Poppy Z. Brite and Various Depressing Hyperlinks

[queerbychoice]

Which one of you people recommended Poppy Z. Brite's books to me? Because 90% of the books I ask for or buy these days are books that were originally recommended to me by LiveJournal people, but I don't always remember who recommended what and it's been too long since I originally obtained the Poppy Z. Brite book that I finally got around to reading today for me to remember where I got the recommendation from anymore. Whoever you are, what did I ever do to you to deserve such vengeance? See, I'd already had quite a few encounters before this with the William Burroughs/Dennis Cooper/Bruce Benderson/etc. school of fiction in which EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IN THE ENTIRE BOOK AND EVERY SINGLE PERSON THAT EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER HAS EVER MET OR EVEN SO MUCH AS WALKED BY ON THE STREET AT ANY POINT IN THEIR ENTIRE LIVES HAS NOTHING BUT A SMELLY ROTTING DEAD FISH WHERE THEIR HEART SHOULD BE, and although invariably the writers who write in this genre string words together in very artistically skilled sentence structures, I really can't say that their skill with words was enough to prevent all my encounters with their books from being really rather unpleasant experiences. Up until I read this book today, though, all my encounters with this school of writing had been via male authors, and I was permitted to vaguely wonder whether it was some sort of male thing. Now there will be no further gender stereotyping, because Poppy Z. Brite is a woman and Poppy Z. Brite's fiction is at least as utterly desolate and grotesque and designed to totally ruin your ability to enjoy life as all of those male authors put together. So whichever one of you it was who once recommended Poppy Z. Brite to me a year or two ago, don't remind me of who you are, because I won't thank you for it, because I'm too busy being disturbed that this book has now temporarily utterly destroyed my ability to ever even look at my own skin without my mind being flooded with images of what I would look like murdered and chopped to pieces on the floor. And if you do remind me of who you are, I will refuse to ever read any other books that you like ever again.

Ahem. And now, on with my usual business of hyperlinking to deeply upsetting news stories that will totally ruin your happy mood. Maybe that's what prompted someone out there to seek revenge by inflicting similarly upsetting reading on me in return.

"The Envoy Who Said Too Much" tells the story of torture in Uzbekistan: "People come to me very often after being tortured. Normally this includes homosexual and heterosexual rape of close relatives in front of the victim; rape with objects such as broken bottles; asphyxiation; pulling out of fingernails; smashing of limbs with blunt objects; and use of boiling liquids including complete immersion of the body. This is not uncommon. Thousands of people a year suffer from this torture at the hands of the authorities."

Meanwhile, over in Sudan, a Sudanese refugee woman interviewed by Amnesty International tells her own story: "Five to six men would rape us, one after the other, for hours during six days, every night. My husband could not forgive me after this, he disowned me."

And right here on LiveJournal, a post about sexual violence by misia is receiving nearly as many responses from creepy people saying things like "Rape is fun!" and "I rape people all the time!" and "Please rape me!" and "People who get raped were asking for it!" as responses from people with hearts who actually care.

On a sort-of-related topic, "Mistaken Identity" is a quite long but well worthwhile article about four MTF transsexuals who regret their sex changes, plus one who doesn't regret it. Some of them regretted it because they made the decision too fast, but some of them regretted it because creepy Christian fundamentalists "s[ought] to reconcile transsexuals with the bodies they were born with" - after those transsexuals no longer had those bodies anymore, when the only thing that "reconciling" them could accomplish was to make them more unhappy and pressure them into having all remaining genital tissue removed from their bodies completely! Aieeee! You know, I do worry that the people who make their money off the sex change industry (or the plastic surgery industry in general) are sometimes excessively inclined to present unhappiness with one's body as having only one possible solution (to change one's body) rather than two possible solutions (to change one's body or one's mind) which each have different pros and cons in different cases and which may not be equally fast or equally easy but they should still both at least be considered before coming to that conclusion - so if the fundies were to come up with a way to spare some pre-op pre-hormones tranny somewhere the expense and social difficulty of transitioning by just making them happy the way they are, I would say good for them. But to go around "reconciling" people to bodies that they don't actually have anymore - to deliberately make people dislike and be more uncomfortable inhabiting the bodies that they actually do have now! I have no words for how evil these people are. How do fundies ever manage to sleep at night?

Have I depressed you enough yet? Okay then. I'll leave you with one article that's actually sort of encouraging, though only by way of lots of discouragingness first. Have you been worrying about how to stop the U.S. government from bullying other countries? Well, worry no longer! "The Unbearable Costs of Empire" argues that the world won't really need to worry about the U.S. government bullying other countries for much longer, because sometime within the next two to ten years the national debt is going to catch up to the U.S. government and it won't be able to borrow any more money to finance more bullying. Which is good. I think. Except that if you're American, it might hurt your pocketbook a little. But for most of the world it's good, and if you're an American living near a prime terrorism target, it might increase your life expectancy, which is also good, unless of course you're a horrible person who the world is better off without, but since you're reading my journal I'm assuming you're not. So it's mostly good. There, see? I actually posted an optimism-inspiring hyperlink! now you can kindly refrain from recommending any more Poppy Z. Brite books to me.

Comments

[datagrok.livejournal.com]

I was just about to recommend one of my favorite short stories, "Ruby Laughter, Tears of Pearl" by James Powell, from The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 6 (http://www.endicott-studio.com/yb06.html). It's great, what a lighthearted feel-good story. I must find more of his work.

Then I was going to comment that I wanted to go sample some Poppy Z. Brite on the strength of your anti-recommendation. Lo and behold, I've read a story by this author in this very same book and hadn't even realized it! Heh. Time to re-read!

All the top-level posts in misia's journal seemed very supportive and moving. As for the ones you called attention to (that I have not read) ... ugh. All I can do when faced with people like that is attempt to memorize and blacklist.

And as depressing as those links are, your "rotten fish" comment made me laugh out loud. As terrible as the world is, I'm happy to associate with good people. :-)

Another happy link for you, though this is quite computer-geeky. Check out the encyclopedia entry and the "quote" section for Mr. Eric Allman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Allman).

[allyscully.livejournal.com]

Well, the Poppy Z Brite recommending wasn't from me, because I tried to read one of her books earlier and couldn't even finish it.

[erdbeermund.livejournal.com]

My impression of a Poppy Z Brite novels:

We drove around listening to Bauhaus on the car stereo and smoking clove cigarettes. My long hair got tangled up in my earing. We wore patchouli and tie dyed t-shirts.

I've never so much as looked at one of her books, but this is the impression I get from everything I've ever heard about them.

[pomobarney.livejournal.com]

It was not I who recomended Poppy Z. Brite, as I can't stand her work. Faux Gothic-Chic just annoys me.

[lilituc.livejournal.com]

I really love Poppy and I can say that the book you read wasn't completely typical of her work - she writes nongoth and nonhorror stuff as well, but....I can't think why someone would *ever* recommend her work to *you.* Unless they didn't know anything about you, which seems unlikely...

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

You left out the part about how the two main characters managed to murder a total of over 40 people over the course of the book, and how each murder (plus the main characters' sexual attraction to each rotting corpse) was described in the most extremely graphic gory detail I've ever seen anywhere.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Actually, it might be my own fault, because sometimes I just read things that people said they liked, without asking whether they think I'd like it.

[wanderingrogue.livejournal.com]

Hey, now. Poppy Z. Brite and William Burroughs shouldn't be in the same state at the same time let alone the same LJ entry. Burroughs was the godfather of the beat writers who's literary legacy is much more than just Naked Lunch. His storytelling can be truly compelling when it isn't totally fucked up by heroin.

Brite, IMHO, is a goth hack who's cashing in on the twenty-something Bauhaus worshipping, clove cigarette smoking neo goth movement. Same movement that gets Hot Topic the majority of it's business (I shop there too, but only to keep myself in Family Guy and Harry Potter t-shirts.) <---To any genuine goth people who read this journal, this, of course, does not apply to you. I know some goths who most definitely don't fall into the poseur category.

When you ask for recommendations, you should always give examples of the kind of books you have enjoyed in the past. It gives people a starting point to go on.

[luinied.livejournal.com]

people saying things like "Rape is fun!" and "I rape people all the time!" and "Please rape me!" and "People who get raped were asking for it!"

This is because LiveJournal, like every open-ish forum online, has been overrun with trolls. And for every troll who trolls only the foolish or wrong-headed, there are dozens more who enjoy upsetting anyone for any reason.

[theobscure.livejournal.com]

Brite, IMHO, is a goth hack who's cashing in on the twenty-something Bauhaus worshipping, clove cigarette smoking neo goth movement.

Ahahah. I always confuse Poppy Z. Brite with Francesca Lia Block, with the distinction that one author's fans think they're fairies and the other's think they're vampires. But I agree with what wanderingrogue said about Burroughs. I think Queer is a beautiful, sad little book, with two very real and sympathetic main characters (just to throw out and example).

I understand your frustration at Brite and Cooper, though. I can understand an interest in "the darker side of human nature," of course, but for some people it's terribly excessive.

(I'm sorry about your job, by the way. How's that going?)

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

The job search is very blah. The most interesting thing that happened was that someone mentioned a job being available as a security guard at an abortion clinic and they wanted to hire a woman and they said attitude was what was important rather than physical prowess and the salary per hour, shockingly and somewhat disturbingly, was very nearly as high as my editorial job had been (except it turned out to be only a part-time job with no benefits, so that wasn't any good). Anyway, it would have been rather amusing to have found myself suddenly transformed into a security guard, but they apparently filled the position immediately before I even called to ask for more details about it. Not really surprising, since I'd think anyone in the security job profession would be extremely overjoyed to get paid $12 per hour.

But er, what I'm trying to find is a job in an editorial or copywriting or other English major related field. And there don't seem to be many. Or rather, they're all in NYC and the website I've spent most of my time searching on so far has been a California-only one, which I have to spend time on because they take my unemployment money away if they see that I haven't been applying for any jobs via their own particular job search website. Once I've fulfilled my requirements on their website for this week though, I may go look for better opportunities in NYC, because half the editing jobs on earth are in NYC.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I wish I understood what they get out of that.

[theobscure.livejournal.com]

I think you should apply for a job in New York because I love it to pieces, but I probably love it for all the reasons many people wouldn't. ;) But you are intelligent and capable and talented. I have no doubt that you will be able to land whatever job you want, as others have also said.

That said, I think you should read Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje.

[lm.livejournal.com]

I didn't rec the PZB book to you, because I didn't think you'd like something like that. I personally went through a short phase in early high school where I pretended to think she was great because "people like me" were supposed to. Now the only thing I really continue to like by her is Drawing Blood, a book about a computer hacker boy and a comic-book-making boy who fall in love and go on a weird haunted transcendental journey together.

I fell out of love with Lost Souls (the book I've inferred that you read) around the same time I decided to be queer, actually. As a heterosexual girl who was fascinated with gay men but afraid of women in general, I responded to the fact that the book has no even remotely likeable female role model--like most of her work, Drawing Blood being the one exception I've encountered.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

No, the book I read by her was Exquisite Corpse.

What very few people seem to be understanding about this journal entry is that I totally do respect Poppy Z. Brite's ability to write poetic sentences and plots that keep people interested and such. I'm not calling her a bad writer at all. What I'm complaining about is, rather, that her vision of the world depresses me beyond words.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

What do you love about it? I tend to love things about my neighborhood that most people wouldn't. Like its poverty and wide variety of races and languages. On the other hand, I also love the fact that it never snows, and I know that doesn't apply to NYC. And I think I might stop loving my neighborhood's poverty if it were the kind of poverty that included a lot of violence and made me feel in danger. But my neighborhood is rather rural really, with lots of open fields everywhere, and poverty doesn't seem to create violence here the way it does in downtown Sacramento where the population densities in the poor neighborhoods are a lot higher.

But I never really know how to answer the whole question of "Do you prefer city life or country life?" . . . I've always lived on the border between them and I see good and bad things about both.

I read something by Michael Ondaatje once before. I didn't hate it. Perhaps I should read another one.

[lm.livejournal.com]

I didn't think you said she was a bad writer. I don't think she's a bad writer. I just don't like the way her characters' gender roles play out.

I've never read Exquisite Corpse (is that the one that's a thinly-veiled John Lennon/Paul McCartney slash fanfic?) but I can say that not all her books/stories are heartless or without happiness. She usually chooses to write about seriously fucked up people, but not necessarily bad people.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

No, it has nothing to do with Lennon or McCartney. It's about two gay serial killers who fall in love with each other.

[lm.livejournal.com]

Er. Right. I was thinking of Plastic Jesus.

exquisite corpse

[(Anonymous)]

just stumbled on this by accident, poppy is a favourite of mine i'm afraid, mainly for drawing blood and about half of lost souls (i love the words, but not the story). it's a shame you read exquisite corpse, it's her attempt to show everyone just how gratuitously violent and amoral she can be, and in the process of this, she leaves out the character developments that made me love drawing blood. i don't care about any of the characters in exquisite corpse, i don't care who they kill, if they die, who they love. but in drawing blood, i fell head over heels for zach and eddie.