i read this one fast (mostly while walking down the street... i may have seen my soulmate by northwestern today... someone else that reads books while walking... heh, i love it)...
i guess some compare it to cather in the rye, and honestly, i don't really remember catcher in the rye since i read it when i was 12... so i don't know if that's accurate or not...
basicaly it's about a girl being who she is. she grows up in florida, she's a lesbian, she has no desire to be a secretary or a wife, she's smart, and she wants to be something. there's discussion of roles and stereotypes in it too, which i really appreciated because i think life is really just to precious to try and form yourself into a role someone else has created for you... there is no set way to be a woman, a southerner, a lesbian, a christian, a certain race, whatever, no one can fit into any one predestined stereotypical role, we are all too amazingly different... ok, that was me going off on a tangent... anyways, i laughed a lot when i was reading and there were sad moments too... i love reading books where the characters just seem so real, so very human...
my favorite line: Damn, I wished the world would let me be myself.
thank god it's over. mary gaitskill's book was hell for me to get through.. pushing myself to finish this book felt a lot like pushing myself to finish assignments last semester, nearly impossible. that said, parts were quite moving, but overall i found myself making brittany's BLAH noise a lot.
basically this story is about how fucked up we become because of our families, our peers, our feelings of inadequacy, and our fears. it also focuses on a "great thinker" named anna granite (read: ayn rand, an author that always pissed me off a little too much) and her movement, definitism. both women had screwed up pasts and have very screwed up presents. one is quite large, and the other is thin... one is lonely and friendless and turns to food for comfort, the other is lonely and friendless and turns to sado masochistic sex for comfort... both seem to be responsible for their current state of suffering and despair, both are grasping for something they can't seem to attain. in the end, they find what is perhaps their first moment of safety and comfort in each other, something neither ever found in themselves. something that goes against the claims of definitism too.
it was just weird, and i just kept waiting for that turning point in the book where i'd go "oh, that's what i've been trudging page by page for" but it never really happened. much of this book disturbed me as well, it was like ripping someones body open and staring at their guts, entrails stringing along the ground, sliminess, meanness, cruelty, and hatred just oozing out.
in a poetry mood this monring so i wandered to poets.org and lo and behold it's national poetry month (it's kind of funny to me that there's a month or week or day out there for everything) anyways, i love poetry, but i only read it occasionally... i love reading poetry with other people... linds had a good collection when we were in freiburg... i loved listening to her read poetry... i'm settling with sharing a little online... so here's a poem from lucille clifton...
wishes for sons
i wish them cramps. i wish them a strange town and the last tampon. I wish them no 7-11.
i wish them one week early and wearing a white skirt. i wish them one week late.
later i wish them hot flashes and clots like you wouldn't believe. let the flashes come when they meet someone special. let the clots come when they want to.
let them think they have accepted arrogance in the universe, then bring them to gynecologists not unlike themselves.