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Oct
18
Read It Now: THE MISTRESS CONTRACT by She and He
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Published October 18, 2011 by Unbridled Books
I’ve been talking about it for months, and IT’S FINALLY HERE!
*muppet arms*
A memoir, The Mistress Contract begins with the agreement a woman (known here as She) signed with her wealthy lover (He) in 1981. Created at the woman’s suggestion, the contract states that she will provide her lover with housekeeping and sexual services, and in return, he will provide a separate home for her and cover her expenses. What follows are transcripts from conversations they recorded privately over the next twenty years (they are in their 70s and still together today) in which they discuss their relationship and the sexual and power dynamics that defined it.
The couple talk in bed, in the car, over coffee, after going to the movies. They quarrel about why she is reluctant to tell him what pleases her and whether their arrangement is revolutionary or really quite old-school. They consider theirs an affair after the 18th-century model (readers will recognize shades of Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White here), except in their case (thanks to feminism!) she *does* have options beyond the dichotomy of impoverished spinster/kept woman. And THAT, the availability of other paths, is what makes this woman’s choice—and it IS an active choice—to become her lover’s “sexual property” so compelling.
This is a book that raises more questions than it answers. Questions like: Is this the ultimate expression of feminism or the ultimate subversion of it? Are the couple creating a new kind of intimate relationship, one that is modern in its old-fashionedness, or is theirs the oldest trick in the book? And what do the dynamics of their arrangement say about relations between men and women in contemporary America? Read more
I’m going to the Jersey Shore, bitch!
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Okay, not really. But I AM writing a weekly feature for Book Riot called Drop It Like It’s Haute in celebration of that unholiest of marriages between pop culture and literature.
My friend and the co-creator of Book Riot, Jeff O’Neal, whom you might know from his terrific blog The Reading Ape, agreed to join me for the first month, and we’ve had more fun than should be legal putting together The Jersey Shore Booktionary, in which we adapt definitions from The Daily Beast’s three-part Jersey Shore glossary to talk about books. Because it’s important to be well-rounded, and we aint’ too proud to fess up to loving literature AND reality TV.
Here are the highlights from the first two weeks. Click here and here for the whole enchilada calzone.
__________
fresh to death (adj.)—to be and have the hottest of the hot and trendiest of the trendy.
Translation: this one’s obvious.
JO: You can’t be any more on trend than zombie stuff. Except maybe zombie stuff that is a little post-zombie. And set in a post-apocalyptic New York. So I give you Zone One by Colson Whitehead, a zombie novel for people who don’t care at all about zombies. Plus he has dreads and lives in Brooklyn. And the book isn’t even out yet. Can’t get any fresher than that.
RJS: Okay, so zombies are the new werewolves are the new vampires. I get it. Reluctant as I am to read about these creatures, I also can’t wait for Zone One, but it’s because I trust Colson Whitehead to do it right. But werewolves? Really? Just when I thought I was in the clear, along came Glen Duncan and his uber-clever, filthy-fucking-hot novel The Last Werewolf. This book! It has everything! Sex! History! Paranormal creatures! Battles with vampires! Literary references galore! Did I mention the sex?
JO: All I can picture is some sort of pornographic version of Teen Wolf. And not in a good way.
RJS: Clearly, this is a problem of imagination.
__________
grenade whistle (n.)—a vuvuzela-style horn that sounds to warn those on Seaside Heights that the Jersey Shore house is currently hosting a grenade
Translation: a book so bad that you read and discussed it so others wouldn’t have to suffer.
JO: Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel
When someone would ask me if I’d read this, I didn’t even have to speak. A look of horrified disgust would tell them all they needed to know. It would be like if the novel was about sentient animals locked in some inscrutable theatrical allegory about the holocaust. Oh wait.
RJS: Oh god, that was awful, wasn’t it? I actually felt like I was performing a public service by reviewing Beatrice and Virgil so other people wouldn’t have to give up precious hours of their lives waiting for Yann Martel to do his thing. But really, my grenade whistle claims to fame are the bizarrely dreadful trifecta of The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (when you think Robert Langdon is FINALLY dead…), some Nicholas Sparks novel about a boy and girl who meet on the beach and fall in love despite the fact that they’re from two different worlds and her dad is dying (wait….), and the entire Twilightseries. Yep. Because you don’t get to have an opinion about it if you haven’t read it, and I definitely wanted to have an opinion. Read more
The Sunday Salon 10.16.11
2011 at 11am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Hellloooooo, Sunday! Betcha thought I’d forgotten how to do these, eh? Fall has been go-go-go, which is terrific, but it puts me in that oh-so-ironic situation where opportunities I received because of blogging in the first place result in my having not-so-much time for blogging, to say nothing of time for reading. First world problems, these.
The week began with a long-awaited facelift for ye olde blog, so if you’re reading this in your RSS reader, I hope you’ll pop through to take a quick look and let me know what you think. I gave away a copy of the audiobook of Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers, which I totally adored and shared a review of Sarah Murray’s Making an Exit, a fascinating exploration of death and burial rituals around the world and how they reflect the ways we live our lives. Author Joan Leegant stopped by to discuss her bare necessities and confess that she came late to loving women writers, and the latest episode of the Bookrageous podcast went live with a discussion about subversive books that changed our lives and blew our minds.
And I’ve actually been reading! I plowed through My Beautiful Genome by Lone Frank for a Twitter book tour I’ll be running with Bethanne Patrick (@thebookmaven). It’s all about genetic testing and how much (or little) our genes can predict our future health, behavior, preferences, etc. If you dig Mary Roach’s casual, engaging, funny variety of immersion journalism, you’ll love Lone Frank as well. Read more
Subversive books are subversive!
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Last week when I asked about the books that changed you, I was elbow deep in prep for the latest episode of the Bookrageous podcast. I’ve been reflecting on the books that made irrevocable differences in my life, and it has made me very curious about which books did that for other folks. Josh, Jenn, and I had a fun and thought-provoking conversation that pushed me to reconsider what, exactly, it takes for a book to be subversive and whether there are certain times in our lives when we are more easily affected by books than others.
I hope you’ll listen, subscribe, and let us know what you’d like to hear about in the future. Oh, and don’t forget to order your copy of Zone One by Colson Whitehead, out next Tuesday, for the first Bookrageous Book Club. Save 10% when you put “Bookrageous” in the comment section of your order from WORD.
The Bare Necessities—Joan Leegant (WHEREVER YOU GO)
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
The Bare Necessities is a series in which authors and book industry professionals share annotated reading lists of books they love.
Joan Leegant is the author of An Hour In Paradise: Stories and a novel, Wherever You Go, out now in paperback from W.W. Norton. She’s here today with a wonderful post that addresses, among other things, books with exotic locales, why she was late to discovering women writers, and what happened when she did.
How can this be? I’ve searched my soul and psyche and find no latent misogyny, no self-hatred, no oxygen-starved upbringing where the only fare was The Hardy Boys and White Fang. The answer, it seems, from the vantage point of 50+ years, has more to do with the expectations of life subtly but powerfully put across in the bookish options available to me in my girlhood than any literary merit. Little Women may have been a great novel, but the girls seemed to mainly stick around the house. (Plus they were “little.” See above.) Jane Austen, perennially loved, terrified me with her message—already so suffocating in real life—that the only route to happiness and respectability was through marriage and, God help us, social climbing. Ditto just about every other female author of the 19th and early 20th century who crossed my albeit very limited radar. Read more
