[They were] known to make out while eating shepherd’s pie, which is not a euphemism[.]
– Maureen Johnson, THE NAME OF THE STAR
I will laugh about this one day, I told myself. I will laugh about it with people so clever and sophisticated I can’t imagine them properly now.
– Jo Walters, AMONG OTHERS
I will laugh about this one day, I told myself. I will laugh about it with people so clever and sophisticated I can’t imagine them properly now.
– Jo Walters, AMONG OTHERS
…is right here.
There’s a long tradition of Socialist Worker movie reviews generating major debates, so I am eagerly awaiting responses.
…is right here.
There’s a long tradition of Socialist Worker movie reviews generating major debates, so I am eagerly awaiting responses.
For reasons like this.
h/t Feminist Philosophers, a usual.
For reasons like this.
h/t Feminist Philosophers, a usual.
My workout ground to a dead halt tonight when I noticed that the TV above me was covering Trayvon Martin and I watched, riveted, while mainstream news said things like, “This is a new movement.”
That’s what it feels like, even being here in Wisconsin where there isn’t yet a response despite our own local murder of a Black boy for doing what teenagers do (what I did); despite the latest vicious racism, like semester-clockwork, from our frats; despite everything. It feels like something was let out of the bottle with Troy Davis and Occupy, or maybe like something finally crawled its way out, and it’s not going back even if it hasn’t yet taken stock of itself, even if it hasn’t figured out yet what it is.
I can’t stop thinking about the picture from the CNN slideshow of three men of color on a New York City bus urgently photographing the Million Hoodie March blocking their bus’s progress. It feels like a line is being drawn, between cops and prosecutors and reporters and racists laying bare that they don’t care in the slightest about Black boys’ lives, and people shouting that we care. When I look at that picture of the bus, it feels like maybe this is the first time they ever saw someone shouting that they care. It feels tangible how much they care back. It feels like one of those moments when options change.
I hope, I hope this is a new movement. Because we really need this one.
My workout ground to a dead halt tonight when I noticed that the TV above me was covering Trayvon Martin and I watched, riveted, while mainstream news said things like, “This is a new movement.”
That’s what it feels like, even being here in Wisconsin where there isn’t yet a response despite our own local murder of a Black boy for doing what teenagers do (what I did); despite the latest vicious racism, like semester-clockwork, from our frats; despite everything. It feels like something was let out of the bottle with Troy Davis and Occupy, or maybe like something finally crawled its way out, and it’s not going back even if it hasn’t yet taken stock of itself, even if it hasn’t figured out yet what it is.
I can’t stop thinking about the picture from the CNN slideshow of three men of color on a New York City bus urgently photographing the Million Hoodie March blocking their bus’s progress. It feels like a line is being drawn, between cops and prosecutors and reporters and racists laying bare that they don’t care in the slightest about Black boys’ lives, and people shouting that we care. When I look at that picture of the bus, it feels like maybe this is the first time they ever saw someone shouting that they care. It feels tangible how much they care back. It feels like one of those moments when options change.
I hope, I hope this is a new movement. Because we really need this one.
I whirl around to face him — again, surprised by how confident I sound, considering that my heart is rushing, tumbling. Maybe this is the secret to talking to boys — maybe you just have to be angry all the time.
– Lauren Oliver, DELIRIUM
(Side question: why is YA so full of constructions like “rushing, tumbling”? Have you ever seen this in a book for adults? Now that I think about it, I think this is even more quintessentially YA than the long-short cadence I wrote about recently. What are the other stylistic quirks of YA?)
I whirl around to face him — again, surprised by how confident I sound, considering that my heart is rushing, tumbling. Maybe this is the secret to talking to boys — maybe you just have to be angry all the time.
– Lauren Oliver, DELIRIUM
(Side question: why is YA so full of constructions like “rushing, tumbling”? Have you ever seen this in a book for adults? Now that I think about it, I think this is even more quintessentially YA than the long-short cadence I wrote about recently. What are the other stylistic quirks of YA?)
I tagged this as Book vs. Book, but it’s really Book vs. Oeuvre, because Sarah Dessen, to me, is her own genre.
SimonPulse emblazoned the front cover of Deb Caletti’s THE SIX RULES OF MAYBE with an SLJ blurb comparing it to the best of Dessen, and a glance at the back shows that all of Caletti’s books have Dessen-esque covers in overall look even if they lack the emphasis on disembodied body parts.
“Their marketing strategy is to trick you into thinking you’re buying a Sarah Dessen book,” I told Emily (we were at Books of Wonder; I’d never read Caletti). “Works for me.”
And I know why the SLJ blurb said that: it’s that narrative mix of emotional over-articulation, rendered in very deliberate, almost trite, imagery, blended with quick and astringent judgment, so you understand right away that the smart girl who’s narrating is knowing and wry, but not so knowing and wry that she doesn’t think her high school experiences are worth metaphors. And it’s that cadence where the sentences come long and then short, like it’s all flowing out of that girl faster than she can control until she’s pulled up short by her own realizations. I thought nobody did sentence-level pacing like Dessen; Caletti sure comes close. Well. It’s tone and pacing and character fused, because it always adds up to a girl who is looking, looking, looking, and wanting, and there’re reasons why these books, despite their fundamental similarity, never get old for me.
So that’s all to the good, and Caletti maybe isn’t edited as well — multiple passages, especially early, feel overwritten in a way that Dessen rarely does — but at her best she’s quotable as hell in the way of Meg Rosoff or John Green.
But I actually think Caletti does the big picture better than Dessen usually does, and it’s because she lets her protagonist fail harder. Here’s the core piece of my favorite scene:
I wanted to open that smile up wider, to see the Hayden of the afternoon back again. But I suddenly couldn’t think of anything else to say, and the smile was retreating. He was retreating. I could feel the moment of connectedness passing, my chance being lost. I wanted to play and volley and be back in that place we had been together before, that great place. I needed something, something quick — I grasped and caught something silly and lighthearted. Silly and lighthearted would do.
“So, Hayden Renfrew. What was your most embarrassing moment?”
It sounded workable until I said it. As soon as the words slipped out I knew I had done something horribly and terribly wrong. A humiliating misstep. I felt it all in one second of pause. The night, the cigarette smoke lingering in the air, the heaviness of his thoughts — my words were inappropriate and idiotic. Oh God, why had I said that? Why, why, why? And why couldn’t you take back a moment sometimes? One little moment? Is that asking so much? God, I suddenly sounded thirteen. My red shorts and my white tank top felt young and shameful, my feet in my flip-flops did too. I felt so ashamed of my painted toenails in the streetlight.
The rest of that scene and what comes of it is perfect. And you can see everything here: that Dessen probably would’ve written this scene better, with more economy and precision (and certainly less pleading), but also that probably she wouldn’t have writt
I tagged this as Book vs. Book, but it’s really Book vs. Oeuvre, because Sarah Dessen, to me, is her own genre.
SimonPulse emblazoned the front cover of Deb Caletti’s THE SIX RULES OF MAYBE with an SLJ blurb comparing it to the best of Dessen, and a glance at the back shows that all of Caletti’s books have Dessen-esque covers in overall look even if they lack the emphasis on disembodied body parts.
“Their marketing strategy is to trick you into thinking you’re buying a Sarah Dessen book,” I told Emily (we were at Books of Wonder; I’d never read Caletti). “Works for me.”
And I know why the SLJ blurb said that: it’s that narrative mix of emotional over-articulation, rendered in very deliberate, almost trite, imagery, blended with quick and astringent judgment, so you understand right away that the smart girl who’s narrating is knowing and wry, but not so knowing and wry that she doesn’t think her high school experiences are worth metaphors. And it’s that cadence where the sentences come long and then short, like it’s all flowing out of that girl faster than she can control until she’s pulled up short by her own realizations. I thought nobody did sentence-level pacing like Dessen; Caletti sure comes close. Well. It’s tone and pacing and character fused, because it always adds up to a girl who is looking, looking, looking, and wanting, and there’re reasons why these books, despite their fundamental similarity, never get old for me.
So that’s all to the good, and Caletti maybe isn’t edited as well — multiple passages, especially early, feel overwritten in a way that Dessen rarely does — but at her best she’s quotable as hell in the way of Meg Rosoff or John Green.
But I actually think Caletti does the big picture better than Dessen usually does, and it’s because she lets her protagonist fail harder. Here’s the core piece of my favorite scene:
I wanted to open that smile up wider, to see the Hayden of the afternoon back again. But I suddenly couldn’t think of anything else to say, and the smile was retreating. He was retreating. I could feel the moment of connectedness passing, my chance being lost. I wanted to play and volley and be back in that place we had been together before, that great place. I needed something, something quick — I grasped and caught something silly and lighthearted. Silly and lighthearted would do.
“So, Hayden Renfrew. What was your most embarrassing moment?”
It sounded workable until I said it. As soon as the words slipped out I knew I had done something horribly and terribly wrong. A humiliating misstep. I felt it all in one second of pause. The night, the cigarette smoke lingering in the air, the heaviness of his thoughts — my words were inappropriate and idiotic. Oh God, why had I said that? Why, why, why? And why couldn’t you take back a moment sometimes? One little moment? Is that asking so much? God, I suddenly sounded thirteen. My red shorts and my white tank top felt young and shameful, my feet in my flip-flops did too. I felt so ashamed of my painted toenails in the streetlight.
The rest of that scene and what comes of it is perfect. And you can see everything here: that Dessen probably would’ve written this scene better, with more economy and precision (and certainly less pleading*), b
Shiny, overconfident clothes you could never imagine yourself wearing hung along the walls. I felt some sort of clothes-store consumer shame creeping up my insides. It was all the insincerity of high school with the added humiliation of mirrors.
–Deb Calleti, THE SIX RULES OF MAYBE
Shiny, overconfident clothes you could never imagine yourself wearing hung along the walls. I felt some sort of clothes-store consumer shame creeping up my insides. It was all the insincerity of high school with the added humiliation of mirrors.
–Deb Calleti, THE SIX RULES OF MAYBE
“I don’t know many rules to live by,” he’d said. “But here’s one. It’s simple. Don’t put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles — drug or tattoo — and… no inessential penises, either.”
“Inessential penises?” Karou had repeated, delighted with the phrase in spite of her grief. “Is there any such thing as an essential one?”
“When an essential one comes along, you’ll know,” he’d replied.
– Laini Taylor, DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE
By the way, I cannot recommend this book enough, but I warn you: the first couple chapters make it seem like it’s going to be a less good book than it is. Just keep going, and then thank me (and Bethany, who told me) with all appropriate effusiveness.
“I don’t know many rules to live by,” he’d said. “But here’s one. It’s simple. Don’t put anything unnecessary into yourself. No poisons or chemicals, no fumes or smoke or alcohol, no sharp objects, no inessential needles — drug or tattoo — and… no inessential penises, either.”
“Inessential penises?” Karou had repeated, delighted with the phrase in spite of her grief. “Is there any such thing as an essential one?”
“When an essential one comes along, you’ll know,” he’d replied.
– Laini Taylor, DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE
By the way, I cannot recommend this book enough, but I warn you: the first couple chapters make it seem like it’s going to be a less good book than it is. Just keep going, and then thank me (and Bethany, who told me) with all appropriate effusiveness.
Here’s the thing: I walk faster than God. I am from New York, and we are a walking people, but even New Yorkers can’t keep up. Midwesterners barely realize what’s happening as I weave through their molassal sidewalk clumps. Mostly people find me freakish. And by that I mean, I get commentary.
I get four types of commentary. Friends, women and men: “I saw you on the street and tried to wave, but you were already on the next block!” (They recognize me in the blur of movement because I usually have a good hat.)
New friends or acquaintances, usually women: “Thank god, you’re the only one I don’t have to slow down with.” We speed and chatter and become better friends. *
Strangers, invariably black men, often older: Laughter and remarks, variants of, “Where’s the fire?!”, or sometimes just an astonished, “Damn.” These ones are my favorite. There are few regular occurrences that improve my day as much as unexpectedly having an occasion to joke around with strangers, which is why I have the best name in the world.
Acquaintances, invariably younger white guys — and this is not the gender-neutral form of guys — : Competition.
They’ll hear me or someone else mention that I walk fast, and they’ll immediately respond, “I bet I can beat you to the end of the block.” Which, I bet you can; your legs are longer and I’m not a runner and it’s just that my natural gait happens to be faster than anyone’s I’ve ever met. But, dude, I find it remarkably self-revealing that this is your reaction, because I notice that it’s not that you’re like me and have a self-identity built partly on walking faster than a hungry hippo, which could justify a certain amount of defensiveness. Or even that you desire a friendly competition, in which we shit-talk each other’s walk and race and then feel fondly toward one another because what bonds you like a mutual shit-talk? Those things I would understand.
But no. That’s not what’s going on. All evidence suggests that, although you have no particular investment in walking fast, nevertheless, the idea that this woman walks faster than you offends you. You must show her up. Well.
I fly a lot through Detroit**, and this occasions a long walk in their crazy neon-lit tunnel between terminals. My airport principle is that you avoid the moving sidewalk because people are not well socialized to place themselves in such a way that you can get around them, so it’s faster to walk alongside where you have more room to maneuver.
So recently I’m strolling through that tunnel and out of the corner of my eye I see this 20-something white guy walking slowly on the moving sidewalk do a double take as I come up alongside and then pass him. And then I see him speed up.
Now, normally I do not engage these races, but something about this dude, or the neon, or the lingering resentment from having earlier had to interact with the TSA brought it out in me. So I sped up, subtly, at first. And he sped up. And then I did some more.
And we got to be moving very fast, him on the sidewalk with his head turning to stare at me, and me next to him and just ahead, much faster than I usually stroll but maintaining my stroll gait (you should feel like you’re loping) and gazing around at all the pretty lights, and this went on for quite some while before the tunnel was over. I pulled through the e
Here’s the thing: I walk faster than God. I am from New York, and we are a walking people, but even New Yorkers can’t keep up. Midwesterners barely realize what’s happening as I weave through their molassal sidewalk clumps. Mostly people find me freakish. And by that I mean, I get commentary.
I get four types of commentary. Friends, women and men: “I saw you on the street and tried to wave, but you were already on the next block!” (They recognize me in the blur of movement because I usually have a good hat.)
New friends or acquaintances, usually women: “Thank god, you’re the only one I don’t have to slow down with.” We speed and chatter and become better friends. *
Strangers, invariably black men, often older: Laughter and remarks, variants of, “Where’s the fire?!”, or sometimes just an astonished, “Damn.” These ones are my favorite. There are few regular occurrences that improve my day as much as unexpectedly having an occasion to joke around with strangers, which is why I have the best name in the world.
Acquaintances, invariably younger white guys — and this is not the gender-neutral form of guys: Competition.
They’ll hear me or someone else mention that I walk fast, and they’ll immediately respond, “I bet I can beat you to the end of the block.” Which, I bet you can; your legs are longer and I’m not a runner and it’s just that my natural gait happens to be faster than anyone’s I’ve ever met. But, dude, I find it remarkably self-revealing that this is your reaction, because I notice that it’s not that you’re like me and have a self-identity built partly on walking faster than a hungry hippo, which could justify a certain amount of defensiveness. Or even that you desire a friendly competition, in which we shit-talk each other’s walk and race and then feel fondly toward one another because what bonds you like a mutual shit-talk? Those things I would understand.
But no. That’s not what’s going on. All evidence suggests that, although you have no particular investment in walking fast, nevertheless, the idea that this woman walks faster than you offends you. You must show her up. Well.
I fly a lot through Detroit**, and this occasions a long walk in their crazy neon-lit tunnel between terminals. My airport principle is that you avoid the moving sidewalk because people are not well socialized to place themselves in such a way that you can get around them, so it’s faster to walk alongside where you have more room to maneuver.
So recently I’m strolling through that tunnel and out of the corner of my eye I see this 20-something white guy walking slowly on the moving sidewalk do a double take as I come up alongside and then pass him. And then I see him speed up.
Now, normally I do not engage these races, but something about this dude, or the neon, or the lingering resentment from having earlier had to interact with the TSA brought it out in me. So I sped up, subtly, at first. And he sped up. And then I did some more.
And we got to be moving very fast, him on the sidewalk with his head turning to stare at me, and me next to him and just ahead, much faster than I usually stroll but maintaining my stroll gait (you should feel like you’re loping) and gazing around at all the pretty lights, and this went on for quite some while before the tunnel was over. I pulled through the end (I also ha
Allow me to break your heart:
…Now allow me to put it back together again:
UPDATED: This Jimmy Kimmel clip is absolutely hilarious — especially the girl who gets the half-eaten sandwich! — but the family whose idea of “terrible presents” is to give their kids presents for the “wrong” gender makes me very sad.
Allow me to break your heart:
…Now allow me to put it back together again:
UPDATED: This Jimmy Kimmel clip is absolutely hilarious — especially the girl who gets the half-eaten sandwich! — but the family whose idea of “terrible presents” is to give their kids presents for the “wrong” gender makes me very sad.
Aunt Emily had spent a lifetime interfering–days–weeks–years. There was nothing she could do better, or that she enjoyed more. To thrust her finger into somebody’s pie and wreck it–that was Aunt Emily for you. Lucinda’s grandmother, having died when her mother was a very little girl, had left Aunt Emily the oldest of the family; and to her had descended that divine right of putting her finger into family pies.
–Ruth Sawyer, ROLLER SKATES
P.S. Just so there’s no confusion with regards to the name, I’d like to state for the record that the above quote is not about me. You can tell because I have no siblings.
…in which Bart and Homer form a tween fiction writing team.
So many vampires, with the fangs and the capes and the medals – nobody knows how they earned them.
- Professor Frink (weird scientist guy), The Simpsons
HUGE SPOILERS for THE HUNGER GAMES and CATCHING FIRE!!!
(note, this is the first of several semi-related posts on the Hunger Games trilogy – stay tuned for more!)
So, I love the whole trilogy, but CATCHING FIRE is my favorite, and here’s why – its about organizing. And I’m an organizer and activist, and thus love and appreciate books (non-fiction or fiction alike) that actually show the organizing process – the how of how change comes about, which mainstream history and a lot of fiction tends to skip past. CATCHING FIRE doesn’t get into as much detail as I personally might like, but I recognize I’m probably on one extreme of that preference spectrum in Collins’ overall readership, so I’ll cut her a little slack. Because what she does quite well is thread in bits and pieces throughout the book that make two things clear: a mass rebellion does not occur “spontaneously;” and depending on your personal experience and context, you are going to see and understand (or not see and not understand) what is happening very differently.
We get a number of glimpses of organized resistance before Katniss re-enters the Games, which we see primarily through Katniss’ perspective, but which we also get important alternative interpretations of through other characters.
The changing of the head peacekeeper and general crackdown in District 12 bring to light the extent to which the underground economy centered around the Hob was in fact a set of organized survival mechanisms within an oppressive regime – ones that have not, in Katniss’ memory at least, been used to challenge that system and thus were permitted to exist, but which actually put in place the kind of networks of communication, mutual support, and solidarity upon which more overt resistance movements build. Which is why it makes sense that the Capitol immediately does what it can to wipe out the whole underground world of District 12 upon the emergence of resistance elsewhere and small signs that at least a few individuals in District 12 might have similar thoughts. Of course, burning the Hob to the ground and electrifying the fence doesn’t destroy deeper community networks. In fact, Katniss’ mother makes it clear that the period of laxness has been relatively short (although apparently long enough that Katniss doesn’t clearly remember the last harsher time), and she and others seem to return pretty seamlessly to the roles they played previously.
Katniss interprets the crackdown as largely a personal retaliation by the Capitol against her. She has no clear memory of previous similar situations, so unlike her mother and some other townspeople who seem to see the lax period as an exception and the crackdown as a more of a return to what came before, Katniss sees the opposite. Furthermore, without context for understanding how collective action happens, how and why people respond to oppression in various ways at different times, Katniss sees both the acts of overt resistance that seem to her eyes to crop up out of nowhere, and the Capitol’s response, as direct consequences of her defiance with the poison berries. President Snow, of course, encourages that line of thinking and its corollaries: that she is personally responsible for any and all actions that follow down the line, and that she has the capability to stop others’ resistance. (More on this in a later post).
Gale provides an important contrast here, because at the start of THE HUNGER GAMES his perspective is actually quite similar. He’s portrayed as a more rebellious personality than Katniss – he sees the system as unjust and unfair, and it makes him angry, and more than anything else he comes off as frustrated. Which makes sense because the only solution he’s able to present is for him and Katniss to run away and live in the woods. Which they can’t do, because they’re each primarily respon
“Miss Binney, I want to know — how did Mike Mulligan go to the bathroom when he was digging the basement of the town hall?”
Miss Binney’s smile seemed to last longer than smiles usually last. Ramona glanced uneasily around and saw that others were waiting with interest for the answer. Everybody wanted to know how Mike Mulligan went to the bathroom.
- Beverly Cleary, RAMONA THE PEST
Where have you been? I had to see “Perks” without benefit of your comments on book or movie.