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<html><head><title>if you publish it, it must be true, right?</title></head><body bgcolor = "000000" TEXT="cc88cc" LINK = "ff99ff" VLINK = "ff8888" ALINK = "884488"><center><p><h1>all those books...</h1></center><p>there's a scattering of books everywhere throughout the clearing.it's clear that dan reads more than would make pat robertson happy.then again, who cares?</p>recently read books and topics:<ul><li>queer theory: <ul><li>i just finished <cite>Vice Versa</cite> by MarjorieGarber, which was a very interesting book about bisexuality and how it'signored yet actually ubiquitous. i wish we could get over our fixationwith freud, though. <li>i'm almost done with <cite>The Celluloid Closet</cite> by Vito Russo.basically, his theme is that it's impossible to find people who areincidentally gay or lesbian (let alone bisexual) in movies from thebeginning of the medium to 1987. not that that has changed much in thetime since then. this book was made into a movie (well, sort of--russo died ofaids in 1990 and the movie is quite different from the book.) it's veryinteresting to consider just how absurd the gay characters in movies overthe last 50 years have been--a great example might be the sal mineocharacter in <cite>Rebel without a Cause</cite> or the cowardly lion. alsohideous is just how duplicitous hollywood has been in changing themes ofmajor literary works and/or lying about the history of well-known gaypeople (e.g. beethoven was bisexual, <cite>immortal beloved</cite> or not).<li>Jonathan Ned Katz' <cite>The Invention of Heterosexuality</cite> is amagnificent assault on the notion that heterosexuality is "normal,""eternal" or "universal." actually, the term is only 100 years old, andactually, the attitudes surrounding it (which basically is the notion thatsexuality and pleasure can be separated from reproduction) is also roughlyfrom that time period. again, though, too much freud.<li>Gilbert Herdt's <cite>Youth of Horizons</cite> is a nice book about gaykids in chicago. he starts with a really nice representation of theclassic social constructivist view of gay people, which i reallyappreciated. he's a little overly anthropological. i found this frustrating, butnot too much, since he's less polemic than he otherwise might be. he alsowrote a large number of books in the early 80s about ritualizedhomosexuality in areas around new guinea, such as the sambians who believethat the only way they can become masculine is to ingest semen. (no, i'mnot making that up.)<li><cite>joining the tribe</cite> is a nice book about gay kids all over thecountry. there's quite a difference in the statistical, academicpresentation of an anthropologist like herdt in the last book thanin the presentation of a journalist like the woman who wrote this one.she's entirely interested in anecdotes, while he is almost not at all.<li><cite>gay is not good</cite> is a beautifully offensive tract from thepre-aids days. interesting of course is the fact that this pap still getswritten, published (despite threats from the "militant homosexual" wingwhich its author suggests runs all of publishing) (if that were the case,why is mass media so fucking biased?) anyhow, we get such marvels as...<ul><li>an analysis of the "advantages to homosexuality," such as our extrafree time, increased leisure cash, and lack of need to be members of thePTA. (and we don't have to take care of our loved ones because we're allunloving sex-crazed monsters...good thing this book DID come out beforeaids...) <li>a gorgeous discussion of greek society along the lines of "if thegreeks were the best that homosexuals could do and <em>they</em> didn'tknow about things like the germ theory of disease, circulation of the bloodor sub-atomic particle physics, they weren't much, now were they?" coupledwith a really nasty description of socrates as "the most important gay manof all time" who was still a woman-hating, pederast, etc. and a salaciousreference to what we'd find in the lives of "lesser homosexuals" liketchaikowsky, da vinci or wilde. hey, you know, i hear chairman mao wasstraight! lenin too! gods-damned heterosexuals.<li>a medical description which seems to be written by a 2-yr-old about whyheterosexual sex is "better" than gay sex. this guy needs a better sexlife (so do i, but let's not go there).</ul><li>i reread pat califia's <cite>public sex: the culture of radical sex</cite>recently. she basically is writing about a whole bunch of marginalized,even by queers, sexual behaviours: sex with "minors" (how many of youwaited 'til you were 18?), why anti-porn "feminists" are silly (a commentfrom john katz on this is that the image of women as happy housewives incommercials probably does far more harm to women than does pornography...),and other topics. her porn is also highly rated by yours truly. <li>i'm also enjoying reading some essays by gore vidal about sex. as theposter child for the "there's no such thing as homosexuals, just homosexualsex" movement, i have some disagreements with him. but he writes so well!</ul><li>computer science:<ul><li>i'm reading alon & spencer's <cite>the probabilistic method</cite> whichbasically tries to prove that combinatorial objects exist by creating aprobablistic space which includes all objects of a certain type and showingthat an object with the desired properties will be randomly selected withnon-zero probability. thus, objects of the desired type exist. cute, butlacking much motivation ("that's nice, but why do i care that graphs withthis property exist after all? and can i <em>find</em> them?)<li>ketan mulmuley's <cite>computational geometry through randomizedalgorithms</cite> is a lovely book about this kind of computer science.i'm really really enjoying it, when i get to reading it.<li>preparata and shamos' <cite>computational geometry</cite> is the moreclassic book on the topic. it's drier, more out of date, and precedes thewhole discussion of how randomization can make something like geometry,which is ultimately largely about "sorting" and "searching" much faster.<li>i'm also reading random books like a conference proceedings volume abouta-life, some soda proceedings, and other books. </ul><li>fiction: <br>lately i've been reading mostly gay-themed fiction. it's not that i'm avoiding heterosexual fiction, but i can't seem to accidentally get straight fiction off the2-week shelf at olin library (the grad library here at cornell). not thati really mind, but...<br>i did seek out some of the following, however. and some of it'sstraight-themed anyhow:<ul><li>manuel puig's <cite>kiss of the spider woman</cite> was a really neat read.my friend nohemy (who's moving to stanford in a month) and i saw the playat the kitchen theater in downtown ithaca (which seems not to be on theweb...) and i read the book in translation after that. one differencebetween the book and the play (i've not seen the movie) is that in theplay, valentin and molina only have sex once, which (to my way of thinking)minimizes the significance of their emotional attachment. in the book,they do so over a several day period. it may sound small, but it'ssignificant. anyhow, a very interesting read.<li>gore vidal's <cite>the city and the pillar</cite> was really upsetting.it's the first book to ever deal with gay people at all nicely, and even itis kind of upsetting. i do recommend it as a really melodramatic, intense,quick read, however.<li>slightly less appaling is andrew holleran's <cite>dancer from thedance</cite>. though it still ends with the faggot dying (why is that???),it's a tragic yet beautiful chronicle of the life of a gay man as he movesfrom one-who-has-not-joined-the-tribe to its most stereotypical member.ack. why do i know these people still, even though the book is mid-70s?<li>daniel vilmure's <cite>toby's lie</cite> made me cry. that alone is prettyimpressive. all toby wants to do is dance with his boyfriend at the promand nothing seems willing to let him do it. vilmure also wrote <cite>lifein the land of the living</cite>, which is about white trash kids in thesouth. nice, nice voice.<li>scott heim wrote <cite>mysterious skin</cite> from a whole bunch ofdifferent voices, which tell us about one boy's obsession with ufo's andhow he realizes that he was abused as a kid, while telling a really prettyintergenerational love story at the same time. he also just emailed me tothank me for mentioning him on this page...that's kinda neat in its ownright, you know? it was also odd, now that i think about it, realizingjust how much it seems different reading books about kids that were writtenin, say, the early 20th century versus today. is it because i'm more likethe current ones, because i <em>seek</em> ones who are more like me, orbecause the writing is more honest? who knows...<li>lars eighner's <cite>pawn to queen four</cite> is pat robertson's worstnightmare, a funny story about the drag queens who <em>really</em> run theplanet.<li>i'm enjoying a book of lesbian vampire stories called <cite>daughters ofdarkness</cite> quite a lot right now.<li>i read a cute book about love and murder in a british department storerecently, called <cite>everything and more</cite>--that's worth a read.<li>i'm also re-reading <cite>portnoy's complaint</cite>(philip roth) and someshitty norman mailer crap. why do people read this shit?</ul><li>other topics: <br>i've also been reading some biography, anthropology, computer sciencepapers, and the occasional truly bad trash novel. i read too much.</ul>here's what i generally <em>like</em> to read about...:<ul><li>consciousness, and what modern science can tell us about how themind works. good books on this topic are very hard to come by, butthe recent collection called <i>android epistemology</i>, recentlypublished by the <a href = "//www-mitpress.mit.edu">mit press</a>, isa good start. be wary of anything that was written by someone whoactually has no scientific background. there was a bitchy editorialin the new york times just today about how a well-respected scientistmanaged to confuse some sociologists of science with complete crapabout quantum mechanics and its impacts on literary theory. but thisstuff is all too common. check out <i>higher superstition: theacademic left and its quarrels with science</i>(jhu press, 1994) formore details on this topic. ick. <li>philosophy of theoretical computer science. this extends todiscussions of artificial intelligence (which is also in the previouscategory), but it also involves whether concepts like "turing machine"or the kleene heirarchy have any real philosophical importance.almost all that i've read on this topic is bunk too.<li>witchcraft. i've been practicing <a href = "witchcraft.html">witchcraft</a> for a few years, but most books on this topic are alsocrap. a couple exceptions are the books by starhawk, margot adler's<i>drawing down the moon</i>, and the books by the farrars. email meif you'd like more information about this topic.<li>gay and lesbian politics. again, a topic which has too many badwritings. i don't agree with most of what they say, but you couldcheck out the writings of bruce bawer, or the writings of jeffreyweeks. unfortunately, however, this topic seems to lack a competent"middle ground." or, perhaps, i keep believing that there should beone when there needn't be. who knows.<li>gay and lesbian history. there <i>are</i> good books on this.brian boswell's books, <i>same-sex unions in premodern europe</i> and<i>christianity, social tolerance and homosexuality</i> are fantasticbooks about the medieval history of gay people. in a more modernsense, the auto-biographical books of paul monette, especially<i>becoming a man</i> are fantastic. you could always read davidhalperin, if you wanted. <li>obscure religions. last semester i read about <a href ="http://www.scientology.org">scientology</a> and this summer i seem tobe starting off on a journey of (discovery?) of <a href ="http://www.lds.org">mormonism</a>. ack. what scary people...<li>contemporary fiction. cornell's library includes a 2-week loangroup of books which are often very interesting and current, and theundergrad library has a 6-month loan period on everything, includingnew books. very nice.<li>medieval history. <li>anti-technological rantings by folks like kirkpatrick sale whoreally should stop publishing in phototype if they want toauthentically make their message.<li>anthropology of modern primitive societies.<li>erotica. a really nice site is the one that's run by <a href ="http://www.circlet.com/circlet/home.html">circlet press</a> which waspartially founded by a friend of mine. you might also check out thesite run by <a href = "http://www.goodvibes.com">good vibrations</a>.<li>computer science. (it is what i study...)<li>operations research. (it's what i currently study...)<li>math. (it's what i really study...)<hr><center>"we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers ofdreams."--aphex twin</center><hr><address>dan brown (snowman@cs.cornell.edu).<br> last updated 22 jul 96</address></body></html>⌨️ 快捷键说明
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