Stuff I’ve Been Reading

— Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce

Lordy be, batten down the hatches. I struggled through it years ago and am now reading it again. It’s going quite well. I read it out loud because so many of the jokes are aural. You need to sound out these nonsense words – or, they look like nonsense on the page – but when you speak them, suddenly it’s clear that what he is actually saying is “Tiptoe through the tulips” (or whatever. Each page is crowded with these word-games.) It’s what makes the book fun. It’s outrageously funny. You just have to submit to it. If you resent it, if you get frustrated with it, it will remain closed to you. I’m halfway through it now.

— The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, by Masha Gessen

Her latest. National Book Award winner. Siobhan gave it to me for Christmas. It’s actually answering a lot of questions for me. Her “way in” is fascinating. There’s an entire chapter about how for 70 years, psychology and sociology were basically banned in the Soviet Union. Or, they were poured through a Marxist context: everything was built to ignore the individual, and sociology couldn’t exist because it would reveal the truth on the ground. The ramifications of this have been devastating. She gets really into it: the psychologists and secret psychiatrists who would read the works of Freud – in secret – and see clients in their apartments, in secret. Yet they were completely cut off from the wider world, they did not know the knowledge acquired by everyone else in their field, they were working blind. Because – as George Orwell showed with “newspeak” – if you limit language, you limit thought. Those interested in psychology had no words for what they wanted to explore, it didn’t even exist for them – the Self and its needs. Or it DID but they had no way to talk about it. This provides a fascinating perspective and like I said explains a lot of things. I have always wondered why Russian movies have not – for the most part – dealt with Stalin and the waves of Terror. Germany, post-Nazi, can’t STOP addressing the sins of earlier generations. They GRAPPLE mightily with their nation’s past, in their art. But in Russia, it’s like an unmentionable subject. There are reasons for this, things I have guessed at, and Gessen confirms – but she also digs deeper into it, revealing things I couldn’t see. It’s an amazing book. Very depressing. But essential.

— Heart Songs and Other Stories, by Annie Proulx

One of my favorite writers today but I had never read these stories. She’s so good. Nobody else like her. I could pick her writing out of a blind lineup. This is my commute book. I make it through a story a day.

— The Reckoning: The Story of Claire Wilson, by Pamela Colloff

I read this yesterday. Texas Monthly was in the news this week – for a pretty depressing reason – so I went back to read this astonishing piece of longform journalism. Not to be missed. It’s about Claire Wilson, the first person shot by Charles Whitman from the University of Texas tower in Austin. She was 8 months pregnant and walking with her boyfriend. (If you haven’t seen last year’s film The Tower, you really must.) She is, of course, a major “character” in that documentary – but this goes into more depth about what her life was like after. The article made me cry.

— Going Through Blanche DuBois’s Luggage, by Susan Harlan

What a wonderful piece in Paris Review about Blanche Dubois’ trunk in Streetcar Named Desire. I love the essay for its analysis, its delving into that one “prop”, and the multiple ways Tennessee Williams uses it.

— How Union Pool Became the Horny Utopia of 2000s Williamsburg, by Allison P. Davis

Last, but by no means least: If you’re on Twitter, maybe you noticed that “Union Pool” was trending, that suddenly everyone and their grandmother was talking about “union pool.” This all went down yesterday. Union Pool is a notorious “hookup” bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Although I’ve been to Union Pool a couple of times, I never hooked up there and I am sincerely sorry for that since reading that article made me realize I had missed out on a cultural moment. The Wrigley Side in Chicago was my Union Pool. If you wanted to get laid, and you struck out at Wrigley Side, you had only yourself to blame. I met this guy at The Wrigley Side – and it was so natural to just be like, “Hey. You. Me. Let’s get this thing started.” It took no effort at all. I wasn’t into “anything more” at the time, I was nursing a broken heart, and was coming out of a 4-year relationship complete with emotional abuse. So I walked into the Wrigley Side to see an improv show, and this man moved into my sight lines, and he was the perfect panacea at the time. BUT, lookee here, it ended up being the most important – and long-lasting – relationship of my life, although it didn’t really follow any recognizable rules. But it went on for 11 years. And it started as a hookup. Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it. (And if you’re not into it, then there’s no pressure to BE into it. Do your thing, whatever it is!) What is it about a certain place that opens up romantic/sexual possibilities – in a way that isn’t creepy, or gross – but humorous, friendly? I don’t know. That essay, though … that’s why Union Pool was trending … and it’s one of the most entertaining things I’ve read in a long long time. The people she interviewed! And her own memories including

That night, I met a hot guy in a poncho and linen pants, and got thrown out of the bar for breaking Union Pool’s only real bylaw: Only one person in the bathroom at a time.

A couple folks on Twitter were sniffing about sexual harassment and how gross the Union Pool scene sounds, like the Victorians they are, but if a hookup is consensual … what exactly is the problem? Some people like to have sex a lot. Sometimes sex is comforting because it reminds you you’re alive. Sometimes random sex helps you get over a bad breakup. If everyone is into it, nobody’s getting used. Sex isn’t always about people getting used. Liberation isn’t just about being able to say No. It’s also about being able to say Yes. “Enthusiastic consent” is indeed the Utopia, but you need to be ABLE to “enthusiastically consent.” I had to learn how to do that, and come into my own with it. The aforementioned Wrigley Side guy was my “way in” to that. I looked at him and thought “No use fighting the tidal wave of ‘enthusiastic consent” I am experiencing just looking at his black troll-doll hair and light blue eyes.” Speaking only from my own experience, once you know yourself and know what it FEELS like to “enthusiastically consent,” it’s much much easier to say “No. I’m not into it.” I know that sexual harassment is in the news, and true sexual harassment is terrible, and shouldn’t be tolerated, and we have a lot of work to do, and workplaces need to be safe from harassment. But, current commentary to the contrary, not every sexual situation is “Cat Person.” (And if you haven’t read “Cat Person,” a short story in The New Yorker … first of all, not to be rude, but where the hell have you been in the last month?? And second of all, here it is. It’s a DOOZY. I’m not sure it warrants a bazillion dollar advance on her upcoming book … but listen, the last time I remember a short story making this big an impact was with Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain.” Game-changing zeitgeist-tapping short stories don’t come along every day. Once a generation, if that.) At any rate, people on Twitter were also sharing their Union Pool stories, including memories of she who is known as the “Hipster Grifter” … which is such a blast from the past, the New York recent past where Gawker dominated as a humorous voice about the social scene of media people … I was like, “Oh my God, people are talking about HER again?” Google “Hipster Grifter” and settle in for all the crazy stories. I never met her, although I know some people who did cross paths with her. Anyway, if you’re in the mood for a story full of humorous anecdotes about a bar filled with sexual possibility – complete with back yard, taco truck and fire pit … there it is.