deathbedxcv's reviews
52 reviews

Just finished reading “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man” by James Weldon Johnson. And I am completely blown away by the historical anonymously published 1912 text, that I prefer to give a quick and vague summary followed by a few quotes. Hopefully this encourages some to read it:

An African American man that passes as white in post Civil War America travels through the Northern and Southern United States, and Europe.

Here are some passages, which stand out to me:

“It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of the storm as does the willow tree.” (52)

“If the Anglo-Saxon is the source of everything good and great in the human race from the beginning, why wasn’t the German forest the birthplace of civilization, rather than the valley of the Nile.” (111)

“All the while I understood that it was not discouragement or fear or search for a larger field of action and opportunity that was driving me out of the Negro race. I knew that it was shame, unbearable shame. Shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals. For certainly the law would restrain and punish the malicious burning alive of animals.” (130)

Mic drop.

“I felt a need for someone to want the black baby to live—just to counteract the universal love of white baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen Peals.”

This a line from ‘The Bluest Eye’ by Toni Morrison. An extremely painful novel about Pecola, a young black girl, who, because of insecurities caused by those around her, which were caused by the racism around them, begs for the bluest eyes like those of white baby dolls. I feel a great shame to admit that this is the first ever Toni Morrison book that I’ve read—it only took me 28 years to get to this point—but I’m very grateful to have read it. This will definitely be one of those books that sticks with me a long time, if not forever. It is simultaneously tragic and beautiful, brutal and poetic. The topics discussed in this novel, through the eyes of little kids too, are not what little kids are supposed to be discussing. Self loathing, sexual assault, insanity. This makes it even more emotionally difficult to read, but I would recommend this book to everyone.

DNF 148/160) “This mother-raping cotton punished the colored man down south and now it’s killing them up north.”

I did not finish Chester Himes’ “Cotton Comes to Harlem” because although it is incredibly written and has that suspenseful hard boiledness to it, its relaxed use of the word rape and how it treats female characters is concerning. A book that put together the ideas of a detective novel and race relations in 20th century Harlem, sounded really really cool, but ultimately it falls extremely flat when it comes to female characters. I’m sure there’s counter arguments, but at the end of the day the cons outweighed the pros for me.

The novel was made into a movie of the same name starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, and Redd Foxx. So I def want to watch that.

“You have to find it out for yourself. I’m like a book you have to read. A book can’t read itself to you. It doesn’t even know what it’s about. I don’t know what I’m about.”

Christopher Isherwood’s ‘A Single Man’ follows George, a gay middle-aged English professor, around for a day during the grieving of his partner Jim, who died in a motor vehicle accident a few months prior. The novel takes place right after the Cuban Missile Crisis so it has fairly political statements like, “A place where the police are angels has to be an insane asylum,” which I love. But it is also quite romantic, with these long poetic sections that begin with “Think of two people living together,” and ending with “Jim is dead. Is dead.”

I would describe George as a grumpy old gay professor, and he has many reasons to be grumpy. Grumpy at society for how gay people are treated during the 60s. Grumpy at his students for not doing required reading. Grumpy at life for taking his love away from him. But in the course of these 24 hours, which is like a speed run of the grievance process, he gets a better understanding and appreciation of what it means to be living and what it means to continue living after someone you loved has died.

This is, I believe, the second Isherwood novel I’ve read to date, and he is slowly growing to be one of my favs.

“I want the God in whatever comes out of the roach’s belly”

There’s not really much I can say about Clarice Lispector’s ‘The Passion According to G.H.,” except you must do everything in your power to get your hands on a copy and engulf yourself in it. The basic story is that a sculptor kills a cockroach in their maid’s room. Very simple premise right? Why would anyone write a story about this? It’s because this story becomes more than the killing of a cockroach—it becomes a one sided philosophical discussion of class, beauty, womanhood, and more.

I feel so ashamed for this being the only Lispector book I’ve read as of this date, but I will surely read more of her.

“Por poco me vuelve loco demostrándome que yo no existo. Pero ¿ usted cree que soy realmente yo?”

Now what can I say about this book by Mijaíl Bulgákov (Mikhail Bulgakov). ‘El Maestro y Margarita’ (The Master and Margarita) is one of those books that’s beyond my typical page limit, but that I could def finish within days if it weren’t for life events. This book is too good, too too good. It has a freaking trigger happy cat that drinks gasolina for fuel! A short summary of the story is that the devil and his crew come to Moscow, Russia to fuvk shxt up. They fuxk with a group of literary elite called Massolit. And I mean they really mess this group up—even in the first chapter. This is in 1930s Moscow, but at the same time Bulgakov tells the story of Poncio Pilatos and Jesus. And he tells the story of The Master, a patient in a mental institution, and Margarita, his lost love lost in a loveless marriage. And at first all these stories seem separate from each other, but oh boy how they all come together in the end. I recommend reading this with my full heart! Shout out to the poet Ivan Nikoláyevich Ponirev, aka Desamparado! He didn’t deserve what was done to him!!

“I spoke to her in a way I had never spoken to anyone before. Sometimes it happens, doesn’t it? You’re speaking to someone and you suddenly find that you’re another person.”

Harold Pinter’s ‘Moonlight’ is a quick read play, which ended the writer’s 1978 hiatus from the dramatic form in 1993. It follows a family in which the patriarch, Andy, is at his deathbed reminiscing about his youth and infidelity. His wife, Bel, is at his side and reminisces about her own infidelity with the same woman that her husband was unfaithful with. Andy is bitter, erratic and mocks his wife. While Bel seems to be more logical and brushes his comments off. Bel tries to get their children (Jake and Fred) to visit their father before he dies, but they don’t seem to take this seriously and joke and talk about other things. Bridget, the younger daughter, seems to be alone most of the time—unless in a flashback—and is the most caring of the entire family. But at the same time it feels as if she’s the most distant of them all.

This is essentially a play about a family that is no longer that much of a family. Set between two rooms and a ‘third area’, Pinter does a great job of depicting estrangement. Andy calls for his children, but will they ever come? Or will they confuse ‘Belcher with Bellamy’ and set other plans instead?

Interesting play, and even though I appreciate Pinter “leaving the story to the reader’s imagination” as Sarah stated on Goodreads in October 2017, I still feel like I needed more. It was a bit too ambiguous for me, and left me rather confused at times. And apparently one of the family members is already dead, which completely went over my head.

“Oh, it’s a grand bad story, and who says I’m a betrayer? I say, tell the story of the world to the world!”

We begin this year of our Lords 2023 with a bang. Djuna Barnes’ ‘Nightwood’ is exactly as the New York Times describes it, “a novel of extraordinary and appalling force—a kind of symbol of sinister magnificence.” ‘Nightwood’ follows Robin Vote through the stories of the people she has infatuations with; the ‘Baron’ Felix Volkbein, the hopeless romantic Nora Flood, and the spinster Jenny Petherbridge. Their stories are told in conversation with the unforgettable Dr. Matthew O'Connor, who can really go on and on and on about the most complex and most simple topics. There literally is no topic which the doctor will not go on a rant about. This, in the beginning, made it hard for me to follow, but with lines like the following, it was definitely all worth it; “I, as good a Catholic as they make, have embraced every confection of hope, and yet I know well, for all our outcry and struggle, we shall be for the next generation not the massive dung fallen from the dinosaur, but the little speck left of a humming-bird.”

A really poetic novel to say the least, I recommend it to the highest degree. One of the first novels to be unforgiving about Lesbian relationships, it seems to have been based on Djuna Barnes tumultuous relationship with the artist Thelma Wood. Try to guess who’s who in the novel.

“In this way it is possible to imagine that the essential tendency of motion, however lightning-swift it may appear, is toward immobility and that, however slow it may sometimes seem, it is continuously drawing bodies toward death, which is immobility. Olé.”

Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s ‘The Bathroom’ is a wacky novel about this French guy that decides to move into his own bathroom. This novel is pretty existencial and discusses multiple topics, but one of the them that stands out the most is of immobility. The quote above illustrates what I believe is the one of the main ideas of the book. Toussaint uses the image of rainfall behind a pane of glass to differentiate the narrator’s philosophy of immobility from other philosophies. To me it sounds like basically the narrator wants to do nothing. The philosophy of doing nothing, just sitting in your bathroom and doing absolutely nothing. Which is funny because the narrator does a lot in this short novel. Speaking of funny, the novel’s also pretty funny. There’s this scene with some Polish painters and an octopus, and the narrator can never find tennis shorts. Very wacky novel, and I do recommend it.