Reading Wednesday, except I haven't been
Mar. 20th, 2019 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breathedoutI have done hardly any reading at all this week! I had a work presentation on a Very Difficult and Fraught Topic that I had to give on Monday, and I spent a lot of last week prepping for it and also stressing out about it, which compromised my ability to concentrate on other things. Then I spent a lot of this week dealing with the fallout from it: a task that will not be finished any time in the near future. Yay. (Thanks to everyone who left supportive comments on my Monday's post, btw! You boosted my morale immeasurably, as did greywash who made me dinner and surprised me with pink tulips and a lovely card. <3)
Also,greywash and I were out of town last weekend to see the Sharks game, and I'm also preparing to leave town THIS weekend to visit my friend A and meet her fiancée (exciting!). Neither trip involves a huge travel distance, but packing a bag and dealing with travel logistics still eats up time, I find.
Anyway long story long, I haven't even had time to read any fanfic this week, let alone crack open a book. Although I did purchase one, which is kind of a funny story: did you know that Gore Vidal's problematic(tm) but groundbreaking comic novel Myra Breckinridge, which sparked his vitriolic and ultimately litigious (and, some would argue, homoerotic) debates with William F. Buckley Jr. in 1968, has apparently been out of print for years?? And that if you want to read it, say for example because it's the April selection of a local queer book group you're thinking of trying out, you cannot check it out of any of the five libraries I belong to, either digitally or in paper form; nor can you order it new or used off Powell's; nor get it new or used off Amazon proper; but must descend into the bowels of Amazon marketplace to get your hands on a 1969 mass market paperback edition with marginalia and a broken spine?? I was shocked. Apparently a new edition is coming out, but not until May, which makes this book group's timing strange. Hmph. Anyway I haven't started reading it yet, because: see above. One doesn't expect much from books written by white men in 1968, but it was apparently the first novel in which the protag undergoes a, as they called it at the time, "clinical sex-change operation." So that should be an interesting historical data point for discussion.
If I haven't managed to read anything I have made some progress on my goal of reducing my number of in-progress projects, in the form of getting a decent amount of writing done. I'm now at around 7,000 words of a probable 10,000 on the one-shot f/f Magicians story forgreywash's Marina-centric mini-fest. Did I plan to write a 10,000-word ultra-rare-pare Magicians story? I did not, but here we are, and I'm having fun with it. The key to making this an enjoyable canon for me to write in is, I think, to have greywash sort out literally all plot-related needs and magical doohickeys for me so that I don't have to invest time in trying to make sense of fantasy universes but can instead stick to my fortes: research on architecture/brunch spots/zine libraries; fuzzy memories of times I have been very drunk in Manhattan; and porn. (As with most canons, focusing on the ladies also helps.) Greywash has thus far been an extremely good sport about it whenever I've come to her whining about my latest need for a canon-compliant plot device.
Anyhoo, I'm taking Friday off and also Monday, and my hopes for the periods of my mini-break that I'm not socializing with A or greywash are: reading, writing, doing yoga, and not thinking about work at all.
Definitely click on that Vidal/Buckley link if you don't already know the story I'm referring to. It's. Amazing.
greywash who made me dinner and surprised me with pink tulips and a lovely card. <3)Also,
greywash and I were out of town last weekend to see the Sharks game, and I'm also preparing to leave town THIS weekend to visit my friend A and meet her fiancée (exciting!). Neither trip involves a huge travel distance, but packing a bag and dealing with travel logistics still eats up time, I find. Anyway long story long, I haven't even had time to read any fanfic this week, let alone crack open a book. Although I did purchase one, which is kind of a funny story: did you know that Gore Vidal's problematic(tm) but groundbreaking comic novel Myra Breckinridge, which sparked his vitriolic and ultimately litigious (and, some would argue, homoerotic) debates with William F. Buckley Jr. in 1968, has apparently been out of print for years?? And that if you want to read it, say for example because it's the April selection of a local queer book group you're thinking of trying out, you cannot check it out of any of the five libraries I belong to, either digitally or in paper form; nor can you order it new or used off Powell's; nor get it new or used off Amazon proper; but must descend into the bowels of Amazon marketplace to get your hands on a 1969 mass market paperback edition with marginalia and a broken spine?? I was shocked. Apparently a new edition is coming out, but not until May, which makes this book group's timing strange. Hmph. Anyway I haven't started reading it yet, because: see above. One doesn't expect much from books written by white men in 1968, but it was apparently the first novel in which the protag undergoes a, as they called it at the time, "clinical sex-change operation." So that should be an interesting historical data point for discussion.
If I haven't managed to read anything I have made some progress on my goal of reducing my number of in-progress projects, in the form of getting a decent amount of writing done. I'm now at around 7,000 words of a probable 10,000 on the one-shot f/f Magicians story for
greywash's Marina-centric mini-fest. Did I plan to write a 10,000-word ultra-rare-pare Magicians story? I did not, but here we are, and I'm having fun with it. The key to making this an enjoyable canon for me to write in is, I think, to have greywash sort out literally all plot-related needs and magical doohickeys for me so that I don't have to invest time in trying to make sense of fantasy universes but can instead stick to my fortes: research on architecture/brunch spots/zine libraries; fuzzy memories of times I have been very drunk in Manhattan; and porn. (As with most canons, focusing on the ladies also helps.) Greywash has thus far been an extremely good sport about it whenever I've come to her whining about my latest need for a canon-compliant plot device.Anyhoo, I'm taking Friday off and also Monday, and my hopes for the periods of my mini-break that I'm not socializing with A or greywash are: reading, writing, doing yoga, and not thinking about work at all.
Definitely click on that Vidal/Buckley link if you don't already know the story I'm referring to. It's. Amazing.
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Date: 2019-03-21 12:27 am (UTC)and treated me to the sort of vocal appreciation he generally reserved for the policies of Ronald Reagan and
“I never say no to sex or appearing on television,” Vidal groused, “but if I’d known it involved Bill Buckley I’d have made an exception.”
Thanks!
Sorry to hereabout the stress around the Difficult and Fraught Topic. Hope things take a turn for the better. M.
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Date: 2019-03-21 04:33 am (UTC)Tennessee Williams’ former lover recalled a weekend staying at La Rondinaia when he came upon Vidal holding the telephone in one hand while pleasuring himself with the other. “I crept to another receiver and whose unmistakable tones should I be greeted with but BILL BUCKLEY! I think I gasped, or something. ‘Is someone else on the line,’ Buckley drawls, and Vidal goes, ‘Never you mind,’ and Buckley says, ‘I oughtn’t have called anyhow,’ and Vidal says, ‘No, it’s refreshing to hear you beg, Bill.’ And it was sort of run of the mill sex talk, I wish you’d, you know, fuck me, I want to suck your, all of it, until the end. Bill came off very loudly. And then he says, very matter-of-fact, I saw the Best Man, I think it’s a nonsensical fantasy, typical of your mediocre prose style, goodbye, and hangs up.” I ran into Vidal afterwards and I said, is this a regular thing? And Vidal said, oh, yes, Bill calls me about once or twice a week whenever he’s three or four martinis deep and begs me to gag him with my cock,” and I couldn’t tell if he was in earnest. I don’t think it was that often but it did happen.”
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Date: 2019-03-21 03:50 pm (UTC)My thoughts *exactly.* M.
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Date: 2019-03-21 06:08 am (UTC)Also, PLEASE DO share the details of this "clinical sex-change operation"!! Right now I'm actually undergoing a nightmarish ordeal trying to prove to the state of Massachusetts that I have completed my own clinical sex-change operation (they need a notarized doctor's note, basically, and in Canada both doctors and notaries are so completely different that I cannot figure out how in the world to accomplish this) so it will be charming to see how much, if at all, things have changed.
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Date: 2019-03-21 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-21 06:39 pm (UTC)I kind of enjoy being reminded that this IS a different country, most of the time, because I like reflecting on the socially-constructed nature of society— but I wish it wasn’t so inconvenient.