fight and die in war or to torture, but that we can advocate for the equal right of men and women to refuse to participate in the military. we can fight to dismantle the military machine as part of our feminism.

next she asks:
what is the relationship between individual and collective accomplishments? she claims it is a mistake to view the career success of someone like C. Rice as a collective success for feminism

at the top of page 22 she talks about emphasizing "feminist methodologies" rather than abstractions. she is talking about 'woman' as an abstraction, referring to the racist, classist feminism of the 20th century that isolated gender from race, class, nation, sexuality--as if that is even possible. she is suggesting that we need to emphasize the practical application as grounded in the material, historicized realities of women's lives as they are lived. no one is female without having a race or class identity, so why theorize as if that is the case? it results in universalizing a privileged experience, as those who are racially privileged do not have to examine 'whiteness' in order to survive, those who are materially privileged to not have to examine'richness' in order to pay rent, etc.

she then encourages us to "inhabit contradictions" and discover "what is productive about those contradictions". i wish she would give an example here of what this would look like. any ideas?

her next assertion is the most compelling to me. in comparing the Vietnam War era to our current era, she uses the My Lai massacre and Haditha as examples, she claims that it is not enough to assume that things would change if we could simply get the truth out to enough people. she recognizes that with embedded journalists, it is true that we are not seeing pictures of the atrocities to the same degree that people were during vietnam, but using the photos of abu ghraib as an example, she argues that it is a mistake to assume our project is to simply get the right information out there to the american public. she ties this mistaken assumption to a critique of the enlightenment. tracing this problem back to philosopher Immanuel Kant, she writes "the problem to which I am referring emanates from the assumption that rational communication and publicity are sufficient".

so, if we agree that it's not enough to get the truth out to the public, because the truth will not have the necessary impact on u.s. foreign policy, then what is to be done?

hmmm. she talks about the reaction people had to images of torture at Abu Ghraib asking 'how could this happen' thinking this is an aberration, rather than being consistent with U.S. foreign and domestic policy. we are asking the wrong questions then?

she then goes back to claim that as feminists, we must be vigilant in our critique of "conceptual tools". i take this to mean she is asking us to engage in a sustained critique of enlightenment thinking (as her earlier mention of 'equal rights' also seems to evoke)....but if people don't know the history of political philosophy or western intellectual history, they don't know what this means exactly--quickly, this is the point in history when Reason replaced God. she is saying that the intellectual tradition that stems from the enlightenment is giving us the wrong conceptual tools, that we can't count on people to be rational and do the right thing once they know 'the truth' about the war in Iraq. Her example of Abu Ghraib then is useful: once people know what happened, they still don't see the big picture. how do we get them to see the big picture? Is that even the goal in her view?

She claims we must make connections between what happened at Abu Ghraib and what happens in US prisons domestically. I would guess the history of US use of torture in Latin America should be examined. we should see this as an example of the continuation of the policy in service of the project of empire. we can't assume the general public to know this history. but if they did, would anything change? according to her critique of Kant, no. so then, what is the point?

her solution seems to be that we need to be vigilant and "engage in constant criticism". but what is the goal of criticism and intellectual vigilance if
the truth and rationalism have no connection to how we act? is that what she is claiming? or is she saying that assuming that being rational=being ant-war is a false assumption? i really am not sure.

i think she is discussing ideology and the role of consciousness in social change without using that language overtly, but i am not sure what her claim is here exactly.

she also asks feminists to constantly critique "democracy", "diversity", individualism and to recognize the role of US ideology in promoting an imperialist agenda that is at odds with radical feminism.

an example of what she means is given when she suggests that violence against women needs to go beyond a discussion of violence between individuals and include state violence, torture, prison violence and capital punishment

she concludes by discussing the case of Assata Shakur, a political prisoner who fled to Cuba and wishes to return to the US and asks feminists to "get involved" and to utilize a feminism that engages in a critique of conceptual tools we use to 'enact transformation'.

Feminism and War: Confronting U.S. Imperialism: Introduction

Here are my notes so far, if you are reading along, please let me know if there are any confusing terms that need to be defined and i'll see if i can help decode. this is the starting point of the book, as laid out in the introduction:

-the book came out of a Feminism and War conference in Syracuse University in October 2006

-U.S. military budget at the time: 1/2 Trillion $ a year

-U.S. military casualties at the time: 3000+, Iraqi civilian casualties: 60 a day from bombs or gunfire

"The administration of President George W. Bush had explicitly argued that U.S. intervention argued would promote the cause of women's liberation in those countries (Iraq, Afghanistan), thus claiming a 'feminist' motivation for U.S. military aggression."

-what does it mean that women are being used as a justification/motivation for war?
what are the assumptions here? does feminism support women in the military?
the first footnote of the chapter lists several statements, articles, books by feminists exploring thess questions, starting in 2001, including one by RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan)

the conference (and the book) shows that the relationship between feminism and war is "contested and complex". what are "women's interests"? how do we understand and pursue them? "war" must be examined in term of 'world economic globalization', as a tool of imperialism, etc.

-how is feminism used as justification/legitimacy for imperialism and war? also explore constructions of race, gender, sexuality, class etc in this context

"Given the centrality of US imperial wars in the world today, it is impossible to understand 'feminism and war' on a global scale without understanding the specificities of the racist, hetero-sexist, and masculinized practices and ideologies mobilized by a USA in pursuit of economic and political hegemony" (2)
therefore, the imperial wars in the middle-east should be examined in terms of the recent history of US foreign policy/wars since WW2 (Guatemala, Cuba, Vietnam, El Salvador, Sudan to name a few)

This book intends to examine the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as examples of the US "on rescue missions in the name of democracy and 'civilization'". What does democracy actually mean, given this situation? What is feminism in this setting? What particular forms of racism, colonialism are being enacted here? How are images of sexuality and gender being used to further this agenda? What is the reality of how war is impacting women's lives in these countries? How is the image of the Western female soldier being used to further this agenda? Which females are seen as "helpless" and which as "liberated"? What is the actual reality of what is happening?

Conclusion: feminism needs to have an anti-imperialist, anti-racist lens.

The Sex Revolts by Simon Reynolds and Joy Press

Ok, so I found this book at the library and I was super excited about because it's basically a combination of my two favorite things, punk histories and gender theory, and it's co-written by Simon Reynolds who wrote one of my favorite books Rip it up and Start again so yeah. This book bills itself as gender theory in rock and roll and it's divided into three parts, two about dudes (basically) and one part about ladies. First of all, this book is flamingly hetero-normative which was kind of frustrating. Anyway.

The first part "rebel misogynies" mainly talks about the rebel stereotype, breaking it down into a bunch of sub-rebels I guess. I really liked this part of the book. It covers hyper-masculinity, boastfulness, wanderlust, drugs, warriors, the absence, fear of and marginalisation of women, making connections from beat poets to the rolling stones to 60's garage rock to nick cave. LOTS of talk about oedipal stuff. It was interesting to read about the roles of women in rock through the context of rebel misogyny, as in these are the roles that women play in the music of these dudes.

The second part was more about psychedelic music and "the rebel" tiring of his ways and wanting to return to the womb (serious, SO much of this books ideas are based on oedipal things, however there is absolutely NO reference to the electra complex) At first this part was kind of interesting, but I felt like it quickly devolved into just a really long record review of can and my bloody valentine. It's weird to be reading theory when you can tell which bands the writer is super into and which things they're not. So overall, second part, whatevers.

The third part, which in the intro of the book was basically billed as the female theory part was HORRID. It spends a lot of time talking about female musicians not idolizing females so their music is in turn not female. This theory is stupid. I don't even wanna explain why. It brushes over riot grrrl in a short chapter, basically saying that the content was feminist but the music wasn't female, just a rip off of sixties garage rock, in turn being a ripoff of boy music, so it doesn't really matter. It did have some interesting things to say about the raincoats, and it did give them the crown of "true female music", so that was good, I guess, even though I don't really get or like the idea of "true female music". Basically this part of the book spent a lot of time being like "girls are just ripping off boys" and "girls want to be boys" and past that there wasn't a lot of ideas or theories, or even decent explanations and examples of said theories, just like kind of talking down, then it kind of just turned into a boner fest for suzanne vega, and throwing muses (serious, like two chapters worth on throwing muses). It was written in a way that it was part hugely long dumb record review and part sitting around being like "girls haven't gotten it"

so, in conclusion first part: yes! second part: eh... third part: fuck you.

Hardcore California

i have been staring at this all week, remembering that this is how i found out about a lot of women-in-punk that i had missed out on in the 80's or had little knowledge of...not there is a ton of focus on this in the book, but that there are photographs, names...giving proof that women were a part of hardcore

what i hate about hardcore today, is how women's role in it hasn't seemed to change. you will still find very few female guitar players or singers in hardcore and a whole lot of bass players. there are not that many all female punk bands that are considered to be hardcore, but there continue to be a handful of groups who last for a short time and maybe make a demo tape. there are still a lot of women behind the scenes, putting on shows, taking pictures, putting together zines, cooking dinner for bands and all that.

hardcore reinvents itself over and over and over again, but the formula doesn't change and girls stay on the sidelines.

why?

if girls started to take over hardcore, like they started to take over rock-n-roll in the early 90's, would everyone declare hardcore to be dead and move on to indy, pop, drum and bass, noise or electro-clash? if so, how long would we have to wait for hardcore to be legitimate again? 10 years, 20 years?

torah reading, redux

Here is the beginning of my post. And here is the rest of it.just wanted to give an update on my torah reading. i added a couple books of commentary and am now listening to daily torah commentary podcasts on the same subject as what i am reading that day. it is a crazy discipline to keep up but i find it really interesting and provoking.

Punk rock: so what? edited by Roger Sabin

So this book bills itself as being a collection of essays about the cultural impact of punk, really the majority of the book talks about the sex pistols, which I get, because I realize that they tend to be THE punk band, you know what I mean? Like when mainstream culture thinks of punk they think of them. The problem with that being is I personally haven't really cared about the sex pistols since I was 12. It's interesting to read ideas of how they've influenced contemporary art and film, but at the same time a lot of it reads like a boner for the pistols record review. Oh, and it's a book out of england, so it's more in the context of the culture of england rather than the culture of the U.S. (duh). As far as the essays not about the sex pistols are concerned, a lot of them were really interesting. There were a couple about fashion and all the commodification that came with it, the differences between small town punks and city punks, there was one essay I really liked that talked about racism in punk and how there is this legacy of rock against racism and all that and this mythology that all that late 70's english punk was anti-racist but then has instances and examples of times when those bands or people did say and do fucked up things, and how there are all these anti-racist bands now that are influenced by that time period but how there are bands from that time period who basically started the trend of skinheads listening to punk.
Anyway, the book is split into two parts, the first being more about visual art culture, films, comic books, literature and the like and then the second half is about fashion and racism and current music and politics. I kind of spent the first feeling like they were streching it in trying to prove their points and that it was some space to talk about how great the sex pistols were, but for the most part I really liked the second half.

Chick Flicks by B. Ruby Rich

A few months ago I checked out a bunch of books on women and film from the library, Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement by B. Ruby Rich being one of them. Since I was reading through a bunch of books at once (as usual) I am not sure which one is which, but recently a group of feminist readers in Olympia have started reading this one together and holding illicit late night screenings downtown. Last night we saw Das Blaue Licht (d. Leni Riefenstahl). If you'd like you read along, Kanako is in charge and I hear there might be another blog starting up...

Happy Chinese/ Lunar New Year...
Some of my favorite things I've read over the year
OR Re-read classics...

Space and Geometry (Mach)
All the Kings Horses (Michele Bernstein)
The Tiger in the House (Van Vechten)
The Mikado's Empire (Griffis)
Ezra Pound: Selected Cantos
The Uncertain States of America Reader
Selected Writings (Marx)
The Culture Industry (Adorno)
The Shape of Time (Kubler)
The Book of Intentions (F.R. David)
Charlotte Perriand, A Life of Creation
New York Times, op-ed
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (T.S. Eliot)
Against Fashion (Stern)
Some Social Implications of Modern Technology (Marcuse)
Irrational Modernism (Jones)
Make Your Own Life: Artists in and out of Cologne
Reena Spaulings (Bernadette Corporation)
The Aesthetics of Disappearance (Virilio)
Letters and correspondence between Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis @ Beinecke Library

Who Wants To Read Transnational Feminist Theory?

Yesterday I was checking out Zed Books and decided I want to read more transnational feminist theory If you are interested in this, let me know and we can discuss it here. I am going to read this first: Feminism and War: Confronting U.S. Imperialism It's not at any of the libraries here so I'm gonna order it. I guess this will be the book for March. Let me know if you're in...

Books Books Books

Hello Bumpidee Readers...

I read so much crap in the past six months that I was kind of embarrassed to even list it here. Then I was like, why am I reading crap? Why not just read better books, and that led me to a kind of reader's block. Let's see the last crappy novel I remember not wanting to post about here was The Secret Life of Bees, which is really just not a good book and I have nothing to say about. I read it because two different people sent it to me in the mail and because I was supposed to see the movie with my grandma and so I figured I might as well read the book first. Well it's very Christian, so I guess that is part of its appeal for some people.

Uh what else? I was reading a lot of books that were slut memoirs, seriously weird genre. Like where the female writer confesses all the bad things she did as a young woman and sort of analyzes it in a moral way that is slightly feminist but more often self-help-y and titillating. I enjoyed reading them because they are so weird and I thought I'd have something smart and analytical to say, but I really ended up just feeling kind of headache-y and gross when I was done, like I had just read a salacious gossip-y Hollywood exposé, except these were by people I have no reason to be interested in. The one I recall best is called Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity by Kerry Cohen, who also wrote Easy, a young adult novel about a girl with a bad reputation that I've been meaning to read. Loose Girl is one of those "poor little rich girl" tales of a party girl of privilege who hates herself. I don't really buy it when she says she regrets all of her sexual exploits, it sounds like she had fun and then regretted it later. Or maybe that she has low self-esteem and didn't know how to have fun. Either way, it's really not that interesting, but I still wanna check out Easy, because I think writing novels about girls getting bad reputations for teenagers to read sounds more compelling. It seems that she may have written Loose Girl as a way to promote her young adult fiction.

I can't remember where my reading took me after that exactly, but I re-read Pride and Prejudice after watching the BBC mini-series and the Hollywood version from 1940 starring Laurence Olivier.

Then watching the Lord Peter Wimsey series got me back into Dorothy Sayers, so I checked out her biography by Barbara Reynolds. It turns out she was a Christian humanist, as well as one of the world's leading Dante scholars and that writing popular detective mysteries was what she did in her spare time. If you read any of her detective novels, I recommend Gaudy Night, starring Harriet Vane. It's a really great mystery, partially because Harriet Vane is such a great female character.

I also read a little bit of Mrs. Woolf and the Servants: An Intimate History of Domestic Life in Bloomsbury by Alison Light, which asks the question--what were the role of servants in Virginia Woolf's life and how does that relate to her as an artist. Hopefully I'll finish it...to ask the question complicates Woolf's feminism--did her female servants have "rooms of their own" for example? Did her feminism reach that far, or was it just for white, upper class/upper middle class women like herself?



I was drawn to this after reading Coco Fusco's A Field Guide for Female Interrogators, which probably deserves it's own post...it is a component of a larger feminist art piece of hers that asks 'what is the role of women in war'? Since Virginia Woolf famously addressed this question in Three Guineas, Fusco frames her book as a letter to Ms. Woolf, getting her up-to-date on how women's role in war has changed in the 21st century, focusing on the role of the female interrogator at Abu Ghraib...if that sounds compelling it really is. Who can pretend that American women are innocent and powerless and that war is waged soley by men in light of their participation in the "war on terror"? Fusco argues compellingly that we can't and that in fact to do so is to fail to explore how gender/power/nation intersect and function at the level of international affairs. She's basically asking the same questions feminist theorist Cynthia Enloe asks, but from the point of view of a performance artist who is familiar with literary criticism. Her question resonates and explores what it means to be female and how systems of power operate in the 21st century.



Last night I started reading Straight from the Source by Kim Osorio, a music journalist who used to be editor-in-chief of The Source and famously sued for sexual harassment. So far it's a compelling tale of a woman inside the Hip Hop side of the music business who demands to be treated as an equal and hang out on her own terms. As with any male-dominated music scene, this is a struggle for dignity and respect. She wants to be taken seriously but she also likes to have fun. It starts out where she already has a "bad reputation" and then back tracks to explore, from her point of view, what that really means. There's also a lot of inside stories about famous Hip Hop battles between late 90's/early 00's NYC artists, so it's pretty entertaining as a music book as well.



There's more....expect reviews of The Cramps: A Short History of Rock'n'Roll Psychosis by Dick Porter soonish.

vacation reading: modern latino american fiction, WWII thriller, Jane Austen

I guess it's really hard for me to read anything unless I get the fuck out of town. Living in NY and working full time and going to school part time has lead me to basically read the paper, some magazines and school work in addition to a gillion blogs, facebook and twitter. Sad.

Well luckily I'm addicted to the beach so I have been able to keep up with a decent amount of reading over the past year. Here's the latest installment. I didn't finish the last one yet but I'll try to finish it by years end.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
My classmate Vanessa let me borrow this and I enjoyed it mostly until the end. It's a funny depiction of a tragic sad sap Oscar Wao and his Dominican family and all of their comic tragedies, curses and disastrous love lives. It's got a lot of Spanglish and Spanish and I thought a lot while I was reading it that it might be really hard to follow if you didn't have sort of an idea of what was being said. At the end it just sort of dragged on and the characters really were sad and pathetic and tragic and I kind of just wanted it to be over.


Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard
I picked this up on my annual stop to the Cannes English Bookshop. I attend a conference every January in Cannes and a four years ago I found this shop and make it a point to visit every year. I pretty much make a random impulse buy and this year "Up In Honey's Room" was the result. This was the UK edition and it was on the discount table and had a cool cover so it was the winner. I dug the book and it's raunchiness and period thrillerness.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
I may have picked up this Signet Classics edition on last years Cannes trip? Anyway, I finally got around to reading it and honestly Jane Austen is sorta tough vacation reading because I really have to concentrate to make sure I know who the hell everyone is. I got about a quarter through it and am into it so far and have it on my nightstand now so I'm gonna try to knock it out. I think on the facebook "which Jane Austen heroine are you?" quiz I was Fanny Price and it makes sense so far.

east of eden

portia bought me east of eden so that is what i'm gonna read next. i'm bad at writing reviews but maybe i finally will.

my favorite american novel is "sometimes a great notion."

invasion 68, prague

invasion 68, prague

this book is filled with big glossy photos taken over several days in prague in august of 1968 during the soviet occupation. the photos are large and beautiful and disturbing.

the book starts with an introduction that explains some of the events that led up to the occupation and a little bit about what happened during and after. the intro is only a few pages long but the pages are ginormous (because it's a big artsy photobook).

mixed throughout the pages of photos there are also pages of eyewitness accounts, official documents, and slogans that appeared on walls and posters during this time. the slogans are printed in czech and english.
"soviet exports: tanks, lead, death..."
"we do not want russian freedom"
"our dead don't need your wheat"

my favorite part of the text of this book was the part about the ghost town method of resistance to the occupation used by the residents of prague:
"Acting on an appeal from the free broadcast of 'Prague', the legal radio station in the occupied town at the end of Friday, hundreds of thousands of anonymous, unknown people tore down the signs with the names of streets and squares. Plaques with house numbers also disappeared. On some buildings there are no longer even the names of the tenants.... The Prague of names and numbers has become extinct. For the uninvited guests, Prague is a ghost town. Someone who wasn't born here, who hasn't lived here, will find an anonymous city of a million people, in which the occupiers may perhaps find only a wide variety of appeals written in Czech and the Cyrillic alphabet. On the roads we read 'Moscow-1,800 km'. Prague is defending itself. Against the tanks, guns and troops of the occupying forces. Without bloodshed. And against collaborators, who, by assisting in the arrest of honourable people, want to make the nation nervous. Let our watchword be: The
postman will find it, but the bastards won't."

the one problem i had while trying to read this book was a common problem i have with photobooks but it's not one that will make me any less likely to read them... the captions of the actual photos are extremely minimal and many don't have captions at all so the curiosity you feel about, for example, the kid sitting on the curb who has painted a target on her or his back is almost painful. who was that woman in the jackie o suit holding the little girl's hand outside of the bullet-ridden building and what exactly happened there and to them? did that old man actually throw the brick at the tank or was he just waving it in his hand... an angry gesture meant for the soviet soldiers in the tank to see? there are 250 pictures in the book and most of them left me with a hopeless kind of curiousity about the specific stories in them.

i highly recommend this book and i highly recommend getting it from your library since i think it costs about $60 to buy for yourself.

Happy Birthday to Gertrude Stein

2/3 is Gertrude Stein's birthday. She was born in 1874 and would be 135 years old today. I picked up a copy of Mrs. Reynolds yesterday and plan on voting YES on the library and staying up late reading to celebrate.