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Apr. 19th, 2014
Reading Life
Apr. 19th, 2014 11:30 amI finished Parini’s biography on Frost last night. I think I am ready to go back to my regular reading routine for a little bit, to some extent, enough to pick up the Lincoln history again anyway. I don’t want too much time to lapse before I hit that book again.
Since I fell back hard with the books of critical literature, I have fallen back into one-book mode, being content to even read such books for my night-reading. And I feel like sticking with it, kind of. I also want to hit some of the great novels I never got around to, such as Thomas Hardy’s “Tess”, which I have been wanting to read since I read “Jude the Obscure” when I was in my twenties. It’s getting late in life now, and I need to start making it happen if I am ever going to get to know such works. As for my regular reading routine, I am content to have that waiting for me as a fallback position, when I lose my enthusiasm for sticking with a single book from beginning to end.
After revisiting Lincoln, I want to finish Dickens’s “Curiosity Shop” and finish it, while I still have the first half vaguely in my memory. Though, I don’t think it will do for my night-reading. So, I will also resume that aspect of my old routine, having a ‘guilty pleasure’ book for the moonlight, and I intend to go all out and get in a smutty book. I recently learned that Darwin Porter, the author of the pornish version of Marilyn Monroe’s biography, “Marilyn at Rainbow’s End” took a crack at Linda Lovelace’s biography, and he was apparently able to bring the same pornish style to an already explicitly pornish story. This porno extravaganza has been on my mind for a while, and since I am not going to read the Lincoln book for my night-reading, nor the Dickens novel, I think I will have to hit up Ms. Deep Throat myself, tonight.
It is to my credit that I have held off on Porter’s salacious version of Lovelace until now, actually preferring to read about Robert Frost. I am actually rather proud of myself for that. But I am still Monk, and Monk must have his fun.
Since I fell back hard with the books of critical literature, I have fallen back into one-book mode, being content to even read such books for my night-reading. And I feel like sticking with it, kind of. I also want to hit some of the great novels I never got around to, such as Thomas Hardy’s “Tess”, which I have been wanting to read since I read “Jude the Obscure” when I was in my twenties. It’s getting late in life now, and I need to start making it happen if I am ever going to get to know such works. As for my regular reading routine, I am content to have that waiting for me as a fallback position, when I lose my enthusiasm for sticking with a single book from beginning to end.
After revisiting Lincoln, I want to finish Dickens’s “Curiosity Shop” and finish it, while I still have the first half vaguely in my memory. Though, I don’t think it will do for my night-reading. So, I will also resume that aspect of my old routine, having a ‘guilty pleasure’ book for the moonlight, and I intend to go all out and get in a smutty book. I recently learned that Darwin Porter, the author of the pornish version of Marilyn Monroe’s biography, “Marilyn at Rainbow’s End” took a crack at Linda Lovelace’s biography, and he was apparently able to bring the same pornish style to an already explicitly pornish story. This porno extravaganza has been on my mind for a while, and since I am not going to read the Lincoln book for my night-reading, nor the Dickens novel, I think I will have to hit up Ms. Deep Throat myself, tonight.
It is to my credit that I have held off on Porter’s salacious version of Lovelace until now, actually preferring to read about Robert Frost. I am actually rather proud of myself for that. But I am still Monk, and Monk must have his fun.
1860s Marx and the Civil War
Apr. 19th, 2014 04:16 pmIn an essay on humanitarian intervention, Hitchens gives us a note on the connection between Karl Marx and the Civil War, and on how Marx looked more toward America rather than Russia for the great future Utopia.
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Many also forget that the international campaign in solidarity with the Union under the Lincoln presidency rallied at a time when it was entirely possible that the United Kingdom might have thrown its whole weight behind the Confederacy and even moved troops from Canada to hasten the partition of a country half slave and half free. This is often forgotten, I suggest, because the movement of solidarity was partly led by Karl Marx and his European allies (as was gratefully acknowledged by Henry Adams in his Education) and because the boycott of Confederate goods, the blocking of shipbuilding orders for the Confederate fleet, and other such actions were to some degree orchestrated by the founders of the communist movement -- not the sort of thing that is taught in school when Abraham Lincoln is the patriotic subject. Marx and Friedrich Engels hugely admired Lincoln and felt that just as Russia was the great arsenal of backwardness, reaction, and superstition, the United States was the land of potential freedom and equality.
-- Christopher Hitchens, "The Case of Humanitarian Intervention" at Foreign Affairs
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Many also forget that the international campaign in solidarity with the Union under the Lincoln presidency rallied at a time when it was entirely possible that the United Kingdom might have thrown its whole weight behind the Confederacy and even moved troops from Canada to hasten the partition of a country half slave and half free. This is often forgotten, I suggest, because the movement of solidarity was partly led by Karl Marx and his European allies (as was gratefully acknowledged by Henry Adams in his Education) and because the boycott of Confederate goods, the blocking of shipbuilding orders for the Confederate fleet, and other such actions were to some degree orchestrated by the founders of the communist movement -- not the sort of thing that is taught in school when Abraham Lincoln is the patriotic subject. Marx and Friedrich Engels hugely admired Lincoln and felt that just as Russia was the great arsenal of backwardness, reaction, and superstition, the United States was the land of potential freedom and equality.
-- Christopher Hitchens, "The Case of Humanitarian Intervention" at Foreign Affairs
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I Spit on Your Grave
Apr. 19th, 2014 07:19 pmLooking for movies to record overnight, I cannot believe what I came across. It has long been accepted as a given that this movie would never ever show up on TV. “I Spit on Your Grave”. After the initial shock, I realized that it is probably the remake, but when I click for details, it is actually the classic 1978 feature starring Camille Keaton. This was never supposed to happen.
It must be censored, and heavily, right?, cutting it down to a thirty-minute movie. Well, I will find out. I am recording it, and I will tune in when it airs to see immediately for myself. Of course, it doesn’t matter if it is censored, since I have the DVD, but I am curious as hell, and it would be nice to replay it easily by clicking on the TV’s remote control, rather than having to fire up the DVD player.
The big question on my mind: what does this mean for cable TV, if this is the movie in its full uncensored glory? Television, even prime paid-cable TV, has been so bland for so long. Indeed, it is no doubt foolish to think that this could be the opening of another golden age of sleaze and rapefests. My bet: there is a mistake in the TV listing. The movie is the remake, and even it will still be censored.
But, wow, it has been nice to dream of what could be for these past few minutes! We pay over a hundred dollars a month for these cable channels, and it would be a relief to be able to get something for our trouble. This has not been a biting problem, thanks to the Internet. I spent an hour this afternoon watching videos that give far more than any version of “I Spit on Your Grave” will ever give. Nevertheless, it would be nice to see these movie stations lighten up on the leash and let us live a little.
It must be censored, and heavily, right?, cutting it down to a thirty-minute movie. Well, I will find out. I am recording it, and I will tune in when it airs to see immediately for myself. Of course, it doesn’t matter if it is censored, since I have the DVD, but I am curious as hell, and it would be nice to replay it easily by clicking on the TV’s remote control, rather than having to fire up the DVD player.
The big question on my mind: what does this mean for cable TV, if this is the movie in its full uncensored glory? Television, even prime paid-cable TV, has been so bland for so long. Indeed, it is no doubt foolish to think that this could be the opening of another golden age of sleaze and rapefests. My bet: there is a mistake in the TV listing. The movie is the remake, and even it will still be censored.
But, wow, it has been nice to dream of what could be for these past few minutes! We pay over a hundred dollars a month for these cable channels, and it would be a relief to be able to get something for our trouble. This has not been a biting problem, thanks to the Internet. I spent an hour this afternoon watching videos that give far more than any version of “I Spit on Your Grave” will ever give. Nevertheless, it would be nice to see these movie stations lighten up on the leash and let us live a little.
Rupert Thomson
Apr. 19th, 2014 09:55 pmI got my Kindle out, fully charged up, and I was seated at the laptop and logging into Amazon, ready to buy Porter’s book on the Linda Lovelace story, but I froze, thinking hard before I clicked to drop some cash: isn’t life too short for me now to waste time on pure trash?
So, I decided to revisit an old author that I recently came across in an article on mid-list writers who are having a tough time making their scratch in the new Information Age ecology of the Internet and Amazon. It may be recalled that I first came across Rupert Thomson with “Dreams of Leaving”, that novel of feeling trapped in parochial life. I later read his “Insult” about the guy who was shot and lost his vision but fell under the delusion that he could still see.
I decided to get his more recent “The Book of Revelation”. It is strangely about a guy who gets abducted by a group of women who keep him as a sex prisoner and then let him go, and about his attempt to recover from that experience. It does strike me as Rupert Thomsonish strange, and going by the sweet flow of the excerpt, I am willing to trust him to deliver on this theme for me, even though that is not the way I like my sex crimes.
So, I decided to revisit an old author that I recently came across in an article on mid-list writers who are having a tough time making their scratch in the new Information Age ecology of the Internet and Amazon. It may be recalled that I first came across Rupert Thomson with “Dreams of Leaving”, that novel of feeling trapped in parochial life. I later read his “Insult” about the guy who was shot and lost his vision but fell under the delusion that he could still see.
I decided to get his more recent “The Book of Revelation”. It is strangely about a guy who gets abducted by a group of women who keep him as a sex prisoner and then let him go, and about his attempt to recover from that experience. It does strike me as Rupert Thomsonish strange, and going by the sweet flow of the excerpt, I am willing to trust him to deliver on this theme for me, even though that is not the way I like my sex crimes.