Here it is, my final stack of red books that I've now recently read and decided to keep. The stack has changed a lot since this project started:
I added Neverwhere, Sula, and Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom. All of which I liked -- Sula and Mary Ventura are now favorite books of mine.
I parted with A Century of Wisdom, and You Don't Love Me Yet. And narrowly decided to keep The Trial, Visual Culture, and Trixie and Katya's book (for now). A major goal of this project is to help me decide which books it's time to say goodbye to. So it was a victory to be able to part with a few of them, and mark a few more for eventual donation (possibly the next time I move?).
Some wrap-up stats for Red:
17 books; 3,392 pages read
Top genre: Poetry
53% Women Authors ; 47% New Reads ; 47% Nonfiction
Aesthetically I like this book. Dream-like circumstances and thought processes. Bleak police state dystopia. Melancholy cynicism.
And honestly the reading goes by pretty fast (except the sexual scenes, and there was a point in Lawyer that was just 10 pages or so of describing how the courts work, in a circular way and repetitive too.)
But there's something I'm not into. The character K is not very likable. He doesn't seem to care about anyone else and his actions seem to come out of nowhere and he hasn't done anything right yet.
And the story itself feels like I already want to be at the end. It still feels like we're at the beginning of the trial though nothing has happened (I'm about halfway through the book) and though events take place (uncle visits, bank deal goes awry, meeting the lawyer) the scenes are hard to follow and seem to take forever and not have a lot of substance.
Of course all of these complaints fit the story itself so maybe the form is supposed to match the content.
But this is the first book I've come to in this Rainbow Challenge where I've read a good chunk of the book (almost half) and I really don't know if I want to keep the book. I have no sentimental value attached, in fact I have no memory of acquiring this book at all.
And so far it's either a 2 or 3 start. I probably wouldn't read it again but do I mind having it around...?
Part of me just likes having Kafka on the shelf because of the name. But maybe in 5 or 10 years I'll be in the mood for Kafka again?
I guess a lot hinges on how the book ends. I'm ready for the ending, maybe it's a worthwhile journey to get there.
Storygraph review (3 stars)
Kafka at his best in regards to: insanely accurate dream logic scenes, inscrutable systems of power, and the horror of the mundane and administrative in modern society.
Sadly I didn't enjoy the experience of reading this as much as I'd have liked -- the main character is annoying, there are many scenes in which the exposition goes on and on, and I got nothing out of the many sexual encounters. While reading, it went by fast and I was intrigued, but every time I stopped reading I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue.
This book is painfully beautiful. The prose! The word choice. So surprising, so lovely.
The themes of friendship, loss, women's independence, and more are explored expertly. I can't wait to read this book again and again.
The pace is good, nice and fast. I couldn't help but keep reading and I always felt surprised by what was next.
I love how the reader always finds themselves aligned with the character Morrison wants us to be. When it's Hannah sleeping with people's husbands, we don't care about the wives' feelings at all. But when it's Nel, it's a whole new heartbreak.
Sula's lack of anchor in herself really speaks to me.
There's something about this book that feel really personal to me that I have hard time thinking about -- the intense friendship of Nel and Sula feels like something I've had before. Old, dear friends of mine I was inseparable from; spoke a secret language with. Friendships that burned so bright they eventually turned to ash, but I still think about constantly. A special bond it's hard to have with anyone but another girl, a young friend. I suppose my marriage has taken over this spot in my life -- and men + society + growing up are partly why Nel and Sula fracture -- but it's still something I wonder if I'll ever experience again. This book made me think back, longingly.
Red 14: Recommended by a celebrity who does not have a book club
Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke
I read most of this from bed in an Airbnb near the Presidio. Full of antiques, it was a particularly eccentric surrounding.
The last time I read this was in 2013, in a cafe in Prospect Park, during the first stop of my 6 week journey from Massachusetts to Berkeley. I received it as a gift from a dear sweet friend I'd spent the last year working beside in a small deli in Amherst. We talked about art, film, life while we made sandwiches like the "Black Sheep Baguette" (pesto, mozarella, and sundried tomato on a baguette) and "The Valley Girl" (smoked turkey, brie, lettuce, tomato, and honey mustard, also on a baguette). I remember I was touched by the thoughtful gift and lovely little inscription.
I miss the intensity with which I knew people back then.
Some themes that stood out to me this time around: the importance of solitude, gender equality, not just doing the easy thing.
I love that Rilke starts every letter apologizing for how long it took him to respond. I very much identify with that, often leaving texts and emails unread for weeks, sometimes longer. It's so interesting to me that that particular guilt has been around longer than texting.
This time while reading, I was wondering if the letters from the young poet that Rilke is responding to have ever been found -- lo and behold they were, and were published in English for the first time in 2020! I'll have to read the other half of the story one day.
“Letters to a Young Poet” has spoken to artists for almost a century. The other half of the famous correspondence reveals the treacherous wo
"he[the young poet] wanted to know what to write and how to be."
If I'm looking to Rilke for a model of who to be, the biography bit at the end emphasizes again and again his discomfort, his doubt, his inability to focus on his work or his studies, his sensitivity to the uglies and evils of certain cities and certain human ways.
I like that he is a vegetarian, that he fell in love with Rodin as an artist, that he was "constantly refreshed" by steps and fountains in Rome (but that he otherwise found the city a "bad museum")
Much of what he tells the young poet is to embrace solitude, look for your future already burrowing its way into your present in small ways, observe yourself your thoughts and feelings, and draw upon these to write.
First things first, I finished reading this book looking over Lobos Valley in San Francisco (pictured above), very dreamy!
I also have a very dreamy remembrance of my first encounter with this book: it was the beginning of my second year in college, and my somewhat mystical friend Brian had brought back what turned out to be the first four books of Loba -- I remember the beautiful drawings, the strange yellowing paper, and that he said he'd found it in some bathtub in an abandoned house somewhere in Kansas City.
You can't make this shit up, friend.
Anyway, that encounter with the book left such an impression that I made sure to get my hands on the book at some point. I don't remember when I bought it; if I got it in a bookstore in San Francisco or off Amazon as soon as possible, or what. But I do know I've now had it all or most of the time I've lived here, and everytime I crack it open, it's one of my favorite books of poetry, hands down.
This version of the book is a First Edition of the Berkeley Press version -- the first time all 8 parts had been published together, I believe (di Prima continued to edit and add to this work for many, many years -- saying she felt no obligation to declare it finished at any time).
I love the drawings, the same line drawings of wolf goddesses that drew me in are chapter headings in this version of the book. After recently reading her memoir-ish book, Spring and Summer Annals, I know how close di Prima was with Josie, the artist. In fact, I feel I know the author much better this time reading through it than I ever have before -- and definitely find myself thinking about her life in New York, her travels and eventual settling in California, her kids.
A random thought while reading: the list of women goddesses on page 69 certainly reminds me of Judy Chicago -- both the act of naming important women, and the fact that many women here are also found in Chicago's project.
I love finding the little motifs and patterns that happen to connect the books I'm drawn to and have collected over the years. Soeaking of which, this book obviously reminds me of Women Who Runs With the Wolves -- that book won't come until the end of this journey, having a black spine. But I'm looking forward to it all the same.
A poem about madness / depression really stuck with me this time around. I've been in a strange long depression for at least a year now.
-------
Some more, scattered, stray thoughts while reading:
The universe turned corporeal -- Loba vomits stars, becomes lava, so much pain
the talisman she repeats: quartz, fire lights, lichen, etc. the book and poem as a gathering of magic materials
The Loba revealed herself to me in the valley
The milk ocean Mare grazing in the meadow of your spirit Moon glide on black meadow of mossy textured pattern of sorrow; rough lichen phosphorescent in gloom "Lies about the Loba" and all the dog ears I did this time around. Once again, I dog-eared very different poems this time than ever before.
The later parts are more biblical in a way that doesn't intrigue me. My current relationship with religion is complete and absolute boredom
The version of this book I first encountered -- I'm not surprised this book cover haunted me until I procured a copy for myself.
This is another brand new purchase. I went on a long walk last weekend and ended up at Bird & Beckett bookstore in Glen Park. While there I bought too many books (I'll never finish this read every book I own challenge if I keep buying them faster than I can read them!!)
This one was a nice quick read, though. It's a short story Plath wrote in college about a young woman who think she's boarded a regular train to some vacation, but who learns the terrifying truth of the train while aboard.
Plath called this a 'vague, symbolic tale', and that's exactly how it reads. I love imagining all the things this story could mean -- where is the train go, why did her parents send her on it? It was also a pleasure to read, the language and style well-crafted.
And just look at that cover! I have a feeling even if I hadn't like the story I'd want to keep it for the cover.
Neverwhere (Illustrated)
Neil Gaiman (+Chris Riddell)
This is a brand new addition to my collection -- I had to buy a book for a poetry class that started this month, and added a few other from the publisher (HarperCollins) to get free shipping.
The other books (if you're curious) are: Startdust by Neil Gaiman, We Run the Tides by Vendela Vida, and The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets who Teach. More on those books when the time comes (Green, Pink, and Purple respectively).
I'd never read a Gaiman novel before, and had only read a handful of his comics. I knew to expect a slightly more grungey, normcore Tim Burton kind of experience. I wasn't sure I'd like it, like maybe Gaiman is just on the outside of my aesthetic -- yes I like dark fantasy, but maybe his stuff is too silly or too self-referential or something.
And that's basically what I thought for the first quarter or so of the book. The pace was slow, the characters all too twee, and neither the plot nor the characters seemed to move much.
I never minded being in the world, though, and as I crested the halfway mark, the pace and the mystery kept growing until I was thoroughly invested.
The illustrations were perfect -- I didn't just like their style, but also how they often wrapped around the text, taking up margins and whole pages alike.
Overall, I liked the book well enough! I would recommend it to anyone whose aesthetic is nearby, and it's made me interested in reading his other work (we have Stardust and Good Omens, so I'll start there although Jesse insists American Gods is where it's at).
I bought this at what may be my favorite bookshop in San Francisco, Adobe Books. I was excited to see it, as it is a collection by someone I took a few poetry classes with, Genine Lentine. And it was in excellent condition.
I met Genine because someone at the art center I worked at said to me, "Oh, you're interested in meadows? I just met a poet whose current project is all about meadows." I guess I'd mentioned my latent obsession with meadows. This quote was, at least at the time, so deeply relevant to me it was like God's Plan was accidentally showing itself.
One of the quotes from her that is always top of mind for me is, "Why would the first thing you say be the perfect thing to say?"
Another project I have is to transfer all poem-ish journal entries into a place where I may make poems out of them -- I'm excited to get to the journal I kept notes from her classes in. And I see she's still teaching poetry workshops, and still meadowing. I'll have to look into taking a class with her again soon.
I remember a particularly warm day at the Old Red Victorian building in the Castro where some of her poetry sessions took place. Sitting in a blue armchair in a warm wooden room with shafts of sunlight holding the place together, and a gentle but very obvious earthquake. Earthquakes in armchairs is a good way to think of San Francisco.
Connections to other books on my shelf:
As I mentioned before, Genine wrote a chapter for Rebeca Solnit's Infinite City, and Solnit is thanked at the back of this book.
In Genine's class, she encouraged us to read Lydia Davis. I like Lydia so much I bought a collection of her short stories (coming up in Orange), and I'm thinking about buying more.
The whole book is about looking at others and being looked at by others, and the mental and emotional spaces in between -- this is all especially interesting after reading Visual Culture and understanding some of the societal mechanisms at play in that space.
Mark Doty wrote the foreword -- I always found Mark Doty through Aracelis Girmay, and have a book of his poetry (coming up aaalll the way in White). His foreword her was excellent by the way.
Thoughts while reading:
The conceit of this book really is incredible-- attending life drawing sessions, but writing what you see instead of draw. So creative and such a good idea.
This collection really brings me back to my days as a model. I modeled for drawing classes and sculpture classes back in Amherst, after graduating college. It was a good way to make a little money, and it actually did wonders for my self esteem at the time.
She captured well, the thoughts that bore through your mind while you're posturing in that space, and absorbing others' rapt attention like that.
I also think she captured well the way the mind wanders, the thoughts we have when we look at a blank page or when we're simply bored.
I like how open ended each page is. One that ended "And then a few days pass." apropos of nothing and with no hint at what those days mean, it made me sit and ponder awhile. I liked that open space, and I liked how it reminded me of the snippets in Homunculs, a record of time in 60 second snippets torn from the middle.
Always a return to sounds. The sound of construction in the next room, of the fan, of breathing, when one is sitting in a space like a workshop, what else but the body in front of you and the sounds all around? Genine is also a Zen Buddhist, so it's interesting to think of these sounds being noticed and then let go (in meditation) vs. scribbled down and rearranged (in poetry formation).
I thought this was an incredible book. I will come back to again and again. I loved the selection of Diekenborn sketches, but I wish there were more. The only thing I didn't like was the selection of the last poem -- it focused on the body in relation to petting a dog. It's not out of place in the collection, but it felt too far away and distinct to end a collection that repeatedly goes back to the same themes and scenes. I would have wanted to end in one of those instead of something new.
One of my favorite poems this time around:
The model's bearing, in which no degree of expecta-
tion rests, makes the waiting in my own body fluo-
resce. The three-second delay. Last night I played pool
at Vixen with an Irish snookerer. He wasn't playing
his best but he still had lots of fancy angles, or fancy
English. In every ball sport, you stay down on the
shot until you're done. Miss, do you mind if I tell you
something? You're too high on the cue. Yes, I thought,
as I watched him run the rack, Sight lower along the
cue. That sounds really good. And I sank his sincere
suggestion just off to the side of my body, in the delta
inside the misregistered police outline where I stash
everything I'll do when my actual life begins.
I'm not sure exactly how and when I bought this book. I found out while looking it up recently that sometime between then and now, this book ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize and Tracy K Smith became Poet Laureate!
My version of the book does not have the Pulitzer announcement, says it is a first printing, and I'm pretty sure I bought it new, in what would have been 2011, maybe 2012.
What I do remember is that it came on recommendation from my poetry teacher in my final year of college, the lovely Aracelis Girmay. She didn't recommend this book actually, just Ms. Smith in general and her Duende book in particular.
Anyway I know I have enjoyed the book when I've read through it (I think twice now), and there are even several poems I've dog-earred, meaning I especially loved them. I'm looking forward to reading them again.
What I think I'll get out of reading it again:
I'm hoping to reconnect with the poems I've dog-earred. I'm hoping to maybe find a few new ones to gain a relationship with. And like with all poetry I read, I'm hoping to note some of the things I love about her writing and subsume them into my own poetry writing. I'm actually taking a poetry class right now, so the timing is very nice.
Final thoughts:
Well first of all, I didn’t actually resonate with the same dog ears -- all the poems I connected most with this time were not dog-earred by my past.
I had a lovely time reading this collection -- I like how it zooms into grief on a molecular level, then zooms out to view it on a planetary, universe one.
As a poet, I'll come back to this book for inspiration on playing with different poetry forms (she uses some really interesting stanza styles!), how to make personal pain so relatable, and how to ponder about space. As a human, I'm sure I can come back to this book next time I'm in the middle of incomprehensible loss.
A few stray thoughts:
This book kind of reminds me of my favorite episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine The Visitor, in which Sisko gets stuck in time and his son Jake spends decades obsessed with bringing him back and trying to mourn his effective death, only to be brought back every few decades when Sisko is able to peek through time to be with him again.
I don't think this collection had much to do with time travel (though if I remember to, I'll look for time travel on my next reading).
However the tenderness of the father relationship, and the grappling of death in sci fi and infinite stars rang familiar.
I did, for sure, go down a David Bowie Blackstar obsession about halfway through the reading, around the time of the line about Bowie never dying. I watched the two music videos (Blackstar and Lazarus) several times, watched a documentary on the last 5 years of Bowie's life, and read a handful of reviews of the album that either came out or were revised after Bowie's death a few days after its release. Again the contemplation of death, how we face it, what grief's place is in the vast expanse.
I think I'm especially drawn to poems that have the color and shape of the seaside (always? especially now?):
Wide, resonant, pale blue & light sand
Wind, pastel twilight. Shhh, the sea
An example is "Everything That Ever Was," which in addition to evoking my idea of the seaside, literally evokes water so that helps. Its long pauses, gentle faded, long grey hair.
Like a wide wake, rippling
Infinitely into the distance, everything
That ever was still is, somewhere,
Floating near the surface, nursing
Its hunger for you and me
And the now we've named
And made a place of.
[...]
A Century of Wisdom: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World's Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor
Caroline Stoessinger
Initial thoughts:
First of all, what a long book title! I feel like most of it could have been a subtitle.
I got this book as a graduation gift from college, from my boyfriend's very sweet and thoughtful mom, Deb.
This made sense as a gift for several reasons, but mostly because I had done post-WW2 cultural studies for my thesis.
This is a book I'm guiltily thinking about donating. It's hard to get rid of a gift, especially such a thoughtful and on-point one. However while I remember enjoying learning about Alice, I also vaguely remember that the writing itself wasn't compelling enough to want to read again. Let's see what a re-read brings.
Thoughts After reading:
My memory served me pretty well -- the life story is compelling, and it's a part of history it's so important to remember and figure out how to contextualize in today's terms. But the structure and style of the writing isn't enormously compelling. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in hearing about Alice's life and how music saved her and sustained her throughout her life. But I would be more interested in reading accounts from poet-authors like Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Paul Celan, Viktor Frankl... an account that is both personal and beautiful.
I didn't love how the author of this biography insert herself in at the end, and the language was quite matter of fact. But the snippets of Alice's life that were chosen and presented were done well, and I felt I really got a sense of who this incredible woman was. Not terrible, but also not something I necessarily need to keep on my shelf. This will be the 2nd book I part with during this project.
Jesse bought this at a comic and zine shop on Valencia that opened up not long ago, taking over a space from a record store.
It’s lovely! In very few pages it conveys a story spanning hundreds of years and successfully captures the reader in empathy and connection to the main character and her creator/mom.
Each scene is merely a snippet yet our minds fill in the blanks.
The story becomes surprising in the end. And the art was effective and pleasant.
It was a delight all the way through. I’m glad we have it and it makes me want to go back to that zine store!
Okay! The first fiction book of the rainbow reading series! This is a book I recently retrieved from storage at my parents' house. I own it because I went through a phase in high school where I was really into edgy-ish contemporary male authors.
I think I was copying my best friend who'd gotten really into Chuck Palahniuk (more on that guy later in the series). My answer to her was finding Jonathan Lethem. It was either this book or The Fortress of Solitude that I found, rather liked, and that then gave me my very own favorite author to claim and to focus my attention on when at the Borders or Library.
I don't remember much about the book -- I remember liking it, I remember it being very 'indie', like many of my other interests at the time (watching Garden State, listening to Neutral Milk Hotel, reading webcomics like Questionable Content, working at a thrift shop, you know). That being said I only vaguely remember that it's about a young woman who works in a fake call center for anyone to call in to complain about anything; and a young man who works at a zoo and kidnaps a kangaroo.
I'm going in with few expectations re: plot. But I expect it to be a fun, easy read as I believe Lethem's books tend to be. I picked it exactly for that reason, in fact, because I need something light to read while I get through the Visual Culture book.
What I thought:
This book sucks. Do I have to say anything else? The characters are selfish and flat. They become saints and devils on a dime. Every character is seen through the lens of the main character's shallow sexual yearning -- no other women in the whole book except one who seems a lesbian and others who are seen as threats.
I will get into a vapid plot if it's done well. In fact I would kind of compare this, in many ways, to another book I read recently Play it as it Lays. I liked that book because it meant something and went somewhere, even though it went nowhere.
It was kind of interesting to read this book now into my 30s -- when I read it as a high schooler I know I looked at these characters and vaguely yearned for the autonomy of adulthood they represented. Now in my adulthood, what I recognize as real in these characters is full of regret and not what it means to be an adult. I hate them.
It was a fun, easy read though when I wasn't hating it.
Visual Culture: A Reader
Various authors; edited by Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall
This is a journey I'm embarking on -- a 469 page collection of often-heady essays and excerpts from art historians, philosophers and other social scientists on various aspects of visual culture. 33 essays, seemingly about 10 pages each. I found with Judy Chicago that 10 pages a day, even if dense, was doable if I'm in the habit. So I expect this book to take me a little over a month, a long endeavor!
How did I come to own this book?
I bought it for an art history class in college. I'm old enough now that I don't remember the provocative title of the course off the top of my head, or even the name of the professor -- I remember he was bald, I took 1-2 classes with him, and I T.A.'d a class for him. He asked me to be a T.A. specifically because he thought my ideas and engagement were good, but I lacked confidence; he hoped helping others would help me find it.
In the class I took that I bought this book for, I met Ellen, the T.A. for that class. She ended up being a dear friend from afar for awhile, entwined as we were in the queer communities at Hampshire. When I moved to San Francisco she ended up being an endless blessing, introducing me to the lady who got me my first office job, and letting me take over her spot in The Ranch -- so much of my history flows out from there, eh?
About the book
I think I've only ever read 2-4 of the essays in this book -- that's the sham of college texts after all. I bought this whole book and was only assigned a few readings. But I know they're both seminal and dense. Seminal: Laura Mulvey's essay on the Male Gaze, Foucault's Panopticon, Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" -- I mean these are essays that formed the bedrock of visual studies, at least up until back when I was in the game. Dense, though, because many of the authors are either postmodern philosophers (Foucault, Lacan!) or contemporary-ish art historians, both groups who use a language that is almost impenetrable, partially for style reasons I suppose, and partially because they are working at the edge of knowledge, thus grasping for ways to understand and communicate brand new ideas -- sometimes you need the weightiness or obscurity of a particular word to communicate the gravity and newness of an idea I think.
Any other thoughts before starting?
I'm looking forward to this one. I think it's going to bring me back to the memory and feeling of being a student, I think it's going to give me an aura through which to view media in a critical way that will be fun to live with for a while, I think it's going to expand my vocabulary.
I'm also dreading it a bit, because I'm afraid of being bored, not following through with it to the end, spending too long reading it, dreading it? I guess if any of those things happen though -- I'm allowed to pick up other books in the middle if I need a break, I'm allowed to skip / skim sections if I need to, and if it really doesn't feel worth my time, I'm allowed to give up and get rid of the book altogether.
Reading the intro
Hah! Already so dense. Sentences like "However, the scrupulously pure project of the strucuralist moment of semiotics, which conceives of language as a system of signs immanent to a single or bounded group of texts and studied independently of history or the particular utterances of human subjects, needs to be both augmented and qualified." Geez!
The main crux of the intro, I think, is to explain that the point of this book is to give a necessarily multi-faceted introduction to the study of visual culture: first by laying the groundwork with some semiotic texts which they admit visual culture studies owes much. Then by exploring the technical limitations of image-making, specifically with photography, and how those technical limitations form, regulate, and have a language of their own within the creation of images and how we experience them. The there's a section on the role of subjectivity and identity -- the identity of the viewer, of the artist, of the subject, generally speaking examinations of all the relationships that go into an image.
Seems a worthwhile project! Another worthwhile project? Expanding my vocabulary by looking up words from the text I either don't know or kind of know but couldn't explain to you. A selection from the first 7 pages of this book:
* semiotic - of or relating to signs / the study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior
* vicissitudes - successive, alternating, or changing phases or conditions, ups and downs / regular change of one state to another
* discursive - proceeding by reasoning or argument rather than intuition / also: digressive or rambling
Thoughts after reading Part A:
* It seems to me that a lot of these 10-page essays (that are excerpts of longer ones / books), could be a series of tweets. It's like, I get it. You made your point. Why are you repeating that point over again in each paragraph, in progressively aggro tones? It's been a while since I read / wrote essays -- are they all like this?
* It feels great to read academic / philsophical thought again, though. Even though I didn't feel particularly challenged or intrigued by any of the first 4 readings (introductory-ish texts to the whole book; treatises on "what is an image", basically), I did find my brain reaching for larger words, more thoughtful and critical words over the last few days since I started reading. I remember and re-understand my younger, college-age self through this. The pleasure I would get from reading and writing like this. I get it, I think. It's like solving puzzles, communicating your ponderings, looking for new understandings. I'm into it.
Thoughts after reading Part B:
* This part was trippy to read for a few reasons:
the first essay, Foucault's Panopticism talks about the system imposed upon plague-ridden society in the 17th century to contain said plague. How strange to read the rules now -- no leaving the house upon pain of death. No fraternizing with people outside your household if either of you have had the plague upon pain of death, etc. I felt my world zooming in and out reading that bit and didn't really care that Foucault was using it as an example of the authoritarian's dream pre-design of the panopticon.
Anyway the readings in this section were all very enjoyable / informative -- Foucault has a lot of prescient things to say about the power of being observed and the lack of power in not being able to see. Surveillance society and its most dystopian and punitive sounds awfully familiar. Walter Benjamin talking about the 'aura' of a piece of art, the somethingness of a thing and how the print is a mere shadow of that thing in many ways. He talked about how trees and have auras, and it made me wonder if they do and if they did and if I've just lived in a screen world too long to be able to see auras anymore.
Susan Sontag talks about living in an image world and how we don't fully realize the power of the image. She talks about photographs' "trace, something directly stenciled off the real...a material vestige of its subject" -- in essence this is a counterpoint to Benjamin, since she argues that the photographs do indeed contain an essence or fragment or even aura ("some trace of the magic remains: for example in our reluctance to tear up or throw away the photograph of a loved one"). I think what's especially interesting, though, is her observation that "reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras. It is common now for people to insist about their experience of a violent event...that it 'seemed like a movie'" Our relationship to the real, to our selves, and to our experiences has been forever changed by photography and it was a pleasure to pause and wonder on that for a while.
Dick Hebdige then talks about a pop magazine of the 1980's called The Face, and what makes it a good magazine. I found many of the characteristics called out about the magazine hauntingly familiar -- it only allowed ads that played well with its own ironic/rebellious/humorous format, it juxtaposed serious news articles with silly gossip pieces with celebrity interviews (reminds me so much of the power of places like Buzzfeed, Vice, Vox!!), and in general it had a youthful, iconoclast, devil-may-care attitiude --daring to look at image and photography and art in their cultural pop context rather than debate the ethics, nicetities, formalities, etc. of them.
The Face seems like it was a cool magazine that had a ton of influence on how we position information and pleasure today. I really liked the essay, especially the author's self-consciousness about his position: he's studying this magazine as an exemplar of the sensibilities of the generation that comes after his own, and he compares it to a magazine that exemplifies his generation's values and style. But he doesn't do it in a derisive way, in fact while I sense a few polite jabs at the frivolousness of youth, I also sense an awe, a wonder, and a fascination that seems pure-hearted. I will want to read this essay again some day.
On to the next section! But checking in on the book overall:
- I like reading it, it makes me use a part of brain that is more engaged / engaging than usual
- I like thinking about these points in the context of when they were made; this book was published in 1999 and so far the essays inside range from the 1930s-1980s. Many of the issues these essays brought out as new or challenging ideas have been come to pass. So they seem obvious to me. But I like thinking about them as new, radical thought and what society must have been like before we thought the way we do now. If the goal of this collection is to cement the legitimacy, history, and practice of Visual Culture, I feel like that has been accomplished in the years since.
- I will keep this book on my shelves after reading it, even though it was one I thought might be a candidate for donation. I think I could come back to some of these essays (so far, the Foucault, the Hebridge, and Barthes), and even though the thoughts feel stale and dated, and I don't really care about photography studies very much, I'm happy to have this on the shelf -- if a bookshelf is a biography of its own, this book has a place on mine for what it says about me that I've read it and that I may come back to it in the future.
Quick thoughts on the rest of the book / conclusion:
Okay so I kind of sped-read through the second half of this book. A few thoughts per section:
C: Turns out I'm actually not interested in reading about the history / theory of photography as an institution or genre. These essays did not engage me, maybe they were too technical or not grounded enough in the social. I think I skipped Rosalind Krauss's altogether.
D: Similar to Section C, but I did enjoy this section a bit more as this was more on the institution side of things; museums, libraries, how nonprofit materials assume and push narratives of their constituents onto them and the public.
E: Fuck Freud. I hate reading Freud. I understand how seminal his work is to psychoanalysis, gender and race theory. But his work itself reads as so...primitive. Other readings later in the book position him in his male, white, colonialist self. But this whole section was him and theorists working directly off of his work. I skimmed/skipped a lot of it because it was so cringey.
F & G: My favorite sections. These pieces all worked from the texts before to theorize gender and race in visual culture. Honestly I'm not sure I have anything intelligent to say about this. I enjoyed these texts, it made me add more bell hooks to my TBR list, and I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a lot from this section.
Overall
I liked and would re-read and/or reference at least 50% of them. The collection isn't perfect: the editors' intro texts between sections are inscrutable and weren't all that helpful in understanding the texts or curation. Some texts seemed they didn't belong at all; some did, but felt like they were in the wrong order. The focus on photography, specifically, as a technique and genre was, in my opinion, boring and a bit of a non sequitur to the rest of it. And of course there's the issue of relevance -- many of these texts are seminal, but the collection is over 20 years old. Surely there are more recent texts that include further thought past the 90s and don't include the texts in this one that felt outdated. So it's hard to recommend, but also worth holding onto instead of donating.
This book came out during the pandemic, and I bought it during the pandemic. It came out during a funny period of time during which seemingly every Youtube star and podcaster was releasing New York Times bestsellers (2018-2020?).
I love watching Trixie and Katya videos on Youtube. Whether their own show, clips of them on other shows; they're entertaining and beautiful. I'm also seeing them live in March, and have bought, in addition to this book, several lipsticks and a tote bag from their merch stores.
So I can say, as a fan, this book is kind of trash. Well, not completely. The photos themselves are worth the price and the space on my bookshelf. Gorgeous costumes and makeup, and the shots are either absolutely beautiful or silly and fun. A visual delight.
As for a read? I'll never read this book again. 1) It reads as part-confessional, part lifestyle magazine parody but doesn't commit to either. neither the tone nor function are fully successful imho 2) Several of the best parts are personal anecdotes they've both shared in other mediums (Unhhh or the podcast), which, sure when you bare your soul online for a living you're bound to run out of material. But still, I'd rather listen or watch to these anecdotes than read them. And as someone who's seen most of their stuff, I didn't need the repetition. 3) It's just...vapid. Maybe that's the point. But I don't really get anything out of it as a read.
So, I really wouldn't recommend anyone read this book (maybe pick up the audiobook version instead? Or dive down a Youtube rabbit hole). But I'm sure I'll delightfully flick through it again someday to take in the photos and just treat it as an art book. Truly beautiful.
This precious artifact was acquired at a second hand shop, I believe somewhere in Massachusetts, maybe Vermont. It is an exhibition catalogue of paintings salvaged by the Monument Men from the German salt mines during World War 2.
I picked it up because it was so serendipitously related to my field of study during undergrad — post WW2 art history. And I'm sure it was cheap.
To thumb through it is to get a glimpse of museum history, as well as art history. The paintings themselves are interesting if not gorgeous to behold, even though most of them are in black and white. But I found myself thinking more often about their context — what was the psychology behind squirreling them away? Ideologically, how did they fit in with the Germans' goals? Financially, were they just seen as valuable liquid assets? It’s interesting to think, why these paintings in particular? And also to marvel out how unscathed the process of stealthing them from the museums hiding them in salt mines made them. The small intro at the beginning of the catalogue marvels at this as well.
It’s a lovely piece of history, it’s a lucky thing to have found and to own. I wonder how many exist in the wild (I imagine several to many of them are in storage at The Met or wherever)? I own a few exhibition catalogues, and while they're not really that useful or interesting to dwell in for long, I do like to look through them to think about the exhibition in a museum nerd way, or to behold these particular paintings for a moment.
I picked this book up during my 6-week cross-country train ride from Amherst to Berkeley. A strange idea to pick up a large book during that trip when I was severely limited/at capacity for luggage.
But I had recently fallen in love with this piece, housed as it is now in the Feminist wing of the Brooklyn Art Museum. I had recently seen it for the first time and was in awe. To find a catalogue of the piece not long after felt like serendipity, plus I wanted to know more about the piece, plus I was still deeply in the habit of collecting art/art history books
I'm struggling to remember exactly where I picked up this book, but inside it was a bookmark from Bart's Books in Ojai. That may or may not have been a bookstore Vincent took me to when I visited him in Goleta when I moved back to California at the end of 2013.
As excited as I was to find it, I never read it, and barely even opened it until now. I'd flipped through it before and maybe scanned part of the intro, but I never found the time to actually read through it.
I didn't get to the Brooklyn Museum on my latest trip to NY (I usually do), so I'm glad to have the opportunity to engage with the piece this way instead.
Thoughts while reading:
By a bit of coincidence, there are already so many parallels between this and the last read (Solnit's atlas of San Francisco):
- both authors are modern feminist icons
- the artwork being one of documentation
- both have deep ties to SF MOMA (commissioned; supported by + first shown at)
- an atlas, an almanac, a carving out of hidden histories
-intimate, cautiously optimistic, reviving old artforms (cartography, ceramics + sewing), a look at the past
Solnit's project is altogether more precious, celebratory; while Chicago's is more defiant, desperate.
First thoughts on The Dinner Party book on its own:
I am filled with sadness at the hints of hurt and disappointment in her intro.
She's on the defense, she's defensive, citing pieces of criticism (both implicitly + explicitly) and responding to them. Obviously they've been bothering her.
This intro that has the task of summarizing where the ideas for this piece came from, what the process of creation entailed, and what's happened in the years since. It is lovely but is also full of angsts.
One thought guiltily strikes me. I'm on her side and I love this piece (feel the need to state so!) and I'm so glad I've seen this piece, and grateful it now has a permanent home in Brooklyn, so I've seen it several times.
But she's so sad it took so long to get that permanence. The permanence was always her goal. I understand the sadness of the cancelled tour, the harsh criticism, the following years of obscurity and disdain (devastating but how could it be surprising after all the research that went into women's history being stamped out by men?). That makes me sad and empathetic. But I guess I wonder why she thinks she deserves a permanent installation. How much space is there in the world for art? Why does anyone (and I include men in this) deserve a permanent installation?
I guess that's the difference between her wave of feminism and mine -- her wave was often framed in "why can't women have what men have!" and mine is more "wait why do we have these systems of hierarchy in the first place!"
I'm sad and ashamed (as a fellow artsy white feminist lady) that this piece is not more intersectional. It makes me feel like I can't claim it as hard as I want to. Is that wrong?
And I don't like the stupid "Heritage Floor" and wish it was better justified (I like the idea of including many many more women who couldn't be included in the plates, and I like that it feels like an overwhelming number of names. But after SO much thought and intention that went into the form and materials of the rest of the piece, the Heritage Floor has always felt like a weird, sad afterthought. Annoyed that the brief explanation so far (I've only read the intro at this point) has not dissuaded me of that notion yet.
Thoughts after reading:
Reading through the entire book was a chore. I decided to read ~10 pages a day and built it into my morning routine. What a way to start your day, reading off the names and brief biographies ("almanac entries" I call them) of women, many many of whom did not receive justice, were overlooked, nearly forgotten, overshadowed, or worse raped and/or murdered.
But it felt like an act of respect, a duty, and one I was ultimately happy to do. I don't know if I retained much about any individual entry, but I now know there's an incredible resource of notable women on my bookshelf if I'm looking for inspiration. And just the act of reading about them felt...empowering? Like I was doing them some justice?
I stand by my earlier note, that I think the overall project here feels severely outdated -- "women's history" "women artists" "women's studies," I guess I'm over it. In a "How is J.K. Rowling is a TURF???" world, I'm ready to put more work towards liberating us all from gender disparity rather than take the hundreds of thousands of years it would take to "even the score" so to speak.
But I will happily say this project has ABSOLUTELY changed the way I read history. When I recently went down a Wikipedia hole about "the destructive end of the Bronze Age", the narrative was all about war and commerce. It made me wonder how the women fared in those 'collapsed' societies, what the untold histories are underneath the war and economic collapse. I will now forever be suspicious of the way men center in our histories in a way that is more specific and real than ever before, and I do thank Judy Chicago for that.
Rebecca Solnit: Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas
A few thoughts before beginning:
I remember when this book was on pretty much every coffee table I came across in San Francisco for some time after it came out (2014-2017?)
I swiped it from Piston -- a long-defunct tech startup where I briefly worked as the HR assistant / office manager. Very SF tech scene, my job was largely to process lunch receipts and make sure there was always Four Roses Bourbon in the board room. The 'aesthetic' of the company was old-timey library, so there were a ton of books everywhere. This appeared one day, no one touched it, so on my way out I swiped it. -shrug-
It's been a few years since I read it, but I remember a few things, especially the note about the bus that runs from preppy Marina through the historically Black Fillmore, down through the Mission, and off to oblivion -- how that one bus cuts through the city in a way that gives you an incredible look at many of its layers of flavors
It strikes me what a bold move it is to try to capture this (particularly?) ephemeral city in a book at any given time. I predict that even though it was written less than 10 years ago, I won't recognize most of the San Francisco inside.
What would I add to a San Francisco atlas? I'd like a map of notable murals/street art, arts venues, staircases, and 'urban hikes'
Thoughts while reading:
- I love this gloriously gloomy quote from page 3, "The bay is, in a haunting phrase, called a drowned river mouth. Once, its islands were only hilltops, for the river channel that still goes deep beneath the bridge was carved out when the sea was lower and the rivers stretched farther west."
time has drowned this valley
continues to drown
and we are the memories
flashing by at the end of her life
-pg. 5 "The poet-artist Genine Lentine of the San Francisco Zen Center..." Genine! I took a poetry workshop with her! I wonder if she still crawls these streets, what's happening at her Zen Center?
After binging the second half of it:
- Maybe I'm just in a bad mood today, but this book feels indulgent, inaccurate (over time) / outdated, incomplete
-But I suppose one could write a Section 23 in the book itself about ephemeralness and how it's an apt description that can be traced both through the book & through the city
Have I crossed paths with Guillermo Gomez Pena? Or Rebecca Solnit for that matter?
I have crossed paths with Genine Lentine. And then and now I've wondered about zen meditation and Buddhism and its possible place in my life. I left those passages feeling contemplative about futures yet to come for me.
Coffee shops, the mission, evictions, participating in its shifting economies, identities + tribes, the character and complexity of each neighborhood, yerba buena and its dreadful past ... subjects that resonate as I crest my 8th anniversary of living here.
Final Thoughts:
It was a pleasure tracing the maps. Looking at what was marked on each map near familiar intersections. Finding things I knew and recognized + finding things I still haven't yet. I last read this in 2014 or 2015, a couple years after landing here. The city has changed so much (more or less on the same trajectories outlined in the book), and I have gained many more relationships to the city + its past + my past.
I have left and come back (if moving to Berkeley for a year counts), I own property here now. I now have streets that mean several different selves to me.
I worked from my new office last week, and sat on the 22nd Floor. Perhaps the highest up in any building I've gone in San Francisco, certainly the highest I've ever spent much time in. I saw Yerba Buena Center from above, and Salesforce Park from above.
I walk by the noted Cafe Flore every day, it sits vacant now but unchanged from the outside. After years of living nearby, I finally consider Dolores Park part of my inner concentric circle of being.
I have known this city alone, and I now know it more as a couple.
I have gotten married on top of a hill alluded to in one of the stories (a story of hidden staircases).
Anyway, while I appreciated it last time I read the book, I am more familiar with its subjects now, and more grateful for the histories and hidden stories it illuminates. Having lived at 24th & Folsom, a new appreciation for the gang territories in the Mission. Having worked in and read poetry in several coffee shops and frequented many more, a new desire to go to the ones I love so much now before they're gone.
Some subjects I'd like to investigate of San Francisco:
- centers of poetry
- local artist collectives
- concert venues + art centers
- tree tour
- sidewalk scratchings
- how the sunset has evolved
I think I'll try the exercise Guillermo and Rebecca did in one of the maps -- for each part of the city, who am I? Who am I where? And maybe I'd do one similar to the Muybridge one, what are some of the important moments on my timeline and where did they occur? And perhaps I'd like to do a version of the Treasure Island map, choosing 49 treasures throughout the city and placing them on the map.
I think this book should be taken as it is. Admire the gorgeous maps, wonder how you might create similar maps of your city, your neighborhood. Let it inspire you to learn more about those who came before you, be it thousands, hundreds, or merely 5 years ago. Cherish the weird signs, persistent graffitti, seemingly timeless coffeeshops, and the particular sounds that surround you, for either they will change or you will, and you'll love to have a mark of them to look back on.
