Fear and Loathing in New Orleans: Thank god.

Books By Which I Am Compelled

Paul Gilroy: The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double-Consciousness
This book is remarkable. It's not so much that this is one of the clearest and most interesting expositions of the problems that make understanding the relationships between culture, politics, identity, and academia and blackness difficult. It's that Paul Gilroy is right all the time.
Heidi Julavits: The Uses of Enchantment: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)
Too much Freud for one sitting.
Ruth Landes: A Cidade das Mulheres ("The City of Women").
Jeffrey had this book sitting on his shelf. It's Ruth Landes' most popular ethnography, which was originally published in English, and it's about candomble in Bahia in the 1930s. I'm happy to be reading it in Portuguese because I get to learn lots of new words. I'm not thrilled about reading it in Portuguese because it means I'm always carrying around a dictionary.
Martin Amis: House of Meetings (Vintage International)
It is not okay that this is the first Martin Amis book I've read. Why didn't anyone tell me how good he was? Jerks.
Joan Acocella: Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays (Vintage)
Acocella is an unbelievably smart writer. I have not heard of many of the writers about whom she writes, and I want to read everything most of them wrote. I had opinions about most of the dancers about whom she writes, and she made me reconsider my positions -- good and bad. This is an excellent book. She does not write about Marcel Proust.
Ulf Hannerz: Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places (Comedia)
I read this about 8 years ago and I plan to re-read it soon. I was just reading some shorter pieces by Hannerz for another class and I remembered how reading this book was the one that tipped the scales in favor of my studying anthropology at GW. And despite the fact that that decision has yielded little in the way of paychecks or social prestige, it's one I don't regret.
Carl A. Brasseaux: French, Cajun, Creole, Houma: A Primer On Francophone Louisiana
Hot damn, it's all worth knowing.
John Casey: Spartina
Described on the back as a "classic tale of a man, a boat and a storm," and compared on the front cover to The Old Man and the Sea and Moby-Dick, I have to admit that I was skeptical about whether I would like this book. I don't understand boats, I abhor macho bullshit (Melville, I'm looking your way), and mostly I'd rather poke my eyes out than read anything about hurricanes at this particular point in meteorological time. But I loved this book. Because like any good book about a a man, a boat, and a storm, it's about how life is a total crapshoot.
Richard Russo: Straight Man: A Novel
A more accessible Lucky Jim, which, because I read it when I did, between semesters, while considering the pitfalls of pursuing a PhD, could have changed my mind. But I'm not sure.
Colson Whitehead: Apex Hides the Hurt
Colson Whitehead has a sense of humor that rarely exhibits itself in any kind of obvious way. His ability to convey the absurdity of aspects of the human condition is his strength both in this book and in The Intuitionist and in John Henry Days. However, this one was the one that made me laugh out loud.

January 13, 2009

Thank god.

I watched the You Tube version of Bush's final press conference just now. I saw clips of it on the news last night, the local news presented the Greater New Orleans area with the Katrina-related portions, and threw my shoe at the television. Watching the whole thing is torturous. I'm so glad it's almost over. The twitchy body language, the inappropriate smirking and guffawing, the bullshit Texas accent, the blatant stupidity, and worst of all, his apparent belief that the federal response to Katrina was adequate ... my blood pressure's up just writing about it. Goodbye, asshole.

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Fear and Loathing in New Orleans

dispatches from the miasma

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Books By Which I Am Compelled

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