2010 January | start narrative here

Another week passes, and no new books. I am, surprisingly, still being so responsible! Standing outside of bookstores, looking longingly through the windows, but otherwise well behaved. The purse remains safely in my handbag.

And don’t even get me started on the reason I’m trying to save my dollars – my Library Services course. I am suffering from the most frustrating and stressful enrolment based angst ever. How hard is it to reply to a.) an email (admittedly, more than one email) or b.) a phone call? Semester starts, oh only tomorrow, and while all my on-campus subjects are, or at least seem to be, organized, my one remaining subject spot remains blank no matter how hard I try to get in contact with the powers that be. Their system is so unprofessional and disorganized. I like to be prepared weeks if not MONTHS in advance, none of this last minute stuff. Argh.

As someone who went through a stage of reading The Catcher in the Rye at least once a year, the news of J.D. Salinger‘s death this week made me pause and reflect on the special place that he held in my reading life for such a long time. I know that you have to be of a particular disposition to connect with Holden Caulfield, but it is a bond that once forged seems to be unbreakable. I think for many people it is the first book that lets them know, in the words of Mr. Antolini, that:

Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them — if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.

And hearing that can be such a powerful thing when you’re a teenager, it’s just too easy to dismiss (or forget?) the urgency of that emotion when we’re all old, jaded and desperately trying to shed anything that remains of our adolescence.

Short Story Soiree: A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J.D. Salinger (1948)

January 30, 2010 Short Story Soiree

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I was planning to continue with Jay McInerney with another Alison Poole short story, but with the death of J.D. Salinger this week – a round up of the various tributes was published by the Guardian – I felt that it was a good time to look back at some of his shorter fiction. This week I’ll be reading the first of the Glass Family stories “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” from the short story collection Nine Stories, usually published outside the U.S. as For Esmé with Love and Squalor and Other Stories.

“A Perfect Day for Bananafish” follows two separate dialogues, presumably occurring at roughly the same time. The first is a telephone conversation between Muriel and her mother. The dialogue is mostly banal, Muriel is on holiday in Florida with her husband Seymour, who her mother has some misgivings about. There is constant mention of some “funny business with the trees” that concerns Muriel’s mother, especially when she discovers that Seymour drove down to Florida. Muriel asks her mother about a book that Seymour sent her from Germany:

‘No. Only he asked me about it, when we were driving down. He wanted to know if I’d read it.’
‘It was in German!’
‘Yes, dear. That doesn’t make any difference,’ said the girl, crossing her legs. ‘ He said that the poems happen to be written by the only great poet of the century. He said I should’ve bought a translation or something. Or learned the language, if you please.’
‘Awful. Awful. It’s sad, actually, is what it is. Your father said last night—’

Muriel’s mother further reveals that Seymour has been seeing a psychiatrist and has recently been discharged from an Army hospital. The psychiatrist has told Muriel’s father that “Seymour may completely lose control of himself.” The emphasis in italics in their dialogue really allows their voices to sound out, you can perfectly hear the stress they place on particular syllables. After briefly discussing a dinner with the local psychiatrist, Muriel and her mother move on to more important matters, such as the state of Muriel’s blue coat and the season’s clothing styles. Meanwhile, young Sybil Carpenter is talking with her mother as she slops sun-tan oil on her skin. Sybil keeps asking “Did you see more glass?”, driving her mother crazy. Sybil runs down to the beach and reaches Seymour Glass in an out of the way part of the beach. They strike up a conversation, suggesting familiarity.

‘The lady?’ The young man brushed some sand out of his thin hair. ‘That’s hard to say, Sybil. She may be in any one of a thousand places. At the hairdresser’s. Having her hair dyed mink. Or making dolls for poor children in her room.’ Lying prone now, he made two fists, set one on top of the other, and rested his chin on the top one. ‘Ask me something else, Sybil,’ he said. ‘That’s a fine bathing suit you have on. if there’s one thing I like, it’s a blue bathing suit.’
Sybil stared at him, then looked down at her protruding stomach. ‘This is a yellow,’ she said. ‘This is a yellow.’

Seymour’s ease of communicating with Sybil reminds me of Holden’s relationship with his younger sister Phoebe in The Catcher in the Rye. Children are easy to talk to for these characters because they don’t hide behind any illusions, that barrier that we’re forced to set up to protect us against the world hasn’t been put up yet. Innocence. Seymour engages Sybil in a hunt for the elusive bananafish, and tells her the story of the tragic life they lead swimming into holes filled with bananas. They stuff themselves so full with ripe banana flesh that they can’t swim out of the hole again, and so they die of banana fever in the hole. Again, doesn’t this suggest innocence and innocence lost? Once we gorge ourselves on all that adulthood has to offer, we can’t get out of it and reach that purer state of childhood naivety again. Here the story takes on a severe shift. After an altercation in the elevator with a woman he thinks is looking at his feet, Seymour returns to his hotel room.

Then he went over to one of the pieces of luggage, opened it, and from under a pile of shorts and undershirts he took out an Ortgies calibre 7.65 automatic. He released the magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. he cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple.

It’s a powerful story, deceptively simple and with a macabre humour simmering below the surface. Vale Jerome David Salinger, goddamn could you write a story.

J.D. Salinger, January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis (1985)

January 29, 2010 Book Reviews

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I’ve been reading a lot of non-fiction lately, and while I always enjoy learning about new things and discovering new perspectives, I also love getting lost in the imagined worlds of fiction, so I turned to some of my staple comfort fiction: Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis. Not the typical warm and fuzzy type of comfort fiction, but I wrote my undergraduate thesis on novels and films about adolescent malaise, youth disaffected by everything around them: Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge, one of my favourite films, and the films of Gregg Araki (many of which have dialogue lifted straight from Less Than Zero.) It could be familiarity, or recognition, with these themes. Nonetheless, rereading Less Than Zero has confirmed that I still really enjoy it, disturbing, unsettling and confronting as it is.

I turn the radio up, loud. The streets are totally empty and I drive fast. I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is “Disappear Here” and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light. I put my sunglasses on even though it’s still pretty dark outside and I keep looking into the rearview mirror, getting this strange feeling that someone’s following me.

Less Than Zero sees eighteen year old Clay returning home to Los Angeles for Christmas after four months away at school in New Hampshire. He returns to his old life of endless parties, excessive drug use and general sense of apathy. Gradually, the horrors of L.A. infect his psyche and he begins to see violence evident everywhere, deciding to never return. He has an ambiguous sexuality, sleeping with both men and women, and having had an on/off again relationship with Blair, which neither of them seem to be too emotionally involved. This lack of involvement extends to every aspect of Clay’s life, frequent “I don’t know”, “I don’t care”, “nothing”, he just doesn’t care about anything. He’s not alone in this, his friends are all equally detached.

He’s staring at me and I look down and take a drag, a deep one, off the cigarette. The man keeps staring at me and all I can think is either he doesn’t see me or I’m not here. I don’t know why I think that. People are afraid to merge. Wonder if he’s for sale.”

The strength in Less Than Zero is how Ellis captures Clay’s disenchanted voice, everything is recorded with this blank monotone as though nothing can possibly touch him. It’s infectious, sort of rhythmic in a jagged, paranoiac kind of way. It’s only as Clay’s so-called normalcy becomes more and more surreal, that anything really begins to register with him. The images of violence start off relatively tame, watching a sick friend shoot heroin at a party wearing a vest that makes her look like she’s been shot, to coyotes hit by cars, dead bodies found in alleyways and his friends engaging in brutal rape. Clay’s search for his old school friend Julian takes a similarly violent turn as he discovers that Julian has become a male prostitute for a vicious pimp in order to pay off a drug debt. As Clay watches Julian engage with his pimp and his clients, his current image of Julian begins to clash with the images he has of him as a child. I think this, really, begins the descent into mayhem that eventually sees Clay denounce Los Angeles, as well as cementing the theme of the desire to return to the past, even if it is unknown, imagined, or just doesn’t exist anymore. Or never did.

The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children. Images of people, teenagers my own age, looking up from the asphalt and being blinded by the sun. These images stayed with me even after I left the city. Images so violent and malicious that they seemed to be my only point of reference for a long time afterwards. After I left.

Less Than Zero is so much more than a novel which captured the zeitgeist of the materialist 1980s, not just a blank look into the superficial lives of bored, numb and dumb teenagers. Hypnotically narcotic, it is a reflection on moral deterioration and an underlying meaningless than we struggle (or refuse) to grasp.

Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone!: The Romantic Movement, Rock & Roll, and the End of Civilisation as We Know It by Craig Schuftan (2009)

January 27, 2010 Book Reviews

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Craig Schuftan’s Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone!: The Romantic Movement, Rock & Roll, and the End of Civilisation as We Know It is not only a great title for a book, but an absorbing study of the connections between modern pop music and its relationship with artistic traditions stretching back some two hundred years. Inspired by his attraction to the grandiose My Chemical Romance song (hey, stay with me now) “Welcome to the Black Parade”, Schuftan sets out to discover why this song hit such a nerve with him and thousands of music fans around the world. Schuftan digs through history to find the common ground between the Romantic poets of the 19th century, and modern pop punk music, and what emerges is an outline of why many of us find music such a powerful relay of emotion and solidarity.

Gerard Way has found that society, the real world, adult life-whatever you want to call it-cannot provide him with happiness or satisfaction. So he’s moved the search for happiness from outside to inside, and has found it, deep within himself, in his own dreams, his own imagination. This is what puts the romance in My Chemical Romance–the rejection of society in favour of the individual.

While Schuftan begins and ends with a focus on the lyrical and subcultural aspects of My Chemical Romance, he draws on a wealth of other cultural acts, from David Bowie to Saves the Day, Frankenstein to Edward Scissorhands, Wordsworth to the Dadaists. Using this collage technique, he manages to continually keep the reader interested as he moves swiftly from one to another, but brings each point of his argument together in a truly engaging manner. Whether he is citing a goth influenced pop punk band or a revered philosopher from the 19th century, all are treated with equal respect and importance, without the high art/low art distinction invoked.

As we contemplate art, we are able to see life–with all its striving and willing–in a detached, aesthetic way. We are freed, briefly, from the desiring that takes up so much of our time, and leaves us so unsatisfied, as we look at life from the artist’s point of view. In this way, the suffering of the world becomes bearable, and art, according to Schopenhauer, becomes our most important consolation for the pain of life.

Schuftan draws some startlingly accurate parallels, for one example, between Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s rejection of The Sorrows of Young Werther and the cult like following it inspired, and Rivers Cuomo’s rejection of the rapt devotion Weezer’s Pinkerton inspires. The way that Schuftan so subtly suggests the likeness between two cultural events leads into his premise that culture is always building upon itself, we are constantly moving backwards in order to move forwards; hinting, without saying as much, toward postmodernism in art and how audiences derive meaning from it. Not only that, but that the constant revival of cultural traditions can suggest similar social contexts, a reaction toward something unsettling within society – Enlightenment and reason for the Romantics; mass consumerism and denial of self expression in contemporary pop punk music.

Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone! sometimes comes across as on overzealous paean to My Chemical Romance, for the most part it reads like a lecture given by someone who can manage to meld the material you’re supposed to be learning about with the things you know in order to bring you to a greater understanding of both.

[The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Fora.tv has a really good hour long video of Craig Schuftan and Zan Rowe discussing his book. Most of the basic concepts of his argument are outlined here.]

Our Girls: Aussie Pin-Ups of the 40s and 50s by Madeleine Hamilton (2009)

January 25, 2010 Book Reviews

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I’ve done nothing but rave about the Arcade Publications I have read, so I expected I would have a similar response to Our Girls: Aussie Pin-Ups of the 40s and 50s by Madeleine Hamilton. Moving from Melbourne based history, Our Girls looks at the lives and lithe limbs of the Australian swimsuit cuties of the 1940s and 1950s. Hamilton seems to be making an argument that these women were “trailblazers of the sexual revolution and women’s lib movement.” All the reviews I’ve read similarly commend Hamilton’s message, and I’ve struggled with voicing my objections: if all those other reviewers found these stories so liberating, why didn’t I? I found Our Girls to be caught up in the nostalgia for pin-up style glamour, and attempting to legitimize that nostalgia under the guise of feminism.

It is refreshing, I will admit, to see female bodies without significant retouching or surgical enhancements. Hamilton at one point almost incites the problematic “real women” debate: “The classic 40s or 50s pin-up is charming because she’s so real.” The images of women we see so often today may be made unreal through extensive digital manipulation, but the women in those images are always “real”, regardless of any surgical alterations. Isn’t it exactly this sort of display that makes them appear as less “real” to us?

Although the attempt is to focus on the experiences of the female models, there is so much emphasis placed on the male reception of the models – whether in response to beach beauty photography competitions or soldiers on the war front overseas. Images of women are claimed to have worked toward boosting morale, promoting patriotism. Rather, I see these images as the forerunner of the commodification of the female body and sexuality, an issue Hamilton touches on briefly: “Pin-up girls were, by now, widely perceived as sexy fantasy figures rather than the approachable girls next door they’d once been.”

The story of Adelie Hurley, pin-up model turned photographer, stands out as a woman carving her own path in a male dominated field, but otherwise I just don’t see much to admire in these sorts of portrayals of women – and yes, one can recognize these responses as merely a sign of the times they were living in, but Hamilton is pushing for embracing these women as feminist forerunners:

It was essential that the Sun contest didn’t offend female readers with any overtly sexual or indecorous display, so entrants wore one-piece swimsuits rather than bikinis and were meticulously groomed. The ‘respectable’ occupations, stable family backgrounds, and marriageability of finalists were emphasised. [...] 1952 Torquay ‘Sungirl’ Jaon Belceaux told the paper she’d ‘rather be married than be a full-time mannequin – Marriage is the best career.’

While Our Girls offers an insight into the lives of the Australian female models of the 1940s and 1950s, the message didn’t come across coherently to me. I am going to a Wheeler Centre event that Madeleine Hamilton will be appearing at, so perhaps hearing her speak will clear up any apprehensions I have.

Book Loot: Week Ending January 24th, 2010

January 24, 2010 Book Loot

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[photo credit: "Independent Study" by flickr user eflon]

I’ve been scrimping and saving to pay school fees and buy new textbooks over the next couple of weeks, which sadly means no money to spend on books. In lieu of spending money, I tend to spend more time perusing bookstore websites, compiling elaborate wishlists of all the books I would buy if I had unlimited funds. That, and looking at bookstores and other peoples bookshelves and books on flickr or tumblr. Here are a few visual delights to cap off your relaxing, productive, eventful weekend: One, two, three, and my favourite, four.

On the reading front, I’ve been snuggling in with Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth at night time, I love how he writes about science in way that makes it accessible to those, yours truly included, who aren’t scientifically minded. I’m going to one of Dawkins’ lectures in March, which I trust will be equally illuminating. I started reading Australia’s favourite literary son (?) Tim Winton’s for the first time, but I wasn’t much impressed. I stuck with Cloudstreet for about forty pages or so, but decided against slogging through another 400 pages. Maybe I just picked the wrong Winton to start off with?

I’ve had to move a whole shelf of books this week as my library, ahem, sister’s old bedroom/spare room gets repainted – all those tomes read, reread and unread. And every book has a particular memory attached to it, either where and who I was when I read it, where I bought a book, why I bought it and so on. I like the idea of creating a personal history through my book collection, and I suppose that now this blog plays a large part in that too.

Short Story Soiree: Story of My Life by Jay McInerney (1987)

January 23, 2010 Short Story Soiree

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I’m continuing on from last week’s foray into Jay McInerney’s short stories, I’m still working through How It Ended: New and Collected Stories and in a burst of insomniac desperation reading, came across “Story of My Life.” Written in 1987, it is the stream of conscious thoughts of Alison Poole, an aspiring drama student whose father hasn’t paid her monthly tuition fee. Eagle-eyed readers among you (or those with instant access to wikipedia and the like) may recognize Alison as quite a figure of late 80s and early 90s American Literature. Inspired by McInerney’s ex-girlfriend and more recently at the centre of an extramarital affair turned political scandal with former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, Rielle Hunter, Alison Poole not only features in this short story, but was expanded upon in McInerney’s novel Story of My Life. She also appeared as an almost victim of Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho and again in Ellis’ Glamorama. (You can read more about Hunter’s presence in literature as Alison Poole here.)

This is nineteen eighty whatever.

It’s almost difficult to see what makes Alison Poole such an enduring character for these writers, but in “Story of My Life” McInerney creates her as, yes, a vapid spoilt little rich girl coke fiend but she’s not entirely detestable. Written entirely in the much maligned valley girl vernacular, peppered with lots of likes and self-aware rhetorical questions, Poole appears to be a wickedly clever, if a little lost, young woman. She’s manipulative, spiteful and cruel but … who enjoys only reading about well behaved women? Exactly.

Skip Pendleton is this jerk I was in lust with for about three minutes. He hasn’t called me in like three weeks, which is fine, okay, I can deal with that, but suddenly I’m like a baseball card he trades with his friends? Give me a break. So I go to this guy, what makes you think I’d want to go out with you, I don’t even know you, and he goes Skip told me about you. Right. So I’m like, what did he tell you, and he goes Skip said you were hot. I say great, I’m totally honored that the great Skip Pendleton thinks I’m hot. I’m just a jalapeño pepper waiting for some strange burrito, honey. I mean really.

Alison is stressing out because her father, refusing to pay a full yearly tuition because of her tendency to not stick with things, has missed the monthly tuition payment for her drama school classes. After receiving phone calls from eager young men being directed her way from an ex-lover, Skip Pendleton, and inspired by her friend Didi’s possible pregnancy troubles, Alison tells Skip that she is pregnant with his child and requires money for the abortion. Her father eventually gets in contact with her, having parted ways with another young lover, and promises to send her the tuition money. Alison realizes that she is actually pregnant and will have to use her excess money to terminate it. To celebrate, Alison and friends enjoy a drug-fuelled binge which sees her hospitalized and reminiscing about her prized horse which was poisoned to death when she was younger. She remembers her father coming into her room (there is a heavy suggestion of abuse here, but it isn’t expanded upon in the short story) and admitting that he had the horse poisoned in order to claim the insurance money. When confronted, her father denies any knowledge of it and Alison Poole wonders how much of her life is just a dream.

So, okay, maybe I dreamed it. I was in bed, after all, and he woke me up. Not for the first time. But right now, with these tranqs they’ve got me on, I feel like I’m sleepwalking anyway and can almost believe it never really happened. Maybe I dreamed a lot of stuff. Stuff I thought happened in my life. Stuff I thought I did. Stuff that was done to me. Wouldn’t that be great? I’d love to think that ninety percent of it was just dreaming.

It’s not exactly life affirming literature. Alison’s concerns are mainly shallow and petty, but as a character she has such a strong and distinctive voice that is difficult to ignore. The slang may grate on the nerves of some, but McInerney uses it so well and so accurately that it makes Alison stand out as a character. Though her plight may be seen as sad, or sick, or the epitome of superficial youth, reading her story in her own voice allows the reader more sympathy toward her. I’m strongly inclined to order the novel, and having just reread McInerney’s introduction to this collection I’ve discovered that another story “Penelope on the Pond” features an older Alison.

(It appears this may be an appropriate time to read the Alison Poole stories, as John Edwards just last week admitted that he is the father of Hunter’s illegitimate daughter, after having denied it for almost two years. This story is as almost as interesting as the exploits of the fictional Alison Poole.)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

January 22, 2010 Book Reviews

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I picked up Aldous Huxley’s classic Brave New World with knowledge of its dystopian themes, but with no real awareness of its story; vague recollections of soma and babies being created mechanically, but nothing really beyond that. It’s amazing how in a culture in which we are continually spoiled or assumed to have a certain level of knowledge about canonical texts, somehow, basic information about Brave New World had passed me by. Set in the distant future, civilized society has taken technology and the methods of mechanical reproduction to every aspect of human life – the physical birthing process and concept of mothers are abhorred in favour of chemically differentiated humans assigned to castes according to tasks that need to be performed within society, work is performed in exchange for the perfect drug soma, promiscuity and carnality are encouraged, and above all the collective social order is more important than the individual. Within this system, Bernard Marx finds himself feeling “different” but it isn’t until he returns from a savage reservation with the naturally birthed son of Bernard’s Director that the social order can be examined from an outsiders perspective.

‘But people never are alone now,’ said Mustapha Mond. ‘We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it’s almost impossible for them ever to have it.’

Bernard Marx is such a complex character, he is for the most part of the novel the sole voice of protest but he is too afraid to really express it, surrounded as he is by others who have been successfully conditioned to passively accept everything on offer. When John revolts against the impassive acceptance of his mothers death and refusal to see his grief, Bernard just stands back unable to join him. In his heart, and in his thoughts he knows that the methods of distraction are against everything he wants to stand for, but because he is both critical and part of society he just cannot separate himself entirely because it is all he knows. I didn’t wholly understand the point Huxley was driving toward until John (the Savage) meets with the Controller, Mustapha Mond, and Mond discusses the basis of the civilized world to the alienated and confused John. It wasn’t until this point when all everything started fitting together for me, and became truly horrifying – and started to mirror aspects of our own culture as well. The cult of positivity, the fear of solitude, the use of entertainment to dull people. Here’s a graphic which lends the comparison to today a stark relevance, and compares the future as envisioned by Huxley to that of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

‘But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.’
‘In fact,’ said Mustapha Mond, ‘you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.’
‘All right, then,’ said the Savage defiantly, ‘I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.’
‘Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.’
There was a long silence.
‘I claim them all,’ said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re welcome,’ he said.

I’m still stunned and taken aback by how powerful the final chapters of Huxley’s novel are. Reeling, I suppose one would say. I think my experience of Brave New World is going benefit immensely from multiple rereads, there was so much going on that didn’t become clear to me until the end. I feel completely unable to articulate how deeply it has shaken me. I wonder whether this paralyzing inability to write about Brave New World stems from the power and continuing relevance of its message or from the novels prestigious reputation. It’s the same feeling I had when I was reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter for the first time (yes, I can really tie Carson McCullers into any and every book discussion I have.), the feeling of “yes. Yes. Yes! Someone else gets it.” I’m sure it’s just a matter of synchronicity, simply discovering it at the right time.

Radical Melbourne: A Secret History by Jeff and Jill Sparrow (2001)

January 20, 2010 Book Reviews

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In Radical Melbourne: A Secret History brother and sister duo Jeff and Jill Sparrow look back over the turbulent political history of inner city Melbourne. Covering a time period of roughly the first century of the city until the mid 1940s, they feature the stories behind 50 prominent inner city Melbourne locations, starting at Flagstaff Gardens and winding through the city before ending up at Trades Hall. This is a history of Melbourne with a focus on the left of the political spectrum, a history that doesn’t get taught in schools.

Each location examined has been the site of significant form of political struggle, from housing dissident political parties, anarchist bookshops and co-ops, to bloody street brawls and protests. These places have become nothing more than banal facades of the city streets, so it is extremely eye-opening to read about the colourful history behind many of them. Radical Melbourne works to uncover the histories that have been lost beneath the ideal image of Australian history, and at the same time, establishing the important message that public space is active, evolving and ever-changing according to the needs of its people, yet also shaped by dominant political ideologies.

However, in a new century, the problem that motivated Chummy Fleming and his comrades to take to the Bank has reasserted itself with a vengeance. In the new Melbourne of casinos and giant outdoor television screens, there are almost no places in which people can congregate. The inadequate space outside the State Library has become the focus for every rally and demonstration, simply because nowhere else exists.

While there is a wealth of truly fascinating stories behind many of the buildings of Melbourne’s cityscape, the “radical” aspect of the book does become tiresome and overly didactic at times. Yes, the struggles of the working class to assert their rights were important and made great headway into establishing what we now accept as basic working rights, and it is increasingly important to highlight their causes in order to maintain them. However, sometimes the writing took on the tone of a student-socialist sneer – especially when commenting on what particular buildings are today.

Luckily, the strength and number of interesting/frightening stories for the most part overrides the sometime disconcerting tone. For instance, did you know that Victoria’s Parliament House still has slits for gun lofts, allowing riflemen to fire upon demonstrators coming up Bourke Street? Or that it houses an underground dungeon, which now functions as a cleaners tearoom? There is enough similarly startling stories in Radical Melbourne to ensure that you will never look at Melbourne the same way again.

Initially written as a walking tour guide through the city streets, Radical Melbourne is perhaps better read chapter by chapter, a book to visit occasionally and to ruminate over rather than read cover to cover as the stories of riots, marches and political struggle do begin to blend together. It gives Melbournians and tourists alike a chance to look at the city in a different light.

Princesses and Pornstars: Sex, Power, Identity by Emily Maguire (2008)

January 18, 2010 Book Reviews

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Emily Maguire’s Princesses and Pornstars is a call for the recognition that feminism is still a necessity in contemporary Western society and beyond because of the bipolar images and representations of women. Written in an accessible and highly anecdotal style, Maguire demonstrates how the political impacts the experiences and limitations of our personal lives, and how the feminist fight is not even close to being over. It offers a reasoned argument for the abolition of outdated gender binaries in order to take that step closer toward the ideal of equality.

Maguire’s central arguments are what you would expect: female sexuality as commodity, how culture reinforces gender roles and how conflicting messages screw with our perception of ourselves. The idea of sexuality as the most valuable commodity a woman has continues to reign supreme, promoting harmful notions of control of female sexuality – in the social (the stigma and meaning of “slut”) and political sphere (women’s reproductive health issues). Cultural images of female empowerment for the most part merely reinforce traditional gender roles – princess culture and hyper-sexualized popstars (here Maguire builds on Ariel Levy’s raunch culture argument) – offering young women a space to explore themselves but only within the boundaries of what society defines as acceptable outlets. The Madonna/whore dichotomy is still at work, princess/popstar, offered under the guise of female empowerment. There is still a widespread, ingrained belief that woman’s essential being lies with her sexuality and her image. Look around you. It’s everywhere.

The dilemma at the heart of male reactions to feminism is rooted in the fact that the traditional values of masculinity depend on the oppression or subservience of women for their expression.

Maguire looks at sex education in Australian high schools to highlight how little we are teaching female students about their bodies, and how what is being taught encourages particular political messages regarding the position of women in society, and the methods that students have to resort to in order to learn – Dolly Doctor anyone? The chapter on marriage and the negative social stigma of the single woman and the assumption of motherhood as woman’s natural role is eye-opening and of particular interest to me. Social constraints are constantly impounding upon our personal choices, and we have to not only be able to see them at work, but to actively confront and challenge them. The complex pornography argument arises too, with a look at mainstream porn, alt-porn, and Maguire manages to articulate what unsettles me about the whole alt-porn phenomenon in a way I have never been able to:

[...] the genre nevertheless does push its own version of the ‘perfect woman’: tattoos, dyed hair (blue-black, magenta or peroxide), piercings and pale skin. And even if the women look ‘alternative’ (or, you know, normal), the existence of the site is still dependent on the idea that women must look a certain way for the pleasure of a male audience. Just because you’re all done up like Bettie Page doesn’t mean you’re retro or transgressive. It’s only another costume like air hostess or naughty schoolgirl. [...]
In a sense sites like SuicideGirls are more troubling than mainstream sites because they let the buyers off the hook. A man can pretend to himself that he is deep, sensitive and caring because the chick he’s wanking over is, like him, deep and sensitive, not like the big-titted blond whores at hotwetsluts.com. The SuicideGirl models fit the perfect image of a certain type of guy who loves girls who are tortured and angsty, who write poetry and maybe cut on their wrists a little, who are wild and crazy angry and tough, but who are also small and vulnerable and in need of a deep, emo dude to help them cope with life. And also, they’re way sexy. The men who get off on this particular male fantasy get to masturbate to images that make them feel like a saviour rather than an exploiter.

Although I really enjoyed Maguire’s arguments in Princesses and Pornstars, at times the chapters felt like introductory newspaper columns about a multitude of issues, issues which deserve more time devoted to them. But, as an introduction to the continuing importance of feminism and the basic concerns we face now, it provides a strong and vital message. It has encouraged me to seek out further reading along similar lines. Thankfully, Maguire has included a list of “suggested reading” to guide the reader in the right direction.

Book Loot: Week Ending January 31st, 2010

Short Story Soiree: A Perfect Day for Bananafish by J.D. Salinger (1948)

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis (1985)

Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone!: The Romantic Movement, Rock & Roll, and the End of Civilisation as We Know It by Craig Schuftan (2009)

Our Girls: Aussie Pin-Ups of the 40s and 50s by Madeleine Hamilton (2009)

Book Loot: Week Ending January 24th, 2010

Short Story Soiree: Story of My Life by Jay McInerney (1987)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

Radical Melbourne: A Secret History by Jeff and Jill Sparrow (2001)

Princesses and Pornstars: Sex, Power, Identity by Emily Maguire (2008)

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