User Profile

back on my bullshit

Unfortunately i think this one may not be for me. I typically like poetic prose, but I just can't seem to drop into this writer's style in particular. It also feels a bit too navel-gazey for me. Makes me feel kind of how I felt trying to read Bluets.

cried during the translator's note. cried during the introduction. cried throughout the novel itself. her punctuation and cadence is so halting and breathless. the doomed and anxious nature of youth dotted with so much playfulness and joy, but you know there's no happy ending.

saw the french translation of this in a shop window late at night and stopped in my tracks. my lesbian-lit radar is strong. excited to be starting this and to seek out some translations of her poetry next.

tore through this one. i love a good meta-narrative / fourth-wall break. now i need to read up on gnosticism before finishing the trilogy.

This was a really insightful, albeit dated, history and literary criticism of lesbians in literature from antiquity to ~1950s. It was interesting to take a bird’s eye view on the many cultural pendulum swings that are covered here. Goes into women’s struggles to be published at various times, books being censored and / or banned, the lack of women in literary criticism, and lesbian characters as depicted by both women and men.

@astralstreeting Ooh interesting, I will! This is the second recent case where I pick up a novel as my first introduction to a writer who is primarily known for poetry. I happened to see the French translation of this in a shop window and it caught my eye. Would be curious to hear impressions of her poetry :)