Wednesday Words to the Wise
What I've Finished Reading
Time of Hope by C. P. Snow. It went by fast and didn't bore me, and was a little more interesting than the previous Snow. This one is kind of diluted Somerset Maugham, with the narrator deliberately getting himself hopelessly entangled with an unhappy woman who will make him unhappy. I might say a little more about it next week and I might not. Probably I should.
What I'm Sort of Reading
In an attempt to give my eyes a break, I picked up a free audiobook from work and have been listening to it. The book is Burnt Offerings by Laurell K. Hamilton, starring a slightly insufferable urban vampire hunter, her preternaturally foppish vampire boyfriend, and lots of rape. It takes place in a world where there are were-versions of every mammal anyone ever drew on a notebook in middle school, vampires, a Circus of the Damned, and zombies, and probably some other things that just haven't come up. Anita Blake works as a kind of law-enforcement liaison for supernatural cases. This provides her with lots of interesting scars to show off in tank tops and backless dresses, and also some moral dilemmas. There are already enough descriptions of clothing and dialogue infodumps for ten regular books - Anita reminds me a little of Enoby Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. She was dating a vampire and a werewolf, but the werewolf freaked her out by eating a guy right in front of her, so now she's sticking to the comparatively safe and meticulously groomed vampire, who talks with a Pepe Le Pew accent and says "ma petite" a lot.
It's not really my thing. If this were a paper book, I would have closed it around the third or fourth conversation about how tough and goff and unlike other girls Anita is, but in this format it's enjoyable. I don't mind that I can't follow the plot because I probably wouldn't like the plot very much (from what I can tell: a bunch of supernatural factions rape and torture each other; Anita is the Chosen One of several communities of which she is not a part), and it helps pass the time while I'm cleaning.
What I'm Reading Now
Lady Chatterly's Lover
osprey_archer has already brought up Mellors' issue with women who "are the devil to bring off, and bring themselves off, like [his] wife." D. H. Lawrence seems to think this is a common resentment: Michaelis, the playwright with whom Connie had her first affair, sneered at her for exactly the same thing:
"You couldn't go off at the same time as a man, could you? You'd have to bring yourself off! You'd have to run the show!"
Mellors is at least able to talk it out instead of being sarcastic, but he's not really interested in Connie's perspective. He just wants to explain what a hard time he's had of it and list all the different ways women are the worst.
[Cut for FRANK TALK about real problems]"The rest? There is no rest. Only to my experience the mass of women are like this: most of them want a man, but don't want the sex, but they put up with it, as part of the bargain. The more old-fashioned sort just lie there like nothing and let you go ahead. They don't mind afterwards: then they like you. But the actual thing itself is nothing to them, a bit distasteful. And most men like it that way. I hate it. But the sly sort of women who are like that pretend they're not. They pretend they're passionate and have thrills. But it's all cockaloopy. They make it up-- Then there's the hard sort, that are the devil to bring off at all, and bring themselves off, like my wife. They want to be the active party.-- Then there's the sort that's just dead inside: but dead, and they know it. Then there's the sort that puts you out before you really 'come,' and go on writhing their loins till they bring themselves off against your thighs. But they're mostly the Lesbian sort. It's astonishing how Lesbian women are, consciously or unconsciously. Seems to me they're nearly all Lesbian."
"And do you mind?" asked Connie.
"I could kill them. When I'm with a woman who's really Lesbian, I fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill her."
Chapter 14 is a fascinating mix of really endearing earnestness and lengthy rants about how women are the worst, possibly as a side effect of modernity being the worst. I don't get the impression that Word of Mellors is necessarily Word of God here, but there is a whole lot of it - plus an unexpectedly repulsive note of bonus racism on the next page, just in case you were wondering when the racism was going to show up.
Connie, who questioned Michaelis' anger back in Chapter 5, here tries to sympathize with Mellors. He doesn't ask her about her own experiences with men or try to understand what she wants (he is perfectly willing to tell her what she wants), but maybe that's just realistic? I haven't tried to test this hypothesis by sleeping with a bunch of dudes in 1922, and I doubt the time-travel grant committee would fund that request. In any case, it's what Mellors and Michaelis are like, and it's what Clifford is like, too.
Chapter 13, immediately prior to the idyll/lecture, is pretty painful. Clifford pontificates about Tevershall and class systems and how education has poisoned the masses, Clifford is pompous and hollow, Clifford's little motor chair gets stuck on a hill and Clifford is helpless and furious and humiliated. Mellors comes to help him and Clifford is horrible about it. He snarls and is self-pitying and vicious, and breaks the chair completely with his stubbornness, so that Connie and Mellors have to push the whole dead weight of both of them all the way home. Poor Clifford is awful and he isn't going to get any less awful, and we've been told all along how it was going to be. His is the kind of hollowness that I'm willing to believe exists in real people, but that in fictional characters almost always feels like unfair deck-stacking. Connie thinks, "Now I've hated him, I shall never be able to go on living with him." It's too soon to tell if this is a permanent revelation or only a temporary one.
It's interesting. I can't really tell how good it is or isn't. The little motor chair is my favorite character, poor little guy. It could be the hero of a children's book: broken and abandoned by the evil/pathetic Sir Clifford, it lingers forlornly first in a barn, then in a scrap yard, before being discovered and fixed up by the scrap metal man as a gift for his daughter, who loves it for the freedom it gives her while respecting its limitations as a machine. It could be called Dream of the Chair or A Chair for Cecilia or The Very Lonely Chair or The Helping Chair, with winsome single-color imitation period illustrations, or maybe some nice watercolors.
I just started To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, which does have a time-travel grant committee, or maybe just one eccentric billionaire who controls the time-travel funds; I'm not sure. There's a team of time-travelers who have been sent back to confirm the existence at a particular time of an architectural feature, for reasons that are unclear. It's a little funny, but not yet as funny as Three Men in a Boat. I am going to read the rest, but I have to finish The Dispossessed first, and a bunch of other things.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have to finish my current stack before I can start anything new! Two new 99 Novels, previously mentioned -- The Disenchanted and Scenes from Provincial Life. Some books from my bookshelf, probably.
Time of Hope by C. P. Snow. It went by fast and didn't bore me, and was a little more interesting than the previous Snow. This one is kind of diluted Somerset Maugham, with the narrator deliberately getting himself hopelessly entangled with an unhappy woman who will make him unhappy. I might say a little more about it next week and I might not. Probably I should.
What I'm Sort of Reading
In an attempt to give my eyes a break, I picked up a free audiobook from work and have been listening to it. The book is Burnt Offerings by Laurell K. Hamilton, starring a slightly insufferable urban vampire hunter, her preternaturally foppish vampire boyfriend, and lots of rape. It takes place in a world where there are were-versions of every mammal anyone ever drew on a notebook in middle school, vampires, a Circus of the Damned, and zombies, and probably some other things that just haven't come up. Anita Blake works as a kind of law-enforcement liaison for supernatural cases. This provides her with lots of interesting scars to show off in tank tops and backless dresses, and also some moral dilemmas. There are already enough descriptions of clothing and dialogue infodumps for ten regular books - Anita reminds me a little of Enoby Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way. She was dating a vampire and a werewolf, but the werewolf freaked her out by eating a guy right in front of her, so now she's sticking to the comparatively safe and meticulously groomed vampire, who talks with a Pepe Le Pew accent and says "ma petite" a lot.
It's not really my thing. If this were a paper book, I would have closed it around the third or fourth conversation about how tough and goff and unlike other girls Anita is, but in this format it's enjoyable. I don't mind that I can't follow the plot because I probably wouldn't like the plot very much (from what I can tell: a bunch of supernatural factions rape and torture each other; Anita is the Chosen One of several communities of which she is not a part), and it helps pass the time while I'm cleaning.
What I'm Reading Now
Lady Chatterly's Lover
osprey_archer has already brought up Mellors' issue with women who "are the devil to bring off, and bring themselves off, like [his] wife." D. H. Lawrence seems to think this is a common resentment: Michaelis, the playwright with whom Connie had her first affair, sneered at her for exactly the same thing:
"You couldn't go off at the same time as a man, could you? You'd have to bring yourself off! You'd have to run the show!"
Mellors is at least able to talk it out instead of being sarcastic, but he's not really interested in Connie's perspective. He just wants to explain what a hard time he's had of it and list all the different ways women are the worst.
[Cut for FRANK TALK about real problems]"The rest? There is no rest. Only to my experience the mass of women are like this: most of them want a man, but don't want the sex, but they put up with it, as part of the bargain. The more old-fashioned sort just lie there like nothing and let you go ahead. They don't mind afterwards: then they like you. But the actual thing itself is nothing to them, a bit distasteful. And most men like it that way. I hate it. But the sly sort of women who are like that pretend they're not. They pretend they're passionate and have thrills. But it's all cockaloopy. They make it up-- Then there's the hard sort, that are the devil to bring off at all, and bring themselves off, like my wife. They want to be the active party.-- Then there's the sort that's just dead inside: but dead, and they know it. Then there's the sort that puts you out before you really 'come,' and go on writhing their loins till they bring themselves off against your thighs. But they're mostly the Lesbian sort. It's astonishing how Lesbian women are, consciously or unconsciously. Seems to me they're nearly all Lesbian."
"And do you mind?" asked Connie.
"I could kill them. When I'm with a woman who's really Lesbian, I fairly howl in my soul, wanting to kill her."
Chapter 14 is a fascinating mix of really endearing earnestness and lengthy rants about how women are the worst, possibly as a side effect of modernity being the worst. I don't get the impression that Word of Mellors is necessarily Word of God here, but there is a whole lot of it - plus an unexpectedly repulsive note of bonus racism on the next page, just in case you were wondering when the racism was going to show up.
Connie, who questioned Michaelis' anger back in Chapter 5, here tries to sympathize with Mellors. He doesn't ask her about her own experiences with men or try to understand what she wants (he is perfectly willing to tell her what she wants), but maybe that's just realistic? I haven't tried to test this hypothesis by sleeping with a bunch of dudes in 1922, and I doubt the time-travel grant committee would fund that request. In any case, it's what Mellors and Michaelis are like, and it's what Clifford is like, too.
Chapter 13, immediately prior to the idyll/lecture, is pretty painful. Clifford pontificates about Tevershall and class systems and how education has poisoned the masses, Clifford is pompous and hollow, Clifford's little motor chair gets stuck on a hill and Clifford is helpless and furious and humiliated. Mellors comes to help him and Clifford is horrible about it. He snarls and is self-pitying and vicious, and breaks the chair completely with his stubbornness, so that Connie and Mellors have to push the whole dead weight of both of them all the way home. Poor Clifford is awful and he isn't going to get any less awful, and we've been told all along how it was going to be. His is the kind of hollowness that I'm willing to believe exists in real people, but that in fictional characters almost always feels like unfair deck-stacking. Connie thinks, "Now I've hated him, I shall never be able to go on living with him." It's too soon to tell if this is a permanent revelation or only a temporary one.
It's interesting. I can't really tell how good it is or isn't. The little motor chair is my favorite character, poor little guy. It could be the hero of a children's book: broken and abandoned by the evil/pathetic Sir Clifford, it lingers forlornly first in a barn, then in a scrap yard, before being discovered and fixed up by the scrap metal man as a gift for his daughter, who loves it for the freedom it gives her while respecting its limitations as a machine. It could be called Dream of the Chair or A Chair for Cecilia or The Very Lonely Chair or The Helping Chair, with winsome single-color imitation period illustrations, or maybe some nice watercolors.
I just started To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, which does have a time-travel grant committee, or maybe just one eccentric billionaire who controls the time-travel funds; I'm not sure. There's a team of time-travelers who have been sent back to confirm the existence at a particular time of an architectural feature, for reasons that are unclear. It's a little funny, but not yet as funny as Three Men in a Boat. I am going to read the rest, but I have to finish The Dispossessed first, and a bunch of other things.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have to finish my current stack before I can start anything new! Two new 99 Novels, previously mentioned -- The Disenchanted and Scenes from Provincial Life. Some books from my bookshelf, probably.