BARE: Recent Comments

Comment on Rough enough for love

2010-07-27T20:05:52Z

Thank you for writing. I like how you said you now regard people's pasts with a "certain calm." I think that's the advantage to being older and to having a past myself. You made me think of verse from an Antonio Machado poem. In the translation by Robert Bly, it goes something like:

Last night I dreamt -- marvelous error! --
that I had a beehive here inside my heart
and the golden bees were making
white combs and sweet honey
from my old failures.

I can't say I'm very Christian in my viewpoint, but I think I try to keep in mind "my old failures" when I think about judging others.

And please forgive me for taking so long to respond -- I just now figured out how to use my blog "reply" button.

Comment on Syphilis in literature

2010-07-27T19:57:35Z

I just figured out how to use the "reply" button on my blog, and I hope you will forgive my tardy thank you for providing the quotation from Candide. I read it when I was in a college French class, and I think all of this was lost on me at the time. Glad to be older now, and to understand. Thanks for writing.

Comment on Promiscuous

2010-07-27T19:49:11Z

Dear Shanna Germain,

I just -- embarassingly -- learned how to use the "reply" button for comments -- I've been meaning to thank you for this comment, and for the review you wrote years ago of Swimming Sweet Arrow. I always felt that you really understood Vangie and what I was trying to do in that book, and as a result I've always felt heard by you.

Forgive me for taking so long to respond, and thank you again for being the ideal reader.

Maureen

Comment on More promiscuity

2010-07-27T19:36:08Z

Forgive me for taking so long to reply -- I finally discovered the "reply" option on my blog! Embarassing.

But in the weeks since you wrote, your words have meant a great deal to me. I've sometimes felt out on a limb with this book, and it matters to me that you found the book's depiction of women's sexuality credible and powerful. Makes me feel less alone. And that you say attraction is "confounding" -- I like that. Thanks for writing.

Comment on Pee of a toad

2010-07-27T19:28:25Z

It takes you by surprise, doesn't it? It sounds like your toad was perfectly healthy.

Comment on Pee of a toad

2010-07-27T17:47:19Z

I rescued a toad from the grated window well at my home yesterday. I was carrying it to the garden (wearing a glove) and suddenly the toad began leaking a copious amount of fluid! I thought perhaps that the toad had become sickly while trapped in the window well but now I know....it peed on me!

Comment on Rough enough for love

2010-06-29T21:20:23Z

Hmmm...I've found that as I've gotten older, a certain calm has enveloped me in regards to other people's pasts. THIEF has reinforced that attitude for me. People have baggage, perceived baggage anyway, and none of us are qualified to judge anyone else's actions unless they harm us personally or someone we care about. I believe this book illustrates that point nicely. If a victim can forgive a rapist, can't we all forgive each other our petty differences? If anyone reading this buys into the Christian viewpoint, then the phrase: "Hate the sin, love the sinner" should hold some meaning. In any regard, the world needs books like THIEF to remind us that we're human beings...imperfect at best, but lovable despite it.

Comment on More promiscuity

2010-06-17T11:40:02Z

I have just read your book Thief. Picked it up in a London bookshop having no idea of reviews etc. I thought it was a very good book and very honest and real about women's sexuality - or at least it resonated with my own. Thee are parts so truthful - about the experiences Suzanne does not share with Breville, her masturbation, fantasies etc they are surprising to see in print. Although I don't share all the main charcter's experiences, her attraction to her lovers and relatipnship to sex, to the animal sexual side - is powerful. To relate the whole thing to promiscuity is to stare down the moral lense - the reality is that often our sexual attractions are confounding, powerful and deep, like a swim through the water. One of the most interesting books I have read in ages. Thanks.

Comment on Syphilis in literature

2010-04-12T19:37:19Z

Here is the Voltaire quote from Candide.

There is a famous piece of literary epidemiology in Voltaire’s ‘Candide’ tracing the trail of syphilis through a complicated network of intimate relationships.

Writing in the mid-1700s, Voltaire describes this scene: Speaking to the naïve young Candide is his old mentor, the ever-optimistic philosopher-tutor Dr. Pangloss, returned after many years, now in a much-diminished state, having lost his health, his wealth, and everything else, including an eye and an ear and most of his teeth. Candide inquires about his old idol’s dramatic transformation and gets this response:
“O my dear Candide, you must remember Pacquette, that pretty wench, who waited on our noble Baroness; in her arms I tasted the pleasures of Paradise, which produced these Hell torments with which you see me devoured. She was infected with an ailment, and perhaps has since died of it; she received this present of a learned Franciscan, who derived it from the fountainhead; he was indebted for it to an old countess, who had it of a captain of horse, who had it of a marchioness, who had it of a page, the page had it of a Jesuit, who, during his novitiate, had it in a direct line from one of the fellow adventurers of Christopher Columbus; for my part I shall give it to nobody, I am a dying man."
"O sage Pangloss," cried Candide, "what a strange genealogy is this! Is not the devil the root of it?"
"Not at all," replied the great man, "it was a thing unavoidable, a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not caught in an island in America this disease, which contaminates the source of generation, and frequently impedes propagation itself, and is evidently opposed to the great end of nature, we should have had neither chocolate nor cochineal . It is also to be observed, that, even to the present time, in this continent of ours, this malady, like our religious controversies, is peculiar to ourselves. The Turks, the Indians, the Persians, the Chinese, the Siamese, and the Japanese are entirely unacquainted with it; but there is a sufficing reason for them to know it in a few centuries. In the meantime, it is making prodigious havoc among us, especially in those armies composed of well disciplined hirelings, who determine the fate of nations; for we may safely affirm, that, when an army of thirty thousand men engages another equal in size, there are about twenty thousand infected with syphilis on each side."
"Very surprising, indeed," said Candide, "but you must get cured. Lord help me, how can I?" said Pangloss. "My dear friend, I have not a penny in the world; and you know one cannot be bled or have an enema without money."

Comment on Promiscuous

2010-04-02T23:59:14Z

"The next word in the dictionary after promiscuous is promise, and that's the word I choose to apply to my women characters."

I loved this bit... so very true and that's often how I see my characters too. Lovely.