I want to love Dickens. I want to love him as much as I love Trollope. But he's so, so boring. And the constant non-surprises! "Are we going to have tI want to love Dickens. I want to love him as much as I love Trollope. But he's so, so boring. And the constant non-surprises! "Are we going to have to pretend we don't know who this woman is for the next 200 pages? Oh yes, we are."
Liked these bits: "Mr Bounderby swelling at his own portrait on the wall, as if he were going to explode himself into it;"
"'You are incomprehensible this morning,' said Louisa, 'Pray take no further trouble to explain yourself. I am not curious to know your meaning.'"
And there's a chap that works at the circus called "Master Kidderminster".
Grim England! I was reminded of 1066 and all that: "During these wars many remarkable discoveries and inventions were made. Most memorable among theseGrim England! I was reminded of 1066 and all that: "During these wars many remarkable discoveries and inventions were made. Most memorable among these was the discovery (made by all the rich men in England at once) that women and children could work for twenty-five hours a day in factories without many of them dying or becoming excessively deformed. This was known as the Industrial Revelation and completely changed the faces of the North of England."
DH's aristocrats experience some of the horrors of the "Industrial Revelation", and yet continue to pursue progress. It made me pessimistic about saving the environment. Perhaps shagging a gamekeeper would offer a diversion from today’s problems, too?
But, yeah, happiness is just around the corner when you are two people in love, sexually compatible, uncaring of condemnation, and rich. Who knew? Even Sir Clifford is enough of a bastard at the end that no-one has to feel guilty about abandoning a man who was paralysed in the defence of his country. And he's got that nurse's tits to fondle. He'll be fine. Very neat, eh?
My favourite bit was when Connie's sister tells Mellors to stop affecting his Derbyshire accent. That was great.
"'Me? Oh, intellectually I believe in having a good heart, a chirpy penis, a lively intelligence, and the courage to say "shit!" in front of a lady.'"
"Sex and a cocktail: they both lasted about as long, had the same effect, and amounted to about the same thing."
"She wanted to be clear of him, and especially of his consciousness, his words, his obsession with himself, his endless treadmill obsession with himself, his own words."
"She’d try to lie still and let me work the business. She’d try. But it was no good. She got no feeling off it, from my working. She had to work the thing herself, grind her own coffee."
"'I believe if men could fuck with warm hearts, and the women take it warm-heartedly, everything would come out all right. It's this cold-hearted fucking that is death and idiocy.'"
"He saw too much advertisement behind the humility. It looked just like the sort of conceit the knight most loathed, the conceit of self-abasement."
"'I don’t give tuppence for your love, nor for the man you love. I don’t believe in that sort of cant.'"...more
I thought this was going to be angry hot young gay Japanese men in space. It wasn't.
There's a huge long conversation towards the end where they discusI thought this was going to be angry hot young gay Japanese men in space. It wasn't.
There's a huge long conversation towards the end where they discuss whether humans should be eradicated or not. It feels incredibly dated. It's funny that we kind of got over nuclear bombs when the Cold War ended, right?
Kochi gets a mention!:
“At just gone seven in the evening, two middle-school students from the village of Ogawa in Sakawa-cho, Takaoka District, Kochi Prefecture, reported having seen an elliptical object, enveloped in a thin membrane, fly through the southern sky at incredible speed from east to west, and disappear into the mountains.�
Bits:
“Akiko lowered her head and flatly rejected self-analysis, that vulgar human practice tantamount to checking the contents of one’s own purse.�
“The expression on Iyoko’s face as she spoke revealed the ruthlessness of a housewife who was happiest when rinsing her chopping board under the tap.�
“People became a race of white-collar workers, and the powerful hairy arms of the blacksmith were no longer needed.�...more
"'I want to change, but not if it means changing."
"Experience has taught me that our childhoods leave in us stories like this - stories we never found"'I want to change, but not if it means changing."
"Experience has taught me that our childhoods leave in us stories like this - stories we never found a way to voice, because no one helped us to find the words."...more
When I was twelve I wrote a "novel" called 'God's Got His Eye on You' about a man who kept being thwarted in his suicide attempts. It wasn't as well wWhen I was twelve I wrote a "novel" called 'God's Got His Eye on You' about a man who kept being thwarted in his suicide attempts. It wasn't as well written as Mishima's, but at least it was short....
Bits: 'I never realized how much fun insanity would be. But now I do. I wish I'd gone mad earlier.'"
And, just like Howards End (the house in Howards End), Hattie's farm is not going to her immediate family but to the pe**spoiler alert** ONLY CONNECT!
And, just like Howards End (the house in Howards End), Hattie's farm is not going to her immediate family but to the person she feels connects with it most. ONLY CONNECT! And, of course, Zadie Smith already wrote On Beauty. ONLY CONNECT! See! E.M. Forster IS cool.
Like a good Iris Murdoch, Bernardine's book opens with a cast of thousands in London. Fabulous. You have to write all these names (with brief descriptions, like "Chinese PJs", "bestie - US now", "sax", "Egypt rich") all over the title pages with lots of little arrows. And then you realise that you've written the same name twice because that person just popped up in that other person's story! ONLY CONNECT!
Iris would have written a HUGE DRAMATIC scene at the after-party. I was a bit disappointed that Bernardine didn't have everyone there ... perhaps beating up Trey (identified as "rapist" on my title pages)? Oh well. Everything is made right by the (loud sing-song Oprah voice) EPILOOOOOOGUE! I was crying on the train.
So ... well done Bernardine. Believed all of your characters, believed all of your voices. Great themes. Knockout ending.
Bits:
"they believed in protest that was public, disruptive and downright annoying to those at the other end of it"
"these days she wears silver or gold trainers"
"Nenet apologized for her mother's ostentatious taste in home decor, not for her wealth"
"eating became both an unpleasant ordeal and a performance of enjoyment"
"she felt sad when he said to her one day, if we cannot make it here, perhaps our child will"
"their children will be mixed, and their children will look white to be wiped out in two generations is this why we came to England?"
"as such she has the softest spot for him, can't believe he spent so many months growing inside her without knowing which makes her feel sad, he might have been lonely without her talking to him and stroking her belly, which is what she did with the other two"
"to be stopped and frisked by the cops, which began when he was twelve and looked fifteen, terrified when these grown men man-handled him in the street in front of everyone, tried hard not to cry, sometimes did"
"the younger ones wearing outfits so tight you can see their hearts beating"
"afro-gynocentricism caused a femquake tonight"
"if there's one thing she's learned in the past forty-eight hours, anyone can be a relative"
"who cares about her colour? why on earth did Penelope ever think is mattered?"
Now I'm re-reading the epilogue and crying again....more
It's the opening scene of "It's a Wonderful Life" and those stars/galaxies are talking:
- "Hello, Joseph. Trouble?" - "We asked Clarence to arrange Mr IIt's the opening scene of "It's a Wonderful Life" and those stars/galaxies are talking:
- "Hello, Joseph. Trouble?" - "We asked Clarence to arrange Mr Ive's son getting murdered just before Christmas." - "That must really have ruined Mr Ive's Christmas. But he's a shit and his son is a really nasty piece of work." - "Yeah? Well Clarence didn't ruin Mr Ive's Christmas. He ruined Mr Ives' Christmas." - "I don't get it." - "S apostrophe." - "That would have been ruining Mr Ives's Christmas, surely?" - "Who knows." - "Oh dear. Well, let's just hope Mr Ives's son wasn't an amazing Catholic do-gooding priest-in-waiting." - "Er....." - "Oh shit. That does it. Strip Clarence of his wings!" Cut to ZsuZsu and George Bailey: - "Look Daddy! Teacher says every time you don't rewrite a sentence to avoid an uncomfortable "s'/s's" dilemma, an angel loses its wings!" - "Oh shit Clarence..."
I thought this was pretty bleak and depressing. I thought it was going to make me feel good about life at Christmas. It really didn't.
I really didn't like that all the family "knew" something bad was happening ... I'm suspicious of that. And it makes me sad for people who come home from work and find their son dead and go "shit I had no idea, I thought Tuesday was going well". Are those people less than all of the clairvoyant people in the life of Mr Ives (see what I did there)?...more
It felt like another book that gets written because a mortgage needs to be paid.
It felt like the author cut some corners. "Let's just dip a toe into lIt felt like another book that gets written because a mortgage needs to be paid.
It felt like the author cut some corners. "Let's just dip a toe into lots of lives, less research!" and "Writing an Italian American childhood is going to be so difficult. How much Italian do I put in? What did they eat for breakfast? Oh god. But Polish is difficult too! How can I make it so that they're interestingly ethnic but talk in the home exactly like I do now? A mixed marriage!"
And bits of it didn't feel very fresh ... "old maid school teacher" .... "educated woman likes having sex, so she's neurotic and ends up a zombie on pills" ... "Italian stallion with jewellery, hairy chest" ... "one day the big unpopular girl takes her glasses off and swishes her hair and suddenly she's sexy and giving the captain of the baseball team a handjob" ....
If you want bleak American families and collapsing American industries, it's got to be American Pastoral...more
“In the twenty-first century, the Pink Line is not so much a line as a territory. It is a borderland where queer people try to reconcile the libeBits:
“In the twenty-first century, the Pink Line is not so much a line as a territory. It is a borderland where queer people try to reconcile the liberation and community they might have experienced online or on TV or in safe spaces, with the constraints of the street and the workplace, the courtroom and the living room. It is a place where queer people shuttle across time zones each time they look up from their smartphones at the people gathered around the family table; as they climb the steps from the underground nightclub back into the nation-state.�
“The new politics was not only about erecting new walls, but also about making claims that older walls had been taken down too quickly.�
On domestic violence: “Kheswa, himself a transgender man, told me that he had noted, too, that ‘particularly in relationships, if you are a trans woman, you’re likely to compromise a lot: here’s a person who says, “You’re my woman!� You’ll let go of everything to hold on to that.’�
A Massachusetts� judge said that Scott Lively had aided “a vicious and frightening campaign of repression against LGBTQI persons in Uganda�.�
“some in these countries used this colonial legislation to back up their claims that homosexuality was unacceptable, and that the demand for its decriminalization was a neo-colonial slight on their sovereignty.�
“Their advocacy provoked unnecessary cultural conflict � and a new awareness of homosexuality that actually shut down space rather than opened it up, by forcing the fluid sexuality of Arab men into the ‘Western binary� of ‘gay� or ‘straight�. Suddenly the customs that provided cover for homosexual activity, such as holding hands in public or washing one another in a hammam, became suspect.�
“I sent him two hundred fifty dollars. This was meant to be for food and shelter but, having heard that his mother had been in a road accident, he chose to send a large part of it to her: like so many of the rejected queer kids I have met on my travels, he was trying to buy his way back into the family. � When Michael and I met in Nairobi, he told me that he was under terrible pressure to send money home to his ill mother now that he was working in Kenya. ‘But you are not working here, Michael,� I said. ‘You are an unemployed asylum seeker with a tiny UNHCR grant. You’re not even allowed to work in Kenya yet.� He looked sheepish. ‘My family think I am here because I have a job.� ‘Why didn’t you tell them the truth?� ‘Because when I sent my mother that money I didn’t want her to know it was gay money.� ‘What’s gay money?� It was a leading question, and Michael got it immediately. He shot his eyebrows up in a characteristic arch and nodded his head forward, in my direction, by the slightest of degrees.�
Dutch naturalisation test: “One of these � offers the following question: ‘You’re on a terrace with a colleague and at the table next to you two men are fondling and kissing. You are irritated. What do you do?� The answers available were: a. You stay put and pretend you don’t mind. b. You tell your colleague in a rather loud voice what you think of homosexuality. c. You tell the men to sit somewhere else. The assumptions are revealing: the possibility that you might not be irritated at all was not anticipated.�
“Jair Bolsonaro was given to saying things like gay children could be beaten straight, and that if his son were gay, he would rather he died in a car accident.�
“In an influential and prescient 1996 essay titled ‘On Global Queering,� the Australian sociologist Dennis Altman tracked the way the expansion of the free market had opened the world to American gay branding and thus to the � primarily American � ‘idea that (homo)sexuality is the basis for a social, political and commercial identity.� Gay people the world over were wearing the same clothes and aping the same styles, dancing to the same music, watching the same porn, aspiring toward a lifestyle made for American consumers. The Pride parades mushrooming across the globe celebrated an American liberation mythology, too.�
“The claiming of lesbian/gay identities can be as much about being Western as about sexuality.�
“He seemed always to be rolling both a cigarette and his eyes,�
Israel/Palestine: “The existence of such a policy was verified in 2014, when forty-three veterans and reservists in the country’s elite intelligence unit signed a public letter refusing to continue serving in the Occupied Territories, in part because they were instructed to use sexual orientation to blackmail Palestinians into becoming informants.�
Israel/Palestine: “’You gay boys just want to go and see the good life in Tel Aviv, and then you come crying to us when you get into trouble.’�
“My gay friends who were parents, attending school meetings and medical clinics and kiddies� birthday parties, were more on the frontline than I was, even if their lives appeared to be more conventional.�
“Like many transfeminine activists, Wolf was convinced that ‘things are more scary and dangerous� than they had been before, precisely ‘because of being in the public view. It’s not that the degree to which people hate us has increased. It’s that people both hate us and now know we are real. Before, if someone noticed us, they might get violent. Now people are looking for us.’�
“’The idea that “children should be seen and not heard� doesn’t hold anymore. So when we start asking children, ‘Who are you?� they tell us. It is our responsibility to listen to them.’�
“‘If a person likes me wants surgery. I’m just not going to get it,� said Emani Love. This has led her to a certain level of self-acceptance: ‘My body is as it is.� A kid who identified as trans but was dressed � for the street � in male attire, agreed. ‘We work with what we got. But we know who we are.�
Someone began to transition, but then paused. Then reversed: “’I had to go through being a man to understand that I am a woman,� she said to me. ‘You know, if I’d been born male, it would have been the same: I’d have had to spend time as a woman. That’s just how it is with me: I don’t fit into the boxes.’�
On people changing their minds about transition: “we are all formed by the paths we chose to take or ignore, driven by the callow passions of youth, or inertia, before we know better.�
“’When girls are lesbians or become trans, they’re taking a step up to a guy, but when guys are femme-y, t’s almost like they’re taking a step down to a girl, in the social marketing.’�
“Ross recounts how, as a college professor, “I accidentally misgendered a student of mine during a lecture. I froze in shame, expecting to be blasted. Instead, my student said, ‘That’s all right; I misgender myself sometimes.’�
“’My body is no longer my destiny. It is now my canvas.’�
“Goldner called for an understanding of gender in this context as ‘a process rather than a thing in itself, a gerund, rather than a noun or adjective, a permanent state of becoming, rather than a finished product.’�
“Stryker defined ‘the concept of transgender� as ‘the movement across a socially imposed boundary away from an unchosen starting place, rather than any particular destination or mode of transition.’�
“’Mainly, I’m a woman because there are huge parts of me that have come to be coded in this culture as feminine, and that this culture makes so difficult to express unless I identify as a woman.’�...more
I thoroughly enjoyed this. It’s rather problematic (Juliete, whose mother was African, isn't written very well) but genuinely interesting about the tiI thoroughly enjoyed this. It’s rather problematic (Juliete, whose mother was African, isn't written very well) but genuinely interesting about the times and, I thought, slightly more sympathetic than I was imagining. It was based on the life of Gustaf Grundgens, and his family were very unhappy with it.
But if I collaborated with the Nazis and this book was the meanest people were about me, I think I’d feel a bit like I’d gotten away with it, to be honest.
The regime's toxic decay is fascinating. You really get the impression that it would all have toppled over eventually, even if the allies hadn't pushed.
Bits:
“he was filled with enthusiasm for the heroism and beautifully uniformed youths of the new Germany.�
“She walked through the glittering crowds dispensing smiles � it as all she ever gave. She believed in all seriousness that God was on her side because he had allowed her to accumulate so much jewelry.�
“But then a person like that has the bad luck to fall into the hands of men who pervert his positive hatred. They tell him that the Jews are to blame for all that’s wrong in the world, and so is the Treaty of Versailles. And he believes all this rubbish and forgets who the guilty men really are, both in Germany and throughout the world. This is the famous diversionary tactic in operation. With these young scatterbrains who know nothing and can’t think straight, it works. So he sits there, a picture of misery, and lets himself be called a National Socialist.�
“You had to know how to deny yourself and take second place if you wanted to get on with Hendrik Hofgen.�
“But, Barbara thought, why does he get so worked up about German honour? What mental picture does he have of the vague concept? Is it so enormously important for him that Germany should once again have tanks and submarines?�
“Everything was once again as it had been in Hamburg, only this time it was on a larger scale. He worked sixteen hours a day, interrupted every so often by interesting nervous breakdowns.�
“Bruckner had to listen to a great deal about the ‘healthy and creative forces� that ‘in spite of everything� were contained in Nazism. He had to listen to talk about the noble national ideals of a younger generation, toward which ‘we old folk� should not assume an attitude of blind disapproval. He had to listen to more about ‘the political instinct of the German people and their healthy common sense� which would always protect it from the worst (‘Germany is not Italy, after all�) � until, angry and disillusioned, he left the city determined never to return.�
“’For the people who don’t know how to use their eyes and ears, this new rhythm must seem like the well-drilled stamp of marching feet. Fools allow themselves to be deceived by the outward severity of the ancient militant lifestyle. What a crude mistake! In reality, we are not marching forward, we are reeling, staggering. Our beloved Fuhrer is dragging us toward the shades of darkness and everlasting nothingness. How can we poets, we who have a special affinity for darkness and the lower depths, not admire him? It is absolutely no exaggeration to call our Fuhrer godlike. He is the god of the Underworld, who has always been the most sacred of all those initiated in black magic. I have a boundless admiration for him, because I have a boundless hatred of the dreary tyranny of reason and the bourgeois fetish concept of progress. All poets worthy of the name are sworn enemies of progress. Poetry itself is in any case a reversion to the sacred primitive state of humanity, before it became civilized. Poetry and slaughter, blood and song, murder and hymns � they are inseparable. Yes, I love catastrophe.’�
“Almost all the modern plays that had been produced in good theatres up to January 1933 � were now rejected as the most demoralizing products of cultural Bolshevism. � What could Director Hofgen produce in his beautiful theatres? The National Socialist bards � enterprising youths in black or brown uniforms � wrote things which anyone who knew anything about the theatre recoiled in horror.�
“It was the poet Benjamin Pelz who had the idea of calling them Oberon and Titania, as though the racist dictatorship of fascism was a kind of bloodcurdling version of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream�.�
“When an aged novelist, whose books were so paralyzingly boring that they were left on the booksellers� shelves but who was officially in good odor, proposed to read a chapter of his trilogy ‘A Nation on the March�, there was a small scene of panic.�
“But perhaps they saw not any particular face, but the dim yet overwhelming synthesis of everything they could have become but had not. Perhaps they saw the shameful, dreary chronicle of their decline, their degradation, which a stupid world saw as an ascent. Now they belonged to each other forever. This glittering, smiling pair belonged to each other forever � like two traitors. The link that bound them would not be love but hate.�
“’I’m worried about Otto Ulrichs,� Hendrik said. ‘How do you mean “worried�?� exclaimed the blond actress. ‘He’s dead.� She seemed to find it almost funny that Hendrik had not heard. ‘He’s dead,� repeated Hendrik softly. To the astonishment of the prime minister’s wife, he hung up without saying goodbye.�...more
I’m fairly confident I went through Fort Smith, driving from Oklahoma City to Hot Springs, Arkansas.
And then we saw Bill in Little Rock!
Anyway ... I eI’m fairly confident I went through Fort Smith, driving from Oklahoma City to Hot Springs, Arkansas.
And then we saw Bill in Little Rock!
Anyway ... I enjoyed this. I laughed a lot. But I thought the ending was a bit much: “Arkansas Jones and the Sankepit of Doom�.
Also .... I don’t think it was clear enough at the beginning that it was written by an old woman many years later. I thought a young girl was writing it a fortnight after the events. And she was a bit annoying. If I’d known she was a stubborn, lonely old woman, I’d have liked her much more, I think.
Don’t tell Maria Von Trapp and all those Viennese kids but Walt Whitman “said goodbye with ‘so long,� an idiom he associated with sailors and prostituDon’t tell Maria Von Trapp and all those Viennese kids but Walt Whitman “said goodbye with ‘so long,� an idiom he associated with sailors and prostitutes.�
An early white anthropologist on ‘berdache� in Native American cultures: “There is a side to the lives of these men which must remain untold. They never marry women, and it is understood that they seldom have any relations with them.� .... dot dot dot ...
I love the berdache and want to read more! “The Lakota Sioux chief, Crazy Horse, is said to have one to two winkte in addition to female wives.� and “Men took on berdache status in a number of ways. Sometimes they acquired the attributes of ‘two-spirit� people as a result of dreams. In some tribes, male children who seemed to prefer female pursuits would be tested to see if they should take the berdache role. Among the Mohave of the American Southwest, such a boy (usually of age ten) would be surrounded by members of the tribe, and a singer, hidden from sight, would perform particular songs. If the boy began to dance like a woman (meaning with great intensity), he assumed ‘two-spirit� status. � Among the Papago Indians of Arizona, as late as the 1930s, such a test involved building a small brush enclosure in which members of the tribe placed a man’s bow and arrows and a woman’s basket. A boy who displayed berdache inclinations was brought to the enclosure � Once he was inside, the adults set fire to the enclosure. They watched what the child took with him as he fled: if he took the woman’s basket he would become a berdache.� Fascinating, huh? And so � like� I don’t mean to be flippant � but they sound like concepts for TV shows, don’t they? “America’s Got Queer Eye Judging Your Gay Dancing� or something.
Anyway, lots of Europeans hated the berdache. Nuno de Guzman � a nasty piece of work � recalled �'a man in the habit of a woman, which confessed that from a child he had gotten his living by that filthiness, which I caused him to be burned.'� Vasco Nunez be Balboa had 40 “sodomites� eaten by his dogs � �'a fine action of an honourable and Catholic Spaniard,' as one chronicler described it.� “By the 1820s another missionary � was able to report that while Joyas [berdache in California] were once very numerous, 'at the present time this horrible custom is entirely unknown among them.'� “Indian Boarding Schools were a focus for the assimilation of Indians into white culture.� One young person was taken to Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania and “Since he was dessed as a girl, he was assumed to be female and placed in a girl’s dormitory; the other Navajo students protected him. However, during a lice infestation in which all the girls were scrubbed, it was discovered that this student was actually a male. He was removed from school and never seen again.� A Lakota Sioux medicine man said �'They began to look down on the winkte and lose respect. The missionaries and the government agents said winktes were no good, and tried to get them to change their ways. Some did, and put on men’s clothing. But others, rather than change, went out and hanged themselves. I remember the sad stories that were told about this.'�
“Mrs Nash was the company laundress of General Armstrong Custer’s Seventh US Cavalry. She remained with the regiment from 1868 to 1878, married to one soldier after the next. In the summer of 1878, Mrs Nash died � while the corporal she was living with was off fighting Indians. The ladies of the garrison prepared her body for burial, and it was then that they made an astonishing discovery: Mrs Nash was actually a man. (She had always been heavily veiled when she appeared in public.) When her corporal-lover returned home, he was ridiculed unceasingly by his fellow-soldiers. He shot himself to death.� Sad, huh? And “shot himself to death� sounds like he had to shoot more than once, don’t you think? God, what a nightmare.
When they arrested Oscar Wilde, Bosie fled to Paris and “Some 600 people made the Channel crossing from Dover to Calais on a night when typically only 60 would have done so � 'Never was Paris so crowded with members of the English governing classes � It was even said that a celebrated English actor took a return ticket � just to be in the fashion.'�
The Sunday Express on The Well of Loneliness�. �'I would rather give a healthy boy or healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel. Poison kills the body, but moral poison kills the soul.'� So dramatic! It reminds me of the Lucille Bluth quote about gays, “Everything they do is so dramatic and flamboyant. It makes me want to set myself on fire.�
Radclyffe Hall: “By the late 1930s, she and Una were living in Florence, singing Mussolini’s praises, and blaming the Jews for Europe’s problems.� Yikes! Step away from the rightists, gays. Always.
You knew Tchaikovsky was gay � but did you know Tchaikovsky’s brother was gay? And called “Modest�?
And did you know Vladimir Nabokov was mean about his gay brothers? One of them was “a harmless, indolent, pathetic person who spent his life vaguely shuttling between the Quartier Latin and a castle in Austria.� Bit catty, Vladimir.
Maxim Gorky: “In the fascist countries, homosexuality, which ruins youth, flourishes without punishment; in the country where the proletariat has audaciously achieved social power, homosexuality has been declared a social crime and is heavily punished. There is already a slogan in Germany, ‘Eradicate the homosexual and fascism will disappear.’� Eyeroll.
“There is no doubt, however, that men who were put in camps for being homosexual were not able to take advantage of the financial restitution which the West German government offered to Jews, political prisoners, and other groups that had survived the camps.� Ugh.
“World War II marked the first time in which the US military screened for homosexuality, asking young men, ‘Do you like girls?� � Suddenly those attracted to members of the same sex had an identity, at least in the eyes of the military.�
In January 1957: �'It is not within the province of the [American Civil Liberties Union] to evaluate the social validity of the laws aimed at the suppression or elimination of homosexuals,'� Yeah cheers thanks a lot ACLU.
Monty hated gays! In the decriminalisation debates that set the age of consent at 21 in 1967, he argued that it should be 80! “It wasn’t until 13 years and innumerable parliamentary debates later that, in 1980, law reform was extended to Scotland.� It came into force on 1 February 1981, with the age of consent at 21.
Jack Kerouac: “Not too many good vibrations in Tangier � Mostly fags abound in this sinister international hive of queens.� Later, William S. Burroughs wrote that “Tangier is finished. The Arab dogs are upon us. Many a queen has been dragged shrieking from the Parade, the Socco Chico, and lodged in the local box where sixty sons of Sodom now languish � the boys, many beaten to a pulp, have spelled a list of hundreds.�
Time Magazine on Other Voices, Other Rooms: �'the distasteful trappings of its homosexual theme overhang it like Spanish moss.'� Which is quite a gay way of being mean about gays, no? "distasteful trappings ... overhang it like Spanish moss"?
Tennessee Williams: �'When your candle burns low, you’ve got to believe that the last light shows you something besides the progress of darkness.'�
James Baldwin: “I wish I had heard him more clearly: an oblique confession is always a plea. But I was to hurt a great many people by being unable to imagine that anyone could possibly be in love with an ugly boy like me…� and “Best advice I ever got was an old friend of mine, a black friend, who said you have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.�
Pat Bond: “Yeah, there was a lot of pressure to look butch � So I would affect how I stood, and you learned to walk like a man with a grim look on your face � that suggested maleness, somehow, being grim.�
When a Miami gay bar gets busted: �'Damn, not only is my life ruined, but the whole evening is spoiled.'�
�'No longer is the claim made that gay people can fit into American society, that they are as decent, as patriotic, as clean-living as anyone else. Rather, it is argued, it is American society itself that needs to change.'�
�'We are no longer willing to be the token lesbians in the women’s liberation movement nor are we willing to be the token women in the Gay Liberation Front.'�
�'What is a lesbian? A lesbian is the rage of all women condensed to the point of explosion�'�
Lesbianism� �'offers escape from the silly, stupid, harmful games than men and women play, having the nerve to call them “relationships.�'�
Thatcher in October 1987: �'Children who need to be taught to respect traditional values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay,'�
On Section 28: “Once again, attempts to repress homosexuality had wound up only giving it more visibility, ‘promoting� it more strongly than the ‘loony left� councils ever had.�
Simon Nkoli: “When more than 70 people showed up at the first meeting, Nkoli was stunned. ‘I believed I was the only black gay in South Africa,� he said.�
�'These guys who operate multimillion-dollar aircraft and tanks are afraid someone’s going to hit on them. Maybe they’ll understand how women feel all the time.'�
Navratilova: �'I’ve been in the twilight of my career longer than most people have had careers,'�
9/11: “There were at least 22 known surviving same-sex partners of the terror attacks, and some Christian Right leaders opposed the use of federal funds to assist them. Public and private relief agencies, said the Rev Lou Sheldon � ‘should be giving first priority to those widows who were at home with their babies and those widowers who lost their wives. Assistance should be given on the basis and priority of one man and one woman in a marital relationship.’�...more
**spoiler alert** I came to this via my work’s book club and hadn’t read the blurb on the back � so I had little idea what it was about. I was genuine**spoiler alert** I came to this via my work’s book club and hadn’t read the blurb on the back � so I had little idea what it was about. I was genuinely shocked when “it� happened! Oh, America. Oh, white people!
I’ve been to the States but while I would probably like to think I’ve been a tiny bit original in my destinations (Oklahoma! Arkansas?), I think it would be difficult for me to say I’ve been anywhere like Starr’s neighbourhood. (I remember all these white people in New Orleans always telling me never to go the Treme like � it was weird that everyone just kept telling me not to go the Treme. It was pretty much the only thing anyone ever said to me. I went to this great secondhand bookshop and I talked to the guy about Lafcadio Hearn’s New Orleans home and he was like “remember that you can’t go and see it cos it’s in the Treme�.�). And I’m white. So I sometimes found myself thinking “Shit, is it really this bad?� but I guess it must be. All those guns! And at kids' parties! And the quality of the investigation into the shooting seemed absurd.
The author obviously decided that Starr deserved a happy ending. And she does. But I found the last few chapters started to feel a bit fairytale. I guess the kids need a bit of hope? I also felt that the writing was not nearly so good at placing the reader in the events. It started to feel a bit “and then this happened. And then this happened. And this this happened.� The impromptu basketball game was written so well early on� it’s a shame the protest felt a bit rushed and a bit “too much going on and to too many characters.�
Important, though. Right? I'm glad to have read it....more
It's weird because it's really boring and you keep thinking "why am I putting myself through this?" but you don't stop or slow down; you keep going coIt's weird because it's really boring and you keep thinking "why am I putting myself through this?" but you don't stop or slow down; you keep going cos you've got to push on to the end. And then you think "oh my god this is how we live our lives!" Kudos, Ha Jin. Kudos. But I have no idea where he got the motivation to sit down and write it....more
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