Anthony Trollope, Can You Forgive Her? (1864)

...well, can ya, punk?

This is the first of Trollope’s Palliser novels, centering around one Plantagenet Palliser—unfathomably wealthy politician, and heir to the Duke of Omnium; his wife, Glencora; and (in future volumes) their offspring.  Plantagenet first appeared in a tiny, superfluous subplot in The Small House at Allington; he was contemplating trying to have an affair with a married woman, then didn’t, was quickly married off, and that was that.  I suppose it’s possible that Trollope was consciously setting up this spin-off series, but I have my doubts.  I think it was just more of his sometimes-maladroit way of filling up pages.

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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Trumpbird

I

Among thirteen greasy candidates

The only thing polling well

Were the numbers of the trumpbird

II

I was of three minds

Like a podium

Where the trumpbird speaks three times.

III

The trumpbird raged in the political climate

It was a large part of the disease.

IV

A man and a woman are one.

A man and a rapist and a trumpbird

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The babbling of pundits

Or the beauty of innuendos about emails,

The trumpbird bellowing

Or just after.

VI

Images filled the TV screen

With vacuous words.

The shadow of the trumpbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the lights

An incomprehensible platform.

VII

O dim men of NatRev

Why do you imagine serious candidates?

Do you not see how the trumpbird

Grabs the pussies

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know xenophobic babbling

And lurid, unbelievable claims;

And I know, too,

That the trumpbird is the source

Of what I know.

IX

When the trumpbird was elected,

It marked the end

Of one of many countries.

X

At the sight of trumpbirds

Governing in a corrupt haze,

Even the fans of non-voting

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over America

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The sounds of a Klan rally

for trumpbirds.

XII

The bombs are falling.

The trumpbird must be tweeting.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was sucking

And it was going to suck.

The trumpbird sat

In the seat of power.

-->

Star Wars: Rongo On

I saw this movie.  I thought it was kind of dumb. Like, spoilers and stuff, WHATEVER. A lot of characters who make no impression dashing about for reasons that are only very tenuously comprehensible. Do I sound like an old man? Well, be that as it may. Also, the fact that everyone dies in the end--I guess you're supposed to see it as this noble sacrifice, but I was just left feeling like the other shoe never dropped--wait, shouldn't these characters have character arks (yes, a few of them don't like each other and then do like each other, but REALLY NOW) or develop in some way or oh no wait they're dead. OKAY! Am I supposed to feel a way about this? 'Cause I SUPER don't. It's also a bizarre tonal mismatch, 'cause let's face it: Star Wars is friggin' goofy. When it works, as in the original trilogy (which, come on, is all the Star Wars any sane person needs), it gets by on sheer joie de vivre. The prequels, gruesome as they were, at least understood that much. That's what's wrong with The Force Awakens: it takes itself so damn seriously. The comic relief, such as it is, feels obviously calculated and inorganic. GUESS WHAT I DON'T WANT A STAR WARS MOVIE SOLEMNLY TELLING ME ABOUT THE GRIM REALITY OF WAR. It's just incongruous.

I mean, REALLY: especially what with Carrie Fisher dying, can't we just agree that Star Wars is over now? Just dump the rough cut of episode VIII onto the internet, and forget about episode IX. This whole thing isn't working, it was never a great idea, let's just cut our losses. I mean, no, of course, I'm well aware that there's money to be made, but I am not impressed by this whole boondoggle. Don't mind me; I'll just be over here shouting at clouds.

That singular anomaly, the lady novelist

Thus endeth the experiment of reading only books by female authors for a year.  Do I win a prize?  This venture was endowed with a certain piquancy by the fact that, when faced with an extremely qualified (whatever else you may think of her) woman as a possible president, we (yes yes, electoral college, but I think the point stands) opted instead for the malevolent orange man-baby. I COULD’VE LIVED WITHOUT THE OBJECT LESSON, UNIVERSE!  Should I write a book called "my year of reading women?"  Probably not!  In the absolute best-case scenario, it would come across not so much as condescending as breathtakingly clueless.  And yet, I'm writing this blog post.  So it's probably too late to avoid anyway.

I decided to do this because it just felt awkward that ninety-eight percent of the books I read are generally by dudes. So the first question we must ask is:why is this the case? The explanation I would always give in the past is that, due to a long history of socioeconomic factors that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH INATE ABILITY JEEZ STOP PUTTING WORDS IN MY MOUTH, there are simply fewer books by female authors I’m interested in reading. And I still think there’s something to that. It does sound awfully damned self-serving and glib, though. I mean, obviously, I never encountered a situation where I thought “huh, should I read this book? Whoa—it’s by a dumb girl! Forget it!” But what role does unconscious sexism play? Wholly unclear. I think back to the college and grad-school lit courses I took, and, indeed, I find that the reading lists for those were more or less male too. Granted, I never took a course in specifically female writers, but none of the ones that I did were meant to be the opposite of that, either. So I can’t help thinking that if sexism is a factor here, it’s institutional as much as personal. But then...why are the institutions such? I mean, I’m pretty darned sure I never had a professor who wouldn’t have described themselves as “feminist” if asked. So what the ding dong dilly? Does it come back to the thing about the socioeconomic factors that I mentioned above? In which case, what responsibility does an institution have to fight back against sexism, and to what extent does it just need to accept that, well, this is the way things were, and you can’t not approach it on those terms? I have no good answers. Even the questions don’t seem to be up to much.

Well, so what good, exactly, does it do for me, or any other individual, to embark on an affirmative action program like this? I discovered some great novels, sure, but let’s face it: that would’ve happened anyway. You’re never going to read all the great books ever written, and really, what difference does it make if I—some random dude—do a thing like this? Well, I suppose it works on a similar principle as voting. It sounds uninspiring, but it’s obviously true: no matter what they tell you in civics class, it doesn’t make a difference it you, individually vote. It wouldn’t even if we had a sane electoral system. BUT, if you can create a critical mass of people to vote the way you do then, boom, shit gets done. Likewise, it makes zero difference for the world at large whom I read, but on some imperceptible level, if reading becomes more egalitarian, then more women will be encouraged to write, and there will be a larger stock of books for us to read—some of which are bound to be masterpieces. So there you go.

So the big question here is, what did I learn from the little exercise? And the answer is: nothing whatsoever! Seriously, it would be impossible to understate how much I learned. I’m not complaining; I discovered some good books that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise (though, again, in that case I would’ve discovered other good books), but what do you want me to say? I suppose maybe if you read the sets that include all books by men and all books by women, you maybe possibly could make some kind of cogent comparison and reach some conclusion or other about gender, but you sure can’t do that from my scattershot reading! Or almost anyone’s, probably. Individual writers have individual styles that are not determined—at least not in any direct, traceable way—by their genders. Is that a lesson I learned? I feel like I kind of knew that already.

The hell of it is, for better or worse, I feel like 2017 is once again going to be overwhelmingly masculine, if only on account of all the cool-looking stuff I discovered this year but couldn’t read because of my resolution. I wish I could say I were going to make a concerted effort to avoid this, but...it’s not gonna happen. Sure, if pressed, I could undoubtedly keep this up for at least another year, but I dunno. The most I can say is that I'll do my best to be aware of female authors who might be interesting to me. I'm not going to make any concerted effort, though; glib though it may be, I feel like it's not untrue that the majority of writers I want to read are male.  Do I celebrate this state of affairs? Obviously not. But c'mon, man, why is it up to me to spearhead opposition the movement? We bloody well have enough to worry about as it is in these dark times.

Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist (1926)

We end/begin the year with this piece of old-school fantasy. Lud-in-the-Mist is the name of a town in a faintly-described secondary world. This town is closely associated with faerie, but in the novel's present, that is taboo, and "faerie fruit," the consumption of which allegedly permanently changes people in strange ways, is strictly illegal. However, this status quo surely will not last. The city's sometime-mayor, Nathaniel Chanticleer, is alienated from the world around him in subtle and intermittent ways, but when his son is comes under apparent faerie influence, he takes action.

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