extemporally

So the thing is, sometimes I read books. Sometimes I put off reviewing them until when I finally do, it looks as if I've read five books in the space of 24 hours omg! And sometimes I review books I've read so long ago I completely forget the critical opinion I formed of it aeons ago, and anyway I can't form a new one, because I have like loads of books to review. Anyway this entry is... not so much with the intelligence, let me just say. I concede, I concede. And yet I regret nothing.

Women, Culture, & Politics, by Angela Y Davis

EVERYONE, IT'S ANGELA DAVIS. FALL AT HER FEET Y'ALL. I have a friend who attended her talk when Angela Davis visited her college, and proceeded to recount it to me v. breathlessly over Facebook. "Li, I blushed!" she said, when telling me that her friend told her she looked like Angela Davis.

Angela Davis has become a classic, and you know she's become a classic because she says things that seem self-evident to the only brands of feminism I would ever care to endorse, but they are only self-evident because she PUT THEM THERE, and so much more eloquently than anyone ever could:

... they may inadverently fall into ideological traps of racism even as they honestly attempt to challenge racist institutions. White women who labor under the illusion that only with their assistance will their 'poor Black sisters' rise out of their deprivation - as if we need a Great White Sister Savior - have fallen prey to prevailing racist attitudes, and their activism could well prove more detrimental to our cause than beneficial.

I like the kindness implicit in 'honestly attempt to challenge', too. Although her actually (still, after decades) radical stuff is, hmm, still something I'm struggling to come to grips with/figure out my opinions on. So she quotes Lenin:

He pointed out, however, that the bourgeois demand for abstract subjective freedom in art was actually a stifling of the freedom of creativity. Literature and art, he said, must be free not only from police censorship,

... but from capital, from careerism, and... bourgeois anarchist individualism. Partisan literature and art will be truly free, because it will further the freedom of millions of people.

Now, I think what Lenin & Davis are trying to get at is Isaiah Berlin's positive conception of freedom, and that simply attaining negative liberty is inadequate, and furthermore that not all choices are made in a vacuum, BUT the reason this is making me uneasy is that Lenin is not merely offering up critique; he proposes a solution. If we follow Nicola Lacey's three-step recipe for feminist utopia (WOO NICOLA LACEY), then we see the shift from critique to reconstruction is, truly, radical and disturbing, and attempts to replicate structures similar to those that are being deconstructed. AND THERE IS NO SATISFACTORY SOLUTION TO THAT. Just to avoid sounding like The Times: I seriously doubt that Angela Davis is suggesting ~policing art~ - and indeed she points to progressive art coming from the artists themselves, such as Gil Scott-Heron and Stevie Wonder - so Lenin's possibility remains hugely hypothetical.

Anyway. I found that passage to show its radicalism, but also its age - no one did radicalism like radicals in the 70s & 80s - and in general came away a huge fan of Angela Davis. I'd really like to read some of her more recent stuff, and maybe an actual book focused on one topic not a collection of speeches and chapters like this was. tl;dr ANGELA DAVIS IS GREAT.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.

Man, nothing makes you feel like a sociopath reviewing The Road a month after you've read it. I liked it! It was good! The writing was gorgeous! It was pretty gutting at the time! Now I am just like, I can't quote any passages because that would entail looking at the book again and I can't do that because I don't have any time to start feeling things again

O: The Intimate History of the Orgasm, by Jonathan Margolis.

Pretty good reading over several weeks. I don't know that I agree with several of his assumptions - Kinsey, really? I thought we'd moved past that - but in general I found this a well-researched and well-written work. I learnt things too - I did not know that masturbation hysteria was a result of the Victorian age! - though it seems incredibly obvious in retrospect. I can't remember what exactly the nature of his queer sex content was, but I do remember it being included, and I don't remember being very pissed off, so A+ for that I guess. His predictions about attitudes towards sex and sexuality towards the end of the book should be taken with varying amounts of salt, but amongst them was nestled this gem:

Virtuality - cybersex and various remote methods of promoting orgasm - will become the masturbation aid of the masses. Orgasm will thus become an ever more lonely pursuit. The middle class, however, will be very superior about having 'natural', non-aided sex - with a live partner.

YOU DON'T SAY, MR. MARGOLIS. *snerk*

The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri.

AWESOME. I enjoyed myself reading this so much that I didn't even remember to flag any pages - you'll just have to take my word for it. I remember reading and enjoying her short story collection The Interpreter of Maladies with varying levels of enjoyment (though her technical accomplishment was evident throughout), but this novel was just wonderful.

When she calls out to Ashoke, she doesn't say his name. Ashima never thinks of her husband's name when she thinks of her husband, even though she knows perfectly well what it is. She has adopted his surname but refuses, for propriety's sake, to utter his first. It's not the type of thing Bengali wives do. Like a kiss or caress in a Hindi movie, a husband's name is something intimate and therefore unspoken, cleverly patched over. And so, instead of saying Ashoke's name, she utters the interrogative that has come to replace it, which translates roughly as "Are you listening to me?"

♥♥♥

Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death, by M.C. Beaton.

This book could have been SO GOOD, and at first it did seem like the best kind of pastiche of detective novels - set in a small village! Except the detective-protagonist comes from the city! A murder! Except the circumstances of the death are mundane and village-y! A protagonist! Except unlikeable! A PR background! But it wasn't the best put-together thing, and the tone sometimes swung from light and ridiculous to taking itself weirdly-seriously, so that was kind of strange. I wish it had been written better though, because THIS BOOK IS ENTITLED AGATHA RAISIN AND THE QUICHE OF DEATH.

Also, tonight is CARIBBEAN BOOGIE NIGHT. And tomorrow I am SWIMMING IN THE RIVER. \o/