This book captures the heart of 20th century Paris, and chronicles the city before and after the first world war.
Stein ran an artistic hub from her hThis book captures the heart of 20th century Paris, and chronicles the city before and after the first world war.
Stein ran an artistic hub from her house and around her formed an important circle of writers, artists and thinkers. She met Picasso, Hemingway and Fitzgerald. She spoke to Ezra Pound and exchanged letters with T.S Eliot. She supported artists in Paris and bought their paintings when they were first starting out. All in all, she was a purveyor and supporter of the arts.
She was also a lesbian, living with Alice Toklas who spoke to the wives of the important men Stein met. So this was written by Stein under the guise of her friend and lover. Stein expresses friendship very strongly. Her friends clearly meant a lot too her, and she influenced them as much as they influenced her. She had a constant exchange of ideas with people.
[image] -Gertrude Stein, by Pablo Picasso (1906)
Other than that, it's a bit dull
Stein advocates for the beauty of writing, for creating artistic sentences and prose; yet, for all that, she has little to know skill at doing so. Her sentences are endless pieces of ordinariness. There’s no skill involved in them. At one point she mentions one as being particularly good, but there is nothing to it. It’s no more skilful than I’m writing here. I’m not sure what she is reading in her own work, but I certainly cannot see it. Read a page of Woolf then a page of Stein and you will see precisely what I mean. There’s nothing in her words except endless repetition about her own books. It’s like she was taking very opportunity to sell me one of them, irrelevant for sure to the motives behind an autobiography.
I’ve also read Paris, France and had a similar reaction to the dull nature of the writing. It’s a bit better, only because it’s in the first person, but it has none of the skill the writer professes it contains. I don’t think I will ever try one of her other books. There’s no passion in her words. As I said, the value of this book is with the image it creates of a modern France. And if you’re interested in 20th century Europe it’s certainly something you should read along with Hemingway's A Movable Feast.
I found myself skimming sections, so I was quite glad to finally finish it. It's a curiosity, though a bit of a trudge....more
-A review copy was sent to me from Disclaimer Magazine in association with And Other Stories. The original review was posted here.
The Review:
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In-A review copy was sent to me from Disclaimer Magazine in association with And Other Stories. The original review was posted here.
The Review:
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In this wanton riot of individuality, we hear the story of a struggling author who works in a book shop by day and experiments with hard drugs for artistic inspiration by night.
Michelle Tea writes in a fast edgy style that reflects the nature of her character; it is chatty, modern and slightly eccentric. The protagonist, also named Michelle, lives a life with no stop lights. She works. She parties. She writes. She works. She parties. She writes. The cycle continues until Michelle gets a particularly strong dose of recreational drugs and burns out, alienating those that love her most and attracting the attention of friends that are clearly no good for her. In the vein of Jeanette Winterson, the style is post-modern and very self-reflexive in nature. The book clearly alludes to the author, though how much so is never clearly established or definitively defined. The writing is undeniably honest, holding very little back. There is a strong sense of
Freedom of expression, freedom of self
“Being cast out of society early on made you see civilization for the farce it was, a theater of cruelty you were free to drop out of. Instead of playing along you became a fuckup. It was a political statement and a survival skill.”
Redemptive themes are also within the narrative. Michelle is trying to find herself within the concrete jungle of today. She explores her own sexuality and engages in spare of the moment fantasies, again, at the expense of long standing relationships. She does not let anything restrict her or hold her back, but instead wishes to experience, to touch, taste and to feel what life has to offer all to the supposed betterment of her fiction. She wears no labels and is simply herself in a world that wishes for conformity. Identity labels do not bother her. After originally appearing to be a lesbian, she engages in another random sexual encounter and reveals her pansexual nature. Although this is set in the 90s, this book is a product of a modern queer feminist imagination. Such a character blends well to the modern times, a world that is becoming more accepting of gender identities and finally beginning to understand them.
Michelle is well aware of the effects of her drug use and she wishes to quit and start a new life in Los Angeles before her lifestyle destroys her. Towards the end of the first half she gets her wish and seemingly escapes the life she has been living. But when she arrives she gets a similar job and adapts a similar routine albeit one that is a little slower. Why would she do this? It is human nature, the familiar asserts itself and her dreams for a new self are questionable. The thing is, Michelle addresses these contradictions within her writing and recognises the limitations of her own experience. She’s only human after all. The idea of settling down is misleading, moving location and starting again will not necessarily solve all of our problems: one needs to look deeper for solutions, if they really do want them.
A new start?
“Don’t you ever fucking write about me! Andy hollered, and was gone.”
The second half of the novel pulls into question the truthfulness of the first. The writing feels experimental and it’s very hard to ascertain what is real and what fantasy is. Michelle admits to editing out a major lover out of the narrative for the purpose of confidentiality; thus, it feels fragmented and blurred. What we read is not the story as it happened, but a censored version to protect the real people involved. I should imagine names have been changed, but in part I think this accentuates the drug use. So in a way the book manages to carry this forward regardless of the inconsistencies. Once such a thing becomes such a large part of someone’s life, lines are bound to be blurred and experiences confused.
And the book really reflects this, stylistically and structurally. An end of the world type narrative is eventually revealed to show how unfulfilled sexual fantasies can hang over us. It appears out of nowhere and brings the story to a swift close; though reading back key sections shows how the drug usage was filled with apocalyptic imagery. Michelle also has some rather ironic (yet true) comments to make on authorship and genre writing. She refers to her character as “fringe” rather than “out there” whereas a book about a white male going through the same experience would be considered literary fiction because it would be more daring. The bitterness in the words is palpable and such a truism stands with one of the main motifs of the book: it doesn’t matter what you are: as long as you are yourself.
This would be a great book for a reader who loves long drawn out character studies, books that are introspective and revealing about the nature of self and sexuality in a claustrophobic world. The drug culture setting may be off putting to some, but it is a part of human existence and Michelle tea relays her personal experiences with it here. It’s a very honest book, brave and unflinching in the face of a world that will likely judge....more
Books mean a great deal to me. Are you surprised to hear me say this? I think not. As a consequence, I really enjoy reading books about people who reaBooks mean a great deal to me. Are you surprised to hear me say this? I think not. As a consequence, I really enjoy reading books about people who really enjoy books. It’s just how these things work. And Jeanette Winterson really, really, likes books. When she had nothing, she always had her books: they gave her courage and strength. This is a book for those that love reading and writing; this is a book for those that understand why someone would spend their entire life doing such things: it is a book that speaks directly to the book lover.
Jeannette had a very cold childhood; her mother was a depressive who had a very warped mind set. She was devoutly religious but rather than seeing religion as a means of spreading love and understanding, she saw it as a way to chastise people. She was a misanthrope, a hater of mankind. When she looked at society all she saw was a wretched cusp of civilisation that needed to be punished. It was unworthy of God’s teachings, of the word of the Bible. And she was obsessed with the Bible, reading it multiple times each year. She attempted to limit her daughter’s faculties by not letting her read beyond its pages.
So Jeanette read in private, hiding her collection of books under her bed. One day her mother found them and burnt them all in the back garden. She destroyed the books of Jeanette’s youth, but she couldn’t destroy her. Jeanette began to learn literature by heart because that could never be taken away from her, and then she set out to write her own story. This book would become her first novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit which, if you didn’t already know, went on to win numerous literary awards along with establishing Winterson as a successful writer.
Her writing is highly autobiographical, drawing on her own experiences to create her narratives. Oranges focuses much on sexuality, gender and the restrictions of religious belief. This, on the other hand, centralises the relationship between Jeanette and her mother within the narrative. It builds on the themes established in Oranges and addresses them in a much more intelligent voice. Twenty-five years have passed in between books, and her mother has died since, and as a result Winterson addresses the themes with more clarity and retrospective wisdom.
She both hated and loved her mother. Jeanette was adopted, and she has always felt unwanted and incapable of accepting love: she has always felt empty inside. The coldness of her adoptive mother has been to blame for much of this, but her actions created the writer. Without them, Winterson would never have established her literary voice. She would never have read so widely and so voraciously and set her on the path to finding her voice. She knows exactly what her mother was to her:
“She was a monster, but she was my monster.”
So this is a deeply personal account about Winterson’s life; it is revealing and powerful. I admire her courage to not only write such fiction, but to impart so much of herself to her readers. It’s very brave writing, highly successful too....more
It’s hard to believe what this book turned into as I got further in. In the preface, the book receives copious amounts of praise from Jeanette WintersIt’s hard to believe what this book turned into as I got further in. In the preface, the book receives copious amounts of praise from Jeanette Winterson. She was influenced by the blatant lesbian content Barnes presents here: it encouraged her to display the same in her works. T.S Eliot even praised it, and T.S Eliot criticised everything to death. That first page will, nevertheless, always remain awful. But this is a book about appearances; it is a book about seeming rather than being, as the book progresses it does, indeed, change completely. The language became almost poetical and eloquent:
“Those long remembered can alone claim to be long forgotten.”
For me, this is a book that requires a completely new approach to reading. If you go into this expecting a linear progression or a sense of fulfilment, then you will be highly disappointed. This is something different, a piece of art that captures the intertwining lives of a bunch of people who are in themselves a little bit different.
Centre to them is the character Robin. She has a strange effect on people; she possesses a power, an ability that draws people to her. A sense of strangeness or otherness that is hard to pinpoint, though it is one that makes people fall in love with her rather quickly. She is not a conventional person. Anyone who spends time with her drastically risks getting hurt. She moves on from lovers rather quickly but her partners most certainly do not move on from her, ever. Her existence is a strange one. I would argue that she’s not really living, but only existing. In this sense she reminded me very much of Andre Bretton's Nadja
She seems to float through life without a sense of purpose or direction. Instead she has this innate drive that she doesn’t quite understand. She is always drawn away from what she has. It’s almost like she harbours a perpetual sense of emptiness that she is longing to fill; thus, she goes roaming at night: she goes looking for something. In the romantic sense, this seems to be a communion with nature. The ending of the book could suggest that she finds it, but it could also suggest that she has gone completely insane due to her unfulfilling life. It’s also worth researching the author’s personal biography and its comparison with the lesbian elements of the story. It’s worth reading up on the see the parallels, and the shadows at the back of the book that suggest that this is, at least in part, semi-autobiographical.
“And must I, perchance, like careful writers, guard myself against the conclusions of my readers?”
Nightwood is an unusual book, highly experimental even by the parameters of modernist literature. It is one that must be experienced and pondered. In a strange sort of way, it is more like poetry than a novel. The words are a vessel for capturing an essence of something meaningful. This is a book to be scrutinised and studied to see the depth of the work, but it is not one I overly enjoyed reading. A patient reader is required....more
"Come close you precious Graces and muses With beautiful tresses……"
The ancient Greeks were nothing if they weren’t frivolous. But every society has it"Come close you precious Graces and muses With beautiful tresses……"
The ancient Greeks were nothing if they weren’t frivolous. But every society has its limits. Male homosexuality is frequently referenced in works of antiquity. But, female homosexuality is almost non-existent. Sappho makes an unusual case in her poetry. Not unusual in its content, but unusual in its rarity. Sappho’s poetry is relatively simple, whist she doesn’t explicitly argue for same sex coupling, she provides an image of female homoerotic lust alongside all other forms. The lyre is very representative of her wants:
"Here is the reason: it is wrong To play a funeral song In the musician’s house- It simply would not be decorous.
God-crafted product of the tortoise shell, Come to me lyre be voluble."
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And there’s the rub, if the Greeks accepted it among men, at least to an extent, why not allow the women the same acceptance? Sappho makes a stark argument, one that suggests the importance of lust with an oneness with the gods.
“Some call ships, infantry or horseman The greatest beauty the earth can offer I say it is what a person most lusts after”
An affinity can be created if mankind engaged in his natural passions, more so than going to war and slaughtering one’s fellows. That just destroys everything, life, love and lust. For me Sappho provides an almost visionary idea, an idealistic harmony within oneself and the rest of the universe. The poems are a true pleasure to read; they are soft in content and speak with a breath of life. I almost imagined the speaker whispering in a completely chilled out tone of relaxation and tranquillity. I enjoyed this selection, but won’t be reading any more by her. There’s enough in here for me.
Penguin Little Black Classic- 74
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The Little Black Classic Collection by penguin looks like it contains lots of hidden gems. I couldn’t help it; they looked so good that I went and bought them all. I shall post a short review after reading each one. No doubt it will take me several months to get through all of them! Hopefully I will find some classic authors, from across the ages, that I may not have come across had I not bought this collection.
This is a book about a gay Sri Lankan boy. He falls in love and realises his sexuality.
I wonder how many people stopped reading my review after that This is a book about a gay Sri Lankan boy. He falls in love and realises his sexuality.
I wonder how many people stopped reading my review after that first line. I can’t judge, this is a book I would never have picked up and read by my own choice. It’s was on one of my university modules, so there was no escaping it for me. Surprisingly, I actually quite enjoyed reading it as I have done with all postcolonial texts I’ve come across.
Gender is socially constructed and socially enforced; it’s also socially repressed. This is nothing new. It is a facet of human existence. Men and women have always been associated with gender specific behaviour according to their culture. A person who crosses these boundaries is often considered strange, a social outcast and “funny” in the sense of weirdness and bizarreness. It’s not so bad in today’s world, but this book is set in the seventies. And as a young boy growing up in a divided Sri Lanka, Arjie wants nothing more than to be a girl.
He was young and confused. Obviously, transgender issues are separate from sexuality. But one thing Arjie does realise is that he is very different to other boys. It takes him many years to actually realise what this difference is, and even longer to accept it. It doesn’t reside with his gender, but his sexual orientation. Arjie is gay in a world that considers such an act weak, unmanly and, again, “funny.” When he was young he found kinship with girls because he was confused when playing with other boys. He felt comfortable, safe even, with the girls. As he grows up he realises the restrictions on such a lifestyle. I can sympathise with him here, I think we all can to some degree: it takes a lot of courage to realise who you are, and even more to face it and become it. Arjie doesn’t come out to his family, thought they have suspicions. I’d like to believe that in the future this character would. At the end of the novel he and his family are forced to flee to the western world, which was more accepting, so I presume that would lead to his eventual admittance.
As well as showing the conflict between homosexuality and social acceptance, the novel also portrays the tumultuous time in a divided Sri Lanka. Colonial power has withdrawn, leaving a massive power vacuum that rival factions fight for. It’s suggestive of the divided nature of Arjie’s own mind. However, for all the interesting themes and literary merit, I could not rate this any higher. And that’s because of the way it concluded the romance plot. It was drastically underplayed; there was barely as much as a good bye.
The love story in here didn’t feel transitory: it felt like it should have lasted a life time; it was true love. The characters knew it too, but they just didn’t fight for it. They let it die. Personally, I think this would have been a much more powerful novel, dramatic too, if they tried to fight for it and it ended in tragedy. It would have been so much more impactful than a mutual, safe, withdrawal of feelings. I feel like I wasted my time with such levels of character investment for it all to conclude in one cold, detached, paragraph. Other than that though, the novel was an interesting read. ...more
This is a marvellous play; it is clearly an equal to any of Shakespeare’s histories. It’s such a shame Marlowe had his life cut short; he could have bThis is a marvellous play; it is clearly an equal to any of Shakespeare’s histories. It’s such a shame Marlowe had his life cut short; he could have been a real rival to Shakespeare if he wrote more. He’s only got a few plays compared to Shakespeare’s forty or so. He just didn’t write enough before he died; it’s a real tragedy because he had the talent to do so much more.
Well, anyway, this is still superb regardless of Marlowe’s short repertoire of writing. I love the tragic elements, and I love the relationship between King Edward and his Gaveston. It’s complex and real. Edward is clearly madly in love with Gaveston, but I’m not entirely sure that his lover returns the passion. He has some feelings for Edward, this much is clear, but I think he is mainly using him for social advancement. He wants to get back at the nobles who have laughed at him, and looked down on his peasant class. So, he uses Edward as a shield to hide behind as he attempts to return the disdain.
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Well, the only problem is that Edward is a very flimsy shield. He is a weak King. Not just because he is homosexual, like the ignorant writers of Braveheart will have you believe, but because he has no backbone. This isn’t because he is gay; he just happens to be gay as well as weak. The two are not related. His nobles push him around and bully him because of his lack of strength. They manipulate him and he doesn’t have the power to prevent it. Gaveston is a stronger man than he in this. He stands up for what he believes in whereas Edward just lets the world overrule him. He lacks the abilities of a strong ruler. His wife is a more authoritative monarch and his young son even more so. All in all, Marlowe’s Edward is a doormat.
Indeed, he causes his own demise at the end of the play, which is a horrible end; it’s almost a mockery of his sexuality. He gets killed by having a hot poker shoved up his arse. This is to prevent physical evidence of his murder being easily perceivable on his corpse. I mean, the medievalists wouldn’t check there for a cause of death if they checked at all. It’s horribly ironic and brutal. It’s actually based upon some flimsy truth, but there are all sorts of conspiracy theories about that. Personally, I love the way Ken Follet handled it The World Without End. He let his Edward escape, but Marlowe couldn’t of done that in a play; it needed its tragic ending.
“All live to die, and rise to fall.”
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The two lovers caused their own deaths. Edward was too absorbed in his lover’s arms where as Gaveston was too arrogant. He attracted the wrath of the nobility when he needed to be humble to survive. He pushed them too far and angered them too much. They were both fools, but characters that can easily be sympathised with. Edward saw nothing but his Gaveston, and Gaveston saw nothing but prestige and glory. It’s a great play; I wish I could find a copy of the Ian Mckellen version somewhere. I bet he nailed the role. ...more
Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is a compelling novel about a young woman dealing with the pressures of conformity in a world that demands she be sometOranges Are Not The Only Fruit is a compelling novel about a young woman dealing with the pressures of conformity in a world that demands she be something she is not.
Jeanette is gay. The world she has known, the world of the church, shuns such behaviour. She was raised to be a missionary by her extremely controlling and zealous mother. Her path was laid out before her. And Jeanette was relatively obedient to begin with. She was ready to accept this life of servitude to God. She didn’t know any different; it’s the only path she believed was open to her. She didn’t look outside it. But life isn’t as simple as that. One day she meets someone who alteres everything. She falls in love. She sees an alternative, and she runs away.
So this is a story about new beginnings; this is a story that shows us that we can break through the bonds of expectancy and be whomever it is we wish to be. We don’t have to sit back and choke on the moral expectancies and norms of a society that controls our faculties. No. We can follow our hearts, and we can do what we know is right. This becomes a tale of self-realisation, one that’s structure reflects the narrative progress of the Bible. It begins with Genesis and Winterson chooses to end it with Ruth, the story that recognises female achievement and is read by modern critics as a celebration of lesbianism.
Jeanette tries to find her own way in life through sexual experimentation and religious rebellion. And by the end, the full autobiographical impact of this is revealed:
“Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.”
This was certainly a daring first novel, though, that being said, I’ve never really had any inclination to read anything else by this author. (I read this back in 2015.) I did enjoy this, and it is a very good tale, but much of the merit is on the surface level of the writing. It’s very straight forward and clean-cut. I would have liked to see a little bit more depth in the language, and a few less puns on the title. Sometimes we don’t need to explicitly say something for the narrative to carry the meaning.
Overall, it's a quirky little book, full of passion and self-revelation. But, for me, it was missing something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps the book needed more time to grow and develop, perhaps the story needed to be carried a little further. It’s unusual for a first book, most authors, if they attempted something like this, it would be after they’d already released a few novels and were relatively established. But, again, that doesn’t mean we should always follow the rules. I was certain on giving this four stars before I started writing but, by the time I came to the end of this review, it’s ended up as a three....more
Madeline Miller did what the movie producers of the film Troy (2004) were too cowardly to do; she stayed true to the homosexuality of Homer’s Iliad rMadeline Miller did what the movie producers of the film Troy (2004) were too cowardly to do; she stayed true to the homosexuality of Homer’s Iliad rather than writing a censored version of the story which stank of homophobia. Achilles and Patroclus were passionately in love, which resulted in their respective destructions. They were not cousins or man at arms, but soul mates. The watering down of this in the film Troy was an insult to the LGBT community. Nothing more. Nothing less.
The attraction between these two men wasn’t something that was rushed and squandered. It was built up, ever so slowly, and delivered eloquently. The two were friends from boyhood, and Patroclus was enamoured by Achilles after just one glance. He didn’t want to be parted from him. The two grew up together, they fought together, they learnt together and they developed together. They became inseparable and reliant on each other. Their sexual relationship just matured as they did it; it was the most natural thing in the world.
Like all relationships, there were issues. The two weren’t without their differences. They clashed and quarrelled but only because they truly cared for each other. Patroclus wanted to end the war, and Achilles didn’t think the fight was worthy of his name: he wanted a bigger war to fight in. So, Patroclus, in his most bravest and stupid move goes against his lover’s wish and tries to end the war with a stroke of his sword. But he is no Achilles: he is not a god of war. He was out of his depth, outmatched and doomed.
It could only end in tragedy
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- "Achilles Laments the Death of Patroclus" 1767.
I’ve not included a spoiler warning because everybody knows the story of Homer’s Iliad. Well, at least, I hope they do! Following the traditional narrative arc, Achilles goes on a mad rampage to avenge the death of his beloved. In the process he simultaneously destroys and immortalises himself. He got what he wanted, but not in the way he wanted it. I love the way the author wrote this, I could really feel the desperate rage of an Achilles who had lost the only thing that mattered to him in the world.
I’m so glad the author didn’t deviate from the suggestions of homosexuality that were present in Homer’s writing. This would have failed dramatically had she done so. There would have been no power, and, again, like the film Troy it would have been abysmal. The romance plot in here is one of the truest and believable I’ve read to date: it was strong and real. However, this is not to downplay the other aspects of the story. It is driven by romance, but it is not defined by it. There is also a story of growth, and the story of warrior who is out to prove his strength and honour in a world driven by war. He just happens to like guys.
A strong four stars
p.s- I’ve purposely avoided images of the movie Troy in this review. Anybody who has seen it and read this book really shouldn’t be putting the two side by side, at least, not if they want to make their review fair. One is an insult to the story, the other a novelisation of a timeless classic.
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Sean Barrs
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