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reading - The Seventh Sphinx - Page 7

reading: Dumas, Baldwin, Messud, Magny

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Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, Dumas — en français! Lentement! A friend inspired me to get back to this (I’ve been poking at it for ages), and this time to adopt the approach of a child reading above her comprehension level. That is, to skip over the words I do not know, and not think too much about them (ideally transcending conscious thought regarding my ignorance altogether, and becoming semi- or (still better) completely oblivious to the fact that I do not know them). Wise, wise children.

Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin — Geek Outsider recommended this so highly that she gave me her spare copy. Such kindness! Such generosity!

The Woman Upstairs, Claire Messud — Messud’s latest, and it’s interesting. Imagine a female voice with ire reminiscent of the narrator in Notes from the Underground. You do not come across so many of those (are there any others?), and it is refreshing. It’s strange while reading to remember Messud’s actual voice, which is soft, and more or less just as you imagine a gentle, quintessentially pacific kindergarten teacher’s voice.

Here, for example, are the first several lines.

“How angry am I? You don’t want to know. Nobody wants to know about that.

I’m a good girl, I’m a nice girl, I’m a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody’s boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend and I put up with my parent’s shit and my brother’s shit, and I’m not a girl anyhow, I’m over forty fucking years old, and I’m good at my job and I’m great with kids and I held my mother’s hand when she died, after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father every day on the telephone—every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it’s pretty gray and a bit muggy too? It was supposed to say “Great Artist” on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say “such a good teacher/daughter/friend” instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.

Don’t all women feel the same? The only difference is how much we know we feel it, how in touch we are with our fury.”

See what I mean?

Stuff Parisians Like, Olivier Magny — I’m pretty entertained by this. A cheeky compendium of comically detailed Parisian stereotypes that is, evidently, often not too far off the mark.

“It is important to realize that most Parisians are tired of most of their friends. Hence, a natural defiance against new friends. They will probably be tired of them soon as well. Why bother?”

“There is no wearing red or yellow in Paris if you are mentally sane. Blue is acceptable. Especially navy blue, which has the good taste of being easily mistaken for black.”

“Parisian men are not to shave every day. Parisian men are to have scruff. 

A good scruff sends Parisian men to the very top of the sexiness scale. Men with scruff are somewhere between Indiana Jones in Malaysia and George Clooney on a Sunday afternoon. Scruff makes Parisian men irresistible. 

Parisian men want to be irresistible. 

Parisian women love their men with a scruff. They love this itchy expression of adventure that grows on their men’s faces. A scruff offers Parisians just the right dose of adventure. Civilized adventure. The look of adventure without the smell of it. Potential is more than enough in Paris.”

If you cannot see that this is funny, I am sorry for you.

Also I am completely in agreement with this business about stubble.

reading: Friedan, Sontag, babies

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The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan – I had only read excerpts of this up to now, and I wish I had read it in its entirety sooner. This book is interesting, relevant, elegantly structured, and–to me, and I think to all American women–important. Friedan explores the causes and repercussions of what she calls the feminine mystique, an American phenomenon bound up in the history of feminism in America. It is a story about our mothers, our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers, and that means it is a story about us.

“The feminine mystique says that the highest value and the only commitment for women is the fulfillment of their own femininity. It says that the great mistake of Western culture, through most of its history, has been the undervaluation of this femininity. It says this femininity is so mysterious and intuitive and close to the creation and origin of life that man-made science may never be able to understand it. But however special and different, it is in now way inferior to the nature of man; it may even in certain respects be superior. The mistake, says the mystique, the root of women’s troubles in the past is that women envied men, women tried to be like men, instead of accepting their own nature, which can find fulfillment only in sexual passivity, male domination, and nurturing maternal love.”

There is a lot more to it, and it is with great sincerity that I urge you– especially the women among you– to read the whole thing. At least read the wikipedia page. This was written in 1963 but the cultural pressures it chronicles have no small degree of influence today, as evidenced by the prevalence of and often rabid responses to articles about ‘having it all’ and ‘all the single ladies’.  (Coincidence that both the articles I’ve chosen as prime examples are from The Atlantic?) I suspect that any given reader would resonate with more of these 60s observations than they would expect. Man or woman, this history is influencing your life, whether you know about it or not. I think, in this case, it is good to know.

The Volcano Lover, Susan Sontag – I picked this up after watching this incredible Sontag interview, wherein she is so unabashedly contentious, so ungenerous to the interviewer (to whom she has taken a transparent dislike), so unexpected, that I took an immediately liking to her. How refreshing! How inspiring! I like her book, too! I don’t know who Camille Paglia is, either! [Or, I didn’t. There is an interview with Paglia in the link as well, which seems to demonstrate quite neatly that she is unhinged. Both interviews very entertaining in their way.]

The New Basics: A-to-Z Baby & Child Care for the Modern Parent, Michel Cohen – A sensible care guide from a French pediatrician, the gist of which is: don’t panic (try this instead). I don’t have a baby but I may someday, or may in some other capacity be called upon to know what to do with one. I like to know what to do. Also, babies and the cultural stuff surrounding them are interesting to me, just academically (why do I feel a need to defend myself? Perhaps because I mention it in the wake of Friedan…). I deem this eminently practical and thorough, with an excellent amount of detail (meaning, not too much) and the encouragement of a relaxed approach. If I did have a baby, I would keep it on hand.