Wednesday is sweltering in the heat
What I read
The only thing I finished in the past week was Jo Walton, Necessity (2016), which perhaps I didn't enjoy quite as much as the preceding two volumes - though at some time I must reread the entire trilogy.
On the go
Still making my way through the Merrill Theory of Lit'ry Criticism, which is very good, though, by the nature of thing - collected prefaces, editorial matter in anthologies, review columns, essays - has a certain amount of repetition. But lots of great insights and a substantial degree of plus ca change, in her accounts of the tensions between the Old Thing and the New Thing in sf, the nostalgia for the gosh-wow of adolescent encounters with the genre vs the pushing of the boundaries, questions of style/substance, etc.
Also making my way through Chris Kraus, I Love Dick (1998, recently reissued). Which is weird and amazing autofiction, around her infatuation with an acquaintance of herself and her husband - lots of interesting stuff, including How To Suppress Women's Creative Endeavours, inverting the usual gendered muse narrative - I am slightly amused by the one star reviews on GoodReads that are horrified by this and her 'stalkery' behaviour, when I think that this obsession with someone known only slightly who becomes a major figure in the imagination is such a trope the other way round. It's using the situation in a very knowing way. I'm a bit irked by the use of the schizophrenia metaphor in the section I've just read, which I think is awfully Laingian romanticisation that I suspect one wouldn't use these days. I'm a bit surprised that when she and her husband (at one point I was, the whole thing is just finding a way to leave him and their relationship) are citing all sorts of literary/other cultural analogues, that they don't name-check Liasons Dangereuses...
Up Next
No idea. Possibly something a bit lighter... This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2475418.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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