I'm in the minority, I'm sure, but Terry Castle's hilarious kiss 'n' tell account of her life as a Sontag groupie actually made me feel ever so slightly more positively disposed towards la Susan than I was before reading it. What a freak.
(via Clive Davis.)
Posted by Dr. Frank at April 2, 2005 04:59 PM | TrackBackI have noticed, Frank, that human stupidities seem to make you only more amused by and fonder of humans. Whereas they only make me wish harder for one of those planets Isaac Asimov story "Living Space" (where "productive citizens" are each assigned an entire planet -- an uninhabitable Earth in an alternate universe -- to themselves). The account of the dinner party is particularly grim.
Posted by: Angie Schultz at April 3, 2005 06:25 PMYou are so right, Angie. The dinner party does sound grim, but somehow also kind of fun. Anyway, I'd rather endure the dinner party than the novel, I'm pretty sure.
Posted by: Dr. Frank at April 3, 2005 06:29 PMWhy haven't you paid any tribute to JPII? In my local punk scene noone seems to care, it's not like this in Ireland but now I find myself living in Florida and its just brutal. The old people are Protestants that don't care and the young people are idiots that don't know.
Posted by: irishpunk at April 4, 2005 05:02 AMI'm with Dr. Frank. Why does this make me smile? I think it's partially because you can tell how much this woman enjoys telling her story.
Posted by: josh at April 4, 2005 03:16 PMI think the author should have lobbied the performance artist, Abramovic, to call all the too-cool-for-school dinner guests to the table by playing "Slow Ride" on her "spindly old stereo from the 1960s". There are Heathers everywhere...
Posted by: Nick at April 4, 2005 07:00 PMThese heavy in-crowd essays challenge *my* autodidacticism. Do I lose points if I mention I had to look up the definition of half a dozen words she used? Does that make me provincial, or her pretentious? I guess it's a little of both -- I've have a hard time seeing the study of "theory" (in whatever form) as just a bit suspect, but like the author, I find myself dizzied by so-called intellectual giants, even when (usually) I don't quite understand what they're saying.
Posted by: Wes at April 4, 2005 10:36 PMI said my piece about this on the 26th.
Sigh. Which is here, he rewrote:
http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2005/03/dissing-considered-as-metaphor.html
I'm glad I've ceased to be intimidated by people who act this way. If they can't be polite, maybe they're not all that smart in the areas in which they need to be.
When you go to a dinner party like that, it's best to bring a book, or better yet, your own car.
Posted by: Elizabeth at April 6, 2005 12:22 AMAt first I read the title of the post as Hadrian Crossing...either because it sounded like something that happens on the other side of my social wall, or maybe just because I can be dyslexic at times.