We found persimmons growing in the wild, and this seems very bizarre. Should there even be persimmons in Illinois?
They are smallish but extremely sweet.
Persimmons in Illinois
Author: Clarissa
Movie Wars
Speaking of movies, Matt Walsh’s Am I Racist? is opening in theaters next weekend. It’s a very big deal that it’s going on the big screen first. There needs to be a thriving movie-going culture and there need to be watchable movies. Plus, it’s crucial that normies find out what the “anti-racist” racists actually believe. They don’t know and when they find out, it will be too late as usual.
Walsh’s movie will be one of two conservative movies in theaters currently, which is unusual. Reagan with Dennis Quaid is doing unexpectedly well at the box office. Critics hate it with a passion but viewers are flocking to the low-budget movie.
I will be at the very first showing of Am I Racist? in my town, a matinee. It has to be an early showing because what would we do with Klara if we wanted to go in an evening?
I’ll post my impressions after I watch, and I hope many people go and we can discuss it after.
Sex Scenes in Movies
I’m clearly not Gen-Z but I never understood why sex scenes need to be in movies either. If one wants pornography, it’s easy to find and consume in ways that brings physiological relief. If you aren’t seeking this kind of relief, then I don’t understand why it’s interesting to stare at naked people.
The amount of pornography currently available is such that it’s puzzling what value anybody thinks yet another sex scene can bring to a movie.
The Solnit Brand of Feminism
Twenty minutes after writing the previous post, I stumbled on the suggestion, in chapter 8 of Piñeiro’s The Time of the Flies, that women get heavier prison sentences than men for the same crimes. This is so divorced from reality that it’s kind of scary.
It’s clear why this brand of feminism eagerly embraced the idea that men make better women than women. For Solnits and Piñeiros, women are profoundly inferior. Women are always victims. There’s nothing a woman can do to not be a victim. Women have absolutely no agency. It stands to reason that one would harbor secret contempt for such weak, pathetic creatures and want men, whom Solnit and Co imagine as all-powerful and godlike, to substitute them.
When an Author Explains Her Own Work
Here’s what I said 3 years ago about the novel Tuya (All Yours) by the Argentinean writer Claudia Piñeiro:
Tuya is a parody of the “resufrida mujer latina” or “the long-suffering Latin American woman” trope but I can just imagine some dour, humorless academic taking it completely seriously and providing a “feminist reading” of the novel. God, I hope the colleague who bought Piñeiro’s books isn’t planning to do that or isn’t reading this post.
Book Notes: Claudia Piñeiro’s Tuya
All Yours is an excellent novel. It’s about the wife of a perennially cheating husband but she’s such an insufferable, self-aggrandizing victim that it’s impossible to feel bad for her. A very funny novel, hugely entertaining but guess what? No dour harpy needed to explain the novel from a tediously politicized point of view. Piñeiro did that herself.
In the recently released sequel to All Yours, titled The Time of the Flies, Piñeiro explains how we are supposed to perceive All Yours, providing an actual bibliography consisting of books by Rebecca Solnit (the creator of mansplaining) and similar characters. There’s even a screed on “transwomen are also women or even better women than the primitive basic women because their womaning is so much more womanly.” And slogans about the importance of “inclusive language.” And other similarly aggravating stuff.
Of course, it was obvious this entire time that Piñeiro is very left-wing. She’s Argentinean, so what else can she be? But she’s talented. How could it possibly occur to her to quote the cognitively unwell Solnit or provide explanations of her own writing? Both things are beyond tacky.
I plan to still try to finish the novel but I’m majorly discouraged. Maybe I can simply skip the woke indoctrination chapters, even though skipping anything is almost physically painful to a literary critic.
All Yours is still very recommended, though. It’s very funny even though it’s become clear that the author didn’t mean it to be.
The Alarmed Administration
Brought to us courtesy of the Biden/Harris administration and its 4-year efforts to coddle Iran and protect Russia:
The endless expressions of alarm, concern and preoccupation from the Biden/Harris administration have become an international joke. The administration issues these statements about being alarmed almost daily regarding a wide variety of issues. You wouldn’t know it if you don’t specifically follow foreign policy but there are actual stand-up comedy routines about how the Biden/Harris WH engineers bizarre situations and then expresses alarm over them.
We deserve better even if it’s not on offer.
Vocabulary
My 8-year-old doesn’t know “encumber, impale and tirade” but she knows the rest. Plus, “surreptitiously” and “preposterous.” She wouldn’t mix up “incidentally” and “accidentally.” Or “sarcastically” and “ironically.”
Because I actually speak like that.
I’m so weird.
Book Notes: Private Life by Niccolò Ammaniti
I never read anything by Italian novelists, which is why I decided to try Private Life (La vita intima in the original) by Niccolò Ammaniti. It’s a good novel which would make an even better movie.
The main character is Maria Cristina, the wife of the Prime Minister of Italy and “the most beautiful woman in the world” according to social media. She is an inoffensive but extremely vapid creature who wants nothing in life but to wear cute outfits and exist in a state of bovine contentment. But people keep expecting that she do more. Her small daughter needs attention and care, her husband needs her to be a wife and not a flower pot, her only friend wants Maria Cristina to notice that he’s a human being and not a household appliance, and the press expects her to answer at least a couple of questions every few years. All these demands confuse the one-dimensional, stupid Maria Cristina.
Incapable of feeling anything beyond physical pain from stubbing her toe and desperate to spur on her atrophied sensibilities, Maria Cristina engages in a sadomasochistic game with an old acquaintance she thinks is blackmailing her. Or courting her. Or both. The weird tricks these very rich, bored people play on each other in-between virtue-signaling by way of their globalist opinions are tawdry and pathetic. The political and financial elites of Italy are depicted in Private Life as not so much wicked as vacuous and primitive. It’s impossible to despise or even dislike Maria Cristina like one can’t despise a cat or a guppy fish. If she were a tad more evolved, I’d call her immoral but to break moral laws, you need to understand them, and Maria Cristina is clearly not equipped for that.
It’s a good novel, and I’m glad that Italian literature is alive and well. If Niccolò Ammaniti is any indication, Italians really despise their elites but, hey, can anybody blame them?
The Daycare Issue
When I supported Trump’s child tax credit, Dem readers unloaded on me like I was saying something downright evil. I hope they stay true to their principles and criticize Harris for this idea. I’m true to mine, so I’m in favor.
I fail to see the connection with childcare costs because the main driver of costs – as people who actually used daycare know – is the paucity of childcare facilities. Even the most exorbitantly priced daycares have a waiting list from here into the eternity. I’m still supportive of the child tax credit but this is a problem it won’t solve.
What I do despise is the dig at Vance’s regional origins by the use of “memaw and papaw.” It’s childish and off-putting. In theory, the idea of grandparents helping out is fine but if people are using daycare instead it’s because this option is not available. There’s literally not a single person in existence who isn’t using it because nobody suggested this possibility.
In short, everybody in the political space is being an infantile dick on this subject.
Expanding the child tax credit is still a great idea, no matter who proposes it. It’s a million times better than direct payments to parents.
Who Puts in the Effort?
There is a pro-Palestinian session at the conference of my professional association of literary critics. I’m for freedom of speech, so I support. I’m not going to attend because the titles of the talks sound preachy, and life is too short but I support people speaking about whatever they choose. In any case, what I wanted to mention is that there are no sessions that positively highlight the Israeli or the Jewish culture. The number of Jews in academia is extraordinary. But they aren’t organizing sessions or making their case.
Lots of people complain and moan but have they put in the work to change things? Like people who say they don’t have time to write but they’ve made zero effort to make time.
This isn’t a post about Israel, in case people don’t understand.
And as a bonus to those who have read to the end, I learned a new word today as a result of reading the program of the conference:
translanguaging
I have no idea what it means and zero interest in finding out.
Literary critics, eh? Such love for the language. Such clarity of expression.
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