The Way of All Flesh

I met Edmund White in New York a few years back and we keep in contact often. He's been a generous guide to my own personal reading. I told him a little about our group and that we were reading "The Way of All Flesh." He was impressed w/ our group and the books we pick (I think his exact words were, "Your group is so serious."). He asked me if we've ever read "The Leopard" and then suggested I read this blurb he wrote.

Polari

—something completely new to me, and so I needn't be the last, herewith this post. All the way at the end, past the glossary, is this wee bit

As feely ommes...we would zhoosh our riah, powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag, don our batts and troll off to some bona bijou bar. In the bar we would stand around with our sisters, vada the bona cartes on the butch omme ajax who, if we fluttered our ogle riahs at him sweetly, might just troll over to offer a light for the unlit vogue clenched between our teeth.

from our Casualty anthologist Peter Burton. Makes me wonder what I may have missed in Hollinghurst!

The Unbareable Lightness of Stripping

Greetings, Colleagues--

Though we were a small (dare I say intimate :-) group this past Wednesday evening, we had an enjoyable discussion of Craig Seymour's memoir, All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Washington, D.C.. Tim wasn't able to join us, alas, but we concurred with his e-mailed comment: "Enjoyed the book, mostly ... or rather up to the last 60 pages, which seemed much less interesting to me and unneeded. Anyone interested in pop culture would have liked it better, I suppose, but might still have found it unnecessary (an epilogue could have covered the great demise of D.C. strip clubs). All that notwithstanding, I learned something about the "industry" and about the mind-set of someone who might wander/end up in it. Entertainingly written. Good book to start off the summer."

Hope that encourages those of you who have not yet read the book to do so. If not, perhaps the following sample will do the trick (so to speak...):

"You know what I've always wanted to know? When you're out there and the customers are jerking you off, how do you keep from cumming?"

"Usually," he deadpanned, "you just look at one of them." (p. 29)

Cheers, Steve

"Not Calling Attention to Ourselves"

Previously unpublished Yoav Ben Yosef has won the Fouth Round of NPR's Three-Minute Fiction contest, coming in just six words short of the 600 word upper limit. You can click on the link to read it, but better yet, click on the "Listen to the Story" link and hear it.

Accurate & Complete

Owing to the truly Augean labor of Tom Wischer—charter member, second facilitator, and archivist extraordinaire—our "Books We Have Read" (v.i.) is now complete and accurate. Many thanks, Tom!

P.S. For those of you who like big numbers but are too lazy to count, the list consists of 162 entries.

A Casualty of Voice?

This eponymous story would most surely be a casualty of voice if we were to take its narrator as authentic Texan (if for no other reason than, as previously stated, its vocabulary: "arse" "whilst" "expiry" etc). So, better to view this "Casualty" as a Hellenistic exercise in rhetoric: what the American soldier in Iraq would say if, say, he spoke in Alexandrines. And author Scott Brown does have an assured rhetorical voice, so, content aside, the story is a pleasure to read. But on examining the content, one finds too much that is psychologically programmatic (the trope of murderous repression is jejune), and, worse, tendentiously editorializing (My Lai, as our chief objector noted, universal- and eternalized). Not the worst story I've ever read—the worst story would be the one I was never able to finish—but unworthy for its title to have become that of this anthology.

Fellini Satyricon at AFI Silver Spring

Bookmen will be discussing Petronius’ The Satyricon on October 6. Fellini’s film version will be showing at the AFI in Silver Spring Friday, April 30 at 7:00 and Saturday, May 1 at 9:45. Showtimes are subject to change. Check http://www.afi.com/silver/new/nowplaying/2010/v7i2/fellini2.aspx#felli for details.