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What are you reading? February 24, 2023 [1]

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Date: 2023-02-24  

In WAYR?, I note what I’m reading and comment...you note what you are reading and comment. Occasionally, I may add a section or a link related to books…

I have finished reading:

Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler - Well. Akin’s metamorphosis is complete. Well, almost.

I enjoyed the last 100 or so pages of Adulthood Rites very much; at first it just plodded along. Humans can’t stop being Human, for better and for worse and mostly for worse in this novel, although there is also heroism; not simply Akin’s.

The Human Contradiction again. The Contradiction, it was more often called among Oankali. Intelligence and hierarchical behavior. It was fascinating, seductive, and lethal, It had brought Humans to their final wall.

“They would never offer you Mars. I offer you Mars.” “Why?” “Because I’m part of you. Because I say you should have one more chance to breed yourselves out of your genetic Contradiction.” “And what do the Oankali say?” “That you can’t grow out of it, can’t resolve it in favor of intelligence. That hierarchical behavior selects for hierarchical behavior, whether it should or not. That not even Mars will be enough of a challenge to you.” He paused. “That to give you a new world and let you procreate again would...would be like breeding intelligent beings for the sole purpose of having them kill one another.”

After a break (during which I will read another book or two)...on to the third and the final book of the Xenogenesis trilogy, Imago.

I am reading:

Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks 1941-1995 by Patricia Highsmith and Anna von Planta - Reading through 1953 which was an awful year for Highsmith, both professionally and romantically (her lover attempts suicide); she returns from Europe to America. The 1953 diary entries are also some of the best writing in these diaries to this point.

February 28, 1953 Saw a most fascinating small boy solemnly waiting at 8:20 at the R.R. station, book-bag in his lap, tiny feet crossed, a somber heavy face, intelligent, and fearsomely thoughtful & wise for his age. A small scar of sore on his temple, showing beside his aviator’s helmet. He looked at no one, boarded and debarked at Accademia. I wonder what kind of parents made him so somber.

Highsmith meets Lois and Clark at a hotel in Gibraltar.

April 24, 1953 In the hotel are a weird couple— Mr. and Mrs. Kent, she the most deformed & hideous wretch I’ve ever seen...Mr. Kent is about 40, reddish complexion not unattractive, attentive to her to such an extent, there must be some guilt somewhere. They are certainly married as their passports testify. He looks like a paid gigolo, who has sold his freedom for a lifelong security. One longs to ask him her story. Who would dare?

June 16, 1953 D. Hammett’s Thin Man, Howard Fast, Langston Hughes, were among those that were removed from libraries.

(A footnote by von Plante reads: Under McCarthy, scores of books were removed from American libraries overseas— e.g., Berlin’s Amerika Haus libraries. Dashiell Hammett and Herman Melville were among those on the index, as well as the poems of Langston Hughes and Howard Fast’s Citizen Tom Paine.)

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/24/2154629/-What-are-you-reading-February-24-2023

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