Playing hell in Charleston:
The men and women massacred while studying the Bible the other night in the Emanuel A. M. E. Church were, in their own way, raising hell.
That phrase might seem ill conceived or even disrespectful but it can be invoked here to honor their courage and the A. M. E Church’s long tradition of challenging white supremacy. Their private prayer this week was political simply because their mere existence challenged racial power. There is a long contextual history of race violence in America which gives us tools to see this event clearly but even more than that, there is a history that is deeply specific to both place and to that phrase.
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Ren Jender emailed me this piece in Toronto Life by Leah McLaren about having been Jian Ghomeshi’s friend, and her take on his behavior:
What’s startling about the allegations against Jian is not that a seemingly law-abiding person is accused of doing terrible things. That happens all the time. It’s the way Jian wove the most cherished and sacred liberal values of Canadian society into an ingenious disguise that he used to hide in plain sight. He was a wolf in organic, fair-trade lamb’s clothing. One woman I spoke to for this story who is now accusing Jian of sexual assault believes his persona was a deliberate cover for his predatory behaviour. She thinks he created and used his personal brand—one that was endorsed by the same network that brought us David Suzuki and The Friendly Giant—to get in touch with women so he could abuse them. She also believes that for him, in his sickness, that dark irony was a turn-on.
Jian used liberalism and feminism the way Roy Cohn used McCarthyism—as a grand screen of moral superiority that hid his deeper, more urgent desires. Did it turn him on to correct his Q staffers for using sexist language like “manning the phone” and then punch women for pleasure in private?
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I rarely support boycotts, as they usually wind up hurting the people you wanted to help in the first place, but I am not going to read or link to Reddit again until they shut down /r/coontown, and I encourage you to join me. That fucking thing is going to get someone murdered, if it hasn’t already.
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when i told him i’m a lesbian my boy jay was like, BUT ALL YOU WRITE ABOUT IS DICK. *squints eyes* first of all, patently false. i write about 1 eating snacks 2 hating: new things/going outside/human garbage in general and 3 luxurious face creams. second, i can still absolutely do every single one of these things in between these extensive feelings talks mavis is always trying to have and listening to this dar williams playlist over and over and over while my bra burns. another of my friends was all, “are you worried you’re going to lose your audience?” and really guys, i kind of am? but then i think if i can write “pussyhole motherfucker” 17 times in one post without alienating anybody cool then what’s the fucking problem? i haven’t dated a man in over three years, and before that i was fucking midgets and dudes who work at foot locker and shit, so it’s not like anyone was hanging around here for heartwarming stories of heterosexual love anyway. if you hate it, kick rocks. you won’t be missed. bitches gotta eat bitches out.
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Mallory and I are superfans of MEG, the terrible book about the big shark, which is finally getting out of development hell courtesy of…Eli Roth…and you can talk about MEG freely in this space.
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Alexander Chee on working for William F. Buckley and his wife Pat. I became mildly obsessed with Pat Buckley after reading their son’s book about his parents, and I think Chee really gets at the complexities of hate and love in this piece.
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I thought this meditation on reading as therapy was fascinating!
Bibliotherapy is a very broad term for the ancient practice of encouraging reading for therapeutic effect. The first use of the term is usually dated to a jaunty 1916 article in The Atlantic Monthly, “A Literary Clinic.” In it, the author describes stumbling upon a “bibliopathic institute” run by an acquaintance, Bagster, in the basement of his church, from where he dispenses reading recommendations with healing value. “Bibliotherapy is…a new science,” Bagster explains. “A book may be a stimulant or a sedative or an irritant or a soporific. The point is that it must do something to you, and you ought to know what it is. A book may be of the nature of a soothing syrup or it may be of the nature of a mustard plaster.” To a middle-aged client with “opinions partially ossified,” Bagster gives the following prescription: “You must read more novels. Not pleasant stories that make you forget yourself. They must be searching, drastic, stinging, relentless novels.” (George Bernard Shaw is at the top of the list.) Bagster is finally called away to deal with a patient who has “taken an overdose of war literature,” leaving the author to think about the books that “put new life into us and then set the life pulse strong but slow.”
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Did you read the thing about gay Mormon men who oppose same-sex marriage, and are married to women? The writer also talks to gay Mormon men who are married to women and DO support same-sex marriage:
He notes that Danny Caldwell and many of the others in the brief do not refer to themselves as “gay.” They prefer the term same-sex attraction, or SSA. “To them it’s an inclination, but it’s not their identity, it’s not who they are,” unlike their religious identity, he says.
Derek Kitchen, another gay former Mormon I spoke with in Salt Lake City, who is running for city council, says this approach can’t end well. “When your entire personal worth is your standing within the church and where you land in the afterlife…It’s hard to say it’s okay to be gay.” If your strategy is to get your family and friends to accept who you are without really supporting who you are, he adds, paraphrasing gay activist and author Dan Savage, “I would not say that it gets better.”
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
The Jian Ghomeshi article! Oh man, oh man, oh maaaaaan. I hated how pandering it was—Leah McLaren straight-up refuses to name what she was seeing and hearing about, and the whole story becomes about her ambivalence, not about the damage he did. I ended up rage-writing a post about this article on my own blog to deal with it.
I saw the headline and refused to click because it seemed to imply support for him. Thank you for your post about this.
I didn’t read it as pandering at all. The article is about exactly what the title lead me to believe what it’s about. The people who’ve chosen to stuck by this (awful) man. I don’t think she in any way showed support for him or his actions, and I actually quite liked that she opened by talking about her own friendship with him. Had she not talked about her own feelings regarding the situation, I think she would’ve come across as disingenuous. Having been in a very similar situation to what she’s describing, I thought her words really rang true, “The trouble with having a friend accused of committing a heinous crime is that you abhor the action but have difficulty squaring it with the individual you knew and cared about.”
I’m still a bit mystified though by how she had respect for him before his violence came to light even though he proved himself to be a creep from the get-go. Who sends a flirtatious message to a married woman in response to a condolence note? Who doesn’t read that and think ‘this is a person I don’t want to have in my life’?
I agree with you and that’s why I think the question of “how could she have been friends w/ such a creep?” is one worth asking. It’s easy for us to sit back and judge her choices when we now have the benefit of hindsight. I think that we are socialized (women in particular) to minimize and rationalize behavior like his. Even if our gut is saying to us, “this guy is a creeper”, there’s this other voice telling us to not make a big deal of it.
I’m also sure that over the course of a 16 year friendship, she felt genuine affection for him and had to work through making the leap from, “this is a good person who did some bad things” to recognizing that this wasn’t just some one off incident and that this person has a pattern of inappropriate and predatory behavior. I went back and re-read the last part about the email, and I agree that it’s really troubling. She oscillates wildly between acknowledging the hard facts about him and his behavior, and minimizing (e.g. calling him a toddler or a flirt). As Kai_Ko said, it really is mostly a story about her own ambivalence.
Just to be clear, he’s awful, and to me, the fact that he has not accepted responsibility for his behavior on any level is a sign that he was, is, and will always be a garbage human. The most important part of this story is, without question, is the very real direct and indirect harm that he did. Still, I think it’s important to grapple with the question of how and why he was able to hide in plain sight for so long (and why even with all of this, some people still support him).
You’re right and I know I’m biased here. This case really reminds me of abusive/creepy/misogynist men I have known who have high community standing and are enabled by those around them. I can sympathize with those who don’t challenge them for fear of professional consequences, but then I hear people talking about how truly charming they were and think, ‘really, you really thought that even though you knew this guy had creepy behaviour?’ There were so many stories about Ghomeshi making pathetically flirtatious comments at inappropriate moments before the exposé and I just don’t really get how anyone can continue to be friends with people who do that. But I’m probably projecting quite a bit.
Appreciating this convo. It reminds me of how things shook out with my college serial predator-rapist ™. He was such a creep, people were open about and aware of his behavior from very early on, aaaand he was so embedded in the social fabric (and also had threatening class privilege-power). Eventually some houses wouldn’t let him come around, but at least one had this culture of apology and acceptance for him. People still hang out with this dude.
Yes, I feel you, and I’m biased too. The sad and striking thing is that a lot of as are because there are lots of abusive/creepy/misogynist men out there. Situations like this where not enough people recognize or say something about the resident creepy guy are all too common. I think part of the issue is that no person is 100% one thing. Even when I think back to my worst and most toxic relationships, I can think of good times that I had with that person. The examples she discusses are culled from 16 years of friendship. There’s an element of “now that I think about it, he was creepy!” As you say, there were power dynamics here in terms of professional consequences, but I also just think in general, people are reticent to speak up and rock the boat. This guy was (apparently) charming (manipulative) and he was able to take advantage of that silence. Once the ball got rolling and people started to talk about it and compare notes, a much clearer portrait of his behavior emerged.
I can think of times where I was harassed or got a weird vibe from someone and just didn’t say anything. Sometimes I was just too surprised and freaked to do anything in the moment. Sometimes I didn’t trust my own instincts. Sometimes I had a touch of “cool girl” syndrome. Sometimes people don’t believe you, so you stop believing yourself. I don’t say this to excuse my or anyone’s behavior, but I just to admit that I can understand how it’s possible to unintentionally enable people like Ghomeshi. I really can’t speak to why anyone would continue to be friend with such a person in light of all this, but I guess I appreciate the complexity of it all.
“Who doesn’t read that and think ‘this is a person I don’t want to have in my life’?”
If they did, Captain Awkward wouldn’t get so much mail.
That was a great post, and I am glad you wrote it. Thanks.
Moxy Fruvous’ “Bargainville” was the first CD I ever owned. I wish I didn’t want to destroy it.
Yup. They were the only band I ever followed. I feel betrayed and angry that someone I liked and respected so much hurt women.
Does anyone else want to become a bibliotherapist now?
I am impressed and overwhelmed by the sheer number of books a bibliotherapist must know about. They would be verrrrrry intimidating at cocktail parties.
YES
YES or just make friends with a bunch of them because wow
This is basically what librarians are for, no?
#soccerthread I highly recommend seeing your country win a World Cup knockout round at home, A+ would do again.
I would also like to thank my dad for leaning into his #PeakDad on Father’s Day and insisting that we get to the game an hour and a half early, which was enough time to discover that we left the tickets at home, go back and get them, and not miss kickoff.
aaa I watched it on my tiny laptop screen and it seemed like such a great game to be in the stands for, congrats! Were the coach/sideline players really trying to get people to be louder?
not really that I could see? But I couldn’t see into the bench besides Herdman gesticulating wildly in front of it, which he does anyways. The goal/60 min onwards was pretty damn loud
Yeah, they were! It was really adorable.
Christopher Buckley’s “Losing Mum and Pup” was an interesting book.
I read the most outrageous parts out loud to my husband so he could appreciate the amazing ridiculousness of Rich People.
As my mom would say when she didn’t want to be unkind, but didn’t approve of someone, “she sure is something”
Oh god. Do I want to know what coontown is? (I mean… I know I don’t want to know, but should I know?)
That piece on gay Mormon men was a very frustrating read. My thoughts on it are echoed in the author’s, “Rights aren’t about feelings, I thought at that moment. They’re about people having the freedom to live the life they want.” Caldwell, for all his unusual circumstances, seems to suffer from a very typical male entitlement–he wants the world to acknowledge his union and doesn’t care if his ideal of acknowledgement involves trampling others. There’s a LOT to unpack about his motivations, too, like the whole “the man I loved rejected me” thing.
Man, you already know what it is. It’s a racist, white supremacist board on reddit.
Imagine it in the worst way that you can.
It’s about two or three times worse than that.
thank you for making sure I did not either a. try to google that while at work or b. feel curious about it all day while at work.
seconded
Uuuugggh and the whole “if other people get to marry, then that invalidates my marriage!” HOW, DUDE. HOW???? You claim to love your goddamn straight-person marriage so much, so how could other people’s marriages change that?? IS IT MAYBE BECAUSE YOU ARE THISCLOSE AT ALL TIMES TO BANGIN’ A DUDE??
There’s also this “Why I Amswered My Dad’s Gay Sex Ad” which …I just? That marriage? I cannot even. http://narrative.ly/daddy-dearest/why-i-answered-…
I had a dumb, Dickensian childhood and I believe books a) saved my life [look buddy-kid, it ain’t always bad] b) taught me how to be a person [spelling out why kids in books got bullied which helped me figure out how to avoid it, all sorts of stuff on manners, modeling bravery and humor.] Books as therapy strikes a chord!
That Buckley piece was really intriguing; I had never heard of Pat Buckley and now wish to know a million things. Also I googled young Christopher Buckley to see if he was all that beautiful.
I did not Google Buckley’s tattoo piece, which I have never read, because sometimes you need a break from reading ugly things – see reading therapy above!
*takes resolved breath* I will boycott with you. Because I only look at carefully cultivated niche subs, I usually miss out on the overall grossness that is Reddit but yeah, I’m not down to support a website that supports that.
Yes, I only ever look at AskReddit threads about hilarious sex mishaps/stupid shit people did as children/REAL GHOST STORIES, thereby shielding myself from the crap mountain that I have always secretly known that most of Reddit is. Will boycott and find some other place to read Totally True Stories About the Time My Friend’s Roommate’s Mom Almost Got Into Ted Bundy’s Car.
My mom thinks she probably ran into him in college! So there’s that?
The Playing Hell article reminded me that education for the oppressed is so often (too often) a form of rebellion and resistance and I can’t think about that too much right now because it makes me sick to my stomach.
Re: gay Mormon men who oppose same-sex marriage and are married to women:
Life is a rich, rich, rich tapestry.
I just…. No one is declaring their marriages invalid. No one is saying they have to get divorced. The people on the internet who judge them are going to continue judging them in the same way whether same-sex marriage is legal or not. So what’s their problem? If their marriage is fragile enough to be threatened by other people having the right to get married, maybe it’s not that stable.
Right, like dude, you just spent an entire interview talking about how great your marriage is (and I believe you!), and now you’re saying that the life choices of strangers are going to make it less meaningful?
Actually, if anything, I’d say that having the option to marry someone of the same sex but choosing not to for reasons of culture makes your marriage more meaningful. Completely unnecessarily and in a neutral rather than a positive way, but more meaningful all the same – which is the position Josh and Lolly Weed seem to have.
” I’d say that having the option to marry someone of the same sex but choosing not to for reasons of culture makes your marriage more meaningful.” +1
As it stands, it seems the Caldwells are in their marriage because they both kind of felt like they had no choice: him, because of his orientation, and her, because she had had premarital sex and was worried about rejection by devout men. That doesn’t mean they don’t still have a great marriage, but I’d be more convinced if there were any indication that they’d examined their own motivations.
I think this particular class of Mormon men with SSA who oppose gay marriage are probably terrified of being reminded that things could have gone a different way. Watching other gays settle down together and raise families really undermines the notion that heterosexual marriage was worth it because it’s the only way to have a family. Also, vocally opposing gay marriage probably earns them a ton of Heavenly Father street cred within the church itself.
” Watching other gays settle down together and raise families really undermines the notion that heterosexual marriage was worth it…”
I just got the saddest image of a man watching the Happily Married Gay Men & Their Kids move in down the street. So sad. I know this was his choice – to stay in his community or to be himself- but it’s just so sad that people are pushed to make that choice.
I haven’t read the article yet (so many tabs open today!), but it kind of feels like the only reason why their marriage would be threatened by marriage equality is that now the husband has the option to get a legal marriage that would be qualitatively better for him. Which…says a lot about why THEY are personally threatened by marriage equality, but the fact that they have made suboptimal choices in their personal lives doesn’t mean that other people should have to be forced into the same box they forced themselves into, y/n?
Why should others get to enjoy a level of happiness that they themselves are denied? I think it’s important to remember too, that each of these gay mormon men (apparently mormon lesbians don’t exist?) probably sat down at some point to weigh the pros and cons of this role. They could leave and be themselves and lose all of their standing in the community/their families, or they could stay in the community at the cost of becoming mouthpieces for sexual repression. There is no guarantee that they’ll meet a male partner but there is a guarantee that if they conform they’ll retain a place in the community.
Why should others get to enjoy a level of happiness that they themselves are denied?
That they themselves are denying themselves. That’s the part I don’t get — not “why are they denying themselves this” but “why are they not acknowledging that they’re consciously denying themselves this?” They’re denying themselves this part of themselves because of love of community and religious and stability — but other people having the option doesn’t make their choices invalid. It makes their choices active, rather than passive, and maybe makes them confront these choices actively rather than passively. That’s not a bad thing.
I’m Jewish, so my philosophical theology is probably very different, but the way I look at it is — I keep kosher, have kept kosher my entire life. I’m not tempted by pork, I’m not tempted by pepperoni pizza — so it’s no effort for me to keep kosher when those are options on the table. It is an effort to keep kosher when the option is something like barbecue chicken — something I can eat (if the meat is kosher) and something I know is delicious. So refraining from barbecue chicken when that’s an option on the table is how I realize I’m actively keeping kosher and staying committed to my religion, etc. Banning barbecue chicken for other people because I can’t control myself doesn’t make me good at keeping kosher and doesn’t make me better at being Jewish. It would just make the lives of people around me miserable.
(To be fair, part of the reason it’s not hard for me to not ban barbecue chicken is because I can stuff my face with a pack of kosher hot dogs, and I don’t think the Mormon Church allows any kind of equivalent for that. But it should! Sometimes I feel like fundamentalist sects of religions — and Judaism is not at all exempt from this — set people up to fail and then guilt-trip them when they do.)
I’m not sure it’s proportionate to compare the temptation of barbecue chicken to the position of knowing that if you choose to be yourself and act on your sexual instincts you will be totally shunned from your entire community. Jews also never impose kosher on anyone outside the community and are raised not to interfere with friends or neighbours who eat cheeseburgers, while people from all homophobic religions do regularly work to impose their values on everyone.
I imagine that for many gay Mormons there is a level of resentment toward gay folks from other communities who aren’t forced to make the choice between being themselves and having a relationship with their families. They are not denied the right to go off and live outside the community. They ARE denied the option of being themselves and being accepted within it.
Yeah, that’s totally fair, and I was realizing that as I was writing it — it’s not the same thing at all, especially when you consider the social pressures people are under. I was thinking of strictly at the level of regulating internal observance, and I should have considered external pressures to conform. Thanks for bringing up a perspective I wasn’t considering!
That article was just… I don’t even know what to think about it? They’re admirably open about their personal lives, but their political activities suggest that they’re still in some form of denial, like as long as homosexuality isn’t a legitimate thing out in the real world then it can’t be a problem in their marriage.
Hello, my ducks, I have returned from a lovely long weekend and things are already relatively hell-like in the office, so book therapy sounds like a fucking fantastic idea overall.
I feel you.
I was on a sailboat this weekend, as anyone who follows me on instagram has probably figured out. I don’t even especially enjoy sailboats (about once every 5 years has been more than plenty for me), but work has me wishing I was there rather than here.
Here’s something for a Monday- Chris Pratt reenacting the raptor scene with kids in a Children’s Hospital.
I love him so much.
I mean, yeah, it’s good PR for him, but I get the impression that he loves kids and that he sees his fame as an opportunity to do some good – cheer up some kids, draw attention to worthy causes, etc.
Yeah, I have always gotten the feeling that visiting kids and making them happier is one of the things he enjoyed about becoming more famous. Maybe I’m just blinded by the Andy Dwyer-ness of him, but I like to believe that he (and the other Chrises) are genuinely good dudes.
Have those kids even seen that movie? I mean, they’re in the hospital. Do they even know wtf he’s doing there?
I mean, even if they haven’t, “I play a raptor trainer in a movie, so how about you guys pretend to be dinosaurs and I’ll act like I’m lion-taming you” is a relatively simple concept, which will delight children whether they have the context for it or not.
True!
I hereby posit the opinion that the Walrus version of the Prattkeeping meme is the most hilarious one.
There will be a pony one as soon as I can find someone to weild the camera!
My personal favorite is the chickens. Because I mean, they ARE tiny dinosaurs, but also so silly and dumb.
This is why (all of) the bird ones are my favorite!
Jesus I would be THE BEST bibliotherapist. I AM the best bibliotherapist. Give me a problem and I’ll prescribe you a book, I mean it. here is a sample, you can assess my skill level from these (warning: it is very high.)
If your trauma is: a man leaving you suddenly, read: John Fowles, The Collector. alum in book form, it is an astringent AND a flocculator. this book will clarify you.
if your trauma is: long lingering death of a close but difficult relative, read: the complete works of Dorothy Eden and most of Jane Aiken Hodge, especially the ones that are like B-grade Mary Stewarts. I don’t recommend the complete works of Mary Stewart because you have already read them — you see how well I know you.
Request for Services: Toxic but sort of well meaning mother with alcohol problem and lovely but codependent chronically ill father, need to gain clarity on how to deal with them. Already read: Toxic Parents, Pride & Prejudice.
Anything by David Sedaris involving his family.
Request for Services: ambivalence and fear about impending motherhood. To throw a wrench into the whole thing: am not interested in dead-children/fucked-up mother narratives (I mean, a little fucked-up is fine, but no abuse, plz).
hmmm and this may be a terrible answer but in your place I would actually go for a lot of classic children’s literature starring Heroic Orphans. this on the grounds that the worst thing a mother can do to her children is die early, which is out of her control entirely, but even if this happens they turn out well and brave in 90 percent of cases. let’s say some Lloyd Alexander, the Westmark books, and some Joan Aiken (there are some bad parents in there but nothing I would construe as targeted anti-mother sentiment overall.)
And then I think there are some really good and applicable Angela Carter short stories and essays.
Randall Jarrell, The Animal Family. much like heroic orphan stories, I think that stories about a bunch of incompatible strangers coming together to live as a surrogate family are highly applicable to ordinary biological parenthood, in that that is exactly the same thing that happens when you have a child the regular way instead of adopting a bear from the forest. a human child that you conceive is also a stranger that you have to find some way to live with, it isn’t any different just because they come out of you instead of coming to you, or if you are a hunter who goes out and catches them and they are a lynx or what not.
David Sedaris was recommended for a different problem above but I would recommend him even more highly to you, because he is one of terrifyingly few writers that really considers his mother to be a human person who is the center of her own world and story rather than as collection of material and emotional resources to be exploited and painstakingly criticized by her children. He is not always too kind about her but he did seem to like her and respect for one’s mother as an equal is, like I say, not as common as you would want it to be.
This is exactly what I love about David Sedaris – his writing about his mother (even when not kind) is so full of real, genuine love because he sees her as a real person, and loves her flaws and all. I find it much more powerful – it’s easy to love an imaginary person, harder to love a real one.
Oooh, could I get a recommendation? I’ll give you a testimonial for when you launch your practice 🙂
The trauma: hurtling far-too-rapidly towards job/relationship stability and becoming newly commitment-phobic in knee-jerk reaction.
oh ok yes.
Read a whole bunch of Bruce Chatwin to start, for escapism. then, the complete short stories of Jean Rhys. Jean Rhys is what I would normally recommend to someone who is despairing and unemployed, and on a long train journey, so this is an off-label prescription, if you will. but it should also work if you want to brainwash yourself into believing that the instability of clinging by your fingernails to a constantly shifting array of people and situations that shine like dim and dingy lights above a great black swirling pool of the unknown is maybe not a fun time, and that stability is maybe not so bad. I make no actual representation that this is true though.
Request for prescription: Finally putting a stop to my (former)friend/coworker’s gradually increasing level of assault. Still reeling from what happened as well as the confrontation. Also mourning the loss of the friendship I was trying to save.
this one I have to come back to, I will have better ideas I am sure. but to start with there is Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary by Pamela Dean which is about learning to recognize an evil influence that presents itself in the guise of a peer and a friend, and learning to expel it from one’s life and undermine its power.
It is a young adult book, though, which is not a thing I like to recommend in any great quantities and which I feel I should mention in case it is off-putting. but it is good.
How about Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood? It’s been a while since I read it, but it’s kind of similar, isn’t it?
Request for services: spiritual burnout.
Marilyn Robinson. Start with Housekeeping and work through Gilead, Home, Lila. A serious and beautiful but almost definitely deeply unfamiliar take on things spiritual. New takes on grace, lack thereof, strong female characters, beautifully written.
I also recommend Thich Nhat Han, if buddhist nonfiction works for you. My favorite is No Death, No Fear, but if mortality & grief aren’t central concerns of yours, he has broader-based books like Mindfulness and A Pebble for your Pocket.
Bless. Thank you. I loved Gilead, and I needed the reminder to read Lila.
Please, can this be a weekly feature, “Ask a Bibliotherapist”? There is obviously a high demand.
Seconded. Besides, I’m also interested in reading the books suggested for others, and what lots of people have to say about lots of these.
I KNOW, some of these are testing me a bit, I am going to have to come back and finish them up after work. you people with your complicated problems
Yes!
Request for services: out and proud pansexual is surrounded by Bible Belt homophobes, is beginning to worry prematurely about dying alone.
RFS: Lesbian dealing daily with an older gay man who is kind to me personally but lets his disdain for lesbians in general surface frequently and hurtfully. If there’s no book for that I’m prepared to write one, but would love some literary succor if at all possible.
What comes to mind immediately— Anne of Avonlea, what with her strange friendship with Mr. Harrison. I am torn between saying that I can’t quite suggest that this is VERY applicable, and saying that I am willing to defend the appropriateness of this rec to the death.
Oh, thank you! Will read, embarrassed that I haven’t already. (It’s still me, it’s just been an identity-shifting kind of day).
Request for Services: About to have my first child, excited and impatient but also terrified of having my entire identity subsumed and hating my husband. Cannot currently handle anything related to death or bad things happening to children. (Major caveat to that: I tear through Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers mysteries weekly.) Help?
Oh my lord I wish I could bookmark this thread. Can you do this for us once a week, maybe?
Request for services: Long-term partners, one of whom falls in love with someone else without simultaneously falling out of love with partner, try to stay together nonetheless and find a way of being in relationship that they both can cope with, despite lots of ouch and a dearth of resources for people in their situation. Asking for a friend.
Megalodon vs William Buckley
C. Megalodon was a largish shark
who cruised the Cenozoic seas
he could have eaten Noah’s ark
and swallowed it with careless ease
William Buckley was a pundit
an author and conservative
his wit they say was never blunted
though many found him negative
Imagine now, if you are able
you had to make a choice of one
to sit beside you at a table
perhaps pass you a dinner bun
The shark of course, would simply eat you
he doesn’t have good table manners
he’d swallow you, he doesn’t chew
a faux pas of the dinner planners
Buckley wouldn’t let you talk
he’d interrupt at every word
like a crowing right-wing cock
a living theater of the absurd
So choose wisely dinner guest
a giant shark who’ll eat your innards?
or pundit who will leave you stressed –
a simpering snob who’ll spoil your dinner.
I think I know who *I* would choose
With Megalodon you couldn’t lose.
I’ve been self-medicating with literature my entire life!
Does this mean that when I read the whole Harry Potter series it’s kind’f like binge-drinking? Because I’m up to four, man, and I know what’s gonna happen and I could quit any time. I just don’t want to.
Depends – have you purchased a broomstick or Gryffindor house scarf in the last 30 days?
Sadly, no. But I saw someone carrying a broomstick just last night and got extremely jealous (and for all I know, it was a Cleansweep 7, but who cares? It was awesome).
I’m on a Lucy Maud Montgomery binge, myself. I can TOTALLY stop without reading every single book I have.
I am currently self-medicating with the works of L.M. Montgomery. Just finished Anne, onto Emily.
haha I just posted the same thing before reading down this far! I started with the short story collections (and even bought myself the last one I didn’t have) and Jane of Lantern Hill, and for some reason went on to Anne inside out, starting with House of Dreams.
MEG! I have read both MEG and several of its equally terrible sequels. I also highly recommend Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, which inexplicably stars John Barrowman.
WHAT
IT’S AMAZING
IT HAS THE WEIRDEST SEX-SCENE TRANSITION IN THE WORLD, TOO
“Molested by Megalodon”?
It involves John Barrowman improvising a line that he was sure wasn’t going to be in the movie and then BOOM THERE IT WAS
Video link for anyone who doesn’t mind have it spoiled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1XOfHax6Q8
LOL-ing forever
I have just got Meg for my kindle and look forward to starting it later. Also going to have to go and find Shark Attack 3… Presume I should ignore the other two?
I second Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. Definitely a favorite.
MEG! The MEG books were the last I pre-read for my then nine-year-old son before deciding he was old enough to read whatever he wanted without approval. I have no idea what he’s reading now, except that I gave him my copy of Strange & Morrell, so I have a maternal nostalgia for that awful Jurassic Shark. We will definitely see the movie(s).
Strange and Norrell should keep him busy for a while…
I had no clue that Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror was at five sequels and counting. The Wikipedia synopses get increasingly impressionistic as the series goes along; the one for book four (Hell’s Aquarium) opens with
Scarface, Michael Maren’s pet Meg, and Angel’s last surviving offspring from her first litter, hunting.
Hell’s Aquarium though.
HELL’S AQUARIUM
You didn’t mention that there are two megalodons named Mary-Kate and Ashley! This is a vitally important detail that Wikipedia just taught me that must be shared with the world.
I have a problem calling Jian Gomeshi’s predatory behavior a “sickness,” seeing as how it isn’t so much something that happened to him that he has no control over, like the flu or cancer. Instead, he engaged in a deliberate series of manipulations, lies, boundary-testing, and abuse of the women in his life because he liked to and because he could.
Starting to remind me a lot of H*** Schwy***, particularly using lefty ideals as cover for abuse. ::spits::
I have a huge problem with it too. Abuse isn’t mental illness! Like, abusers will CALL it a sickness, or say that they can’t control themselves, but they’re lying. I always quote Lundy Bancroft: “Abuse is a problem of values, not of psychology.” And it’s really damaging to people who actually have mental illnesses to conflate the two.
Reddit wouldn’t be such a thing if we all just boycotted it forever. It would die the MySpace death of nobody-goes-there-anymore. Maybe then a place less bound up in white cis male privilege would come along to replace it.
Also Reddit is like a case study in why Libertarianism as an ideal never works IRL. Without any governance, the jackwads take over.
Over there (I visited via donotclick, out of morbid curiosity), they refer to that as “pure democracy.”
It is a literal cesspool and all of Ellen Pao’s (while admirable) efforts to clean it up are just bringing all the turds to the surface.
Good morning Toast, I am home sick today because I woke up with a fever and general aches and pains, etc. I feel a bit better now but overall like a wrung-out towel.
Also, ugh, that Ghomeshi article. I read it last week. That email she quotes on the last page, where he goes from talking about how “gutted” he is by his father’s death to flirting with her in one sentence…. so, so creepy.
I felt this weird disconnect throughout the piece because McLaren kept talking about how irresistibly charming and charismatic Ghomeshi was, but the interactions she describes having with him are anything but. I can’t imagine being a journalist interviewing someone and having him say, “I’m going to this orgy tonight, do you want to come?” and finding that charming instead of repulsive. She writes, The fact that we believed the cuddly, wholesome version of Jian makes the crimes he’s accused of doubly galling but how on earth did she perceive him to be cuddly and wholesome when literally the day they met, he made that orgy “joke”?
I know hindsight is 20/20, but… I don’t get it.
there is a lot of MEG + Meg happening here, and every time I get a bit of a jolt like, what did I do? what do you want from me?? I appreciate sharing my name with a giant shark, but I’m still gonna be real confused for the rest of this comments section.
This remembrance essay by Harris Wittels’s sister is beautiful and so heartbreaking: https://medium.com/@stephaniewittelswachs/the-new…
Okay, I just went from rolling my eyes over my brother texting me something dumb to quietly getting up and hiding in another room so I could sob. Thank you for posting that, it was really beautiful.
She did such a great job depicting the surreal banality of losing somebody – they were here and now they’re not and all I wanted was to tell them about my new shoes, is that too much to ask?
And how you never really stop feeling grief, you just sort of adapt to it. I don’t think many people really understand that.
People say there’s no homosexual agenda but what about our stranglehold on the cater-waiter industry?
literal lol
My relationship with Reddit is like a bad ex. Every now and then I wander back there because I want to talk with other people about something that interests me, and eventually the microaggressions and intolerance hit critical mass and I finally realize why I’m so upset, and I leave, vowing to never go back.
If I wasn’t already mid-vow, being reminded that Reddit fosters shit like /r/coontown would be enough for me to leave. I’m totally in support of this boycott; Reddit gets away with too much disgusting, destructive shit in the name of free speech.
I have nothing to add to the Buckley article except that I saw a documentary about the Buckley/Vidal debates of 1968 (aka that time Buckley called Vidal a “goddamn queer” on live TV) and Gore Vidal was so obnoxious, he actually managed to make Buckley look good by comparison. Which says very little about Buckley’s relative value as a person, but a ton about how annoying Vidal was.
I’ve only seen outtakes of those debates, but what I did see was fantastic just because it was so witty & complex & sustained in a way you never see nowadays — and it went for blood in a way that really told, instead of being just stupidity & shouting. It was bracing! I didn’t notice Vidal being more obnoxious than Buckley — they were both incredibly obnoxious. But, you know, partial outtakes.
If I tried to be a bibliotherapist I’m pretty sure I’d just tell everyone to read I Capture the Castle all the time.
I see no problem with this.
omg yes +5
Alternate with applications of Cold Comfort Farm for best effect!
Off-topic, but: how do you deal with experimental fiction? I’m trying to read Clarice Lispector at the moment and mostly it’s making me feel stupid.
What are you reading? I enjoyed Hour of the Star, although it’s been a few years since I read it so I don’t remember all the particulars. I guess the trick is that you don’t try to think of everything as if it’s going to be crucial to a future plot point. Just enjoy it as you go as if you were reading poetry.
Passion of G.H. It’s got some gorgeous lines, but without the usual structures I’m struggling to maintain the meaning/impressions as I go…pages will pass and I might has well have been reading the telephone book. I’m sure this is because I’m lazy/dumb, it’s just hard to feel like I’m getting a damn thing out of it.
I don’t.
The ad at the bottom of this page is for the new Jonathan Franzen novel. How to mark ad as offensive?
I just started reading a Dave Eggers novel…does that make me a bad person?
No. But soon you’ll be a disappointed person.
The Buckley article was FASCINATING … but I did not realize St Vincent’s was being converted into luxury condos, and that fact is now eating a rage-y hole in my brain. I mean COME THE FUCK ON.
Wow, that Jian Ghomeshi piece was uh…not very self-aware was it? Me, reading it: “ABUSERABUSERABUSERABUSER” Lady who wrote it. “Oh Jian is so lovable!”
Also that pic of him at her wedding it looks like he is looking riiiiiiight down her dress.
I don't.
For some reason the I have this one passage in MEG where the female baddie is described as grinding her properly emasculated lover with her pelvic bone seared in my mind grapes.
OT- I now own a house, Holy crap
Yes!
I recently read H is for Hawk while feeling a bit weird and miserable and dissociated from reality; the author was writing about feeling weird and miserable and dissociated from reality. My feelings intensified quite a lot and I felt like I was losing my grip on my sanity a bit. Fun!
That bitchesgottaeat post uses the offensive term midget in a pretty hateful way. I’m not about that.
Thanks for noting this.
Thanks for noting this.