Mysterious forces are at work. For reason unbeknownst to us this thread temporarily disappeared. It is now back. Intact although perhaps a little worse for the wear.

Reading Log
23 September 2009

Herewith begins part three of Dacha Doings. Click for here for threads one and two.

Perestroika appears to be wearing thin at the dacha. Repeated attempts to contact the editors of the Long Dark Tea Times have been blocked by a mysterious, otherworldly firewall, resistant to all attempts by the world's best hackers to breach. "This is no ordinary firewall" commented Stephen J. Hacking, president of the Hacking Coughers. "It emits dangerous combinations of 0s and 1s that can only be described as diabolic. No human wrote the code for this firewall." We fear the worst.

When attempts at serious news coverage are blocked, we can only resort to reports about Michael Jackson (dead in case any of you missed the news) and the weather. So on to Southern weather.

It is monsoon season in Tennessee (and Georgia). The rain falleth from the heavens untempered by the quality of mercy. Indeed, mercy seems a bit strained everywhere these days. But let us not stray or fall prey to non sequiturs; back to the weather. Southerners do not take kindly to monsoons. "T'ain't no call for them monsignor things here. They're okay in furren' parts like India and Taiwan and such. Furreners are used to monsters over there. But we don't cotton to 'em hereabouts," said Mr. Dude Dooper owner of Dude Dooper's Restaurant, Home of the World's Largest Hotdog.

Suffice to say, Southerners feel badly abused, misused, and miffed at the sudden appearance of monsoons. They have been muttering darkly about global warming conspiracists to whom they do not "cotton" either. In fits of pique and protest, Tennessee southerners are coming down right and left with swine flu. Schools have been closing every other week of late, thereby insuring that all Tennessee children will be left behind this year. "That'll show 'em," said Mrs. Erma Geddon, whom we met at the Kroger Pharmacy stampede yesterday.

I am not sure what "that" will show "'em," but far be it from me to question Mrs. Geddon. In the meantime, when woes, worries, weather, and weariness strike, I hit the books. So what books have I been hitting lately? I would like to have hit Daughters of the North (a.k.a. The Carhullan Army but the craven Baron von Kindle, who has fled the dacha and urania's loving arms, refuses to give it up. He also refuses to discuss anything pertaining to the dacha. What evil creature holds him ensorcelled? I, too, fear the worst but am helpless. I must reserve my ire with an angry but intelligent review of Daughters of the North

Daughters of the North
by Sarah Hall

Daughters of the North, narrated by a woman known only as Sister, details the aftermath in a future Great Britain of extreme global climate change. Severe, flooding, an inability to produce enough food to feed the populace, and house shortages produced by the flood have resulted in a dystopian nightmare - one that hands to the government a way to control absolutely the population. Rounded up into "quarters" within cities, travel outside certain boundaries forbidden, drug addiction, starvation, and humiliation of women characterize the situation. Following an old map, Sister escapes and makes her way to Carhullan, a sustainable community of women started before the great floods. Founded as a safe haven for women, Carhullan is in the midst of change. While half of the community continue practicing sustainable living, a contingency of the community have become warriors, who primarily spend their time in "extreme" bootcamp training. There they learn how to kill and torture people. This departure from the original purpose of Carhullan is the product of Jackie Nixon, founder of the community and owner of its land. Nixon, a former special forces operative in the armed services, has become convinced that a preemptive strike on the "official" government of the country is necessary for Carhullan's survival. Sound familiar? These women warriors adopt the worst characteristics of the stereotypical, tough talking "male" warrior. Male progeny of Carhullan women and a nearby group of male outcasts who fled the original round-up of citizens are cast out of the community when they reach the age of ten. Matriarchy is substituted for patriarchy. But at what cost?

Reviewers, for the most part, have discussed this book in glowing terms and praised it as a feminist novel. One reviewer describes this book as "literary fiction at its finest" and concludes "it is a story by a gifted writer that examines what price we will pay for freedom and self-determination, and how women are capable of bonding by way of blood, guts and glory - the same as men have for generations - to form a sisterhood resolute enough to execute the ultimate sacrifice." Other critics have compared it to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Writes NPR's Jennifer Crispin: "I am supposed to like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. But when I read her 1985 novel of women living in a repressive theocratic regime, forced into either celibacy or involuntary breeding, all I could think was, "OK, so when do these women start stabbing people? . . . I like a good dystopia as much as anyone, but I prefer mine to come with an organized resistance army." James Smith, website editor for Booktrust approvingly notes, "Ultimately, the Carhullan women are definitely, vitally, female, but what makes them strong is their willpower."

If "blood, guts and glory" define feminism, if "stabbing people" is "vitally female," if reiterating the abuses of patriarchy is good, if becoming "a man" in all but sex is what it takes to bring about sexual equality, then count me out. Yet Sarah Hall celebrates these qualities in her novel. War is not glorious. The waste of resources in terms of human lives and other community assets shows a profound lack of imagination both in real time and fictional time.

Carhullan is an interesting book, but does it provide solutions to society's current dilemmas? The answer is a resounding "No."

3.25/5 stars

Other Books Read
The Hour of the Star (Brazil) by Clarice Lispector - a gorgeous novella 10/5 stars
Of Dreams and Assassins (Algeria) by Malika Mokeddem - not as good as her other work 3/5 stars
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene - loved it 4/5
The Egyptian (Finland) by Mika Waltari - a sweeping epic of ancient Egypt in which the narrator manages to be at all the crucial places at all the crucial turning points 3/5
Beauty and Sadness (Japan) by Yasunari Kawabata 4/5
Genesis by Bernard Beckett - a brilliant little gem in a small way, which I hope to review later 4/5
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky - unsettling, bad for the digestive tract, but brilliant 4.5/5
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - surprisingly absorbing YA fiction. For once Stephen King and I agree on something. 4/5
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins- sequel to the above 2.75/5
The Last Friend (Morocco) by Tahar Ben Jelloun 3.5/5
New Italian Women: A Collection of Short Fiction edited by Martha King - a mixed bag, some brilliant stories, some so-so stories 3/5

and blush . . . . The Vampire Academy Chronicles through the latest installment . . . oh dear, oh dear

LATE BREAKING NEWS ALERT
Just in from Welsh Terrorists: "Something wicked this way comes. Beware Czech lass calling herself virapol . . . must . . . go . . . help urania . . . Great Aunt Martha . . . entire Mucas clan . . . danger . . . vampires . . .

To be honest, it sounds like a terrible book: Women who want to be men. Hmmm.

Urania, are you there?
Hello?
reports are reaching us of atmospheric disturbances from your area. Strong smells of garlic and falling blood counts. OMG!!

This review #1 reminds of a book I read that I cannot remember the name of. Basically it was distinguishing between triumphs of feminism as 1. women having equal opportunities in society, and 2. Those values and roles thought of as belonging to women, traditionally, being equally valued with those traditionally accorded to the male.

While there has been a lot of progress on the first, the second has not gone very far. Women now have a lot more opportunity to advance in a workplace that is still run according to male values. But the traditional work or women, nurturing, etc. is still either not paid for or (when it is other people's children), under paid.

>3 solla,

Vis à vis point two, Carol Gilligan author of In a Different Voice makes a strong case. Of course, she has been criticized for what some view as an "essentialist" version of gender, which many would argue is a cultural construct. in some ways, this argument recapitulates the old nature-nurture argument. I think separating the two is dicey. I would also argue that in "some" ways, women have more "freedom" in our culture than men. Consider what has happened when little boys show up for school in dresses. In some ways women are more free to take risks because there's no cultural opprobrium if women "fail." Heterosexual men quickly get locked into the "provider" role. When the roles switch and the woman goes to work while the man assume the "homemaker" role, incredible pressure is put on the man to cooperate with traditional cultural expectations. A truly free society is one that liberates both men and women from the cultural stereotypes that bind us.

Hear Hear!

And how! Hallelujah!

#4 Women are certainly accorded more emotional freedom, and, at this particular point in time in this country, and some others, I would probably agree with you, although I am old enough to remember many non so subtle messages of just not being as important as a boy - From "1000 boys clubs for 1 million deserving boys" posters on the bus, to being required in high school in order to letter in a sport to have service points, which were earned by such things as serving food to the boys at their awards banquet (we had no awards banquet), and being chased out of the girls' gym by the boys C squad.

On the other hand, you didn't even mention the most horrifying to me, that men are expected to grow up and be willing to kill for their country, and the whole process of how that is accomplished. I remember watching fathers bully their 6 or 7 year old sons into fighting when they were picked on. It seems to me that splitting up power and compassion into separate gender roles keeps us all from being whole people and makes the world a much harsher place.

>7 solla,
we must be ~the same age. I, too, remember "the not so subtle messages" about not being as important as as boy. I also remember have to be twice as good as the men in order to be recognized as an equal. I was the first generation of women's studies majors at my university. At a school of 25,000, there were three women's studies majors - all of us named Mary. And the point you mention in your second paragraph is dead on. In talking to former students who have boyfriends/husbands in Iraq, they have all said "the person who came home is not the same person that left." These young women all note that this new person is scary and alien. Clearly war, "the traditional domain of men" (although not really), deeply damages those who fight as well as those who are their targets.

Well, I was born the day after Eisenhower was elected president ('51), not an auspicious beginning, but being Guy Fawkes day, there was hope of future rebellion.

splitting up power and compassion into separate gender roles keeps us all from being whole people and makes the world a much harsher place. I agree totally.

So are we saying then that feminism shuld move on to a more 'gender equality' position
where the needs of men are also taken into account?

When I worked for the British Council, I caused somewhat of a ruckus by pointing out that their inhouse magazine devoted to the promotion of gender equality and called, "Equality" was all about women, and written by women, and that in my view that wasn't very equal.

Murrushka,

When I was an employed academic, I raised hackles by renaming a women's studies course "gender studies" (without permission, which I would never have gained) and actively recruiting male students. The college's view was that the women's studies course should serve young women only - primarily by providing them a place where they could kvetch about men. Having a gender studies class focused on the ways the roles of both men and women are deformed by our current system seemed much more productive to me. The class was an extremely productive one with some really tough discussions that class both male and female students judged as excellent.

At the the time I was a student at university, I think a real need existed for a women's studies program (then allowed through the offices of interdisciplinary studies, which meant one designed one's own major) because women were almost entirely absent from the curriculum. However when I entered graduate school, I had reached the conclusion that the time had come to mainstream women's studies rather than producing a women's studies ghetto. I also moved from calling myself a women's studies specialist to calling myself a gender studies specialist.

P.S. solla, I was born in 1960. My beliefs were formed in the crucible of the civil rights, the Vietnam War, and the women's rights movement.

Message edited by its author, Nov 9, 2009, 5:36pm.

#10 Well, I have to say that I find that kind of a loaded question with assumptions about what feminism is that I don't share. Feminism as I know it - and obviously I can not be responsible for all versions of what goes by the name - was never heedless of men's needs nor in favor of gender inequality by either gender. I can't comment on the specifics of the British magazine without the context. In general, though, when a list of 20 books of the millennium still includes 14 male voices to 6 female (1- 8 all being male), it would seem to me that power and recognition could not be said to be loaded on the side of female voices. For me to say gender roles are more complex than top and bottom does not mean to me that power in its institutional and financial trappings is not important, and, frankly, I think that, in so far as it has occurred, that women coming into their power has been a plus for males as well as females. (well that is the short answer to your question - I just don't have time right now).

solla,

With your last statement I agree.

hear, hear!

*Murr slinks under the sofa, bashes the Proctologist for suggesting this line of questioning and reemerges*

Yes, I agree with your last statement too: humanity as a whole benefits from having one half of its members come into their power. Absolutely.

However, what I'm saying, I think, is that I would like to see the gender roles for straight men opened up for debate. I agree with Urania, that men's roles are deformed as much by our current system as women's are/were in the past.

The debate about the magazine is kind of pointless, really. I was just trying to make a point that gender equality should include men, otherwise it can by no means be called 'gender equality': there is more than one gender. My point was more about the (Orwellian?) use of language in an official publication than actually about feminism.

Message edited by its author, Oct 1, 2009, 12:29pm.

I am in the throes of a cold and so must beg off of a real response. The truth is I was never really good at definitions. They seem so easy to argue about even when you really agree. Stories, on the other hand, experience, to me, much more precise. And the story that I would want to tell about - from my parental role, is about watching my daughter grow up - she is 32 in a few days now so she has been grown up for some time now - and seeing the messages her world has sent her about being a girl and a woman. So, remind me sometime in the near future about that if I don't get back to it. For now I will just say that just lately we have been watching "So you think you can dance" together, and among the things I particularly enjoy about the show - aside from dancing, which just blows me away - is watching the mentoring that goes on, particularly the judge, Nigel, and how nurturing he is even when critical, and also just how easily and naturally judges and contestants of both genders cry on the show.

So, Tomcat, tell me a story, and, if you could deliver it with some chicken soup, or a hot toddy...

A story. Mmmm. well, it's completely irrelevant, but i saw this incident very late last night when I was in a taxi coming home and it made me laugh.

Two elderly and rather large ladies on a scooter, laden with pots and pans and bags of ingredients and cooking utensils were towing two other (also large) ladies on another scooter, also very laden with cooking utensils. The tow rope was made of rubber and was highly elastic, (I think it was an inner tube), and when the first scooter started off, the second scooter did not start until a few seconds after, and then rebounded with great force into the first scooter, to much laughter from everybody. I watched this all the way down Roosevelt Road, stopping at all the lights. Their good humour and ingenuity (and total lack of awareness of any safety issues ) was quite marvellous to behold.

Sola, I hope you feel better soon.

Reading Log
9 October 2009

Dark, Deadly, and Dire

The dacha remains incommunicado. According to an unconfirmed report from a local comrade peasant, who asked to remain anonymous, the Welsh Terrorists met something fiendishly 'orrid and smelly in the woodshed. They now smell fiendishly 'orrible themselves. Oh what is to be done? Is our beloved urania still alive? Has she succumbed to the powers of darkness? Oh woe, weariness, and more woe.

The craven Baron von Kindle, currently staying at a rustic mountaintop cottage in Tennessee, still refuses to comment. Has he deserted our urania? Who knows?

And Great Aunt Martha Mucus, relic of the late Henry "Commodore" Mucus? Alas, she is a mere shadow of her former self. Two weeks ago, she, with her wandering womb in tow, showed up on the doorstep of the charming brownstone love nest belonging to her nephew Cornelius "Cornikens" Mucus and his longtime lover Teddy. She muttered one word, "virapol," and lapsed into catatonic state from which she has yet to emerge. As for the wandering womb, now safely recovered after a long search through the Finer Spas of Europe, it started screaming so hysterically that Teddy had to lock it in a closet. Cornikens, always nervous at best, has locked himself in the linen closet, where he has remained biting his nails and reading White Is for Witching. Periodically, he too emits loud shrieks of terror. Fortunately, their upstairs tenant, Mrs. Whimpersnapple is not the complaining sort. Her proclivity for gin is famous, so she mostly doesn't notice. As for the basement boarders, the Russian goth folk industrial band "Teddy and the Throes," they are hardly in a position to complain as they receive the basement at a reduced rent (which they seldom pay). Truthfully, they rather like the shrieking as they shriek a lot themselves.

Of course, crises never occur at convenient times. Poor Teddy has been left to run T. Septimus Glass, the vintage Tupperware shop, as Cornikens is incapacitated. And then there's the upcoming national convention of the Tupperware and Tea Association, for which Cornikens is the keynote speaker. The Association has booked Teddy and the Throes to play at the ATTAC (Annual Tupperware and Tea Association) Dance - another worry. With the entire responsibility of the shop and the conference falling on Teddy's less than broad shoulders, he has hired an assistant, Vera Polivkova, a sweet little Czech lass recently arrived to the States. Although a hard worker, she spends much of her time weeping over her Katrina back in the Czech Republic; consequently Teddy spends much of the work day patting her shoulder sympathetically.

In the meantime, a mysteriously beautiful (but ominously pale) Countess di Vira has taken out a hundred-year lease on the luxury apartment above T. Septimus Glass. Fortunately, she is a quiet tenant, although when Teddy works into the evening, which of late, has been far more often than he would like, he hears noises that faintly resemble sounds one would rather not hear. And then there's the mysterious Madame Chiang, agent for building in which T. Septimus Glass is located. Lately she has taken to showing up unexpectedly every other day. Of course she always shows up "expectedly." One minute she's not there and the next she is. She departs the same way. Extremely disconcerting if one tends to nervousness.

And if Teddy did not have enough problems, he has to figure out what to do about the Oklahoma Mucuses who have booked reservations for ATTAC, even though as Great Aunt Martha says, "They wouldn't know the difference between fine vintage Tupperware and a Rubbermaid container." Great Aunt Martha will be livid when she finds out the Oklahoma Mucuses are coming and will probably have an "episode" - unless she is still catatonic. One can only hope

Mucus Clan Reading
Cornikens - White Is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

Teddy - Breathless in Bombay by Murzban F. Shroff
Vera - The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Yours truly - Dance of the Tiger by Björn Kurtén
Teddy and the Throes a novel that has yet to be written
Countess di Vira unknown
Madame Chiang Don't ask.

White Is for Witching
by Helen Oyeyemi

With her latest book White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi has achieved the nearly perfect 21st-century gothic novel, a novel simultaneously terrifying, structurally sophisticated, and beautifully written. In short, she offers something for every reader. For the reader, who enjoys shrieking every time a door creaks, Oyeyemi's on top of it. Anne Radcliffe, Sheridan Le Fanu, Stephen King - move over. You have been displaced by the Queen of Terror. For literary snobs, those disdainful of horror fiction, those who would never admit reading Stephen King even if his book were in a brown paper wrapper, Oyeyemi comes through with a brilliantly complex novel mixing Nigerian superstition about twins, Caribbean folklore about the soucouyant, and a house ('ware the house).

Oyeyemi weaves together multiple voices in this eerily beautiful novel. One hears Miranda Silvers, Eliot (Miranda's twin brother), Ore (Miranda's lover), Lily (Miranda and Eliot's mother who died in Haiti while on a photo shoot), Luc (their father) Sade, a Haitian housekeeper who uses juju to try to protect the family from . . . .

From what? This question literally haunts the story. Initially, it appears Miranda may be the problem. She suffers from pica - a tendency to eat chalk, dirt, plastic, paper, anything but food. This disorder begins when she and her family move into the house inherited by Lily from her grandmother. Despite Lily's reluctance to move to the house, her husband Luc insists it will make a wonder bed and breakfast inn. And it does for a while. But darkness shadows the Silvers family.

Miranda is slowly self-destructing seemingly because she will not eat regular food. Why does Miranda have pica? For the reasons anyone might suffer from this disorder? Or is her disease rooted in something darker, in the house itself? Moreover, is Miranda psychotic, psychic, or possessed? Are the voices and ghosts she sees real or imagined? Perhaps, perhaps not. Ore, the young Caribbean woman who becomes her lover when she moves to Oxford suspects the presence of a soucouyant, a witch said to devour human souls, to suck the blood from their bodies leaving nothing but the skin. Sade hears the ghosts, senses the evil presence of the house, but her juju is insufficiently strong to protect the family. As for Eliot, Miranda's twin brother, he wants to separate himself from Miranda's madness but cannot quite bring himself to believe his sister is mad.

The novel opens and and apparently closes with Miranda's disappearance. Or does it? Has Miranda really disappeared? Is she still living in the house, to which Sade refers as "ill-favored"? And the soucouyant? What of her? Who is she?

4/5 stars

Breathless in Bombay
by Murzban F. Shroff

One of the most beautiful collection of Indian short stories to reach recent Western audiences, Murzban F. Shroff's Breathless in Bombay eschews the themes that have become the stock in trade of contemporary Indian fiction: arranged marriages, cultural dislocation, wife killing, and the rest. Instead Shroff highlights the lives of ordinary people as he attempts to "be a tourist in my own city." While Shroff does not deny the inequities of class and caste, the corruption, and the environmental degradation of the city, he is more interested in the day-to-day lives of his characters. He wants to understand the lure Bombay has for him and its other inhabitants be they ever so lowly. As he notes,

To find the answers, I did what I am best at: I walked the streets; I met people. I studied their dreams, their lives, their preoccupations, their regrets, and I understood the motivation that drove them just the same.

In his travels through the streets of Bombay, Shroff tells us stories about the dhobi (launderers) community whose age-old occupation is threatened on the one hand by the washing machine and the fancy high-rise apartment complex built on the edge of the dhobis' community - a mere collection of huts, in danger of condemnation so its water can be redirected to the new Bombay. Despite these problems, the dhobi's daily life continues with dignity, the sly jokes, the clever maneuvers to part a miserly dhobi from his money for the good of the community.

Shroff also introduces the readers to the new Bombay, the Bombay of free love in which an upwardly mobile assistant in the Bollywood industry can enter a hopeless relationship with a charming, artistic, alcoholic lover. One also meets the maalishwallas (masseurs) who ply their trade on the beaches and dream of life in their villages back home; the prostitutes, the taxi drivers, the residents of a fine old building whose lives are threatened when the developers bribe officials to condemn the property. Shroff's Bombay is a land of dreamers, of greed, of kindness, of evening meals cooked and shared.

(4/5)

The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins

Note: I have been obsessed by this YA book since I first purchased it approximately a month ago. I have read it a least a dozen times, and it still continues to fascinate me. I hope to post a review soon.

Dance of the Tiger: A Novel of the Ice Age
by Björn Kurtén

A work proclaiming itself to be "a novel of the Ice Age," invites comparison with Jean Auel, and the temptation to dismiss it and move on is great. However, Björn Kurtén, former Professor of Paleontology at the University of Helsinki, at least knows whereof he speaks, as far as anyone can "know" the field given that knowledge about the fossil record changes with each discovery of a new fossil cache as well as advances in technology that allow more sophisticated interpretations of the evidence.

Kurtén's novel takes place approximately 40,000 to 25,000 years ago, a period during which a warm spell occurred causing the ice to retreat northward leaving much of Scandinavia uncovered. During this period some scientists have hypothesized that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons coexisted. What was the nature of that coexistence? Why did the Neanderthals die out? Kurtén's novel provides some conjectures on these and other questions. In particular, he challenges some of images that have become staples of museum exhibits dealing with the period. One of the more interesting stereotypes to come under fire in Kurtén's novel is the notion that Neanderthals were dark skinned. As Kurtén notes, the fossil record provides no clue about pigmentation. However, working off the general rule that people living at higher altitudes usually have lighter skin than those living in the tropics or subtropics, Kurtén hypothesizes the Neanderthals must have been lighter skinned than Cro-Magnons who had migrated from Africa. Hence the reference to the Neanderthals as the whites and Homo sapiens as the blacks.

So what makes this novel so entrancing? As Stephen Jay Gould notes in his introduction, "the encounter between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon . . . was a meeting between equals, a confrontation between two groups of human beings." However, as Gould notes,

the gap between them (genealogically, at least) was far greater than that separating any two human groups today. . . . Neanderthals were human but different. Herein lies the fascination of that European encounter some 35,000 years ago--and herein the urge to novelize. For a meeting of two truly different human groups is more wonderful than all science fiction.

Kurtén's book, however, deals with multiple encounters--encounters between blacks and whites, encounters between peaceful blacks and those who have begun to develop disciplined forms of warfare, encounters between violent blacks and peaceful whites, who must learn to defend themselves. Above all, this story deals with an encounter between two men: one seeking his father and true identity, a man who is neither part of the human nor the Neanderthal world; and another man left homeless after the slaughter of his tribe, whom the Neanderthals welcome as one of their own.

3/5

Message edited by its author, Oct 10, 2009, 10:00pm.

Countess di Vira is listening to Wagner and alternating in her reading between Dracula and Mein Kampf. Verrry verry interesting!

One of throes is young Leonard "Ludovic" Mucus, one of the dozens of great grandchildren of dear old Aunt Ida Mucus(Great Aunt Martha's first cousin). Leonard has insisted he be called "Ludovic" ever since he became obsessed with YA vampire fiction, russian goth folk industrial music, and of course russian novels.

Needless to say, he didn't fit in back in the Mucusville, Oklahoma, where old Aunt Ida raised three generations of Mucuses on the Mucus family farm. Fortunately "Ludovic" won a scholarship to Cooper Union for a short film adaptation of Dostoevsky's Poor Folk he made with the video camera Aunt Ida gave him for his eighteenth birthday. He played all the parts himself and set the whole thing in a trailer park. Also in Ludovic's version the character Varvara is a vampire.

I drove out to the Mucus farm early this morning and had breakfast with dear old Aunt Ida. She is very worried about young "Ludovic", whom she still calls Leonard. Her trip to New York for the ATTAC party is really an excuse to check on him. Aunt Ida raised Leonard after both of his parents disappeared when their home was destroyed in the Great Mucusville Tornado. Leonard, just a baby at the time, was found untouched in his crib in the middle of a pile of debris several miles away. Both of his parents were presumed dead, although no bodies were ever found.

Aunt Ida is concerned because Leonard has not called or written to her for over a month. Until now Leonard has called Aunt Ida almost every day since he moved to New York to start school a year ago and he has written to her at least once a week without fail. She says Leonard has not been himself ever since he got mixed up with those New York "vampire people". She is afraid they have done something with Leonard.

Aunt Ida is also very concerned about Cornikins. She said Cornelius sounded "disturbed" when she talked to him on the telephone yesterday.

Cornikin's has always been very fond of dear old Aunt Ida, in spite of Great Aunt Martha. He spent several summers at the Mucus family farm as a child. He alway's dreaded returning home to the gloomy Mucus Mansion and that mean old Great Aunt Martha.

Message edited by its author, Oct 10, 2009, 6:57pm.

urania, have you ever thought of writing a book? You're hilarious. If you're reading The Hunger Games, I assume you know that the sequel is out? Catching Fire is supposedly even better, though, alas, not on Kindle.

Hmmm . . . . . .

Murrushka,

Is the Countess an acquaintance of your Wagner-singing proctologist? Probably not. The poor man spends his days in a terrified huddle under your couch. Wagner is his only outlet. You should be nicer to him. Wagner-loving proctologists are "hard" to come by.

Ms Price,

I broke down and bought the hardback version of Catching Fire a few weeks ago. Andrew was present when the dire transaction took place, but he promised to remain mum on the subject. I would appreciate it if you didn't mention it to anyone either. I do have a reputation to uphold on LT ;-)

>19 Vera,

I believe we met in a bar in Bila Hora some years ago. I was working with Charles Bonaventure de Longueval at the time. Here is my picture in case you do not recall the occasion or our acquaintanceship.



By the way, do you know the Countess well? I only ask because your reading and hers dovetail so nicely. Perhaps you belong to the same blood oops bookclub? Don't you just hate it when your pen goes on without you? Imagine blood club. How ridiculous.

Ciao miao,
viragodiva

Message edited by its author, Oct 10, 2009, 10:10pm.

>21 I forgot to add, I read Catching Fire on the way back from Toronto. I really enjoyed it, but it is obviously a bridge book to part three. Collins has promised this will be a trilogy. I hope she keeps her word. Series that potentially never end get tiresome. IMO, Collins needs to keep this piece a trilogy. Anything longer will weaken the tension and momentum she has established in the first two books. But then, I'm not her editor . . . or her pocketbook ;-)

Dacha News
Still ominously silent.

urania's Mucus relatives
Great Aunt Martha still remains catatonic (let us be thankful for small blessings). The wandering womb has stopped shrieking hysterically and is now sniffling quietly in the corner of the closet. Young Ludovic Mucus? He is reading Crime and Punishment and muttering darkly to himself. He has also started hanging outside T. Septimus Glass around dusk. I don't want to know why. As for me, I am trying to ignore the unexpected appearances and disappearances of Madame Chiang by reading Enid Bagnold's A Diary without Dates.

A Diary without Dates
by Enid Bagnold

Enid Bagnold

Given the the penchant of Viragoes (a lively band of naughty women hanging out at the VMC forum - not to be confused with the scolding women of English lit. lore), I am surprised they have not jumped on this book, read it cover to cover, or at least added it to their ever-shortening list of Viragoes they should own if not read ;-) So for the edification, gratification and general amusement (well strike the amusement, there is none), I will review this book for Viragoes and sundry.

As Jane Potter notes in Boys in Khaki, Girls in Print, the war-related fiction and nonfiction published during WWI glorified or sentimentalized the war. The horrific toll on human bodies and spirits largely goes unnoticed in the literature of the period. A Diary without Dates is one of the few exceptions. Published while the war still waged, Bagnold's diary presents the war from a V.A.D.'s perspective - and an unflinching perspective at that. No rose-colored glasses for here.

Written in a fluid, almost stream-of-consciousness style, Bagnold's diary shifts from the abjection of men objectived by doctors, Sisters, and V.A.D.s., from the man who moans in pain,

his knees drawn up under him, the sheets up to his chin; his flat chaulk white face tilted at the ceiling [with] the look that a dog gives . . . his words the character of an unformed cry

to the Sister who blithely says while laughing with an M.O. over tea, "I can't do anything. He must stick it out."

Bagnold has a deft touch for rendering the various people who come through the wards for example the "lady" visitor who cries on seeing an officer limp into the Mess:

'And can some of them walk, then!' Perhaps she thought they came into to tea on stretchers, with field bandages on. She quivered all over, too, as she looked from one to the other, and I felt sure she went home and broke down crying, 'What an experience . . . the actual wounds!'

Thus the "ladies" with their teas and sentimental tears carry out their war duties

On a similar note, Bagnold satirically observes her fashionable friend in Chelsea, who from the safety of his unenlisted status proclaims he "feels" the war more than other people do, that his "heart is able to bleed more profusely than any other heart . . . in . . . England." This same man self-righteously expounds his theories: "When the taxes go up . . . perhaps it will make make people feel the war." Bagnold, ever the ironic observer, notes in her diary, "He forgets that even in England a great many quite stupid people would rather lose their money than their sons."

With her sparse economic prose, Bagnold, nevertheless, manages to comunicate a wealth of information about the various hierarchies that rule the wards - and the rules abound. V.A.D.'s must not form romantic attachments to the soldiers. Officers get special privileges, special food not available to the enlisted men. Then there are the hierarchies of class - nurses disdainfully referring an old lady as "comic." Of the Tommies (the lowest in rank), Bagnold notes, "The men fall in with our moods with a docility which I am beginning to suspect is a mask, admit to that she is comic." But on closer observation, Bagnold observes that this "comic" old lady is not so comic:

. . . Her treatment [of the soldier] differed from ours. She treats him as though he were an individual; but there is more in it than that. . . . She treats him as though he had a wife and children, a house and a back garden and reponsibilities: in some manner she treats him as though he had dignity. . . . That is the difference: that is what the Sisters mean when they say 'the boys.' . . .

In a country full at the time of patriotic fervor and praise for "masculinity over softness," Bagnold's descriptions must have sounded like heresy.

However, Bagnold's experience is not without its compensations. For the first time, women have an opportunity to participate in real work, to free themselves from the cloisters of home and family. despite the rules governing her life, Bagnold exults in the "exhilaration of liberty" she experiences.

This book first published in 1917 and last in 1978 by Virago Press provides a short but incisive description of the war. As one of the few anti-war narratives actually written during the war, this book deserves attention . . . and a new edition.

Message edited by its author, Oct 14, 2009, 9:02pm.

P.S. For those who don't hold up their noses when Baron von Kindle walks by, I have put together a pretty good mobi file (complete with cover) for anyone who would like it. Just PM me and I will e-mail it to you. Actually any mobi reader will work and I can probably reformat for other readers if you tell me what yours is.

Message edited by its author, Oct 14, 2009, 6:10pm.

I think I may give in to the Baron's seductions soon. . .

The Bagnold book sounds interesting--one I'll definitely look for.

The Baron is dark and handsome although I hear the Earl of MacIntosh is scheduled to arrive sometime next spring. Rumor has it, that the two plan to duel. We'll see. Place your bets anyone?

P.S. I hear the Earl is quite bonnie. All those MacIntoshes are such handsome guys.

Message edited by its author, Oct 15, 2009, 10:59am.

Oh, I've nothing against the Baron. He is simply too costly for my taste. Those "easy" Ladies of the library are more my speed. Now, if he comes to some agreement with them, I'm perfectly willing to check him out.

Arrrrghhhhhh!!!!!!!

The snail is on the thorn and is finding it quite uncomfortable. All is not right with the world. The center does not hold. Awry, awry, awry. I hear things are rotten in Denmark as well.

Message edited by its author, Nov 17, 2009, 4:59pm.

I love this thread. On the one hand, it seems a gothic novel filled with idealized love by perhaps mildly flawed personas. On the other hand, there is a detailed discussion of the critical academic issues of the day. The ambiguities established by the two threads somehow don't really seem that ambiguous.

Might I suggest that we add Pierre and Lucy to the mix? This thread needs Pierre and Lucy (and Pierre's mother/sister, too, of course).

Because stories are popular here, I offer one as my price of admission: I attended a small New England institution where we had the traditional major requirement but were also required to do an interdisciplinary "adjunct" (perhaps known elsewhere as a "minor" but there was, of course, nothing minor about us little Pip squeaks). Mine was a regionalism (the Middle East), others had such glorious topics as "Light" or "The 19th Century". Really kind of fun.

One poor classmate entirely ignored her adjunct requirement until the need was brought to her attention on the eve of graduation by her advisor. She perused her courseload to see what commonality she could find to weave together a sizable collection of courses from different disciplines, but it was difficult to do, as her interests were varied (Calculus of Liberation and Theology? Buddhist figure studies? Anthropology of Nerds?). She brought the issue up before a committee of drunkards to decide. We pondered. We thought. We drank. Finally, She herself struck on Gold: White Male Studies. She had plenty of courses that fit in White Male Studies.

Thus, she graduated with a major in English and a not-very-minor in White Male Studies. There were no complaints from anyone about her choice.

Message edited by its author, Nov 9, 2009, 3:22pm.

Interesting story, A_musing. I have been involved in Asian Male Studies for many years. My research continues. I feel it's time for a conference.

Okay, when and where will we have the conference? In Tennessee? That would be good because it would upset the natives but might prove interesting to the university set. They might react in outrage, but we're talking about an English department that once brought a candidate for modern drama to campus. Her presentation was on breast puppetry. I thought several of the more doddering members of the male faculty were going to have apoplectic fits on the spot.

On the other hand Taiwan would be fun. I've never been there and could thus improve my acquaintance with Asian males.

Dear old Aunt Ida called me today. She is in Manhattan now for an extended visit. She is staying with Mrs. Whimpersnapple. They have been very close friends since the days of their youth when they were both on the stage, before old Grandpa Mucus passed away and Ida gave up her career to return home and run the family farm back in Mucusville.

Aunt Martha returned to Mucus manor in a rage after Aunt Ida chased her wandering womb out of the closet and out of Corny and Teddies apartment with a broom. Aunt Ida remarked, "Well, I can see the old sourpuss hasn't changed a bit after all these years."

Aunt Ida is cooking up a big batch of blood pudding and blood sausage with Mrs. Whimpersnapple for Ludovic and the other throes and all their young vampire friends from school tonight. She has invited everyone in the building, including the Countess, whom she said was really rather rude. She said virapol is a sweet girl, but seems to have a lot of problems, poor thing.

Davushka,

No!!! Ludovic may read vampire novels, but he is entirely too intelligent to hang out with all those faux goths who like to pretend they are vampires. As for the Countess, you are misinformed. She doesn't live in this building. She lives in a luxurious apartment above T. Septimus Glass, Purveyors of Vintage Tupperware. And I fear you must be mistaken. The Countess is rather exclusive in the company she keeps. I fear Aunt Ida is deluded about the "true" situation. She always was a bit naif. I have the deepest misgivings about vera. It troubles me that I have been unable to communicate to the other three musketeers the gravity of this situation. I must write a post forthwith. Alas internet woes, my birthday, and entirely too much levity have interfered with both my read and my reviewing.

Mary

P.S. Stay away from blood puddings. They are neither healthy nor vegan.

No. Is not true. All good Czech girl know blood pudding very healthy. No like raw egg.

Vera dearest,

I refuse to comment on the picture posted above. Its presence on my thread merely confirms my theory that you are not a nice girl.

Eek! None for me. Thanks.

I guess dear old Aunt Ida was a little bit confused when I spoke to her on the telephone. I could tell she was still in a tizzy after her encounter with Aunt Martha.

virapol has only confirmed her bad intentions by posting that picture and misleadingly calling it blood pudding. A quick Google search reveals the origins and true nature of the objects pictured therein: they are, in fact, fossilised turds, miraculously preserved under the ashes of Pompeii.

They were discovered in 1956 by the Russian archeologist Damital Verisnomo Lupaper, in a cesspit in the northern sector of the dig, and presented to the Museum of Lenin Studies in Ekaterinograd, where they were photographed. The whole archive of the museum, including other finds can be accessed here:

www.ekaterinefluvia.rus

Virapol is a lying scurvey knave-ess (knavine?)

Message edited by its author, Nov 17, 2009, 9:52am.

Much dizziness and tizziness at the dacha and with the Mucus clan in New York. More news to follow. In the meantime, inspired by the puppet motif running through Byatt's latest novel The Children's Book (Byatt has definitely read her Hoffmann), I feel moved to post this picture by Jules Cheret entitled Theatre les Fantoches. Just call it an early virtual Christmas present from me to thee.



P.S. Practice subversion. Do not buy into the Christmas glut. Put together a virtual presentation of art, music, and poetry for your loved ones.

Message edited by its author, Dec 5, 2009, 11:21am.

I love it! My family is foregoing Christmas gifts this year; the season has become too commercialized. Your suggestion is excellent!

>43
Hey kiz,

You could even do this with a story line running through it. Fun for the whole family. And fun to see what each family member would give someone else.

No Christmas at home for me this year—as usual. We have to work at least one of three major end of year holidays, and I prefer to be home for Thanksgiving. I'll be on call on Christmas Eve, and working in the hospital all day Christmas Day. I'll visit my parents in PA starting the week after Christmas.

>45 kidz,

What about this? Start a private LT thread. Get all of your family members to join LT even if they don't visit it. Then you can invite family members only to the thread, and everyone can post their offerings. So . . . you can check on Christmas Eve day. People can keep on commenting on each others gifts from Christmas until New Years. Just a suggestion. I am full of endless suggestions to subvert the system. I am writing a story for Beloved for Christmas. As for the wicked but seductive Baron von K., I not sure. He was a bit craven throughout the fall.

Gorgeous picture. Ignore Christmas and celebrate Chinese New Year in February instead! Dragon dances!

A very lovely pic indeed. It reminds me very much of Everett Shinn's illustrations.

Ignoring christmas and celebrating Chinese New Year is a fabulous idea!