After reading Partial Objects today, an amazing post, all about things like Lacan and the Soul—

All I know is, my soul is a pest. Or whatever that internal thing is that has kept yammering away, lo these many decades. Always with a very clear idea of what is right. Read the rest of this entry »

Of all the scenes in the book, the one most resembling the later life of the Tolstoys is not a Levin-Kitty scene, but the final row between Vronsky and Anna just before she goes out to throw herself under a train. Tolstoy’s mastery of the feat of simultaneously putting the reader inside the heads of both characters as well as his own, as if the ball is being tossed from Anna to Vronsky to the narrator at high speed without ever being dropped, is one of the supreme moments of craft in all fiction … James Meek, LRB

… A statement so disarming, I had to go find it.
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Burning down the cloth house. Have you a shred of a chance of realizing all that you know in your heart are your dreams withheld, stifled, lost? And does this loss, what you have already lost and what will come, does it resonate anywhere? Or do your struggles as women rise and disappear like waves in the ocean, what does one woman matter, in a world you know is Wrong. Misguided, stupid to the core. Could you do better with one little finger than the men you refuse to call, anymore, leaders. And don’t you have to live with the terrible obviousness. Your perfect skill to find the moral balance midst conflict. Isn’t it all a big pissing contest, no more than gang behavior … and aren’t you, as a woman, with your maternal, familial skills, aren’t you the hope of the world?

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If only it weren’t now necessary for most women to work to provide basic support to their families, Nance writes in her comment yesterday …

And of course I had told only part of it, the overall story is one of sadness and powerlessness—make no mistake, on the part of all of us, and ironically, that much harder to tell. For is there ever a single pointedness to history. Chomsky, Lowe and others tell us, No.
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Day care may prevent certain children from establishing a healthy relationship with their parents, a new study suggests.

The results show the more time fussy, irritable infants spend in day care, the less likely they are to develop a so-called secure attachment with their mothers. A secure attachment means babies are at ease exploring their surroundings, but can still seek comfort from their mom when they need to—they are not clingy or aloof. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning the first issue of my new subscription to the London Review of Books arrived; I have some dim memory of subscribing to the site … but this appearance of the thing in print, in the mail of all things, felt rather odd,  as I’ve read the site for years. Mostly to read up every bit of Jenny Diski, a writer with whom I used to exchange links and the occasional email, but then when I read that the woman who brought her up, in her teenage years, happened to be, of all people, Doris Lessing—perhaps it was then I fell silent. Read the rest of this entry »

My God, (oops) I hadn’t even heard of Mr. Deity until today, when I followed a link from Frank to One Good Move … and here you have it. Every Woman’s Life. In the Whole World. Okay, the Whole English-Speaking World. Guys, um, man up on the responsibility-for-self thing, ‘k? Thxbye.

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I’ve been watching old movies late at night, bits of which come up again and again, as I flip channels and the movies are repeated. In this way, eventually I piece together a whole. Or actually look at the listings and, quelle horror, watch the thing from beginning to end. Which is not remotely as interesting, especially if you’ve gotten good chunks of the film under your belt. Read the rest of this entry »