That Ol' Christmas Haul (Image Heavy)

So none of this for Xmas:









But I did get these:


Australia (DVD). Yes, I know it was panned, but I *loved* it. I'm a Kidman fanatic, admittedly, and a copious drooler over Jackman...but I genuinely enjoyed the film, too.









Kiki's Delivery Service (DVD). OMG I LOVE MIYAZAKI AND I'M A CHILD. Kiki is so great.










And also Milk, Changeling, and Elizbeth: The Golden Age on DVD. Which means I'll be running out tomorrow to pick up this one:

Brideshead Revisited. And possibly grabbing Atonement, The Fountain, or 2046.











Bat for Lashes, "Two Suns"












Oh hellz yeah, Lady Gaga, "The Fame Monster." Ra-ra-ah-ah-ah.

Need to grab Neko's new one, PJ Harvey's and John Parish's collab album, Gossip, Patrick Wolf, and Florence and the Machine when I get the chance. I download a lot of music, but I always buy the albums I really love, usually at the end of the year.



And then, the real gems:


After Atwood's "The Year of the Flood" (which I'm working through now--and it's wonderful), Byatt's "The Children's Book" was my most anticipated book of the year. I'll probably jump on this once I finish Atwood--I'm scared that otherwise, it'll get pushed off until after the spring semester. It's a pretty giant book, but it's gotten rave reviews--considered her best since Possession, apparently, so really excited for it.






Wallace, "Infinite Jest"--A hefty tome I won't get to this until the summer, but really excited to see what all the fuss (and by 'all the fuss,' I mean all of Conley's fussing over it) is about.









Brad Gooch's new Flannery O' Connor biography. Been looking forward to this all year.











All of Didion's nonfiction before "The Year of Magical Thinking," I think. Can't effing wait to read Slouching Toward Bethlehem and The White Album--I've heard incredible things about those collections.

Tons of books were on my list to Santy Claus, so I'll probably treat myself to a few of those too (though probably copies that are beaten up and half the price on half.com)--so Hermione Lee's bio of Virginia Woolf, Alison Light's new book called "Mrs. Woolf and the Servants," Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian," Timothy Findley's "Not Wanted on the Voyage," and Anne Carson's "Autobiography of Red." Yummy.

Of course, most importantly, I was with my family for Christmas--and it's been wonderful, I truly truly missed them. And I haven't felt as relaxed and content as I have this past week here in some time...thank goodness I'll be staying here for at least another week, and probably two. I needed it. Happy Christmas, everyone. xo.

The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Reviews

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (5 stars)




I went to the liquor store a few weeks ago to buy smokes; the first pack I’d paid for in Boston, in fact, because my Virginia stash(es) had lasted the first four months of my living here. It was painful to hand over seven bucks; even more painful was the fact that the woman at the register looked at my ID for approximately seven minutes, as the line behind me accumulated, and even went so far as to pull out one of those little mini-microscope-things and peer at every centimeter of the license. She then looked me up and down, glaring into my face as though to see the inner corruption that would compel me to use a fake ID for my nicotine fix. Eventually, she handed the Camel Crushes over, I gave her the cash, and went on my merry way.

It was an oddly poignant moment to have, having just finished reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray that morning. Yes, call me a bad English student; call me a bad queen; it was my first reading of the novel. It was also a surprisingly thrilling reading of a novel—I hadn’t been so emotionally caught up with anything I’d read throughout the semester, except perhaps Beloved. Of course we all know the story; Dorian is young and beautiful and sells his soul in order to stay so for all of eternity. His portrait takes on his sins instead (and at this moment I can only think of Anne Sexton’s ‘The Double Image’—“they had my portrait done instead” being the refrain marking her own corrupt relationship with her mother and with her daughter and her self; she even references Dorian at one point in the long poem, which is well worth checking out if you don’t know it). But I suppose I wasn’t anticipating the novel being able to sustain its excitement or beauty beyond the most basic components of this plotline. Wilde’s prose is stunning, and as much as we hear of him being a strict aestheticist, it’s a peculiarly affective, a really deeply felt, novel. I think Wilde wants his reader to believe he’s Lord Harry, but I get the sense that he is, in reality, the Basil figure. Intrigued by beauty, prone to idolatry, remorseful for all things lost—in particular youth and beauty. Basil was perhaps the only truly compelling character of the novel, at least on an emotional level. Lord Harry is absolutely wonderful to read—someone you’d want around you at every party (so long as you weren’t the target of his witticisms), and Dorian is the dumb pretty little creature you want to pat on the head but not keep around for extended periods of time…but Basil is the real Prince Charming of the novel. Everyone else in the novel, as Lord Harry would certainly agree, is mere backdrop—setpieces intended to provide color or contrast to this triumvirate.

If Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway was the perfect novel for me to read last fall, Dorian Gray was ideal for this one. Mrs. Dalloway recalls with an astounding nostalgia the possibilities that one has foreclosed throughout life—the experiences that are shut out by choosing other experiences over them. Nonetheless, that novel brings loss in all of its breathtaking beauty back to the reader with a tangible quality; loss is a texture of the novel, nostalgia is the scent that permeates everything. As I embarked upon grad school applications, and a number of decisions that would effectively map the next decade of my life, Mrs. Dalloway helped me to—as Clarissa says at several moments—appreciate the present: “What she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely?” Dorian Gray, on the other hand, fears this possibility; the loss of youth and of beauty, and finally death—which ends absolutely—are harbingers of absolute terror, and thus are violently disavowed. I say that this was the right moment for me to read this, not because I’m increasingly fearful of aging or of death but because now I’ve made the leap into the next phase of my life and now these foreclosures of possibility are not merely tangible or recognizable but will forever evade my grasp—I’ve crossed that threshold moment that Mrs. Dalloway so preserves, and entered into the next stage. Hopefully, of course, I’ll handle this more in a Clarissa than a Dorian sort of way; perhaps I’ll throw a party and make sure not to murder any of the guests.

In any case, Dorian is an absolutely stunning novel. Forget the awful ‘Classic Lit-ruh-chah’ assignation of the novel (though I’m currently a lover and voracious reader of classics, I remember being likewise terrified of that designation). The setting may be over a century old now, but the thrills, the motives, the anxieties are all as modern as anything being published now. The writing is fluid and exciting, and this has some of the best one-liners you’ll ever read, among them: “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about,” “To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable,” “The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young,” “The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true,” “When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self and one always ends by deceiving others.” Every line is essentially quotable, except for the strangely bland and undercooked dialogue with one of the old women towards the end of the novel. But this is a strikingly philosophical and contemplative book despite its glamour and its many ‘Wildeisms.’ I connect this to Mrs. Dalloway only because both have truly fascinating things to say on aging and conscience, the ability to be compassionate and to connect to others (in each, I think there’s more evidence against genuine connections or genuine sympathy than there is for them)—and it’s certainly a recommended read to anyone reading this blog who hasn’t enjoyed it already.

And here are a few capsule reviews of some other things I’ve been reading, x-posted from my goodreads:

Joan Didion, Vintage Didion (4 stars)



I'd only previously read "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Didion--and, considering my admittedly non-existent experience with having lost loved ones, didn't connect to it in the way so many seem to have (at least on an emotional level). Nonetheless, I found her prose style there to be breathtaking, and it's in full form in this short collection. Vintage Didion collects essays from several books--three from "After Henry," three from "Miami," two from "Salvador," one from "Political Fictions," and one based on a lecture concerning September 11th. Truly, every essay was spot-on, though Didion really confronts me with the fact that I'm pathetically unsavvy with politics. The essay on NY and the Central Park Jogger case was perhaps one of the best non-fiction essays I've ever read. Though it's clear she's done her research and doesn't mind showing as much, it comes across as astute rather than showy, fluid rather than stuffed full of other people's facts and writings. Her logic is fascinating to watch, in the sense that she moves from the most micro-level observations into smart arguments about much much larger questions. Thus, the Central Park Jogger case becomes an essay on ideologies of crime and class, specific to NYC over the past 150 years, but reaching outward, as well. And then she sweeps back into her initial arresting claims. The essay on good ol' Bill's sexual exposure in "Clinton Agonistes" was particularly provocative, as was the Sept. 11th essay, and the one on Patty Hearst. I think I was swimming too deep in the Salvador/Miami pieces, but they too are beautifully written and argued.

I'm really looking forward to moving through more of her work--and as a close friend tells me, I'm an awful idiot and a bad Lit PhD for not having read her novel "Play It As It Lays." Any case, this is probably a great introduction to Didion--at least to her more politically-minded work. I'm trying to think of lovely descriptors for her, but the one that sticks out most for me at the moment is 'shrewd'--she's got a hawk's eye to everything she mentions, and watching her follow through that sightline into an argument is inspiring. Read it, for sure.

Ian McEwan, First Love, Last Rites (3.5 stars)



After reading 'Atonement' over the summer, I really really wanted to love this collection. McEwan is clearly just gaining traction at this particular moment, though, and I felt that the stories--one after another, almost without fail--succeeded only on the strength of some gimmicky twist at the end. This isn't to say that they weren't unexpected turns, thrilling ones at times, but that without these turns, the stories would have been meandering and oftentimes mediocre. The first story is perverse, yes, but I feel like I've heard the same sort of sentiments about adolescent longing expressed before (though McEwan's wonderful dark humor remains intact here)--it's the twist that defines the story, and I feel as if that's perhaps one of the biggest weaknesses of any narrative--that if one thread is removed, the glamour unravels. Needless to say, that first story, "Last Day of Summer" and the final story, "Disguises," are the strongest of the group. The first one does indeed rest on its own twist, but I commend McEwan at least for daring to take the story to its most extreme conclusion--hard to read? Certainly, but I can't think of another author who would have handled incest in that way--shocking, sick, but also really bold. "Last Day of Summer" is the only one of the collection that, to my mind, has a genuine emotional investment in its characters--a convincing and compelling one. And the final story is just a damn good story, with both the perversion of the rest of the collection but the breathing room to develop and really flesh out its narrative world.

In short, it's a decent collection--a thrilling one to read, but clearly a bit of an exercise book.

Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road (4 stars)



[[Very very light spoilers, but nothing critical.]] You know those days where literally everything seems to go sour, as if you've been caught up in some sort of awful vortex where fortune cookies instantly stale and every endeavor is a failed one before it's even begun? That's sort of what Revolutionary Road feels like, except higher on the magnitude scale and a helluva lot more depressing. This is not to its detriment, of course; after all, it's a novel about suburban malaise, and the deflation of the American Dream (and the deflation of the dream of the counterattack on that American Dream). The characters are nearly universally insufferable, even the well-intentioned ones (like the Campbells), but these are characters that you've met time and again in your life. Their very terribleness is what convinced me of their genuine quality. So when Millie Campbell becomes this monstrous, nasty character at the end of the novel--and Shep appreciates her in spite of recognizing this--it all makes sense. There's not much of a redemptive urge in the novel; even Frank's 'change' at the end is not one envisioned as one for the better, but rather, one that's hollow-eyed and done out of desperation.

Yates' prose is tight and clean, the plot moves along at a fairly quick pace, and the dialogue is always always spot-on. It's not quite a 5-star novel for me, not because it's not well-constructed or compelling, but simply because it's slightly dated and somehow more cinematic (to my mind) than literary. Perhaps it's simply that I felt like more of a voyeur than a participant at times--which can be quite fun, but frequently discomforting as well. Looking forward to finally seeing the film.

Brief jottings...

Confession: I should be writing my papers right now, but I’m tired and I’m officially finished with classes and I came home and had a cocktail too many. I wish I were blogging more; or rather, that I had had the time to do so over the course of the semester. I won’t lie and say that grad school isn’t rough—it’s a chaotic mess, frequently, scrambling to get through readings, trying to put together a coherent thought, a workable presentation, and now, a half-decent paper (or three, in the case of we first years). Class in and of itself tends to be exhausting; just getting through a discussion wears a body down. My brain is fried. My writing is muddled. My body is actually not too bad off; I walk probably three to four miles a day, just by way of commuting to school and back. But then, there are days when just putting a sandwich together for dinner is too exhausting, so you burrow in bed and read or pass out or do whatever it is you do in bed. There will be deeper, further reflections on this whole crazed semester once I’m actually through with it.

For now, I’m tipsy and a little sad. We had a departmental party tonight, full of naughty desserts, serious™ conversations, and more than a few awkward moments. But nonetheless, it was weird to say “see you next semester” to people you feel you’re only just getting to know. Anti-climactic, I guess. Maybe I’m just being mawkish; I still feel like a bit of a child in all of this. Most of the people I’ve gotten to know are real people, adults, who have lives on their own, incredibly separate from school. For the past three months, school has been my life, and my entire life in many ways. Perhaps the strangest thing to me has been that the most challenging experience grad school—thus far—is, in fact, what goes on outside of the classroom. Growing up; playing adult; trying to figure out what my place in this city is. Boston is a cold city in every sense of the term. And being locked away in my room, in a coffeeshop here, a coffeeshop there—I still feel somewhat alien here. I suppose, in short, it hasn’t been at all what I expected. In some ways, good, in others not so much—but I suppose that’s any experience, no?

Hopefully, I’ll keep up with this blog from here until at least the start of next semester, but I can’t promise anything until the eighteenth. I’ll be entirely hermited away until next Friday, churning out these papers, and then it’s off to Virginia to visit my loves for a week. I shan’t take the laptop, but will likely be tweeting from the phone. Until next time…

Also, here's what my bed looks like in paper-writing-time:



Also, here's my wild lion's mane--I haven't had a trim since I've moved here. Increasingly, I feel as if I should have been a Rossetti painting instead of a person.

The N-Spot: Beloved and Sula Reviewed

It always feels slightly blasphemous to review Toni Morrison’s work—even worse if you’re discussing her in an uppity, academic setting. There seems to be some disservice done if you aren’t simply basking in her glory. This is not to say that her work is untouchable (read Love and you’ll know what I mean), and I certainly don’t believe she thinks as much (though she wields a far heavier hand in critical reception to her work), but that any review I might eke out will inevitably fall short. Perhaps this is why I’ve felt so uncomfortable over the past several weeks; I re-read Beloved and Sula one after another (Beloved for my longest seminar paper; Sula for a presentation), and in a scholarly capacity. Not only did I feel slightly, as I said, presumptuous—but also inadequate, for how does one write about a novel as emotionally complex and ethically indeterminate as Beloved? How does one argue against Sula as a positive model for the ‘new black woman’ in a classroom—especially when you yourself love Sula, even despite your inclination to think of her as an awful person? At the end of the two weeks or so it took to get through both novels, I felt like a picked scab. I was emotionally tired out.

It seems strange that it had been so long since I’d read either novel—above three years for both of them—because so many moments from each have become imprinted on my psyche, it seems. Of course, one forgets much: the strange spectacle of Shadrack’s final National Suicide Day; Helene Wright turning to ‘custard’ on the train; the fact that Paul D made an impact on 124 Bluestone Road (or Paul D more generally; it seems I only remember the women of Beloved). But there is also much that feels inescapable: the ‘O-gape’ of despair in Nel’s final howl for Sula; the chokecherry tree that blossoms on Sethe’s dead-skinned back; that strange rose-shaped birthmark over Sula’s eye; Amy Denver’s yearning for velvet and for Boston, where she’ll find that velvet. In some ways, I can only describe the power these novels have had over me in Sethe’s terms—they follow me, my rememory, and I run into these images and moments at unexpected times, with unexpected reactions to them. I say rememory because for Sethe, rememory signals the tangible quality of the past—you encounter your own history as tactile, rather than ephemeral, and at times, this past is something you simply cannot get away from. Not that I want to escape Morrison’s work, but that her novels have that beautifully tangible quality for me; I don’t simply scan the pages, but enter into some other world, an elsewhere, where I confront my self even as I confront all that is narrated.

Re-reading Beloved this go-round was particularly difficult. It took me nearly two weeks to get through the novel—for no other reason than that there were many occasions where I simply had to put it down and step back for a spell. I won’t pretend that I feel the emotional resonances of black experience—but even as a white, gay, male reader, I can feel the resonances of the human experience, which is precisely what I think Morrison intends. The politics of slavery and the tensions of the post-Reconstruction era are of course central to the novel, but Beloved is never a polemical minstrel show—the powerful political work is done, it seems, simply by granting her characters an implicit and enduring humanity. One of the things I’ve always admired about Morrison’s work is her capacity to imagine the nuances of every person, no matter how ‘good’ or ‘bad’ they might seem at surface. Thus, in the face of the awful atrocities Schoolteacher and his pupils commit against the Sweet Home slaves, there are whitepeople like Amy Denver, like the Garners and the Bodwins—and even in the case of Schoolteacher, who horrifyingly instructs his pupils to put Sethe’s ‘human’ qualities on one side of a list and her ‘animal’ on the other, there is an indication that he has some capacity for sympathetic feeling, if only in his treatment of his dying sister-in-law. Likewise, Sethe is the emotional core of the novel, but she has committed one of the only crimes that is literally unrepresentable—infanticide. Morrison neither condemns her, nor lets her entirely off the hook. Even in their most fraught and horrifying sins, these characters are for Morrison essentially human, and she treats each one on their own terms. A novel about slavery and infanticide—a ghost story, in some capacity, as well—never manages to become moralizing or alienating, because Morrison refuses to let either her narrative or her reader take any easy outs.

Sula once tried to battle Beloved for my top-Morrison spot, but I think this re-reading has cemented the hierarchy for me. Nonetheless, they both remain among my favorite novels of all time (Beloved, in fact, has to be in the top five for me). Sula offers a wonderful exploration of female-female relationships (not necessarily erotic, though one can certainly read the Sula/Nel pairing as erotic in some capacity—I would argue more autoerotic than anything), and imagines a space in which women necessarily rely upon one another in a woman-centered community. My professor asked as we discussed the novel: ‘Do you think Morrison suggests that men have to leave in order for these characters to establish healthy and productive intimacies?’ And in fact, I tend to agree. We talked about the novel as contextualized alongside the Moynihan Report (a 1965 sociological ‘study’ that essentially claimed that female-headed black households kept ‘the race’ down, and generated figures like the Welfare Queen)—and so wondered together whether Morrison’s novel offers an alternative to these sorts of (white) hegemonic discourses on matrilineal systems in black communities. For Sula, this is the only available model; and in the case of Sula and Nel, female intersubjectivity is the most powerful and generative model of subject formation. Notice that the real troubles of the novel occur only after Nel and Sula’s strangely indistinguishable identities are fractured. Oh, look. There I went and did an academic discussion of the novel. But these issues weren’t what first drew me to the novel; rather, I think I was pulled in by the vulnerability of Nel, who ‘pulls her nose’ to make it seem more ‘white’ in the eyes of her mother. I was drawn to the way Morrison describes the ‘expanse of khaki’ that covers the men’s predatory/dormant dicks—and how Nel and Sula are unable to comprehend—but simultaneously able to intuit—what it means to be called ‘pig meat’ by these men. I was seduced by Sula, much the way she seduces everyone around her, and repulsed by her selfish actions—I was lured into imagining what it would be to function as the ‘dumping ground’ for a community’s frustrations, but being self-sufficient enough (as Sula is) to not give a damn. I felt my chest tighten when Nel lets out that final roar of utter grief (sidenote: Morrison has a real way of illustrating inarticulable emotions through guttural sounds). I considered my own conflicting desires to assimilate, as Nel does, and to deviate, as Sula does—the novel asks, in many ways, how we might discover a middle ground, and if such a thing can sustain itself. Sula doesn’t have the weight of Beloved, but it is in many ways so different from Beloved (even though many of the same issues arise—woman-centered communities, the mother-right, infanticide, & co.) that it carries the same sense of power.

As I mentioned at the top, Morrison has had her hits and her misses. Love is scatterbrained, meandering, and a bit of a hackneyed reworking/amalgam of her earlier novels. Song of Solomon may be a powerful novel, quite well written (with an absolutely amazing opening scene)—but for me, Morrison simply can’t write men in the same way she writes women, and the novel suffers for it. Her most recent, A Mercy, is positively stunning; The Bluest Eye was an eye-opening experience for silly-freshman-me, who had read perhaps one black author previously (Ellison’s Invisible Man). Jazz, Paradise, and Tar Baby all sit on my shelf, beckoning to me—but will likely have to wait until summer, as Atwood and Byatt’s new novels will dominate my winter break.

But Beloved and Sula are truly two works beyond comparison. As schmaltzy as it sounds, they changed my life. And it’s almost heartbreaking to see so many vicious reviews on goodreads, where people tear Beloved apart, call it the ‘worst novel’ they’ve ever read, decry Morrison’s illuminative faculties as a prose writer. I can only tell myself that art is subjective that these people are fucking idiots, like most people, and that I’ll keep-on-keepin’-on with my worship at the altar of Toni.

Georgia School Makes Clear that Different is "Not Okay'

Well, of course, Jezebel beat me to posting this, but here it is in any case.

Transphobia in Public Schools

A Georgia high school has “asked” a 16-year-old, male-bodied student to dress in a “more manly” fashion or consider homeschooling. Jonathan Escobar, the student, wears—according to this article (and as is evident in the video interview)—wigs, high heels, skinny jeans, women’s ‘vintage tops’ (whatever that means), and makeup to school. After being involved in a lunchtime fight in the cafeteria, Jonathan withdrew from school, and—as he remarks in the video—would be happy to return if he is allowed to express himself in the manner that makes him happy; i.e., while cross-dressing. There is some disputed evidence involved in the situation; Jonathan claims that he cleared his attire with the school before moving from Miami to Georgia; the school, it would seem, denies this. Administrators are defending themselves by reminding everyone that, although there is no official dress code, attire that might potentially ‘cause disruption’ is prohibited.

Jonathan comes across as an incredibly mature and well-adjusted teenager, especially considering he’s (and it’s unclear whether he prefers ‘she’ or not, since he’s being referred to as masculinely-gendered in all of the articles I found, not to mention he retains the name Jonathan) making one of the most difficult statements a high-schooler can make: as he remarks, “I want people to know that it’s okay to be different.” And, as I well remember from high school, when ‘different’ is specifically construed in the mode of crossing gender boundaries, there is little to no support from peer groups—or, for that matter, from authority figures in the school. As Jonathan’s school shows, administrators are more concerned with avoiding conflict than with creating—perhaps at some risk—an accepting and open environment. An assistant principal blamed Jonathan’s attire for the resulting cafeteria fight—though at what point this same principal made clear that students should never lay hands on one another in violence, I’m not sure.

Though I was tough-skinned enough by high school to handle myself against homophobic taunts, I distinctly remember teachers and staff in junior high, and even elementary school, turning a deaf ear to the kids who would scream “faggot” or “sissy” or “little girl” at me in the hallways. Come to think of it, I can’t recall a single time when an authority figure made it clear that insults and threats of physical violence were not okay, even if the person being threatened were ‘different.’ Not to say that all teachers are scum, but to say that the public education system does not foster an environment where ‘difference’ is accepted into the fray. Again, the impetus is to avoid conflict rather than to cope with it—and perhaps this is because there’s so little protection for public school teachers in situations like this. People lose their jobs over giving a student a kind word, or for defending themselves against a student that physically threatens or lays hands on them. So I can see why, perhaps, authority figures in the public educational system prefer to keep their hands clear of anything like this.

Nonetheless, there should be some way to get the message across that, as Jonathan says, “it’s okay to be different.” There should be a support system in place, particularly seeing as so many kids who don’t fit in with the norm are not accepted in their home lives, either; ultimately, with no one at home, in their peer groups, or in positions of authority (teachers, administrators, employers) to create a support system, the so-termed ‘deviant’ is left entirely alone. One of the highest rates of attempted or successful suicide occurs in the transgender community. There is, it would seem, no place in which trans folks can feel safe—and this extends, more generally, to the GLBTQ community, particularly at that vulnerable moment we all find ourselves in in high school. Jonathan is fortunate in some sense, because it seems that he knows who he is, what will make him happy, and will stand up for his right to express himself freely. But he is a special case; most are not so fortunate.

Reading over the comments to this article, I’m positively struck by how many people are casting all blame on Jonathan. One commenter remarks that taxpayers’ dollars are putting him through school, and so he better wait until he can “exercize [sic] his adult right” to become “Boy George.” Commenter closes by implying that if he can’t accept the normative system, then he can “go join a circus or a drama school.” Many other comments reiterate the idea that Jonathan should be forced to follow the policy, because he is disrupting the classroom with his ‘inappropriate’ clothing. My younger sister is still in high school; I’ve seen the wide range of styles that, though purportedly violating the dress code (for example, no loose jeans, no girls in strapless or thin-strapped tops, no offensive remarks on shirts, etc.), kids get away with. I’m not going to play with the politics of what it means for a teenage girl to dress like a “slut”—because I recognize the kinds of demeaning attitudes in place to make sure girls cover up all their naughty bits in the right way—but the fact is that the girls get away with it. Ditto on the loose jeans, the ‘offensive’ shirts—I don’t want to say whether or not these are okay, because that’s a whole ‘nother ballpark with very different implications, but ultimately, the only reason Jonathan is being legitimately put into this position and harassed to such a great extent is because he has violated normalizing ideals of masculine gender performance.

The comments on the site repeat over and again that he can “do what he wants” when he’s out of school, but that children need rules and regulations. But these are 16-year-olds; they are not ‘children’ who need a bit of a refresher course vis-à-vis the paddle. Comments like this infantilize people like Jonathan, who are clearly at a point where they are self-aware enough to make the decision to dress themselves in the morning; does anyone comment on the fact that the nice little “children” that beat him up in the cafeteria need to be properly regulated? No. They do go on and on about the fact that school is not a “freak show” in which Jonathan can dress the way that makes him feel comfortable. Finally, one comment shrieks “SEND HIM TO IRAN.”

On that note, I’m too furious to continue.

O NOES! The Miscarriage Tweeter!

Oh! Here’s something. So who heard the story of the woman—Penelope Trunk (works for careerist.com, I believe, geared towards teaching people how to market and manage their careers)—who tweeted about her miscarriage in a board room meeting? The tweet, on her account which is, I guess, public and possibly also geared towards career-based networking, reads: “I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a fucked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.” The media, of course, flew into a frenzy—how dare this woman be so blasé about the loss of a special-snowflake life! Is there nothing sacred in the cyber-verse? What compelled this idiot to tweet something so personal/devastating/graphic?

And yes, I am aware that most people would not wish to exhibit their miscarriage/abortion woes for the entire world. Yes, I realize the thin line between private and public in the Internet Age veers closer and closer to nonexistence—that really anything under the sun seems to be fair game for tweets and facebook status updates and myspace (do people still use that?) comments. Finally, no, I would not put this kind of information on my twitter account. (Well, I did post something on there about my glass-cutting nipples yesterday—but I think that remains fairly tame and mostly ironic.)

But then I saw this interview:

Rick Sanchez Interviews Penelope Trunk for CNN

…and several things came up for me, as well as things that I mulled over from some wonderful comments over on Jezebel (which I highly encourage you all to read, if you aren’t already! srsly one of the best blogs on the internetz!).

1. Would we all tweet this experience? No. But ultimately, she’s achieved exactly what, it seems, she was going for. People are talking about women’s bodily experiences—about the nitty-gritty of miscarrying a child (which, I’ll confess, I had no idea lasted over the course of weeks!), about the obstacles to having an abortion in this country, and about the fact that we HAVE NOT been talking about these issues in an open manner. As someone on Jezebel remarked, even the most ardently pro-choice advocates don’t discuss abortion in such a frank and unapologetic way. Trunk does not spare (that bastard interviewer) Rick Sanchez, and she most certainly doesn’t uphold the conventional image of the (post-abortion) martyred and grief-stricken fallen woman. She comments on the difficulty of having the procedure done in a timely and convenient manner without infusing her discussion with hot-button moralizing phraseology; she makes very clear how both miscarriages and abortions are facts-of-life for many women, and that having careers—and being stuck in a board meeting—does not mean that women aren’t going through these experiences. It’s just that no one is talking about it.

2. Sanchez attempts to put this awful fallen woman in her place at several occasions, to hilariously futile effect. He opens the interview with “Now I’m going to ask you a tough question, young lady” despite the fact that he’s speaking with a grown fucking woman (!)—not some Hot-Topic-styled tweenager cowering in his presence (and I wouldn’t condone his stance if it were). Sanchez infantilizes her, perhaps in the effort to undermine her capacity for decision making, perhaps to question her moral sanity, perhaps simply to impel his own masculine authority over her. His paternalistic demeanor throughout the interview is almost laughable, but the unfortunate and underlying fact of the matter here is that, in fact, much of the media was reacting in this very way to her—they just weren’t as visibly douchey about it. In the interview, he makes it crystal clear that he has no desire to listen to what she has to say or to think about it, perhaps, from her vantage point. As Trunk holds her own in the interview, going into great detail of the ways in which miscarriages occur, and bringing up a rather surprising factoid—that 75% of women have miscarried while at work (which, as Trunk points out, is not unusual, because miscarriages occur over the span of weeks, and aren’t vastly dissimilar to the experience of the menstrual cycle)—Sanchez increasingly appears confused and frustrated.

3. Once Trunk makes it clear that she was planning to abort the pregnancy, and was not going to beg for forgiveness for such a ‘heinous’ action—Sanchez attempts, once more, to undercut her decision. By reminding all of America that Trunk is already a mother, that she has children and cherishes them, or whatever the fuck Sanchez was trying to communicate, he reifies the notion that women are essentially reduced to their reproductive value. An abortion, as he attempts to paint it, is okay only if a woman wants to—does—fulfill her ‘proper’ role as wife and mother. But what Sanchez cannot seamlessly cover over in the process of the interview is Trunk’s insistence on the inadequacy of the legal and health systems of this country to provide optimal service for women that choose to end a pregnancy. Her repeated and merciless attention to the pragmatic workings of her experience—and the experience, as she remarks, of many many women who don’t or can’t talk about it—shines through the interview.

4. And ultimately, the very media that decries Trunk for her so-called TMI moment is the same media that’s not only awarding her the spotlight they seem to think she should be denied—but that believes the Kardashians and the Hiltons are newsworthy, that the ‘reality’ stars of a show like The Hills are worthy of having every moment of their lives publicized. The difference, I suppose, is that Trunk is controlling her own spotlight here, and she’s got something to say. But the hypocritical positioning of the talking heads since this burst out has been simply ludicrous.

5. And quote of the year? She reminds us all in the face of Sanchez’s ignorance that “Whether or not you believe women should have the right to abortion, they do in this country.”

So great. Seriously, watch it. Absolutely refreshing to see someone speaking so frankly and powerfully on the subject of abortion. Whatever you think of her decision to tweet the info, it’s panned out to get an honest dialogue going—and for that, I have nothing but respect for her.

Oh! Also, here are two badly-done phone camera photos!



Aw, the English grad lounge (also Classics, but who cares for them?). Couches, and the fridge where I store my little brown-bag-lunch. And a water machine (what the hell are those called?) that even has hot water for my tea! I spend 90% of my time on campus here.



See, see! There I am! Reading! And the book isn't upside down. But it is Judith Butler, so it may as well be.

More soon.

Rainy days and creepy ways...

A rainy day in Beantown; the sort of day you stay curled up under covers with a book (or laptop) on your lap and a cup of coffee at your side. Which is exactly what I’m nursing right now. Surprised to say I’m not hungover this morning, despite drinking liquor, wine, beer, and champagne all in the course of four-or-so hours and getting to bed at 4:30AM, then waking up at 10. Perhaps my tolerance is upping the ante again? I realized, with much terror, that I was becoming an ancient, haggard old queen last week—I had hangover throw-ups! Who does that? Vomming the night of is respectable, especially if you nobly force yourself to do so in order to preemptively strike back at the impending hangover. But hangover vomming is for long-term alcoholics, people who can’t hold their booze, and grandparents. I’m old! Old, I say! I do feel like a total creeper on campus—there are all these hot athletic (and probably rich and over privileged) boys at school, and so I—naturally—cruise, and then I remember that there’s like, some sort of divide between me and them. I may be but a year or two older, but they’re babies now to me! I’m wilting before I’ve even had the chance to properly blossom. On the gay market, I’m spoiled meat; I’m slowly morphing into the Yoda of the bottom brigade of Boston. Ugh. Take me behind the barn; I’m like the horse with a gimp foot.

In other news, we’re in full swing now. Presentations loom, assignments pop up out of nowhere, professors throw an extra two-hundred pages of reading onto our plate with only a week’s warning. The party-hards are dying out, and now people beg off of sexytimes with the excuse that they have “papers to write.” Oh, those? Piff, posh! I’ve somehow managed to stay on top of everything thus far, but next weekend will, I’m certain, throw me under the wheel. Three of my queens are visiting, and for four days, I’m letting loose—with or against my consent, I can rest assured. Attempting to get ahead on everything this weekend/upcoming week, but with so much to do, there’s rarely if ever time to do anything but stay with the flow of the current. Whatever. I’m just happy to say that even if my ‘element’ isn’t with me in Boston, I can bring it to me from the days of yore—in the form of my beautiful, crazy friends (and the cheap cigs they’re bringing me!).

Beyond that, nothing much of interest in my life. I’ll be seeing Margaret Atwood on her book tour stop in Cambridge in a few weeks, and I’m submitting an abstract to a conference—to potentially present a paper on abject bodies in Anne Sexton’s poetry. I’m actually pretty thrilled about that little fact. I’m reading everything under the sun, and even forcing myself to keep my old habit of reading-one-book-for-pleasure at all times (it keeps me grounded, reminds me why I’m doing this)—even if it means just catching a few pages here and there on the subway, or while waiting for the train to campus. Wilde’s Dorian Gray is my current one; had never read him before, and he’s just delicious and hilarious. I don’t imagine most people think of late-19th century novels as particularly humorous, but I’ve been cracking up constantly since starting it.

Enough boring details on me; yet again, I’ll say that I’ll update more frequently. And hopefully! I can get back into what the original purpose of this blog was (not merely listing my activities or blogging my oh-so-potent emotions), and start bringing in some more frequent cultural critique-type-shite and book reviews and such. Until then…