reading wednesday

[boxofdelights]

Lookee here comes the prodigal son
Fetch him a tall glass of water
But there's none in the cup cause he drank it all up
Left for the prodigal daughter
Oh
Cotton-eyed Joe

--Michelle Shocked


• What are you reading?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey, for classics book group. When I read this as a teen, I completely missed the misogyny! I could see that Nurse Ratched was evil, but I thought that was just her. I think I didn't really identify with women, then; there were men and women and kids, and I was a kid. And civilization was determined to suppress everything, in kids, that prevented them from conforming to the appropriate model citizen: foolishness, willfulness, the failure to see things the way everyone else sees them, anger, despair, all sexual feeling outside the bonds of wedlock. But Kesey thinks that it is women who want to stamp all that out, in men. McMurphy gets crucified for fighting too much and fucking too much, but in real life, girls get punished much more harshly for much smaller acts of anger or sexual desire than boys. How did Kesey not know that?

Also I am listening to My Own Devices - True Stories from the Road, by Dessa.

• What did you recently finish reading?

Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption, by Susan Devan Harness, for Tawanda book group.

• What do you think you’ll read next?

Blackfish City, by Sam Miller, for SF book group.

• What are you watching?

At Eternity's Gate, which is beautiful and strange, though not as beautiful and strange as Vincent Van Gogh.

Comments

[lunabee34]

I should read that. I think we have a copy. I haven't seen the movie either.

[kore]

The movie is one of those Jack Nicholson 1970s set pieces. If you like Nicholson, you love those movies. (I loved Chinatown for a long time before I became allergic to Jack Nicholson.)

[lunabee34]

I think I am actually fairly neutral on him. He scared the crap out of my in the shining, and I love his campy take on the Joker, and after that I'm kind of drawing a blank on other movies I've seen him in. I have huge, huge holes in my movie viewing because I wasn't allowed to watch a lot of stuff as a kid/teen.

[kore]

LOL, my dad insisted on showing me ENTIRELY age inappropriate stuff he said was great cinema, like The Godfather, Looking for Mr Goodbar, and other (white male) classic seventies movies. The ones I saw Nicholson in were Chinatown, Five Easy Pieces (famous scene of him insulting a waitress), Easy Rider, Carnal Knowledge, King of Marvin Gardens (double bill with Atlantic City), The Shining, Postman Always Rings Twice, Terms of Endearment, Prizzi's Honour, Heartburn, Batman -- and then I just SNAPPED and decided I never needed to see another Jack Nicholson-starring film again, and not coincidentally left for college and never lived with my parents again, too. I don't think I have seen a film with him in a major part in it since.

[lunabee34]

*nods nods*

I've seen none of those except the two I mentioned. I missed a ton of the classic 80s movies as well.

[kore]

My dad was DELIGHTED with the first home video machines and was an early and frequent if often inept user. Same with computers. I still remember him and my mom coming home from "a computer class" at the local community college with some box you could hook up to the TV set to have a computer at home! (of course it didn't work) He would've gotten a Laserdisc player for the image quality, but they were way too expensive.

(Lots of the classic 80s movies are wildly overrated, and/or have REALLY bad racist and sexist bits)

[lunabee34]

My parents were early tech adopters, too, with computers and video equipment. So many VHS tapes of us as kids.

My uncle had laserdisc.

[mrissa]

Kesey not knowing that is part and parcel with why I steer clear of grown-ass men who declare that they aren't going to be boring grown-ups. Because growing up is required to look outside your own head and notice that you might not be the most ill-done-by person in the history of forever, and Kesey--like the hordes of other whiny straight white dude writers of his generation who were enshrined in my lit classes instead of the more interesting people who were writing at the same time--never, ever did that.

[kore]

I think I didn't really identify with women, then; there were men and women and kids, and I was a kid. And civilization was determined to suppress everything, in kids, that prevented them from conforming to the appropriate model citizen: foolishness, willfulness, the failure to see things the way everyone else sees them, anger, despair, all sexual feeling outside the bonds of wedlock. But Kesey thinks that it is women who want to stamp all that out, in men. McMurphy gets crucified for fighting too much and fucking too much, but in real life, girls get punished much more harshly for much smaller acts of anger or sexual desire than boys.

OMG, that's exactly it. I read a lot of classics when I was younger and like you said, it's men women and kids (or adolescents), and then later I read them again and it's like the anti-woman sentiments punch you in the gut. It's so offhand a lot of the time! And it's so baked in. And the women are monsters, or angels, or devils, or saints, always tormenting or saving the men. Never human.

(There's a whole other rant about the supposed Native American narrator, but anyway.)

[jesse_the_k]

I loved listening to Dessa sing, and that carried me through My Own Devices -- I'll admit that I was sad that she spent so much energy on what was clearly a doomed relationship, although fortunately she has so much energy that she can also create a bunch of great music while pining.

It's intriguing that kid!you saw the world as male, female, kid. Perhaps because my father was a 5-star MCP and it was my sister, my mother and me, but I saw the world as male/female from a young age.

At Eternity's Gate sounds fascinating -- thanks for letting me know about it. Have you seen Loving Vincent? It manages to animate oil painting, and it's very very pretty.

Kate and Anna McGarrigle made a great song about progeniture:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNnXG9Et-M0