What Are You Reading (not on a) Wednesday
Jan. 2nd, 2015 05:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricCurrently Reading: Barbara Baynton: Between Two Worlds, a biography of an Australian author. Contemporary with Lawson, Patterson et al, and friends with Rose Scott and her lot as well, but hardly ever mentioned alongside either set. A .txt file of her collection 'Bush Studies' is on Gutenberg Australia.
Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, Nancy D. Polikoff: I've been wanting to read this for ages, and second-hand copies online were stupidly expensive. Picked up this one at Goulds for 16 bucks, and lo, it is good. Super US-centric, but that does have the benefit of explaining a lot of the standard assumptions of US-oriented marriage activists for me. It's an interesting read. Polikoff takes the line that many people, not just same-sex couples, are disadvantaged by a system which privileges married couples over unmarried as well as hetero over other, and marriage over other family structures (she cited the example of US woman who was denied hospital access to see her stepson, and a woman who was denied the right to have her elderly father added to her rent-controlled household because he was not her partner). Polikoff interprets 60s and 70s feminist, lesbian and other civil rights challenges to the law as aiming not to expand the benefits of marriage but to ensure legal and financial security for various family types: illegitimate children, lesbian mothers, stay-at-home fathers and extended family groups were all important. She details a range of legal changes arising from this agenda (eg, one chap who won the right to receive survivors' benefits after the death of his wife, his lawyer successfully arguing that although he had not previously been supported by his wife, one of the key purposes of survivors' benefits was to allow a child to continue to be raised by a stay-at-home parent after the death of the other parent, and he, the father, would be able to do so if he could receive survivor's benefits.)
This all hits very close to home, as some of the not-gay-marriage scenarios she outlines involve foster families, extended relative carers, etc. So it's interesting reading but is kind of stressing me out.
Recently Finished:
A stack of Harry Potter fanfiction, onna plane.
The Bridegroom: Stories by Ha Jin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I actually didn't finish this collection. It was very well-written, no doubt about that, but I found its appeal very... variable. For instance, the longest and most-acclaimed story, concerning efforts by a regional Chinese TV company to stage a tiger fight with a real tiger (and the hilarious fall-out that ensues) didn't grab me at all.
The collection had many things I like in short stories: domestic detail, a knack for indicating cultural particularities while conveying that they are to be taken for granted and not exotic at all.
Initially I was annoyed by the overwhelming masculine focus of the first half of the collection - particularly in the case of the title story, The Bridegroom, I thought the choice of the father-in-law's POV for a story about a successful young husband arrested for homosexual behaviour was... an oversight. The wife, who seemed perfectly happy to have married him, or the mother-in-law, who seemed to think her daughter had done well in securing a husband who made no onerous sexual demands, would have made more interesting POV narrators to me.
The gender imbalance did improve in the second half of the book. I particularly enjoyed the story, told through a child's eyes, of the kindergarten teacher who enlisted children to harvest fresh vegetables, but said vegetables never made it to the table because the teacher was (the reader deduces) using them to pay or bribe a doctor for her abortion.
In terms of form, I particularly enjoyed the story of a poet and academic who crashed and burned out of his job - told in the form of a letter of reference to a new prospective employer of said academic, written by a former student now holding a teaching post. The complexity of the student-teacher relationship, the student's growing disillusionment with his mentor, and the damning-with-faint-praise format of reference were all gorgeously rendered.
The Harp In The South by Ruth Park
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was as delightful as promised. I've not read many stories about poor urban australians, or novels about poor australians which aren't comedies. Comic tales of the struggling family on the land, yes, but urban slum dwellers? Not so much. There is warmth and good humour in this novel, but it's not a comedy. It's starkly realistic at times about the financial and social burdens the central family bear: in particular, I was impressed with the way Park empathises with without really excusing the alcoholic father, and the way she does not give Rowie an 'out' from poverty even as Rowie clearly forms a healthier romantic and married relationship than her mother's.
The portrayal of the Chinese and Jewish characters is interesting, too - the main characters all hold racist beliefs and engage in racist behaviours, and I hesitate to speculate about the author's own racism or lack thereof, but the characters of Lick Jimmy and Tommie are pretty well developed for side characters, and you can tell the author put time and thought into them as people. The same goes for the Italian family, although they're even more peripheral: they're treated as furriners but *our* furriners: I got the sense that, in the eyes of author and characters both, their membership in the slum community renders them less alien than the 'night-club hoppers' a few suburbs over. The central family's response to their possibly-indigenous son-in-law is also a good case in point: mother and father both spout racist condemnations of black folk in general, as a first reaction, but faced with the young man in front of them conclude they care more about the fact he's a good man and treats their daughter well. I'd hesitate to say, without further reading, that there's a considered anti-racist ethic here, but there seems to be a strong sense of *community* in which shared experience of poverty and social isolation trumps cultural difference. Also it seems like a pretty good example of how to do period-accurate attitudes without committing dickishness yourself (although for all I know Park herself held said period-accurate prejudices).
Pat Barker, Regeneration trilogy:
Regeneration by Pat Barker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Wow. I'd been told this was excellent, and the internet was right (although the internet also overstated the chances of a great Sasoon/Owen romance).
I loved everything about this book. The careful balance of history and fiction(alisation). The engagement with psychology and ethics and sexuality. The adorableness of Wilfrid Owen and whatever it was that Barker did which managed to make Sassoon phenomenally attractive the whole way through. The teasing out (here, and throughout the series) of Rivers' conflicts between his duty as a doctor and as a member of the armed forces, and the way those neatly tied into Sassoon's ethical quandrary.
The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I think Regeneration was probably a *better* book - it had a neat, contained setting and was shaped by Sassoon's progress. This book suffered a little from its larger scope. However, I found it even more engaging, as the fictional character of Prior gets tangled up with socialists, sodomites, and causers of trouble. The links which the book implicitly and explicitly makes between different stigmatised groups during war were fascinating and convincing, but Prior's teasing out of what divides him from both the homosexual literati and his former socialist peers was most fascinating.
This book dealt in more detail with homosexuality - I did not know about the Pemberton Billings case before this, nor the fact that WWI had brought on a rash of sodomy arrests. It's interesting that Prior's own sexuality is never given a name: he's obviously bisexual, but he never even seems to think about the difference between him and, say, Manning in those terms. At times it seems as if his homosexual shenanigans might be less central to him than his capacity to fall for women, but at others he seems to love no one at all.
I am trying to imagine anyone succeeding in writing a respectable literary trilogy about homosexual ANZACS and am having trouble believing it'd get *published*, let alone win respected literary prizes.
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was less impressed with this book than the other two. Particularly sad that Sassoon made no appearance at all. Disappointed that Prior's dissociation just vanished out of the story, and both Prior and Wilfrid Owen got to sail happily and non-neurotically through their final posting to the front.
The purpose of this book seemed to be to follow Prior's (and Sassoon's) logic to the bitter end: that the war may be dubious but it was their duty to stick by their peers and their men. I liked Prior's continued interrogation of class politics throughout this book, and the fatalistic awareness that these men were being sacrificed to footnotes and small print on the peace treaty was in keeping with the overall politics of the series.
Rivers' flashback narratives, concerning his anthropological expeditions to Melanesia, I was less sure of. In themselves they were interesting, and provided an interesting elaboration on his concerns about his own power as a doctor and psychologist over his patients, through his reflections on his Melanesian medicine-man friend. Rivers carries with him the awareness that his own society is no more natural or just than anyone else's, which is good to know... but I wasn't convinced by the apparition at the end of the novel. Its purpose seemed to be to unite the two threads of Rivers' life, the hospital and the island, but... it came off funny. Moooostly Barker avoids exoticising, but that's what happened there.
To Read Next:
I hadn't expected to read so much this holiday. I've spent about sixty bucks on second hand books already, most of which I shall pass on to others before I leave. I've bought Alexis Wright's Carpentaria to read while up north.
Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, Nancy D. Polikoff: I've been wanting to read this for ages, and second-hand copies online were stupidly expensive. Picked up this one at Goulds for 16 bucks, and lo, it is good. Super US-centric, but that does have the benefit of explaining a lot of the standard assumptions of US-oriented marriage activists for me. It's an interesting read. Polikoff takes the line that many people, not just same-sex couples, are disadvantaged by a system which privileges married couples over unmarried as well as hetero over other, and marriage over other family structures (she cited the example of US woman who was denied hospital access to see her stepson, and a woman who was denied the right to have her elderly father added to her rent-controlled household because he was not her partner). Polikoff interprets 60s and 70s feminist, lesbian and other civil rights challenges to the law as aiming not to expand the benefits of marriage but to ensure legal and financial security for various family types: illegitimate children, lesbian mothers, stay-at-home fathers and extended family groups were all important. She details a range of legal changes arising from this agenda (eg, one chap who won the right to receive survivors' benefits after the death of his wife, his lawyer successfully arguing that although he had not previously been supported by his wife, one of the key purposes of survivors' benefits was to allow a child to continue to be raised by a stay-at-home parent after the death of the other parent, and he, the father, would be able to do so if he could receive survivor's benefits.)
This all hits very close to home, as some of the not-gay-marriage scenarios she outlines involve foster families, extended relative carers, etc. So it's interesting reading but is kind of stressing me out.
Recently Finished:
A stack of Harry Potter fanfiction, onna plane.
The Bridegroom: Stories by Ha JinMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I actually didn't finish this collection. It was very well-written, no doubt about that, but I found its appeal very... variable. For instance, the longest and most-acclaimed story, concerning efforts by a regional Chinese TV company to stage a tiger fight with a real tiger (and the hilarious fall-out that ensues) didn't grab me at all.
The collection had many things I like in short stories: domestic detail, a knack for indicating cultural particularities while conveying that they are to be taken for granted and not exotic at all.
Initially I was annoyed by the overwhelming masculine focus of the first half of the collection - particularly in the case of the title story, The Bridegroom, I thought the choice of the father-in-law's POV for a story about a successful young husband arrested for homosexual behaviour was... an oversight. The wife, who seemed perfectly happy to have married him, or the mother-in-law, who seemed to think her daughter had done well in securing a husband who made no onerous sexual demands, would have made more interesting POV narrators to me.
The gender imbalance did improve in the second half of the book. I particularly enjoyed the story, told through a child's eyes, of the kindergarten teacher who enlisted children to harvest fresh vegetables, but said vegetables never made it to the table because the teacher was (the reader deduces) using them to pay or bribe a doctor for her abortion.
In terms of form, I particularly enjoyed the story of a poet and academic who crashed and burned out of his job - told in the form of a letter of reference to a new prospective employer of said academic, written by a former student now holding a teaching post. The complexity of the student-teacher relationship, the student's growing disillusionment with his mentor, and the damning-with-faint-praise format of reference were all gorgeously rendered.
The Harp In The South by Ruth ParkMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was as delightful as promised. I've not read many stories about poor urban australians, or novels about poor australians which aren't comedies. Comic tales of the struggling family on the land, yes, but urban slum dwellers? Not so much. There is warmth and good humour in this novel, but it's not a comedy. It's starkly realistic at times about the financial and social burdens the central family bear: in particular, I was impressed with the way Park empathises with without really excusing the alcoholic father, and the way she does not give Rowie an 'out' from poverty even as Rowie clearly forms a healthier romantic and married relationship than her mother's.
The portrayal of the Chinese and Jewish characters is interesting, too - the main characters all hold racist beliefs and engage in racist behaviours, and I hesitate to speculate about the author's own racism or lack thereof, but the characters of Lick Jimmy and Tommie are pretty well developed for side characters, and you can tell the author put time and thought into them as people. The same goes for the Italian family, although they're even more peripheral: they're treated as furriners but *our* furriners: I got the sense that, in the eyes of author and characters both, their membership in the slum community renders them less alien than the 'night-club hoppers' a few suburbs over. The central family's response to their possibly-indigenous son-in-law is also a good case in point: mother and father both spout racist condemnations of black folk in general, as a first reaction, but faced with the young man in front of them conclude they care more about the fact he's a good man and treats their daughter well. I'd hesitate to say, without further reading, that there's a considered anti-racist ethic here, but there seems to be a strong sense of *community* in which shared experience of poverty and social isolation trumps cultural difference. Also it seems like a pretty good example of how to do period-accurate attitudes without committing dickishness yourself (although for all I know Park herself held said period-accurate prejudices).
Pat Barker, Regeneration trilogy:
Regeneration by Pat BarkerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Wow. I'd been told this was excellent, and the internet was right (although the internet also overstated the chances of a great Sasoon/Owen romance).
I loved everything about this book. The careful balance of history and fiction(alisation). The engagement with psychology and ethics and sexuality. The adorableness of Wilfrid Owen and whatever it was that Barker did which managed to make Sassoon phenomenally attractive the whole way through. The teasing out (here, and throughout the series) of Rivers' conflicts between his duty as a doctor and as a member of the armed forces, and the way those neatly tied into Sassoon's ethical quandrary.
The Eye in the Door by Pat BarkerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I think Regeneration was probably a *better* book - it had a neat, contained setting and was shaped by Sassoon's progress. This book suffered a little from its larger scope. However, I found it even more engaging, as the fictional character of Prior gets tangled up with socialists, sodomites, and causers of trouble. The links which the book implicitly and explicitly makes between different stigmatised groups during war were fascinating and convincing, but Prior's teasing out of what divides him from both the homosexual literati and his former socialist peers was most fascinating.
This book dealt in more detail with homosexuality - I did not know about the Pemberton Billings case before this, nor the fact that WWI had brought on a rash of sodomy arrests. It's interesting that Prior's own sexuality is never given a name: he's obviously bisexual, but he never even seems to think about the difference between him and, say, Manning in those terms. At times it seems as if his homosexual shenanigans might be less central to him than his capacity to fall for women, but at others he seems to love no one at all.
I am trying to imagine anyone succeeding in writing a respectable literary trilogy about homosexual ANZACS and am having trouble believing it'd get *published*, let alone win respected literary prizes.
The Ghost Road by Pat BarkerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was less impressed with this book than the other two. Particularly sad that Sassoon made no appearance at all. Disappointed that Prior's dissociation just vanished out of the story, and both Prior and Wilfrid Owen got to sail happily and non-neurotically through their final posting to the front.
The purpose of this book seemed to be to follow Prior's (and Sassoon's) logic to the bitter end: that the war may be dubious but it was their duty to stick by their peers and their men. I liked Prior's continued interrogation of class politics throughout this book, and the fatalistic awareness that these men were being sacrificed to footnotes and small print on the peace treaty was in keeping with the overall politics of the series.
Rivers' flashback narratives, concerning his anthropological expeditions to Melanesia, I was less sure of. In themselves they were interesting, and provided an interesting elaboration on his concerns about his own power as a doctor and psychologist over his patients, through his reflections on his Melanesian medicine-man friend. Rivers carries with him the awareness that his own society is no more natural or just than anyone else's, which is good to know... but I wasn't convinced by the apparition at the end of the novel. Its purpose seemed to be to unite the two threads of Rivers' life, the hospital and the island, but... it came off funny. Moooostly Barker avoids exoticising, but that's what happened there.
To Read Next:
I hadn't expected to read so much this holiday. I've spent about sixty bucks on second hand books already, most of which I shall pass on to others before I leave. I've bought Alexis Wright's Carpentaria to read while up north.
no subject
Date: 2015-01-05 08:22 am (UTC)