courtneyfalling's review against another edition
reflective
fast-paced
3.5
Mixed feelings? 4 stars if Trisha Low is going for the class critiques I think she may be, 3 stars if she’s not because I truly can’t tell. Interesting musing about how living a socialist values-aligned life brings her further from her family or produces ongoing tensions, but feels like she sets up that concept and doesn’t push it to anywhere it could go.
jiyoung's review against another edition
3.0
A scattershot mosaic of Trisha Low’s thoughts. This 150 page essay would’ve been better delivered with a bit more structure. Low’s a decent writer and makes interesting observations, but the random tangents and varying theme chunks were stitched too haphazardly. I often felt like Low pivoted into something else just as it was getting interesting. A shame to see the scaffolding there but no opportunities to draw out real profundity. Either make the book longer and separate it into discrete essays or establish a more consistent thematic spine to help it all cohere. Title is a bit of a misnomer.
caedocyon's review against another edition
2.0
I picked this up at the library in my frenzied pre-lockdown rush in March because I liked the cover and the title, without even glancing at the back. 2/3 of the way through Socialist Realism I still have no fucking idea what it's about or what the point is.
All the little paragraph-to-several-pages bits that Low stitches this book out of are 3 to 4 out of 5 stars, but in order to figure out what the relationship is between them you'd have to do a much more intensive close reading than I am willing to do. If I had a sense that it was all going to come together in a fascinating way that's more than the sum of its parts, well, maybe, but I'm not convinced of that at all.
I repeatedly had the thought that Resource Generation has answers to basically all the class issues that Low spends scattered paragraphs weakly bemoaning.
The exact same genre as [b:Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through|42372517|Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through|T Fleischmann|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1603210944l/42372517._SY75_.jpg|66029276] except longer and much less focused (and I wasn't that impressed by Time to start with), so if you're into that kind of thing, definitely go to town.
All the little paragraph-to-several-pages bits that Low stitches this book out of are 3 to 4 out of 5 stars, but in order to figure out what the relationship is between them you'd have to do a much more intensive close reading than I am willing to do. If I had a sense that it was all going to come together in a fascinating way that's more than the sum of its parts, well, maybe, but I'm not convinced of that at all.
I repeatedly had the thought that Resource Generation has answers to basically all the class issues that Low spends scattered paragraphs weakly bemoaning.
The exact same genre as [b:Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through|42372517|Time Is the Thing a Body Moves Through|T Fleischmann|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1603210944l/42372517._SY75_.jpg|66029276] except longer and much less focused (and I wasn't that impressed by Time to start with), so if you're into that kind of thing, definitely go to town.
jdglasgow's review against another edition
1.0
You know that sitcom trope of the New Yorker or Los Angeleno who cajoles their unwilling friends into coming to watch their self-indulgent, supposedly “vulnerable”, endless and uninteresting one-person show? That’s what Trisha Low’s SOCIALIST REALISM feels like, but in book form. Also, I am not her friend so I didn’t even have the luxury of being guilted into reading this exhausting, childish mess: I did it for free. My thinking was that, at 158 pages, it wasn’t terribly long—I could bear it—and, moreover, it would allow me to write this review.
Part memoir, part list of books she’s read, part… I don’t know, convoluted philosophical musing, the book is a stream of conscious collection of thoughts and memories with no unifying theme beyond Low’s disaffected aimlessness, about which she has nothing particularly insightful to say. It’s interesting she references LiveJournal at one point because that’s exactly what this feels like: the petty complaints of a teenager trying to sound profound. It’s hard to believe she was 32 and already a published writer when this book was released; she writes like a 15-year old novice.
If it makes a difference, you can read this review as 1.5 stars, because there are glimmers of ideas that could have been developed into something more meaningful. Low’s crisis of identity between her Singapore roots and California dreams seems like fruitful material, but it doesn’t really congeal into anything here. I also honestly thought the parable about the waterboarding S&M workshop, in which she was told she didn’t know “how to struggle correctly” was funny and held some deeper metaphor about life, but then Low beat it into the ground by repeating it again and again. Most often, though, it’s stories about pronounless theyfriends going to art shows or talking about fucking. She loves to talk about fucking and loves calling it “fucking”, because that’s super transgressive.
I stumbled across this book on the library shelves when picking up Cheryl Strayed’s WILD. I was intrigued by the title, SOCIALIST REALISM, and the blurb on the back which describes Low moving west to find utopia or revolution, and dealing with severed relationships, a family whose values do not align with her own, and the toxicity of right-wing politics. That synopsis seems similar to my own journey from Arkansas to the PNW so I thought I would find the book relatable, but my only thought is that I hope I am not as insufferable as Low and her clique are. The low point (no pun intended) is an extended section where she gets caught up in performative argumentation about a fictionalized poem about domestic violence posted on Buzzfeed. She feels compelled to have an opinion because she’s been compared to the author of the poem but then gets shut down on all sides no matter what position she takes. What she doesn’t appreciate is that neither she, nor anybody else involved in the kerfuffle, has anything of worth to say. It’s about their compulsion to be listened to more than anything. And though the phrase “socialist realism” is deconstructed three or four times, by the end of the book I still can’t tell you what it means or how it relates to whatever story Low is trying to tell.
I’m very disappointed in this book. There’s maybe some nuggets of good ideas buried in it, but those ideas are poorly developed here, and the writing has a distinctly teenage-y, uncritically self-involved, faux-poetic tone that makes the whole endeavor tiresome. It feels like it was really written for an audience of one: Low herself.
Part memoir, part list of books she’s read, part… I don’t know, convoluted philosophical musing, the book is a stream of conscious collection of thoughts and memories with no unifying theme beyond Low’s disaffected aimlessness, about which she has nothing particularly insightful to say. It’s interesting she references LiveJournal at one point because that’s exactly what this feels like: the petty complaints of a teenager trying to sound profound. It’s hard to believe she was 32 and already a published writer when this book was released; she writes like a 15-year old novice.
If it makes a difference, you can read this review as 1.5 stars, because there are glimmers of ideas that could have been developed into something more meaningful. Low’s crisis of identity between her Singapore roots and California dreams seems like fruitful material, but it doesn’t really congeal into anything here. I also honestly thought the parable about the waterboarding S&M workshop, in which she was told she didn’t know “how to struggle correctly” was funny and held some deeper metaphor about life, but then Low beat it into the ground by repeating it again and again. Most often, though, it’s stories about pronounless theyfriends going to art shows or talking about fucking. She loves to talk about fucking and loves calling it “fucking”, because that’s super transgressive.
I stumbled across this book on the library shelves when picking up Cheryl Strayed’s WILD. I was intrigued by the title, SOCIALIST REALISM, and the blurb on the back which describes Low moving west to find utopia or revolution, and dealing with severed relationships, a family whose values do not align with her own, and the toxicity of right-wing politics. That synopsis seems similar to my own journey from Arkansas to the PNW so I thought I would find the book relatable, but my only thought is that I hope I am not as insufferable as Low and her clique are. The low point (no pun intended) is an extended section where she gets caught up in performative argumentation about a fictionalized poem about domestic violence posted on Buzzfeed. She feels compelled to have an opinion because she’s been compared to the author of the poem but then gets shut down on all sides no matter what position she takes. What she doesn’t appreciate is that neither she, nor anybody else involved in the kerfuffle, has anything of worth to say. It’s about their compulsion to be listened to more than anything. And though the phrase “socialist realism” is deconstructed three or four times, by the end of the book I still can’t tell you what it means or how it relates to whatever story Low is trying to tell.
I’m very disappointed in this book. There’s maybe some nuggets of good ideas buried in it, but those ideas are poorly developed here, and the writing has a distinctly teenage-y, uncritically self-involved, faux-poetic tone that makes the whole endeavor tiresome. It feels like it was really written for an audience of one: Low herself.
laura_sonja's review against another edition
4.5
this was so so good - just a brilliant little look at desire and masochism and art and life under threat of fascism. trisha low covers such a broad range of topics but the leaps between them almost never feel off or inappropriate.
sleaterkenneth's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
disrespectfully reading this reminded me of dating my anarcho-communist ex who spent $700 on a vetements hoodie
jaclyn_sixminutesforme's review against another edition
4.0
“Home - it’s always been the dream. But what composes it? Wanting to belong somewhere, to feel comfortable returning to a place. Home is conceptual, immaterial. Architecture, then, is it’s manifestation: it’s what we build in response to our desire for place, how we design the structures that hold us. Some place so delicious we can only date imagine how it might one day arrive.”
This book-length essay was a really unique read - being quite stream of consciousness with no further breaks in the text other than paragraphs, I found it surprisingly easy to fall into the flow of the writing. The sentences are sharply constructed and the content took on a natural flow, moving between topics seamlessly.
I really connected with some of the continued thematic discussions that keep popping up particularly, namely in regard to interrogating what “home” is and means for those who move (namely west in this essay). I found this essay engaging and thought provoking, really enjoyable read.
Thanks CoffeeHouse Press for providing a review copy.
This book-length essay was a really unique read - being quite stream of consciousness with no further breaks in the text other than paragraphs, I found it surprisingly easy to fall into the flow of the writing. The sentences are sharply constructed and the content took on a natural flow, moving between topics seamlessly.
I really connected with some of the continued thematic discussions that keep popping up particularly, namely in regard to interrogating what “home” is and means for those who move (namely west in this essay). I found this essay engaging and thought provoking, really enjoyable read.
Thanks CoffeeHouse Press for providing a review copy.
busymorning's review against another edition
A smart read, which is difficult to concentrate on in the present moment.