People like being bummed. It’s the only guess I have for why my really depressing posts get the most traffic. That can’t be right, though…

Anyway, I’ve been reading more of the Cerebus series by Dave Sim. I’ve done Church and State I & II , Melmoth , and Flights . I’ve also given myself something of a coronary in reading he’s diatribe about feminism, homosexuality and race tangents

Well, the first two parts of it. I had to take a break there. If you get through all of it, let me know what you think.

I’m enjoying Cerebus on the whole and I agree with Sim on some of his assertions about certain portions of feminism (I just wish he wouldn’t paint all women with the same brush). And I find that RS Stephen sums up how I feel much better than I do in her essay “Masculinity’s Last Hope, or, Creepily Paranoid Misogynist”. This bit in particular: “Despite the fact that you champion reason, your writing lacks the factual and intellectual rigor required by even an undergrad English essay, and your arguments aren’t all that logical.”

Melmoth is in interlude about Oscar Wilde, of all people, and is incredibly well-rendered.

As the storyline of Cerebus goes along it gets more complex and interesting, which is only to be expected, and even knowing that he and I wouldn’t be able to have an intellectual discussion over dinner doesn’t ruin that, though it does alter my reading of the text somewhat. It’s a train wreck situation. Where you wish you didn’t know it existed, but once you do, you just have to look. I simply had to know how he felt about women. So I read Tangents. And it altered the way I read his work.

This brings me to something else that’s in the literary news lately–J.K. Rowling commenting off-handedly that Dumbledore is gay. (If you don’t know who J.K. Rowling or Dumbledore are, please return to your rock for the rest of this post.)

Since she outed him there’s been several sides to the conversation. The two most predictable are: ‘What a big pedo! That’s why he liked Harry so much!’ and ‘She should have said it explicitly, Dumbledore was in the closet!!!’

Does knowing he was always gay change the way a person would read the books now? It shouldn’t, as it has no bearing on the majority of the books. But it will to some people. The people who only see the word ‘gay’, no matter if it’s in front of “the gay man who cured cancer”. In The Celluloid Closet Quentin Crisp said, “When you say heterosexual, people focus on the ‘hetero’ but when you say, ‘homosexual’, people focus on the sex.”

I’m a lesbian and a writer and I fully understand why Rowling handled the character as she did. A writer knows all sorts of things about her characters that she doesn’t tell the audience because it’s not pertinent to the story. It wouldn’t have made one bit of difference if Albus (I can call him that because we ride the same bus) had been explicitly gay or not. Who he loved didn’t matter much in terms of the story. And in a kids’ book, what is he supposed to say? If Rowling wanted to be sure everyone knew, at what point was Albus supposed to say he wanted to make the buttsecks with Grindelwald? You don’t address sex in kids’ books in that way. He said he loved Grindelwald. How much more do you want?

At the same time, she handled it beautifully. She said (when the revelation occurred in Carnagie Hall in New York) that if she’d known it would’ve made everyone so happy she would have told them sooner. The way to de-demonize homosexuality is to let people like the gay person first and then say, “Ta-da! I was a big ol’ queer the whole time!” It’s like Suzanne Westenhoefer, a marginally known but always out, lesbian comedienne and Ellen DeGeneres, a closeted until popular comedienne. Now she’s everywhere with her partner and people are cool with it. Sometimes you have to sneak under the radar before you can throw off the invisibility cloak.

[This post is from a previous blog. Original post date: 24 October 2007]

I watched Puccini for Beginners at the weekend and it was a fun enough romp. New York was shot beautifully and the actors did a better job than what I was expecting–I don’t have high hopes for most lesbian-themed films, as they usually don’t have great budgets. Gretchen Mol was nice (this is the first thing I’ve seen her in–is it just me or does she look exactly like Kate Hudson?) as were the other two leads, Elizabeth Reaser and Justin Kirk.

The premise is a commitment-phobic lesbian (Reaser) is dumped by her heterosexual girlfriend (a Molly Parker look-a-like named Julianne Nicholson) and falls into bed with a man (Kirk). They have a relationship of sorts and have a rather ridiculous conversation about the differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals philosophies towards relationships. The friends of the lesbian-dating-a-man are two dimensional, but the actresses (Jennifer Dundas and Ute Lemper’s twin Tina Benko) do their best. And I know it seems like I’m saying everyone in this film looks like someone else, but that’s bound to happen, really. There are only so many ‘attractive’ faces in the world and a good number of them are on the screen–some of them are bound to resemble one another.

The thing about the film that’s stuck with me longest was the pronunciation of “Turandot” by Reaser within the first five minutes of the film. She pronounced it: TUR-in-dot. I thought it was a French name and therefore the ‘t’ would be silent. So I looked it up and the final answer is: Yay, I’m right. According to Puccini scholar Patrick Vincent Casali, Puccini never pronounced the ‘t’. Which totally kills the illusion that the character was supposed to be such an opera buff. Oh well. At least I learned something.

[Repost from now-defunct blog. Original post date: August 7, 2007]

Essays

Pageism a.k.a. You May Be a Pageist If… Humourous essay about Pageism, the desire to be of (non-sexual) service to an older woman based on a section of Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis.

Shorts

Vignettes, single paragraphs, descriptions… Uncategorised but complete pieces

Close

Short Stories

Happy Birthday, Dana Byrne [PDF] : Two members of a threesome decide to kill someone making life hell for their mutual girlfriend. Dark comedy.

The Isis Group
Book One: Through Me the Way [PDF] A privately-funded, humanitarian organisation that goes about improving the world by removing unconvicted criminals in a variety of ways. The first story is the recruitment process for the most important members of the group, ‘Keys.’ Dark comedy that should appeal to Existentialists.

Other Things

A British Primer   [PDF] Information for Yanks preparing to visit Britain–England in particular–to help them not embarrass their country.

On the last Friday of each month I’m going to post about what books I’ve began, finished, or made  progress on and some thoughts on those books. Some books will get their own post with a longer review once I’ve finished them.

Began

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris.

God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. (audio)

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
MIT offers a free course on the book for high schoolers. And this is an image gallery based on the book. Some of those would make excellent tattoos if your artist was incredibly talented. (At first, I wasn’t sure why I liked those images so much–then I realised they’re very Burtonesque.)

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (Chapters 1- ??) by Elizer Yudkowsky.
This is my first fanfiction and it’s very enjoyable. It reminds me of Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder (not Sophie’s Choice, which is by William Styron), in that it’s a loose narrative created to explain, well, methods of rationality. (It was philosophy in Sophie’s World, which I recommend.)

The characters’ personalities are nothing like the canon characters, but it’s still highly entertaining and informative. I’m glad to see there are 80 chapters thus far and is still being written.

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov.

Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell (audio). Wow. This guy really wasn’t keen on the Christians.

Finished

Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell (audio).

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
This is one of those books I’ve wanted to read for some time, but it was always pushed back by more recently-published works. Well, the time is now. It’s a collection of short stories written in the future that follows the history of robotics from when first introduced to society to the inevitable outcome. My favourite story is ‘Reason’, which is an allegory about religion and the ways logic can be used incorrectly. If you haven’t already read it I highly, highly recommend it. Even if you’re not a sci-fi fan, this one is excellent.

Comics

I found a comic reader for the iPod (CloudReaders) that’s quite excellent. Whilst trying to decide what to add to it I realised I had an insane number of digital comics. I’ve always enjoyed comic books, but I haven’t read a great deal so I’m looking forward to being able to carry them with me and read them anywhere.

100 Bullets Issue 1

Caffeine : Issues 1, 2. The Caffeine series was published from 1996-1998. I’ve only just got around to reading them because I have an unholy amount of readable media.

Gay Comix Issues 1, 3. This series is a collection of (mostly) autobiographical comics about gay life and society in the early 80s.

Audio and Video

I have discovered iTunes U. Oh boy. It’s an iOS app that allows you to watch/listen to podcasts of educations lectures and information from some of the most prestigious universities in the world.
TED Talks: Understanding Happiness If you’re interested in psychology, what makes people happy and why, or how you can live a happier life, this is for you. Overall, I’d give this 4/5 stars, as the talks could have been longer.
– Nancy Etcoff: On the Surprising Science of Happiness
– Martin Seligman: Positive Psychology. The website he mentions is here .
– Helen Fisher: On Why We Love & Cheat. She talks about what ‘love’ does to the brain (makes you insane).
– Paul Bloom: The Origins of Pleasure
– Dan Gilbert: Why Are We Happy? He also wrote an absolutely fantastic book, Stumbling on Happiness . It’s psychology, but accessible to the layperson.
– Barry Schwartz: On the Paradox of Choice. This one is about how choices are supposed to make us happy, but actually hinder us in several ways.
– Malcolm Gladwell on Spaghetti Sauce. This one follows the previous one well, because it’s also about choice, but it’s about how choice can make us quite happy.
Cambridge Short Ideas
– Seven Ages of the Body
– Bird Tango. Wonderful talk about the parallels between humans dancing and the mating rituals of birds.
– Just Add Water. Interesting talk about the importance of water on living organisms.
– The Music in Me. Very interesting talk about what our music choices say about us. What do you picture when you think of death metal listeners or indy artists or country & western music?
– Forgotten Heroes.
– The Perfect Crew? This one compares the ways to build the best athletic team and the best office workers.
– How Many Lightbulbs? One man sets out to discover the best ways to save electricity–busting some of the current myths about what the average person can do–as well as explains what would be required to divorce ourselves from unsustainable power resources.
– Don’t Eat the Plants. Great talk about the defence mechanisms of vegetation. Even if you’re uninterested in botany, this one is a must-watch.

The title pretty much says it all–Inseparable focuses on relationships (both lesbian and platonic) throughout the history of literature. It’s quite good and exhaustive enough to exhaust the reader–a bit too academic for a general audience but a must have for women’s or lesbian studies.

Some quotes:

[0063] INSEPARABLE by Emma Donoghue 4s English|Non-Fiction|Women’s Studies|Lesbian [22.09.10]
-001- It was perceived by the servants of the House that some secret bond of connection existed between Miss Aldclyffe and her companion. But they were woman and woman, not woman and man, the facts were ethereal and refined, and so they could not be worked into a taking story. –from Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy (1871)

-002- Often such critics protest that it would be anachronistic for us to find lesbian themes in a text whose writers and first readers would have seen none.  … Why would playwrights construct so many homoerotic scenarios in dramatic form if they had no expectation that their audience would understand them?

-003- Endings are overrated; they are often the point where the writer bows to convention…I know that my liking for a character is shown bymy giving her a lot of page time and vivid scenes, however I may dispose of her by the end.

-004- they are more interested in the charming scenario of a pair of girls whose bond emerges naturally from their similarity and mutual familiarity. The girls are either known as growing up together or as being “kindred spirits” who fall in love at first meeting. Because of their likeness in age and background, they can act as mirrors to each other, although events will often reveal their characters as contrasting.

-005- _inseparable_ was a common term for female pairs by the late sixteenth century

-006- Mistresses of all a universe we shall be; through our alliance I feel we shall become the superiors of Nature herself. Oh, dear Durand, he crimes we are going to commit! The infamies we are going to achieve!  [EPIGRAPH?| — Marquis de Sade _Juliette_

-007- A secret alliance of two beings who understand one another because they’re alike… –Edourad Boudret _La Prisonniere_

-008- It was _to love_ I yearned more than to _be loved_, and I was entirely free from sexual instincts. — Christopher St John, Hungerheart: The Story of a Soul (1896)

-009- You’re neither unnatural, nor abominable, nor mad; you’re as much a part of what people call nature as anyone else, only you’re unexplained as yet–you’ve not got your niche in creation. But some day that will come and meanwhile don’t shrink from yourself, but just face yourself calmly and bravely.

First on the list of research reading for my new novel:

“The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe.

The protags in my story would definitely read Poe, if only for his gift for atmosphere. Atmosphere is something I definitely need to work on, though my descriptions will never be as good as Poe’s.

-1- an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn–a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued.

-2- I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.

-3- And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.

-4- An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm.

I particularly like his description of seemingly baseless anxiety–it does feel like something daemonic and heavy has taken up residence on one’s chest.

My Sister in This House by Wendy Kesselman

No quotes from this one, but it’s a play about the Papin sisters, two young maids who live in a house with their stifling boss and her perpetually soon-to-be-married daughter. It reads with subtley, though on stage the too-close relationship between the sisters is more obvious. It was made into a film called Sister, My Sister , a title that sounds like some sort of feminist manifesto from the 60s.