Home Land by Sam Lipsyte (04/10)

Sam Lipsyte hates conjunctions, convention. Likes startling juxtapositions, mordant observations. Is clever, facile. Isn't really very funny.

Labyrinthes by Jorge Luis Borges (04/10)

"Abulcasim's memory was a mirror of intimate cowardices...the moon of Bengal is not the same as the moon of Yemen, but it may be described in the same words" (151).

"Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships" (213-4).

"Can an author create characters superior to himself? I would say no and in that negation include both the intellectual and the moral" (215).

Minotaur symmetries.

Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin (04/10)

"Dear Collector: We hate you. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities.

"You do not know what you are missing by your microscopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of aspects which are the fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood.

"If you nourished your sexual life with all the excitements and adventures which love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent man in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine.

"How much do you lose by this periscope at the tip of your sex, when you could enjoy a harem of distinct and never-repeated wonders? No two hairs alike, but you will not let us waste words on a description of hair; no two odors, but if we expand on this you cry Cut the poetry. No two skins with the same texture, and never the same light, temperature, shadows, never the same gesture; for a lover, when he is aroused by true love, can run the gamut of centuries of love lore. What a range, what changes of age, what variations of maturity and innocence, perversity and art..." (xiii-xiv)

In sex, as in most things, there are few greater sins than a failure of imagination.

Erotica demands imaginative exercise while porn, most porn, supplants it.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (04/10)

Asks Commentary, "why can't we just depose the Islamic regime?"

Ms. Satrapi is a very appealing lady, in her youth for who she was and today for how she represents it.

Women by Charles Bukowski (04/10)

The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd.

I was being catered to as if I was an invalid. Which I was.

"Why can't you be decent to people?" she asked.

"Fear," I said.

"Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Bach, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart, People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.

"I took my choice, I raised the fifth of vodka and drank it straight. The Russians knew something." (177)

"I was a bush-league de Sade, without his intellect" (236).