#Joan didion coded

[lovech1ld]

I’m a real straight shooter if you know what I mean

[flowerytale]

Joan Didion, from The Year of Magical Thinking

[nyehilismwriting]

helloooo! i've been following your writing/coding journey since the early days of sentinel and it's been so nice watching your story-telling blossom into a masterpiece. i love project hadea a lot and the characters are all so compelling i always have trouble choosing who to romance (rohan refuses to kiss me lmao). forgive me if you've been asked this question a million times already, but i was wondering what are some of your literary inspirations? what sort of writing shaped your style? it's one that i wish i could achieve one day tbh!!

WAH this is so kind of you 🥺

i'm sure i've spoke before about some of my inspirations but i am always happy to do it again:)

my writing style tends to go through phases- i feel like i write hadea slightly differently to some of my other projects, particularly the shorter ones. often, when I'm going for something poetic, i can't maintain that for as long, or i feel like it gets effortful; some authors seem able to maintain a really lovely style for long-form works. i'd say max gladstone (and there's no way you've followed me this long without seeing me talk about him before lmfao), julia armfield (who wrote our wives under the sea), louise erdrich (the painted drum, the antelope wife) are all authors whose prose particularly sticks out to me as something i'd like to emulate.

i'll also have to shout out adrian tchaikovsky and peter watts as scifi authors who manage to maintain a very effortless, easy to read style while writing hard scifi; it's not easy to do, but they pull it off, often with clarity and humour i really admire. and their work is not without poetry! i also really like adrian tchaikovsky's tendency to skew sharply into and out of horror: he's got such a knack for atmosphere and tone, something that really stands out to me whenever i read his work.

i'm trying to read more nonfiction/autobiography type stuff, as well: i recently finished billy-ray belcourt's 'a history of my brief body', and in the summer i read ocean vuong's 'on earth we're briefly gorgeous' (which is fiction, but in a similar vein); I'm hoping to read more joan didion this year, as well. i think reading stuff like this is a good way to develop both empathy and also an interesting study in tackling highly personal emotional stuff, and in a lot of cases i do feel i can learn a lot from the prose of these works.

i also read quite a bit of poetry, in itself, which i think helps; i like my writing to have a rhythm to it, and i tend to find that reading poetry helps a lot with that.

finally, as i think i've mentioned before, i love the magnus archives and the writing in that: i think that writing stuff that's meant to be read out loud/performed is a really interesting exercise, even if that's not the final goal, and it really helps to develop a sense of rhythm for your prose.

[elektramouthed]

You see I want to be quite obstinate about insisting that we have no way of knowing—beyond that fundamental loyalty to the social code—what is “right” and what is “wrong,” what is “good” and what “evil.” I dwell so upon this because the most disturbing aspect of “morality” seems to me to be the frequency with which the word now appears; in the press, on television, in the most perfunctory kinds of conversation. Questions of straightforward power (or survival) politics, questions of quite indifferent public policy, questions of almost anything: they are all assigned these factitious moral burdens. There is something facile going on, some self-indulgence at work. Of course we would all like to “believe” in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public causes, like to lose our tiresome selves; like, perhaps, to transform the white flag of defeat at home into the brave white banner of battle away from home. And of course it is all right to do that; that is how, immemorially, things have gotten done. But I think it is all right only so long as we do not delude ourselves about what we are doing, and why. It is all right only so long as we remember that all the ad hoc committees, all the picket lines, all the brave signatures in The New York Times, all the tools of agitprop straight across the spectrum, do not confer upon anyone any ipso facto virtue. It is all right only so long as we recognize that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with “morality.” Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble. And I suspect we are already there.

Joan Didion, from On Morality in: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

[madamescarlette]

Yet again, another media I enjoyed this past month of March list because I can and you will suffer me >:D

Books

Blue Nights by Joan Didion (surprisingly stunningly lovely and very much something I needed this past month)

The Werewolf of Whitechapel by Suzannah Rowntree (a delightful romp my only qualm is it feels like it ends so soon! but truly that is a me problem because I gulped it down too fast. Truly I love when I can tell the author cares for the time period dearly and also all the female characters made my heart swell!!)

The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow (I was very surprised by how much this book touched me even as it frustrated me because it's inherently about someone perpetually made to be distrustful of other people and me who is always trying to believe in people is sobbing on the other side of the line begging her to look up! but by far the most loving and polished Austen-like that I've ever read and much, much more gentle to me than I ever could've anticipated. I've kept the library copy on my nightstand for the past week so I can gently touch its cover every now and then and take strength from it which is a dear honor in my life teehee!)

Deathmark by Kate Stradling (the second act is WONDERFUL and actually it surprised me so much that I had to stop reading for a little while because I was crying too much. The ending wraps up a little at a breakneck speed but I will simply read anything she writes so I don't mind, plus anything that spawns a Blue Castle reread for me is well worth it in my mind <3)

Code Girls by Liza Mundy (reading this involved a lot more of the cogs of my brain having to whirl about than I realized going in but quite engrossing indeed)

The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry by Wendell Berry (I just think his poems are about joy and that means a great deal to me)

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin (I need to write up a full review for this at least for my GR account but this was my first read since I was a child and yet all of it was so tinged with an ache of familiarity to me that I know I've carried it with me my entire life and it has never stopped reverberating with me. Vetch my beloved always!!)

Media (to steal from Songbird)

Lockwood and Co. (there's a reason why there's a mass hysteria going on over it rn)

Touch Your Heart (truly it touched me (ha) so much more deeply than I ever would have thought even though it's still fluffy and light and yet I'm so grateful)

Belle (2021) (okay this film is BONKERS but I love the quiet and stillness of the real life sections and also the scene of the three kids in the train station made me CRY LAUGH alone in my room plus I love the vividness of the virtual world and the flashback of her mom made me have to walk away from it for a few days because I sobbed too much so!!! Take from that what you will.)

Castle in the Sky (much more abruptly beautiful and somehow perfectly bittersweet than I recalled and I still adore the sky pirates)

Songs

Easy - Daisy the Great (the simplicity and seriousness of it very much to me)

Past Love - Kimbra

Bye Bye Baby - Taylor Swift (I don't truly know why I come back to this song every year but it matters deeply to me and says something that I can't quite comprehend myself)

Let's Get Married - Bleachers (the bridge-est of bridges I'll never be the same)

The Neighborhood - Grave Enger (there's something about how she sings "I'm gonna miss the sun rising in your eyes" that makes me melt into a puddle on the floor)

Apt. 4 - Vacation Manor

All I Wanted - Paramore

Fake Out - Fall Out Boy (listen to Lu y'all it is sooo much)

Sweet Time - Porter Robinson (a song that makes me glad to be alive what can I say!)

Tighinn Air A'mhuir Am Fear A Phosas Mi - Capercaillie (an extreme throwback because I was listening to them again on a lark but I looove the softness of it so much)

[dreamgirledward]

havent done one of these in a while! tagged by @wentzy thank u lou 🫶✨ last song: future by j-hope :') i watched his special about his album release/lollapalooza set last night so been vibing a lot with his albums esp when im commuting 🌈

last show: the white lotus s2, welcome to chippendales, and also rewatched the bear not too long ago (this was all at the same time so it's hard to pinpoint which of those was actually the last one) ! merlin should be here somewhere but i have that on before i sleep most nights nowadays so that's its own thing i guess lol

currently watching: the last of us and love is blind because i love a good balance ✌️ (im in desperate need of garbage tv so im probably gonna rewatch real housewives of ny soon.....)

currently reading: interview with the vampire! tho i havent had time to properly read in a long time, i wanted to read the series again after the show finished. this isnt really current but on the subject of books ive been on the hunt for a few joan didion novels as well.

current obsession: i dont really have one right now, which is shocking for a tumblrina. i think it's mostly because ive been both so busy and tired :'') here's a list of random things that ive been into lately that make me happy instead: slip skirts, my new chunky boots, love yourself: tear by bts on loop, a gallery book i bought myself from the leonard cohen exhibit at the ago after a bad date, and a cute little calendar illustrated by an artist i like that i just hung up :)

tagging: @taikacohen @lovers-spitmp3 @citruscas @monstermoviedean @danneelswife @kellyscabin @davyperez @castieldean @anna-coded @jewishdeanwinchester no pressure hehe <3

[venusinmyrrh]

9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 19, 25, 28, and 30 for the book asks!

ok here we go!

9. if you were stuck on an island and could only have three books with you what would they be?

D.V. (Diana Vreeland), A Natural History of the Senses (Diane Ackerman), and Book of Longing (Leonard Cohen). all books that richly reward rereading.

10. the worst book you have ever read?

Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony (Eoin Colfer). I believe the term is "jumping the shark".

11. the best book you have ever read?

probably still The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood). I read it senior year of high school and it's never really left me. "I feel like the word shatter."

12. a book/book series you wish you could read for the first time ever again?

Heir Apparent (Vivian Vande Velde), which I read when I was eleven or twelve, and apparently nobody on the planet but me has ever heard of it. it's like you don't even care what would happen if Tron took place in a medieval fantasy universe except instead of evil capitalists the real enemy was evangelicals, and also wizards. jeez.

14. an overrated book?

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones and the Six (both by Taylor Jenkins Reid). the framing devices of both books necessarily require telling instead of showing, her toothless plots and bloodless characterizations do not have the courage of their convictions, and she writes about beautiful women like they are exotic aliens from another planet.

15. an underrated book?

Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (Rachel Pollack), which I hardly ever see on tarot book rec lists but I think everyone who's interested in tarot simply must read.

19. a book you came across randomly but ended up loving it?

I came across Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion from the New Look to Millennial Pink (Véronique Hyland) because I was actually looking for Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History (Richard Thompson Ford), and I'm so glad I went for it! I started reading a digital copy from the library and actually stopped and went out the next day to buy a physical copy to annotate.

25. a book that had you bawling your eyes out?

I never, ever cry at books... unless it's Joan Didion's essay "Letter from Paradise, 21° 19' N., 157° 52' W" from Slouching Towards Bethlehem. the description of nineteen-year-old soldiers' graves at Pearl Harbor got me.

28. the last book you read? did you like it?

My Body (Emily Ratajkowski). incredible. blisteringly intelligent. feels like it took my half-formed thoughts right out of my head and put them into words. existing as a woman in modern culture means being full of contradictions, and I appreciate the way she articulates them without trying to resolve them.

30. give any 3 book recs to your followers!

the feminist trifecta of 90s Bitch (Allison Yarrow), We Were Feminists Once (Andi Zeisler) and Female Chauvinist Pigs (Ariel Levy). all of them sharp, snappy reads, well reasoned and well researched. all of them will make you so very, very incensed about the state of feminism from the 90s to today.

[ficrecslist]

Fic Rec Sunday #2

This week's collection includes Boku no Hero Academia and Batman fics again. Please make sure to look through fic tags before reading.

Batman

the wrongest thing in the world by dustorange (5k, WIP, M)

"I thought it’d be different when he got shot. I was going to be the one to do it. I wanted him dead so bad. But when I saw him, it was different. He was all scared. He was just some guy. It was all different,” Dick whispers. “I didn’t want it to be different. It shouldn’t be different. He took everything from me. I don’t even have my—” his fingers reach up as if to claw down the cuffs of his hoodie, then falter on his bare skin, remembering that it's no longer there, and scratch into his skin instead. His voice breaks. “He got everything.”

Damian slowly unclips his cape. He hesitates. Then he wraps it around Dick’s shoulders.

“Not,” Damian says, “everything.”

(After Bruce's death, Damian struggles to shoulder the Batman mantle. He also struggles to keep a grieving street kid from getting himself killed.)

Another excellent Robin age reversal AU this week. The author has a ton of other good works as well.

the primacy of personal conscience by birdsofthesoul (26k, M)

"WHAT MAKES IAGO EVIL? some people ask. I never ask."

— Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays

Or: Dick, his family, and the moral morass of a wishing well.

Delves deep into each of the batfam's personal morals by putting them into an interesting situation: what would happen if an actual wishing well that worked showed up in Gotham?

Code of Silence by JHSC (9k, T) cw: referenced sexual assault

Willis Todd doesn’t die in prison. That doesn’t change much, until it does.

I didn't think too much of Willis Todd before reading this. Normally people characterise him a lot as an abusive dirtbag, but this fanfic doesn't do that and I find it really interesting. Definitely a good fic.

The Next Life by spqr (15k, T)

“I don’t need an exorcism,” Tim says.

“I beg to bloody differ,” Constantine mutters.

Nobly, Tim elects to ignore him. “I want you to teach me.”

“Teach you what? Manners?”

“I already know manners,” Tim says, then barrels on as Constantine snorts in disagreement, “what I need to learn is necromancy.”

Very much enjoyed a look at the magic side of DC, especially since I haven't read much stuff on it before. I don't know how much of it is true to canon, but if it isn't, it feels very built-in and detailed in the way the magic system is written. Necromancer!Tim and questionable adult John Constantine is a delight to read.

Bet Your Bottom Dollar by husborth (7k, T) cw: referenced sexual assault

Dick's been having kind of a hard time, recently. When it boils over, Bruce is there for him.

Lots of good things to write about this fic: comes highly recommended. I've reread this and the author's other works multiple times.

Circles by withthekeyisking (9k, M)

Dick understands the necessity of working with Hush, that having the world continue on thinking that Bruce Wayne is alive is a useful thing. Doesn't mean he has to like it. Doesn't mean it's easy to engage with a man with Bruce's face when Dick still misses his dad like a limb.

And it turns out that's a weakness Thomas is all too happy to exploit.

If you're feeling up for some angst, give this one a try.

Boku no Hero Academia

Legacy by i_am_snowils_admiral (8k, T)

One For All is a sentient quirk. It isn't evil, or malicious. But it's sentient and it has one goal: to carry out the will of its first user - overcoming All for One.

A very cool fic! It does a great job of making OFA come across as creepy, and then they take it down another road.

the ghost of unbroken love by ennuied (7k, T)

Shouto’s life has cracked open like a raw egg on concrete. Some things will never be the same, but some things will.

It's actually been a while since I read this one, but I do remember that I really enjoyed it.

Candor by OwlF45 (60k, M)

Izuku’s ears pop.

It’s the third time Izuku’s hit the pavement face-first.

He’s so close to pulling himself up to his knees when a pipe slams through his lower back and pins him to the concrete. His breath leaves him all at once. He tries to scream. He can’t.

And the rest of the building falls on him in a burst of smoke and dust. His eardrums shatter, he lays flat against the pavement, spitting red globs of blood, and he tries not to remember red eyes and white hair and—

Or: The Hero Commission passes a new code that requires all heroes to complete a mental simulation test. For Izuku, the consequences are catastrophic.

I'm so into the themes that the author explored in this fic, and just kinda everything about it? You can tell they worked a lot on it, and I think Candor is now one of my favourite BNHA fanfics, because wow. Comes HIGHLY recommended.

hineni | הנני by jonphaedrus (42k, T)

The problem was not that All Might was Yagi Toshinori.

The problem is that Yagi Toshinori is—was—had always been—All Might.

And always would be.

A lovely All Might character study that I liked a lot.

Walk a Mile in Another’s Shoes by katydid (56k, WIP, T)

The Aoyamas think twice and decide not to get involved with a shady man who claims to be able to give quirks. Instead, Hisashi and Inko Midoriya purchase a naval laser quirk for their son in exchange for a large sum of money and an undisclosed favor.

A decade later, All for One comes to collect his due. Izuku Midoriya must choose between his mother’s life or betraying his ideals and his friends.

Read this fic. Read all of the other fics the author has written. Thank me later. This one isn't my favourite but I do very much enjoy it: all of them are really good and are worth reading I think.

different, same by achievingelysium (1k, T)

The world is different from what he remembers.

Much, much different.

Midoriya Izuku is Quirkless. Yet the universe works in circles, and One for All returns to its first wielder long long after he's dead.

A cool Yoichi-reincarnates-as-Midoriya Izuku fic!

[kennymoonshoes]

2013

Here's something they don't tell you about falling in love online: it happens in fragments, in 3 AM messages about nothing that feel like everything. Your boy was living that Baldwin Park life, passing out in his jeans every night after shooting sweet sixteens and bar mitzvahs, when this girl from Tennessee started turning insomnia into an art form.

Now, you've got to understand something about 2013 Tumblr. This was before Instagram ate everything, before everyone and their mom thought they were Annie Leibovitz because they had VSCO. This was back when you could still find real shit between the Harry Potter gifsets and whatever the fuck homestuck was. And this girl, she's posting these moody shots of Southern Gothic mansions and dead magnolias that look like something out of a Faulkner fever dream.

So I hit follow. Because that's what you did back then. You didn't slide into DMs or whatever. You followed and maybe they followed back and mostly that was it. Except she did follow back. And then she liked my photo series about the crackhouse that burned down across from my home. The one I shot through my bedroom window over six months, tracking the way the char patterns changed in different light. Real artsy shit, the kind of work I used to do before I started shooting rich people's "I do" moments for a living.

Then the messages started. First about Sedaris essays because apparently we both had that specific brand of sad-funny in our DNA. Then about the squirrels in her ceiling that were definitely rats but she wasn't ready to face that truth. Every notification hit like a shot of something expensive, the kind of bourbon her daddy probably collected but never drank.

I didn't know then that her address meant something in Chattanooga. Didn't know that "guesthouse" was code for old money, for the kind of family that had enough house to spare some. All I knew was that this girl could quote Parks & Rec one minute and drop references to Russian literature the next, like somehow Pawnee and Petersburg existed in the same universe.

The kind who'd wake up at dawn to watch some kid race his diesel engine go-kart around the neighborhood and turn it into poetry. Who'd skip work to go to bird sanctuaries. Who slept in black tights and socks just so she could feel the pleasure of taking them off against cold sheets at night. The kind of girl who lived in her family's guesthouse on Riverview Road like that was a normal thing people did.

I was shooting quinceañeras and bar mitzvahs back then, living off Cup Noodles and dreams. She was skipping her "second job" (which I later learned was volunteering at an art gallery, because of course it was) to go to a bird sanctuary. Different worlds. But online, none of that shit mattered. Online, we were just two insomniacs trading David Sedaris stories and debating whether Dorne's climate made any fucking sense in Game of Thrones.

The first photo she sent me was of a succulent garden she was trying to grow. All these fancy-ass plants arranged just so, with this handwritten note: "If these die on the way to LA, just know I tried." They did die, every last one. But I kept that note, folded up in my wallet like some kind of goodluck charm, until the morning Laura handed back her ring.

Watching those succulents slowly turn to dust on my Baldwin Park windowsill, I should've known. Should've seen how this would end—me trying to keep alive something that wasn't meant for my climate. But you know how it is when you're young and stupid and someone who writes like Joan Didion but memes like a Redditor starts sending you good morning emails about the rats in her ceiling.

You convince yourself that maybe this time, the plants will survive the journey.

fuck, was I wrong about that.

[elegiaclilies]

She imagined her mother trying to call her from a pay phone in Tonopah, standing in a booth with all her quarters and dimes and nickels spread on the shelf and getting the operator and getting New York and then the answering service picking up the call. Maria did not know whether any of that had actually happened but she used to think it, used to think it particularly around the time the sun set in New York, think about the mother dying in the desert light, the daughter unavailable in the Eastern dark. She would imagine the quarters and dimes and nickels spread out on the shelf and the light in the cottonwoods and she would wonder what she was doing in the dark. What time is it there, her mother would have asked had she gotten Maria. What's the weather. She might never have said what was on her mind but she would have left a coded message, said goodbye.

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎Excerpt from Play It As It Lays , by Joan Didion.

[zmkccommonplace]

Joan was the son Papa [Hemingway] always wanted, even if she was the daughter he never knew he had. Her sentences were, like his, as cold and clean as spring water. Feelings were there, and strong to the point of overpowering, though they were addressed only obliquely. To address them directly would be to violate the cowboy code—baring your soul? yikes, sissy stuff!

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2022/08/joan-didion-letters-eve-babitz

[colindotpdx]

Hammer Museum and Mausoleum

A quick visit to the Hammer Museum in Westwood to see an homage to Joan Didion, the amazing work of Bridget Riley, Karon Davis’ sculptures, and a taste of Armand Hammer’s astonishing personal collection.

Afterwards a friend directed us to the Westwood Village Memorial Park, a completely hidden gem of a graveyard that has been there since the Gilded Age and is now surrounded by the canyons of offices and condos on Wilshire; a little known enclave for the famously dead.

The most ornate site was for Don Knotts with his entire career pictured in bronze. Here is also John Cassettes, Dean Martin, Frank Zappa, Farrah Fawcett, Kirk Douglas, Peter Falk, Jack Lemmon.

Graves and crypts of all sizes for all budgets.

The mausoleum of Armand Hammer, the founder of Occidental Petroleum and “Lenin’s favorite capitalist” is the largest piece of marble but still dwarfed by the buildings that have blossomed even since his death in 1990.

Crypts for Marilyn Monroe and Hugh Hefner now lying side by side without irony or epitaphs or ornamentation except for a single rose for her. They were both born in the same year (1926) but died 55 years apart.

Grassy plots for stars, smaller places for urns, and even smaller spots for simple name tags for those whose ashes were simply scattered there. Persian Square is nearby - some call this area Tehrangelese - and there is a very large number of Iranian graves here.

Corny epitaphs: writer Jackie Collins (She gave a great deal of people a great deal of pleasure), impresario Oscar Lerman (Let’s get outta here), comedian Rodney Dangerfield (There goes the neighborhood), Billy Wilder (I’m a writer but then nobody is perfect … watch Some Like It Hot to get the reference)

There is even a convenient QR code to order your own plot. Credit cards accepted, fame not essential if your credit is good.

[skonnaris]

Books I’ve Read: 2006-2020

Alexie, Sherman - Flight

Anderson, Joan - A Second Journey

                         - An Unfinished Marriage

                         - A Walk on the Beach

                         - A Year By The Sea

Anshaw, Carol - Carry the One

Auden, W.H. - The Selected Poems of W.H. Auden

Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice

Bach, Richard - Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Bear, Donald R - Words Their Way

Berg, Elizabeth - Open House

Bly, Nellie - Ten Days in a Madhouse

Bradbury, Ray - Fahrenheit 451

                       - The Martian Chronicles

Brooks, David - The Road to Character

Brooks, Geraldine - Caleb’s Crossing

Brown, Dan - The Da Vinci Code

Bryson, Bill - The Lost Continent

Burnett, Frances Hodgson - The Secret Garden

Buscaglia, Leo - Bus 9 to Paradise

                        - Living, Loving & Learning

                        - Personhood

                        - Seven Stories of Christmas Love

Byrne, Rhonda - The Secret

Carlson, Richard - Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

Carson, Rachel - The Sense of Wonder

                         - Silent Spring

Cervantes, Miguel de - Don Quixote

Cherry, Lynne - The Greek Kapok Tree

Chopin, Karen - The Awakening

Clurman, Harold - The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre & the 30s

Coelho, Paulo -  Adultery

                          The Alchemist

Conklin, Tara - The Last Romantics

Conroy, Pat - Beach Music

                   - The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son

                   - The Great Santini

                   - The Lords of Discipline

                   - The Prince of Tides

                   - The Water is Wide

Corelli, Marie - A Romance of Two Worlds

Delderfield, R.F. - To Serve Them All My Days

Dempsey, Janet - Washington’s Last Contonment: High Time for a Peace

Dewey, John - Experience and Education

Dickens, Charles - A Christmas Carol

                            - Great Expectations

                            - A Tale of Two Cities

Didion, Joan - The Year of Magical Thinking

Disraeli, Benjamin - Sybil

Doctorow, E.L. - Andrew’s Brain

                        - Ragtime

Doerr, Anthony - All the Light We Cannot See

Dreiser, Theodore - Sister Carrie

Dyer, Wayne - Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life

                    - The Power of Intention

                    - Your Erroneous Zones

Edwards, Kim - The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

Ellis, Joseph J. - His Excellency: George Washington

Ellison, Ralph - The Invisible Man

Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Essays and Lectures

Felkner, Donald W. - Building Positive Self Concepts

Fergus, Jim - One Thousand White Women

Flynn, Gillian - Gone Girl

Follett, Ken - Pillars of the Earth

Frank, Anne - The Diary of a Young Girl

Freud, Sigmund - The Interpretation of Dreams

Frey, James - A Million Little Pieces

Fromm, Erich - The Art of Loving

                      - Escape from Freedom

Fulghum, Robert - All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Fuller, Alexandra - Leaving Before the Rains Come

Garield, David - The Actors Studion: A Player’s Place

Gates, Melinda - The Moment of Lift

Gibran, Kahlil - The Prophet

Gilbert, Elizabeth - Eat, Pray, Love

                           - The Last American Man

                           - The Signature of All Things

Ginsburg, Ruth Bader - My Own Words

Girzone, Joseph F, - Joshua

                              - Joshua and the Children

Gladwell, Malcom - Blink

                             - David and Goliath

                             - Outliers

                             - The Tipping Point

                             - Talking to Strangers

Glass, Julia - Three Junes

Goodall, Jane - Reason for Hope

Goodwin, Doris Kearnes - Team of Rivals

Graham, Steve - Best Practices in Writing Instruction

Gray, John - Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus

Groom, Winston - Forrest Gump

Gruen, Sarah - Water for Elephants

Hannah, Kristin - The Great Alone

                         - The Nightingale

Harvey, Stephanie and Anne Goudvis - Strategies That Work

Hawkins, Paula - The Girl on the Train

Hedges, Chris - Empire of Illusion

Hellman, Lillian - Maybe

                        - Pentimento

Hemingway - Ernest - A Moveable Feast

Hendrix, Harville - Getting the Love You Want

Hesse, Hermann - Demian

                           - Narcissus and Goldmund

                           - Peter Camenzind

                           - Siddhartha

                           - Steppenwolf

Hilderbrand, Elin - The Beach Club

Hitchens, Christopher - God is Not Great

Hoffman, Abbie - Soon to be a Major Motion Picture

                         - Steal This Book

Holt, John - How Children Fail

                 - How Children Learn

                - Learning All the Time

                - Never Too Late

Hopkins, Joseph - The American Transcendentalist

Horney, Karen - Feminine Psychology

                       - Neurosis and Human Growth

                       - The Neurotic Personality of Our Time

                       - New Ways in Psychoanalysis

                       - Our Inner Conflicts

                       - Self Analysis

Hosseini, Khaled - The Kite Runner

Hoover, John J, Leonard M. Baca, Janette K. Klingner - Why Do English Learners Struggle with Reading?

Janouch, Gustav - Conversations with Kafka

Jefferson, Thomas - Crusade Against Ignorance

Jong, Erica - Fear of Dying

Joyce, Rachel - The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

                      - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Kafka, Franz - Amerika

                     - Metamophosis

                     - The Trial    

Kallos, Stephanie - Broken For You  

Kazantzakis, Nikos - Zorba the Greek

Keaton, Diane - Then Again

Kelly, Martha Hall - The Lilac Girls

Keyes, Daniel - Flowers for Algernon

King, Steven - On Writing

Kornfield, Jack - Bringing Home the Dharma

Kraft, Herbert - The Indians of Lenapehoking - The Lenape or Delaware Indians: The Original People of NJ, Southeastern New York State, Eastern Pennsylvania, Northern Delaware and Parts of Western Connecticut

Kundera, Milan - The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Lacayo, Richard - Native Son

Lamott, Anne - Bird by Bird

                        Word by Word

L’Engle, Madeleine - A Wrinkle in Time

Lahiri, Jhumpa - The Namesake

Lappe, Frances Moore - Diet for a Small Planet

Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird

Lems, Kristin et al  - Building Literacy with English Language Learners

Lewis, Sinclair - Main Street

London, Jack - The Call of the Wild

Lowry, Lois - The Giver

Mander, Jerry - Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television

Marks, John D. - The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind         Control

Martel, Yann - Life of Pi

Maslow, Abraham - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature

                             - Motivation and Personality

                             - Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences

                            - Toward a Psychology of Being                            

Maugham. W. Somerset - Of Human Bondage

                                       - Christmas Holiday

Maurier, Daphne du - Rebecca

Mayes, Frances - Under the Tuscan Sun

Mayle, Peter - A Year in Provence

McCourt, Frank - Angela’s Ashes

                         - Teacher man

McCullough, David - 1776

                               - Brave Companions

McEwan, Ian - Atonement

                     - Saturday

McLaughlin, Emma - The Nanny Diaries

McLuhan, Marshall - Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Meissner, Susan - The Fall of Marigolds

Millman, Dan - Way of the Peaceful Warrior

Moehringer, J.R. - The Tender Bar

Moon, Elizabeth - The Speed of Dark

Moriarty, Liane - The Husband’s Sister

                        - The Last Anniversary

                        - What Alice Forgot

Mortenson, Greg - Three Cups of Tea

Moyes, Jo Jo - One Plus One

                      - Me Before You

Ng, Celeste - Little Fires Everywhere

Neill, A.S. - Summerhill

Noah, Trevor - Born a Crime

O’Dell, Scott - Island of the Blue Dolphins

Offerman, Nick - Gumption

O’Neill, Eugene - Long Day’s Journey Into Night

                           A Touch of the Poet

Orwell, George - Animal Farm

Owens, Delia - Where the Crawdads Sing

Paulus, Trina - Hope for the Flowers

Pausch, Randy - The Last Lecture

Patchett, Ann - The Dutch House

Peck, Scott M. - The Road Less Traveled

                        - The Road Less Traveled and Beyond

Paterson, Katherine - Bridge to Teribithia

Picoult, Jodi - My Sister’s Keeper

Pirsig, Robert - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Puzo, Mario - The Godfather

Quindlen, Anna - Black and Blue

Radish, Kris - Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral

Redfield, James - The Celestine Prophecy

Rickert, Mary - The Memory Garden

Rogers, Carl - On Becoming a Person

Ruiz, Miguel - The Fifth Agreement

                    - The Four Agreements

                    - The Mastery of Love

Rum, Etaf - A Woman is No Man

Saint-Exupery, Antoine de - The Little Prince

Salinger, J.D. - Catcher in the Rye

Schumacher, E.F. - Small is Beautiful

Sebold, Alice - The Almost Moon

                      - The Lovely Bones

Shaffer, Mary Ann and Anne Barrows - The Gurnsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Shakespeare, William - Alls Well That Ends Well

                                  - Much Ado About Nothing

                                  - Romeo and Juliet

                                  - The Sonnets

                                  - The Taming of the Shrew

                                  - Twelfth Night

                                  - Two Gentlemen of Verona

Sides, Hampton - Hellhound on his Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin

Silverstein, Shel - The Giving Tree

Skinner, B.F. - About Behaviorism

Smith, Betty - A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Snyder, Zilpha Keatley - The Velvet Room

Spinelli, Jerry - Loser

Spolin, Viola - Improvisation for the Theater

Stanislavski, Constantin - An Actor Prepares

Stedman, M.L. - The Light Between Oceans

Steinbeck, John - Travels with Charley

Steiner, Peter - The Terrorist

Stockett, Kathryn - The Help

Strayer, Cheryl - Wild

Streatfeild, Dominic - Brainwash

Strout, Elizabeth - My Name is Lucy Barton

                           - Olive, Again

                           - Olive Kitteridge

Tartt, Donna - The Goldfinch

Taylor, Kathleen - Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control

Thomas, Matthew - We Are Not Ourselves

Thoreau, Henry David - Walden

Tolle, Eckhart - A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

                     - The Power of Now

Towles, Amor - A Gentleman in Moscow

                      - Rules of Civility

Tracey, Diane and Lesley Morrow - Lenses on Reading

Traub, Nina - Recipe for Reading

Tzu, Lao - Tao Te Ching

United States Congress - Project MKULTRA, the CIA’s program of research in behavioral modification: Joint hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence and the … Congress, first session, August 3, 1977

Van Allsburg, Chris - Just a Dream

                               - Polar Express

                               - Sweet Dreams

                               - Stranger

                               - Two Bad Ants

Walker, Alice - The Color Purple

Waller, Robert James - Bridges of Madison County

Warren, Elizabeth - A Fighting Chance

Waugh, Evelyn - Brideshead Revisited

Weir, Andy - The Martian

Weinstein, Harvey M. - Father, Son and CIA

Welles, Rebecca - The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood

Westover, Tara - Educated

White, E.B. - Charlotte’s Web

Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorien Gray

Wolfe, Tom - I Am Charlotte Simmons

Wolitzer, Meg - The Female Persuasion

Woolf, Virginia - Mrs. Dalloway

Zevin, Gabrielle - The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Zusak, Marcus - The Book Thief

[elisaenglish]

Joan Didion on Learning Not to Mistake Self-Righteousness for Morality

“When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something … but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen.”

“To be a moral human being is to pay, be obliged to pay, certain kinds of attention,” Susan Sontag wrote in what remains some of the finest advice on writing and life. But if beneath the world “morality,” as James Baldwin asserted, “we are confronted with the way we treat each other,” then to be a moral human being requires an especial attentiveness to other human beings and their subjective realities. In consequence, any true morality is the diametric opposite of self-righteousness — the very thing that so often masquerades for morality.

That paradox is what Joan Didion (b. December 5, 1934), a writer who has spent a lifetime mirroring us back to ourselves, examines with characteristic incisiveness in a short 1965 essay titled “On Morality,” found in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (public library) — the classic 1968 essay collection that gave us Didion on keeping a notebook and her timeless meditation on self-respect.

With an eye to our tendency to mistake for morality what is indeed a “monstrous perversion” of the ego, Didion writes:

“I followed my own conscience.” “I did what I thought was right.” How many madmen have said it and meant it? How many murderers? Klaus Fuchs said it, and the men who committed the Mountain Meadows Massacre said it, and Alfred Rosenberg said it. And, as we are rotely and rather presumptuously reminded by those who would say it now, Jesus said it. Maybe we have all said it, and maybe we have been wrong. Except on that most primitive level — our loyalties to those we love — what could be more arrogant than to claim the primacy of personal conscience?”

Half a century later, Didion’s point seems all the more disquieting amid our present culture, where the filter bubble of our loyalties has rendered in-group/out-group divisiveness all the more primitive and where we combat our constant terror of coming unmoored from our certitudes by succumbing to unbridled self-righteousness under the pretext of morality. Didion considers how this tendency has made us less moral rather than more:

“You see I want to be quite obstinate about insisting that we have no way of knowing — beyond that fundamental loyalty to the social code — what is “right” and what is “wrong,” what is “good” and what “evil.” I dwell so upon this because the most disturbing aspect of “morality” seems to me to be the frequency with which the word now appears; in the press, on television, in the most perfunctory kinds of conversation. Questions of straightforward power (or survival) politics, questions of quite indifferent public policy, questions of almost anything: they are all assigned these factitious moral burdens. There is something facile going on, some self-indulgence at work.”

In a passage of excruciating timeliness today, as we fling our self-righteousnesses at each other from the two-finger slingshot of what was once the peace sign, Didion adds:

“Of course we would all like to “believe” in something, like to assuage our private guilts in public causes, like to lose our tiresome selves; like, perhaps, to transform the white flag of defeat at home into the brave white banner of battle away from home. And of course it is all right to do that; that is how, immemorially, things have gotten done. But I think it is all right only so long as we do not delude ourselves about what we are doing, and why. It is all right only so long as we remember that all the ad hoc committees, all the picket lines, all the brave signatures in The New York Times, all the tools of agitprop straight across the spectrum, do not confer upon anyone any ipso facto virtue. It is all right only so long as we recognise that the end may or may not be expedient, may or may not be a good idea, but in any case has nothing to do with “morality.” Because when we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.”

Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains an indispensable read. Complement this particular fragment with Mark Twain on morality vs. the intellect, artist Ann Truitt on the cure for our chronic self-righteousness and James Baldwin and Chinua Achebe’s forgotten conversation about morality, then revisit Didion on grief, Hollywood’s diversity problem, and her all-time favorite books.

Source: Maria Popova, brainpickings.org (5th December 2016)

[redantsunderneath]

West Side Story, Twin Peaks, and the Death of the 60s

I poke around at this a lot, but I thought it might be good to get it all down in one place.  

I feel like I grew up in an eclipse of West Side Story.  Grease had taken over its space as a specific cultural artifact, and it wasn’t pushed on TV that much. When I got around to it, I realized it was not what you might think it was – it was influential way past the direct references like Springsteen’s first 3 albums, theater offshoots, and modern Romeo and Juliet takes.  The filmmaking was daring and I noticed may stolen shots (this is about David Lynch, so I’ll use an example of the dissolve to the party being stolen for the jitterbug contest at the beginning of Mulholland Drive) not to mention the way New York City is shot becoming the only way to shoot it in the 70s and 80s.

The color scheme bears notice.  The Jets have goldenrod jackets and light blue ensembles, while the Sharks are purple and red (there is that one Orange girl that really pops) with a red background at the dance.  The jacket yellow and the red and white of Maria’s dress are the same as those of the high school in Twin Peaks.  Here, look:

Tony and Maria 

Tony and Maria 

But the real connection I want to make is the lead actors in WSS, both of whom were cast in Twin Peaks: Richard Beymer playing yearning Tony then scheming capitalist Ben Horne and Russ Tambyn playing gotta move Biff then try anything burnout, metoo bait Dr. Jacoby.  

The characters in Twin Peaks are embedded in a web of reflections and foils and, in many ways this diad is the center of that, even though they shared no scenes in the show (which is why the pic is a rarity).  But let’s look for a minute at these two actors and their lives.

Richard Beymer was a child actor that, other than WSS and Twin Peaks, is primarily known for journeyman TV work.  His WSS role was that of a guy who wants something specific and peruses it who has a job and generally follows the rules. The actor was, for most of his life, an example of someone in the glass closet, but he dated Sharon Tate before that choice.   He was more associated with the mod end of the 60s “split,” though he marched for civil rights. He settled into a typical TV guest starring career playing the straight-man career guy.  

Russ Tamblyn wanted to be a circus performer and, other than WSS and Twin Peaks, is primarily known for dance.  His WSS role was that of a guy who is all energy and just wants to engage and experience who has no job and generally flaunts the rules. The actor has been married and divorced many times, including to a Vegas showgirl.   He was more associated with the hippie end of the 60s “split,” and gave Charles Manson a ride in his VW bus once. His career is wild and diffuse, but he worked predominantly as a choreographer.  

There is much cultural myth acceptance of the Joan Didion narrative, that the problems with the 60s were there but the Manson Murders were when the idealism gave way and birthed the harsh 70s: the murders were the moment the 60s died. In a way, it is a story of the dirty hippie 60s leaking into the flashy Hollywood 60s.   But then, every male on both sides involved even peripherally with the event was guilty of rape and there was a way that all “sin” was normalized.  That’s the story, anyway, but we’re talking about stories.  Beymer was Tate adjacent, Tamblyn ran in Manson circles. Beymer and Tamblyn, from a purely superficial narrative lens, lived the two sides of the ideal 60s.   But after the 70s came the 80s.

In the 80s, the spirit of the 60s, such as it was, had given way to two archetypes that were fairly legible in entertainment at the time – the sellout and the burnout.  The businessman ruled by greed (Gordon Gekko was the apotheosis) and the hippie whose fading cognition struggled to remember the last 10-20 years had happened at all (think the image of Regan era Dennis Hopper, especially his Flashback character Huey Walker). It’s this that Twin Peaks was drawing on for the characters of Ben Horne and Jacoby.  

So the threads here are cute and obvious.  In casting Twin Peaks, they took WSS’s straight-laced icon of “you want it you take it you pay the price,” played by a lifelong career actor and Sharon Tate dater, and cast him as the rich businessman trope, and took WSS’s delinquent icon of “if it feels good, man,” played by a far out maximum experiencer and Manson valet, and cast him as the fried hippie trope.  Great, just regular casting, right?  But how does this build a network of associations?

The first most obvious reflections of the pair are Mike as Jacoby and Bob as Ben.  These are archetypal characters that represent the rapacious consumption (Bob) and the seeking/experiencing-tendency which has stepped out too far (Mike).  Mike also “splits” into the Mike the spirit and Philip Gerard which reflect a kind of addiction to experience that Philip eventually “kicks.” All this is centered around the idea of Garmonbozia, an ambivalent symbol of industrially ground down life essence produced by pain and suffering (sort of too much experience embodied but also a kind of jouissance the bad system depends on) which Bob and Mike sought but Phil has disavowed by cleaning up. This all relates to absent mother Judy but talk about her we won’t.

Ben is also reflected in Jerry, his brother, splitting the avarice of the Wolf of Wall Street type into the power hunger (Ben) and the hedonism (Jerry). He is further diffracted by the generational lens into Gen X Audrey and (in later S2) Bobby. Audrey is the youthful activism trying to reassert itself in the child, and Bobby turns into Alex P Keaton, the young stepper and protégée (that whole plot line reminds me of Family Ties for some reason).   The connections to other characters continue on their own wavelengths. Audrey mirrors Laura, who is mirrored by Donna and Maddie, many other businessmen reflect Ben, Bobby bounces off of James and Mike (no relation), Bob’s gender reflected mom Judy is Naido is Diane, etc.  There’s even an 11th hour play to connect Doc Hayward to Ben in a good dad/bad dad plot.

Mark Frost has always said that they were cast because they were the best actors for those roles, but Lynch’s casting by feel with no audition process is well known - he’s looking for people to “paint” with.  The history here brings up powerful associations that may have made him feel quite a lot.  I got through this entire post without using the word Boomer, not sure how, but Tamblyn and Beymer were both Silents who code as late and early Boomers respectively.

[voguingtodanzig]

Reading 2018

​Douglas Wolk, Live at the Apollo

George Grella Jr., Bitches Brew

Dan Clowes,The Death-Ray*

Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code

Ta-Neishi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power

Daniel H. Wilson, Guardian Angels and Other Monsters

William Gibson, Nueromancer*

Anthony Ray Hinton, The Sun Does Shine

Luis Alberto Urrea, The House of Broken Angels

Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation

George Pelecanos, Shoedog

David J. Bauman, Moons, Roads, and Rivers 

Franchesca Ramsey, Well, That Escalated Quickly

George Pelacanos, The Turnaround

Robyn Carr, The Family Gathering 

Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry 

Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room

John le Carre,The Looking Glass War

Bret Easton Ellis, Glamorama*

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

Philip Roth, American Pastoral 

Tao Lin, Richard YatesJoe Gross, In On The Kill Taker

Catherine Steadman, Something in the Water 

Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

Otessa Mossfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation 

Gary Shteyngart, Lake Success  

Robert Caro, The Power Broker

Michiko Kakutani, The Death of Truth  

David Baumann, Angels & Adultery

Arthur C. Clarke, 2001

Nicole Chung, All You Can Ever Know

Kathy Wang, Family Trust

​Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

*Tracey Daughtery, The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion

Sarah St. Vincent, How to Hide in Winter

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black

Stephen King, Elevation

Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’s 

Brian Abrams, Obama -an oral history 

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms*

Ha Jin, Waiting

Bill Janowitz, Exile On Main Street

Gina Arnold, Half A Million Strong: Crowds and Power from Woodstock to Coachella

Kim Un-su, The Plotters

Don Winslow, The Power of the Dog* 

*re-reads