So I teach high school English, and for the most part my job is not to teach literature. Instead, I teach literacy. Literature works for a lot of this because it’s rich, it’s dense, it’s good, and it’s timeless, so the notion of themes, symbols, figurative language are done well, correctly, and in a way that is in balance. But for a lot of kids, these kinds of things aren’t always available or appropriate for trying to make someone be a better reader. But then […]
“Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed.”
Whatever, I liked this. I think I wouldn’t trust anybody who LOVED this or anybody who HATED this. And that’s because as a novel, it’s more or less just a soap opera. It’s just some screwed up sexual politics to it, but really what book doesn’t. I wouldn’t super trust a novel that really discusses a progressive stance on sexual politics to be all that good since our society is so screwed up on the issue, it would read like fantasy. But otherwise, I find […]
“Small wonder how pitiably we love our home, cling in her skirts at night, rejoice in her wide star-seducing smile, when every star strikes us sick with the fright: do we really exist at all?”
Here is Walker Evans: You know some of these photographs probably: I am not sure that I liked this book much. Well, you can see that from my rating. I think my issue with my own feelings is that I actually should have liked this book a lot because of my slightly more former Socialist leanings. I never would have been a Communist but I would vote for Socialist candidates, but I would like a more established ground-up party than say a certain Senator might […]
While they waited for the revolution, life had to be lived.
I didn’t know much about this one going in. The opening was fetching, and I got into it almost immediately. I found it funny, sort of ahead of its time or not quite what I expected, and there were several moments where I was laughing out loud. I got a little “done” with it by the last 100 pages or so (it’s oddly long at 560 pages for an otherwise small feeling story) and so I was happy to finish it when the time came. […]
It’s not possible to forget anybody you’ve destroyed.
This novel came out in 1962 and deals with various love….triangles, quadrangles, quintangles…the entire sexual framework of the USA as it deals with bisexuality, homosexuality, heterosexuality, and queerness in general. It also deals with those same issues as they relate to race, black and white identity, Americanness, African-Americanness, and even Frenchness/French Colonialness. All of this leads to an earnest and devastating novel that bloodied and beautiful mix of pain, sadness, love, sexual energy, and violence. There’s some parallels and similarities to a few other writers […]
“A realm of war did not need courtesies”
Book 1: Re: Colonized Planet 5 – Shikasta. Personal, Psychological, Historical Documents Relating to Visit by Johor [George Sherban] Emissary Grade 9, 87th of the Period of the Last Days This is the first of five “space fiction” novels that Doris Lessing wrote in the late 1970s, early 1980s, and finally in the early 1990s. I call it “space fiction” because she calls it “space fiction” in the opening “Some Remarks” of the collection. They were published separately and then together, and then went out […]
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