Jesse > Recent Status Updates

Edmund Wilson in the Intro: "And Betram Cope's Year, though it involves homosexual situations, is not really a book about homosexuality. "

Me: surejan.gif

Decided to skip Prancing N*****, which I was hoping was just a provocative title, but unfortunately proved not to be the case. Might return to later. Valmouth, however, has already established itself as another exquisitely absurd idyll.

Decided to skip Prancing N*****, which I was hoping was just a provocative title, but unfortunately proved not to be the case. Might return to later. Valmouth, however, has already established itself as another exquisitely absurd idyll.

Long overdue. First up: The Flower Beneath the Foot. Firbank's flamboyance, delicately detached from the recognizable world, is exactly what I need right now. Each succeeding line fills me with delight.

Time to remedy perhaps my biggest gap in the canon of classic queer lit.

Geez is this book resonating right now...

"Loneliness, I began to realise, was a populated place: a city in itself. And when one inhabits a city... one starts by getting lost. Over time, you begin to develop a mental map, a collection of favoured destinations and preferred routes: a labyrinth no other person could ever precisely duplicate or reproduce."

Moore's style is so byzantine AND exacting that it's been a bit of a struggle to find my way "in" to this; I think I finally have though.

"That she did not belong she had always known. What until recently she had not known was how very much she did not desire to belong."

He suddenly feels melancholy, an emotion he cherishes for its bittersweetness and its uselessness. His life feels overripe, full of people, love, plans, projects, work and getting high. But there is something missing, some sense of high purpose, of adventures for a grand cause outside himself. 'At least I am a faggot,' he thinks.

Luxuriate in the sensual, sumptuous use of language--but beware those savage little bites of self-awareness.

I knew I'd regret how long it has taken me to take up Colette... this is just unbelievably exquisite.

Unbelievably captivating--history revealed to be just as intricate and circuitous as any Borges story.

It's gotten "easier" to read with each return, yet it somehow stays as cryptic and enigmatic as ever.

This has proved so illuminating regarding the mechanics of everyday queer life in the pre-Stonewall era.

SUNDAY, JUNE 18, 1944: Warren was certainly wrong when he thought marines couldn't be had. This one could, in every possible way.

It's like a labyrinth—or a haunted house—that one keeps getting drawn back to...

'I don't think it matters much what you do in little things,' he said. 'Minor transgressions, the small faults of vanity or lust, can be forgiven. But when the great moment comes, if ever such an opportunity is granted to you in your life, then you must behave impeccably.'

"If I could produce one good novel, one good story, even, I would starve rather than work on other people's books and outlines. But one must accept limitations and exploit such talent as one has. I have a flair for what entertains"

Since I spent most of last week doing archival research on this novel and its two authors for my thesis, I figured it was a good time to revisit. It's gotten easier to read over the years, but it remains as giddy and bewildering and funny and brazen—and yes, queer—as ever.

So excited this has been reissued and widely available at long last! A queer curiosity, but an important one.

I'm both enthralled that so many of my immediate research interests are being featured in new scholarship by a longtime favorite scholar, and also trying not to feel pangs of jealously that she got here first. :)

As is the case with all essay collections quality can vary (or perhaps more accurately, level of interest and engagement fluctuates), but several pieces so far--particularly the autobiographical ones--showcase Baldwin at his very, very best.