*What book are you reading? (part 2)

[Autochthonous1]

Okay, I won't quote you Autochthonous1 but there's much there to be unravelled. Could do it by email if you fancied. I don't know what you mean by 'unconducive' though - guessing you mean opposite of conducive, but it's not a word, and if you did mean it that way, conducive to what, exactly?

I wrote ''unconducive'', then edited it a few times. Meant unconducive as in damaging/destructive/harmful. Was writing on my phone so made many errors and as I said; not able to write well atm, not slept in days. You knew what I was getting at though... as it came after the word ''hindering'', which is negative. Drew will tell you I make up words daily (some of them are actually really fantastic and I use them amongst my friends regularly ). I'm not one for picking out the grammatical errors of others, or misplaced/misused words, or un-words, myself - if I get the general gist of the statement. Had to edit that post a zillion times, gave up in the end.
Yeah, via email prob best, though not now as have too many other things going on I need to deal with, and let me re-read that book first, so we can talk about that.

Girls Gone Wild is the commodification of drunk college girls; a franchise with clever marketing. Nah, flashing tits or any body parts, unless it's for a job is not feminism or empowering in any, way shape or form, it's manufactured by men with hard dicks and profit maximisation on the brain who tell these young women it makes them sexy...when they grow up they realise what bullshit that is. Flashing CAN be fun (in the right place/time), if you're an exhibitionist - which isn't anything to do with feminism/empowerment. Just for thrills and kicks... y'know it's cheaper than a course in skydiving. I've done both. I've never flashed whilst skydiving though. Actually, my flashing days are over. Only time I will get topless in public is on the shoulders of a tall person at a rock concert...y'know, it's ok there.

Yeah, I agree there are failings and conflict in any 'movement'. I know that. I also agree many young women are rejecting feminism without any thought, as well as attaching themselves to it without much thought - works both ways.

No I didn't mean YOU or other sex-workers emulating sex-workers, I meant young women doing it. And that's the point - they are emulating people who are faking sexual pleasure, who are dressed like that in order to titillate. Precisely. It's your job. It's not THEIRS though.

What is your point here though? I mean, young women will emulate older women, are you suggesting that is the fault of the sex workers? I'm pretty sure you weren't, just wondering. I think it's MTV's fault. Fuck me, music videos are pornographic now a days.

 

[Autochthonous1]

Also, what you make of the claim that up to 90% of all sex workers have been sexually abused?

Sorry, missed that post. I certainly do not believe it's 90%, but where, when, who did they ask? Statistics are generally shite when it comes to that sort of thing, imo.
I'd not met any who were sexually abused, or admitted to it, I'd never been sexually abused. ''Sex workers'' is a massive umbrella, I knew/know many sex surrogates, fluffers, pornstars, strippers, dominatrices, women who worked on webcams, in peepshows... all over the world, but not many prostitutes. I know some of the strippers I met were hookers at one point/as well as stripping. I know one ''high-class'' escort. I am pretty sure she wasn't ever sexually abused (but I've not asked, just know she comes from lovely family and is close to her parents). Though there were a lot of us who grew up fatherless and/or in foster care. But I don't see how it's got to do with anything, it's like saying x amount of bankers grew up with overpowering parents... Sure, if an individual's sexually abused as a child/teenager you're likely going to feel worthless and like an outsider and may then be attracted to or manipulated into the sex industry. There are many people who were sexually abused and didn't go into the industry, dunno about any statistics, they don't tell us those ones do they! Personally, I know more people who were sexually abused as children/teenagers OUTSIDE of the sex industry. Again, not sure what your point is? Most of the sex workers I met were either exhibitionists who did it because they actually enjoyed it (or preferred it to ''normal'' work), or mothers or students doing it for the cash. I did it for the excitement and attention (in the beginning, I was only 18) as I'd tried ''normal'' jobs and couldn't stick 'em.

I've got sucked into Urban land again. I have stuff to do for my voluntary work tomorrow, so gotta go, but nice talking to you more. I'll re-read that book, for sure. Xx

 

[Dexter Deadwood]

A Dance With Dragons - George R R Martin.

 

[Frances Lengel]

Has anyone read In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan?

I'll read with an open mind, but it does look like a load of bollocks (not that open obviously).

Don't think I've read watermelon sugar, I've read some other of his stuff though - It's all very much of it's time, which is no bad thing - Far from it AFAIC.

Here's a couple of his novels
A Confederate General At Big Sur
http://www.brautigan.net/general.html

And Trout Fishing in America
http://www.brautigan.net/trout.html
Both Ok. Trout fishing... has a character in it called Trout Fishing In America Shorty named in homage to Railroad Shorty, a character from Nelson Algren's The Neon Wilderness.


This is from Revenge of the Lawn - A collection of his short stories.

Homage to the san francisco YMCA

by Richard Brautigan

One upon a time in San Francisco there was a man who really liked the finer things in life, especially poetry. He liked good verse.
He could afford to indulge himself in this liking, which meant that he didn't have to work because he was receiving a generous pension that was the result of a 1920s investment that his grandfather had made in a private insane asylum that was operating quite profitably in Southern California.
In the black, as they say and located in the San Fernando Valley, just outside of Tarzana. It was one of those places that do not look like an insane asylum. It looked like something else with flowers all around it, mostly roses.
The checks always arrived on the 1st and 15th of every month, even when there was not a mail delivery on that day. He had a lovely house in Pacific Heights and he would go out and buy more poetry. He of course had never met a poet in person. That would have been a little too much.
One day he decided that his liking for poetry could not be fully expressed in just reading poetry or listening to poets reading on phonograph records. He decided to take the plumbing out of his house and completely replace it with poetry, and so he did.
He turned off the water and took out the pipes and put in John Donne to replace them. The pipes did not look too happy. He took out his bathtub and put in William Shakespeare. The bathtub did not know what was happening.
He took out his kitchen sink and put in Emily Dickinson. THe kitchen sink could only stare back in wonder. He took out his bathroom sink and put in Vladimir Mayakovsky. The bathroom sink, even though the water was turned off, broke out into tears.
He took out his hot water heater and put in Michael McClure's poetry. The hot water heater could barely contain its santiy. Finally he took out his toilet and put in the minor poets. The toilet planned on leaving the country.
And now the time had come to see how it all worked, to enjoy the fruit of his amazing labor. Christopher Columbus' slight venture sailing West was merely the shadow of a dismal event in the comparison. He turned the water back on again and surveyed the countenance of his vision brought to reality. He was a happy man.
"I think I'll take a bath," he said, to celebrate. He tried to heat up some Michael McClure to take a bath in some William Shakespeare and what happened was not actually what he had planned on happening.
"Might as well do the dishes then," he said. He tried to wash some plates in "I taste a liquor never brewed," and found there was quite a difference between that liquid and a kitchen sink. Despair was on its way.
He tried to go to the toilet and the minor poets did not do at all. They began gossiping about their careers as he sat there trying to take a shit. One of them had written 197 sonnets about a penguin he had once seen in a travelling circus. He sensed a Pulitzer Prize in this material.
Suddenly the man realized that poetry could not replace plumbing. It's what they call seeing the light. He decided immediately to take the poetry out and put the pipes back in, along with the sinks, the bathtub, the hot water heater and the toilet.
"This just didn't work out the way I planned it," he said. "I'll have to put the plumbing back. Take the poetry out." It made sense standing there naked in the total light of failure.
But then he ran into more trouble than there was in the first place. The poetry did not want to go. IT liked very much occupying the positions of the former plumbing.
"I look great as a kitchen sink," Emily Dickinson's poetry said.
"We look wonderful as a toilet," the minor poets said.
"I'm grand as pipes," John Donne's poetry said.
"I'm a perfect hot water heater," Michael McClure's poetry said.
Vladimir Mayakovsky sang new faucets from the bathroom, there are faucets beyond suffering, and William Shakespeare's poetry was nothing but smiles.
"That's well and dandy for you," the man said. "But I have to have plumbing, REAL plumbing in this house. Did you notice the emphasis I put on REAL? Real! Poetry just can't handle it. Face up to reality," the man said to the poetry.
But the poetry refused to go. "We're staying." The man offered to call the police. "Go ahead and lock us up, you illiterate," the poetry said in one voice.
"I'll call the fire department!"
"Book burner!" the poetry shouted.
The man began to fight the poetry. It was the first time he had ever been in a fight. He kicked the poetry of Emily Dickinson in the nose.
Of course the poetry of Michael McClure and Vladimir Mayakovsky walked over and said in English and Russian, "That won't do at all," and threw the man down a flight of stairs. He got the message.
That was two years ago. The man is now living in a YMCA in San Francisco and loves it. He spends more time in the bathroom than everybody else. He goes in there at night and talks to himself with the light out.

 

[Autochthonous1]

I am a massive Brautigan fan Frances Lengel!

 

[Buckaroo]

Don't think I've read watermelon sugar, I've read some other of his stuff though - It's all very much of it's time, which is no bad thing - Far from it AFAIC.

Here's a couple of his novels
A Confederate General At Big Sur
http://www.brautigan.net/general.html

And Trout Fishing in America
http://www.brautigan.net/trout.html
Both Ok. Trout fishing... has a character in it called Trout Fishing In America Shorty named in homage to Railroad Shorty, a character from Nelson Algren's The Neon Wilderness.


This is from Revenge of the Lawn - A collection of his short stories.

"The checks always arrived on the 1st and 15th of every month," Checks? Cheques?

 

[DotCommunist]

cheques is european, checks is US english

 

[toblerone3]

I am reading six books simultaneously. This one is an unconvincing conspiracy theory about the assassination of Martin Luther King. Written by the brother of James Earl Ray.

It was a set up by the mafia and the Feds also involving mind-bending drugs apparently.

 

[Buckaroo]

cheques is european, checks is US english

really, never knew that, cheers, knew yanks can't spell but still

 

[Buckaroo]

I am reading six books simultaneously.

what six books are you reading simultaneously?

 

[toblerone3]

what six books are you reading simultaneously?

Sorry just edited my post to feature details of one of the six.

 

[Frances Lengel]

I am a massive Brautigan fan Frances Lengel!

I've not read him for years but he's definitely an author I'm glad I found

 

[Autochthonous1]

I've not read him for years but he's definitely an author I'm glad I found

I like his poetry too.

 

[Greebo]

Ramsay's disease - Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and the unfortunate creation of "CFS" - Leslie O. SimpsonPhD Nancy Blake BA, CQSW

 

[Frances Lengel]

I like his poetry.

TBH, I'm not a great one for poetry TBH -I like a good story, me.Though I do like Bukowski's poetry. And John Burnside.
Have you ever heard of a guy called Denis Johnson? If you like Brautigan's poetry you may like his stuff (though I'm crap at recommending things - Here's a review of a novel of his anyway by a guy called Alan Warner, who I rate;
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/13/train-dreams-denis-johnson-review

Hurrah. Some have started to say that Denis Johnson might be one of America's greatest fiction writers. This should have been obvious in 1986, with his third novel, The Stars at Noon – and it was certainly confirmed by the linked short story collection, Jesus' Son, in 1992.

There is something discomfiting about Johnson's work, for middlebrow lit shits. Perhaps it's a puritanical reaction to the author's own biography: his promising youth, lost in fearsome psychic turmoil; his reluctance to play the contemporary games of interview and Twitter, where author comes before work.
Then there were the characters of those early novels. Often terrifying, they were broke, unsteady drifters on the cusp of interior collapse, becalmed in queasy settings – twitchy hitchhikers you desperately wished you'd never stopped for. Yet the scale and ambition was huge. The Stars at Noon conjured a sweated, Latin American
maelstrom, with a glorious xenophobia about its stance. The jumpiness of the Johnsonian vision can also be seen in his brilliant nonfiction reportage; Seek: Reports from the Edges of America and Beyond is a revealing title which demonstrates where some of the dramatis personae came from.
Stylistically, Johnson's fiction is sustained in an opiate buzz: rationality festers at the corners. Narcotic blackouts and sudden nightmarish convulsions challenge the reader, as an America of budget motels, happy hour bars and desperate waitresses hurtles towards forlorn escape. A vertiginous theology seems apparent – tangible demons, a sensitivity to real evil as Satan peeps out, a palpable operator. These novels recall Flannery O'Connor at her most frothed up.
Some critical acceptance came as Johnson's character palette widened. The Name of the World fitted into the campus novel genre, with a rattled academic unravelling in a gracefully drawn nowhere; Johnson's mastery of language began to show the world as an ungraspable and deeply mysterious locale.
Tree of Smoke won Johnson the National Book Award (his wife collected it on his behalf) and his last novel, Nobody Move, embraced genre yet totally surpassed it. This distressing, gripping book, in which an unlikely barber-shop quartet singer struggled to escape his small-time criminal past and certain assassination, was received very quietly by the normally shouty crime genre constituency, but was perhaps the best American crime novel since James M Cain.
Train Dreams appears as if on respectable territory: a short but sweeping third-person historical novel which grapples with that fecund American myth of the pioneer sensibility, the dramatic speed with which that remarkable nation arose around a startled populace. Robert Grainier is an itinerant labourer, building bridges and felling trees for the rapidly expanding railways of the early 20th century. He finds happiness with his wife and infant daughter. Grainier's is a poor, crushingly modest and long life, described with gorgeous economy. Sleeping under old civil war canvas, his young eyes fall upon land and forest that white men and women have barely ventured into, yet those same eyes will glimpse Elvis on his touring train in the late 1950s and the bewildering superhighways of the 60s. Grainier is an innocent, seemingly untroubled by greater complication or the scourge of doubt, who is ultimately crushed by a more desperately cruel and irrational world than he could have dreamed of. And dream he does. The novel fulfils the duties of historical fiction but, characteristically, Train Dreams releases a lurking grotesquery. As always, main and peripheral characters are magically conjured from a few deeply considered, gruff sentences: "I worked on a peak outside Bisbee, Arizona, where we were only eleven or twelve miles from the sun. It was a hundred and sixteen degrees on the thermometer, and every degree was a foot long. And that was in the shade. And there weren't no shade."
Grainier is everyman yet no man; essentially an orphan, with conflicting versions of his origins. The landmarks of his tough existence include the attempted execution of a storeroom thief, who seems to put a curse on him; a man shot by his own dog; the childhood discovery of a fatally injured railway hobo: "Been all over this country. Canada, too. Never a hundred yards from these rails and ties." Young Grainier hands him his final drink in an old boot.
An apocalyptic fire "stronger than God" sweeps the valley where the Grainiers have pitched their humble shack and his family vanishes, possibly floated downriver from the inferno. Grainier becomes a hermit in the cindered ruins, howling along with the mountain wolves, never quite abandoning the search for his lost daughter.
The denouement of Train Dreams is so tragic and surreal that the reader at first denies its grisly approach: yet when it comes, it is written with such credibility that it fulfils the book's theme, the collapse of the rational world for a decent man. Softly and beautifully, this novel asks a profound question of human life: is the cost of human society and so-called civilisation perhaps just too high?

Anyway, here's a collection of some of his poetry - And it's a minter
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9904.The_Throne_of_the_Third_Heaven_of_the_Nations_Millennium_General_Assembly

A couple of reviewa

must admit that I have not read all of the poems in this book; it is so large, and I generally don't read lengthy books of poetry in one sitting. I must also confess that Denis Johnson is one of the top ten living writers that I admire most in the world, and his work is always startling and scary and lovely

I liked this one though some poems are of course stronger than others. The good ones are really excellent. The less good ones are just nothing in a way worse than a lot of poets, because part of Johnson's appeal is the closeness of his style to ordinary speech (some of the time). I will be coming back to some of these. They have something to say about our shared pains and this is of value.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...en_of_the_Nations_Millennium_General_Assembly

BTW, the title "The throne of the third heaven of the nations millenium general assembly was taken from this...To be cont

 

[Frances Lengel]

Gallery Label
"Where there is no vision, the people perish" — Proverbs 29:18 (King James Version)
posted on the wall of Hampton's garage

James Hampton's entire artistic output is this single work which he called The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly. Hampton worked for more than fourteen years on his masterwork in a rented garage, transforming its drab interior into a heavenly vision, as he prepared for the return of Christ to earth. The Throne is his attempt to create a spiritual environment that could only have been made as the result of a passionate and highly personal religious faith.

Hampton's full creation consists of 180 components—only a portion of which are on view. The total work suggests a chancel complete with altar, a throne, offertory tables, pulpits, mercy seats, and other obscure objects of Hampton's own invention. His work also includes plaques, tags, and notebooks bearing a secret writing system which has yet to be, and may never be, deciphered.
Hampton's intricate, large-scale design for The Throne derives coherence from parallel rows of constructions, densely packed on several levels. A seven-foot tall cushioned throne at the rear center is the work's focal point. Pairs of objects on either side of it impart a powerful, compulsive sense of symmetry. To the actual throne's right, objects refer to the New Testament and Jesus; to the left, the Old Testament and Moses, a division that corresponds to the disposition of the saved in the Bible. Every item has a relationship to the others and most bear a dedication to a saint, prophet, or other biblical character that may have appeared in the recurrent visions that inspired Hampton's efforts.

Massive wings, suggesting angels, sprout from most components; framed tablets line the walls, and crowns and other complex foil decorations fill every available space of the assemblage. The entire complex was originally placed on a three-foot tall platform set stage like against the rear wall of his garage.
The Throne and all of its associated components are made from discarded materials and found objects consisting of old furniture, wooden planks and supports, cardboard cutouts, scraps of insulation board, discarded light bulbs, jelly glasses, hollow cardboard cylinders, Kraft paper, desk blotters, mirror fragments and electrical cables and a variety of other "found objects," all scavenged from second-hand shops, the streets, or the federal office buildings in which he worked. To complete each element, Hampton used shimmering metallic foils and brilliant purple paper (now faded to tan) to evoke spiritual awe and splendor. Hampton's symbolism extended even to his choice of materials such as light bulbs, which represent God as the light of the world.

Praised as America's greatest work of visionary art,
Praised as America's greatest work of visionary art, Hampton's Throne reveals one man's faith in God as well as his hope for salvation. Although Hampton did not live to initiate a public ministry, the capping phrase "FEAR NOT" summarizes his project's universally eloquent message.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006


...cont...Hampton reminds me a bit of the protagonist out of Philip k Dicks non sci fi (can't stand spacewank, me) "Confessions of a Crap Artist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Crap_Artist

Confessions of a Crap Artist

is a 1975 novel by Philip K. Dick, originally written in 1959. Dick wrote about a dozen non-science fiction novels in the period from 1948 to 1960; this is the only one published during his lifetime.

The novel chronicles a bitter and complex marital conflict in 1950s suburban California from the perspective of the wife's brother, an obsessive compulsive amateur scientist. The novel contains only small amounts of the complex mystical and science fiction concepts that define much of Dick’s work. Rolling Stone Magazine called it a “funny, horribly accurate look at life in California in the 1950s.”[citation needed]

Jesus, sorry Autoc, all you said was you liked a bit of Brautigan and you get fucking reams

 

[TruXta]

Philip k Dicks non sci fi (can't stand spacewank, me)

Whatever else you can lay on PK Dick, he rarely did space-wank. Sci-fi, sure, space (wank) opera not so much.

 

[Frances Lengel]

Whatever else you can lay on PK Dick, he rarely did space-wank. Sci-fi, sure, space (wank) opera not so much.

You're right - I do like a bit of Dick. His "straight", non sci fi stuff remains my favourite stuff of his though. Not through any anti SF prejudice, I just prefer it - IN Milton Lumkey territory is one of my favourites.

 

[sojourner]

I wrote ''counterproductive'', then edited it a few times. Was writing on my phone so made many errors and as I said; not able to write well atm, not slept in days. You knew what I was getting at though... as it came after the word ''hindering'', which is negative. Drew will tell you I make up words daily (some of them are actually really fantastic and I use them amongst my friends regularly ). I'm not one for picking out the grammatical errors of others, or misplaced/misused words, or un-words, myself - if I get the general gist of the statement. Had to edit that post a zillion times, gave up in the end.
Yeah, via email prob best, though not now as have too many other things going on I need to deal with, and let me re-read that book first, so we can talk about that.

I'm obsessed with language - I couldn't work out what you meant it may be 'unconducive' to. I make up words myself all the time, it's a very amusing past-time I WILL pick out grammatical errors I'm afraid, so that I can get to meaning. Okay fair enough re email/book.

Girls Gone Wild is the commodification of drunk college girls; a franchise with clever marketing. Nah, flashing tits or any body parts, unless it's for a job is not feminism or empowering in any, way shape or form, it's manufactured by men with hard dicks and profit maximisation on the brain who tell these young women it makes them sexy...

Absolutely, which is exactly what Levy was saying. We agree It doesn't take much to then extend that to other forms of media featuring naked women. Commodification is what it's about, and it's not the girls making the money, is it? Even porn stars are pretty badly paid until they get any real 'fame'.

What is your point here though? I mean, young women will emulate older women, are you suggesting that is the fault of the sex workers? I'm pretty sure you weren't, just wondering. I think it's MTV's fault. Fuck me, music videos are pornographic now a days.

The point is that this 'new feminism' is based on facade, on titillation that makes money out of women, for men. What the young women are experiencing/feeling is not a sense of empowerment based on their own judgements/beliefs. Their self-worth is fed only by how attractive they feel they are to men. Not their own self-value, on confidence based on their intellect, or skills, but on how they perceive men feel about women. Men fancy porn stars/strippers, or appear to. Therefore they will fancy/value ME if I emulate that.

No, I don't think it's the 'fault' of the sex-workers at all. They have accepted pay for what they know is fake. Their understanding of the situation is, I would argue, much less clouded, is closer to the truth, than those young women.

 

[DotCommunist]

You're right - I do like a bit of Dick. His "straight", non sci fi stuff remains my favourite stuff of his though. Not through any anti SF prejudice, I just prefer it - IN Milton Lumkey territory is one of my favourites.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Dick

 

[sojourner]

Sorry, missed that post. I certainly do not believe it's 90%, but where, when, who did they ask? Statistics are generally shite when it comes to that sort of thing, imo.
I'd not met any who were sexually abused, or admitted to it, I'd never been sexually abused. ''Sex workers'' is a massive umbrella, I knew/know many sex surrogates, fluffers, pornstars, strippers, dominatrices, women who worked on webcams, in peepshows... all over the world, but not many prostitutes. I know some of the strippers I met were hookers at one point/as well as stripping. I know one ''high-class'' escort. I am pretty sure she wasn't ever sexually abused (but I've not asked, just know she comes from lovely family and is close to her parents). Though there were a lot of us who grew up fatherless and/or in foster care. But I don't see how it's got to do with anything, it's like saying x amount of bankers grew up with overpowering parents... Sure, if an individual's sexually abused as a child/teenager you're likely going to feel worthless and like an outsider and may then be attracted to or manipulated into the sex industry. There are many people who were sexually abused and didn't go into the industry, dunno about any statistics, they don't tell us those ones do they! Personally, I know more people who were sexually abused as children/teenagers OUTSIDE of the sex industry. Again, not sure what your point is? Most of the sex workers I met were either exhibitionists who did it because they actually enjoyed it (or preferred it to ''normal'' work), or mothers or students doing it for the cash. I did it for the excitement and attention (in the beginning, I was only 18) as I'd tried ''normal'' jobs and couldn't stick 'em.

I've got sucked into Urban land again. I have stuff to do for my voluntary work tomorrow, so gotta go, but nice talking to you more. I'll re-read that book, for sure. Xx

Listen, I'm not trying to 'get at' you or anything. There's a defensiveness in your post that makes me think you are feeling like that. I really just wanted to know what you made of that claim, having worked in that line. I'm enjoying the dialogue, and asking more questions, that is all. No agenda. Ah fuck though I've gone and given the book back to my daughter-out-law and didn't write down the source of the statistic. Pretty sure it was from a female psychologist who'd worked with women in the industry though. 90% was the figure that she thought it was closer to - the initial figure was more like 65%.

I think it WOULD make a person more easily manipulated, though, yes. I know way too many women who were abused as kids, raped etc - I'm one myself. It definitely skews/destroys sexualities in many cases, and in some, numbs a person to the point of having no self-worth.

Anyhoo yeh, see you around. Gis a shout if you read it. Enjoyed the debate, thank you

 

[sojourner]

ANYWAYYYYY - the fucking library was shut yesterday. SHUT! So I found a short story collection I'd bought from the charity shop ages ago and read some of that. Roald Dahl - Someone Like You. Fucking ace writer - so clever BRILLIANT twists

 

[TruXta]

I'm coming to the end of the Wasp Factory. Not sure what I'll read after, have King Leopold's Ghost in the shelf, but not sure I want more 100% grimness after TWF.

 

[Orang Utan]

Its a great book that, but very very disturbing

 

[TruXta]

Its a great book that, but very very disturbing

I've had enough disturbing for a bit with the Wasp Factory... Maybe I should read something comedic for once.

 

[Orang Utan]

What did you make of Wool? I'm 10% in and fuck all has happened yet

 

[TruXta]

What did you make of Wool? I'm 10% in and fuck all has happened yet

I liked it. It's slightly slow to start off with, but gets better IMO. It's an easy fast read too I found it.

 

[Autochthonous1]

Listen, I'm not trying to 'get at' you or anything. There's a defensiveness in your post that makes me think you are feeling like that. I really just wanted to know what you made of that claim, having worked in that line. I'm enjoying the dialogue, and asking more questions, that is all. No agenda. Ah fuck though I've gone and given the book back to my daughter-out-law and didn't write down the source of the statistic. Pretty sure it was from a female psychologist who'd worked with women in the industry though. 90% was the figure that she thought it was closer to - the initial figure was more like 65%.

I think it WOULD make a person more easily manipulated, though, yes. I know way too many women who were abused as kids, raped etc - I'm one myself. It definitely skews/destroys sexualities in many cases, and in some, numbs a person to the point of having no self-worth.

Anyhoo yeh, see you around. Gis a shout if you read it. Enjoyed the debate, thank you

Hey you, no, I really wasn't thinking you were digging at me at all... I have liked our posts here. There was no defensiveness in anyway (I certainly didn't mean to sound defensive and that's why I put the smiley in too). This is why I have issues with internet chit-chat, irl you would've seen I wasn't being defensive or thought you were having a dig; I literally was asking/wondering what your point was (re the 90% thing). My thoughts of that claim were sceptical...well, I don't doubt that some psychologist found that 65% of some women, somewhere in the industry were abused, but what areas of the industry and where, what workers? As I said; I worked in the industry for years and don't recall meeting many at all. I know more women who've been abused who aren't in the industry - so I just don't get the statistics. I'd assume the 90% were prostitutes, not strippers or pornstars. Most of the strippers I met were very confident, ballsy, gutsy, in control. Pornstars too, mostly, they were in charge of their ''business'', their bodies, their own boss. Where as prostitutes *generally* are not...perhaps?
Sorry to hear about your past Soj, brave of you to say that on here. Mucho respect. Went to the anti-pope march a couple of years ago and that was a gruelling day/protest, met so many brave people.

As for the English language, I love it too. A bit of word smithery turns me on. I grew up listening to John Cooper Clarke, he was my hero. Inspired my pen to move in different ways, but most people don't know what I bang on about half the time (especially after not much sleep). I detest Grammar Nazi's though; people who go 'round pointing out ''you're'' and ''your'', fair enough if it's a thread about grammar/language etc. In the case of my post though, ''unconducive'' is a word, perhaps I didn't use it in the correct way during my insomniatical daze? I said that I found too many aspects of feminism hindering, even: http://thesaurus.com/browse/unconducive, meaning damaging, etc? Let's not discuss the feminism bit now, eh...

Even porn stars are pretty badly paid until they get any real 'fame'.

I disagree. The pornstar just has to be a good business person - strong willed/minded. If they are naive/easily manipulated/stupid they will get underpaid/exploited - which can happen in any business though, right? And one of the reasons I thought the porn industry was so fabulous (apart from the fact you got paid to orgasm) was because it was one of the very few professions in which women got paid more than the men. Look, I know all about the nasty side of the industry, but being wise, clued up, pretty tough too, I was never exploited; I chose what/where/when I wanted to shoot and who to ''do it'' with. I didn't do anything I didn't want, and got paid double than any man I worked with (though once I got paid more than a trans* woman, which wasn't right... but queer porn is a whole other kettle of sharks). I was happy with what I was paid. I didn't do many shoots. I ''got out'' and worked behind the camera, then in other parts of the industry, including being a sex surrogate for people with disabilities. I love the sex industry. The good parts. It can be great for some people to work in. Awful for others. You have to work it, not let it work you. Such a cliche, eh, but true.

 

[Autochthonous1]

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Jesus, sorry Autoc, all you said was you liked a bit of Brautigan and you get fucking reams

Hey, I LOVED the REAMS, best posts to me yet on Urban. But I have to watch a film now and get off to bed, your posts will take a good few coffees tomorrow morning to get through, so I'll get back to you then. Thank you though. Yes, I had a copy of Trout Fishing in America, not read it though, think I gave it away (always doing that). And I've heard of Denis Johnson but not sure I know his work so will be looking over that tomorrow with my coffee. Ta.

 

[DotCommunist]

Managed to get halfway through Gemmel's 'Druss the Legend' before bed last night. Gemmel is the most shameles amongst shameless swords and sorcery tellers.Every hero is a HERO. Every villain has a henchman who just made some bad choices and has a wife. There is holy wise men and a semi agrarian economy. How does he get away with this?