(no subject)
I'm finally over my bitterness enough to rewatch the X-Files. Now nearing the end of Season 3, I must say that Teso dos Bichos really doesn't stand out as the fount of badness. I think coming right after Pusher and having no relationship moments at all made fandom bitter about it. The stuffed cat didn't help either, but honestly, it wasn't that much worse than many of S3's monsters of the week.
Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property: Promising title, no? I got less out of this than I'd hoped, in part because I've been thinking about art-as-gift for a while as part of my fandom involvement. Hyde has some interesting discussions of the gift and its incompatibility with a market economy; he insists that "real" art always has something in it of the gift, over and above what was bargained for. I'm not sure that distinction can be made meaningfully - I believe Buffy is art -- but he gives himself a way out by saying that real artists can participate in a market economy as long as they always add something more. Unfortunately, what that more is remains undefined, and it ends up feeling like he's just reversed the normal capitalist polarity of "that which people pay for has value, that which is free is crap." The last part of the book, with detailed discussions of Whitman and Pound and their relationships to creativity/art, seemed somewhat disconnected from the initial theorizing, and better suited to people who know more Whitman & Pound than I do.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System: This book was much more balanced and less annoying to me than Vaidhyanathan's first book, which was directed much more to attacking the U.S. copyright system, sometimes without sufficient justification. Now he examines Napster and its sequelae in a different light. His views have deepened and he recognizes a lot more complexity now, as well as the relevance of non-copyright concerns like security (including terrorism and democratic activism in repressive societies trying to control the Internet, like China). Unfortunately, that recognition of complexity isn't accompanied by any new suggestions for solutions. If you were looking for an overview of major problems raised by the information age, this book would be a clear introduction, with a bias against government-imposed solutions, but if you're already familiar with the debates, it doesn't add much.
Erving Goffman, Stigma: I'm trying to figure out what makes the past generation's theory worth reading - sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's not all that helpful because the more recent works already stand on the shoulders of the older greats. This book, subtitled "Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity," was of interest more as historical than theoretical document, I think because much of what I've read about discrimination has taken its big insights for granted. Goffman focuses on how "we normals" (yes, that's explicitly to whom the book is addressed) react to stigmatized groups, which include criminals, cripples, homosexuals, Negroes, ugly people, mental patients, and Jews, with the occasional Jewess. The unashamed terminology is the first big hurdle, reminding the reader how much things have changed in a few decades - the book was published in 1963. It's at least possible to understand what Goffman is saying with the following anecdote about a female doctor who tried not to identify herself as a doctor unless necessary: if she came across an accident scene at which "medical service was already being rendered the victim, or in which the victim was past helping, she would, upon examining the victim at a distance from the circle around him, quietly go her way without announcing her competence. In these situations she was what might be called a female impersonator" (emphasis added). But other cultural changes have moved faster, making Goffman's assumptions about what "goes without saying" invalid, as when Goffman comments that some symbols "merely confirm what other signs tell us about the individual, filling out our image of him in a redundant and unproblematic way," such as "male wedding rings in some contexts." I have no clue what those contexts would have been, as opposed to contexts in which the ring would be surprising, since I have no idea what made a man choose to wear or not wear a wedding ring in the 1950s and 1960s.
Dan Savage, Skipping Towards Gomorrah: Dan Savage is a better writer than the greased grooves of his weekly sex advice column suggest - I enjoy the column, but both this and his book about adopting a child with his partner are better, full of fascinating insights. This book, based on the idea of celebrating each one of the seven deadly sins as it's done in America, is a fascinating journey. My favorite introspective parts were Dan gambling (greed), experiencing the arrogance and the addictiveness, and Dan shooting a gun (anger), which he was inexplicably good at. The chapters on partner-swapping (lust) and the fat acceptance movement (gluttony) - which turns out not to have a lot of acceptance in it - were good excursions into stigmatized subcultures. A fairly critical reflection on Gay Pride Day (pride) succeeded in problematizing the concept while still appreciating why people want to celebrate it. Chapters on pot (sloth) and hanging out at a rich-folks' weight-loss camp (envy) were makeweight, but as a whole, it was a nice tour of the variety of ways in which Americans try to make themselves happy.
Steve Almond, Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America: Another nontraditional travel narrative, in which Almond moves from small candy producer to small candy producer across America, in search of people as dedicated to candy as he is - and finds them. Almond's uninhibited writing is the book's strength, as he embraces his freakdom, working on the theory that everyone is a freak about something. He narrates his experiences with candy and with American life in general in vibrant, often funny prose. Although I don't always agree with his evaluations - I happen to like coconut, and I didn't think that Five Star Bars were All That, though the caramel one is quite nice - I always enjoyed reading him rave and rant, as for example: "if one were to set Jujubes beside pencil erasers in a blind taste test, it would be tough to make a distinction, except that pencil erasers have more natural fruit flavor."
Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property: Promising title, no? I got less out of this than I'd hoped, in part because I've been thinking about art-as-gift for a while as part of my fandom involvement. Hyde has some interesting discussions of the gift and its incompatibility with a market economy; he insists that "real" art always has something in it of the gift, over and above what was bargained for. I'm not sure that distinction can be made meaningfully - I believe Buffy is art -- but he gives himself a way out by saying that real artists can participate in a market economy as long as they always add something more. Unfortunately, what that more is remains undefined, and it ends up feeling like he's just reversed the normal capitalist polarity of "that which people pay for has value, that which is free is crap." The last part of the book, with detailed discussions of Whitman and Pound and their relationships to creativity/art, seemed somewhat disconnected from the initial theorizing, and better suited to people who know more Whitman & Pound than I do.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System: This book was much more balanced and less annoying to me than Vaidhyanathan's first book, which was directed much more to attacking the U.S. copyright system, sometimes without sufficient justification. Now he examines Napster and its sequelae in a different light. His views have deepened and he recognizes a lot more complexity now, as well as the relevance of non-copyright concerns like security (including terrorism and democratic activism in repressive societies trying to control the Internet, like China). Unfortunately, that recognition of complexity isn't accompanied by any new suggestions for solutions. If you were looking for an overview of major problems raised by the information age, this book would be a clear introduction, with a bias against government-imposed solutions, but if you're already familiar with the debates, it doesn't add much.
Erving Goffman, Stigma: I'm trying to figure out what makes the past generation's theory worth reading - sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's not all that helpful because the more recent works already stand on the shoulders of the older greats. This book, subtitled "Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity," was of interest more as historical than theoretical document, I think because much of what I've read about discrimination has taken its big insights for granted. Goffman focuses on how "we normals" (yes, that's explicitly to whom the book is addressed) react to stigmatized groups, which include criminals, cripples, homosexuals, Negroes, ugly people, mental patients, and Jews, with the occasional Jewess. The unashamed terminology is the first big hurdle, reminding the reader how much things have changed in a few decades - the book was published in 1963. It's at least possible to understand what Goffman is saying with the following anecdote about a female doctor who tried not to identify herself as a doctor unless necessary: if she came across an accident scene at which "medical service was already being rendered the victim, or in which the victim was past helping, she would, upon examining the victim at a distance from the circle around him, quietly go her way without announcing her competence. In these situations she was what might be called a female impersonator" (emphasis added). But other cultural changes have moved faster, making Goffman's assumptions about what "goes without saying" invalid, as when Goffman comments that some symbols "merely confirm what other signs tell us about the individual, filling out our image of him in a redundant and unproblematic way," such as "male wedding rings in some contexts." I have no clue what those contexts would have been, as opposed to contexts in which the ring would be surprising, since I have no idea what made a man choose to wear or not wear a wedding ring in the 1950s and 1960s.
Dan Savage, Skipping Towards Gomorrah: Dan Savage is a better writer than the greased grooves of his weekly sex advice column suggest - I enjoy the column, but both this and his book about adopting a child with his partner are better, full of fascinating insights. This book, based on the idea of celebrating each one of the seven deadly sins as it's done in America, is a fascinating journey. My favorite introspective parts were Dan gambling (greed), experiencing the arrogance and the addictiveness, and Dan shooting a gun (anger), which he was inexplicably good at. The chapters on partner-swapping (lust) and the fat acceptance movement (gluttony) - which turns out not to have a lot of acceptance in it - were good excursions into stigmatized subcultures. A fairly critical reflection on Gay Pride Day (pride) succeeded in problematizing the concept while still appreciating why people want to celebrate it. Chapters on pot (sloth) and hanging out at a rich-folks' weight-loss camp (envy) were makeweight, but as a whole, it was a nice tour of the variety of ways in which Americans try to make themselves happy.
Steve Almond, Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America: Another nontraditional travel narrative, in which Almond moves from small candy producer to small candy producer across America, in search of people as dedicated to candy as he is - and finds them. Almond's uninhibited writing is the book's strength, as he embraces his freakdom, working on the theory that everyone is a freak about something. He narrates his experiences with candy and with American life in general in vibrant, often funny prose. Although I don't always agree with his evaluations - I happen to like coconut, and I didn't think that Five Star Bars were All That, though the caramel one is quite nice - I always enjoyed reading him rave and rant, as for example: "if one were to set Jujubes beside pencil erasers in a blind taste test, it would be tough to make a distinction, except that pencil erasers have more natural fruit flavor."