The Sixteen Pleasures by Robert Hellenga has almost sixteen separate themes and they are not tightly woven together. After finishing the book and asking myself, what was his point or his message, why did he write it, I have to give equal if minimal weight to: the importance of art as life-defining; the attraction of a contemplative life over an erotic one; the false love of a foreign country (read Italy); the geographic dispersal of the American family leaving it rootless versus the generations long home in Abruzzi; etc., etc.
Hellenga is clever and reaches a couple of peak writing experience. I particularly liked the parallelism between peddling the Renaissance pornographic book bound into a religious tract and the Rota annulment trial, steeped in voyeuristic marital relations or the lack thereof. Especially when Postiglione buys fake decades old post cards from a store that caters to making forgeries specific to the requirements of Catholic law. At that point, the theme of religion vis a vis sex played its strongest.
But Margot, the female lead character, is wimpy, a mediocre bookbinder, lured and tempted more by the nuns she lives with while restoring artifacts destroyed by the flood of the Arno in Florence than she is by her series of men. Like the manual labor of drying soaked folios and resewing bindings, Margot seems more comfortable in the mechanics of sex, the sixteen illustrations, than in the emotional aspects of lust or love.
Both Margot and Postiglione are overaffected by trivial events: she "falls in love" seeing him bringing her a bouquet as he walks across the Plaza; he falls out of love when she takes him to a Chinese restaurant and he cannot master chopsticks. They part, he returns to his wife, she returns to her doldrums.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Which Was More Painful: Justine's Abuses or Reading Justine?
Ultimately, I did not care about what agonies Justine was subject too. Centuries of distance made all her inflicted atrocities seem mundane and believable, if still distasteful and against the moral majority's view of sex. Justine is more than wimpy. She never learns from her experiences which dooms her, almost rightly so, to repeat them.
My only lodestar for plodding through the 300 interminable pages of the story was to see if there was any redemption for virtue. Or any morale that de Sade appears to promise to his dedicatee. I'm roundly disappointed.
But the context is universal ... what with the IMF head being charged with rape, A-nold getting kicked out by JFK's niece and the Vatican commissioning a John Jay study that concluded that the Age of Aquarius was the root cause of pedophile priests. Justine is as real, or more so, today than ever. Unpleasant, but all too human.
My only lodestar for plodding through the 300 interminable pages of the story was to see if there was any redemption for virtue. Or any morale that de Sade appears to promise to his dedicatee. I'm roundly disappointed.
But the context is universal ... what with the IMF head being charged with rape, A-nold getting kicked out by JFK's niece and the Vatican commissioning a John Jay study that concluded that the Age of Aquarius was the root cause of pedophile priests. Justine is as real, or more so, today than ever. Unpleasant, but all too human.
Monday, May 16, 2011
"If you love someone, set them free"
It's quite atypical for my face to face book club to suggest a book that overlaps with my blog themes but it happened quite serendipitously for June. One member suggested we read Just Kids by Patti Smith to commemorate Gay and Lesbian month. Being a somewhat acquiescing member, I reserved it at the library ...especially since the group's selection for May was so awful.
Anyway, I loved Just Kids. We have new flash cards for our project meetings at work, and one says "my bias is showing" and I readily admit it. Left to my own devices, I would read nothing but murder mysteries and minor biographies, looking to find famous people popping into the lives of the second or third ring of celebrity. Patti meets everyone who's anyone in the late 60's and 70s in NYC ... a time when I haunted the City as well, but never in the same circles.
Another bias or two of mine are not liking punk rock or Mapplethorpe's sexually infused photographs. I wasn't expecting much except voyeurism in Just Kids and was blown away. Patti can write!! Phenomenally well, poetically, lyrically, with a good story thread and so, so many interesting people, and minute attention to detail. But making that detail so much more personal and relevant than The Museum of Love, or is my American versus mid-Eastern bias now showing.
Not only does Patti and Robert live through the seminal tragic events of culture from 1967 onward, but she marks all the days of her life referencing who was born, died or had some other historic significance on any day she recollects as a marker in her experience. She haunts museums and book stores looking for art materials and bargains. She seems so female and like me, despite both Robert and Allen Ginsberg finding her attractive for her most masculine of features.
My time then in NYC was split between political protest and a need for physical refinements. What art I craved was theatrical not musical, museum not gallery. But she captures the freedom and fluidity of the era. Her and Robert's moving definition of sexual traits does not ring false to me. We all dressed funny, experimentally, and talked on end of what it meant to adhere to stereotypes. We all wrote. We acted in college adaptations of Hair to hide behind theatrics in order to disclose our personal truth or dare.
So, after this praise, how does Just Kids rate on the passion meter for 2011? Patti is Victorianly discrete when it comes to sex and passion. She no more lets the reader into her bed with Robert than with Sam Shepard or Blue Oyster Cult. Her husband lands in the story like an extraterrestrial, lending credence to the excuse that she married him not to have to change her last name. But her love of Robert and his in return is tremendously, achingly passionate. There is a love that is artistic, between muse and artist ... and even when Robert's migrates to Sam and his money, Patti remains top in his Pantheon as the first.
The book is romantic and passionate if not an expose. That intrigue and guise ennobles it.
Anyway, I loved Just Kids. We have new flash cards for our project meetings at work, and one says "my bias is showing" and I readily admit it. Left to my own devices, I would read nothing but murder mysteries and minor biographies, looking to find famous people popping into the lives of the second or third ring of celebrity. Patti meets everyone who's anyone in the late 60's and 70s in NYC ... a time when I haunted the City as well, but never in the same circles.
Another bias or two of mine are not liking punk rock or Mapplethorpe's sexually infused photographs. I wasn't expecting much except voyeurism in Just Kids and was blown away. Patti can write!! Phenomenally well, poetically, lyrically, with a good story thread and so, so many interesting people, and minute attention to detail. But making that detail so much more personal and relevant than The Museum of Love, or is my American versus mid-Eastern bias now showing.
Not only does Patti and Robert live through the seminal tragic events of culture from 1967 onward, but she marks all the days of her life referencing who was born, died or had some other historic significance on any day she recollects as a marker in her experience. She haunts museums and book stores looking for art materials and bargains. She seems so female and like me, despite both Robert and Allen Ginsberg finding her attractive for her most masculine of features.
My time then in NYC was split between political protest and a need for physical refinements. What art I craved was theatrical not musical, museum not gallery. But she captures the freedom and fluidity of the era. Her and Robert's moving definition of sexual traits does not ring false to me. We all dressed funny, experimentally, and talked on end of what it meant to adhere to stereotypes. We all wrote. We acted in college adaptations of Hair to hide behind theatrics in order to disclose our personal truth or dare.
So, after this praise, how does Just Kids rate on the passion meter for 2011? Patti is Victorianly discrete when it comes to sex and passion. She no more lets the reader into her bed with Robert than with Sam Shepard or Blue Oyster Cult. Her husband lands in the story like an extraterrestrial, lending credence to the excuse that she married him not to have to change her last name. But her love of Robert and his in return is tremendously, achingly passionate. There is a love that is artistic, between muse and artist ... and even when Robert's migrates to Sam and his money, Patti remains top in his Pantheon as the first.
The book is romantic and passionate if not an expose. That intrigue and guise ennobles it.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Superficial and Shallow: A Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman
I first read about this compendium when Ackerman's latest book was reviewed in the newspaper, her account of her husband's recovery for a stroke. Never heard of her before and thought I'd add her Love book to the lust list. Definitely, she too is on a quest to understand and contribute to the understanding of love. Now on reflection, this book is similar to the 2009 list capstone, the book with some short entry for each of the fifty states. Some takes on what a place meant to a particular author were memorable, most were the equivalent of a Corn Palace or other tacky tourist traps.
Not to suggest there are no quotables in ANHOL, about they do not string together to mark an author-improved perspective. One look at the content page, and the reader sees a scatter-shot approach: from history, literature, famous men, chemicals and mores. Too broad, too shallow.
But I will cut and paste those more poetic snippets from Ackerman's love almanac:
On courtly love in medieval times as described by troubadours: "the lying awake at night, the devoured glances, the secret codes, the fetishes and tokens, the steamy fantasizing, the moaning to one's pillow, the fear of discovery, the agony of separation, the torrents of bliss followed by desperate hours."
On Tristan and Iseult: "Can one excavate the past? Is it possible to become acquainted with our forgotten selves? At what point should one allow them to be castaways? Never, if what we really seek is ... the most intense excitement, receptivity, and awareness ... Without hurdles, the mind doesn't take wing, and there can be no flights of passion ... When we hear the Tristan myth ... we crave the lover's fire ... we could use ourselves in every pore and cell, feel breathtakingly alive, be rocketed right out of our skins and hurled into a state of supernatural glory, where we feel as lusty and powerful as gods.?
On Proust: " ... point about live is that it doesn't exist in real time, only in anticipated time or remembered time. The only paradise is the one that's been lost. Love requires absence, obstacles, infidelities, jealousy, manipulation, outright lies, pretend reconciliations, tantrums, and betrayals. Meanwhile the lovers fret, hope, agonize, and dream. Torment whips them to a higher level of feeling, and from that mental froth comes love. Love is not a biological instinct, nor an evolutionary imperative, but a feat of the imagination which thrives on difficulty."
Her variation on red to blue flam is all biochemical: " ... The infatuation chemical: PEA phenylethylamine, a molecule that speeds up the flow of information between nerve cells, whips the brain into a frenzy of excitement, which is why lovers feel euphoric, rejuvenated, optimistic and energized ... and the attachment chemical: endorphins... infatuation subsides and a new group of chemicals take over, the morphine-like opiates of the mind, which calm and reassure. The sweet blistering rage of infatuation gives way to a narcotic peacefulness, a sense of security a belonging. Being in love is a state of chaotic equilibrium."
Finally, Ackerman can write strongly when she is on her own and not trying to personally interpret all of love's domain. For example, this is almost poetic: "The towns in upstate New York are like railway stations, where at any moment hundreds of lives converge --people carrying small satchels of worry or disbelief, people racing down the slippery corridors of youth, people slowly dragging the steamer trunk of a trauma, people fresh from the suburbs of hope, people troubled by timetables, people keen to arrive, people whose minds are like small place settings, people whose aging faces are sundials, people desperate and alone who board a bullet train in the vastness of nothing and race hell-bent to the extremities of nowhere."
Not to suggest there are no quotables in ANHOL, about they do not string together to mark an author-improved perspective. One look at the content page, and the reader sees a scatter-shot approach: from history, literature, famous men, chemicals and mores. Too broad, too shallow.
But I will cut and paste those more poetic snippets from Ackerman's love almanac:
On courtly love in medieval times as described by troubadours: "the lying awake at night, the devoured glances, the secret codes, the fetishes and tokens, the steamy fantasizing, the moaning to one's pillow, the fear of discovery, the agony of separation, the torrents of bliss followed by desperate hours."
On Tristan and Iseult: "Can one excavate the past? Is it possible to become acquainted with our forgotten selves? At what point should one allow them to be castaways? Never, if what we really seek is ... the most intense excitement, receptivity, and awareness ... Without hurdles, the mind doesn't take wing, and there can be no flights of passion ... When we hear the Tristan myth ... we crave the lover's fire ... we could use ourselves in every pore and cell, feel breathtakingly alive, be rocketed right out of our skins and hurled into a state of supernatural glory, where we feel as lusty and powerful as gods.?
On Proust: " ... point about live is that it doesn't exist in real time, only in anticipated time or remembered time. The only paradise is the one that's been lost. Love requires absence, obstacles, infidelities, jealousy, manipulation, outright lies, pretend reconciliations, tantrums, and betrayals. Meanwhile the lovers fret, hope, agonize, and dream. Torment whips them to a higher level of feeling, and from that mental froth comes love. Love is not a biological instinct, nor an evolutionary imperative, but a feat of the imagination which thrives on difficulty."
Her variation on red to blue flam is all biochemical: " ... The infatuation chemical: PEA phenylethylamine, a molecule that speeds up the flow of information between nerve cells, whips the brain into a frenzy of excitement, which is why lovers feel euphoric, rejuvenated, optimistic and energized ... and the attachment chemical: endorphins... infatuation subsides and a new group of chemicals take over, the morphine-like opiates of the mind, which calm and reassure. The sweet blistering rage of infatuation gives way to a narcotic peacefulness, a sense of security a belonging. Being in love is a state of chaotic equilibrium."
Finally, Ackerman can write strongly when she is on her own and not trying to personally interpret all of love's domain. For example, this is almost poetic: "The towns in upstate New York are like railway stations, where at any moment hundreds of lives converge --people carrying small satchels of worry or disbelief, people racing down the slippery corridors of youth, people slowly dragging the steamer trunk of a trauma, people fresh from the suburbs of hope, people troubled by timetables, people keen to arrive, people whose minds are like small place settings, people whose aging faces are sundials, people desperate and alone who board a bullet train in the vastness of nothing and race hell-bent to the extremities of nowhere."
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