masculinity; musings

[CutieMouse]

Gah!

Hemingway... torture of the not so exquisite kind.

*shudders and withdraws from the thread*

 

[Netzach]

Dreadful Nick Adams stories. Blah.


Walt Whitman, on the other hand.

 

[Ebonyfire]

I tried to read Hemingway once. It just did not speak to me.

Eb

 

[boyvenus4u]

ladies, dear ladies...

Forget the dumb macho image and just read the prose...it is truly beautiful stuff...the work not the life.

What about Almodovar, the spanish director? Must be one of the few men around you might possibly apply the term genius to. Says his muse is his mother. And his portrayals of women have all the characteristics traditionally associated with men; courage, bravery,tenacity etc... this is very interesting considering he is a gay man. All his men in contrast are portrayed as frail vulnerable creatures, in fact weakness traditionally associated with the 'fairer' sex. I love this reversal of roles, Hemingway did touch upon it in The Garden of Eden, and I would admit it is not his finest hour. Honesty in sexual matters, as Whitman proved, is one step on the road to a terrestial paradise, where leaves are grass.

 

[CutieMouse]

Forget the dumb macho image and just read the prose...it is truly beautiful stuff...the work not the life.

What about Almodovar, the spanish director? Must be one of the few men around you might possibly apply the term genius to. Says his muse is his mother. And his portrayals of women have all the characteristics traditionally associated with men; courage, bravery,tenacity etc... this is very interesting considering he is a gay man. All his men in contrast are portrayed as frail vulnerable creatures, in fact weakness traditionally associated with the 'fairer' sex. I love this reversal of roles, Hemingway did touch upon it in The Garden of Eden, and I would admit it is not his finest hour. Honesty in sexual matters, as Whitman proved, is one step on the road to a terrestial paradise, where leaves are grass.

Ahh.. but it isn't the dumb macho image that annoys me about Hemingway. I simply dislike his style of writing. Similarly, I'm not all that fond of Steinbeck or Faulkner, either.

*ducks the cyber flying tomatoes being thrown at her for disliking the kings of the American modern novel*

Give me Dickens, Eliot, Bronte, or Dickinson (plus a relaxed mind to enjoy them), however, and I'm a happy girl.

 

[boyvenus4u]

What about Jane Austen!

Now there's a woman who found her place in the world. There are so many wonderful film adaptations also. Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson to the fore. I always get a feeling, when I am watching the social trajectory of one of her characters, not unsimilar to that when one is watching a high wire artist, one false step and a life is ruined. And so, under such pressure, she moves her characters with such perfect grace. Once again, like Almodovar, the women come across, because they are mainly the area of focus, as such mentally strong creatures. There is an incredible dignity shown there in the face of adversity. And of course a woman's place, in the society she portrays, was not an easy one. Austen's books, for this reason, have something of the document feel to them, she is documenting women's lives, their thoughts and their experiences. Holding up the mirror, as it were. She is a very quiet writer, in contrast to Hemingway, say. I believe that he too was a great admirer. Of course, there's nothing to stop one liking the two. This is what I like. The difference. I would not take one over another. Both portray worlds that they KNOW. Both are just as real, just as poignant. all we have to do is spend some time with them, the books characters, like with people. in this books are a great preparing for life.
I was at work today, and I couldn't get this title out of my mind. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I don't know why, but it just popped into my head. Carson McCullers. Now there is a truly GREAT American writer. I firmly believe that if she had been a man EVERYBODY would know her name. In fact, scratch that. It is not a belief, it is a fact. And this is terrible. Really terribly. Reflections in a Golden Eye is a poem in prose. For me, she is truly a great seer, like Austen. And again like Austen, she is a great humanist. People. That's her subject. People. And usually the misfits, the outcasts, the ones who don't belong. Marlon Brando gives a great performance in John Houston's film version of the impotent, homophobic officer.
Anyway, I seem to be going on a bit here Cutie. I better stop. Nice chatting with you all the same. See you tommorrow? Maybe you could tell me a bit about those books your reading. Which one you like, and why etc..
Boy.

 

[Netzach]

Forget the dumb macho image and just read the prose...it is truly beautiful stuff...the work not the life.

Gimme Dylan Thomas or JJ any day, if you're going to drink and self destruct do it with lyrical celtic wordiness.

 

[Ebonyfire]

Forget the dumb macho image and just read the prose...it is truly beautiful stuff...the work not the life.

What about Almodovar, the spanish director? Must be one of the few men around you might possibly apply the term genius to. Says his muse is his mother. And his portrayals of women have all the characteristics traditionally associated with men; courage, bravery,tenacity etc... this is very interesting considering he is a gay man. All his men in contrast are portrayed as frail vulnerable creatures, in fact weakness traditionally associated with the 'fairer' sex. I love this reversal of roles, Hemingway did touch upon it in The Garden of Eden, and I would admit it is not his finest hour. Honesty in sexual matters, as Whitman proved, is one step on the road to a terrestial paradise, where leaves are grass.

Beautiful prose or not; it ain't my cup of tea and never will be. I don't like him.

 

[boyvenus4u]

Dylan Thomas and lyrical celtic wordiness

Ah Netzach, you take me back twenty odd years, and more! Perhaps as many as 25! (Crikey!) What am I saying, even more...anyway...

He was my introduction to poetry. A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire of a Child in London

Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

I was 16 or 17. We had just finished with Andrew Marvell and John Donne. I couldn't get enough of him. I read everything. All The Poems, all the stories. And then of course the Biographies. And then of course the imitative period. My god! You know the stories in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog? That too was something approaching my 'childhood'. There is one, the last I think, called One Warm Saturday, and the one before it Old Garbo. They tell about the lives of young women and men shy, young, naive, and with too much beer. I loved them for the atmosphere. I too just wanted to fall in love with a girl, get married and settle down in some sea town and compose poems. Wish it were that simple.

And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

Thomas seemed to never grow up. Always the adolescent. So, he's great when you are that young and tentatively exploring. The repression, the longed for release, the dream encounter which of course never happens. And so to the bottle. I too used to find out old pubs. There was one in particular. Very Thomasish. I used to go in about 10 in the morning and leave about ten that night, and that was a good day. O we used to have such fun. The bar was above a chemists, can you imagine it? There was just a counter, and a fireplace, always lit. And the publican, now dead, would hand you his card with a Noel Coward quote; With a talent to abuse! He was gas. I used to meeet Canadians, French, Italians, Americans, Australians, Irish...it was wonderful. All that anybody cared about was the conversation, and of course the next drink. I met so many loveable rogues. My girlfriends were never too impressed with me for bringing them there.

The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
with any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.

So, the years passed. And I moved cities. I ended up in Paris, home of JJ. And there I met a very different world, far from owls and Captain Cat! Beckett was alive then, and living there. I used to be terrified that I'd meet him. Would be like meeting god! What would you say? At least, that is how I felt at the time. Sometimes, I would return home for Christmas. And then it would be up the stairs above the chemist to meet the abuse with such good cheer, like a dog returning too his kennel.

Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.

 

[boyvenus4u]

Ebony..

You're a real bundle of joy today. Hope everything's alright.

 

[Ebonyfire]

You're a real bundle of joy today. Hope everything's alright.

Why does my not liking Hemingway make me not a bundle of joy? I read what I want, and leave the rest to others. Life is too short. I am tired that is all.

 

[boyvenus4u]

Eb, I don't give a rats arse if you don't like Heminway...for christ sake.

I was just commenting on the way you said it. You reminded me of my wife when she has the hump, that's all. Go to bed, sleep it off. And hope to see you in the morning!