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if you pop a chub while reading the sex scenes youre legally obligated to post about it
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Feb 4, 2019 03:23
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 23:50 |
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this is actually very well written and quite good here's a fun bit from the morning after the bear eats her out for the first time. the narrator thinks: quote:Oh dear, what I did I do? look at how revealing this is of her unstated thought process. she never explicitly admits to herself what happened - the question "what did I do?" is never answered. The closest we get is "then I...the bear". the act is omitted, never even approached; it's subsumed entirely by the sheer fact of the bear itself. even the actor (did she, or did the bear?) becomes confused. but it's that last bit that I like best: quote:what a strange thing to do. To have done. To have done to one. the first sentence approaches the reality of the act but shies away at the last moment; it's just a strange thing "to do", not a strange thing that she did. but even that is too close, and the infinitive "to do" hints at something ongoing (as indeed her sexual relationship with the bear will be). the next sentence tries to fix that: it's not a strange thing to do, it's a strange thing to have done. now we've safely conjugated the verb, locked it in the present perfect tense, eliminated the unconscious possibility that this might happen again. the last sentence, though, is the kicker: the second hasn't gone far enough in distancing her, psychologically and linguistically, from her own actions. she's the implicit actor of the first two sentences, but now she makes herself into the object, the receiver of the action: this was something that was done to her, not something she did.
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Feb 5, 2019 08:04
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I haven't gotten that far yet ya that too. It’s totally depersonalized This book does a lot with the reception of the English Romantics and their place, and the place of English (literary) history, in Canadian (literary) identity, but I’m not sure I know enough about either the Romantics or Canada to work out quite what it is. Something, I think, about the inherent absurdity of importing the romantic worldview (shaped as it was by the tamed English countryside) into the wild and fierce Canadian wildernsss (recall the absurdity and impracticality of building a Fowler octagon house out there). But then some kind of reconciliation is achieved between the two when the bear sticks its tongue in her vagooch as shown by her final reflection as she paddles down the river, overwhelmed by the beauty of the scene, and wonders “have anyone since the Romantics ever really seen? or something, maybe, I dunno
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Feb 5, 2019 20:59
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safe as houses, plausible as kitchens, thrilling as a bear going HAM on your clit
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Feb 5, 2019 22:49
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apropos of nothing but its worth noting that the narrator is, subconsciously, insanely horny from the very beginning. when she's thinking about the furniture in the house prior to her arrival, for example:quote:There were many sofas, many tables, many chairs. She could see their spread legs as they sat on the list. emphasis mine. that's a sex weird way of talking about furniture. then as she drives through the canadian landscape, there's a lot of juxtaposed death-and-fertility imagery. she recalls her parents looking for flowers while she, not joining them, stared at "the skeleton of the biggest dragonfly in the world, caught in a spiderweb and sucked dry". the beautiful beach and lake remind her of some kind of loss. she listens to the birds in the evening and then writes in a postcard to the director that she feels she's "being reborn", which is an odd thing to say to your boss on a work assignment even if you do let him hog up your gooch once a week. then the sight of the "bald stone mountains of Algoma", which I don't know where that is, remind her of some internal desolation of her own - of feeling that she's "old as the yellowed papers she spent her days unfolding". there's a constant back-and-forth movement between the landscape (in spring) and her own internal state (barren as a desert), is what i'm getting at here. and it all ultimately revolves around loving.
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Feb 14, 2019 08:11
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Bilirubin posted:and here I was smugging it up having a first edition hard cover. that is actually very cool. does it have the gently caress cover? WatermelonGun posted:i forgot i agreed to read this until it arrived in the mail today. thanks guys. welcome, brother
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Feb 16, 2019 05:59
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her interactions with homer indicate her taking ownership of her own sexuality. she doesn't really want him as him and it's not repayment for the work he's done. she seems surprised when he makes a pass at her in the house - naively, she didn't realize how her actions looked to him. she goes and fucks him later in the novel because she can. he's a conquest and nothing more.
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Feb 18, 2019 00:49
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most of the point of the book is her taking ownership of her sexuality and actually evolving into a sexual being; it's not an accident that Engel draws so much attention to the fact that she heads north in spring when things are blooming. she lets the director gently caress her, but it's routine, rhythmic; she describes it as "something that she's doing to herself" rather than a real act between two people in which both have agency. there's passing mention, at one point, to her having picked up a man "on the street" once, but the way that action is depicted reeks of desperation and loneliness; also, it's strongly implied that the man she picked up assaulted her. her seduction of homer, on the other hand, is wholly her decision. it's symbolic, representative.
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Feb 18, 2019 01:43
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mewse posted:As a Canadian what probably happened was the small high lit community decided this book was Worthy Of Praise and then it won that award "a group of people decided that [x] was worthy of an award and so gave [x] the award" is usually how awards work yeah
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Feb 18, 2019 01:44
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Bilirubin posted:OK, that makes sense--and I am super bad at lit crit generally, and am learning a bunch in this forum overall (drat streaming in university too early). i mean that's just my read, i might be wrong, but i broadly interpreted the book to be about a woman who learns at last to get her gently caress on
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Feb 18, 2019 03:25
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just a normal coming-of-age-late-in-life story about a lonely individual who learns how to take what she wants by having a large grizzly bear repeatedly shove its tongue into her hole
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Feb 18, 2019 03:31
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oh yo also it is 100% implied that the old native woman hosed the bear and that Homer knew about it. i wont back down from that interpretation furthermore everyone talks about the bear cunnilingus but no one talks about the fact that her friendship with the bear starts when she takes a big stinking dump next to it
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Feb 18, 2019 03:32
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Bilirubin posted:which the old native woman tells her to do. And she says that he is a "good bear" repeatedly, with her cackling laugh. That was also my interpretation and I'll die on that hill with you. its also extremely sus that the bear knew exactly what to do when started uh *checks the text* "making love to herself*
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Feb 18, 2019 06:47
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Bilirubin posted:The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood please. stop. please
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Feb 25, 2019 06:07
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what have i ever done to you
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Feb 25, 2019 06:57
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my headcanon is that homer also hosed the bear
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Feb 28, 2019 18:45
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 23:50 |
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the sexual revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race
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Mar 6, 2019 21:01
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