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May 2026

	Annie John (Kincaid) ★★★★ [read for bookbug] This was the bookbug reading two months ago but I regretted that I missed it and so I came back to it now. I was charmed. The mother/daughter relationship was so interesting to me. women inherit from their mothers their self-hatred, and this makes mothers complacent to the patriarchy and even vessels for woman-hating. I read on Jamaica Kincaid's wikipedia that her work is often criticized for being "angry," which was funny to me because I thought Annie John was quaint. It is already difficult when white women write nuanced or unlikable female characters (I can't believe Maria from Play it as it lays is thought of as the devil), but it seems like a black women's character will especially be villainized if she expresses any little dissatisfaction with the world. the consensus on the bookbug discord seemed to be that Annie's hatred for her mother was to some degree irrational (whether justified or not) but I thought it was all good and proportionate. even if you are born into the healthiest family in the world, that family functions to impose social repression on you while having the most intimate access to your life, molding you into conformity and complacency; I think that is something to be angry about and it is the source of all teenage angst -- most of us just learn to enjoy it, in the Zizekian sense. "oh the sensation was delicious--the combination of pinches and kisses. and so wonderful we found it that, almost every time we met, pinching her, followed by tears from me, followed by kisses from her were the order of the day. I stopped wondering why all the girls whom I had mistreated and abandoned followed me around with looks of love and adoration on their faces." "how much I longed to be in a place where nobody knew a thing about me and liked me just for that reason, how much the whole world into which I was born had become an unbearable burden and I wished I could reduce it to some small thing that I could hold underwater until it died."
	Right-wing women (Dworkin) ★★★★ I expected it to be like feminism or death, a product of its time that isn't really interesting today. I was so wrong, it was depressing how all the issues addressed by Dworkin are just as contentious today, and as one of the most accessible books of feminist literature it goes to show that leftist men don't read shit because they widely maintain the same misogynist ideas described. I was also surprised that the recognition of black women's struggle and intersectionality in general was more than just a footnote somewhere; where american feminism has an edge over the french, I think. I read the edition with the introduction by Moira Donegan and it's a little stupid. Dworkin "pays rigorous attention to how sex is used to degrade women, but is not attentive enough to how it can inspire and enliven them." did she read the book???? but I agree that Dworkin can be a little too forgiving of right-wing women (not recognizing their "sadistic glee"), which is a concession I make in this blog.
	Speculum of the other woman (Irigaray) ★★★★ I'm so glad Sadie Plant deflected me from the Deleuze to Land pipeline and instead into feminism. the first half was a good Freud refresher, and I was endeared by her Lenin "don't laugh!" sarcasm (this is Freud read by Irigaray). I felt like I was reading Lacan again. especially in all the "always already"s of everything, and also the master discourse of Plato's cave. a seminar of his, specifically; Speculum reads very orally. but I don't have the same patience for dissecting her every word as I did in my Lacan phase, I don't know if that means I'm less affected by neuroticism now or if it's laziness. I want to read a secondary source sometime because I don't think I understood most of the book … thought I could get away with not having read a lot of Plato until Irigaray forced pages-worth of his quotations on me in that middle part. Philosophy beginning from the attempt to look at the sun with one's eyes appealed to the Bataille in me, as well as that literary mystique in her voice (and the later chapter titled "a waste of time"): "men freeze nature to understand her, they do not set her aflame. the names that will be given to her will be a series of ways--geometrical, arithmetrical, logical--of cutting up her territory as to make her relate to herself differently." (150) I wrote three blogs on Speculum: notes on Speculum of the other Woman, Language for conflict or comfort and Performative women.
	play it as it lays (didion) ★★★★ ½ airplane read. inspiring prose. an american anne desbaresdes. 20th century philosophy is best in french but the modernist novel might be best in english.
	The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov) ★★ ½ "not having any hole to drop through, Kanavkin settled for fingering the hem of his jacket." vacation read. the highest praise I have is that it's a literary Bosch painting. otherwise, I only like magical realism in theory and I never liked it on paper. master and margarita is a lot better than kafka by the shore but I can't help being reminded of it … it moves too fast without having anything formally interesting enough to invest me. whenever a character begins to be interesting, the narrator takes over their dialogue to summarize whatever plot points they would have revealed. maybe psychology is my guilty pleasure. to be fair, judging from the commentary by Ellendea Proffer, a lot went over my head. I wish I had consulted it after every chapter now; maybe I will be compelled to reread m&m in 20 years. and the afterword convinced me to like it hypothetically, I can see that it is the deeply religious literary tradition of Russia entering modernism. I'm also beginning to really like literature about literature (I just read the first part of 2666 by Bolano about the critics). and I like the references to the characters by their mundane jobs (former tax collector, financial director). besides for the Pilate chapters, my favourite part was Margarita's compassion for Frieda.