05.05.05
I hear you loud and clear—there will a well-considered essay on why the gays have lost their way. There will be copious references to Daniel Harris. [Warning: extremely bad website design.] Other topics to be considered include: my dinner parties, sex with bears, and this website.
But before that, more self-indulgent personal news! I have had a platonic date with a gen-yoo-wine British Upper Class Twit! He speaks like William F. Buckley Jr! He has his own studio apartment in über-posh Kensington (where Madonna lives), which, he informed me, used to be his "father's shag pad." His father, perhaps predictably, now lives in Hong Kong. In fact, he is not at all a twit, but he is 23, and perhaps not as worldly-wise as he thinks he is. Which is sort of charming. Oh, and he's the first British person I've met personally to fulfill the British stereotype of very, very bad teeth. He's a musicologist writing a Master's thesis on Luigi Nono. (Hey kids! Let's play "find the irony"!) Updates as they occur. I believe he will be referred to herein as "The Upper Class Twit." I could grow quite fond of him.
Also, are we all aware that my Adriessen essay is up and running? There is one glaring factual error that slipped through the editorial process, and one sentence which I would like to be rephrased, so if you have any problems with it, just imagine it is one of those things, okay?
Bizarrely, within a day of it going up, I received a long (long!) email from the author of one the books under review. She was, basically, happy. Inasmuch as she didn't actually threaten bodily harm. Heh heh.
It is election day! Since the British general election was not greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm as a blog topic, I shall keep my thoughts more or less to myself. Know this, though: elections are way, way different here.
But before that, more self-indulgent personal news! I have had a platonic date with a gen-yoo-wine British Upper Class Twit! He speaks like William F. Buckley Jr! He has his own studio apartment in über-posh Kensington (where Madonna lives), which, he informed me, used to be his "father's shag pad." His father, perhaps predictably, now lives in Hong Kong. In fact, he is not at all a twit, but he is 23, and perhaps not as worldly-wise as he thinks he is. Which is sort of charming. Oh, and he's the first British person I've met personally to fulfill the British stereotype of very, very bad teeth. He's a musicologist writing a Master's thesis on Luigi Nono. (Hey kids! Let's play "find the irony"!) Updates as they occur. I believe he will be referred to herein as "The Upper Class Twit." I could grow quite fond of him.
Also, are we all aware that my Adriessen essay is up and running? There is one glaring factual error that slipped through the editorial process, and one sentence which I would like to be rephrased, so if you have any problems with it, just imagine it is one of those things, okay?
Bizarrely, within a day of it going up, I received a long (long!) email from the author of one the books under review. She was, basically, happy. Inasmuch as she didn't actually threaten bodily harm. Heh heh.
It is election day! Since the British general election was not greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm as a blog topic, I shall keep my thoughts more or less to myself. Know this, though: elections are way, way different here.
posted by Grrg at 12:19 PM
6 Comments:
Now see bears are always an interesting topic. I mean not that the election wouldn't be or anything, maybe. Meanwhile I've only read a little of your Andriessenage because guests in town, etc., but approved of the writing already.
G
Oh, p.s. I am sort of vaguely following election news today and so now I'm going to go ahead and ask anyway, having dissed the topic somewhat: is the political spectrum there sorta Liberal Dems on the left, Labour=centrist as in American Democratic party, Conservative=Conservative?
That Daniel Harris designed a seriously ugly-ass website. My eyes are bleeding.
That Daniel Harris website has a 1997 copyright date on it...and I don't think it's been touched since. Appropriately, I've read Harris' book, and I think it's as tiresome as his web design.
Hmm. You say "tiresome"; I say "obviously touched a nerve"...
Listen, you're right the olde tyme web design is appropriate: obviously the book is very dated. I like to call it a "period piece." It is also unremittingly negative, blind to any number of more complicated cultural movements of its time, and very much off-target in terms of some of the things he chose to attack. (Did we need a sustained critique of the International Male catalog? No, we did not.) But in terms of the fundamentals of his criticism, I don't know anyone who speaks more cogently or provocatively.
More on this later.
Re: International Male, you have to remember how large it loomed at the time. It seems stupid to critique it unless...does it seem stupid to critique A&F? (I suspect I'm a few years behind the times and A&F was the force of gay bodyfascist hegemony of the 90's. Surely something equally hideous has replaced it, though, to encourage us to throw heaps of cash at our insecurities about youth and masculinity.)
G
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