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gothhotel's reviews
224 reviews
A Clean, Well-Lighted Place by Ernest Hemingway
5.0
Didn't land the first time. Five years later it does. Kinda wish it didn't!
Queer by William S. Burroughs
3.0
This was my first Burroughs and reading it felt like fishing in a landfill. You're guaranteed to find something repulsive, profound, evocative, funny, rotting, weird, dull or all of the above, maybe all in the same statement. "Ugly American" doesn't cut it - maybe better to call him the "Repulsive American". "Ugly" suggests a body that is ostracized or shunned for aesthetic reasons - we find ugliness in a junky or a disabled person (like the hunchback) or a queer (like the old queen Bobo). The author's ugliness runs deeper, a repulsiveness at the core - every possible -ism and pedeophilia to boot. Those assigned ugliness are not allowed to have an internal life, not even here - but the repulsive, that we explore, that we come to understand. Yes, "every country has its Shits", and through the sheer violence of his imagination I'm thinking Burroughs was one of ours.
Despite it all - or because of it - I can't write it off. I wouldn't say that I "connect" to anything here, as most of it by design offends me to my core. But in all the bizarro self-absorption, the blind hedonism and the endless "routines", there are moments where Burroughs found something real, in all this junk - a real pain, exquisite and sharp, captured here -
- "In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it, you cannot complain."
- "He walked on, looking at every face he passed, looking into doorways and up at the windows of cheap hotels. An iron bedstead painted light pink, a shirt out to dry… scraps of life. Lee snapped at them hungrily, like a predatory fish cut off from his prey by a glass wall. He could not stop ramming his nose against the glass in the nightmare search of his dream. And at the end he was standing in a dusty room in the late afternoon sun, with an old shoe in his hand."
Anyway I went crazy trying to analyze this book and then remembered I'm not in college and nobody's paying me, so at this point I shrug and toss my notes aside. Three stars because I said so.
Despite it all - or because of it - I can't write it off. I wouldn't say that I "connect" to anything here, as most of it by design offends me to my core. But in all the bizarro self-absorption, the blind hedonism and the endless "routines", there are moments where Burroughs found something real, in all this junk - a real pain, exquisite and sharp, captured here -
- "In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it, you cannot complain."
- "He walked on, looking at every face he passed, looking into doorways and up at the windows of cheap hotels. An iron bedstead painted light pink, a shirt out to dry… scraps of life. Lee snapped at them hungrily, like a predatory fish cut off from his prey by a glass wall. He could not stop ramming his nose against the glass in the nightmare search of his dream. And at the end he was standing in a dusty room in the late afternoon sun, with an old shoe in his hand."
Anyway I went crazy trying to analyze this book and then remembered I'm not in college and nobody's paying me, so at this point I shrug and toss my notes aside. Three stars because I said so.
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
4.0
nicely written and really god damn funny. i never tire of ways to call out corrupt religious institutions while articulating in warm personal detail the humanity of their members, even the reactionaries and fanatics. and if you manage to do it in a way that makes me laugh out loud, all the better! it does drag here and there (esp towards the end), not everything lands, and i could do with a bit less talk about Being A Writer. but i like the cut of her jib nonetheless!
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
4.0
"Manuscripts don't burn."
"Everything will turn out right. That's what the world was built on."
"He has not earned light, only peace."
70% amusing satire of Soviet society with a light comic tone, 30% aching reflection on art and the human experience. Some passages that made me stop and appreciate, though sadly not the kind of thing one can capture in a quote. The story of Pilate defies simple summary and can't be taken apart in brief, at least not by me. It's subtle and very clever, what Bulgakov does with agency, tense, detail. And the story echoes beyond itself a bit, especially towards the end, when Bulgakov was dying and knew his novel would never be published without significant censorship; the exhaustion, the quiet acceptance, the determination that it mattered - the manuscript can burn because "I remember it by heart", and "I shall never forget anything again."
Anyway, minus a star for gender politics that are tiresome and predictable, if not malicious. The restrained style doesn't lend itself to rich internality, but Margarita's almost comic-book - she's beautiful and intelligent, but frivolous, and she's utterly devoted to the Master. She's a wife, then a witch, then a wife again, and that's all women are throughout the novel. Margarita gets an intriguing moment at the ball - the episode with Frieda - where she's almost something else, resonating with Yeshua, but it goes away, and in the end she's little more than a dog.
"Everything will turn out right. That's what the world was built on."
"He has not earned light, only peace."
70% amusing satire of Soviet society with a light comic tone, 30% aching reflection on art and the human experience. Some passages that made me stop and appreciate, though sadly not the kind of thing one can capture in a quote. The story of Pilate defies simple summary and can't be taken apart in brief, at least not by me. It's subtle and very clever, what Bulgakov does with agency, tense, detail. And the story echoes beyond itself a bit, especially towards the end, when Bulgakov was dying and knew his novel would never be published without significant censorship; the exhaustion, the quiet acceptance, the determination that it mattered - the manuscript can burn because "I remember it by heart", and "I shall never forget anything again."
Anyway, minus a star for gender politics that are tiresome and predictable, if not malicious. The restrained style doesn't lend itself to rich internality, but Margarita's almost comic-book - she's beautiful and intelligent, but frivolous, and she's utterly devoted to the Master. She's a wife, then a witch, then a wife again, and that's all women are throughout the novel. Margarita gets an intriguing moment at the ball - the episode with Frieda - where she's almost something else, resonating with Yeshua, but it goes away, and in the end she's little more than a dog.
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
5.0
Constant motion - slow at first, little worlds moving down Bond Street, reflecting and refracting parts of each other as the torch of narration passes between them. At the center of it all Mrs. Dalloway, both very young and very old (indeed every age) in the middle of her life; hands and feet, sensing and moving and doing. And the interactions, with Lucy or Peter Walsh… I can’t even begin to take that apart, look under the hood to understand how it beats with life.
Started as a library loan and knew within 20 pages i would have to own a copy. I’ll spare everyone (primarily myself) and try not to Say Something; I can only recommend.
Started as a library loan and knew within 20 pages i would have to own a copy. I’ll spare everyone (primarily myself) and try not to Say Something; I can only recommend.
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
5.0
"The skin of the soul is a miracle of mutual pressures."
“A man moves through time. It means nothing except that like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.”
Dream-reading. Words that waltz off the page, spin you around, words that make you sit up straight. Anarchy, not disorder. At one point read while walking down the street. I don’t like to overexpose these things. It’s very good.
“A man moves through time. It means nothing except that like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive.”
Dream-reading. Words that waltz off the page, spin you around, words that make you sit up straight. Anarchy, not disorder. At one point read while walking down the street. I don’t like to overexpose these things. It’s very good.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
4.0
A hypnotic read, if a little repetitive. It's giving American Psycho for depressed women. Very slick, powerful satire. The first few chapters describe my life for the last year or so minus the drugs, and I appreciated the lack of sentiment. I hovered around 3 stars for most of the read but brought it up to 4 by the end for a tight structure and appropriate length.
Also, I know this is controversial but I thought the ending was good - last line of the book is a real gut-punch. Without spoiling anything, I thought the message was pretty clear and a certain "gotcha" moment (the last page) doesn't feel like a gotcha at all, in context. Free yourself or die.
Also, I know this is controversial but I thought the ending was good - last line of the book is a real gut-punch. Without spoiling anything, I thought the message was pretty clear and a certain "gotcha" moment (the last page) doesn't feel like a gotcha at all, in context. Free yourself or die.
A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
4.0
Picked this up as a reader of poetry, not a writer, and found it enriching. Some of it was familiar or intuitive but all of it was worth reading. Something to understand my response to poetry, which is all gelatinous feeling at the edge of the mind. Oh I knew the literary devices, but it starts to feel like taxidermy after a bit. Mary Oliver has something to say about how a poem breathes. I needed that.