Maybe you're happy, but I hope you're sad

[sovay]

I understand the entire point of this profile of 1980's Bennington is the writers who came out of it and that she herself went to the Catholic University of America, but by the end it really sounds like a Liz Hand novel.

After establishing that Norman Lindsay's Man and leopard-woman in a room (1900s–10s) which I first saw elsenet without sourcing was not the product of extractive AI, I particularly admire the naturally occurring gloves on the leopard-woman and I expect the next drawing in the sequence to have shown his dressing gown in shreds and no leopard-woman to be seen.

I am not any more pleased with this month after hearing that Joan Plowright just died.

Comments

[naraht]

I understand the entire point of this profile of 1980's Bennington is the writers who came out of it and that she herself went to the Catholic University of America, but by the end it really sounds like a Liz Hand novel.

By Lili Anolik. Because of course it is.

[gwynnega]

I didn't make it all the way through that Bennington profile, but yeah. (I'm currently reading Lili Anolik's book on Didion and Babitz.) The piece made me glad I opted to go to UCLA and live at home! I was terribly jealous of Bret Easton Ellis when Less Than Zero came out, because he's my age and also from the Valley, and I'd written a novel about me, my private school friends and rock'n'roll musician friends, but I couldn't get it published (though I had interest from a publisher at one point). Also, I went to school with Quintana Dunne (and we both went on a school trip to Greece in 1979)!

[selkie]

Wylding Hall always felt like something that could easily have stumbled upon younger, more-beautiful us, and the article was very Wylding Hall .

[theseatheseatheopensea]

After establishing that Norman Lindsay's Man and leopard-woman in a room (1900s–10s) which I first saw elsenet without sourcing was not the product of extractive AI, I particularly admire the naturally occurring gloves on the leopard-woman and I expect the next drawing in the sequence to have shown his dressing gown in shreds and no leopard-woman to be seen.

This is amazing--it could be one of those delightful five minute art fandoms next Yuletide!

[rachelmanija]

I understand the entire point of this profile of 1980's Bennington is the writers who came out of it and that she herself went to the Catholic University of America, but by the end it really sounds like a Liz Hand novel.

It TOTALLY does.

[nineweaving]

... by the end it really sounds like a Liz Hand novel.

It's smugger than Liz Hand. Only one of them would have made it to graduation, with terrible and beautiful psychic wounds.

I particularly admire the naturally occurring gloves on the leopard-woman and I expect the next drawing in the sequence to have shown his dressing gown in shreds and no leopard-woman to be seen.

Mraow.

I am not any more pleased with this month after hearing that Joan Plowright just died.

Damn.

I want to have Orson Welles's Moby-Dick, with Plowright as Pip.

Nine

[alexxkay]

Hrm. I wonder if there's any connection between that piece and Caress of the Sphinx, from a decade or so earlier?

[I know that painting because it features prominently in Greg Egan's short story "The Caress".]

[oracne]

RIP Joan Plowright.

[rushthatspeaks]

I'm glad the article sounds like a Liz Hand story, but I cannot trust Lili Anolik on anything after having encountered her readings of Eve Babitz, which are simply unforgivable. I understand the urge to compare Babitz to Didion, the major two female writers about L. A. in that specific time, but the thing is that Didion is part and parcel of American Literature The Establishment, sort of person who published in the New Yorker, and Babitz is something far wilder and stranger.

I think of Didion when I think of, like, oh fuck, this referent has changed meaning since I would last have used it, but Alice Munroe before we knew the truth, that specific public image. The writers I compare Babitz to are Le Guin, Francesca Lia Block, and Colette.

I gave your mother Eve Babitz for Christmas this year. I would never voluntarily purchase Didion for anybody.

If I had not been reading a library copy of the Anolik book on Babitz and Didion, it might have lost a couple of pages from sheer wrath.

So I'm glad she can paint a picture, but I wouldn't swear it has any relation to anything a reasonable person would accept as fact.