I enjoyed this elegant, humane book immensely. Learned a lot that I was glad to learn, and I was glad to be reminded of much else. Her usual theme of the validity of hope is again present, convincing and inspiring too.
This multifaceted tribute to one of her principal literary influences is a reassessment of a writer best known for his fervent criticism of totalitarianism as “a threat not just to liberty and human rights but to language and consciousness.”
Solnit’s view of Orwell broadened and softened after she came to recognize that his deep appreciation for some of life’s cozier pleasures — including domestic comfort, the natural landscape and gardening — underpins and pervades his work. In rereading his books and essays, she writes, “I found another Orwell whose perspectives seem to counterbalance his cold eye on political monstrosity.”
“Orwell’s Roses” is at once a biographical study of this champion of freedom, an impressive work of cultural and literary criticism and a testament to Solnit’s far-ranging curiosity. Known for her penchant for digressions and tangents, Solnit leaves no row unhoed as she simultaneously explores the roots of Orwell’s prolific literary output and the fecund history of roses.
Her novels would have been enough. “The Vaster Wilds,” “Matrix,” “Fates and Furies”—flights of imagination and dives into history that keep readers turning pages late into the night. Her collection “Florida” (my personal favorite) won the Story Prize. But Lauren Groff is more than a great writer, she’s also a great citizen, channeling her belief that everyone should be free to read the books they choose into The Lynx, her new bookstore in Gainesville, Fla. When I heard the news, I wanted to stop her. I wanted to praise her. I wanted to tell her there will be days that being both a writer and a bookstore owner will feel like one job too many. Just ask Louise Erdrich, Emma Straub, Judy Blume, Jeff Kinney. Ask me. But the joy of putting the right book into a customer’s hands will make up for everything. Once again, Lauren Groff is doing spectacular work.—Ann Patchett on Lauren Groff for TIME.
A radical history of transness in cinema, and an exploration of the political possibilities of its future.In the history of cinema, trans people are usually murdered, made into a joke, or viewed as threats to the normal order – relegated to a lost highway of corpses, fools, and monsters. In this book, trans film critics Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay take the reader on a drive down this lost highway, exploring the way that trans people and transness have evolved on-screen. Starting from the very earliest representations of transness in silent film, through to the multiplex-conquering Matrix franchise and on to the emergence of a true trans-authored cinema, Corpses, Fools and Monsters spans everything from musicals to body horror to avant garde experimental film to tell the story of the trans film image. In doing so, the authors investigate the wider history of trans representation – an exhilarating journey of compromise, recuperation, and potential liberation that they argue is only just the beginning.
Rereading John Crowley’s Little, Big, which has been a favorite for decades. Crowley is one author who has never written with an eye to an adaptation, or using D&D as a template for his plots, or any other popular idea in fantasy fiction. He just turns out the deepest, richest prose that you want to savor on the tounge and in the breath. He uses words like corybantering (excited dancing). He evokes places and emotions better than any one.
Just started Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel Maddow. As the title implies it’s a suddenly-very-familiar-sounding story of how Germany waged a well-orchestrated and terrifyingly effective propaganda war to win over the hearts and minds of American citizens to support the fascism movement in the first decades of the 20th Century. The bright side is that the book is also about the American heroes who pushed back and eventually prevailed, and how we can use their example as a template for how to win similar battles in the present and future.
Just finished 2023 Booker prize winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. It is about totalitarianism taking over the Republic of Ireland told thru one woman trying to keep her family together. Wow! Deeply moving novel.
Currently reading Jim Harrison’s “The Search for the Genuine,” a collection of essays and non-fiction. I’m not sure where I got it. It just appeared in my home office. A friend had given me another Harrison to read, which I enjoyed and passed forward. This particular copy must have achieved spontaneous generation.
Long ago I read a book of his about a middle-aged man having an “affair” with a teenaged girl. Kinda gross, from what I remember, like a middle-aged crisis fantasy.
Ayup. The novella (or a similar one) was in the prior collection I read (“the Ancient Minstrel”). I don’t know enough about his writing overall, but the various novellas in that collection contrasted enough to show different characters and themes. The essays so far are poetic and keep me reading.
Found it. Farmer, a 1976 novel about a 43-year-old school teacher in Michigan:
Joseph has slipped into an erotic love affair with one of his students. At 17 Catherine has given Joseph what his widowed lover Rosalee cannot comprehend, an animal sexuality rapturously free. For the first time in his life she becomes what Henry Miller and D. H. Lawrence promised in Joseph’s fantasies. It also becomes a guilt-ridden parody of love. Catherine is a sick-child seeking a daddy. Rosalee is the caring mistress-mother-sister holding Joseph to a dull but proximate reality. The pull between the two drags Joseph near ruin.
What holds him together is Michigan, a crusty doctor-hunting partner and his own sense of man’s history. There is no stability in emotions, only needs.
Bleh. Anyway, glad to hear you’re reading something by him that sounds better.
I just finished Fall by Neal Stephenson, which was kinda sorta a sequel to REAMDE. (Several of the same characters, although it’s not super critical to know the back story.)
At 883 pages it was a long book, with a lot of digressions, even for something written by Stephenson. There was this whole part in the first third where American society had totally collapsed and fractured into an all-too-plausible “post-truth” hellscape, and then the rest of the book basically ignores that detail and moves on like nothing happened, so that was weird. And the last half of the book gets a little weird and involves epic quests. So a little disjointed and uneven, but I suppose it held my interest well enough for me to finish it. I’m curious to hear what others thought of it.
The first part of the book, with the realistic future hellscape, particularly the need for personal editors to filter one’s input of electronic information (similar to what was shown in a further potential future/ different universe in Anathem with the reticulum). Very interested in that part.
The rest of the book was just exhausting for me. I am trying to read past the very fist part, to get to that part in the desert, but I haven’t yet.
I’m a Neal Stephenson super fan, but this one tired me out.
