Books

[Rod Hagen]

For whatever reason there seems to be a stronger tendency in the muscle service site to create long-running posts. But there's no reason why we can't do that here. So let's keep one thread alive, if we can, to simply discuss books. Books that are current, books that are old, books that we recently read and loved, or books that we were disappointed in. I'll start with one.

 

I recently finished another Edmund White, and I have to ask:

 

What is up with "The Married Man"?

 

How could White allow something so wonderfully evocative in the first two thirds, to disintegrate so quickly and with much slop into just another AIDS tragedy? He had such an atmospheric tale of modern-gay Parisian life underway, and he felt compelled, due in great part I am sure to his personal struggles with his own HIV infection and a sad history of loved-ones who have succumbed to AIDS, to clumsily change directions and combine, unsuccessfully, the works of Paul Monette with Paul Bowles . In fact the death in the desert could have been lifted straight out of "The Sheltering Sky".

 

Did anybody else feel that the last 30% of "The Married Man" was terribly heavy-handed? It's a real shame given how the rest of the novel simply tempts the read to jump on the very next flight to Charles De Gaulle.

[Donnie]

>So let's keep

>one thread alive, if we can, to simply discuss books.

 

Yes, by all means, let's have literary discussions. After all, no one comes to this website because they're horny & want to get laid. We all want to show how fucking well-read we are.

[Casteran]

I say we discuss all three.

 

Books - Chrisian Jacq - multi book series regarding Ancient Egypt from Ramses the Great to Sete II. Series is both chronologically factual and very engrossing with action, romance, some sexual overtones. Books are available on amazon.com at better rates and can be purchased in French (original text) and English (translation)

 

[Rod Hagen]

>Yes, by all means, let's have literary discussions. After

>all, no one comes to this website because they're horny &

>want to get laid. We all want to show how fucking well-read

>we are.

 

That's what the Deli's for BOTTOM BOY. Don't like it, tough shit. If you bothered to look at the Muscle Service site you'd see they have long standing threads on all sorts of subjects, we could too, if anybody else wants to. If not, it will die, no big loss, right? Right. Must you do nothing but bitch and moan you fucking princess?

 

It's not a matter of showing off. Talking about which escorts around the world you've fucked and which ones you will is a lot more showey than a simple book discussion. Escorts are the subject matter of this website, but there is nothing wrong with a diversion here and there; the message center will not fall apart.

[bluenix]

>Did anybody else feel that the last 30% of "The Married Man"

>was terribly heavy-handed? It's a real shame given how the

>rest of the novel simply tempts the read to jump on the very

>next flight to Charles De Gaulle.

 

Well, Rod, I think this thread is fated to be short. The folks here, I am supposing, don't tend toward fiction, or at least not the sort of fiction that interests publishers.

 

Still, it's a good try, so I decided to engage.

 

I hated "The Married Man." It was, so to speak, the last nail in the coffin of my interest in Edmund White. It read like he had telephoned it in to his editor.

 

So in answer to your question, no, I didn't feel that the last 30% was heavy-handed. I thought all of it was.

 

The last compelling novel I read was Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prizing winning "The Hours." He put much at risk by impudently daring to write a sequel to Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway," but he succeeded in spades. (Edmund White, in contrast, puts nothing at risk.)

[Guest DevonSFescort]

I've been on a V.S. Naipaul kick. "A House for Mr. Biswas" is his first book and one of the most amazing novels I've ever read. It's set in the Hindu community in Trinidad and is based largely on his father's life. In addition to creating amazing characters, Naipaul is an astute observer of cultures -- you get a vivid sense of the richness and strangeness of this transplanted Indian society, and he doesn't romanticize anything. He's really sharp-eyed and funny.

 

That knack serves him well in "Among the Believers," Naipaul's account of his travels through Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia shortly after the Iranian revolution in 1979. As a take on contemporary Islam, it's pretty scathing, and sheds a lot of light on the cultural clash between Islam and the West. A theme he returns to over and over again is that of Islam's being stuck in a medieval culture, aware of a great encircling civilization it can't master (the West), which it therefore simultaneously rejects and depends upon. However this phenomenon takes on very different manifestations in what are four very different countries. In 1995 he went back to those countries and wrote a follow up book called "Beyond Belief." I'm going to read that next.

 

...as soon as I'm done with his most recent novel, "Half a Life," about an Indian whose Brahmin father disasterously married a woman of low caste. Their "half-and-half" son ends up going to London, where he meets and marries a Portuguese African woman (another half-and-half) and they go back to her country (probably Mozambique) and live there in the days before Portuguese rule collapsed. This book is written at a swifter-moving pace, but the voice is definitely Naipaul's. He's got a really unique perspective.

[Guest DevonSFescort]

>The last compelling novel I read was Michael Cunningham's

>Pulitzer Prizing winning "The Hours." He put much at risk by

>impudently daring to write a sequel to Virginia Woolf's

>"Mrs. Dalloway," but he succeeded in spades.

 

I agree! And it's all the more incredible considering how different it is from "Flesh and Blood," which is impressive in a sweeping, much more linear and conventional way. "The Hours" is much shorter and cuts back and forth across decades. It's not even so much a sequel to "Mrs. Dalloway" as a rewriting that also matches the sense of newness people must have felt reading Woolf's original (which is a wonderfully trippy book).

[bluenix]

.

I'm not myself a VSN fan but I grant you his pertinence and -- dare one say -- objectivity. He was a hoot and a half at last year's Edinburgh festival. Jaded, tart, blunt. Rare qualities these days.

 

Meanwhile, is anybody reading non-fiction?

[Bilbo]

The last nonfiction I read was Karl Malden's autobiography (written with his daughter, Carla), When Do I Start? It was light and entertaining, but caught a lot of the philosophical side of this great actor. An example of the light side - Did you know that after he changed his name, and had enough clout, he made sure that there was always a character (a different one each time) who had his original last name?

 

Actually, I think that if you put all of the different smaller threads we have had about books together that it would make a sizable thread. It's just that we usually seem to zero in on either A. books related to the profession or B. a certain author or a certain book.

[Bilbo]

should have proofread that last post better, left out part of the sense of it. He always made sure that there was such a character in each of the movies and TV shows that he performed in.

[+ Charlie]

Most of what I read is non-fiction. The book that tempted me recently to jump on the next flight to Charles de Gaulle (would that I could!) was Adam Gopnik's 'Paris to the Moon'. Right now I'm reading 'Anthony Blunt: His Lives', which so far is mostly about gay sex in England in the '30s.

[Guest DevonSFescort]

>...as soon as I'm done with his most recent novel, "Half a

>Life," about an Indian whose Brahmin father disasterously

>married a woman of low caste. Their "half-and-half" son

>ends up going to London, where he meets and marries a

>Portuguese African woman (another half-and-half) and they go

>back to her country (probably Mozambique) and live there in

>the days before Portuguese rule collapsed. This book is

>written at a swifter-moving pace, but the voice is

>definitely Naipaul's. He's got a really unique perspective.

 

Just finished it. It ends REALLY abruptly.

[Rod Hagen]

>I hated "The Married Man." It was, so to speak, the last

>nail in the coffin of my interest in Edmund White. It read

>like he had telephoned it in to his editor.

 

I've had a difficult time getting into Edmund White myself. His characters, almost entirely based on himself be it fiction or autobiographical, always struck be as being irritatingly stupid and completely without compassion. But he's one of those authors I keep "trying" to like. Normally it's a waste of time to return to a writer you dislike, but I really felt he had something with Married Man. He managed to keep contrivances like "We sat in shabby rattan chairs under a naked light bulb inadequately screened by a lantern-shaped basket whose weave was too wide and let our eyes stray..." (Beautiful Room) to a minimum and he'd obviously paid a lot of attention while living in Paris; kind of like Bret Easton Ellis and LA for "Less Than 0".

 

But it became a by the numbers living-with-man-living-with-illness tragedy, and he lost my interest, again. I probably won't read much more by him either, though I am 20% into "The Beautiful" and that will probably mark the end of him for me.

 

Last nonfiction I read and loved was Brian Greene's "the elegant universe". It's one of those informative science texts that treats you like an educated adult, and spares the mealy-mouthed spoon-feedings you find in other pop science like "Brief History of Time". Normally I prefer to read about Natural Science authors like Richard Dawkins and S. J. Gould, but "elegant" really held my interest.

[Guest DevonSFescort]

>I've had a difficult time getting into Edmund White myself.

>His characters, almost entirely based on himself be it

>fiction or autobiographical, always struck be as being

>irritatingly stupid and completely without compassion. But

>he's one of those authors I keep "trying" to like.

 

Didn't he write "A Boy's Own Story?" Didn't do a thing for me. Granted I was in high school at the time, but isn't that when a book like that SHOULD have done something for me?

 

<husky whisper> Rod, I'll be in LA tomorrow and Thurs if you wanna get together for a lit crit...

[Guest albinorat]

Good for you Hagen! (And did you know that is the name of the villain in Wagner's Gotterdammerung? He is the son of the malignant dwarf Alberich and a mortal woman!). There have often been lively discussions here of interesring topics (which is not to say that orgiastic abandoned demonic sex hopefully with some ropes attached isn't interesting). I appreciate your starting a thread up again, though I miss Will and others who were wonderful.

 

I am also very happy to see a number of escorts who post as people rather than adopting the "aren't I adorable" snap queen style of a certain excessively hairy Chelsea pixie.

 

>>I hated "The Married Man." It was, so to speak, the last

>>nail in the coffin of my interest in Edmund White. It read

>>like he had telephoned it in to his editor. >

 

I don't agree only because I'm roughly the same age as White, who I've known for ever, and I connect with his life experience in general (I am HIV negative, he is not and was one of the first to be open about his status). But most of us in that broad circle have led lives shadowed by loss.

 

(There has been nothing in my life more devasting than the earliest years of the AIDS epidemic in New York and San Fran -- 1981-'85, where people suffered agonizing deaths for mysterious reasons, no one knew for certain who had it or if they had it before the dramatic symptoms or how you got it and even touching another man seemed a risk.

 

One literaly dreaded to answer the phone --x who was thriving yesterday was chained to a cart in the emergency room today, delirious with a 105 fever and no insurance, having been cut off and thrown away, y who had gone in early that morning for a standard biopsy had died suddenly during the proceedure but had seemed in radiant health, z was homeless again and everybody who had helped him before was either broke or over committed to helping others in the same boat, j, who had been an amazing beauty three weeks ago had stopped you on the street yesterday and chatted and it had taken his reading puzzlement in your eyes and his dropping his name for you to recognize the facially deformed skeleton who was talking to you -- the magnificent face was one pulpy mass, the beautiful body was shivering bone though it was summer --- and on and on.

 

And then Q who had suffered horrible pain and couldn't walk or see had signed himself out of the hospital to die at home. The suicide squad had gone over and after being sure he really wanted to die, fed him pills and booze, but his digestive system was beyond absorbing them and he had thrown up convulsively for hours in agony. When they thought they had no recourse but to call 911 he had begged them to smother him -- one -- terrified and crying -- had. They had spent the night cleaning his puke and shit and gathering up the pills and had just gotten out. But his family who had rejected him were coming, the coroner had sealed the apartment and would you agree to meet with the family and help them sort things and make sense of the will? That went on it seemed to so many of us for an eternity. A number of us agreed 9/11 seemed less terrifying.)

 

I thought White's early books (Forgetting Elena)pretentious and arty. But I thought States of Desire one of the great books about a certain kind of gay life before AIDS was identified clearly. I was moved by The Farewell Symphony. As to the Married Man, I agree with you that the end is a dying fall and seems obvious, as though he were anxious to get the book done. But I thought he captured hauntingly and powerfully what it is to age as an out gay man who has lived a full life sexually as an attractive and magentic personage, but who in the present has found himself gaining weight and losing touch and desperately needing love. I thought the irony of his being seduced by a "straight" much younger Frenchman delicious and powerful at least until the middle of the book. And I thought the scenes where he tries and fails to connect with younger people both in Paris and teaching in the States hilarious and touching.

 

>Last nonfiction I read and loved was Brian Greene's "the

>elegant universe". Normally I prefer to read

>about Natural Science authors like Richard Dawkins and S. J.

>Gould, but "elegant" really held my interest.<

 

I agree %100! Thanks for the chance to vent...

 

Al

[Rick Munroe]

I love to read. There's a great article in People Weekly about the "Eating Habits of the Stars." For example, Gwyneth Paltrow is a vegan and Drew Barrymore loves soy products. It's great reading but the author (Jenny Wilson) loses steam at the end, discussing J-Lo's requirement of room-temperature evian water in her dressing room. I hate how the whole thing disintegrates into just another beverage discussion. It's almost as if she's isn't trying anymore...just resting on the laurels of her classic, "Whitney's Deathbed Coke Binge."

 

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

— Mark Twain, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LITERATURE

[bluenix]

>>>I hated "The Married Man"...

 

>I don't agree...

 

Just to clarify, I didn't mean I do not like and respect White. I do. What I meant was, his apparent experiments (if that's the word) in narrative fiction have led him in a direction I don't care to follow.

It could well be a matter of taste. I like a little adornment when it comes to prose and he seems to move closer and closer to, well, reportage. Which works for a New Yorker piece on researching Gide but not, to my mind, for a novel.

 

Speaking of, did you read the memoir by his nephew Keith Fleming? That's when I decided I like White.

 

>(There has been nothing in my life more devasting than the

>earliest years of the AIDS epidemic in New York and San Fran

>-- 1981-'85...

 

You write powerfully of the time. Thanks for that.

 

Are you suggesting these experiences affected White's style (e.g. an inclination to, say, detachment)?

 

>>Last nonfiction I read and loved was Brian Greene's "the

>>elegant universe". Normally I prefer to read

>>about Natural Science authors like Richard Dawkins and S. J.

>>Gould, but "elegant" really held my interest.<

 

Thanks, Al and Devon, I'll put Greene on my list. I like natural world stuff; however, if I can be out of step again, I find Dawkins too snooty, especially for somebody who's Professor of Public Dissemination of Knowledge or whatever the hell he is.

 

Much more to my liking is something like David Quammen's The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions.

 

That is all.

[bluenix]

Oh, I almost forgot. I loved Gould's book on the Burgess Shale. Am I right, however, that his view there has since, largely, been discredited? Or is that open to debate?

 

As I recall, his argument was that evolution "began" with an explosive flowering of myriad life forms but has, since, been nothing if not a steady narrowing. Which is to claim that evolution is less about diversity and advancement than about inching further and further out on a (terminal) evolutionary limb.

 

I think the counter-argument was that he just picked the wrong place to study in that regard?

[bluenix]

Exactly. Why read if not to improve oneself! Did you know J-Lo will not tolerate eye contact from hotel staff? With God as my witness, I read it in a magazine.

 

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read

and nobody wants to read.

— Stephen Hawking, A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

[+ Charlie]

I thought Quammen's book was wonderful. I'm glad to see someone else here read it and thought so, too.

[Rod Hagen]

Albino and Blue, Quammen writes some amazing travel and natural history essays for "Outside" and "Adventure" magazines. He's a lot like Tim Cahill, but with more of a bookworm quality.

 

Devon, if "Boy's Own Story" didn't stir you as a youth, then nothing of his will now.

 

Blue, I don't know about that particular SJG controversy, there have been quite a few surrounding him. One of my favorites is the ongoing, and silly since they both believe the same essential things, debate between SJG and Richard Dawkins. It reminds me of all the digs that Gore and Capote took at one another. They're friendly, but each feels the other is significantly inferior.

 

There are some amazing books that look at the science of homosexuality. Two of the most informative are "Queer Science" by local braniac Simon Levay, which traces the use and misuse research into Homosexuality, and "Straight Science" written by a straight scientist which skillfully addresses the question "Is homosexuality anti-Darwinian?"

 

Recently I read two great books on writing. Stephen King's "On Writing" gave me new resolve to stick to the tight style I learned to love as a college Journalism minor. He hates wasteful adverbs such as "screamed loudly" or "tiptoed softly", and as far as we are both concerned we never want to read "his eyes rolled down the front of her dress" because such a stupid oversight pulls you right out of the story. I saw a headline three weeks ago in the Daily News that actually read "Infant Heart Defects". Now how the hell did THAT get past the editors?

 

And former New York Times editor Patricia T. O'Conner's "Woe is I" explains when being a stickler is wise and when it's just inefficient and pompous. She loves Strunk and White, of course, however she'd never chastise a writer for splitting an infinitive, if it reads better split. And "datum"! forget about it. Both King and O'Connor are indispensable guides.

[+ Cash4Trash]

The best book I read recently was Park Honan's Shakespeare, A Life.

He sticks to the facts, no silly flights of fancy and when he does

speculate he tells you so.

I'm currently reading Henrik Ibsen - A New Biography by Robert

Ferguson. It isn't very good but it does fill a void in my education.

If you're looking for some good history "beach reading" try

Alison Weir's The Life Of Elizabeth I and The Six Wives Of Henry VIII.

Lot's of fun.

Cash

[spiro3]

What a wonderfully refreshing thread, after a steady stream of bitchiness and jealousy from this site.

 

Rod, it makes me want to pay your fee just for a literary discusion with you( well, maybe a little cuddling, too!)

 

I've loved everything I've read by Edmund White, but it may be because I am close to his age, and always awed by his bravery (He was first to come out with the gay coming-of-age novel) and his elegant prose style.

 

I'm presently reading "Marie Antoinette" by Antonia Fraser, which I'm finding long on 18th Century fashion, but short on historical analysis. As in, why did it take Louis XVI seven years to consumate his marriage to his 14 year old bride? Too many good-looking pages lounging around Versailles?

 

Rod, one writer you might want to give a try is Michael Chabon, (Wonder Boys, Klavier and Clay) , if you haven't already. Definitely the John Updike of his generation.

[Bilbo]

Also on my to be read shelves is a new one by Shakespeare (with John Fletcher) called Cardenio, or The Second Maiden's Trajedy. But I'm not in a real hurry to get to this suddenly found new play by the Bard (after whom my dog, Bard, is named) because even the forward, which I've dipped into, says that this is a second rate play that would probably only interest completeists, or some such thing.

[Guest alanm]

Reading a good book is a wonderful experience, whether it be fiction or non fiction. I particularly enjoy fiction and getting lost in the

best books of Thomas Mann, and especially "Rembrance of Things Past"

by Marcel Proust. You could devote a lifetime to either author and continually find new things in their books. More recently, I have been enjoying the work of gay mystery writers like Michael Nava, Joseph Hansen, Richard Stevenson and Michael Craft. I think Felice

Picano is underrated. "The Book of Lies" by Picano has an extremely

interesting story line. I generally agree with the negative comments about White, although i have enjoyed a few of his books.