extemporally | Either sex or a conversation -- ideally both.

Entry tags:

books

Either sex or a conversation -- ideally both.

Quickly, three sentences' worth of whining: Livejournal I am so tired :(((( this subject is kicking my ass, even though in terms of pagecount the reading lists are puny, but I keep reading and my attention keeps sliding away, goddamnit, with the result that I feel both incredibly frustrated and incredibly lazy. Also, the bank won't give me a cashpoint card, and recent events in my ~personal life~ are transpiring to make me feel both incredibly giddy and also small and scared at weird moments, it's weird.

BUT things are... surprisingly okay! On Saturday I get both

oddishly and

kickingrad, and we're going to hang out together and you can't say better than that, and I am surrounded by some of the most incredibly nice (and funny, and interesting, and understanding) people in the world, and you really really can't say better than that, eh?

Also, I'm about halfway through My So-Called Life and argh, what a brilliant show, I LOVE IT SO. Tiny Claire Danes! Sarcastic voiceovers! The opening sequence! The part at the end of the first episode where --

RAYANNE. We had a time! Didn't we have a time?

ANGELA. Yes. We had a time.

And then she beams, and the camera pans, and oh my god, I'm not making any sense now, but <333 oh, my heart. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. Also, I went on the Wikipedia article for it and apparently Winnie Holzman [who created the show] said, "When I realized that Claire truly did not want to do it any more, it was hard for me to want to do it. The joy in writing the show was that everyone was behind it and wanted to do it. And I love her." FOR SOME REASON IT IS MAKING ME ALMOST TEARY. Already I've press-ganged one of my friends into watching the first episode. :DDDD

Anyway. Books I've read! That were not for school!

Cat On A Hot Tin-Roof, by Tennessee Williams.

I read this before I got on the plane back to England, so I don't have any quotes or any really specific things I wanted to talk about, but OH MAN, TENNESSEE WILIAMS. ♥ if anything, I appreciate him for the way in which he uses language so exuberantly and angrily, it's hard to explain. I think the afterword in the edition I read got it down pat when they described it as "lyrically obscene", yes, that's pretty much it, the way he uses certain words (mendacity!!!) over and over again, till it forms a kind of rhythm in the play. (Although I also have to say that I also had some Issues with the commentary -- Margaret as the saviour of the family? C'mon.)

I also think it's pretty obvious that this play was a product of its time (?), McCarthyism etc, I kind of wish I hadn't speed-read my way through it now, or gotten time to reread it, or SOMETHING, because I feel like there are so many things about this play to be observed! And all I have now is, "This was a good play. They were all kind of assholes, like in A Streetcar Named Desire, but I didn't mind it as much."

Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern, by Joshua Zeitz.

This was a HUGELY enjoyable read. On the front cover it's been described as an "engaging blend of solid academic research with a pop culture sensibility". Mm, yeah - like, my main bugbear with the book is it didn't go as deep into the issues I wanted to read about as it could have, like gender and race and class and consumerism, but on the other hand, if it had, I don't know that it would have kept my attention as well as it did? (Given that I read half of this book in between breaks studying, and couldn't put it down when it was time to go back to work -- you know. Pretty well.)

Like!

But if the flapper faithfully represented millions of young women in the Jazz Age, she was also a character type, fully contrived by the nation's first "merchants of cool." These artists, advertisers, writers, designers, film starlets, and media gurus fashioned her sense of style, her taste in clothing and music, the brand of cigarettes she smoked, and the kind of liquor she drank - even the shape of her body and the placement of her curves. Their power over the nation's increasingly centralized print and motion picture media, and their mastery of new developments in group psychology and the behavioral sciences, lent them unusual sway over millions of young women who were eager to assert their autonomy but still looked to cultural authorities for cues about consumption and body image. Like so many successor movements in the twentieth century, the flapper phenomenon emphasized individuality, even as it expressed itself in conformity.

WHAM BAM THESIS STATEMENT. I liked this! I was kind of struggling to express the same idea after watching Goodbye Lenin!, the way treatment of gender sort of makes an appearance pre- and post-reunification of Germany, the way conditions had changed but for better or for worse you couldn't say.

Or here:

In the old days, courting took place at home. There simply wasn't anywhere else to go. In effect, the Victorian system of romance, centred as it was around the front parlor or porch, put women in the driver's seat: They did the inviting, they set the hour and day of the visit, and they called the limits. Dating was something completely different. It revolved around a new public leisure culture that cost money; it therefore placed men, who had more money, in greater control. The result was a complex interplay among commerce, sexuality, and love.

And:

"Personal liberty is a Democratic ideal," argued a 1920s marriage manual. "It is a woman's right to have children or not, just as she chooses." Americans had gone to war to make the world "safe for Democracy." Now, many seemed to believe that the essence of democracy wasn't just self-governance, but free choice in every realm of life.

And also!

Flapperdom was every bit as much an expression of class aspirations as it was a statement of personal freedom.

And of course, there are those anecdotes that seriously brought home the whole zeitgeist of the 20s -- I think Zeitz called it the "hilarious glory"? And that is as good a description of it as any! --

But Long's job was to prowl the streets, not to cloister herself in the magazine's offices. Her lifestyle was outrageous and frivolous, and she knew it. "I shall not write about restaurants," she began one column, "because I haven't been to any and I am tired about writing about eating anyway. I shall write about drinking, because it is high time that somebody approached this subject in a specific, constructive way."

!!! okay so I'll admit it -- I went through pages and pages of, Idk, Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald and Lois Long and reams of other people doing outrageous stuff in the full knowledge that these were all Very Cool People who did things that were cool and were way cooler than I could ever aspire to be, which creates... some distance, to say the least? (I was brought up to disapprove of wrecking hotel rooms, I'm sorry!) But, oh man, "it is high time that somebody approached this subject in a specific, constructive way." Who says that? Who even says that?

I would have liked for this book to be about a hundred pages longer. After a while, I think it was quite clear that Zeitz liked dipping (or fully immersing himself...?) into the broader context of the 20s a lot, and that's cool, because I liked it when he did that too, but I think he also cut out some bits:

All the while, a powerful combination of mass disenfranchisement in the South (courtesy of poll taxes, literacy tests, and state-sanctioned violence) and gerrymandering in the North (small towns often sent the same number of legislators to the state capital as did large cities) made it exceedingly difficult for ordinary people to exercise meaningful political sovereignty.

Then he uses that as a bridge to argue that people came to embrace economic sovereignty and value it over the political. Like, HEY WAIT WHAT? Because slow down, Zeitz, I want to hear more about this stuff!!! Tell us more!

Or this bit:

By the late 1920s, the flapper craze had extended well past the white, middle-class neighborhoods where it began. Even if the media imagery was lily white, young black women, no less than their white peers, aspired to flapperdom. On campus at Spelman College, an all-black women's institution in Georgia, they donned imitation Chanel dresses, bobbed their hair, applied lipstick and eye shadow, and dangled strings of fake pearls from their necks.

Wait, "even if"? I think you could more accurately say "because", I mean -- very unfortunate blind spot there, given that Zeitz (correctly, I think) mentioned that flapperdom was very much an expression of class aspirations, it is rather obvious that the same link could have been made with race, the idea of superior white womanhood being reinforced through the flapper.

Although he did mention Lois Long's racism and the general flapper appropriation of the Charleston:

Reporting on one of her nighttime excursions to Harlem, she made the preposterous observation that "most of the Negro girls entertaining along Lenox Avenue would do well, either to take Charleston lessons from one of the five thousand flowers of American womanhood adorning our [downtown] choruses, or to invent a new dance." Never mind that African Americans had pioneered the Charleston.

I mean, the whole idea of white mainstream approbation being needed to legitimise the Charleston as a dance form, and also appropriation, argh, it makes me so angry :( but! That is neither here nor there, but anyway, I liked this book! I mean, my only real problem was that it should have been longer (and was maybe a bit superficially written at times? And also just plain poorly written in spots - Mik was totally right, oh my god, stop saying "It was a story that began in" already), so, you know. Clearly I enjoyed it enough to have wanted it to be longer!

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson | The Moon By Night, by Madeleine L'Engle | To Live, by Yu Hua | Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer | The Next Competitor, by K.P. Kincaid | Raffles Place Ragtime, by Phillip Jeyaretnam | Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy, by Frances Mayes | Mao's Last Dancer, by Li Cunxin | Marie, Dancing, by Carolyn Meyer | Man Walks Into A Room, by Nicole Krauss | How To Be Good, by Nick Hornby

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm too sleepy and pleased with the universe tonight (best production of the Tempest, oh best, oh best) to say anything constructive, so I'll stick to sounding about eight: I want your Saturday. :( Or rather, I want to be there. :( You and Helen and Chaz and-- :(

You should be there :( we want you to be there :( we will be thinking of you! :( ♥

My So-Called Life! \o/ I watched that show when it originally aired, when I was thirteen years old. (I'm so ancient!) The show has traveled with me through life on VHS and DVD and now it's on my hard drive in .avi form, and it's been sixteen years but it will never stop being relevant. I hope you love it all. :)

It will NEVER stop being relevant, for sure. Oh man, it's awesome that you got to watch it when it originally aired, I'm glad you had that as a kid. I love this show so much already!

Now I have to add My So-Called Life to the list of Things I Must Watch. Thanks, dear. *sighs*

Also, this line:
Flapperdom was every bit as much an expression of class aspirations as it was a statement of personal freedom.
I find this intriguing. Was it a way of saying, "I'm rich so I can party like this," or was it something else. Class differences are so rarely talked about in the U.S., I'd love to hear any info you care to impart.

No problem! *g*

Okay, more context, I was being a bit lazy in just quoting that one sentence:

In short, though few women in the 1920s lived like Lois Long, increasing numbers of them encountered her image every day at the office, in magazine advertisements, and on the silver screen. Flapperdom was every bit as much an expression of class aspirations as it was a statement of personal freedom.

The idea of a freewheeling flapper lifestyle being the choice of a privileged few which the rest attempted to emulate but couldn't afford, yeah. (Elsewhere in the book it says that the cost of a full flapper wardrobe was something like $1200 in today's money at the very least?) And conversely, of class aspirations being used in the pursuit of advertising to young women who were very successfully sold on the idea, etc.

I agree with you about Flappers! So many parts of it that I wanted a whole other book about, to properly dive into, oh man.

And oh my god, My So-Called Life, yessssssssss. THAT SHOW.

I mean -- even just factually, they could have gone into so much more!

I LOVE MY SO-CALLED LIFE. It's an amazing show, ugh, my heart. I feel like my life would have been so much more comprehensible if I'd discovered it a couple of years earlier.

It is so cool that you are discovering MSCL. I might be biased because my friends and I had to get together every week to watch it, and my then-BFF and I had arguments over which one of us was the Rayanne in our friendship, and this one girl in my homeroom dyed her hair red like Angela's, and I still say Brad Pitt movie with a certain cadence, and... Let's just say your post made me happy. There are a few meh episodes toward the end, but bear with it.

It's such a great show, and now that you've said it my mind's going to keep superimposing Angela & Rayanne over all the really intense girl friendships I've had. Thanks for warning me about the meh episodes! Already it's making me kind of sad that once I've finished the season I won't be able to watch it for the first time any more because that is all there is of the show.

♥ MSCL ♥

Hmmmm I wonder if I would like the Flappers book. It sounds like a fun read! But also like those bits the annoyed you would annoy me as well. :( (Although I do wonder - the bit you quoted, with the poll taxes and gerrymandering and stuff? How much U.S. history about that sort of thing is taught outside the U.S., and was this a book first published here? Because I know what he's talking about there; maybe he thought people would have the requisite knowledge and it didn't need addressing? Except, if that's true, then why didn't he go deeper into the class and race things, and the way politics interacted???)

Ahaha don't mind me I am tired and making no sense and have read too much homework today.

BEST SHOW.

Hmmm, I do wonder! My knowledge of US history is mostly "the 20s happened, GREAT DEPRESSION (we covered that in lots of detail), WW2, baby boom in the 50s", so it's possible that Zeitz simply assumed that the reader would have known what he was talking about! (You should explain it to me, though.) I do think that it is a superficial book in some respects, even accounting for that fact. I mean, I read a NYT book review that complained about the same thing, and also went on to add that the old anecdotes about the Fitzgeralds and their contribution to 20s culture was just... old, and not very insightful anyway, which was something I hadn't picked up on because it was all new information to me.

No you are delightful! This is a delightful comment! Although I am sorry you're tired. *pets*

ALSO ALSO. Now I just want to reread Having Our Say in the light of having read this - have you heard of it? It's a memoir by these two black women who lived through the most part of the twentieth century, and if I do recall there was a fair amount about the 20s, too, and argh. I want to reread it!

I've not heard of it, I don't think, but it sounds great! Hm, for the other stuff: poll taxes were a tax on the right to vote; often they were enacted in such a way that only men whose ancestors had voted prior to the end of slavery did not need to pay a tax. Poll taxes, in short, were state-sponsored disenfranchisement of black sharecroppers who couldn't afford to pay the tax. Literacy tests were another method of preventing people from registering to vote; if they couldn't pass a literacy test, they couldn't register. The folks with the least access to education in the South were, again, black sharecroppers. He's talking about the Jim Crow stuff, you know? As for the state-sanctioned violence, I'ma assume he means the lynchings (in which sheriffs and their ilk often participated, whether in the form of opening a jail to the howling mob looking for black defendants, or what), although he might also mean the kind of legal system that led to things like the Scottsboro trials.

Sorry if all of this sounds rudimentary! I just don't know what all knowledge he's presuming versus what knowledge you have. I agree (especially based on that point about the tired coverage of the Fitzgeralds) that this sounds like a shallow book. :(

Hm, okay! This is all new information to me, more or less, though I did know about the lynchings/Jim Crow... okay, stuff is making more sense now, although the way you explained the quote (I must clarify -- I do think you did it quite well! I'm interpreting it as another gap of logic in the book) made it sound like it was predominantly a problem of race. I mean, I have no doubt that this would have spilled over into the general political climate, but given that most people who wanted to emulate the flapper/twenties lifestyle at first, and more than likely were the only ones who could afford to do so, were... middle-class white people who already had more than their fair share of political sovereignty (again, disclaimer about general political climate). I mean, isn't political sovereignty related to economic sovereignty really? Especially for black sharecroppers -- if you can't vote, I'm sure the rest of life (inc. the economic bit) is going to be pretty shit for you, so.

Tl; dr -- I don't doubt that for a limited subset of people "embracing economic sovereignty" would be a meaningful/workable alternative to political sovereignty, but holy that is one hell of a generalisation to be putting into one paragraph. So, um, yeah, this was a shallow book?

Seriously! When you put it that way (and I just read again through some of the other quotes you included above), that seems like an even grosser (in both senses!) generalization than I'd thought. What a shame! I bet somebody could have managed to write both a fascinating and deep book on the subject.

That is one of those shows I never finished like I was supposed to, but I want to now. This summer when I get back, maybe.

I'm glad you do! It's such a brilliant show -- argh, just thinking about it now is making me be like all, oh, my heart.

I used to have a really huge thing for the Roaring Twenties, your review's bringing that back in a big way. I should like to read that! Also, I auditioned for Streetcar the other day. That went...rather hilariously, not in a good way.

You could! COME VISIT ME and I will lend you the book, not even kidding about that. Also hahaha yes I heard about Streetcar, oh dear.

ugh, li, this is like a ridiculously fast drive-by comment that's mostly *hugs hugs hugs*

events in my ~personal life~ are transpiring to make me feel both incredibly giddy and also small and scared at weird moments

THIS. oh my god, this is me recently too. i can't even. i don't know what your ~events are (though, to make a semi-educated guess...boy-issues?), but for me, i think i've reached the point where yes, i'm scared and feeling possibly inadequate and insignificant and tiny in the universe, but if there is even a small glimmer of giddy in there, i owe it to myself to invest in that glimmer, you know? so. MORE HUGS, GIRL. put your chin up and embrace vulnerability (yes i will be quoting that talk for the rest of all time) because i think even the heartaches are worth it.

ha, okay, not actually that fast a comment after all. basically. ILU AND YOU DESERVE THE HAPPY OKAY

Edited 2011-01-21 11:52 (UTC)

ALL THE HUGS IN THE WORLD.

Got it right in one, ha. It's absolutely amazing and absolutely awful, AND thank you for mentioning that talk again because I so meant to check it out!! For what it's worth, though, I always thought wearing your heart on your sleeve required more bravery than snark (I am not in the fandom, but I think Andrew Garfield said something along those lines?), but, I don't know. I don't want to just, open myself up to hurt for the hell of it, and this is sounding increasingly wanky so I'll stop now, aha.

ILU TOO, okay. You deserve the happy!

....i scrolled. but i will say that a long time ago my mum dragged me to line dancing classes with her and the charleston is pretty fun to do.

Dude, that's awesome. You should show me!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Either sex or a conversation -- ideally both.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

whoops, wrong journal!

Re: whoops, wrong journal!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject