Rape and the fantasy genre; Song of Ice and Fire (George R.R. Martin) and Wild Seed (Octavia Butler)

I'm currently living in an isolated area of the Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil with 7 other women for company. We've had some good discussions around the campfire about patriarchy and misogyny. But another thing we've been talking a lot about is fantasy books. Watching Games of Thrones at night is verging upon becoming a tradition. Sometimes there's overlap in our conversations about fantasy and misogyny. There's someone here who won't watch and doesn't enjoy reading George R.R. Martin's series because, in her words, “It's just too rapey”. It's hard to argue with that. Many have tried, saying that Martin includes so much rape in his work because it's such a common part of life, both today and in the parallel feudal history Martin in writing in. Again, true; rape happens all to often, and often, the silence surrounding rape culture can be deafening.

On the other hand, the ubiquity of rape in our culture, and Martin's, does not lessen it's trauma. Much like violence in all types of media, many of us are exposed over and over to descriptions and images of rape. And, if we don't want to be hurt every time that we are exposed to it, we must harden ourselves to withstand those descriptions; make it seem further away. Limit our compassion. Martin may write about rape in a way that is honest, but he does not particularly write about it in a way which is compassionate, to his characters or, especially, to his readers, particularly survivors. For some, the constant depictions of rape can make it seem further away, less meaningful, and for some, it can be a painful trigger, over and over. Martin writes about a wide range of violence in the Song of Ice and Fire series. Rape is singularly unlike any of the other violence he describes in gory detail for two reasons; it is commonly a hate crime against women, and this hits harder to home for women than for other people, whereas most of the violence in the story is not directly analogous to violence which happens every day in real life to a particular group of people in real life because of their identity. For instance, if it was common to kill a particular group of people by pouring boiling gold over their head, and Martin wrote about that happening to the same group of people over and over again in his story, that experience could be traumatic and alienating. But, luckily for us, that's not a thing.

This is not to condemn Martin. I read all five of the books he's finished, and eagerly await those (hopefully) still to come. He does seem to have some trouble writing women without sexually objectifying them; we might have to read about the way their breasts jiggle when they're doing something entirely unrelated to breasts. But he does write strong female characters, who often transcend gender norms of their time and ours.

The book I just finished, Wild Seed, by Octavia Butler, deals heavily, entirely, with similar realities of rape, slavery, freedom, and reproductive justice. But Butler is more subtle than Martin; her method is not to describe a rape in gory detail. She does describe, for instance, how a man is able to gain power over and control a woman by threatening her children. That relationship is the primary relationship in the book, and she also describes how the woman, eventually, is able to become a partner in that relationship, rather than a vassal or an animal to be bred. The book takes place during American colonialism, when slavery and genocide were rampant, and deals in a significant way with how dehumanizing it is for people to have their partners chosen for them, based on the worth of the children they would produce.

Like many of Butler's books, Wild Seed deals with creating a family out of those that society has ostracized or alienated; creating a loving, caring, intentional community. That dynamic makes Butler's a feminist, and a hopeful novel. It deals with power, but offers, also, possibility.  

Reading in Brazil

Well, I said I might blog from Brazil, but since this blog is supposed to be devoted to books, that's what I'll stick to more or less. I amazed myself by only taking three books to Brazil...

To Inherit the Earth, about the history of the MST. So far this book has given me some good background about Brazil. The level of inequality, the history of the dictatorship, military coup, and continuing dictatorship, and the rise of liberation theology, as well as the importance of mate as a social binder have all been topics thus far in the exposition about the origins of the MST. The part of Brazil I'm in, in the state of Minas Gerais, has more small family owned farms than other parts of Brazil, where share-cropping is more common, so it hasn't had as much MST action happening.

Part of what's going on in this area, the Serra de Brigadeiro, is a lot of coffee farming. The coffee, someone told me, is considered to be mediocre, BUT the coffee that I've had from the region so far has been phenomenal. Maybe it's the freshness? I'm at a research centre which has its own cook, Carminha, who has been terribly warm and patient with me in my struggles to communicate in Portuguese. Carminha's family grows coffee, so I think the coffee we drink in the morning is quite local.

I also brought Eduardo Galeano's, The Book of Embraces. If you haven't read this, you should. It's basically poetry, in the form of short stories or prose. Some of the best I've ever encountered. Really, read it.

I reread a little of the book, Environmental Justice in Latin America. Kinda dry. Not recommended.

And I hiked up a mountain and read the first Harry Potter book at the top of it. Mostly because it was on my kindle. And I'd had a bonding moment the other day with some of the volunteers here about sci-fi and fantasy books. They'd been watching Game of Thrones, 1st season. Did I leave Worcester? I'm starting to wonder. . .

Otherwise, I've been reading my phrase book, and my "Harmonica for Dummies" book. There's a small library of books people have left behind here, and I found The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, which might be next on my hit list.

Besos

Holly

Books of 2011

I decided to list the ones I could remember reading. I know I've forgotten some, but remembering is hard.

I'd say my top three are Stone Butch Blues, Feminism for Real, and Sister Outsider, all of which really shook me to my core and contributed to making this a year of feminist and trans-liberationist rage.

Books of 2012 so far include The Song of the Dodo, A Storm of Swords, and more Swamp Thing.
Twilight books I II III and IV
Moby Dick
The Dispossessed

Left Hand of Darkness
Snow Crash
Travels with Heroditus
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Dangerous Woman: The graphic biography of Emma Goldman
Macedonia
the Bone comics
the Sandman comics
American Gods
Swamp Thing--the first few years
Stone Butch Blues
Feminism for Real
The Mysterious Stranger
the Autobiography of Angela Davis
To Tell the Truth Freely--an autobiography of Ida B Wells
The Veiled Garvey
Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement
Hubert Harrison
Ready for Revolution: the autobiography of Stokely Carmichael
Black Sexual Politics
Sister Outsider
But Some of us are Brave
Women of the Silk
The Color of Water
Belonging: a culture of place
Zami: a new spelling of my name
Proudly we can be Africans
The Yellow Wallpaper and other short stories
Naked Lunch
A Wizard of Earthsea
Great Expectations
Leaf Storm and other short stories
Survival
Invisible Monsters

Audre Lorde's Zami

I just finished Audre Lorde's book, "Zami: A new spelling of my name". 'A biomythography by Audre Lorde'. I'm studying the Combahee River Collective, a mostly-lesbian all-black, all-feminist collective in Boston in the 1970s. Their first retreat was in Hadley, at a members house. Audre Lorde was part of the collective, and so before I left Worcester for Bermuda, I scanned my house's library for any of her books I might take along with me. There lay Sister Outsider, which I read last year, and Zami. Until reading Zami, I had forgotten how deeply Sister Outsider had moved me, and then Zami did the same. It largely focuses on intimate portraits of the women who shaped a young Audre Lorde. Most of the women are lovers, but the lovers are bookended by Audre's mother.

It felt good to be reading this book on the sunny/windy Island of Bermuda, almost as good as reading Jamaica Kinkaid's A Small Place: a book of mourning and celebration for a Jamaica she might have had, had it not been taken from her by colonialism. I read it as a reprimand to tourists like me blissfully ignorant of power relations on Caribbean Islands) Both A Small Place and Zami felt like a type of stretching back for roots which had been severed.

Zami.  A Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers.

Carriacou; a small island which is part of the nation of Grenada, where the women walk like Africans. There it is said that the desire to lie with other women is a drive from the mother's blood.

Carriacou was the home of Audre's mother, and growing up, all good things came from 'home', a place Audre had never been. At the end though, Audre says that home is no longer a long way off. The biomythography ends somewhere in Audre's 20s, when she is still stealing from grocery stores for sustenance, working part-time in a library and too poor for groceries.

What struck me was partly Audre's lush and unabashed descriptions of her dealings with women emotionally and physically. She terms herself a Woman-Identified-Woman, finding strength in other women that she does not gain from men. To me, the book seemed a tribute to those women and herself. And I think I gained some insight into the whole idea of being drawn to women. That's always been a hard concept for me because I've conceptualized myself as being attracted to people regardless of their gender, though of course that's not true, because gender is such an essential part of people's identity.

It's usually in environments where gender-fucking is welcomed and encouraged that I realize what a burden it usually is to me, that it feels oppressive every time I have to publicly declare my allegiance with one side or the other. When I do, though, my usual reaction is, fuck it. Why do we need gender?

Of course, I'm not so much as declaring an allegiance as reaffirming it; everybody already pledges my allegiance for me as a woman, because of my presentation and my body.

And usually when we talk about gender identity, it is these external indicators which we think about. Those are the tangible things. "A woman born in a man's body" and vice-versa, rather than a person, born in their own body, who has their own relation to it. But of course the body's not what it's about; gender isn't so fluid that it changes depending on one's outfit (or is it?)

So one can present one way, and enjoy presenting that way, but still feel that one is greater than the way one presents. Can one not? Which i think is how I feel... although I also feel frustrated with my inability to switch... usually, I cannot pass as male regardless of hairstyle, chest reduction, packing, beard shadow... it just looks like drag, which is probably why i don't do it too often. I prefer, for instance, dressing up pretty girly, parading my breasts, and scrawling a label, "BOY", across them in lipstick. Because in my view, people really ought to just take my word for it.

Still. Still, people should and they dont and they see me as everybody sees and shapes everybody else... and that creates legitimate differences between genders which theoretically ought to be celebrated while remaining necessarily unnamed, as they shape each person in different ways.

My friend I were walking the other day, and a small child asked her why she had 'boy hair'. I told her to respond with the question, "what is a boy?" but while maybe enlightening for a child in a certain context, the category of 'boy' is a useful descriptor of some people and attributes. As is the category woman.

Now I've lost my train of thought. To sum up:

i just read this beautiful book by Audre Lorde

she's definitely one of my favorite authors/poets/people, it's a biomythography of her life, but it largely focuses on the women who have shaped her

it made me sort of newly re-evaluate my usual 'fuck gender' attitude

gender binaries are oppressive to me but i think i need to realize that they do indeed create legitimate differences between men and women

and recognizing and celebrating that difference is as importance as realizing that it's something which is constructed by society

which gives me new insight into why someone might feel the need to strongly associate themselves with one gender or the other even if they are attracted to people across that spectrum

Audre coined the term, 'woman-identified-woman', which is about drawing strength from the female relationships in a woman's life as much as those relationships being sexual in nature, which i think is a good idea deserving of contemplation.

The Left Hand of Darness by Ursula Le Guin: I've been wanting to read for a while, because it was on a list of recommended feminist sci fi reading in a class I took freshman year (three years ago now). It's been lovely living in the same house as the HX library-- many of the contributors happen to have the same taste in books that I do. (for those who don't know, the HX is a collectively run library housed in the Starship X collective--two different collectives here-- and it contains lots of radical books, lots of black power stuff, lots of sci-fi--lots of Joss Whedon-- among many other things. It's opening this week)

The Left Hand of Darkness if one of the books housed in the HX; my housemate Shane was reading it this summer, so I would see it lying around, tantalizing me... I would read it in quick bursts when he wasn't around, then have to start over. He finished months ago and now I'm in a science fiction book club (through SPOC--Science Fiction People of Clark--finally living up to it's name), which has decided to tackle this book first. Needless to say, I'm excited. And since Shane was done reading it, I snagged it from the house and started to read ASAP.

When Shane was reading it, he said it made him nostalgic for winter, and I know what he means. It's fall here in Worcester, and Winter is Coming. (So reading the book reminded me of Game of Thrones, another book I just finished; I need to borrow the next one in the series from somebody soon. In Game of Thrones, the House Stark's words are, Winter is Coming. Stark is the main house of aristocracy which is followed in the first book, and each house has words, like a family motto which appears on their crest--called, in Game of Thrones, a Sigil.)

Each book, Game of Thrones and The Left Hand of Darkness, is set in a world where winter is a perpetual reality; in Game of Thrones, Winter is coming--seasons can last decades in the book, and the Kingdom is threatened by encroaching ice... in The Left Hand of Darkness, the world is called Winter by non-natives, because it perpetually cold there; the world is in the midst of an ice-age.

Some of the people who live on Winter are, I think, modeled after Buddhists. There are multiple civilizations on Winter of the same species; one is a Kingdom, one an apparently fascist state. There are also different religions; the Handarrata seem like the Buddhists to me. They have mastered the art of fortelling; a connection with everything about them which enables them to see the answer to questions they are asked. But, warns one character, when an alien seeks after it; the ability may be impossible to attain if one thinks it important.
The name comes from the poem,

Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.

Later on, the alien character draws a yin yang (or, as I learned to say it in Korean, a Tae Ghuk) to show how he perceived the native character to be whole.

Whole, the character was perceived to be, because they were neither female nor male, but a combination of both. The 'kemmer" mentioned in the poem above (really an excerpt from a religious text) is the state of heat the characters go into about once a month, where they may either exhibit female or male traits, and so either father or mother a child (if not on birth control).

Another way Le Guin drew on eastern tradition is in her discussion of Shifgrethor, a game of honor played in ways so subtle that the alien narrator cannot understand it, nor does he posess Shifgrethor. Every action, every word in the society is calculated to protect one's own and others' shifgrethor, or, in the game of nation-states, diminish the other's shifgrethor.

This is another way in which the book was reminiscent of Game of Thrones. In Game of Thrones, the honor code is extremely important, but only for the honorable characters, whom it hindered in their political maneuvering. In The Left Hand of Darkness, shifgrethor applies to everybody, but it was more of a political liability to lose shifgrethor; if one lost it, that person often had to resign from their political post. On the other hand, the main character who is native to the land must be willing to put aside their shifgrethor in order to have a frank and trusting relationship with their visiting alien friend. (the pronouns in this book are problematic; the alien mostly calls everybody by masculine pronouns; he seems slightly mysogynist and definitely cis-normative, saying, for instance, in a clinical way, that women they don't often produce great scientists, composers, etc, and frequently finding it difficult to acknowledge the feminine aspects of those around him--finding it hard to believe that the king is also a proud mother, for instance).

It's funny that the female and maleness of each character is something that the alien would find hard to accept; he comes from a dualist world of men and women like ours, but even in ours, each person has some of each, and one would expect the main character, with a strong intuitive sense and an ability to read minds, to have a fairly firm grasp on that already. But no. He even exhibits strongly masculinized traits like being ashamed of crying, and frequently feels the need to demonstrate his masculinity through feats of strength and endurance.

All in all an awesome read. Read it!

People's history--unions, Survivor--Star Trek, Invisible Monsters. . . confusion and maybe offensive portrayal of trans individuals?

I recently finished the comic book version of A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. I cried at Wounded Knee. Twice. It's severely truncated from the actual book; if you want history, revolt, inspiration, read the full book! The comic is mostly about American imperialism, which by itself is a quite a lot to get through--and it brushes on different regions. I like reading about popular revolt right here on our home turf, though.

Like the Battle of Blair Mountain! I wrote a paper about that once. It was a battle to unionize the West Virginia coal fields after WWI. The largest armed insurrection since the Civil War. One of my friends/roommates who was also reading the book said what she found so inspiring about it was the solidarity; the way the paperboys would throw out newspapers which had negative stories about the Pullman Strikers, for instance. Now we don't have paperboys in the same way, but if we did. . . she said she didn't think they would still act in that way these days. Blair Mountain was similar; many of the coal miners were veterans of the war, and when the US army was called in to suppress the miners, the miners refused to fight their comrades in uniform, and the soldiers didn't fire on the miners either. I think such solidarity is still possible, though. Look how many people of all professions ended up standing in solidarity with black South Africans. The thing is though, people have to know that they're standing for something worthwhile; and some unions ain't what they useta be; when they start acting like big business instead of protecting workers from exploitation, there's hardly a side worth fighting for. Don't get me wrong, I think unions are great. I have a lot of faith in them as liberalizing and protective forces in our society. But unions should be a tool to help make people stronger, not people a tool to make unions stronger.

I also read a couple of other books; Survival, by Octavia Butler, and Invisible Monsters, by Chuck Palahniuk. What these books have in common, like so many other books, is a heavy focus on sexuality (one of my favorite things!)

I guess there are some spoilers ahead. Seagoers beware the craggy shores of now-you-know-what-happens-next!

Octavia Butler didn't like Survivor, and didn't allow it to be reprinted after 1981. I read it online, after being linked to it from this post at Racialicious (the best blog) http://www.racialicious.com/2011/07/11/vote-should-we-read-octavia-butlers-survivor/

Butler called it her "Star Trek" novel, in that, like Riker or Kirk's numerous liasons, it was largely about what happens when humans interbreed with aliens.

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

Such colonial rhetoric! Butler really drives home the parallels between her novel and western history by making her colony a Missionary colony. That's really their name; the missionaries. They want to convert the natives to their religion, but they also don't believe that the natives have souls; they're frequently refered to as animals.

This intersection is interesting; the colonialist will to control, and the branding of the other as wild. In Star Trek the control comes from the classification and gaining of knowledge over new civilizations. Or, less subtly, whapping them with the photon torpedoes. WHAP!!  In Star Trek, those who are torpedoed are usually the Romulan, or the borg, or occasionally the Klingon; an odd mix of villains. The Romulan and Klingon are both coded as your classic savages; brown skin and dark hair of course, warrior cultures, "honor", they frequently communicate in growls. The Klingon are the nobler of the savages; Warf is almost tame, by virtue, like the main character in Survivor, Alanna, of being orphaned and subsequently adopted by civilized humans in his youth. The borg though. . . the borg. Are they a fear of the opposite end of the spectrum from Romulan? Too civilized, too much loss of individuality to technology? Or are they a similar fear of the feminine wild, or the ability to change identities and use what comes to hand to survive?

Another question: Why am I talking about Star Trek? Probably because it's awesome. But back to the books. One thing that was interesting to me in both Survivor and Invisible Monsters was the subtlety of the family ties involved. Allow me to summarize:

Survivor
Alanna, a feral orphan human, is almost killed by missionaries but then adopted by the compassionate leaders of the missionaries, who are firm believers and teach her their ways. They leave earth and colonize a new planet where they form an alliance with a furry, camoulflaging, humanoid group, the Garkohn, who addict them to a food substance, meklah, in order to begin incorporating the humans into their own culture. (flashes of Dune) Alanna is kidnapped during a raid by a warring and very similar humanoid group, is the only one of the prisoners to survive withdrawal, and ends up marrying the chief of the Tarkohn, which in their culture happens as a result of her having a baby by him.

war war war, intruigue, conflict, war, missionaries escape North away from both groups, eventually to withdraw from the meklah, and Alanna stays behind to be with her baby daddy.

Invisible Monsters--
Shannon McFarland and Shane McFarland are sister and brother, until Shane decides to transition to being a woman, but apparently doesn't actually identify as a woman, but only transitions because he thinks it would be a really horrible mistake to make, and wouldn't that be interesting? Meanwhile Shannon thinks he dead, and hates his little dead self, for always getting more attention. Shannon is a fashion model who blows off her lower jaw with a shotgun so that she wouldn't be a slave to 'being beautiful' anymore. She will have to exert herself and achieve real things, with no lower jaw. They roadtrip away from home with Shannon's ex-fiance who is trying to get with Shane, now Brandy, who doesn't know that Shannon, whom he had dubbed Daisy St. Patience, is his sister. The road trip is to look for his sister. Both siblings pass the time giving large doses of estrogen to Manus, the ex-fiance, who is also a cop who raped Shane once!. YIKES

So I was talking about family. Much of Invisible Monsters is about creating a sense of individuality, of, "I am who I am because this is who I have made myself to be". Of "This is my family because this is the family I have chosen". This seems to be a really common trope in our popular culture.  People frequently leave home and their families to find themselves and their 'true family'. In real life, sometimes people don't have a choice. Sometimes people can't connect with their family. But I like works of art which push back a little bit, which say, maybe we're a little too free, maybe we should respect your roots a bit more. Visit your mother now and then, even if she doesn't listen to punk rock. So at the end, although Shannon has spent the entire time trying to kill Brandy, she decides to give her her life as a model, and that she will care for and love Brandy as long as she lives. Family triumphs, despite attempted murder and disownment.

In Survivor, Alanna makes her own family. With aliens who once raped her.

Now that I'm thoroughly confused, it's time to watch some star trek.

Naked Lunch

dirty asshole sandwich, anybody? 
Alan Ginsberg is the first beat poet I read who I liked. 


I read that rockstar of the beats (beast), Jack Kerouac, a long time ago, in seventh grade; for french class. when i was twelve, i wrote an essay about it, in french. A language I don't actually speak, understand, or read or write in, making that essay one of my top life-time achievements. 


My French Teacher, Madame L'Chaise (Mrs. The Chair, for you anglophones out there--or perhaps she misses the chair? BAAA bilingual punning! I digress.) Madame L'Chaise was convinced that Jack Kerouac was Quebecois, and also that I would looooove him. Presumably because I was perceived as a sort of free spirit. I've gotten all sorts of bad recommendations from teachers in my day. One of the worst was Reviving Ophelia, which is a pop-psych book about how messed up and lost today's adolescent girls are, and what we can do to make them better. Apparently I was supposed to be self-reflective enough to come to a better self of self-knowledge through this; instead it pissed me off, as pop-psy books are wont to do. 


Jack Kerouac also pissed me off, for, you know, being a misogynistic twat and not a terribly gripping author.


The lack of women in the beat movement is striking, and i read a comment once from one of the men in the movement who said, it's not that there weren't women. there were. it's just that the women were all locked up in insane asylums. 


Hettie Jones was one of them. She was married to Amiri Baraka for awhile; the man who would become a spokesman for the Black Arts Movement later on, after leaving her for a black (more politically correct) woman. (Hettie was Jewish). Joan Vollmer was another. Both are poets and authors, but are best known for their husbands. Joan was killed by hers, William Burroughs, author of the book I'm currently reading. He was drunk, and a William Tell wannabe. A jerk, but still a good author.


A lot of what I know about women in the Beat movement I learned from the book Queer Beats, a really wide-ranging collection of the contributions of queer and women authors to the movement. Definitely recommended reading; it also discusses how beat writing and activity informed changing attitudes about Queerness in our society at some length. 


So I read Jack Kerouac. Thought he was a misogynist asshole. Read Howl, by Alan Ginsberg. First time was with some friends out loud in an elevator, in high school (elevators make good out-loud reading spots. We also read literotica to each other and whoever dropped by, there). Alan Ginsberg, unlike Jack Kerouac, was a decent human being. Known for his naked readings, for being out about his gayness (Jack's not gay, however many 'belly-rubbing' shenanigans he gets into, however much Ginsberg sucks his dick, or whatever kind of crush he has on Neal Cassady), and for being the only friggin' one of the bunch (with the exception of black cats who left the beats behind, like Amiri Baraka) to become a political figure, supporting the anti-war movement and allying/aligning himself with the hippies of the 60s. 


And I think of Alan Ginsberg because I associate Burrough's title, "Naked Lunch", with Ginsberg's work: 


"I ate a sandwich of pure meat; an 
enormous sandwich of human flesh, 
I noticed, while I was chewing on it, 
it also included a dirty asshole


Burrough, of course, has talking assholes in his book. I haven't gotten there yet. I just know it to be true. 


Ginsberg has written, 


A Naked Lunch is natural to us,
we eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
Don't hide the madness.


Naked Lunch is a great book to read when you're feeling mad, which I was; mad in both ways at once; I wanted to beat up a brick wall, and that anger seemingly came from nowhere. I think that my wanting to practice my long-lost tae kwon do skills on inanimate objects was actually related to a feeling of glamour, though. I dressed up to read Naked Lunch last night, black shirt and dripping gold jewelry, and drank some cheap champagne. I felt more glamorous than I have in a long time; i also thought that the heroin heroes of the novel were glamorous, possessing an illicit underground connection between degradation and romance. forget a bed of rose petals; there's nothing like coming to on a filthy mattress in a heroin den. 


you can't be wholesome and hip, you gotta pick. i think it's the unbearable lightness of being. glamour is being smooth and oily and slick enough to slide through life, without/getting/too/heavy.  i think part of the reason we admire the beauty of people who look like famine victims, who paint their eyes black and move a little faster, or a little slower, than the rest of us, the the feeling of vertigo. Milan Kundera wrote, 


"No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."


Take Mia, the mob wife in Pulp Fiction, as she snorts her coke. Glamour. But glamour because she, and the audience, can feel just how far she and those around her can fall. 


Reading Naked Lunch makes me crave that feeling of vertigo. . . the emptiness he writes about feel tempting. Luckily my life has a few things weighing me down, for now.