Teaching Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir Monday, Jan 21 2008 

books and teaching thisgaudygildedstage 7:21 pm

Borrowed TimeI’m not sure I can do this. I’ve wanted to teach Paul Monette‘s Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir or Becoming a Man: Half a Life’s Story but have always been too afraid to do so. Until now. My Lesbian & Gay Lit class is starting Borrowed Time for Wednesday’s class. I’m not sure I can do it.
Borrowed Time is Monette’s chronicle of his relationship with Roger Horowitz, his partner of ten years, as Roger is first diagnosed with and then dying of AIDS. It’s one of the most important accounts of the AIDS crisis during the 1980s, a classic text of Lesbian & Gay Literature.

I’ve taught portions of Monette’s last collection of non-fiction essays, Last Watch of the Night: Essays Too Personal and Otherwise a couple of times, but this is my first time teaching Borrowed Time. In fact, I’ve never been able to finish Borrowed Time — it’s just so intensely tragic. One of the essays in Last Watch of the Night, “3275,” which is the plot number of Monette’s grave site with Roger, ends with a call to arms:

We queers on Revelation hill, tucking our skirts about us so as not to touch our Mormon neighbors, died of the greed of power, because we were expendable. If you mean to visit any of us, it had better be to make you strong to fight that power. Take you languor and easy tears somewhere else. Above all, don’t pretty us up. Tell yourself: None of this ever had to happen. And then go make it stop, with whatever breath you have left. Grief is a sword, or it is nothing. (115)

I can’t help but approach Borrowed Time with this passage in my mind. Reading it has always felt so devastating that I can’t help but cry through parts of it. It’s difficult for me to feel angry about the losses the gay community has suffered from AIDS and all too easy to feel sad and crushed by them. I’ve never known anyone personally who died of AIDS, so maybe that’s kept me from anger.

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Atonement: A Review Sunday, Jan 20 2008 

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In preparation for the announcement of this year’s Oscar nominees on Tuesday, PJ and I saw Atonement today. As with 2005’s Pride and Prejudice, director Joe Wright has crafted a beautiful adaptation of a much loved novel. This time, Keira Knightley, is joined by James McAvoy, Brenda Blethyn, and Vanessa Redgrave. Here’s the trailer:

McAvoy plays Robbie Turner, the son of the housekeeper to the wealthy Tallis family. Having won a scholarship to school, Turner then went to Cambridge at the Tallises’s expense. While this beneficence is admirable, the family’s true colors come out when Robbie is accused of a terrible crime by Briony, the youngest Tallis daughter.

Briony is played by Saoirse Ronan, who does any amazing job as the precocious girl who mistakenly thinks she understands the adult relationships around her. The first act follows Briony’s rather fractured witnessing of three separate events, which leads her to conclude that Robbie is a “sex maniac,” as she tells another character. This conclusion leads to her accusation against him. Five years later, she has a completely different reading of these puzzle pieces, one that forces her to confront her previous actions and at least attempt to atone for them.

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Favorite Albums of 2007 Sunday, Jan 13 2008 

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I’ve spent the past week working like a dog. Classes have started, I have various service commitments, and I’m finishing up an essay for my colleagues to read for our departmental colloquium on Friday.

As I’ve worked, I’ve been listening to albums from last year. I’ve been struck by just how many I bought or received last year, at least fifteen. Listening to them all together — or at least one after the other — has also reminded me just how much I listened to this past year and how much I loved some of the musicians I heard for the first time, including such artists as Amy Lavere, Bright Eyes, Diana Damrau, Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, Paulo Nutini, and Feist, just to name the ones whose albums I have. If I listed artists whose singles or videos I liked, I’d be here for the rest of the afternoon!

One outcome of this past week has been identifying my five favorite albums of last year, which I’ll briefly write about here. Later, I hope to blog about my favorite tracks and videos too.

My favorite album of 2007 was Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. The album came out in England before it was officially released here in the U.S., so it feels like Winehouse has been around longer than she actually has been. I think this is a brilliant album that combines old school wind instruments and 50’s beats with twenty-first century lyrics. Winehouse has been in the news more for her lifestyle than for her music lately, but this album is too good to be forgotten — it deserves to be remembered regardless of where Winehouse goes from here. I reviewed the album when I first bought it; you can read my review here.

Number two on my list is Mika’s Life in Cartoon Motion. While Mika is still being cagey about his sexual orientation, this is nevertheless one of the gayest albums I’ve ever heard, which is what I love about it. This is pop music at its fluffy best. Surprisingly, perhaps, it’s his “gay” track, “Billy Brown,” that I like least on this album. His other songs are fun, entertaining, and interesting. I’ve seen him perform on Graham Norton’s BBC talk show a couple of times. He also looks like he would be fun to see live. I’ve also reviewed his album previously.

Rufus Wainwright’s recreation of Judy Garland’s famous and highly praised Carnegie Hall concert, Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall, is number three on my list. Let’s start with the obvious: despite what I say about Mika above, this has to be the gayest album ever recorded. To quote Molly Shannon’s SNL character, “I love it, I love it, I love it!” I’ve always been a bit of a Judy Garland queen, even though I’m a little young to be one. I attribute it to my parents’ refusal to watch any movie made after 1959 when I was a kid. Wainwright sings the same set list as Garland used in her concert, but also gives this music his own personality and artistry. He does kind of channel Garland, but he also “makes it his own,” to quote American Idol. It’s a great concert album, and Wainwright’s voice is perfect for most of these standards. My one objection is to his butchering of one of my favorite Garland songs, “Do It Again,” which he sings in the original key that Garland used. It’s a little too high for him, and I think the song loses something as a result. But just about every other track is a gem, so I’m willing to forgive this one misstep.

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One Down, 18 to Go Monday, Jan 7 2008 

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Today was the first day of winter quarter here at OU. I’m teaching two classes: Lesbian & Gay Literature and Restoration Literature, a graduate seminar. Both seemed to go well enough, but as usual I was way too manic. I tend to be overly hyper on the first day of the quarter. I don’t think that was much of a problem for the undergraduate class, but I feel sorry for my graduate students — I know I went way to fast through all sorts of random subjects. Oh well. Now I’m totally exhausted, which is probably not the best time to be blogging!

The weirdest part of the day was waking up to such warm weather. It was over 50 degrees when I woke up and just got hotter as the day went on. The high was near 70! In January! This, of course, created the problem of Ellis Hall being overheated — the heat was still on inside, and opening the windows didn’t cool it off all that much. I hate snow, so I’m not not entirely complaining, but it feels so odd to be so warm on the first day of winter quarter.

My classes meet from 1 to 3 and from 3 to 5 on Mondays and Wednesdays. Jumping from one to the other is also going to be weird. I’m pretty sure my brain doesn’t switch gears that quickly. It will be interesting to see how it goes. I’ll be having office hours on M and W mornings, so I’ll be at school all day these two days. Hopefully, I’ll learn to work well in my office.

In the gay lit class, we went over the syllabus and then watched the first episode of the British version of Queer as Folk. Several of them seemed to laugh a lot during it, so I think that’s a good sign. I’m having them write about what this episode says about contemporary gay culture — is it critiquing it or praising it. I definitely think it’s making a statement about these “men’s” lives, and I’ll be interested to see if my students agree.

I love the British series (and not just because everything is better in England). Unlike the American version, the British one doesn’t mind making its characters look bad at times. They each have strengths and weaknesses. That makes them more human. The American version seems more interested in being sexy and glamorous — kind of like The L Word, which I watch. But neither show is about real people in any sense of the phrase. The British Queer as Folk at least tries to ground its character in some sort of reality or identifiable human qualities. I would show the whole series to my class, but we don’t have time. Someday it would be great to do a Russell Davies class — QaF, Dr. Who, Torchwood, and Bob and Rose.

My graduate students were pretty much forced to listen to me ramble for two hours. We talked a bit about Steven Zwicker’s 2006 article, “Is There Really Such a Think as Restoration Literature?”. We also talked about a little of the historical background to the period. And we discussed the highlights of their assigned reading, a chapter from Judith Bennett’s History Matters. Almost every one of them contributed to the class’s conversation, so that was good. But I talked way too much and felt like I was all over the place despite the fact that I had planned out what I was going to talk about before hand. Oh well. I’ll calm down next time I’m sure.

I’m looking forward to the quarter. Both classes should be a lot of fun. We’re definitely studying interesting texts in each. For Wednesday we’re watching a documentary in gay lit — Gay Sex in the 70s— and starting a discussion of Milton in the grad class. So, I guess a lot of nudity in both classes!

 

New Year’s Day Hike Wednesday, Jan 2 2008 

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In addition to eating black-eyed peas and ham, going for a hike in the ridges above Athens has become one of PJ’s and my New Year’s Day traditions. Our friends M and CJ have hosted the hike for three years now. I feel a little bad for them; the problem with starting a tradition is that people expect you to continue it every year no matter what. This year they got home from their holiday travels on Year’s Eve, which meant they had a lot to do before everyone started arriving at their house less than 12 hours later!

The hike seems to grow a little larger each year. This we we gathered at M & CJ’s house around 10:30. We then took a small trail up from their back yard to the Rockhouse Trail. We followed it around to the Athens trail and the took the Paw Paw trail back toward their house. Here’s a map of the trail system:

Athens Trails

You can find out more about the trails by looking at the Athens Parks and Recreation Trails page or Athens Cycle Path website. The latter page even has recent descriptions of the trail conditions. We basically hiked on the yellow and pink trails in the bottom left-hand corner of the map.

I’ll include a few of the pictures I took after the jump ….

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Planning a Restoration Lit Graduate Seminar Sunday, Dec 30 2007 

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Our winter quarter starts a week from Monday. In addition to muhy5 course on Lesbian & Gay lit, I’ll be teaching a graduate seminar on Restoration literature (1660-1688). I’m really looking forward to it — I’ve never taught a graduate class just on this period.

When I started thinking about the class, I immediately wanted to organize it around a chapter from Judith Bennett‘s new book, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism. Most of the book is more suited to historians, but the chapter on “Patriarchal Equilibrium” will offer us an interesting way into the literary texts that we’ll be studying. It discusses definitions of patriarchy and talks about a model for analyzing patriarchal structures from a feminist point of view.

After I chose the theme, historicizing patriarchy, I had to start choosing literary texts, of course. I especially want to introduce my students to female poets in the period. I also decided to order Blackwell’s anthology of Restoration drama, which is kind of expensive. Due to the cost, I quickly decided that I would need to assign as much as possible from that text in order to justify the expense. It feels a little weird to let the book order dictate the reading list, but in many ways that happens all the time so it’s nothing really new. Originally I had thought about ordering no textbooks and having the class just read everything online, but I was quickly convinced not to do that by PJ and other colleagues — all of whom thought I was crazy.

I also made another momentous decision: to start with Milton‘s Paradise Lost. I’m hoping that this will set up the patriarchal tradition for us, even if Milton wasn’t exactly a typical patriarch (or at least he wasn’t typical of some Restoration political theory that equated the family patriarch with the national one, the king). In order to make room on the syllabus for other things, I ended up asking my students to read part of the poem (along with the Bennett chapter) before the class started. We’ll therefore be jumping into the poem right away.

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Can We Stop Talking about Religion Now? … It’s Christmas! Saturday, Dec 29 2007 

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The title for this post comes from My So-Called Life. PJ and I have been watching the series again on dvd. Today we watched the Christmas episode. Early on, Danielle (the main character’s younger sister, who has become my favorite character this time around) is tired of her family talking about whether they believe in God and why they don’t go to church (a conversation instigated by Angela) so she asks, “Can we stop talking about religion now? … It’s Christmas!” In a sense, this statement ironically sums up the episode’s commentary about the holiday: that it’s not really about church-based religion but should instead be about people learning to really care about their fellow human beings (in this case, homeless and abused teens, lonesome neighbors, etc.). Or something like that.

I started blogging so I could keep track of my thoughts and impressions on various aspects of my life — movies, books, teaching, travel, etc. This Christmas was quite a bit different from years past, so I definitely think it warrants a brief commemoration. It was so much better than last year, the worst Christmas ever, though I didn’t write about it in those terms at the time, which raises an interesting question about the ethics of blogging that I should write about at some point.

I’ve always thought that Christmas was just for kids — the presents, the cookies, Santa Claus, bad t.v. specials, etc. The transition from me being excited about Christmas to my little sister being excited (she’s 9 years younger than me) was an easy one. Once we both grew up, the holiday didn’t seem very special. Now that I’m in my early late thirties, I can’t say that I find Christmas all that exciting. On the one hand, I hate traveling in the Christmas season. All the hustle and bustle, combined with everyone else’s travel stress, doesn’t appeal to me at all. And I’m at a point in my life when I want to be in my home with my loved one at Christmas.

On the other hand, the whole presents thing is overrated. I’m not particularly good at buying people great presents, and I usually have no idea what I’d like to receive on Christmas morning, though that doesn’t stop me from being vaguely disappointed anyway. The best gift, the truest gift, is the companionship and love I share with PJ every day — nothing in a box is ever really going to compare with that. And while presents are really supposed to be expressions of love and affection, in reality there are other kinds of expressions that I appreciate and crave much more.

Writing about presents reminds me of a great clip from John Waters’ Female Trouble that I ran across this week:

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The Frick, the Whitney, and the Morgan Thursday, Dec 27 2007 

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While in NYC earlier this month, PJ and I visited three art museums: the Frick Collection, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Morgan Library and Museum. This was our first time to visit each museum. I enjoyed all three.

The Frick Collection

The Frick Collection was founded by Henry Clay Frick, who bequeathed his Manhattan residence and many of his works of art to create a public museum for the display and study of the fine arts. It has a premier collection of paintings by seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century masters.

I loved several of the works here. Among my favorites was John Constable’s 1826 painting, Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Garden:

John Constable

As the audio guide notes, this painting obviously relates the medieval cathedral to the equally magnificent trees in the foreground, creating a statement about religion and nature. In this case, the two go hand in hand. The brightness of the cathedral framed by the darker colors of the trees draws the viewer’s eye. The grandness of the cathedral and the garden dwarf the figures in the left foreground, the bishop and his family. This painting shows a world of harmony and order, but the scene’s peaceful ease is perhaps undermined by the storm clouds in the distance. It’s a great example of English Romanticism.

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New York Theater 2007: Reviews Saturday, Dec 22 2007 

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In addition to August: Osage County, PJ and I saw three other plays while we were in NYC this month: Things We Want, The Seafarer, and Spring Awakening. Here is a brief review of each play.

Thnigs We Want We saw Things We Want on the first evening we were in NY. It’s playing at the Acorn Theater, part of The New Group, an Off-Broadway company. The play was written by Jonathan Marc Sherman, was directed by Ethan Hawke, and stars Peter Dinklage, Paul Dano, and Josh Hamilton.

The play is about three brothers. Dano plays the youngest brother, Charles, who has quit college and returned home after breaking up with his girlfriend. His older brothers still live in their parents’ apartment. Hamilton plays the oldest, Teddy, who works for a self-help guru. Dinklage plays Sty, an alcoholic. With Teddy gone on a business trip, Sty decides to set Charles up with a neighbor, Stella, played by Zoe Kazan. The first act introduces us to these four characters; act 2 picks up exactly one year later, showing us what’s become of them. Not to give too much away, but just about everyone’s fortune has changed over the course of the year. Thus, the play examines these brothers’ relationship as the dynamics of who is happy and who isn’t changes.

We soon learn that their parents’ each committed suicide by jumping out of one of the apartment’s windows. This window becomes a focal point of the play, as each brother at one point or another contemplates jumping out himself or the consequences of their parents’ deaths. Ultimately, the play forces its character to decide whether life is in fact worth living.

Another motif in the work is the guru’s system of prime numbers: 7-5-3-1, which stands for the 7 chakras, the 5 sense, the 3 words that sum up the 1 thing you most desire in life. Each character is faced with figuring out what that one thing is (even if the guru’s system turns out to be bogus).

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Sweeney Todd: A Review Friday, Dec 21 2007 

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I just got back from seeing Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Johnny Depp plays Sweeney, and Helena Bonham Carter plays Mrs. Lovett. Having been exiled from England for fifteen years for a crime he didn’t commit, Todd returns to London seeking revenge on the man who unjustly sent him away, Judge Turpin, played by Alan Rickman. He sets up his barber shop above Mrs. Lovett’s pie shop and guarantees his clients the closest shave they’ve ever had. Here’s a taste, part of the scene in which Mrs. Lovett figures out what to do with the bodies:

Sweeney Todd is getting lots of good reviews and quite a lot of Oscar talk. It’s definitely well deserved. I loved it!

Let’s start with Depp: he’s perfect for this role. His voice is surprisingly strong and appealing, and he gives Todd a real sense of anguish. Maybe because it’s Depp, but you can see why the other characters, Mrs. Lovett for example, really like him. His Todd has soul, and this is definitely Depp’s best performance to date. He’s been nominated for two Academy Awards in recent years; Sweeney Todd should be his third.

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