Wednesday, January 22, 2003

What I Read During My Winter Break Fury, by Salman Rushdie 2001 CD narrated by the author Get it, read it, don't let anyone borrow it. Rushdie, along with Borges, showed me there is an entire world of literature still only barely aknowledged by "English lit" classes. Forget that, Rushdie is a modern alchemist, transforming what I mistook to be lead and revealing it as pure gold. Pop culture has its own mythology. Each of us creates her or his own monster which will try to destroy its creator. We live at a furious pace as we attempt to master our own fury--and what is the connection between the emotion of fury and those Kindly Ones who would try to destroy us?--and fury fills the news, the literature, the movies, the art, everything we create. Why is it whenever I try to describe Rushdie's writing it always sounds as if it is the most depressing stuff, but really, I always feel much more optimistic after reading it? Reading Rushdie is like attending a fabulous banquet: there are interesting people, exotic flavors, magical music, and when you are done, you feel as if you have been both physically and spiritually well-nourished. Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture edited by Mary Flanagan and Austin Booth 2002 MIT Press If you are interested in feminist theory and cyberculture, or what women are doing with technology as a means to self-expression, or even perceptions of women in the media, this book is a great resource. It is an anthology of essays by different writers working in a wide variety of fields: science, technology, gender studies, literary criticism, and performance arts. The science fiction stories alone are worth the price of the books, and the bibliography and list of works cited is a treasury of women's writing. Can I have some more, please? extraordinary bodies: FIGURING PHYSICAL DISABILITY IN AMERICAN CULTURE AND LITERATURE, by Rosemarie Garland Thomson 1997 columbia university press Interestingly, this book, like the one about women and technology, makes frequent reference to the representation of the cyborg as "other." The two taken together provide many intersting points about what we consider to be "human" and "normal" and why questioning our own ideas about representations of women and the disabled and other minorities in literature and the media can reveal the constructs of power hidden beneath the surface. Writing Machines, by N. Katherine Hayles 2002 MIT Press Worth it just for the hints regarding what _House of Leaves_ was about. 1:49:24 PM    comment []

The Nightmare Screening Room You have to understand: My nightmares possess vivid color-saturated cinematic detail. (If you think it is ironic that a blind person dreams in color, let me tell you the one where I can see just fine and am about to pick up a book to read and then I remember I'm blind and the picture goes blank.) I don't like to describe my nightmares to normal people because my nightmares have been known to give other people nightmares. The one time I mentioned any details to anyone, she told me I should sell that script to Wes Craven. A psychiatrist once told me perhaps it would be a good idea to stop reading horror fiction. Yeah, right. I compromised and stopped listening to the news. The point is, nothing has worked to make these babies less paralyzingly terrifying. I think I just found the answer, though. http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp It was weird enough having Alan Moore play Cupid between my boyfriend and me; if Neil Gaiman manages to provide the answer to my nightmares I will have complete faith in the power of comic books (yeah, yeah, Alexx, I know, it's "graphic novels"). 1:12:11 PM    comment []