It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these because work has been keeping me busy and I went through a period whee I just wasn’t reading all that much - in April I finished just one book, and it wasn’t worth a whole post to share that. But now that good weather is here and I’ve sort of settled into a groove, I’m back in full swing. So here’s what I read in May.
McKenzie Wark - Reverse Cowgirl (Semiotexte, 2020)
I’ve already written about this one at length, so I’ll keep my notes here brief: It’s an enjoyable memoir-ish story, written in fragments that illuminate where Wark’s state of mind was at any particular place, be it taking drugs with a boyfriend, getting railed at a sex club or working on a thesis at an adult bookstore. In these fragments, Wark grows into herself, slowly accepting roles and trying to adapt them into what she wants to be; it isn’t until late in life, while eating mushrooms in the forest, that she finally decides to transition. I don’t think the term Femboy was in common use a couple of years ago when this came out, but Wark’s story makes me think of a couple I know and I wonder if their story will be similar. And while it might be, nobody else is telling their story in prose as interesting as Wark’s.
Joan Chase - During the Reign of the Queen of Persia (NYRB Classics, 2014)
Set mostly in a rural Ohio farm, During the Reign… follows the women of a family as they grow up and grow old, grow wise with experience and learn the ways of men. It’s told in an interesting, plural voice: the four grandkids who spend their summers at the farm, watching their granddad milk the cows, their grandma make pies and their mom slowly succumb to cancer. It’s a haunting story, poignant at times, disturbing at others. In my internal card catalog, I’m sliding this one somewhere between Winesburg Ohio and Ducks, Newburyport, maybe not too far down the road from Lynn Lauber’s White Girls. I think I’ll have more on this later.
Jean Genet - Prisoner of Love (NYRB Classics, 2003)
Genet’s memoir-cum-autofiction, republished almost 20 years ago and written in the twilight of Genet’s life, remains a compelling and powerful read about the Middle East. At a time when conflicts frequently flared up and most people knew the PLO as the organization that killed some Israeli athletes at the Olympics, Genet travelled to Palestine, spending parts of the next decade there. A dangerous choice, yes, but also an interesting one as he rubs shoulders with terrorists, freedom fighters and people stuck in refugee camps. He writes passionately about the conflicts, doomed at the time but still ongoing, and the people he left behind: some killed in combat, some fled to Europe and some who just vanished. A compelling and insightful read, and recommended for anyone who’d like some insight into this conflict.
Mark Lilla - The Shipwrecked Mind (NYRB, 2016)
A series of essays (mostly book reviews) previously published in the New York Review of Books, Lilla’s collection is something of a spiritual successor to his 2001 collection The Reckless Mind. But where that one looked at how intellectuals can be led astray by politics, this one looks at how politics can lead otherwise rational people astray. In other words, it’s a look at reactionary politics. Lilla mostly looks at the right, ranging between early 20th century thinkers like Franz Rozenzweig and Eric Voegelin to contemporary writers like Michel Houellebecq and Eric Zemmour. Through these, Lilla tries to draw an arc of how conservative thought is always in search of some mystical past and how to get back to the garden. “For in learning how to tell a story that idolizes a lost America,” writes Lilla, “they unknowingly reproduce a very European cultural pessimism.” Or as Allan Bloom put it, “whether it be Nuremberg or Woodstock, the principal is the same.”
Lilla is generally pretty successful in drawing this arc - and I appreciate he also sets his sights on Badiou, who preaches a similar decline from the left - but one can’t help but think this book aged rather quickly. Not long after these essays were written, the US elected Donald Trump to the White House and Lilla found himself mired in the water of arguing identity politics, something of his own reactionary turn. The anger towards radical Islam among conservatives quickly turned to anger against LGBTQ or BIPOC people; one no longer hears scaremongering about Sharia Law, but hears a lot about “grooming” or women’s sports. This doesn’t mean Lilla’s book is worthless or anything - I found it an engaging read, myself - but it does make one wish his scope was a little wider.
Gore Vidal - Julian (Vintage International, 2003)
Vidal wore a bunch of hats in his lifetime: political essayist, chronicler of the American dream, playwright. One that’s a little overlooked is his turn as a historical novelist. Julian, published some 60 years ago, shows him at his finest, a story about Julian the Apostate, the Roman Emperor who tried to turn back the clock and restore an older way of living. It was a Quixotic quest, doomed to failure, but in doing so sort became a last blazing star.
Vidal tells his story in an interesting way, as a series of letters between two philosophers commenting on Julian’s memoirs and diaries. They undercut the narrative, provide context and occasionally bitch about each other. It’s distinct from similarly minded works like I, Claudius in this almost metatextual way where one’s never quite sure what to make of any given moment. But more than that, Vidal draws a compelling world of palace intrigues, ancient warfare and the allure of power, something Julian is initially repulsed by but grows not only to love but crave - and which ultimately seals his downfall. It’s a good read, atmospheric in the best sort of way, and has Vidal at the peak of his novelistic powers, lacking the campiness of Duluth or the cheekiness of Myra Breckenridge.