Tag: reviews

Book Notes: Álvaro Pombo’s Gay Novel

~ Clarissa ~ 23 Comments

Contra natura – or “against nature” – is the magnum opus of the famous Spanish author Álvaro Pombo who finally decided to lay out his understanding of homosexuality after a lifetime of being openly gay. Pombo doesn’t write about the gays who imitate the heterosexual setup by getting married and setting up joint households. For those gays he has quite a bit of contempt because the kind of homosexuality that fails to embrace its unnatural (contra natura), anti-social dimension is, in Pombo’s eyes, pathetic and vaguely disgusting.

Pombo’s novel is about another kind of gays, the ones who are gay in order to avoid the complexities placed by women on the way to sex. That there is such a duality among homosexuals – the ones who want to be (or to marry) men who are like women and the ones that want a sex life free from female patterns – was a commonplace even in the prissy US 15 years ago. But now it’s all a big secret and we are supposed to pretend that the entirety of homosexuality can be reduced to the lifestyle embraced by Pete Buttigieg.

Pombo is blissfully unaware of political correctness and writes his novel to show what happens to the non-Buttigieg gays in old age. What do you do when you are 65, and your body simply can’t give you rapid-fire sex acts with a large variety of new partners? You have to buy the companionship of young men, Pombo says. You have to open yourself up to humiliation and abuse. To Pombo, that is perfectly fine. The gays, he says, should not be like the heterosexual

shit-eaters whom we have always envied and hated. Our purest connection is with failure, with marginalization and with death.

And that, Pombo believes, is fine. Gay men are the shadow of self-satisfied bourgeois propriety. They are a conduit to the darker, more painful and chaotic side of human beings, to the Dionysian rites of pleasure and pain that inspire non-reproductive creation. Instead of running down the streets in Pride parades, says Pombo, the love that dared not speak its name should now choose to not speak it in order to remain on the margins where, says Pombo, it belongs.

I am a heterosexual woman, and much of the novel’s text was hard for me to understand. It’s a beautifully written work of art. Pombo is one of the Spanish greats, having received every literary prize in existence, and deservedly so. But it took me far longer to read the novel because none of it was understandable to me or rooted in any sort of intuitive motivation. Which, of course, is the point.

I recommend the novel only if you are VERY open-minded, both from the left and from the right.

Book Notes: Victoria Kielland’s My Men

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

I’m very conflicted about this novel by the young Norwegian writer Victoria Kielland. It’s beautifully written. Kielland is a major talent. At only 39, she delivered a seriously impressive work of art.

However, there is something that is giving me serious creeps about My Men. It’s based on the life and experiences of the first known female serial killer in the US, Belle Gunness. And it’s not just loosely based or vaguely inspired. The main character is called Belle Gunness, and all the relatives and victims and events are like those of the real Belle.

I’m probably a major prude but I can’t get over it. Imagine if somebody wrote a novel about Ted Bundy, portraying him as this sad, tender, wounded, misunderstood victim who didn’t really want to murder anybody but he was kind of provoked into it against his will. We’d all be repulsed. But then why is it less repulsive to romanticize a woman who chopped up a couple dozen men and children all over the Midwest?

As I said, brilliantly written, major talent. And I do understand that Kielland is trying to show that even the worst piece of garbage evildoer perceives herself as a long-suffering, sweet little lamb. I get it. But I can’t get over, this bitch left behind a pile of corpses and you are making it sound cute? I’m probably a bad literary critic if I can’t place myself completely above these mundane considerations and value art above all. It is what it is, though. I loved the writing but quite hated the book.

Miranda July vs Moa Herngren

~ Clarissa ~ 12 Comments

Miranda July (the author of All Fours) is more artistically gifted than Moa Herngren (the author of The Divorce). Still, if you are in the mood for a novel about the midlife crisis, I’d recommend Herngren.

For one, The Divorce gives space to both female and male experience of being in their early fifties. Herngren decided not to follow the fashionable trend of turning male characters into props who sit around waiting, supportively and silently, while their wives thrash around menopausally, destroying everything in sight. Herngren’s depiction of the male middle-aged life weariness is nuanced, kind, and very realistic.

Another reason is that Herngren’s characters aren’t rich, clueless bastards. These are regular people who struggle to pay the mortgage and worry about money. Most people can’t just drop everything and start bed-hopping around the country when middle age hits because nobody is rich enough for that. Herngren writes about normal, everyday people, and that makes the book a lot more useful. Middle age is difficult, and The Divorce reads like a handbook of what can go wrong and how to prevent it.

Of course, if All Fours were a literary masterpiece, none of this would matter. But it’s not. There’s talent there but not remotely enough to justify choosing this novel over The Divorce.

I recommend The Divorce very highly, even though the author piles it on way too thick to make her characters as representative of their type as possible. Besides, I’m eager to discuss it, so if you’ve read it or are planning to read, please make yourself known.

Book Notes: Moa Herngren’s The Divorce

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

After 32 years of “daily arguments about gender roles”, Niklas walks out on his wife Bea. Instantly, Bea’s sense of simmering irritation with the man she perceives as in constant need of her guidance turns to concern. Yes, she’s annoyed that Niklas spends too much time at the hospital where he works as a doctor, even though his earnings allow her to “do something meaningful with her life” in a vanity job. But still, how dare he walk out and avoid doing the chores she assigned to him!

Bea hops on her bike and rides in search of the wayward Niklas. It does cross her mind that she should have brushed her teeth and combed her hair but she rejects the idea of making herself look good for her husband. Sweaty, stinky, in Birkenstocks over grubby socks, she confronts Niklas and is stunned by his refusal to scurry back home. I could have stopped reading right then because people who wear Birkenstocks over socks have nobody to blame when their marriages collapse but I’m very interested in the “wifely drama” genre.

Women use books like Moa Herngren’s The Divorce to run through all sorts of scenarios that can imperil a marriage and find solutions before a problem arises. “Husband suddenly walks out” is one of the favorite female scenarios to explore. Herngren makes it way too easy for her readers, though, offering up an image of such a sad excuse for a wife that one would have to try really hard to reach her level of marital uselessness. Bea’s inability to formulate a single sentence free of exasperation or demand is comical, and so is her shock at finding out that this approach doesn’t evoke deep sexual longing towards her in her husband.

Niklas is a piss poor husband, too, of course. He’s man enough to get himself a girlfriend but is so terrified of his wife that he fails to inform her of that fact for months, forcing the miserable, Birkenstocked Bea to beg him, again and again, to tell her why he isn’t living at home.

There are still some useful things one can pick up from The Divorce, though. For instance, Bea is shocked to discover that Niklas left her for Maria Axelsson, a woman with scented candles and animal-print cushions, whom Bea and Niklas had spent years ridiculing. Lesson 1: if a man spends years ridiculing some random woman, he likes her. She’s a source of danger, especially if she is armed with animal-print cushions and you wear sandals over socks and don’t use deodorant.

Lesson 2: telling a dude that you want him “to take initiative” by doing exactly what you want him to do while looking enthusiastic is not going to lead anyplace nice. When a man takes initiative, there’s a strong probability that you won’t always like how that looks, so don’t be a Bea and demand initiative when what you really want is slavish obedience.

I don’t know if we have any young, unmarried people around here but this novel is a veritable textbook on how to screw up a marriage. With anybody less beaten down than the miserable Niklas, it would take only a few years of Bea’s marriage-killing strategies to turn the relationship into a smouldering wreck. Read The Divorce and do the exact opposite if you want your marriage to thrive.

The novel is a lot of fun, people. Highly recommended, enjoyable, light reading that’s screaming fun. Read it in a day to get rid of the horrible aftertaste from Claudia Piñeiro’s The Time of the Flies, and the remedy worked.

Book Notes: Claudia Piñeiro’s The Time of the Flies

~ Clarissa ~ 8 Comments

In spite of the inane quotes from Angela Davis and Rebecca Solnit, I still decided to give Claudia Piñeiro’s novel a chance and ploughed on until the bitter, bitter end. And bitter it was, indeed, because it turned out that the whole point of The Time of the Flies is that any man has “the right to be a woman” and it’s “a right that must be recognized.” These are quotes, in case anybody didn’t catch on.

As I’ve been saying, the narrative of “rights” leads to very insane places if we don’t approach this concept carefully and intelligently.

Aside from Piñeiro’s insistence that it’s crucial to trans children in schools and keep it secret from their parents (which is hard to ignore because it’s what the novel is about), nothing about the book works. The way it’s put together is clumsy. The characters make no sense. Everything is fake. And I swear, she used to be an excellent writer. When she wrote about Argentina and things that are happening in Argentina and are relevant to Argentineans, she was an excellent bloody writer. But then, for some utterly confusing reason, she decided to abandon all that and write for the English-speaking admirers of Angela bloody Davis, and I’m so upset because this was one of my favorite Latin American authors and now she’s all “rah-rah, let’s prattle on about the stupid Anglo fixation on transing kids like it’s the most important issue on the planet.” It’s so subservient, so pathetic. The woman threw away her God-given talent for … this? To appeal to some marginal group of overheated Anglos?

I’m really upset right now. I could have spent these two days reading something worthwhile and instead got saddled with this crap.

Book Notes: In the Presence of the Enemy

~ Clarissa ~ 1 Comment

If you are looking for a police procedural written from a conservative sensibility, you can’t do much better than In the Presence of the Enemy by Elizabeth George. The novel features a Hillary-Clinton-type character and offers a very realistic depiction of what that means and what it costs.

George is known by going deep into the story of even minor characters, making them real and memorable. As a result, her novels grow longer and longer. The series isn’t uniform in quality, so if you don’t have the energy to read 20 books ranging from 400 to 1,000 pages each, I’d concentrate on this one.

One of George’s favorite themes is a parent’s love for a child. She writes about it with heartbreaking force. But in In the Presence of the Enemy, she gives us an ice-cold, cruelly ambitious mother who is incapable of even imagining what love is.

The novel is from 20 years ago, when everybody was still normal and wrote normally without trying to maneuver around ideological landmines.

The Hunger Games Trilogy: Catching Fire and the Purpose of Men

~ Clarissa ~ 7 Comments

Thanks to reader V.’s recommendation, I have spent another sleepless night reading the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire. I found it to be a lot better than the first. The model of “one hero and a bunch of pathetic people and nasty evildoers” does nothing for me. In Catching Fire, though, that model is abandoned for the sake of a much more interesting model where people resist, cooperate, and there is no single hero who is a lot better at everything than everybody else. I have always been bothered by the “Superman plot” which revolves around the idea that we all need a hero with superhuman powers to save us all from our pathetic weaknesses.

What I find disconcerting in the novel, however, is how the male protagonist, Peeta, is presented as a person whose only goal and overpowering interest is to serve the needs of the “fair lady.” How would we feel about a 16-year-old female protagonist who tells a boy that her entire life is about him and that life has no meaning if he isn’t there? A female protagonist who shows no interest in her parents, siblings, or even pets, who has no friends of her own, who disappears when the boy she likes dismisses her and reappears as soon as he shows some interest or has need of her services? A female protagonist who tells the boy she wants to die so that he can go ahead and marry some other girl?

I think we  would all passionately condemn the novel as extremely patriarchal and promoting the image of women as subservient to men and as having no value of their own apart from male needs. Doesn’t it make sense for us, then, to feel equally bothered by a book that denies a male character any other role as being an uncomplaining and unquestioning servant of a girl?

The inhabitants of Panem at least manage to rebel against the authorities that enslave them. I hope Peeta does the same by the end of the 3rd novel in the trilogy.

Is The Hunger Games a Feminist Novel?

~ Clarissa ~ 44 Comments

I won’t beat around the bush and will just give you my answer instead: no, of course, it isn’t. There is absolutely nothing feminist whatsoever about it. I can’t say that it’s actively anti-feminist either, though. The novel is simply not about that at all.

It’s funny that so many people think The Hunger Games is some sort of a feminist manifesto. For instance, Katha Pollitt, who is usually a very insightful journalist, gushes about the “feral feminism” of both the book and the movie like a teenage fan. These “female warrior” narratives that have become so popular in the past 25 years keep trying to sell us the belief that the most admirable girl of all is the one who has managed to turn into a boy. And I fail to see what’s so feminist and progressive about that idea.

The novel’s protagonist keeps repeating that she is much smaller and weaker physically than her male opponents in the Hunger Games. Yet, because of her great people skills, her capacity to sell her sexual favors successfully and fake sexual desire, her intelligence, her fast running and archery skills, she defeats them all.

I’m sorry, folks, but that’s a load of baloney. In terms of height, girth and muscle strength, women lose to men without a shadow of a doubt. Rare exceptions do not change the general rule. In any competition where brute strength or any sort of athletic abilities are involved, I can guarantee to you that I will lose even to the least athletic of men.

The good news, however, is that this doesn’t matter any more. The world has changed, and the brute physical force means nothing. People who used to make their living by lifting and moving heavy objects are being rendered unemployed by the physically much weaker folks who design the smart machines that can do these jobs much better. The muscle tone and the height are completely irrelevant to how successful and comfortable one will be in life. We, the women, have no need to prove that we can run, shoot, jump and kick ass as well as men. Because even if we can’t, it’s completely unimportant.

The “female warrior” narratives try to sell us some sort of a feminized version of a nerdy teenage boy’s Spiderman fantasy. “I will discover superpowers and will beat up all the men boys on the playground.” When that fantasy is projected on a female protagonist, silliness ensues. Let’s remember that the only battle that Buffy, a far more interesting and complex “female warrior” than Katniss, never manages to win is the one over the right to practice her sexuality as she sees fit. As a woman, i.e. a person who owns her female body, Buffy is a complete and utter failure.

For as long as I’ve been a reader, I have been searching for a female character I could identify with. Male characters like that abound. In The Hunger Games, for example, I feel a lot of affinity for Haymitch. Katniss, however, is as removed from my way of being Bella Swan is. The only real difference between the two is that Katniss is a little clumsier at performing patriarchal female roles: she mothers, albeit reluctantly, both children and adult men, she gradually learns to sell sex, and her entire existence belongs to her family.

And she can shoot a mean arrow. Whoop dee do. How very feminist of her.

Hunger Games: A Review

~ Clarissa ~ 34 Comments

On the advice of reader V., I read the first book in Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games.  This is not my genre but I wasn’t risking anything since Amazon gives these books out for free on Kindle.

I have to say that, considering the genre, the book is quite good. The prose is nothing to write home about but, in spite of the impotence of the vocabulary and the hobbled nature of the grammar structures, there is nothing in this book even remotely resembling the vicious injuries to the English language one has seen in the Twilight series.

Hunger Games is highly entertaining and it reads very easily. As you can see, I read it in a day (a bout of regular Friday night insomnia helped.) The premise has been a little overdone, of course. As I read, I kept wondering why it is that societies that suffer from obesity enjoy fantasizing about starvation so much. I guess such fantasies tickle their appetites and allow them to eat more than they could normally manage to stuff into themselves. I know that all the descriptions of endless meals made me eat like a maniac yesterday.

The main problem I had with the book is how completely inconsistent the main character was. I understand that this is the fantasy genre, but there has got to be at least a pretense at some internal logic in the novel. Katniss, who is extremely self-sufficient, strong, resilient and opinionated, suffers from a debilitating lack of self-esteem. She somehow manages not to know that she is attractive and spends the entire novel alternating between feats of self-reliance and profound belief in herself with extremely obnoxious and unmotivated bouts of “But it isn’t possible that he likes me. Oh, of course he doesn’t like me. And nobody likes me. And this is all a conspiracy because there is no way anybody likes me. And, of course, he, of all people, doesn’t like me. And people in general don’t like me. And if somebody says in public that he is in love with me, it will make everybody laugh at me because I’m probably five years old and I think being loved makes adults look ridiculous.” To me, it made zero sense.

Another problem was that I had to make a huge effort to remember that these characters are supposed to be 16. Peeta, for example, behaves like a very mature 40-year-old man. If anybody has seen this kind of 16-year-old boys, especially among those who, within the structure of their society, are considered sheltered, please let me know.

Later on, I will write a separate post addressing the issue of whether this is a feminist book. This is a debate that has been raging for a while and even The Nation has an article on the subject in its most recent issue, so I want to share my point of view.

This is the end of the academic year and I’m in need of light, distracting reading matter. This means that I will definitely be reading the next two books in the series. I’m not planning on watching the movie because, for one, I have no doubt that Hollywood has made exactly the kind of product that the book tries to criticize: flashy, gaudy, full of obnoxious special effects, with half-naked surgically altered starlets rolling in the mud for the delectation of the viewing audience. Every last shred of the timid social critique that the novel offers will have been excised form the movie.

Besides, I have no doubt that the film producers have cast 25-year-old starlets to play 16-year-old characters. The only people who can play 16-year-olds are either actual 16-year-olds or extremely talented performers of the caliber that Hollywood is not familiar with. Otherwise, this becomes a huge circus where adult men and women pretend to be kids, making themselves look ridiculous in the process.

Of course, if there are people who are willing to tell me that the movie is not that bad, I’m willing to listen.

Do share whether you liked the novel and why. I’m very interested in how people feel about it.

Classics Club #1: Nancy Milford’s Zelda

~ Clarissa ~ 15 Comments

I really enjoyed Nancy Milford’s biography of Zelda Sayre, the wife of one of my favorite writers, F.S. Fitzgerald. This is a tragic story of a woman who realized that being nothing but a wife even to the most brilliant, fascinating, adoring and faithful man in the world (because Fitzgerald was all that to Zelda) is not enough to fulfill a human being.

At first, Zelda was very happy in her marriage to Scott. They were the most glamorous couple of the twenties, admired and celebrated by everybody. Gradually, however, Zelda started to realize that her life lacked meaning. Scott had his work while she had nothing of her own. She was too smart to be content with living her life as an appendage to a famous writer.

Zelda’s dream became to excel in something and manage to make her own living. However, she had no education and lacked the simple knowledge of how much work and effort one needed to invest to become even just simply mediocre at anything.

At first, she decided to become a ballet dancer but the need to practice on a regular basis was too much for her, and Zelda ended up at a clinic with a nervous breakdown. Then, she chose the career of a writer. The problem with that plan was that the only material she could write about was her life with Fitzgerald, and he’d already written about that with the skill he’d acquired from the regular practice of his craft. Zelda simply could not compete, which made her suffer. Later on, Zelda tried her hand at painting. The perseverance and strength needed to practice any of her chosen professions were not there, though.

Every time she failed, Zelda withdrew deeper into mental illness. She spent years going from one institution to another. Scott, who loved her passionately, struggled to pay for her expensive medical care, for their living expenses, and for the education of their daughter for whom he was the only actual caretaking parent. Having seen what a lack of an education and a career had done to his wife, Fitzgerald was obsessed by offering his daughter Scottie the best education he could.

Milford’s biography of Zelda is very well-researched and offers a very convincing and poignant story of the horror implied in the “two people, one career” model of a romantic relationship.