Cash Alex Band
I've been meaning to make a post about my Cash/Marshall tinhat (which will inevitably include things like, "see this clip where they sit next to each other? see it? ...TRUE LOVE!"), but for now I will just link to these new pictures of The Cab. Because, for the first time, we have pictures that actually come close to showing how attractive they all are. They are really an unfeasibly pretty band. *flaily hands*
Go, see!
Oh sigh. I wish I weren't so horribly blocked on my Cabfic. :(
And now for something completely different:
I finished reading Joyce Johnson's Minor Characters and I found it so problematic. Sigh.
It felt like a long book to me (even though it wasn't) and I was frequently bored by it. But then, in the last few chapters, there was some really beautiful stuff (about Elise's death, mainly) and I cried. So, at the end, I was really sorry to see it go. I read the last paragraph a few times and thought, "oh. OH. I don't want to stop reading."
I said in my goodreads review that there are three strands to this book and all of them are varying degrees of interesting.
As a beat memoir, I found it disappointing. Joyce always seems like she's on the outside of everything (and blahblah that's the point because she's a woman), so therefore, what she tells of the beat generation is a little limited. The task she sets herself of demystifying the key Beat figures (particularly Kerouac) is all well and good, but I kind of like the mystique. It's a little depressing to merely think of Kerouac as a sad old drunk ruined by fame.
As a book about women in the 1950s, it's a much more interesting read. I originally wanted to read this book after I came across a piece Johnson had written (for a magazine? I don't remember. I found it in some anthology while I was researching my dissertation on Allen Ginsberg), which was an incredibly evocative (and genuinely shocking) account of abortion in the 1950s. That stayed with me more than anything else I read about the Beats. Nothing in this book was quite as incisive as that article, but the parts about abortion and violence towards women were still the most powerful. E.g. Joyce's account of arranging an illegal abortion, where she has to meet a guy in a bar, ostensibly for cocktails, and he'd take her to the doctor -- and afterwards, he'll invite her to "recuperate" (yeah right) at his house.
As a memoir about a disaffected girl in New York trying to escape turning into her middle-class parents, I honestly found it quite dull. I know we all think our childhood/adolescence is fascinating, but it very rarely is. :|
Johnson's style of writing was sometimes beautiful, but more often distracting. Everything was written in fragments. I realize life does not follow a linear narrative, but the abrupt changes in subject became confusing and annoying.
Go, see!
Oh sigh. I wish I weren't so horribly blocked on my Cabfic. :(
And now for something completely different:
I finished reading Joyce Johnson's Minor Characters and I found it so problematic. Sigh.
It felt like a long book to me (even though it wasn't) and I was frequently bored by it. But then, in the last few chapters, there was some really beautiful stuff (about Elise's death, mainly) and I cried. So, at the end, I was really sorry to see it go. I read the last paragraph a few times and thought, "oh. OH. I don't want to stop reading."
I said in my goodreads review that there are three strands to this book and all of them are varying degrees of interesting.
As a beat memoir, I found it disappointing. Joyce always seems like she's on the outside of everything (and blahblah that's the point because she's a woman), so therefore, what she tells of the beat generation is a little limited. The task she sets herself of demystifying the key Beat figures (particularly Kerouac) is all well and good, but I kind of like the mystique. It's a little depressing to merely think of Kerouac as a sad old drunk ruined by fame.
As a book about women in the 1950s, it's a much more interesting read. I originally wanted to read this book after I came across a piece Johnson had written (for a magazine? I don't remember. I found it in some anthology while I was researching my dissertation on Allen Ginsberg), which was an incredibly evocative (and genuinely shocking) account of abortion in the 1950s. That stayed with me more than anything else I read about the Beats. Nothing in this book was quite as incisive as that article, but the parts about abortion and violence towards women were still the most powerful. E.g. Joyce's account of arranging an illegal abortion, where she has to meet a guy in a bar, ostensibly for cocktails, and he'd take her to the doctor -- and afterwards, he'll invite her to "recuperate" (yeah right) at his house.
As a memoir about a disaffected girl in New York trying to escape turning into her middle-class parents, I honestly found it quite dull. I know we all think our childhood/adolescence is fascinating, but it very rarely is. :|
Johnson's style of writing was sometimes beautiful, but more often distracting. Everything was written in fragments. I realize life does not follow a linear narrative, but the abrupt changes in subject became confusing and annoying.