Wake Up America Wednesday
Jul. 19th, 2017 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
I'm still way behind on my 99 Novels, which is no one's fault but my own. I really enjoyed both Portnoy's Complaint and A Single Man (two different books about the body, I guess you could say) but I'm still not sure what to say about either of them. So I'll give it another week and either come up with something or let it go.
What I'm Reading Now
I ran out of books to read on the plane back home, so I bought Hidden Figures at the airport bookstore and promptly fell asleep - through no fault of Margot Lee Shetterly or the women of West Computing; I was just tired. I think it's pretty good so far, and Shetterly does a good job of making the 1940s engineering problems readable for the non-engineer, though I might still be having a little trouble with them because my brains are mush.
I've started reading Generation of Vipers by Philip Wylie - next in a long line of books I bought a long time ago and haven't gotten around to yet. Generation of Vipers was a background figure in feminist cultural criticism back in the 90s (when I was reading a lot of stuff from the 70s and 80s) because Wylie reportedly blames mothers for everything.
The perception that Generation of Vipers is all about blaming mothers is inaccurate so far; there's been some name-checking of "moms" and culturally expected attitudes toward motherhood, plus a dash here and there of contempt for "mustached females at Columbia" whose infant experiments came to unimaginative conclusions - but Vipers has a lot of fish to fry. It's a Wake Up Call for America, some of it perceptive, some petulant (with or without justification for the petulance). I don't want to be dismissive of Wake Up, America! writing; there's never been any shortage of fruit on that tree, low-hanging or otherwise. Wylie's antidotes to complacency are 1) a scientific approach to the individual soul, leading to 2) a healthy respect for Jungian archetypes, so it's bound to be a mixed bag for today's reader.
It's interesting to note that in 1941, when this book was first written, organized religion was sufficiently on the wane in the US for Wylie to write it off as a cultural influence; in this new edition from 1955, he admits that he couldn't have predicted the resurgence of religion in the next ten years via the anti-Communist movement. He doesn't footnote his remarks on the barbarity of mixed-use zoning, though; maybe in 1955 he still thought the burbs were an improvement.
What I Plan to Read Next
No idea! Probably something in the Mount TBR category. I'm still half-asleep. Blame the weather if you're feeling charitable.
I'm still way behind on my 99 Novels, which is no one's fault but my own. I really enjoyed both Portnoy's Complaint and A Single Man (two different books about the body, I guess you could say) but I'm still not sure what to say about either of them. So I'll give it another week and either come up with something or let it go.
What I'm Reading Now
I ran out of books to read on the plane back home, so I bought Hidden Figures at the airport bookstore and promptly fell asleep - through no fault of Margot Lee Shetterly or the women of West Computing; I was just tired. I think it's pretty good so far, and Shetterly does a good job of making the 1940s engineering problems readable for the non-engineer, though I might still be having a little trouble with them because my brains are mush.
I've started reading Generation of Vipers by Philip Wylie - next in a long line of books I bought a long time ago and haven't gotten around to yet. Generation of Vipers was a background figure in feminist cultural criticism back in the 90s (when I was reading a lot of stuff from the 70s and 80s) because Wylie reportedly blames mothers for everything.
The perception that Generation of Vipers is all about blaming mothers is inaccurate so far; there's been some name-checking of "moms" and culturally expected attitudes toward motherhood, plus a dash here and there of contempt for "mustached females at Columbia" whose infant experiments came to unimaginative conclusions - but Vipers has a lot of fish to fry. It's a Wake Up Call for America, some of it perceptive, some petulant (with or without justification for the petulance). I don't want to be dismissive of Wake Up, America! writing; there's never been any shortage of fruit on that tree, low-hanging or otherwise. Wylie's antidotes to complacency are 1) a scientific approach to the individual soul, leading to 2) a healthy respect for Jungian archetypes, so it's bound to be a mixed bag for today's reader.
It's interesting to note that in 1941, when this book was first written, organized religion was sufficiently on the wane in the US for Wylie to write it off as a cultural influence; in this new edition from 1955, he admits that he couldn't have predicted the resurgence of religion in the next ten years via the anti-Communist movement. He doesn't footnote his remarks on the barbarity of mixed-use zoning, though; maybe in 1955 he still thought the burbs were an improvement.
What I Plan to Read Next
No idea! Probably something in the Mount TBR category. I'm still half-asleep. Blame the weather if you're feeling charitable.
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Date: 2017-07-19 02:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-07-20 05:29 pm (UTC)