I could write a great novel if my neighborhood weren't so upscale (book thread)

[elpollodiablo]

From here: http://www.lastplanetojakarta.com/forums/index.php/topic,12202.500.html

Finished Tom Segev's One Palestine, Complete and started Luc Sante's Low Life. LL is "an attempt at a mythology of New York," one man's quest to make a sense of history for a place he saw changing rapidly in the late 80s. Sante has a sympathy for poverty tempered by a distrust and fear of social progress and reform, often waxing sentimentally about how New York has gotten "dull" or "suburbanized." It's a kind of liberalism that seems embarrassing, almost offensive today, and there are moments where he lapses into full=on romanticization of poverty, crime, and squalor. Even when exhibiting a keen self-awareness. Quoting from the New Cosmopolis, 1915:

"An East Side there was in those hardy times, and it was still virginal to settlement-makers, sociological cranks, impertinent reformers, self-advertising politicians, billionaire socialists, and the ubiquitous newspaperman. Magazine writers had not topsyturvied the ideas of the tenement dwellers, nor were the street-cleaner, the Board of Health, and other destroyers of the picturesque in evidence. It was the dear old dirty, often disreputable, though never dull East Side; while now the sentimentalist feels a heart pang to see the order, the cleanliness, the wide streets, the playgrounds, the big boulevards, the absence of indigence that have spoiled the most interesting part of New York City."

Rather than reflect on the cynical, exploitative, and evilly classist mindset that could produce a passage like that, Sante goes on to say that though "cynically decadent," the passage does have some truth to it: "Housing reform does tend to the expedient, the homogenized, the bland... The slums were interesting, but they were also ghastly." Sentences like that betray Sante as part of a vanguard of gentrification, a resident of the LES who, by his own admission, moved in in pursuit of "cheap rents and youth culture" and then began bitching about the effect he himself was having on the neighborhood, all the while pining for a past that was "more interesting" in its widespread cases of cholera, high infant mortality rates, and short life expectancy.

Nonetheless, I'm really enjoying this book so far. Sante's got a great ability to contextualize, and his ruminations in the preface on New York and its respect (or lack thereof) for history is some of the best writing on the totality of the city that I've ever read.

[Ignatius]

Would that Jacob Riis had never dragged his charitable Danish ass over there.It's kind of hilarious that the quote picks on the Board of Health considering the massive citywide damage caused by the cholera epidemics that necessitated its creation. That's a few steps short of romanticizing plague.

[elpollodiablo]

This book is rife with examples of how the authenticity trope 1) existed for longer than you might think, 2) was mostly propagated by people who didn't have to live in the sodden reality of "authenticity," and 3) is dumb as hell.

[davy]

I think I need to take a short break from the epic fantasy and read the new Nicholson Baker novel.

[davy]

I think I need to take a short break from the epic fantasy and read the new Nicholson Baker novel.

This is working out well. He just described mowing the lawn as "walking around behind this armful of noise."

Like button.

[cold before sunrise]

dear old dirty

Heart this.

I don't know, wasn't Calvin's dad from Calvin and Hobbes always harping on about how pain builds character? Everything I need to know in life I learned from the Sunday funnies.

[Ignatius]

If you took everything Calvin's dad said w/r/t character building, etc. at face value, I can't imagine you learned much at all from the Sunday funnies.

[Greg Nog]

Started reading Doc Savage today, WOOOOOOO

[dieblucasdie]

Just finished "King Solomon's Mines," with its non-stop hilarious racism.  But even going in taking the "savage vs. civilized" trope for granted, what's really great about it is how the protagonists solve every problem by being painfully, comically, stereotypically British.  It's like reading about Hugh Grant taming the African wild.   

[Nick Ink]

Starting Aravind adiga's White Tiger. Caitiously optimistic based on first chapter and a bit. Always been drawn to Indian fiction (Nayantara Sagal, Rohinton Mistry, R.K.Narayan, Anita Desai etc.), the bustling, sensory overload of it all.

[Ignatius]

A Kiran Desai book is supporting one corner of this couch I'm on

edit: oops you said Anita...

[diesel_powered]

God I love this thread's title.

[auto-da-fey]

my boss just gave me this new book because I am connected to efforts to demand gender-neutral restrooms where I work:



no idea when I'll read it, but it looks fascinating as hell.

[cold before sunrise]

If you took everything Calvin's dad said w/r/t character building, etc. at face value, I can't imagine you learned much at all from the Sunday funnies.

What I learned is that comics generally aren't very funny, it's rarely they hold any value at all (the only current ones I remotely like are 'Get Fuzzy' and occasionally 'Pearls Before Swine'), and I'd much rather spend a lazy Sunday afternoon laughing myself to tears with a friend while we try to outdo each others' most horrifying moments.

[Anne the Man]

Jeez cbs just when I thought you might be not batshit crazy...It's comics! Comiiiiics! I am reading Runaways by Brian K. Vaughan slash Joss Whedon slash Terry Moore lately. Only at the earlier Vaughan volumes at the moment, but they're grand. Not sure what to expect from Joss--I mean glory, of course, but I haven't read any comics of his yet. Not expecting amazing stuff from Terry Moore, as Strangers In Paradise got clunkier and clunkier as it went on.

I read The Lovely Bones in about a day I guess. It was alright. It didn't "stay with me long after I read it" as the thingy on the cover promised, though. The characters didn't come alive for me.

[G.C.R]

I made the bad mistake of starting to read The Summer Book again, when I actually have work I need to get done. I mean, that work is also the reason I'm spending like an hour a day or so on here as well...
The Summer Book really is brilliant, though.

[YojimboMonkey]

I read a Doctor Who novel.  My buddy mailed it to me, and hell I had 2 train rides today and nothing else to read.  But still.  I read a Doctor Who novel.  It was basically like reading an episode of Doctor Who so I guess you'd have to say it was a successful Doctor Who novel.

oh hey it has a wikipedia entry

[cold before sunrise]

Jeez cbs just when I thought you might be not batshit crazy...It's comics! Comiiiiics!

Are you retarded? All I'm saying is that tough times equal better laughter fuel than comics, because it's true, and defending the dear old dirty because nobody else will.  

[G.C.R]

Nah, I think that was more of a good natured "what the hell are you talking about?" Saying that comics "rarely hold any value at all" because you prefer laughing with friends is kind of like saying hot chocolate rarely holds any value because you prefer playing videogames. They're almost entirely unrelated aside from their awesomeness.

[cold before sunrise]

Laughs are laughs... I believe that a challenging life is more worthwhile than one where things come easily, verified by the wisdom of a classic comic strip and other things funny. What are you talking about?

[Ignatius]

I have trouble reconciling that statement with your preference for Get Fuzzy. You are all too human, cbs.

[G.C.R]

I just think its weird to have a value judgment about two very different ways of experiencing amusement. Laughs are laughs, sure, but I don't feel like laughing about things that happen in my life is intrinsically better than reading a fantastic comic.
This is without even starting on the massively problematic implication that comics' only value is in being funny.

[cold before sunrise]

The things that happen to you should intrinsically have more importance than a set of drawings, don't you think? unless you're doing art inspired by memories... I think it's all about the story either way.

[davy]

I hardly ever laugh out loud reading comics, I'll say that.

[C of heartbreak]

Hey cbs you should check out Krazy Kat.