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eb00kie's review
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
I read Angela Carter as one reads Twitter, a platform where podcasters of interest still post interesting insights whilst surrounded by omnipresent piles of worthless trash.
There are three parts to the book:
1) An analysis of pornography in relation to society and women
2) A fantastic literary analysis of Sade's fiction. With summaries.
3) A sort of psychoanalysis of Sade through his work and characters
Angela Carter's work (to date: two books read, a third dnf'd) is one of the few if not the only author for which I use the word "trash" and I want to stop, ok? "Trash" is dismissive. I want to read books where every fifth page on average isn't a surprise cow pie. If I were to narrow it down, this is what's happening:
She has a worldview in her head, that is seldom explicit, and what comes out of it is at times absolutely fascinating, so that when something else comes out that is shallow, inaccurate, demonstrably incorrect, it infuriates me that the two coexist in the same book. I find it hard to read her rhetoric, so I annotate, and often go back, to put together all the bits of her argument, which often make sense retrospecively and with a healthy dose of asking "what if this proposition is false" and checking for contradictions. But I persevere.
This is probably the most annotated book I have.
It infuriates me that I have a book that pretends to do analysis, where the author calls sadism <i>an unnatural obsession with pain.</i> (there are some other bits).
- Primarily, because I find sweeping statements lazy (in a <b>book of analysis</b> I find them insulting),
- secondarily because "unnatural" is a term that has been and is being used to dehumanise or marginalise behaviours that turned out to be based in a pretty average psychology (see Freud on women's 'natural' place in society). What follows 'Unnatural' is we invalidate the data point and stop asking questions and that is lazy at best and hurting others, to say the least
- thirdly because the BDSM community, wherever they are, is large enough to be statistically relevant, so. This book is rude at a community level
I get she didn't have as much internet as we do, but this book is four parts cool and one part 'Sade is scared and angry at mommy because Freud said so'. Which. No. You can't do 60% of the book highlighting the parallelism, the fantastic themes and motifs and allegories in the Justine/Juliette books and then state this, like throwing pig shit on a Faberge egg.
Is that oversimplifying for the sake of humor? Sure, but not by much. Would recommend doing yourself a favour and stopping at 81%.
There are three parts to the book:
1) An analysis of pornography in relation to society and women
2) A fantastic literary analysis of Sade's fiction. With summaries.
3) A sort of psychoanalysis of Sade through his work and characters
Angela Carter's work (to date: two books read, a third dnf'd) is one of the few if not the only author for which I use the word "trash" and I want to stop, ok? "Trash" is dismissive. I want to read books where every fifth page on average isn't a surprise cow pie. If I were to narrow it down, this is what's happening:
She has a worldview in her head, that is seldom explicit, and what comes out of it is at times absolutely fascinating, so that when something else comes out that is shallow, inaccurate, demonstrably incorrect, it infuriates me that the two coexist in the same book. I find it hard to read her rhetoric, so I annotate, and often go back, to put together all the bits of her argument, which often make sense retrospecively and with a healthy dose of asking "what if this proposition is false" and checking for contradictions. But I persevere.
This is probably the most annotated book I have.
It infuriates me that I have a book that pretends to do analysis, where the author calls sadism <i>an unnatural obsession with pain.</i> (there are some other bits).
- Primarily, because I find sweeping statements lazy (in a <b>book of analysis</b> I find them insulting),
- secondarily because "unnatural" is a term that has been and is being used to dehumanise or marginalise behaviours that turned out to be based in a pretty average psychology (see Freud on women's 'natural' place in society). What follows 'Unnatural' is we invalidate the data point and stop asking questions and that is lazy at best and hurting others, to say the least
- thirdly because the BDSM community, wherever they are, is large enough to be statistically relevant, so. This book is rude at a community level
I get she didn't have as much internet as we do, but this book is four parts cool and one part 'Sade is scared and angry at mommy because Freud said so'. Which. No. You can't do 60% of the book highlighting the parallelism, the fantastic themes and motifs and allegories in the Justine/Juliette books and then state this, like throwing pig shit on a Faberge egg.
Is that oversimplifying for the sake of humor? Sure, but not by much. Would recommend doing yourself a favour and stopping at 81%.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Rape, Sexual violence, and Excrement
Moderate: Incest
crissy_estev's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
emannuelk's review against another edition
3.0
A nota desse deve ser, em grande parte, ignorada. Ela indica mais o quão essa leitura me será útil no projeto de doutorado que venho bolando. Para quem se interessa por Sade ou pela questão da pornografia, vale a pena. Mas, como não são exatamente as coisas que pretendo pesquisar, não podia dar uma nota maior.
sltah's review against another edition
5.0
See, Sade to me is someone the analyses of whom I enjoy far more than their actual work… Angela Carter also brought this up in that Sade's depiction of sex is of the senses and not sentiments and that he himself is puritanically terrified of the sentimental.
lindseywyen's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
goofy_ruthie's review against another edition
fast-paced
3.5
not sure how i feel about this, i think i am sympathetic to the argument