Books I read in 2010

December 31st, 2010, 15:02 | 7 comments

Amigos! It’s time for my annual summing up of books I read during the year. As you can see on the chart above (click for larger size), my new interest for Japan is reflected in my choice of books – 7 out of 17 novels have Japanese authors. I’ve also continued my research of sexualities, as can be seen in the non-fiction department, as well as read some autobiographies by interesting people – Michael Davidson’s The World, the Flesh and Myself being the most inspiring one.

I usually have one “discovery” every year, meaning one author whom I become so obsessed with that I want to read everything by him or her, someone who stays with you for a very long time. They have been Camille Paglia, Joe Keenan, Witold Gombrowicz, Tennessee Williams, Joe Orton, Plato.

This year’s discovery was Yukio Mishima, without doubt. He’s up there with Gombrowicz. I’m currently reading The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, but that one will feature on next year’s chart since I haven’t finished it yet.

Thanks dear friends for this year. I’m going out shopping for our improvised Neukölln “Silvester” dinner now. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Category: English, Personal
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Japanese Cinema: 3x Osamu Tezuka

December 31st, 2010, 11:56 | No comments

The Japanese “god of manga” Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989) is most famous for creating Atom, or Astro Boy as he was called in the US, a 1950s manga cum tv series. I still haven’t made his acquaintance. Instead, I watched these three animated movies:

  • 1980: Phoenix 2772
  • 1984: Bagi
  • 2001: Metropolis

Of course, the 2010 Metropolis was only based on Tezuka’s comic, which he made in 1949. I enjoyed the film though, it was very bombastic.

The Phoenix 2772 didn’t leave much impression (I was probably in the wrong mood), but Bagi really did. It’s a beautiful story about a genetically manipulated cat, who escaped a lab and lives with a boy. I think you got to see it for yourselves. Go to 2:50 for some beautiful and hot cat/boy-love:

I also wanted to see Princess Knight (Ribon no Kishi) because of its gender-bending qualities, but didn’t manage to get hold of the movie.

Category: Culture, English, Japan
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Japanese Cinema: 4x Kenji Mizoguchi

December 30th, 2010, 13:16 | 2 comments

The Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi (1898-1956) made many films that dealt with women and their problems. He has therefore been dubbed “the feminist director.” I saw four of his films:

  • 1951: Miss Oyu (お遊さま – Oyū-sama)
  • 1952: The Life of Oharu (西鶴一代女 – Saikaku ichidai onna)
  • 1953: Ugetsu aka Tales of Moonlight and Rain (雨月物語 – Ugetsu monogatari)
  • 1956: Street of Shame (赤線地帯 – Akasen chitai)

Unfortunately, this wasn’t my cup of tea. Wikipedia describes his style this way:

Mizoguchi’s films have an aesthetic that is reminiscent of Japanese art. He favoured long takes and rich, painterly mise-en-scene, seldom with the Western-favoured device of the close-up; a typical shot can take a few minutes, and places emphasis on lighting and placement (…)

Although it was fun to watch a movie based on a short story by Ihara Saikaku (The Life of Oharu), the films mostly bored me – with one exception: Street of Shame. That movie is about the women in a brothel in a time when the city discusses a ban on prostitution. I found it engaging and surprisingly up-to-date, since prostitution was banned in Sweden in 1999.

Category: Culture, English, Japan
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John Valentine: Puppies

December 30th, 2010, 9:52 | No comments

So I finally got around to read this gay classic! I remember seeing the Gay Men’s Press edition (pictured here) on the shelves of my local gay bookshop Rosa Rummet in Stockholm back in 1995, wondering what it was.

Puppies is a collection of diary entries where the author shares his sexual experiences, mostly from the 1960s and 1970s, with “puppies” – that is, young men. John Valentine was the pen name of Chester Anderson (1932-1991), an American underground publicist, and the book was originally published in 1978 by Entwhistle Books.

It’s an amusing read, if dense – you can only take that much pre-condom sex per day. Use Puppies as a rabbit hole that lets you peek into the happy and uncomplicated sex lives of gay men before aids, a bit like Gay Sex in the 70s.

Of course, that documentary was about gay men doing it with other gay men. Valentine mostly does it with straight boys and men, in the age range “from puberty to around (but very youthful) 35.” Oops! Gay men were so honest in those days! (The quote is from a journal entry in 1967, when Valentine was 35 himself.)

Valentine writes:

Aside from my youngest puppy, a precocious 12-year-old pool lounger (son of a friend of the boss) at the Travellers Motel who was already a two-year carnal veteran, and the jocularly horny 14-year-old son of a guest at the motel, the spring-flesh meadow I’ve browsed upon has been unfailingly graced with pubic hair. Within this age range, the younger, generally, the better. A flawless 21-year-old can retroactively shade a whole week with anticipation, a 17-year-old can restore my faith in nameless wonders I’ve not known I’d lost faith in, gold vibrating in my memory, while a 15-year-old w’d constitute a major health hazard. (p. 40 – October 9, 1967)

It’s poetry. And once again, I’m reminded of a verse by Strato from Daryl Hine’s translations of The Greek Anthology:

A twelve-year-old looks fetching in his prime,
Thirteen’s an even more beguiling time.
That lusty bloom blows sweeter at fourteen;
Sexier yet a boy just turned fifteen.
The sixteenth year seems perfectly divine,
And seventeen is Jove’s tidbit, not mine.
But if you fall for older fellows, that
Suggests child’s play no more but tit-for-tat.

(Strato IV, in Puerilities, p. 3)

Almost a genre, this “ode to the (teen) ages,” or what shall we call it. More examples, anyone?

The book is full of detailed descriptions of Valentine’s sexual encounters, but more than them, I liked his elaborations on sexuality and attraction, like here:

I’m interested in boys, not men. Football players & weight lifters, Clark Gables & Yul Brynners, leave me erotically unconcerned. Youth is the cosmetic that turns male flesh to my obsession. Craggily handsome athletes or body builders, no; but boyish ones can swell my fantasies until I’ve no spare mind for non-erotic thought & no will but desire to govern me. (p. 39 – October 9th, 1967)

He continues:

Boys. Preferably beautiful boys, but more essentially boys than beauty. Youth is most of my aesthetic. All my life I’ve known better than to become a teacher.

I was also captivated by the passages where he encounters exceptional beauty – always a mesmerizing theme:

Blake inspires instant tender Blakelust in everyone he meets – I saw this happen when visitors passed through – and no one who can sense this can resist it. All of his beauties are meant to be touched, and he likes to be touched. He is awesomely desirable & radiates desire. I have no way to describe any of this adequately to anyone who can’t experience it. The melting beauty of a boy is hard for a really heterosexual man to perceive or admit: it’s so much more than visual, but eyes are all a straight man dares to use. Lines, curves, handscapes of flesh more exquisite than any female body shows, more graceful & alive, the strength of his beauty – and more than a body for mine to glorify, but a mind of equal beauty wanting always to be taught, to be to my mind what his body is to mine … (p. 89 – April 16, 1968)

There are similarities to Michael Davidson, although Puppies doesn’t come close to Davidson’s Some Boys. Not least, Davidson has a way with words that makes you gasp. Puppies is not about life and death; it lacks the passion of Some Boys. Still, it’s a classic. Three out of five.

Was this a review? No. It was an entry in my hupomnemata.

Category: Culture, English
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Det finns en gräns, Google

December 29th, 2010, 12:29 | No comments

Ännu en påminnelse om att jag måste lämna Google tids nog, det är ju bara så smidigt att använda att jag låter det bero ett tag till …

I vilket fall, detta är typ första gången jag läser annonserna som visas intill ens mejlväxling. Och vad läser jag:

Så långt har det gått alltså. Jag korresponderar med vänner om våra liv och intill oss står tre månglare och erbjuder sina terapitjänster. Jag bara: What?! Jag tror inte att jag till fullo fattat vad Adsense egentligen är.

Category: Personal, Politics, Swedish
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Pier Paolo Pasolini: Amado Mio

December 23rd, 2010, 22:28 | 1 comment

Today I read the Swedish translation of one of Pasolini’s early novels: Amado Mio. Yes, it’s so short you can read it in a day – I finished it in three hours. What a contrast to Petrolio, which I left unread after a few tries.

It’s yet another wonderful story in the genre The Beautiful Boy as Destroyer, as Camille Paglia calls it. It’s set on the Italian countryside after WW2 (Pasolini wrote the manuscript in 1948). All villages are full of boys – beautiful and naughty boys who “do it” several times a day. The protagonist Desiderio meets the young farmer boy Benito, whom he names Iasís and whose beauty he becomes obsessed with.

I love the way Pasolini describes beauty, I love his passion and the way he makes beauty become a matter of life and death – as it is and should be! I wish I could quote, but that would be in Swedish.

Amado Mio is a must-read for any true aesthete and most of my loyal readers. The newly published Swedish edition is really beautiful too (and printed in only 500 numbered copies – I got #183), so it will look great in your reference library on beauty (don’t tell me you don’t have one!).

Category: Culture, English
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Prata inte om det

December 23rd, 2010, 11:00 | No comments

Är mycket imponerad av Johanna Koljonens makt i svenska media. Jag läste hennes twittrande från Berlin, och när jag nu är i Sverige hittar jag stora Prata om det-artiklar i flera tidningar. Men samtliga jag läst (finns ingen anledning att nämna vilka, jag är inte ute efter polemik här, i synnerhet inte i fråga om så personliga grejer) handlar om något annat än vad som jag uppfattade som Johannas ursprungstanke. Den faktaruta som ramade in texten i två av tidningarna jag läste är talande:

I spåren av misstron mot kvinnorna som anmält Wikileaks Julian Assange…

Är det bara jag som uppfattar formuleringen som att Prata om det-initiativet ställer sig på kvinnornas sida? Johannas första text i DN uppfattade jag som mer neutral, även om bara det faktum att ämnet togs upp förstås kan ses som ett statement i sig.

Johannas text hade också en finess som de andra texterna jag läst saknar. De har uteslutande handlat om att skribenten varit med om något obehagligt, och den underförstådda kontentan – som uttrycks fegt mellan raderna – är att detta är en katastrof, att varje beröring som inte känns rätt är fel. De gråzoner som initiativet säger sig vilja prata om existerar inte. En skribent avslutade sin text så här:

En gång försökte jag förklara att penetrationen gjorde ont, att jag skulle föredra om vi gjorde något annat. Man kan söka hjälp för sånt, sa han.

Tadam! Här finns inte någon vilja att prata om det. Det där sättet att formulera sig uppmanar oss i stället att skaka upprört på huvudet, vifta indignerat med pekfingret och säga: “Fyyy!!!”

Tja, det var min spontana kommentar. Jag avstår helt från länkar den här gången och jag har faktiskt inte ens varit inne på Prata om det-sajten – den här posten var mer for the record. Man måste välja vad man lägger sin energi på, och just nu ska jag lägga den på att läsa ut den svenska översättningen av Pasolinis Amado Mio.

Category: Politics, Swedish
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4 months of Japanese studies – back on the horseback!

December 19th, 2010, 17:18 | 1 comment

I’m one day late with this post – yesterday (18 December 2010) marked four months of Japanese studies for me.

I’m happy to inform you that I studied more during my fourth month than during my third. I’m now on chapter 9 in Japanese From Zero 3, and I’ve also studied from Let’s Learn Kanji, and increased the frequency of my tutor visits from every second week to once a week.

It’s hard to learn Japanese. Partly because what you learn is basically two things: Speaking and writing. And they are not as closely connected as in the Indo-European and Uralic languages that I’ve studied before. (Japanese is a Japonic language, hm, obviously…) This means that when I learn kanji, which is quite time consuming (but also fun and sort of relaxing in a meditative way), I don’t make any progress in the grammar and speaking department.

Right now I’m in a very snowy Sweden for my Christmas holiday.

Berlin was snowy too: The airport train was 55 minutes late, so I had to take a taxi to the airport, only to find out that my flight was delayed three hours. Didn’t matter, the taxi driver was a sweet and fat old man from the former GDR who was divorced and therefore would spend his Christmas in the company of André Rieu, or at least his cd’s. He praised the old East German Wartburg automobile and an former East German winter tire factory that is still around and apparently the best.

Since I travel luggage free, I couldn’t bring my thick text books. This means I’m taking a break from Japanese From Zero, and instead go through Genki I from start on my sweet little companion Samsung N310. (I didn’t mind the delay at all, since it made me conquer two Genki chapters!) Instinctively, I prefer Genki to Japanese From Zero. It feels more serious, it’s not cluttered with typos and I’ve heard it’s used at universities. However, it is not from zero, and it contains lots of “pair work” and “class activities” that are not suitable for self studies. And it’s not from zero. So I must say Japanese From Zero has suited me pretty well after all.

Ok, now we’re apparently about to go out and play in the snow a bit, me and my host.

Category: English, Japan
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