Submitted by pwerle on Tuesday, June 6, 2006 - 5:57am

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Work is the chapter that impresses me most in regards to Vincent's ability to maintain her masquerade, because of her contempt for every hypermasculine, jingoistic aspect of the process she entered. Knowinginly going into a losing situation like that, working with phony wornout people in a phony worthless job for what amounted to no gain, its amazing that Ned managed to hold off on snapping as long as s/he did.

As soon as Vincent mentioned Men's empowerment groups my mind immediately flashed back to my innumerable high school viewings of Fight Club. "Bob had bitch tits." The chapter went downhill from there, mostly do to my own inability to take it seriously. "A generation of men raised by women" had summed it up succinctly several years before.

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Submitted by pwerle on Monday, June 5, 2006 - 6:02am

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The dating chaptor was pretty painful to read, and the detailing of how self defeating the process can be is hardly motivating. How does a guy both develop the thick skin needed to keep going back for more abuse, but on the same token not end up so calloused by the process that he can't feel anything? Is the male "fear of commitment" in fact a delayed twitch in respose to prior beatings? Likewise, its disheartening to read Vincents analysis of the mindset of the women, that men are monsters until proven human. I find it confusing that women can be so vicious to one another in competition, yet still give each other more credit at first meeting than they would to any man on earth.

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Submitted by pwerle on Friday, June 2, 2006 - 3:54am

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There is nothing on this earth more depressing than stripclubs. The section of the book with the bowling team was kind of heartwarming, and had all these great, "Yeah, I know guys like that", "That's totally true" moments, but the stripclub chapter has killed my enjoyment and comfort. I've never been to a stripclub, I don't plan to start, and having to contemplate them and read the sad story like this just makes me feel unclean.

I have a friend who I knew back in High School who became a stripper for about a year. She had one of the most fucked up childhoods I'd ever heard of, second only maybe to one other person I know. Imagine Drew Barrymore's childhood but exponentially worse, without the money or support to fix her life. Despite everything thrown at her, the mental and physical sicknesses that her childhood left her, and the shit she had to do in order to get away from her hag of a mother and give herself some sort of new beginning, she's a wonderful person. Her story is tragic, its real, and its tied to her. The thought that somebody used her like these guys in the book, and that she had to let herself be used that way, makes me so depressed I don't really know how to describe it.

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Submitted by pwerle on Thursday, June 1, 2006 - 6:23am

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My kingdom for a definitive ending. Happy or sad, good or bad, I need finality. I am a creature of prose, tell it to me straight.

I loved it when Gail called the narrator out. I also loved it when the narrator decked Elgin. These are strong moments, they are the cliches that make us happy. The final paragraph was not one of those moments, the only thing that you can take at face value from it is "I don't know if this is a happy ending". Fairy tales don't keep one awake at night, or at least not once you've grown up.

I shouldn't have read everyone elses blog entries before making my own, now I feel like anything I would say would be repetitive.

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Submitted by pwerle on Monday, May 29, 2006 - 11:19pm

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I found an interesting paper online about Written on the Body, discussing how Winterson's open lesbian status and past turmoils with the the press and literary community has led to Written on the Body being discounted both by womens rights and mainstream literary critics, but for different reasons. As someone who was entirely detached and unaware of Winterson's history, its very interesting to see how different my approach to the novel has been thusfar, and how I view the narrator and his/her interactions.

Check it out

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Submitted by pwerle on Friday, May 26, 2006 - 4:06am

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I thought Written On the Body was all Gender vagueness and flowery language, but I was wrong. Oh so wrong. There is poop smearing insane ex-girlfriends, and sex with midget-managing giants. I am not above admitting that such extremes help to keep my interest.

Quite often the books language is so flowery and embellished that I think it could be written by Dennis Miller on estrogen shots. The authors voice is undeniably feminine in my mind, but the main character still comes off as male, despite a conscious effort on my part to regain the books ambiguity. The effort on the author's part to keep us guessing doesn't really seem subtle, but instead seems to just try to shock you into the opposite direction you're leaning.

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Submitted by pwerle on Thursday, May 25, 2006 - 5:57am

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I guess if I really try to imagine the narrator as sexless or ambiguous, I can see that there is room for ambiguity. Never has the book used specific pronouns or described any sort of sex act that would define them. However, I can't help but read it as being male. I assume this is due to my greater familiarity/comfort with heterosexuality, and that I am projecting myself onto the narrator, but everything has read as strongly male throughout.

I saw the title of Pronouns, Politics, and Femme Practice and immediately braced myself to be annoyed, because I have always found complaints about gender bias in matters like pronouns and words to be petty.

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Submitted by pwerle on Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - 5:20am

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After the madness of the raid on the maidmen's ball and the gay club from the last reading, the ending was sort of anticlimactic. The fight with Gro was pretty brutal and disturbing, killing any good will left towards one of the books few sympathetic female characters. It had been forshadowed that Gro had tendencies as bad as the rest, but I honestly hadn't expected her to outright beat the crap out of Petronius. The chapter of Petronius' book, testing the limits of the fourth wall, was interesting, but I don't really see the purpose of it. It could have been summarized easily and used as the same role for the story, since it only served as a method for instigating the character's reaction to the book. A particular favorite was Christopher's proclamation that he's taking classes, just because it was nice to see him so enlivened.

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Submitted by pwerle on Tuesday, May 16, 2006 - 2:24pm

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Sigmund Freud, more like Sigmund FRAUD! The man is a clearly an overrated hack. Fancy analysis won't do anyone any good, the only cure for madness is trephining.

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