Urban v's the Commentariat

[butchersapron]

Ah, the difference between "call girl" and "prostitute", i.e. one of social position, perception and capital, rather than anything meaningful or relevant.

Or burlesque vs stripping. A differentiation that penny has been rather keen to get in on the wrong end of in the past.

 

[Rural]

Paying lip-service by mentioning the word class doesn't equal a class analysis. This is one thing that annoys me about all lp ' s writing. Just writing a buzzword with no attempt to understand its depths or implications. So she can pat herself on the back & say "but I tried, I can't understand why they (pick any group she tourists among) aren't happy with me!" Then there will follow a list of mc media types throwing sympathy her way. The victims of her tourism will get painted as bullies... This cycle just goes on & on.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Or burlesque vs stripping. A differentiation that penny has been rather keen to get in on the wrong end of in the past.

Over and over again, as I recall.
She also seems to differentiate between "porn as art" and "porn" per se. She'd probably be fine with one of Jeff Koons' pieces of sculpture of him sodomising his wife, but not okay with so-called "gonzo porn" of a w/c bloke and their partner doing the same.

 

[Theisticle]

Guardian review of Penny's new book:

Unspeakable Things is billed as an account of love and sex in a time of austerity, an attempt to bring together two of Penny's familiar themes: gender politics and a post-crash politics of protest. Her argument seems to be that capitalism invariably creates losers, young men who lack economic clout and thus the status to which they feel entitled; and that capitalist society defends itself against their rage and disappointment by somehow deflecting it on to women, suggesting it's because of emasculating, uppity women that these men haven't got what they want. Or as she puts it, "neoliberalism may have set up vast swaths of people to fail, but the real problem cannot be a crisis of capitalism so it must be a crisis of gender".

Why? One reason might be that this is Penny's fifth book in about four years, alongside a prodigious blogging and speaking and journalistic output, and it's a rare talent that can sustain being spread so thinly. There is something uncannily familiar about a hefty nine-page chunk of the final chapter, devoted to the Hollywood film trope of the kooky, sensitive Manic Pixie Dream Girl: a quick check reveals it's lifted, virtually word for word, from a recent piece she wrote for the New Statesman. It is a great piece, which is why I remembered it. But reprinting it here, with nothing more than an easily overlooked reference in the copyright blurb to parts of the book being "excerpted and extended" from published work, seems frankly to be pushing her luck. The fourth chapter, "Cybersexism", also rings a bell for a reason: it was first published as an ebook last year. And so on. It's fair enough for readers just discovering her, but diehard fans will have a sense of deja vu. Halfway through, I began to wonder if it isn't time Penny took her themes – social change, love and loss, coming of age – and turned them into a properly literary novel, rather than exploring them again in non-fiction.

Wow, that's appalling. What a hack.

Yet for all her contradictions and irritatingly sweeping generalisations, when she's right she is very right. She provides a clear yet empathetic explanation for why the Occupy protesters signally failed to come up with a better idea than capitalism: those she met were often "homeless, jobless and multiply damaged", boarding the bus to protests because they had nowhere else to sleep. Barely surviving their own lives, they were incapable of reinventing everyone else's. Lecturing them from a great height on their lack of intellectual rigour seems somehow an inadequate response from a society that has failed to offer them any answers either.

Insert that tweet about her refusing to go outside and report during the protest.

Kinda stopped reading there.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/09/unspeakable-things-laurie-penny-review

 

[Bakunin]

Or burlesque vs stripping. A differentiation that penny has been rather keen to get in on the wrong end of in the past.

If I remember rightly, wasn't her account of her burlesque period considered rather questionable by many people?

 

[butchersapron]

Guardian review of Penny's new book:





Wow, that's appalling. What a hack.



Insert that tweet about her refusing to go outside and report during the protest.

Kinda stopped reading there.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/09/unspeakable-things-laurie-penny-review

That's excellent - a review of a book by a privately schooled oxbridge graduate written by a privately schooled oxbridge graduate in a section of the paper edited by a privately schooled oxbridge graduate in a paper edited by a privately schooled oxbridge graduate. I know i keep banging on about this sort of thing but we must name these demons. We must make these covert networks of privilege transparent to all. Maybe laurie and gaby and claire and alan and all the other little lauries and gabys and claires and alans so concerned with the operation of privilege would like to lend a hand?

 

[butchersapron]

If I remember rightly, wasn't her account of her burlesque period considered rather questionable by many people?

She was called a liar and a fantasist by a number of people and the multiple edits of the article stretching over an extended period (6 months!) plus the inclusion of an explanation at the end by the editors suggests some merit in these claims.

 

[Theisticle]

Is Penny that lazy of a writer that she inserts her 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' piece almost word-for-word in a book? It would appear so. That's scandalous really.

 

[DotCommunist]

and so hacky even her bezzies at the groan couldn't let it slide in a friendly review

 

[rekil]

From an amazon review.

With quite a bit of pleasantly dry and snarky humour thrown in to break up discussions of some of the darker topics covered - for instance, her view that the problem isn't the lack of women in corporate boardrooms but that none of said boardrooms are on fire.

That bit of pathetic posing is from her oxford union performance I think.

 

[butchersapron]

Is Penny that lazy of a writer that she inserts her 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' piece almost word-for-word in a book? It would appear so. That's scandalous really.

It gets worse, the e-book she included as an entire chapter is itself largely a collection of previously published articles. She clearly feels the need to have 250+ pages to suggest seriousness.

Excellent line in the review:

Like Caitlin Moran, another compulsive and essentially self-taught writer,

Self-taught. Really.

 

[Theisticle]

Throughout this polemic about the way gender roles have been destroyed under market forces, Penny thrills in being provocative and dramatic. When she talks about the high proportion of men who succeed in committing suicide, she can't stop there, but has to imagine how they might do so. The hyperbole continues in her chapter "Fucked Up Girls", when, after making a sound point about the pressure on girls to appear perfect at all times, she adds: "We can preserve you as the perfect girl… with a few subtle slits for easy penetration. Ageing can and must be fought with injections and knives."

WTF

As with many writers who favour radical ideals over pragmatism, Penny's arguments often seem to contradict themselves. It is hard to pinpoint what the book is really trying to say, which Penny half-admits herself in the afterword. Just like the Occupy movement she supports, her revolution has no clear narrative.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...tion-by-laurie-penny-book-review-9565404.html

 

[Rural]

Guardian review of Penny's new book:





Wow, that's appalling. What a hack.



Insert that tweet about her refusing to go outside and report during the protest.

Kinda stopped reading there.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/09/unspeakable-things-laurie-penny-review

Lol at "diehard fans"

 

[el-ahrairah]

From an amazon review.

That bit of pathetic posing is from her oxford union performance I think.

actually i think this is one bit that she's right about. fuck reforming boardrooms, end capitalism.

 

[Rural]

[QUOTE="el-ahrairah, post: 13258497, member: 30835"nk this is one bit that she's right about. fuck reforming boardrooms, end capitalism.[/QUOTE]
But why is it referred to as the "darker side"? It looks reasonable to me.

 

[el-ahrairah]

because guardian people are liberals. they get little liberal stiffies over joking about burning down boardrooms, but each and every one of them would allow their children to ritually sodomised by every member of every board in the country before they consider changing the system completely.

 

[emanymton]

Lol at "diehard fans"

I think that means us.

 

[emanymton]

It gets worse, the e-book she included as an entire chapter is itself largely a collection of previously published articles. She clearly feels the need to have 250+ pages to suggest seriousness.

Excellent line in the review:



Self-taught. Really.

I used to be more sympathetic to her than I am now but have always felt she was a pretty crap writer, there are plenty of poster on here with a much stronger claim to being self taught writers who piss all over her. But of course they don't get the newspaper columns and book deals as they never went to the right school.

 

[YouSir]

I used to be more sympathetic to her than I am now but have always felt she was a pretty crap writer, there are plenty of poster on here with a much stronger claim to being self taught writers who piss all over her. But of course they don't get the newspaper columns and book deals as they never went to the right school.

What constitutes a trained writer I wonder? She's done journalism courses, according to Wiki, as well as a degree in English. Bizarre defensive claim really.

 

[ViolentPanda]

What constitutes a trained writer I wonder? She's done journalism courses, according to Wiki, as well as a degree in English. Bizarre defensive claim really.

The whole "self-taught" schtick is part of LP's attempt to construct herself as outside of her actual influences (the private schooling, Oxbridge, all that stuff), and therefore not as a creature of those influences like so many others of her ilk.
She's always shown a fairly-illustrative sense of denial when it comes to admitting that she's the sum of the social and economic capital her parents invested in her. What better than to propaagte a legend whereby you were the author of your own success, unassisted by others, untainted by those grubby networks that other people used to "get on".

 

[Bakunin]

What constitutes a trained writer I wonder? She's done journalism courses, according to Wiki, as well as a degree in English. Bizarre defensive claim really.

Not if you're trying to sell the non-privileged, outsider 'worked my way up from the bottom by honest labour' schtick, it isn't. Wouldn't suit that narrative at all to be seen treading a conventional path.

 

[JimW]

"Compulsive" is an apt choice though, but it's not "writer" you tend to pair it with

 

[Bakunin]

Check your privilege, Penny Dreadful. The privilege you seem to be pretending isn't there...

 

[weepiper]

The whole "self-taught" schtick is part of LP's attempt to construct herself as outside of her actual influences (the private schooling, Oxbridge, all that stuff), and therefore not as a creature of those influences like so many others of her ilk.
She's always shown a fairly-illustrative sense of denial when it comes to admitting that she's the sum of the social and economic capital her parents invested in her. What better than to propaagte a legend whereby you were the author of your own success, unassisted by others, untainted by those grubby networks that other people used to "get on".

time for a repost of this to illustrate your point

Laurie Penny was born in a skip in Islington in 1986 and grew up wild in the back-alleys of London’s bourgeois ghetto, surviving only on mouldy paninis and half-eaten pots of hummous fished out of bins and sleeping in rolled-up copies of The Observer Review. After a dispute with a notorious urban fox gang, she fled to Brighton Beach, and was taken in by a radical seagull collective and weaned on mulched-up, regurgitated back-issues of Spare Rib and Red Rag. Eventually she was offered a scholarship to Brighton College Sixth Form, where she edited a student newspaper and never learned to wear a tie. She went to Wadham College, Oxford, and later moved back to London to work in a shop in Camden Market, where being a scuzzy, mohawked Brighton feminist was part of the job description. It didn’t stick, and she rapidly turned to a life of journalism, having discovered that she was unsuited to any other employment by virtue of being weird and difficult. Now she has long hair, a semi-regular income, and zooms around trying to put the world to rights. She can still talk to seagulls.

 

[J Ed]

time for a repost of this to illustrate your point

This is actually what she tells the Americans

 

[equationgirl]

Don't forget, she's off to Harvard soon to do some fancy course in journalism.

The book must be pretty awful if her mates at the Guardian aren't giving her a rave review.

 

[J Ed]

 

[rekil]

Wanting more white male pretend Labour party MPs in parliament is a little bit communism.

 

[Rural]

QUOTE="J Ed, post: 13260330, member: 58247"]

[/QUOTE]
"Heros" R not what is needed. I hate the crap about ppl needing someone to save them (from themselves). Save urself & kill ur heroes. Cant blv a *revolutionary* like lp would endorse this hero rhetoric. Oh wait

 

[The Pale King]

Don't forget, she's off to Harvard soon to do some fancy course in journalism.

The book must be pretty awful if her mates at the Guardian aren't giving her a rave review.

Yeah, reading between the lines I think it's a bit of a demolition job to be honest - there's a lot of negative language in the review, the author makes it clear she is on LP's side, but phrases like:

She is a dazzling writer, but so dazzling that you wonder if sometimes the words race rather ahead of the facts.

Her argument seems to be

one is led to expect something well beyond the anecdotal here; more exploration, perhaps, of those missing working-class voices

Her economic theories feel rather hastily bolted on

it's a rare talent that can sustain being spread so thinly

But reprinting it here, with nothing more than an easily overlooked reference in the copyright blurb to parts of the book being "excerpted and extended" from published work, seems frankly to be pushing her luck

Halfway through, I began to wonder if it isn't time Penny took her themes – social change, love and loss, coming of age – and turned them into a properly literary novel, rather than exploring them again in non-fiction.

Yet for all her contradictions and irritatingly sweeping generalisations,

Unspeakable Thingsmay not be very much more than the sum of its parts

...don't add up to a good review - I'd say this is a filleting.