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coldmorte · 4 years ago

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Hey! I really really like your blog and all the Dutch content, and I read your posts on Molly and Dutch and I just felt like sharing my thoughts :) If you don’t feel like it, just ignore this

I like Molly, even though I agree that she’s very much a snob and very paranoid at times.

It’s always felt very clear to me that Molly really, truly loves Dutch. And love makes you do stupid, desperate things (just look at Arthur).

Molly’s interaction with Abigail is about Dutch’s love for Molly, not the other way around. It’s Abigail saying that Dutch doesn’t love her and Molly lashing out (probably to protect herself from the truth).

This is brought up again in An Honest Mistake, when she talks to Arthur about Dutch, questioning how Dutch seems to him. When Molly says, “I really love him, you know,” Arthur averts his eyes and doesn’t look at her. I’ve always seen this as Arthur knowing Dutch doesn’t love her in the way Molly wants him to, if he loves her at all.

I’ve always seen Dutch as being kind of ahead of his time when it comes to certain progressive ideas (especially as it pertains to race), but when it comes to women, he’s very much a product of his his time. The way he talks about them and to/at them, whether it’s Molly or Abigail or Mary-Beth or Sadie, is often either dismissive or condescending.

While he doesn’t outright say it, the way he acts around the women at camp has always left me feeling like he prefers women (at least the ones he takes an actual interest in) to fit into the roles society has carved out for them; they have to be beautiful and docile and romantic-minded for him to take an interest.

You’ve said yourself, that Dutch deals with a lot of self doubt and that stems from wanting to be seen as a great and powerful man, who the people in camp can look up to, and women (especially young women) were (and to some degree stil is) seen as symbols of status. Molly is a beautiful woman from a wealthy family; she could have anyone she wanted, and she chose Dutch and ran away with him, leaving her old life behind – that’s the ultimate powermove on Dutch’s part.

I’ve always thought of Dutch as a romantic, the way he talks about love and how it’s the one thing worth living for, and I believe that he may have at some point actually loved Molly or at least convinced himself that he did, but the second he grows tired of her and realises that he doesn’t actually love her, he’s moving on to another, younger woman.

His inner romantic and his ego and need to be perceived as powerful are at odds with each other, and as the game progresses we see how his romantic and kind side wilt under the weight and pressure of his responsibilities as a leader and his need to be perceived as powerful and a great leader.

Those are my thoughts at least :)

Hello!

Thank you for the ask and the kind words! That really does mean a lot!! 💜💜💜

I am very grateful for your message, and no!!!! I don’t want to ignore it!! That wouldn’t be very fair of me, as I feel like you bring up some good points to discuss. Also, I appreciate the respect in your message and for taking the time to write so much out! I’d be happy to give you some of my time in return 🥰

(Warning: SPOILERS below)

I’m going to take your points one at a time here. So, starting with liking Molly, it’s totally fine! I don’t want to be too negative on my blog, and I don’t want people to feel like they have to think the same way I do. That wouldn’t be any fun, so it does make me happy that you can enjoy her character. I don’t want to take that away from you!! By all means, love her to your heart's content!!! ❤️

Furthermore, though I don’t personally like Molly, I don’t think she was a truly bad person. Just like every other character in the game, she had flaws and made mistakes. I primarily wish I could have gotten to know her better because she was presented during a very dark time in her life. I feel like this affected my perception of her, and I might have seen her differently, if I had gotten the chance to interact more with her character (especially outside of the RDR2 timeframe). Everybody deserves not only to love somebody, but everybody also deserves to have faith that the person they love can truthfully say the same back to them. I felt bad that Molly died such an unhappy, loveless death.

About the love Molly had for Dutch, I agree that she loved him. My point in bringing up infatuation was to primarily highlight the reason and the degree to which she honestly loved him. Did Molly love Dutch for the man he was, or for the idea of the man he was? Maybe, it was a mix? I am not sure there is enough information to give a conclusive answer to this (as I somewhat mentioned before).

To be fair, the same thing could (and should) be asked of Dutch. Did he truly love her, or did he just love the idea of having her at his side? Again, it would be fascinating to see the early part of their relationship. It would answer a LOT of questions. You mention that Dutch arguably saw Molly as a symbol of status, and I agree that it was very plausible. I think, to some degree, both Molly and Dutch saw each other as being favorable for what they represented, unfortunately.

In regard to the interaction between Molly and Abigail, I realize my response was unclear about this (that’s my bad). I'll try to write it better here, but this is really complicated to put into words! I'll do my best!!

What I said was that Molly got angry at people she “perceived” as challenging her love (this was subjective to her POV and not necessarily reflective of true reality). My original answer was not objective (nor was it meant to be - I was trying to write this part from her POV), and there are a few layers I want to analyze here. First of all, from an objective perspective, you are correct. The conversation between them was ultimately about Dutch not loving Molly the way she wanted to be loved. However, the first thing Molly did was state to Abigail that she loved Dutch. If she didn’t see this point as being in question, why did she feel the need to immediately justify it before saying anything else? To me, it seemed like she needed to actively prove that she loved him to others.

This was also seen with Karen and Arthur. The conversations with Karen were confusing because they didn’t have much context, but perhaps, that was the point - to show the extent of Molly’s paranoia (in other words, that there was no context and that she was imagining Karen to be against her out of insecurity). Molly continually complained that Karen said bad things about her, and she insisted that she not only loved Dutch, but that he loved her as well. Then, as you mention, Molly emphasized to Arthur that SHE loved Dutch (it was not directly about his love for her). Again, by constantly having to profess her feelings, it was as if she thought people were doubting her on some level.

But here is where the contradiction comes in - I believe that Molly was smart enough to know that this doubting wasn't entirely genuine. She knew it was never really her love that she should have been concerned about. Although, by focusing on herself, it was a way to deflect from her insecurity regarding Dutch and the fact that she knew, deep down, he didn’t truly love her (at least, not anymore). That’s why she got so upset when Abigail, for instance, brought this point up. As soon as the conversation shifted from Molly’s love to Dutch’s love, she lashed out and stormed away.

So, to try to summarize this all up, what I am trying to say is that Molly “perceived” challenges to her own state of emotions as a means of shifting away from her concerns about Dutch’s feelings. She knew her "perceptions" were really more like lies to herself. Molly wanted the conversation with Abigail to seem like it was about her because she felt she was more in control of that and could handle it better. From a neutral perspective, the conversation was definitely not about Molly - it was entirely about Dutch, which Molly knew (she just didn’t like Abigail directly pointing it). I hope my response makes more sense? Sorry, if I am still being confusing!

Now, as for Dutch and his progressive ideas, I think a lot of them were formed in his youth. Little information was given about his childhood, but he did seem pretty sensitive about the fact that he grew up fatherless. His dad died in the Civil War (a conflict primarily centered around the issue of slavery and states’ attitudes towards it), while fighting on the side of the Union. One reason Dutch was probably so progressive in regard to race was because of his anger over losing a parent to racially-motivated violence. Racism seemed like a waste of time and life, so he was bitter towards people who still harbored racist sentiments. He knew firsthand how destructive they could be.

Minimal insight was provided into Dutch’s relationship with his mother, other than the fact that it was quite strained and unhappy. He left home at a young age and essentially disowned her. He obviously didn’t keep in touch with her, judging that he didn’t even know she died until years after the fact. Could this have affected his attitude later in life (towards women)?

I suppose it’s possible. Maybe, Dutch would have looked better on women, had he been closer with his mother. I consider his attitude towards women as pretty average for the era. It’s not entirely fair to compare him to Arthur, who was very progressive for the time and definitely above normal standards. As you say, I think Dutch was a product of his time. In RDR2, he didn’t come across as physically abusive, nor did he overtly sexualize women. However, he did seem to expect women to act in a subordinate manner. It's not great (and I certainly do not agree with his attitude), but again, the contemporary standards in regard to gender roles did not exist in 1899.

Lastly, I COMPLETELY agree about Dutch being VERY romantic, sentimental, and idealistic. This wasn’t just limited to interpersonal relationships either - it also fit his entire perspective of America and the values he held dear. Just take a look at some of his quotes:

“The promise of this great nation - men created equal, liberal and justice for all - that might be nonsense, but it’s worth trying for. It’s worth believing in.”

And:

“If we keep on seeking, we will find freedom.”

In the beginning, he had such high hopes and strong faith that he could find a way to live free from social and legislative demands. Compare that to the end, where he started to say things like:

“You can’t fight nature. You can’t fight change.”

And:

“There ain’t no freedom for no one in this country no more.”

Dutch wanted to believe that there was a chance to live free from the threat of control, but as he started to lose people he loved and got closer to losing his own battle, he started to take on a much more cynical tone. He began to realize that his romantic notions and idealistic visions of life were not always obtainable - no matter how hard he tried to reach them - and it broke him. This change in his life outlook was kind of similar to his interpersonal relationships. When he realized they were a lot of work and not always happy/perfect, he seemed to grow frustrated. Love requires a lot of patience and energy. Despite full effort, love still does not always succeed.

Also, I just want to add that I think Dutch knew he had a problem with his pride, but he tried his best to maintain his tough, confident persona because he didn’t want to be perceived as weak. He definitely realized he messed up in putting his pride first in the end, but at that point, it was too late. Whatever was left of his idealistic aspirations in life died with Arthur up on that cliff.

Anyhow, I’ve said more than enough. I’d like to once again thank you for the ask!! I hope my response was worth the time to read and that it makes sense. Feel free to share any more thoughts you may have!!!

~ Faith 💜

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celiabowens · 4 years ago

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Book recommendations, Literary Fiction edition(?)

A companion to this post (which should be updated, at some point lol)

Short Story Collections:

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield: grotesque and disquieting collection about women and their experience in society, how they view and perceive their own body and desires. Pretty strong mythic, magical realism, body horror elements in here.

The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks: fascinating collection in which Sacks reminishes some particularly odd stories of patients who had to cope with bizarre neurological disorders.

Home Remedies by Xuan Juliana Wang: a collection focused on the Chinese millennial experience. Stories about love and loss, family, immigration and the uncertainty of the future. (also there’s an extremely beautiful short story about a pair of Chinese divers that broke me forever!!!)

Bestiary: The Selected Stories by Julio Cortázar: unforgettable selection of short stories that mix surreal elements to everyday life and apparently ordinary events. Would also recommend All Fires the Fire by the same author.

Novels:

How Much of These Hills is Gold by C. Pam Zhang: one of the biggest debuts of 2020, it follows two recently orphaned children through the gold rush era. An adventurous historical fiction piece that focuses on themes like gender, identity and immigration, this is one of my favorites 2020 reads so yeah, I’d really push it in anyone’s hands to be honest.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent: historical fiction inspired by the last days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in the 1820s. A quite bleak, but beautiful novel (the prose is stunning).

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave: historical fiction novel set in Norway in the 17th century, following the lives of a group of women in a village that recently (barely) survived a storm that killed all of the island’s men.

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead: the 2020 winner of the Pulitzer Prize. The book follows the lives of two boys sentenced to a reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. A bleak, but important book, with a shocking final twist (side note, I’ve been recommended The Underground Railroad by Whitehead as well, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. If you’re looking for something quite peculiar, if a bit less refined when compared to The Nickel Boys, The Intuitionist is a quite odd pulpy noir set in an alternate NY about...elevator inspectors *and racism*).

The Leavers by Lisa Ko: haunting book about identity and immigration as the main character is apparently abandoned by his own mother (an undocumented Chinese immigrant) during his childhood. Mainly a story about living in between places and constantly feeling out of place.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa: when everyone would probably recommend Murakami (not much against Murakami besides his descriptions of women and their boobs), I suggest checking out some of Ogawa’s books. The recently translated The Memory Police, published in Japan in the mid 90s, is an orwellian dystopian novel set on an unnamed Island where memories slowly disappear. Would also really recommend The Housekeeper and The Professor, a really short novel about a housekeeper hired to clean and cook for a math professor who suffered an injury that causes him to remember new things for only 80 minutes.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong: Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, following a son writing a letter to his illiterate mother. The book seems quite polarising due to Vuong’s writing style (his poetry background is really quite clear and the book doesn’t really follow a regular narrative, rather than portrays events and memories in brief flashes), but I loved it and I’d really just recommend going into it without knowing much? It’s a beautiful exploration of language, family history, trauma, sexuality and more.

Exist West by Mohsin Hamid: this book was fairly popular when it came out (in 2017 I believe) and was often incorrectly marketed as magical realism. Hamid’s book is a brief and quietly brutal journey with a few fantastical elements, following a couple trying to escape their city in the middle of war, as they hear about peculiar doors that can whisk people far away. The doors are, of course, a quite effective metaphor for the immigrant experience and the book does a great job at portraying the main characters’ relationship.

Family Trust by Kathy Wang: this has a really low rating on goodreads which...wow i hate that. Family Trust is a literary family saga/drama about a Chinese-American family residing in the Silicon Valley. It’s often been compared to Crazy Rich Asians, but I believe it to be more on the literary side and definitely less lighthearted.

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee: historical family saga (one of my favorites tbh, I’m absolutely biased, but this book deserved more hype) set in Korea and Japan throughout the 20th century, following four generations of a Korean family. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of the prose, the book has really great characterisation and absolutely fascinating characters. (I’d suggest checking out eventual TW first, in this case).

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker: another recent read, The Silence of the Girls, while not faultless, is a pretty good retelling of The Iliad, narrated through Briseis’ perspective. The prose can feel a bit too modern at times, but it provides the reader with some really strong quotes and descriptions.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: and also Little Fires Everywhere by the same author, to be honest. If you’re looking for really really good family dramas, with great explorations of rather complex and nuanced relationships? You should just check out her stuff. Vibrant characters, good writing, and some superb portrayal of longing here.

Nutshell by Ian McEwan: i’m starting with this one only to grab your attention (if you’ve even reached this part lol, congrats), but McEwan’s one of my favorite authors and I’d recommend almost everything I’ve read by him? Nutshell, specifically, is a really odd and fun retelling of Hamlet...told from the pov of an unborn baby. But really, I’d also recommend Atonement (of course), The Children Act, Amsterdam? All good stuff.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles: I’ve read this book this summer and, while I’m still unsatisfied with the ending, I’d thoroughly recommend this? The novel follows Count Alexander Rostov, who, in 1922, is sentenced to a lifetime of house arrest in the Metropol, a luxurious hotel in the center of Moscow. A singular novel, funny and heartbreaking at once, following a vibrant cast of characters as they come and go from Rostov’s secluded life.

Human Acts by Han Kang: from the bestselling author of The Vegetarian (which honestly, I thoroughly despised lol), Human Acts focuses on the South Korean Gwangju uprising. It’s a really odd (and at times grotesque) experimental novel (one chapter is narrated from the pov of one of the bodies if I remember correctly), so one really has to be in the mood for it, but it’s a really unique experience, worth a chance.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon: sort of a really chunky historical adventure novel following two artists in 1940s/1950s NY, who create a superhero and use him to wage a one man war on the Nazis. A bit slow in places (the pace can be uneven at times and the book is quite long), but an enjoyable novel that does a pretty good job when it comes to exploring rather classic themes of American contemporary fiction: the American dream and the figure of the artist (I think there’s a particularly interesting focus on how the artists navigates the corporate world and its rules) and their creative process.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: this is a pretty classic rec, the book really got a lot of hype when it came out? It’s a dystopian-ish novel set after civilisation’s collapse, following a post-apocalyptic troupe (of Shakespearean actors). It’s a really odd, but surprisingly quiet book. Not sure if a pandemic is exactly the right time to read it, but I thoroughly recommend it.

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng: I feel like this book is extremely complex to summarise to be honest. In short, it’s a book set in Malaya at the end of the 1940s, following a woman who, after surviving Japanese wartime camps, spends her life prosecuting war criminals. But truthfully this book is about conflicts and contradictions and in particular about remembering and forgetting. Lovely prose.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt: and also The Goldfinch. I’m sure no one really needs me to introduce Donna Tartt?

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton: quite cerebral mystery set in New Zealand in 1866. Honestly you have to be a patient reader who enjoys novels with a pretty complex structure to like this, but if you’re into this sort of challenging read...go for it? It’s a book of interlocking stories (with 10+ pov and main characters) with a really fascinating structure based on astrological charts, which provide insight to the main characters’ traits and personality as the mystery unfolds.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham: ok...do not watch the movie first. The Hours is an incredibly difficult novel to describe to be honest: it begins by recalling the last moments of Virginia Woolf’s life, as she’s writing Mrs. Dalloway. The book focuses on three separate narratives, each one following a specific character throughout a single day of their own life. Goes without saying that I’d suggest being familiar with Mrs. Dalloway itself first though.

An Artists of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro: not one of Ishiguro’s most famous works (most start reading his work with Never Let Me Go or The Remains of the Day), but probably my favorite out of those I’ve read so far. The novel follows Masuji Ono, an artist who put his work in service of imperialist propaganda throughout WWII. Basically a reflection and an account of the artist’s life as he deals with the culpability of his previous actions.

Stoner by John Williams: I feel like this is an odd book to recommend, because I don’t think someone can truly get the hype unless they read it themselves. Stoner is a pretty straight-forward book, following the ordinary life of an even more ordinary man. And yet it’s so compelling and never dull in its exploration of the characters’ lives and personalities. Also, I’ve just finished Augustus by the same author, which is an epistolary historical fiction novel narrating some of the main events of Augustus’ reign through letters from/by his closest friends and enemies. Really liked it.

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien: back to integenerational family sagas (because I love those, in case it wasn’t clear lol), Do Not Say We Have Nothing follows a young woman who suddenly rediscovers her family’s fractured past. The novel focuses on two successive generations of a Chinese family through China’s 20th century history. While not every character got the type of development they deserved, the author does a good job when it comes to gradually recreating the family’s complex and nuanced history.

There’s probably more but I doubt anyone’s going to reach the end or anything so. There’s that lol.

#book recs #book rec #litblr #2020 reads #all the typos are my own LOL #also i didnt put here philip roth or auster #but tbh #i dont think anyone needs me to rec them???

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rebeccaheyman · 4 years ago

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reading + listening 10.12.20

The Love Square (Laura Jane Williams), eBook ARC (pub date February 2021). If the marketing/cover on this title made you think it might nestle in nicely beside your small-UK-town romances, think again. Here’s my 2-star NetGalley review (and an added bonus, my recommendation to simply read The Bookshop of Second Chances instead, reviewed in my roundup from 9.21.20):

Sadly, I found THE LOVE SQUARE neither as funny nor as smart as the publisher's market copy suggests. The book revolves around a profoundly self-centered, borderline-unlikeable heroine and the three men with whom she has romantic liaisons. Her external conflicts include running her own cafe, helping run her uncle's pub/restaurant, and deciding whether or not to engage a surrogate for the fertilized embryos she had prepped prior to undergoing treatment for breast cancer. There's not much in the way of lightness or humor throughout -- rather, we see a lot of angst, pining, crying, and uneven character development.

If love triangles are a somewhat hackneyed convention in storytelling, we might expect a new shape -- the square! -- to solve the problem of predictability. But THE LOVE SQUARE takes the guess-work out of Penny's choices by painting one of her lovers as the clear, capital-L Love she's been waiting for. The others are mere distraction, which rather undermines the scenes/tension based around these characters.

My biggest problem with THE LOVE SQUARE was Penny herself, however. She makes childish choices that perpetuate the story's primary "conflict" (it's not really a conflict if it can be solved with a single conversation, eh?), and Act III finds her laying claim to Big Feelings about her time in Derbyshire despite the fact that little-to-none of those feelings make it to the page. "I was crying a lot before," Penny claims, when reflecting on her time at her uncle's pub. "Like, I would cry if I burnt my hand in the kitchen, which, well, I'm a chef, so that happens all the time and we're literally trained to withstand it. Or I'd cry at what was on TV, not just the movie or whatever, but the adverts too." In sum, Penny is depressed at the book's start, gets more depressed as she conveniently denies feeling depressed throughout the novel, then settles on the epiphany that her depression will likely right itself if she finally gets what she really wants: A BABY.

Le sigh.

There are some strange narrative features here, including: the integration of Lizzo as a significant tertiary character; low-key slut-shaming; awkward turns of phrase ("...his manly fingers proved too chubby for the fine work of knotting the latex [balloon]."; and an overall lack of tension. If a mystery resides at the heart of every novel, then the grand question here is, Will Penny stop being such a self-centered brat and learn to treat others/herself with respect? Not the most compelling question, I'm afraid.

It's worth noting that Williams includes the most gracious, inclusive, kind set of Acknowledgements I've ever read at the end of her book. I wish her protagonist could have reflected even a modicum of the grace demonstrated in the back matter.

It might be worth noting that a different structural approach to this story might have made it far more enjoyable. I’ll be discussing this further in my new series, Read Like A Writer, on the Reedsy YouTube channel.

Spoiler Alert (Olivia Dade), aBook (narr. Isabelle Ruther). I’ve been following Olivia Dade on Twitter for some time, and find her so witty and lovely that I made a point of pre-ordering the audio for SPOILER ALERT. The concept here, that an avid fan of a GoT-style show, who writes fan fic, designs and wears cos-play, and also happens to be fat, goes on a date with one of the stars of the show -- unaware that he also happens to be her dyslexic bestie from the fan-fic server. No spoiler alert needed for this review, but suffice it to say the shenanigans you might expect are augmented (and much improved) by Dade’s deep focus on the emotional trauma of childhood, the challenge of vulnerability as an adult, and the complications of defying society’s expectations -- whether you’re a fat woman or a brawny, pretty-boy celeb man.

If you found Lucy Parker’s LONDON CELEBRITIES series charming (as I did), you’ll love the behind-the-scenes dynamics of Marcus’s show/costars -- and Dade writes at a comparable heat level, too. There’s something here for fans of Jen Deluca’s WELL MET, too, in the way the fan fic and show communities create a kind of world-building overlay on the otherwise familiar setting. I was exceedingly charmed by the intertextual elements in SPOILER ALERT -- message exchanges, fan fics, script excerpts -- which brought Gods of the Gates to life in interesting, dynamic ways. If you liked FANGIRL by Rainbow Rowell, you’ll find the same commitment to a fictional fiction here, rendered even more inception-y by the simultaneous presence of books, a TV show, the actors who have feelings about said show, and fan fics -- plus the writers of those fics in real life. Phew!

All in all, I am an Unapologetic Olivia Stan, looking ever so forward to Dade’s next title.

His Only Wife (Peace Adzo Medie), aBook (narr. Soneela Nankani). LUSTER meets CRAZY RICH ASIANS in this fascinating portrait of Afi Tekple, a young Ghanaian woman who, at the book’s start, is being married off to Elikem, who doesn’t actually show up for his own wedding. Eli’s mother hopes marriage to Afi is enough to make her son set his current paramour aside -- despite the fact that the two have a child together. Afi leaves her small hometown for capital city Accra, and there finds herself caught up in a world -- and love affair -- that challenges the very notion of who she is.

HIS ONLY WIFE was the first book I’ve read set in Ghana since Yaa Gyasi’s HOMEGOING, and I loved getting this contemporary view of a country where a town like Ho and a city like Accra coexist. More books in Ghana, please!

Perhaps because Ghana plays such a significant role in the book itself, I found the choice of narrator here extremely strange. I loved Soneela Nankani on THE MARRIAGE GAME, but found her American accent drew me out of the story in HIS ONLY WIFE. Ghanaian accents sound vaguely British to my untrained ear, so if casting a Ghanaian actress/narrator like Akosua Busia wasn’t an option, the publisher might have opted for a Brit with an ear for Ghanaian accents, Adjoa Andoh. As any dedicated audiophile knows, a narrator can make-or-break a recording...Soneela Nankani is incredibly talented, but she did seem somewhat misplaced here.

The Invisible Life of Addie Larue (V.E. Schwab), eBook and aBook (narr. Julia Whelan). Apparently I was looking so forward to this title, I pre-ordered both the eBook and aBook?? No matter -- at nearly 500 pages and 17+ hours of audio, it was nice to be able to switch off.

ADDIE LARUE boasts all the signatures of Schwab’s narrative style: characters whose very humanness is their greatest asset and foible; stories with sweeping scope distilled to the experience of only one or two characters; lush, endlessly quotable prose; strong, subtle, deeply-feeling women looking to make their own way in a world that would very much like them to shut up and know their place.

In a moment of desperation, Adeline “Addie” Larue makes a Faustian bargain with a god who comes from the shadows. She gets what she wants -- time, freedom -- and what she doesn’t: no one who meets Addie can remember her. Until someone can.

No spoilers here, but it was impossible not to be swept away by the nuance and inventiveness of Schwab’s latest. Did it transport me as far or as fast as SHADES OF MAGIC? No. But was it lovely to be in expert narrative hands, on a journey tracing one woman’s defiance of everything the world thought she should be? You bet.

This was probably Julia Whelan’s finest narration since EDUCATED, so it goes without saying, I highly recommend the audio.

#the love square #the invisible life of addie larue #his only wife #spoiler alert #audiobooks #book review #ebook #NetGalley #read like a writer

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scarlettsabetlondongirl · 6 years ago

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SCARLETT SABET: THE POET EXPLORING MODERN LOVE

Maslow’s Mortimer House

The Notebook | 20th February 2019

Interview: John-Paul Pryor

The young star of the burgeoning British poetry scene on the vagaries of modern love, reflecting the world around you, and taking risks with words The young poet and performer Scarlett Sabet has been hailed by British GQ as one of the key voices in contemporary poetry and has even garnered the appreciation of the famously taciturn musical legend Sir Van Morrison, who has spoken highly of the “intensity and spiritual aspect” of her work. It is worth noting that the award-winning poet Matthew Yeager has also duly described her spoken word as “darkly sonorous vowel music... full of wildness”– and her fourth collection of poetry, Camille certainly offers a nuanced and dramatic interpretation of love and all it encompasses. Featuring a selection of traditional 'love' poems that explore the soaring joy of intimacy, passion and sensuality, and others that delve into destruction, obsession and infatuation, the book presents a unique poetic excavation of what it means to be an emotional animal in the 21st century.

This month, Sabet presents the London launch of Camille, at Mortimer House, where she will also be reading a selection from the works within. Renowned for her emotive readings, Scarlett has performed at some of the world’s most important literary establishments, such as City Lights, San Francisco, Shakespeare & Co, Paris, and The Troubadour, London, where she is currently poet-in-residence. Here, the bright young thing of the burgeoning poetry scene tells Maslow’s Notebook what drives her to paint in words, and explains why a sentient AI with a penchant for poetry might just further alienate us from our own emotional landscapes.

Tell us about your latest collection–what would you say essentially drives you as a poet?

It's a collection of love poems–I wanted to pour more love on the world. And I've always received a really warm response to the love poems in my previous collections. But also, this collection has poems for those in lust, in love, rejected, single, and relieved to be single! I can't help but write–it's a compulsion, but a happy compulsion! Poetry has always been the language that makes the most sense to me. I digest and meditate, and form my own experience through language, words and rhythm. And I love performing my words, I know some poets and writers struggle with that, but I take flight with it. I feel my words have their own life on the page, in people's heads, and they come to life when I perform them on stage. One poem in this book that I've loved performing is a love letter, a kind of eulogy, for Jack Kerouac. It’s called 'For Jack'–I read it first in Kerouac’s birthplace in Massachusetts, so I guess it’s infused with some of his hometown energy.

What for you is the ultimate purpose of poetry?

It is my language of choice. It helps me make sense of the world, and I hope I can offer some illumination to others, and that I may be of service with my work. Also making art, of any kind, is maybe a human attempt at immortality–to throw a penny at an airplane, to make a dent, to record your experience. We've done that since the dawn of time–cave men painted on their walls, recorded their lives. I'm recording my experience, but I observe and reflect the world, and our leaders’ hypocrisy and manipulations.

Why do you think there is a huge resurgence in interest in poetry among the millennial generation?

Words are more important than ever. Words matter, and they carry a lot of weight, especially as there are more ways to communicate than ever before. I think poetry is appealing because it is concise, it's magical, and you can sum something up in only a few lines. My work lives both on the page, and when it's being performed. I love the idea of people reading my words to themselves–on the train, in the city, in their homes. The physical manifestation of my work gets brought into people’s lives and absorbed, in the same way any book I buy and bring home does. I find that fascinating. The emotion between it being read alone at home and being performed is the same – it's just at different volumes. I suppose if you attend one of my readings the intention and emphasis on a word or rhythm will be different.

What do you think about the notion of poetry created by AI?

I love the articulation of the human experience – someone that has lived a flawed life, has experienced shame and tears, and love and desire. I'm sure it's possible to create a perfect algorithm to create a 'perfect' poem, but what's beautiful about perfect? Give me flaws and wisdom and lust. And there are so many humans, living and breathing, that have already been born, that are not being listened to–many people are angry they are being ignored and pushed aside, creating new forms of 'life' will only exasperate this.

How important is poetry in modern society?

Well, poetry is for everyone. Poetry is for everyone, literature is for everyone, Shakespeare is for everyone, regardless of age, race, religion, or gender. Everyone is entitled to be a part of the poetic conversation. I get such a thrill when someone says at one of my poetry readings that they don't normally like poetry, but they really enjoyed it, and it made sense to them, and that they related to what I was saying. That makes me feel like I have done my duty as an artist.

Please tell us about one of the key poems from the new collection that you are particularly proud to have penned…

I'm excited to share the poem "And My Lungs Filled With Ecstatic Song" – that’s an ecstatic mantra, trying to capture this transcendental feeling, a reflection on a loving memory as I was walking in the countryside by a river; it was kind of an epiphany. I used the Brion Gysin/William Burroughs cut-up method to create it, and I performed it for the first time at Shakespeare and Co, in Paris on Valentine’s Day. It was a special place to first perform that poem, because that was the exact location where Burroughs started writing Naked Lunch. I really love William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Kerouac, Ginsberg… They were brave, and truly committed to their life's work. I'm attracted to people with passion that take risks.

Interview link here

Camille can be purchased here

Photo: Scarlett Sabet website

#scarlett sabet #jimmy page #jimmy page girlfriend #led zeppelin #poet #poetry #poem #Love poem #Love Poetry #camille

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wellesleyunderground · 7 years ago

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Wellesley Writes It: Chelsea Ennen ‘14 (@ChelseaEnnen), Writer and Editor

Photo by Shannon L Hasenfratz.

Chelsea Ennen holds a master’s in Contemporary Literature, Theory, and Culture from King’s College London and double majored in English and Theater at Wellesley College. Her writing has appeared on The Female Gaze, The Tempest, The Mary Sue, Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Avidly, and HelloGiggles. She is the Fiction Editor at the Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal and works in book journalism. Follow her on Twitter (@ChelseaEnnen) for updates on her creative work and inane pop culture commentary. Interview by Camille Bond ‘17, Wellesley Writes It series editor.

WU: Welcome, Chelsea, and thank you so much for interviewing with us! Your academic experience and written work reflects a serious interest in feminism, pop culture, and literature. How does your work handle these themes, or how do they intersect in your work?

Something the head of my department in grad school said to us once is that if you’re really thinking about something a lot (whether it’s because you like it or hate it) there’s probably a specific reason why, and if you can articulate that reason you’ve got a good thesis for an essay. That’s the attitude I take towards my academic and freelance writing. When something, be it a movie or book or whatever, sticks in my head, why is it stuck there?

When you look at the pop culture from any particular time or society, you’re looking at their values. Who do these people think of as heroes? Who are the villains? What do they see as a problem to overcome, and what form do solutions take? What kind of identity is considered the “default”? Who is deserving of love, success, visibility?

I feel like I hear people dismiss pop culture as “just a book/movie/TV show” less and less these days, but when I do hear it my blood just boils. Art, and especially the business around art, is and always has been political. To try and assert otherwise is a political statement all its own. To be able to consume art and not notice the politics of it, to not be affected by the politics of it, is also deeply deeply political. So while I don’t necessarily have a political critique to make in every piece of writing I publish or every thought I ever have about something, I find that’s the side that sticks in my brain the most.

WU: Your written work has been featured in an impressive assortment of publications. Are there any published pieces that you’re particularly proud of?

One that comes to mind is the War and Peace essay that I wrote for Avidly, mainly because I wanted so badly to publish something about reading that book and I pitched it around for months looking for the right fit (never give up, kids!). Another couple are the Alien: Covenant and Transformers: Lost Light essays I wrote for The Mary Sue. Both those pieces really represent the kind of thing I wanted to do after leaving academia, where maybe what I want to say isn’t really suited to an academic essay but it’s something I think is worth saying or something I’m enthusiastic about. There’s something coming up in a couple months that I’m EXTREMELY jazzed about but it’s too far out to talk about it yet.

WU: You’re currently working as a Fiction Editor at the Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal, which was founded by Wellesley alumna Dana Mele. Can you tell us a bit about the journal, and how you got involved with the project?

When I had finished my dissertation but had another few months until I officially had my MA, Dana posted something in one of the Wellesley Facebook groups (I think Wellesley Writes It?) saying she was starting this journal and did anyone want to help. I reached out to her and she’s been letting me serve as the fiction editor ever since! It’s been a lot of fun, the website describes us as loving “the strange, the experimental, the disastrously gorgeous, and the simply lovely” so we get some really bold, cool submissions. It also forces me to read more short fiction, which is always a great idea! (Side note: Dana’s debut novel, People Like Us, is coming out soon and is getting a lot of positive buzz, you should preorder it!)

WU: How does your editorial work inform your voice as a writer, and vice versa?

I seem to be one of those rare people whose creative work often benefits from my editing work. For one thing, editing also means reading and it’s always helpful to read more, but I’m always taking mental notes. What is this writer’s style like? What am I changing about it, and why? What do we do differently, what do we have in common? And as a writer I’d like to think it helps me to be more objective about what I’m doing, because I have an idea of how an editor looks at things. Nothing can replace having other people read your stuff and give you feedback, and book editing isn’t the same as the editing I do, but it’s good to be able to self-edit as best as you can.

You also work as an editorial assistant at Kirkus Reviews. What have you learned from your experience working at a book review journal? How, if at all, has the position changed your understanding of the industry as a whole?

My job at Kirkus has given me a fairly deep understanding of contemporary publishing, and it was amazing how quickly I was able to gain that knowledge. Not because I’m some kind of whiz kid, but just from the breadth of books we cover. We publish reviews two months before the book is published so we get them in really far ahead of time. And I very quickly got to this point where I flick through the New York Times book review supplement and I recognize everything. I know all about what my mom’s book club is reading, or the new biography my dad ordered. And feeling like a publishing-insider is pretty cool, but as a writer it’s helpful to have a pretty wide knowledge of what kinds of things are getting published, and what the big dogs like Penguin Random House are publishing versus what smaller presses are publishing.

WU: You earned a Master’s degree from King's College London. Your dissertation, titled "Entertaining the Offered Fallacy: Pop Culture, Postfeminism, and the Function of Uncertainty in Feminist Narratives,” earned a Distinction and was accepted into Indiana University of Pennsylvania's 2016 English Graduate Organization Conference. Can you tell us a bit about the focus of the project?

The summer before I left for grad school I watched the HBO series Big Love and I was so fascinated by it, but I couldn’t articulate exactly why. Over time as I kept reading literary theory in my seminars, particularly feminist theory, I was able to whittle down what I thought really worked about that show and see other places where I saw the same thing.

If you look at academic (and nonacademic) feminist criticism of contemporary pop culture, you see a lot of...criticism. A lot of deconstructions of why all these properties that market themselves as being progressive are actually incredibly regressive. Go on Twitter for any number of seconds and you will see fifty of these articles, I myself have written plenty of them. And they’re great! They’re important! Keep writing them!

But I found myself wondering if achieving a contemporary feminist narrative was even possible. What would it look like? How would you account for intersectionality? Contemporary oppression is all about pretending it doesn’t exist, that racism is over/women are equal/the poor are just lazy, whatever. So how do you shine a light on that hypocrisy as a whole instead of picking at one small aspect of it? What I found was these different pieces of media, like Big Love, that used a bit of fantasy in an otherwise realistic work, and that bit of fantasy called everything else, including gender norms, racism, capitalism, materialism, etc. into question.

WU: You’re currently workshopping a finished manuscript for a novel. What is the genre of the novel? What steps will you pursue after workshopping?

It’s contemporary fantasy, and I hope it comes across as quirky and even a bit odd. I’ve been influenced a lot more by fantasy writers like Jasper Fforde and Susanna Clarke than, say, Tolkien. I like things that are a little weird. I actually finished workshopping/editing it recently, and at long (long) last I am sending agents query letters! Which is all very exciting but a slower-than-frozen-molasses endeavor. I’ve gotten a full manuscript request, which was wonderful and totally unexpected only a couple weeks after sending, so it was nice to have some kind of confirmation that I’m not sending things into a void. I’ve also already gotten a couple rejections, which is also great, usually they don’t have time to notify you at all! Every single individual stage of writing a novel and trying to get it published is one of those ultra marathons where you go fifty miles over a mountain or whatever, so it’s important not to get too bogged down in the process. In the meantime I’ll be starting the next one...

WU: During your time at Wellesley, were there any professors, classes, and/or orgs that you found particularly formative? If so, how did the professor/class/org influence you?

Listen, your mileage may vary, but since you’re asking, I am one of Those People who had an amazing time at Wellesley and would gladly follow any of my former professors into battle. I will name a few specifically, however, if only not to cop out of the question. Nora Hussey gave me a lot of great opportunities early on in the Theater department and I think without those I would have allowed myself to get lost in the shuffle of the bigger personalities who usually do theater-y stuff. And I don’t care what your major was, if you took a class with Diego Arciniegas I bet it helped you with your confidence. I adore the English department as a group but Lisa Rodensky is such a gem of a teacher and a human being, and she went out of her way to be there for me even when I was in grad school. She’s someone whose advice I always think about when I’m having a hard time (I also pull up old emails from her sometimes…), and another person who saw a pretty reserved, timid student and was like hey! I see you! Your voice matters!

Speaking of your voice mattering, I also took private voice lessons with Andrea Matthews, who is just plain cool and so enthusiastic about music and teaching. She’d get so excited whenever I had a breakthrough, which was touching for me because I’d always been so insecure about my singing, which was not very good despite all the high school and community theater I’d done. She taught me how to really engage with the act of singing from an emotional, organic place. The word she’d use was “yummy, it should feel yummy!” which was a really wonderful image. I was never the best singer around the department but I got better and better every semester and ended up participating in as much as I could because I always had so much fun.

WU: What is your approach to self-care?

Exhaustive! I am more or less a collection of mood disorders stuffed into a meat sack, so self care is A Thing and I could talk about it for forever. I should do a podcast about it. One thing I will say, that I wish more people talked about, is that I find it incredibly therapeutic to engage in hobbies where I don’t care if I’m good at it. That’s such a hard pill to swallow for most people, Wellesley types in particular, but it’s soooooo good for you to let go of the need to be the best at everything. There are enough things in your life, especially if you’re a writer, where you care about it and deeply want to improve, and that’s great but that can’t be your attitude towards everything in life, you’ll explode and have no self esteem (in that order).

I recently did a paint night with my cousin, which is basically an episode of Bob Ross but in person and with wine, and we just decided to not to care if the painting looked “right” or like the example. What if we just mixed colors we thought were pretty and had fun and learned something new instead of getting down on ourselves for how “good” or “bad” it was? And we had an amazing time! I painted a wave on the beach! It didn’t look exactly like the example, but no one died and I am still deserving of love!

I also really like playing first person shooters (Titanfall 2, anyone?) because that kind of goal-oriented quick-moving target-based activity is actually really helpful for certain kinds of anxiety. And boy howdy do I need to not care if I’m good at those! I just set it on easy, never play online, and don’t worry how many tries it takes to hit all the evil robots.

WU: What advice would you give to a Wellesley student or alumnx seeking to improve their writing skills?

Reading and writing, both, a lot, LIKE SO MUCH, is the biggest thing. It’s so big that even though I know it’s what everyone says, I’m still saying it. Read fiction, read nonfiction, read stuff you like, read something you know you’ll hate (or maybe just sample it, your time is valuable). If you have an impulse to write something, do it! Make the thing! Get it out of your head first and then worry about fixing it up later. Do some garbage journaling about how you can’t think of what to journal about. It all helps.

WU: How would you like to grow as a writer and/or editor? Do you have any writing-related New Year’s resolutions?

I would love to finish my next novel not necessarily more quickly but more smoothly than the last one, and for freelancing I would love to branch out and get published in places I haven’t been published before. For editing I want to strengthen my grammar skills. There are some things I keep having to check with AP every time I see them and I’d like to get those to stick! I also really need to make my website, I’ve been putting it off for ages. Partially because I could also use a new set of headshots. I’ve been using the Wellesley ones since I got them senior year and, dare I say it, those are perhaps a bit too old now... Anyway, no one likes to think about the businessy side of writing that includes using Twitter every so often and having a website, but it’s important stuff!

#Wellesley writes it #wellesley writes it series #wellesley underground #wellesley college

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ia-alfredopassos · 8 years ago

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The name of Zygmunt Bauman prompts awe amongst fellow sociologists. "Late flowering" is the phrase which frequently crops up to describe his extraordinarily prolific output since his retirement from Leeds University in 1990. Book has followed book, almost annually, almost all of them breaking new ground and drawing admiration for their reflections on a vast range of questions from intimacy to globalisation, from the Holocaust to reality television programme Big Brother. At 78, he shows no sign of faltering in either his rapacious intellectual appetite - he picks his way, jackdaw-like, through material as diverse as obscure European philosophers and EastEnders - or in his stamina to keep churning out thousands of words a week from his home in a leafy suburb of Leeds.

Bauman is now counted as one of the most influential sociologists working in Europe. He is in international demand as a lecturer, and frequently spends several months travelling in Russia, eastern Europe, China, Germany (where he is particularly fêted) and France. He is probably better known on the continent - which has always had a higher opinion of sociology - than in the UK where he has consciously avoided the public profile of sociology colleagues such as Professor Tony Giddens, intellectual architect of Blair's third way. He says he "sees nothing in the corridors of power" for his kind of sociology; the audience he has in mind for his work are ordinary people "struggling to be human". What preoccupies him is how social conventions obstruct the possibility of human liberation and it makes him a stern critic of the status quo, particularly in his growing focus on how an individualistic society finds common cause, and how the public realm can be renewed and sustained. It might be also true that those in power see little of use in his sociology as it has become increasingly harsh in its judgment of liberal capitalism. Bauman offers no comfortable optimism for the future; in his recent books he has shown a bitter gloominess, calling into question our very capacity to love, to continue to make moral judgments, the likelihood of future holocausts and what he calls the "liquidity of modernity" in which identity is constantly fluid, generating unprecedented anxiety and insecurity.

It is this kind of gloominess which has caused avowed admirers such as Geoff Mulgan, seen by some as Blairism's chief ideologue and head of the government's forward strategy unit, to describe themselves as "sceptical fans". Mulgan claims that Bauman projects his "central European pessimism" on to everything; a pessimism originating in his background as a Polish Jew who survived the second world war as a refugee in Soviet Russia and was expelled from Poland in 1968 in an anti-semitic purge. But Bauman gives short shrift to the charge of pessimism: we have enough court poets and enough triumphalism in liberal capitalism, he comments drily, so why should he point out its virtues? In fact he is much more optimistic in person than in his published work. His current thinking can be summed up in one of his favourite phrases: do we take "responsibility for our responsibility"? Do we acknowledge and accept our responsibilities, be they personal, political or global? Indeed, much of his writing on globalisation focuses on his claim that it is primarily a moral issue. Bauman points out that Freud's thesis that human beings had traded freedom for security has been inverted; now we have traded security for freedom and with that freedom has come unprecedented responsibilities for the conduct of our own emotional lives and for our political participation.

Fellow sociologist Richard Sennett, professor at the LSE, argues that alongside Bauman's Polish pessimism lies an intellectual challenge to contemporary society which is profoundly invigorating: "When you speak to Zygmunt, he's very optimistic. It's remarkable that at this stage of his life he is so engaged. He wants to know what is going to happen next year. He suggests that there is a real realm to navigate of personal responsibility, and that makes contact with young people. A lot of thinkers of his age think that the world has gone to hell in a basket - for example Adorno who, by the end of his life, didn't seem to like anything. But Bauman's work doesn't read like that, it reads like - make it better! "Contrary to all the cliches about young people being disengaged and not interested, they are attracted by the idea of ethical action. They're just not buying the New Labour versions, they want something with teeth. So it really appeals when someone tells them that they're responsible for relating to others in an ethical way. That's why he is so popular."

The real pessimism is quietism - not doing anything because nothing can be changed, argues Bauman: "Why do I write books? Why do I think? Why should I be passionate? Because things could be different, they could be made better. [My role] is to alert people to the dangers, to do something. 'Don't ever console yourself that you have done everything you could, because it's not true,' says the philosopher Levinas, who believed that you recognised a moral person as someone who does not think he or she is moral enough. That is also how we recognise a just society - a just society castigates itself that there is not enough justice in our society."

Given such restless moral energy, it's not surprising that Bauman has been described as "the Prophet of Postmodernity" in a book of that name by Dennis Smith. As his former colleague at Leeds University, Dr Ian Varcoe, points out, Bauman measures society up against a utopia and always looks at it from the point of view of the underdog. "This awful concept of underclass is really horrifying," says Bauman passionately. "You're not lower class, you are excluded - outside. I read a horrifying account of the new American ghettos as the dumping grounds of unnecessary people and how they become greenhouses of hatred. We normally speak about the money aspects of poverty which are extremely important and I wouldn't play them down because it's the conceit of people who are better off that being deprived of money is not a painful thing. But I think we underestimate often the pain of humiliation, being denied the value of your worth and identity, of how you earned your living and kept your commitments to your family and neighbours.

"In a consumer society, people wallow in things, fascinating, enjoyable things. If you define your value by the things you acquire and surround yourself with, being excluded is humiliating. And we live in a world of communication, everyone gets information about everyone else. There is universal comparison and you don't just compare yourself with the people next door, you compare yourself to people all over the world and with what is being presented as the decent, proper and dignified life. It's the crime of humiliation." In the many twists and turns of Bauman's intellectual preoccupations throughout his life, the thread of continuity is this trenchant moral critique and angry compassion. It attracted him first to Marxism which he studied in the Polish division of the Red Army in Soviet Russia as a teenager in the second world war. It fuelled his enthusiasm as a young Communist party member in the 1940s and early 1950s when a new Poland was being built out of the wartime devastation. Then it underlay his growing disillusionment with Soviet communism as an academic at the University of Warsaw when he was one of a group developing a "humanistic Marxism". He still calls himself a socialist, indeed he maintains that never has the world "needed socialism more than now". He describes it as a "sharp knife pressed against the blatant injustices of society... bent on spoiling the self-conceit and self-adoration of Galbraith's 'contented majority.'"

But the period in which Bauman kept to the official Marxist line was brief: "I discovered Gramsci and he gave me the opportunity of an honourable discharge from Marxism. It was a way out of orthodox Marxism, but I never became anti-Marxist as most did. I learnt a lot from Karl Marx and I'm grateful."

Probing details of Bauman's life for the events which have shaped his intellectual preoccupations is not easy. He is a private man, subscribing to Richard Sennett's thesis that public life is vitiated by the confessional culture. "Men and women can only act in public if they are not forced into the paralysing straitjacket of displays of ersatz intimacy," Bauman has said.

He bats away questions about his early life with self-deprecating comments: "I don't have the capacity to present my life as a story," he claims. Over the years, he has given a few details: his birth in the provincial town of Posnan in west Poland to a family of very modest means; his struggle for an education as a poor Jew; the flight to Soviet Russia when the Germans invaded and how he joined the Red Army. He was posted to a remote town (westerners were not allowed in big cities) in northern Russia and whiled away his free time by studying for a physics degree. To these bare outlines, he adds a few new details: "I was brought up in the kitchen. My mother was a woman of great ambition, inventiveness and imagination, but we were relatively poor and she was confined to the housewife role. My father came back from work in the evening and immediately fell asleep, he was so tired. But I hold him in very high esteem; he was a self-made man. He never went to any schools, but he learnt to read several languages and was an avid reader of wide horizons. Above all, he was amazingly honest.

"In fact, we almost lost our lives because of his honesty. In 1939, we were running away from Posnan as the Germans were invading - the town was almost on the German border. We took the last train east, but we were stopped at a station which was being bombed by the Germans. We should have run away from the station because that was the object of the bombing, but he wanted to find a ticket inspector to pay for our tickets."

Although aware of being a Jew, Bauman was brought up speaking only Polish, eating Polish food and mixing only with Poles. His grandfather tried to inculcate some Judaism into the small Zygmunt, to no effect. But his wife Janina is adamant on one aspect of Bauman which is quintessentially Jewish: he is a Jewish mother and, since his retirement, does all the cooking. He presses visitors to try the little cakes, strawberries and canapés spread out on the coffee table with napkins, forks and sideplates and offers coffee and tea with solicitous eastern European hospitality.

The escape to Soviet Russia saved him from the worst experiences of wartime Poland: the ghettos, concentration camps and the Holocaust. Indeed, he says that it was not until his wife wrote her own memoirs of life as a young Jewish girl in the Warsaw ghetto that the enormity of the suffering hit home. Janina's account, Winter in the Morning, which was published in 1985, describes how she was hidden and survived while much of her extended family perished. It influenced enormously Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust published four years later. The book received great critical acclaim in Germany, and provoked controversy elsewhere for "letting Germany off the hook". Bauman's thesis was that the Holocaust was a product of modernity rather than being specific to German nationalism. As Dr Richard Kilminster, another Leeds sociologist colleague, explains: "When the book was published in Germany, it caused a sensation. He argued that the Holocaust could only happen because of modernity's technology and bureaucracy. What modernity did was to generate unintended consequences of bureaucratic complexity and created the conditions in which moral responsibility disappeared."

Bauman argues that to blame Germany effectively exonerates everyone else, whereas the ideas of eugenics were adopted and received scientific credibility in many countries including the US and Scandinavia.

The Holocaust triggered the ethical preoccupations of his books of the early to mid-90s: "What is it in our society which makes this sort of thing possible? The real problem is why, under certain circumstances, decent people who are good husbands, neighbours and so on, participate in atrocities. That's the real heart of the problem. There are not so many psychologically corrupted people in the world to account for all the many atrocities around the world. So that was my problem: people who, under other circumstances, would be exemplary members of society, participate in monstrous things - though it's difficult to say if they become monsters.

"It all boils down to a person and personal responsibility. I was fascinated by sociologists' research into the people who helped the victims: these people were a cross-section of the population. None of the factors which sociologists believe to be the determinants of human behaviour - education, religious belief, political attachment - correlated with the incidents of heroic resistance against evil. Somehow, the ability to resist is not fully dependent on social conditioning."

After the war, Bauman returned to Warsaw as a Red Army officer, a position which gave him a decent flat and access to a university education. He described in one interview how he and Janina sometimes play a game over a drink in the evening, speculating on how Hitler changed the course of both their lives.

Paradoxically, he owes his education indirectly to the Nazis; in inter-war Poland, severe quotas on Jews would have ruled out a Polish university, and the option of studying abroad - pursued by well-off Jews - would never have been open to him. Bauman also acknowledged that he owed his marriage to Hitler; the enormous gap in social status between the poor provinical Baumans and Janina's wealthy, cosmopolitan family would have made a relationship impossible. But by the time the two met in their early 20s in a lecture theatre in Warsaw University, Janina was living in genteel poverty with her mother and younger sister.

"Immediately I saw her, I knew I didn't have to look further and within nine days, I'd proposed. Why did I know I didn't need to look any further? I'm not a poet," says Bauman shortly, though he adds that she has been the most important woman in his life. Janina's wry comment on their 55 years of marriage is obviously a familiar joke: "We're Poles apart."

Their every gesture expresses their mutual respect and love. Although she admits her reading of his work can't keep up with his writing, she accompanies him on all his lecture tours. In her second volume of memoirs, A Dream of Belonging, Janina describes with tenderness their whirlwind courtship and the happy early years of marriage with the arrival of a daughter, Anna, now a mathematics professor in Israel, then Bauman's assiduous care of Janina after the birth of their twin daughters, Lydia, now a painter, and Irena, an architect. These were good years despite the small flats and shortages of postwar Poland; their lives were full of family and friends and their careers flourished as they were both drawn into the dream of creating a new communist society. Janina worked as a film script editor while Bauman was forging a career in sociology, an academic discipline which was then at the centre of public debate. He founded and edited a journal, Sociological Studies , which sold out on its first day of publication. "Sociology was very interesting to our generation; it was seen as a kind of medicine for many problems, social and psychological, a way of helping people. Now, young people look in a different direction," says Elzbieta Tarkowska, professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences, who has known Bauman ever since her interview for Warsaw University as an 18 year old. It was Bauman's then bestselling Sociology of Everyday Life which inspired her to study sociology.

Tarkowska describes Bauman as a brilliant teacher, attracting young people around him, of whom he expected high standards and from whom he had a knack of drawing out their full potential; a group of them would meet in his flat for a seminar every Saturday to discuss ideas. But the dream went sour. Janina charts in her memoirs how, yet again, she was to be rejected.

Horrified at the repression, police violence and undercurrents of anti-semitism, she resigned from the party, was demoted and then lost her job. Bauman himself has never described the details but the noose slowly tightened on him also and finally in 1968, after 20 years as an academic, an anti-semitic purge of Warsaw University forced them and a number of other leading Jewish intellectuals into exile in Israel, leaving close relatives and friends behind. It was a shattering experience for them; Janina writes of the "despair" of starting life again in their late 40s. Tarkowska remembers the gap they left behind: "All of us were very shocked when he was expelled - it was a kind of catastrophe."

Nor did Israel prove congenial for the Baumans despite the fact that their eldest daughter had settled there with her husband, and they left after only three years: "It was a nationalistic country, and we had just run away from nationalism. We didn't want to go from being the victims of one nationalism to being the perpetrators of another," says Janina.

Bauman's reputation had spread well beyond Poland so there were no shortage of job offers. They turned down one in Canberra, Australia, as too far from Europe, and accepted the next offer, as head of the sociology department at Leeds at the invitation of the then vice-chancel lor, Edward Boyle, a former Conservative education minister. They arrived with little knowledge of Britain, and none of Leeds, but have been in the same roomy 1930s house surrounded by an overgrown garden next to a busy main road ever since. The job offers from more glamorous locations - such as Yale - have come and gone. Bauman was not tempted to pursue the prestigious posts at British universities such as the LSE or Oxbridge. By way of explanation, Janina interjects, "We moved enough in the past."

Varcoe believes Bauman never moved on partly because of the "terrible trauma of exile" in his 40s and partly because "he was pleased to be left alone, he had peace and quiet and a predictable environment". He likens Bauman to another distinguished European refugee sociologist, Norbert Elias, who similarly found a quiet niche at Leicester. Both the Baumans talk warmly of the acceptance they have found in Britain as Poles. Sennett thinks Bauman made the right decision not to go to the States: "He would have felt very marginal there. He is one of those displaced intellectuals who have come home to Britain; they never assimilate, but at the same time they are very comfortable. They all dwell on the great crises of central European culture - the second world war, Holocaust, communism and its collapse. It speaks well for Britain that these men could work out this crisis of European humanism here where many of the terms are not familiar to the UK."

Bauman is hugely admired now in eastern Europe and Russia where he regularly lectures (he speaks fluent Russian as well as Polish and English). Varcoe believes that part of his appeal to post-Soviet bloc countries is his attempt to articulate an ethical vision amidst the wreck of communism: "His concern is how to save the ethical principles of socialism when communism is finished. He thought about all of this years before everyone else, and saw the collapse of communism as a great opportunity, but as the 90s wore on he became increasingly depressed that these ethical issues were not being addressed and, instead, consumer values were more deeply entrenched than ever."

But for all his international popularity, Bauman is very much a loner and something of an intellectual maverick. "I've never dreamt of belonging," he says with sudden fierceness.

His preoccupation with morality makes him an unusual sort of sociologist. Not for him the exhaustive statistical analysis and surveys, he prefers the grand, sweeping assertion which his reader can accept, reject or reason with. He never builds his arguments on assembling facts, but on provocation. Nor is he prepared to accept the traditional boundaries of sociology; Mulgan places him at the interstices of sociology, philosophy and psychology. That can make him seem eclectic to some; Mulgan accuses him of not being a systematic or logical thinker. To others, it is precisely the unpredictable maverick thinking with its powerful rhetorical imagery (remarkable in a man for whom English is his third language) which is so compelling.

On the war in Iraq, for example, he says: "What we have here is a huge china shop with a huge elephant and no one can tame its utter disregard for the realities of the world. What has pressed the current elite of the US to war is the American economy. The military warehouses were full to the brim and now the war has started there is room for new orders... it's a way of stimulating the economy. Technology has its own momentum - if you produce a billion dollars' worth of weapons, you have to use them. This war is playing with fire. The long-term outcome will be terrorism. Iraq will become another Afghanistan, only this time the mojahedin are not on our side but the other side. It has been a very bad calculation."

Bauman hasn't founded a school of sociology although many sociologists take his work as a starting point for more empirical research. He has never cultivated the British Sociological Association. Fellow Marxists treated him with some suspicion in the 1970s and 1980s either because he had been a Communist party member (not a real refusenik) or because he had been expelled from Poland. When he first arrived in Leeds, he was renowned for his inscrutability, remembers Varcoe. Perhaps it was the result of years of being watched under communism, or even earlier experiences of being a Jew in Poland. Despite the charm and warm humour which has attracted a network of friends throughout Europe, Varcoe claims that Bauman is what psychologists would describe as "a well-defended personality. It is precisely this distance and position of the outsider which has so richly fed his analysis of the way human beings build, and are continually rebuilding their understanding of the world, and in the process always opening up new possibilities.

His detachment extends to the academic discipline to which he has dedicated his life; it is literature - writers such as Italo Calvino and Borges - not sociology or philosophy which he cites as his greatest inspiration: "Their books are exemplary of everything I learned to desire and struggled, in vain, to attain: the breadth of vistas, the at-homeness in all compartments of the treasury of human thought, the sense of many-facetedness of human experience and sensitivity to its as-yet-undiscovered possibilities."

Zygmunt Bauman Born: 1925, Poznan, Poland Educated: University of Warsaw Family: Married Janina in 1948. Three daughters Anna, Irena, Lydia Career: 1954-68 University of Warsaw; 1968-70 University of Tel Aviv; University of Leeds 1972-1990 Some books: Modernity and the Holocaust; In Search of Politics; Modernity and Ambivalence; Globalisation: the Human Consequences; The Individualised Society; Society under Siege; Liquid Modernity.

Source: The Guardian, Saturday 5 April 2003 02.57 BST

#books #culture #society #theguardian #zygmunt bauman

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mattgrips · 6 years ago

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In Search Of

The Good life. Is it an ideal? I don’t know, I don’t think so. Maybe the universally accepted Good life is an ideal. I have my own reservations on what the Good life is. It doesn’t sound so Good to some. I feel the same way about some other people’s ideas of the Good life. Well, whatever the truth is, the Good life, living Well, etc. is a fixed goal in the human psyche despite its inconclusiveness. No one is waking up with the intention of living badly. It’s like a rule that you’re stuck with. Boom you’re on Earth, now live well. Wait, how?

Purpose -> it’s funny because the idea possesses both necessity and elusiveness. These aren’t opposite things per se, but they certainly aren’t complementary to each other. They’re definitely two qualities best presented with a ‘but’ between them. The implication is not that the qualities are contrasting, but one makes it difficult to further define the other. I need this thing, so I will mobilize myself to attain it... but I can’t define it. Conversely, I can’t conceive this thing in my mind, so this thing must be nonsensical and not worth pursuing...but it is necessary for my life (coherent perception of reality) to carry on.

When the narrowing powers of societal, cultural, and familial identity prove no use in defining or necessitating your life’s purpose, the next line of defense from absolute madness is found in the realm of self-help.

Taking from a variety of human endeavors, from academic (mostly the social sciences) to religious (mostly Buddhist (i guess it’s the most malleable)) to simply anecdotal, authors from all walks of life attempt to formalize their own views and experiences into a book or dvd collection to contribute to our collective definition of the Good life, while also making a quick buck. I’m not going to take the cynical route in this post. I genuinely believe people produce and promote self-help materials not to push some sort of ideological agenda, but to test it against competing theories for the greater good of society, like in an idealist-enlightenment era-free market-democratic-academia sort of way.

I’ve read self-help books, and consumed a lot of self-help media in my days. Contrary to the reasonable fears that some people have, self-help books don’t create ideological zombies out of people and turn consumers into fanatic endorsers of a certain idea. Humans, like me (yes), are not as stupid as people would like to glibly assume. We may certainly become rather obsessed with what we see or hear from some person of perceived authority, but only for a short time, in which we more so test out the ideas we’ve been exposed to in real life, rather than carry out those ideas without question.

Unless agents are actively imposing themselves into the lives of readers, which is not possible with a book (...under most circumstances), most readers will revel in fascination at the new ideas presented to them, maybe promote or endorse these ideas to their apprehensive and worried friends and family, but eventually discard these ideas within a few months unless they have manifested themselves in useful ways that are only apparent through deep reflection. I often become enthused after reading a person’s biography and quickly take to emulating the qualities embodied in the bio. Within a few weeks, I would have definitely changed, but not in a simplistic way. After evaluating whatever I learnt on the merits of its ability to contribute to the author’s life, I’d soon go into experimentation mode, where I’d start to live out my lessons. I’d then reflect on what I learnt, now on the merits of its ability to contribute to my life. After some unscheduled time (my life is not contrived in the slightest) I will spontaneously discard the qualities that I deemed useless, problematic or even boring. If I’m more aware, I’d probably recognize the qualities that I found helpful, and then proceed to look further into this quality in my future.

This is the funny part about self-help. As far as I’m concerned, you can pick and choose what you want to take out of it. You can take the parts that you deem useful and discard or even do the opposite of the parts you deem useless. You can’t do that with the sciences. As far as the physical sciences go, I cannot accept classical physics, and deny evolutionary biology. I chose this example for a reason. The two sciences are separate enough that you may have caught yourself asking wait maybe I can have one without the other. The reason I say you can’t is because when you reduce both these sciences, they are rooted in the same formalism of scientific thought. Ideas on purpose or meaning, however, are usually not. Ideas touted in self-help media are often fragmented and are discussed in ambiguous contexts that may not pertain to the consumer’s life. The realm of study is so complex that a starting point is hard to find, but the need for a person to formalize a worldview (not just any, but one that brings about meaning and interest for the individual) induces people to share thoughts and ideas, no matter how unrefined they may be.

But just because someone’s idea is unrefined, it doesn’t make it unethical for them to share it in book format. The rules are different, at least in this field. I say this because even though I use the word unrefined, I don’t mean to say that people’s ideas can be further refined by the individuals themselves. As soon as a person has put in enough thought to write a book on their experience, they have exhausted as much useful effort as they can into developing the idea in the context of their own life. Developing the idea further would require the particular advice to be tested out in multiple lives, to which differences and similarities may manifest themselves. With effective awareness, reflection, and discourse, more useful ideas will be refined further, combined with other ideas, and flipped entirely to the point where the idea won’t even be recognized as a point in a self-help book, but maybe a culturally ingrained value.

I think this is a very useful mechanism in society for evolving with the times. Ideas on living a Good life are carried out somewhat autocratically by the previously mentioned narrowing powers of society, culture, and family. While eliminating the con of elusiveness, the purpose of life becomes empty, contrived, and incoherent with the individuals own experience, no matter how rooted to their society or family they are. The future will always bring some deviation from the past into the next generation. Besides their own minds, where else can people get ideas on living a good life from? There are some gems of wisdom in more archaic forms of knowledge, but maybe they wouldn’t be grasped well enough unless illustrated in the relatable ways a contemporary’s anecdote or biography can show. But then again, I don’t want to just listen to someone who said something in a heated moment, or an inconsequential tweet from people with no demonstrably envious qualities. That reduces my scope of relevant discovery to a very limited number of materials.

I’m not saying that these are the only materials one needs to develop as an individual, or that this is the only mechanism needed for society to plan for all of the future’s contingencies. There are certain externalities that are only captured within the realm of self-help. Deep, individualistic needs that aren’t convincing enough in more general realms, and aren’t effective enough in more narrow realms. This realm of self-help, is a great way to bring out unrefined ideas into the public that also need the intimate experimentation and reflection of other individuals in order to be further developed.

I got way off track in this post. I was originally going to center this post around two self-help books I recently read: 12 Rules for Life by the edgy Jordan B. Peterson and Grit by academic Angela Duckworth. In short, I came out of reading these two books with a great appreciation for what both books taught me but also a confusion as to how the useful concepts of both books were related, and even how they contradicted in subtle ways. For example, 12 Rules is adamant on focusing on a very micro approach to life that eventually grows greater in scope corresponding to the increases in discipline and competence of the individual. This is illustrated in the lessons of ‘cleaning your room’ and ‘negotiating with yourself’ and many other forms of baseline life skills that plant the seeds for future success. On the other hand, Grit takes a more macro view of the world and outlines a method of specifically developing greater goals and then interconnecting them with other goals of reducing value and urgency.

Both ideas, after careful reading, were deemed heavily applicable in my life, and I am constantly bouncing these ideas off in my routine. During this experimentation phase, I’m having trouble not understanding the value of these lessons, but achieving some sort of coherence within these ideas. One has me viewing life in simple blocks while the other is encouraging me to develop a purpose through deliberate thought. Both can be achieved, but how can one complement the other? I just KNOW that cleaning my room and developing discipline will in turn help me define my interests, goals, and dreams, but how specifically can I understand the when and how of these jumping points remains a mystery to me.

Overall this incoherence does not bother me too much. This is such a free-form kind of thought that is reminiscent of the mindset I get into when writing music. It is a kind of driving force that doesn’t need absolute or even strong assurance in order to move forward. This sort of thought process can cause debilitation and anxiety for sure, to which I always come back to a statement this one artist on that one netflix show about artists said that one time I was watching netflix. -> I actually don’t remember what she said but I remember she said the words ‘state of play’ in the context of art, and it really resonated with me. That’ll probably be the topic of my next post. But anyways, that’s how I think one should approach the area of purpose and meaning in their life so as to not grow weary or frustrated in the process of philosophizing. Be in a state->of->play, take in other people’s experiences and evaluate them against how the other person is to you (not by what anybody ‘says’, words are so cheap and deceptive), think about how these experiences pertain to your life, experiment, and just have fun.

Life is fun ain’t it

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melindarowens · 8 years ago

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Weekend Reads: Classic Papers for Lasting Learning

A few weeks ago, Morgan Housel scared Twitter by asking, “How much of what you read today will you care about a year from now?”

Speaking personally, much less than I’d like.

Fortunately, Google Scholar created Classic Papers, a “collection of highly cited papers in their area of research that have stood the test of time.” Enjoyably, it “excludes review articles, introductory articles, editorials, guidelines, and commentaries,” and allows for high-signal interdisciplinary browsing.

I took the news of this week to the exercise, which began with reports that the US military had downed a Syrian jet. On Thursday Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North Korean government, reportedly warned South Korea against following “psychopath Trump.”

You wonder about these sorts of things. How are investors reacting? In a discussion at the Annual Ben Graham Value Conference IV, hosted by CFA Society New York on Tuesday, investor John Levin observed that in general, “domestic earnings are undervalued and international earnings are overvalued” as a result of these and other tensions.

While wondering about this and flipping through the aforementioned classic papers, I came across Niall Ferguson’s “.” Its final section asserts that World War I came as a “bolt from the blue” for investors, despite plenty of early discounting.

Ferguson’s paper is relevant to the present but is easy to misinterpret. Whenever one refers to World War I in a geopolitical discussion, it’s hard to avoid the notion that the war was inevitable. Such predestined wars — when established powers clash with rising ones — are sometimes called “Thucydides Traps.” However, Arthur Waldron, reviewing Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap by Graham Allison, writes that there is little evidence that they really exist.

Unexamined assumptions are a silent killer of thoughtful analysis, and one of the most common of these is that “developed” and “emerging” markets have important uniform characteristics. In their paper, “The Early Modern Great Divergence: Wages, Prices, and Economic Development in Europe and Asia, 1500–1800,” economists Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta look under the hood of economic development during that time. The connection they draw between high productivity and eventual prosperity is worth noting in the context of contemporary worries about productivity growth. The discussion continues, as Ryan Avent recently summed up.

I thought Stefaan Walgrave and Peter Van Aelst’s article on the contingencies that enable the media to set a political agenda to be particularly interesting. The discussion of the methods used to create truth in this arena is fascinating.

We often feature posts on the role of women in investment management, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t close this section by mentioning Patricia Yancey Martin’s “Practising Gender at Work: Further Thoughts on Reflexivity.” It is an invitation to view gender performance through the same prism that George Soros suggests we view markets: reflexivity.