Reading Roundup, July 2024
Jul. 30th, 2024 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
phantomtomatoThe Beautiful Room is Empty - Edmund White
I like how Edmund White writes. His prose is filled with details that convey immediacy—it must be this time and this place and none other. Usually the type of prose I see praised is about description so fnature, or metaphors using it—your Austens and the like. White doesn’t have much of that. The closest that he gets are the times he describes bodies, especially of men he’s sleeping with. It’s more culture that earns his attention, the milieu of life in that city or town during those years. As an American whose life has touched many of those same places, albeit during different decades, I really love reading it. He is unsparing but somehow not unromantic.
He’s also extremely judgmental and full of prejudices of his class/race/era. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this at first, in part because his prejudices are more recent and recognizable, than those in Victorian British novels. But one thing I appreciated was how much that judgment was applied to himself—it came to feel more like a reflection of his self-disgust, the constant theme of his internalized homophobia leaking out and hitting everyone nearby. Towards the end of the book he relates a conversation with a lesbian friend whose politics, in the late 1960s, are turning feminist. He gives her the perspective to call him on his prejudices. The conversation conveys so much about how White’s awareness of racial issues, misogyny, and gay rights must have changed during the twenty years of life between the real analogue of this experience and when the book was written. But he refrains from absolving this portrayal of his younger self from having held those views or felt those things.
The novel ends on the Stonewall Uprising, which White was actually present at. It is a strong thematic ending, suggesting his turn to an awareness of gay community, social and political, after a youth refusing to fully acknowledge or accept this part of himself. Which doesn’t mean that he was celibate—so much of this book is an unflinching recounting of cruising culture and sordid public hookups, which White describes as a sort of debasement even as he recognizes himself as fully a peer to the other men engaging in it. He is perpetually terrified of his femininity. It debilitates him, making him unable to see himself as he really is. It also connects him to many other characters suffering from self-image issues, and the series of relationship failures (friends and lovers both) he describes form the basis of most of the novel.
There is one more book in this semi-autobiographical series, and I understand that it’s longer than this or the first (A Boy’s Own Story). I read ABOS two years ago and loved it, but I think I will hasten picking up the third one. This leaves off in a place which promises there is more personal development to come, and I’m very curious to see it.
Oh, and a final note—the entire novel is written in first person POV (love this), and White avoids anyone ever addressing the narrator by name. It’s incredible, actually. The effect is so convincing. We know the character so well that we forget we have nothing to call him.
Run Away With Me, Girl - Battan
This manga has really gorgeous art. There is so much movement—the artist draws hair with particular personality—but also volume. The characters are sort of weightless, allowing them to flow across the panels, but their bodies curve and take up space on each page in a way that I don’t often see in manga. It’s very compelling, as so much of the story depends on our ability to empathize with them, so letting their physical forms be the tableau through which the story is told (as opposed to more typical backgrounds or objects or action+SFX-type movement) is effective at creating that empathy.
Two women, Midori and Makumura (Maki), were girlfriends in high school. But when they graduated, Midori sprung the usual “that was just childish play, now it’s time to grow up and have adult relationships with men” line on Maki. We meet Maki again about a decade later. She is listless, going through the motions of life but intending to become a spinster. She knows she’s a lesbianm but that teenage breakup has left her unable or unwilling to try dating again. A chance reunion with Midori (you know I love reunions!) throws their lives back together, and what follows is sixteen chapters of moving, challenging romance as we get to see how Midori’s pursuit of marriage and conventionality played out for her.
One aspect of the story that I think was done especially well was the handling of Midori’s existing relationship. She is engaged to a guy when we reconnect with her, and somehow RAWMG manages to thread the needle of portraying infidelity and an abusive relationships so that we can still sympathize with both characters—though I was rooting for Midori to leave her fiancé, there was a line in the final chapter, which serves as an epilogue, indicating that Midori and her now-ex have a functional co-parenting relationships and that he is a good father. I was genuinely happy to see that.
I like infidelity in queer romances. I know it’s a controversial trope, but it works for me to convey that insecurity about embracing queerness and letting go of the safety of heteronormativity. A good allegorical affair lets me experience again the transitory period where one might think, can I exist this way, split between these two forces? Can I be happy with queerness as a side piece, a fraction of my life, a hobby that I sequester to nights and weekends? I am luck to live at a time and in a place where I can answer those with ‘no,’ where I was able to choose being out—but that’s still an impossibility for so many, and stories which really embrace the difficulty of that choice are dear to me. It can be extremely difficult. I understand why even a bad relationship could be so appealing to Midori.
Overall, a great read, not too long, and I recommend it to anyone who is intrigued by lesbian identity drama with a hard-earned romance and great art.
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
I did not finish this around the halfway mark. I want to be upfront that this was not about a dislike of Fanny, though she does not generally appeal to me. The book was too slow-paced for me overall, and though I suspect that the drama at its climax would be interesting (Henry being dastardly, Tom being ill), I was still so far off from it that the slog did not seem worthwhile.
On Fanny—an FFA nonny recently called her a woobie, and I agree. It is funny and apt. Compared to Anne and Lizzy, my other two Austen heroines, Fanny has much less going on outside of her woes. Austen clearly likes to write the unfortunate overlooked sister/cousin, that is her thing I guess, but Anne shows us mettle in taking charge of her injured nephew’s recover and Lizzy gleefully flouts convention at ever tern, both things established early in their narratives. The early Fanny scene that sticks with me is her balefully watching on as Edmund offers Fanny’s mare to Mary Crawford, day after day, and says nothing. (Then of course she becomes ill and this injustice is noticed, in woobie fashion.) That, or the time she sits on a park bench for an hour and frets and mopes.
I get the social context around why she does not act. Actually, I am intrigued by the prospect of an Austen heroine who does not act, since my other two did. Where I depart from the book is in the narrative showing a disinclination to examine Fanny’s thinking. The reader can surely judge the insults and abuses to which she is subjected, but I did not feel as though I could say much about what gives her pride or satisfaction, or what are her mundane preferences for how she spends her days. This is all raised to the level of a DNF because Edmund is just such a prig (I compare him to Mr. Collins), and Fanny’s romantic jealousy being assumed. I wanted some stronger attempt to connect the reader to her affection for him, for the narrative to more openly acknowledge her shift to romantic jealousy, and probably also for Edmund/Mary to be a bit less convincing. Were they a good fit that I saw? No, not at all. But they very much did have crushes on one another and I was sold on believing it.
Anyway, a break from Austen for me. Back onto Forster, my last of his novels, and either more Edmund White or some Alan Hollinghurst to follow.
I like how Edmund White writes. His prose is filled with details that convey immediacy—it must be this time and this place and none other. Usually the type of prose I see praised is about description so fnature, or metaphors using it—your Austens and the like. White doesn’t have much of that. The closest that he gets are the times he describes bodies, especially of men he’s sleeping with. It’s more culture that earns his attention, the milieu of life in that city or town during those years. As an American whose life has touched many of those same places, albeit during different decades, I really love reading it. He is unsparing but somehow not unromantic.
He’s also extremely judgmental and full of prejudices of his class/race/era. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this at first, in part because his prejudices are more recent and recognizable, than those in Victorian British novels. But one thing I appreciated was how much that judgment was applied to himself—it came to feel more like a reflection of his self-disgust, the constant theme of his internalized homophobia leaking out and hitting everyone nearby. Towards the end of the book he relates a conversation with a lesbian friend whose politics, in the late 1960s, are turning feminist. He gives her the perspective to call him on his prejudices. The conversation conveys so much about how White’s awareness of racial issues, misogyny, and gay rights must have changed during the twenty years of life between the real analogue of this experience and when the book was written. But he refrains from absolving this portrayal of his younger self from having held those views or felt those things.
The novel ends on the Stonewall Uprising, which White was actually present at. It is a strong thematic ending, suggesting his turn to an awareness of gay community, social and political, after a youth refusing to fully acknowledge or accept this part of himself. Which doesn’t mean that he was celibate—so much of this book is an unflinching recounting of cruising culture and sordid public hookups, which White describes as a sort of debasement even as he recognizes himself as fully a peer to the other men engaging in it. He is perpetually terrified of his femininity. It debilitates him, making him unable to see himself as he really is. It also connects him to many other characters suffering from self-image issues, and the series of relationship failures (friends and lovers both) he describes form the basis of most of the novel.
There is one more book in this semi-autobiographical series, and I understand that it’s longer than this or the first (A Boy’s Own Story). I read ABOS two years ago and loved it, but I think I will hasten picking up the third one. This leaves off in a place which promises there is more personal development to come, and I’m very curious to see it.
Oh, and a final note—the entire novel is written in first person POV (love this), and White avoids anyone ever addressing the narrator by name. It’s incredible, actually. The effect is so convincing. We know the character so well that we forget we have nothing to call him.
Run Away With Me, Girl - Battan
This manga has really gorgeous art. There is so much movement—the artist draws hair with particular personality—but also volume. The characters are sort of weightless, allowing them to flow across the panels, but their bodies curve and take up space on each page in a way that I don’t often see in manga. It’s very compelling, as so much of the story depends on our ability to empathize with them, so letting their physical forms be the tableau through which the story is told (as opposed to more typical backgrounds or objects or action+SFX-type movement) is effective at creating that empathy.
Two women, Midori and Makumura (Maki), were girlfriends in high school. But when they graduated, Midori sprung the usual “that was just childish play, now it’s time to grow up and have adult relationships with men” line on Maki. We meet Maki again about a decade later. She is listless, going through the motions of life but intending to become a spinster. She knows she’s a lesbianm but that teenage breakup has left her unable or unwilling to try dating again. A chance reunion with Midori (you know I love reunions!) throws their lives back together, and what follows is sixteen chapters of moving, challenging romance as we get to see how Midori’s pursuit of marriage and conventionality played out for her.
One aspect of the story that I think was done especially well was the handling of Midori’s existing relationship. She is engaged to a guy when we reconnect with her, and somehow RAWMG manages to thread the needle of portraying infidelity and an abusive relationships so that we can still sympathize with both characters—though I was rooting for Midori to leave her fiancé, there was a line in the final chapter, which serves as an epilogue, indicating that Midori and her now-ex have a functional co-parenting relationships and that he is a good father. I was genuinely happy to see that.
I like infidelity in queer romances. I know it’s a controversial trope, but it works for me to convey that insecurity about embracing queerness and letting go of the safety of heteronormativity. A good allegorical affair lets me experience again the transitory period where one might think, can I exist this way, split between these two forces? Can I be happy with queerness as a side piece, a fraction of my life, a hobby that I sequester to nights and weekends? I am luck to live at a time and in a place where I can answer those with ‘no,’ where I was able to choose being out—but that’s still an impossibility for so many, and stories which really embrace the difficulty of that choice are dear to me. It can be extremely difficult. I understand why even a bad relationship could be so appealing to Midori.
Overall, a great read, not too long, and I recommend it to anyone who is intrigued by lesbian identity drama with a hard-earned romance and great art.
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
I did not finish this around the halfway mark. I want to be upfront that this was not about a dislike of Fanny, though she does not generally appeal to me. The book was too slow-paced for me overall, and though I suspect that the drama at its climax would be interesting (Henry being dastardly, Tom being ill), I was still so far off from it that the slog did not seem worthwhile.
On Fanny—an FFA nonny recently called her a woobie, and I agree. It is funny and apt. Compared to Anne and Lizzy, my other two Austen heroines, Fanny has much less going on outside of her woes. Austen clearly likes to write the unfortunate overlooked sister/cousin, that is her thing I guess, but Anne shows us mettle in taking charge of her injured nephew’s recover and Lizzy gleefully flouts convention at ever tern, both things established early in their narratives. The early Fanny scene that sticks with me is her balefully watching on as Edmund offers Fanny’s mare to Mary Crawford, day after day, and says nothing. (Then of course she becomes ill and this injustice is noticed, in woobie fashion.) That, or the time she sits on a park bench for an hour and frets and mopes.
I get the social context around why she does not act. Actually, I am intrigued by the prospect of an Austen heroine who does not act, since my other two did. Where I depart from the book is in the narrative showing a disinclination to examine Fanny’s thinking. The reader can surely judge the insults and abuses to which she is subjected, but I did not feel as though I could say much about what gives her pride or satisfaction, or what are her mundane preferences for how she spends her days. This is all raised to the level of a DNF because Edmund is just such a prig (I compare him to Mr. Collins), and Fanny’s romantic jealousy being assumed. I wanted some stronger attempt to connect the reader to her affection for him, for the narrative to more openly acknowledge her shift to romantic jealousy, and probably also for Edmund/Mary to be a bit less convincing. Were they a good fit that I saw? No, not at all. But they very much did have crushes on one another and I was sold on believing it.
Anyway, a break from Austen for me. Back onto Forster, my last of his novels, and either more Edmund White or some Alan Hollinghurst to follow.
