Book Acquired Recently: James Tiptree, Jr.’s Her Smoke Rose Up Forever

Tiptree, James Jr. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. San Francisco: Tachyon, 2004.

Bought at amazon.com

I read one of Tiptree’s short stories, “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” about a year ago and loved it, and since then I’ve been looking for her (James Tiptree, Jr. is a pseudonym for Alice Sheldon) books in bookstores. Salt Lake City has a fantastic bookstore scene–the best I’ve encountered outside of New York City–but it lacks in the science fiction (SF) department, so I finally broke down and ordered the book online. I am only two stories in thus far, but the second story, “The Screwfly Solution,” is immediately one of my favorite SF stories. Like “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?,” it manages to communicate a strong feminist message without being pedantic. The epidemic of femicide that breaks out as a result of Christian fundamentalism is not that far-fetched. It is a slight extension of the misogyny portrayed in texts such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which already occurs in places such as Iran and in polygamist Mormon sects in rural Utah (see Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven for more on this topic).

New Bookends

Here is a pair of new bookends that I bought at a local vintage shop this past Friday. I love their languid elegance.

The book being held up by the top bookend is Samuel R. Delany’s new novel, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, which I am super-excited to read. I read an excerpt last summer that was fantastic–beautiful language, vivid characters, unabashed sexuality.

Blogging Again.

Welcome to my new blog! I’ve made several previous attempts at blogging that have been derailed for various reasons. The most recent, and most successful, which died due to technical difficulties, is here: http://www.anewyorkerinexile.blogspot.com/. But I’m paying for this one, and one would hope that this factor will give me extra motivation. This summer my goal is to write some every day, whether I am writing here, or writing literary criticism, or writing poetry, or fiction, whatever. The blog will focus primarily on literary topics, but may also address sports (especially now, with the Mets still contending in the National League East and the Rangers in the Eastern Conference Final of the Stanley Cup playoffs) and other topics.

“I celebrate myself, / And what I assume you shall assume, / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

–Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” (1855)