Clare > Recent Status Updates

Lol. I love The Yellow Wallpaper. It's horrifying, but also hilarious. "Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by
the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!"

Creep, creep, creep!

The fact that Lovecraft thinks Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper is a ghost story -- or that it's scary because of some kind of supernatural transference of madness -- says a lot about him and his take on what's horrifying. To be clear: The Yellow Wallpaper is story about how men treat women. Nothing's supernatural, and her madness has very mundane origins...which is all the more terrifying.

Stories like The Jaunt just aren't that scary to me, because if a technology like this actually existed, there would be regulations such that what happens in this story just... wouldn't happen. This is only scary if you believe basic industry safety regulations aren't possible. Or, like, basic advances in anesthesiology. It's such a strange 80s mentality to think that nothing can be done about simple problems.

Bailing on the commentary.

The commentary is not helpful.

The commentary section is not useful.

Re-reading this, and just to note, the audiobook version I'm listening to (the 2004 Minford translation) has a laughably racist introduction. Man. It's just... so transparently limited in its worldview. It's really best to read this work from a more general human vantage point than getting mired in whatever hot take conservative Westerners want to give on Chinese culture, because the lessons themselves are universal.

"We stood no prospect of breaking their spirits."

Sounds like the modern military apparatus could stand to re-read their Lawrence. From Vietnam to Afghanistan to Palestine, historically, bombing campaigns and brute force tactics simply radicalize the general populace and redouble resistance. To quote another author, "there's no strength like a poor man's spine when his back's against the wall."