books, art, rant

My reading lately has been short mid 20th century crime fiction - Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Christiana Brand, Josephine Tey - sort of escapist, easy to read, not very annoying... Not quite escapist but I find nothing really is. Keep coming up against weird assumptions and attitudes in the books, and for instance, one book set in 1938 mostly ignores the political situation in Europe apart from one minor character who comes across as rather interesting and I wanted to read more about her, her perceptions of the upper middle class English circle she found herself in. That was Ngaio Marsh's Death in a White Tie.

And now I am reading a book about sculptor Eva Hesse. One of her drawings jumped out at me in a modern art history book. So I've investigated her and used that drawing as an inspiration in my own art. (In my own practice in art college speak.) I now find her work evaluated using a little-known psychoanalytic article, one that my own therapist mentioned to me last year as something very relevant to my own issues. So feel quite excited by this - I was drawn by an image that unknown to me at the time was part of her own work to deal with something, the very thing I have been working on in therapy and in my art. And I am not going to tell you about the specific issue because it is still really intense for me and also I want my visual images to speak for themselves.

And finally a rant. I have just had it up to here with people saying "we are all people, mentally ill or not" and "we all have mental health struggles" which yes, are true. I know people often say this sort of thing to break down barriers. But I experience it as a way of silencing our different views, of erasing our experiences... Maybe I am clinging to my own sense of being special that I feel I have by having these experiences of distress, medication, pathologising, struggle, community. And these people say "we are all special" which to me means "no one is special, especially you, Anne".

I know some people with similar experiences to my own feel this is great, their humanity is being seen over their mental health status. Maybe I haven't had that depth of experience of discrimination that I feel that need to be seen as the same as everyone else. Maybe my own "pathology" is about differentiating myself from the mainstream in whatever way I can.

I don't know. But I don't like it. I see it as naive and uncritical and simplistic and silencing.

Beat in View by Margaret Millar

Last week I read Beat in View by Margaret Millar. It's a suspense novel written in the mid-50s in the USA

I liked it - it is short, well paced, well written, interesting. There is a twist which I didn't see coming, but I never do. It was reasonably well sign-posted. I am going to use the word killer because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who does want to read it.

However, mental illness is the reason that the killer does what they do. Multiple personality disorder, to be exact.

Which makes me uncomfortable. It always does, even though some peopel do kill and commit other crimes because they are mentally ill. But in life, it is uncommon, and in fiction, it is very common.

I think Millar handles it well, better than many other novels. There is an understanding of the killer's psyche and it is not rammed home either.

One of the characters is homosexual and the relationship between him and his mother is a bit stereotyped. Very much of its time.

A third thing that jarred was that one of the characters seems to fall in love with another, offering some sort of heterosexual resolution of some of the issues in the novel. There's a dynamic of an older, male, sane saviour of the younger, female insane character.

There isn't much online about the novel, and not much about the writer. I have reserved another of her books from the library.

Infectious reading

Been quite busy but a chest infection has laid me low. Well, slowed me up. So I am reading, short bits of each book in between whinging and knitting.

(Remember when library books had stickers about reporting the presence of infectious illnesses in the house when returning the books so they could be fumigated.)

I am currently reading

• Melissa by Taylor Caldwell
• It's Lovely to be Here – The Touring Diaries of a Scottish Gent by James Yorkston 
• http://www.jamesyorkston.co.uk/?page_id=125
• Bad Vibes : Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall by Luke Haines (contrasting review in the Observer)

Haines is vitriolic, Yorkston is gentle. I know I would prefer to hang out with Yorkston, especially as he is vegan. I think Haines is the better writer. What they have in common is that they show touring as a musician to be awful. I hate travelling anyway so it is nice to have it confirmed that it sucks.

Mental health connections: Haines hears voices due to drink and drugs and his behaviour and attitude suggests there is something shit going on under the surface. He does say at the start that he is writing as he was thinking back then, implying that he isn't like that anymore, or not so much anymore.

Melissa is the daughter of a psychopath, not the serial killer kind, but the kind who manipulates those around him in very destructive ways. Her reactions after his death, and that of her mother and her relationships with her siblings, show that she is still under his spell. My partly digested reading on object relations is helping me make sense of her behaviours. Caldwell was one of the first adult writers I read circa 1980, though I didn't read Melissa. It's readable.

Of course, I am currently reading these three books so who knows what I will think of each of them by the end. But so far, they are all good reading for me in my current state.

(BTW, Caldwell was a right wing anti-semite and had a FBI file because she was forever reporting people for involvement in the Kennedy assassination and other things. The FBI seemed to take it all with a pinch of salt.)

Consequences by E.M. Delafield

Yesterday, I finished reading Consequences by E.M. Delafield, published in 1919. She wrote the more well-known Diary of a Provincial Lady which is (on the surface, at least) an amusing novel. Not so Consequences. It is the story of Alex, an upper-middle class girl growing up in late Victorian London, who constantly fails to live up to the demands of her family and class. She isn't a feisty character who stands up for herself and forges a life for herself. She is the opposite. A sad, misunderstood girl, who never finds someone who will care for her, and this dooms her to ongoing misery...

(I do get sick of the feisty heroine, especially in historical fiction, where the writer can't let go of her/his 21st century perspective and allow their character to be of their time in more than their clothes.)

It sounds so depressing, doesn't it. It is. I couldn't stop reading it, and I sobbed yesterday as it became increasingly obvious what Alex's fate would be. The tragedy of it is really how she tries to make sense of her life, and how she interacts with other people, just make things worse. She is both innocent and culpable.

I did think at one stage that she would be admitted to a mental hospital. I sort of hoped that would have helped in some way!

You can buy the book in paperback from Persephone. Or read it for free on Project Gutenberg.

recently read

I've been struggling a while to read - social media and google reader have been distracting and they damage my concentration. And on the bus, I usually listen to podcasts. Often about books I will never find time to read. So I've taken myself in hand. 

The last five books I've read are A Fisherman of the Inland Sea by Ursula Le Guin, Your Voice in my Head by Emma Forest, On Drawing by John Berger, Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym and A Lie about my Father by John Burnside. 

I liked the Le Guin the most. A collection of short stories. The last three are great - about faster than light travel: it's not the technology that's interesting but the impact on people. 

Of the memoirs, Your Voice in my Head was disappointing. I had expected more. A Lie about my Father was better. I think Burnside is the better writer, and is older. I think one of the things that bothers me about Forest is that she is very on the surface, despite the painful things she tells us. She seems not to want to know why she has a mental illness. Burnside knows why - and he's trying to understand his father in this book. Forest is all about her. 

Currently reading on my iPod: Penny Plain by O. Douglas and Night and Day by Virginia Woolf. The Woolf is taking ages. The Douglas is an undemanding, cosy read which suits me right now. 

Currently reading in physical book format: The Mammoth Book of 20th Century Science Fiction (table of contents - scroll down a bit); Bliss and other stories by Katherine Mansfield. 

mad books

I've been reminiscing - again - this time about the books which have shaped my ideas about madness and mad people.

I don't mean the serious books I purposely read to learn about it e.g. A sociology of mental health and illness by Anne Rogers and David Pilgrim or Users and Abusers of Psychiatry; A Critical Look at Psychiatric Practice by Lucy Johnstone or Mental Health Matters: A Reader edited by Tom Heller.

Or the many self-help books I've poured over in search of answers. (I particularly like Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers - the title alone is brilliant. I wouldn't be doing this blog or involved with Oor Mad History or CAPS or anything if I didn't recite that mantra a lot.)

I mean the books I primarily read for pleasure, before I was particularly interested in mental health issues, services, theories...

And the books I read when I did get interested, the fiction and autobiography.... the books that moved me, stirred me, comforted me, angered me.

I didn't read The Bell Jar until quite recently and I have never read (or watched) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I did try The Bell Jar years ago, but the protagonist annoyed me in the first chapter so I didn't persist.

It's hard to remember after about 20 years of reading, thinking, talking, rereading.

But I thought, if I put this out there, it might stir some distant memories.

Books, the arts and me

I wrote this on April 11th, 2009

When I was a child and a teenager in the 1970s and 1980s, I thirsted for news of a wider world. Not the adult world of politics and responsibility but a world of ideas and sex and love and adventure. I searched for it in the right-wing newspapers, in the occasional arty film on the new tv channel, in the music press and in the music itself and most of all in books. Books on the narrow school curriculum, shabby paperbacks from even shabbier second hand shops, worn plastic-wrapped hardbacks in the local library. High literature from the past, texts of plays by Russians and Norwegians, or second-rate fiction with near-naked women on the cover. It didn't really matter. 

I found bits and pieces, hints and promises that life did not have to be like the dull future which seemed my destiny. I wanted something more than and different to that. Not that I could imagine anyone employing me or marrying me but these seemed the only future - a job and a husband. I was told often enough of my faults and my lack of ability.
But I was a good enough student at school, not obedient but interested. Physics experiments, French essays, the history of the Irish language, the Romantics, Bismarck, calculus - they all absorbed me in different ways and to different degrees. (It is satisfying now to think of how many of those interests, in different forms, still interest me.) 

But now I have the internet! Since my early thirties, I have been messing about online, finding more and more to read and watch and listen, almost drowning in words and images. I still feel the compulsion to seek out all the new things I can find... It chokes me sometimes. There is so much that I skip from site to site. No time or inclination for the close reading of a story which made my legs weak or the close listening to a song which made me gasp on the rare occasions I heard it on the radio. I am still the same child as I was in the 80s with the same thirst. But I am older and slower and there is so much to connect to still. I will never reach all that I yearn for. That saddens me and excites me.

Over two years on, most of this is still true. I am a bit more focused when I make myself focus, but I am still easily distracted by the internet and overwhelmed by all it opens up to me. But I am a bit more relaxed about it.

15 books in 15 minutes

A couple of years ago (8 May 2009)  I did this meme:  list 15 books that will always stick with you and do it within a 15 minute time frame.

• Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
• The Luck of Brin Five by Cherry Wilder
• That Place by Andrea Loewenstein Freud
• Four Days in the Life of Lisa by Christine Nostlinger
• My Friends books by Jane Duncan
• Starbridge novels by Susan Howatch
• Alice Miller
• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keys
• Dubliners by James Joyce
• The autobiography of Malcolm X
• Man's Search for Meaning
• My Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein
• The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

Cheated a bit there - two series and one author - I couldn't think of one book by Alice Miller that stood out above the rest to choose for this.

It's pretty mixed. Kids books, SF, autobiography, heavy, light, funny, sad, graphic novel, classics, short stories, novels...

I can understand why I chose each of them. And I think I might have come up with a slightly different 15 today but a lot of them would be in there, I think.

Books on the move

Blue Pelican and Orange Penguin paperbacks

I moved some of my bookshelves and books around yesterday - here is most of my Penguin and Pelican collection on my bed awaiting reallocation. Kept the Penguins in the bedroom and moved the Pelican into my newly renamed Work Room.

I have also culled a lot of my non-fiction. I moved a lot of my favourites into the spare room and could see the less interesting books in their own right. And some didn't seem to deserve to be in my flat. So they are in a pile in the hall, awaiting delivery to charity shops.

Owning books, being surrounded by books, having so many books I haven't yet read and probably won't... I crave minimalism but books... books mean so much to me. Their physical presence is comforting, their promise of escape and entertainment and enlightenment is exhilarating.

And I remember my 8 year old self, when told to pack for her summer holidays, packed all of her books on the grounds that she didn't know what she would actually want to read once she got there. There were maybe 30. I think I owned more books than my parents did.

Having all those books now means I am grown up, I am in control, I have arrived!

Recently...

Recently read...

• Wilson, Daniel Clowes - very easy to read but uncomfortable - too much like me in my head, not in my actions.
• The Contract with God, Will Eisner - amazing, took a while to read
• An Education, Lynn Barber, very quick to read because Barber writes very well, being a journalist. 

Enjoyed each of them.

Just started reading A Life in Pictures by Alasdair Grey. It's great. 

Recently drawn...

She's coming up a lot in doodles so I am going to have to write a wee story about her.

Excerpts

I've read a couple of excerpts of interesting books on Scribd

Your Voice in My Head by Emma Forrest - here's another extract in the Guardian

Nina Here Nor There by Nick Krieger

Forrest's book is about her experience of being in therapy and Krieger's book is about his gender transition. Both seem well written and reflective accounts, which is what appeals. Both the "I was nuts but then I saw this therapist" and "I was in the wrong body and then I changed gender and I am ok now" narratives have been done many times and I have had too much of both over the years. But I love a good book on either subject from time to time.

The frustrating thing is that the two copies of Forrest's books are late back by 2 months so I doubt my reservation will come through any time soon, if at all. And Krieger's book is published in the US so unless I order it from there, I won't get to read it. I am not going to because if I get his book, I will have to get so many others...

more books in my TBR bookcase

books I bought in a charity book fair on Thursday, 21 books for £20.50 

recently, in books

I've not read much lately, and haven't had much to say about what I have read.

Yesterday, I got a present of a little book called The Cornet-Player Who Betrayed Ireland by Frank O'Connor for my birthday last week. (I am 45 years and one week today).

Every Irish child reads 'First Confession' at school. It is a great story, about a boy who decides to kill his grandmother, very funny and a bit sad rereading it as adult. But great reading for a 12 year old. You can read it here. The other story by him I remember reading at school was 'Guests of the Nation' about the execution of two Englishmen held captive by the Irish Republican Army during the War for Independence. You can read that here. The other two stories in the book, the title story and 'A Story by Maupassant' I haven't read, or at least I don't remember reading.

Today, I bought Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine. As if I don't have enough books already! But this is a subject dear to my heart. I am convinced about 95% of the differences between men and women are socially constructed. And I think men and women have much more in common than the whole "men are from mars, all women love shoes, men are useless" mentality would have us believe. It's about power and it's about selling you stuff. So I am interested in what Fine has to say about it. Not sure when I will read it but sometimes, the thing about books is simply having them.

This is a vehement attack on the latest pseudo-scientific claims about the differences between the sexes - with the scientific evidence to back it up. Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant memory. Yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles increasingly defend inequalities by citing immutable biological differences between the male and female brain. Why are there so few women in science and engineering, so few men in the laundry room? Well, they say, it's our brains. Drawing on the latest research in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and social psychology, "Delusions of Gender" rebuts these claims, showing how old myths, dressed up in new scientific finery, help perpetuate the status quo. Cordelia Fine reveals the mind's remarkable plasticity, shows the substantial influence of culture on identity, and, ultimately, exposes just how much of what we consider 'hardwired' is actually malleable. This startling, original and witty book shows the surprising extent to which boys and girls, men and women are made - and not born.

While on the subject of gender and books yet to be read, I borrowed Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal and Photographic Autobiography by Jo Spence. You can see some of her work here.  I think she is best known for her work around her experience of breast cancer and the treatment she had for it.

Passing through the hands of the medical orthodoxy can be terrifying when you have breast cancer. I determined to document for myself what was happening to me. Not to be merely the object of their medical discourse but to be the active subject of my own investigation.

She also did photo therapy which for some reason I am struggling to explain. She took photographs of herself reenacting or creating images of herself e.g. in various roles. She was a feminist and a lot of her work was about the female body and how it is represented in art. I read about her work when I was in my 20s in London and recently saw a couple of her photographs in Glasgow. I was delighted that Edinburgh libraries had this book by her. I have been playing with self-portraits in both photography and drawing so who knows what influence she will have on me.

And I am still reading Cancer Ward. I read the first half in a rush and am now struggling to pick it up. Not sure why.

Comic books...

Today is Free Comic Book Day. Which means some comic book shops will be giving away some free comic books. And there will be some events. I might go to one later on today, where I can draw and try out some different pens and talk to other comic book drawers.

Cartoons are fun - here's a great one by John Callahan

man in white orders man in wheelchair to "heal", and the second man leaps to sit at the heels of the first man like a dog ordered to "heel"

So what are my favourite comics/graphic novels? Here's some I've recently read

• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (reread)
• The Book of Leviathan by Peter Blegvad (reread)
• Couch Fiction: A Graphic Tale of Psychotherapy by Phillipa Perry
• Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
• American Splendor: Another Day by Harvey Pekar

I also like a lot of online stuff - here's some:

• Hark! A Vagrant! - Jane Austen.
• Hyperbole and a half - pain chart
• XKCD xkcd
• John Callahan 

I've chosen stuff that is quite varied in visual and narrative style and in subject matter. I have a preference for autobiographical material and my own comic book work is autobiographical.

I tend not to like the superhero type of comic that most people think of when they think of comics. I admire them but since Buffy, I haven't been able to get into heroes. Not sure why... I admire a lot of that kind of work but it doesn't engage me.

I can sometimes read comics when I can't read text, and it is usually quicker, but it can be just as demanding in terms of attention and emotional involvement.

Finn and books

Had to have a lie down yesterday. But couldn't relax so I started playing with my mobile phone. And took this photo.

books and Finn

Finn is my approx. 4 year old feline flat mate. And behind him, you can see some of my books - these are my non-fiction shelves. I need more shelves.

Bookish auntie

My eldest niece was 7 on Monday. She was excited by some of the books she got as presents, books about Irish legends and heros. When I was at primary school, I loved the Irish legends - specifically the Fenian Cycle and the Ulster Cycle.

(I think my feelings about shoes has partly to do with the Finn McCool - the Fianna had to be able to run through a forest without making a noise or breaking a twig - how can you do that in high heels? That feeling was strengthened by reading more modern adventure stories where being able to creep up on someone was an advantage. Even now, if my footsteps are audible, I feel a bit uneasy. )

I want to get R a book about Scottish legends until I realised all I could think of were folk tales, not mythology or legends. Realised it was because Ireland and Gaelic Scotland shared the same language - Early and Middle Irish and so they shared the same literature. There wasn't a strong sense of what was Irish and what was Scottish then. So folk tales it will be.

I'm really pleased she is interested in them - most recent girls fiction seems to be about princesses as far as I can see. While most of the characters in the myths are men, there are some strong women there too - Meave in particular. Also my love of mythology - Greek, Norse as well as Irish - I think got me interested in SF and fantasy. I wish I had had more exposure to other mythologies, maybe I will send her stories from other cultures as well?

Next year I will get her Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass (which was my favourite for years as I read it first!) I will blog about Alice sometime.

Choosing books for my 6, soon to be 7, nieces and nephew is a bit tricky as they get older. But their mad old auntie will do her best!

comfort read: Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

Selene at the Shaggy Dog Story blogged about Cranford, which is one of my comfort reads. Her post points out what a narrow existence the genteel ladies of Cranford were permitted. And it takes place just before the railways arrive, bringing great change to the small towns of England.

So why is it a comfort read?

I think partly because of the warmth of the relationships between the women and the gentle humour of the narrator, Mary, in her descriptions of the dilemmas of the main characters. I like it because it is domestic and "small".

I first read it on Mull - 16 or 17 years ago. So I have that happy memory as well. And it is a shared love with my mother. We don't have much in common when it comes to reading, so it's nice when we can agree on this.

And another part of the comfort for me is that it is a good book for me to read when I cannot concentrate. Gaskell writes so clearly and I know it so well, it isn't quite the effort most other books are.

And no, I haven't seen the tv series.

BADD 2011 post - a wee rant

This is my post for Blogging Against Disablism Day.

I had plans for well reasoned and referenced posts on some great topics. But... when I tried it, the energy just went. So I thought I would just go for it, try not to privilege rationality. I think for too long, when writing publicly or semi-publicly, I have tried to be reasonable and persuasive. Look the mad person can be reasonable! Well not today.


Ok, here are some of the madness/disability things that have been bugging me lately!


People's impairments being discounted in some way because they weren't totally laid low by them. Being even a bit capable seems to mean you are somehow trying it on - "you only have symptoms when it suits you".  You know the type of thing - wheelchair user transfers themselves to a chair or even can walk a bit with a stick - ah, they don't need the wheelchair! Person who battled anxiety to attend a special event with the help of lots of meds and support from friend - ah, they don't have anything wrong with them!


The current "all people on benefits are potentially scroungers" mindset contributes to policing of disability. And disabled people do this policing as well as non-disabled people. Which sucks. A lot. I even find myself doing it and have to give myself a good talking to.


This happened ages ago but it pops up in my head every now and again and gets me riled up still. I had listed a book by R.D. Laing on an book related website. Someone sent me a private message to tell me that basically I was wrong to like Laing. Assuming that owning a book means I like it! This person explained that a family member had schizophrenia and Laing blamed families and this was wrong as it was a chemical imbalance and the family were blameless. And me owning this book and admitting it publicly was a kick in the teeth to the families of everyone with schizophrenia. Which no doubt was why I had listed it.


Which brings me to two other argh! topics.


'Mental illness' being entirely a 'chemical imbalance'. Better than me have done a much more critique of this than I can manage.


And a particular type of 'carer'. (I don't mean all carers here but a subset.) I have met carers who in public will tell you intimate details about their 'loved one' and their lives. They do this at events aimed to gather the experiences of people who use mental health services and carers. Service users tend to say things like "our group think that it is important to..." but some carers will say things like "my Johnny didn't take his tablets and the services didn't section him immediately!". Whoa! Does Johnny know you are talking about him like this? And are you not here as a representative?


When I first heard about recovery, I was really excited by it. I went to the first recovery event in Scotland (Would recovery work in Scotland? in Dundee in 2002) where I heard Ron Coleman and Audrey Reid talk about their own recovery despite the mental health system. It seemed to bring together all the ideas I had people talk about in collective advocacy groups. And now it is mostly just another words services use - oh yes, we are a recovery focused service - or even as justification for cutting services to people.


And wellbeing! Well! What's not to like about wellbeing? We all want to be well, surely! but when a word is used a lot all of a sudden in policy documents I get a little suspicious... I think it is because it pretends to be neutral and it isn't. My feeling about wellbeing is that it is really about individualising and depoliticising health issues - which is an ongoing project. So we're told "lose weight, stop smoking, do 6 sessions of CBT… while we cut services in health, education, community development and through our economic policies, we further increase the inequalities that lead to health inequalities".


And I think I am done. For now. I am sure there are more things I could rant about but I am tired now.

Tomorrow is Blogging Against Disablism Day - BADD.

This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people will blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination, disablism or ableism. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we've made.

I'm going to blog something - not quite sure yet. Any requests? You've got fourteen hours (from time of post) or so to comment.

And I need to update here as well. I only blog when I want to, not to fit in with some idea of appropriate scheduling. I hope I never apologise for "neglecting" this blog. So needing to post to is about my desire to write.

cartoon

I made this little cartoon last night on stripgenerator:

the trick is to keep reading by ayenomaybe

what do you think?

look what I saw in a Glasgow library

Self-help books for a range of mental and physical health problems. The leaflets were about recovery from addiction. There were a couple of good books there: Doctoring the Mind by Richard Bentall is one - not exactly a self-help book but worth reading. Though I haven't. I did read his previous book Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature which I did like.

suicide

Hello, cruel world: 101 alternatives to suicide for teens, freaks, and other outlaws by Kate Bornstein

this book won me over when the author said something like "of course you should contact a crisis line or a mental health professional but..."

many of us find that following the well-meaning advice to tell someone you are thinking of killing yourself isn't very helpful - Kate acknowledges this and moves on to give some alternatives.

it's a bit self-consciously hip or something but that's ok. it's still better than shelf-loads of other self-help books.

What to Look For in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness

I'm reading Candia McWilliam's memoir What to Look For in Winter: A Memoir in Blindness. She dictates most of the book because she can't see, hence the subtitle. I don't read too many books about individual experience of mental illness - mostly because they tend to conform to a simplistic narrative of "I was once ok and then this thing happened and I wasn't ok and then thanks to this amazing doctor/medication/the love of my family I am now cured". Tend, I said. Not all do. This one doesn't - at least not so far. I'm on p.276 out of 480. I know she isn't blind anymore so she does get cured of that but I doubt she will finish with "and now I am totally fine"

I feel quite sympathetic to Candia McWilliam but also a bit jealous/envious. Class is why. And a sort of idiot's luck. Not that she is an idiot, not by any means. But she comes across as a bit vacant at times, drifting through things - or she writes about them as if she has been drifting through them. How did she get jobs, for instance? And everyone she mentions is the sister to someone famous and brilliant in her own right at something or other.

An example from my own life might read like this:

When I was asked to cover a shift at Belsize library one Tuesday morning, I found I was to be working with Jean and Debbie. Jean was known as being handy with a witty reply to the more elderly male readers and was sister to one of the best plumbers in Kentish Town. Her marriage to Den had broken up but they were devoted parents to Paul who was doing Business Management at the Polytechnic of East London. She and Debbie took great care of me, Debbie giving me a cheese and tomato sandwich she couldn't eat herself because as we found out later, she was pregnant with Katie, who went on to work for English Heritage. Jean was especially talented at making tea. 

I think Candia's experience of people isn't that disimilar to the above - they were people she knew and who were connected in various ways. But she mentions them knowing that many of her readers will recognise the names.

People also seem incredibly kind to her on the whole - she has been adopted at various stages of her life by kindly people. She came up against some difficult people - her second mother-in-law and her step-mother - but not many.

I think I am envious myself - not being one to endear herself to people wanting to take care of her. If such people exist. I wouldn't know as I doubt I would have recognised them as such. Either not noticed them at all, or have misinterpreted their intentions.

Anyway, it's a good book. A bit hard to keep track of things because she does wander about a bit but bear with it and it all makes sense and hangs together.

(Disclaimer: I did cover a shift at Belsize at least once, but can't remember who I worked with. I don't think there was a Jean and a Debbie, but there would only have been two of them, maybe one. And I might be mixing Belsize up with Hampstead library... I think I am. It was a long time ago.)

madness in SF

while I do see reading as a solitary pleasure, there are times when it is good to meet with like minded people. One place and time is Wiscon - a feminist SF convention held every year in Madison, Wisconsin in the USA.

one panel which caught my eye is called We're All Mad Here: Madness in Fiction

How have writers used the concept of madness? Does it denigrate, or exalt the character? Tag them as dangerous, sick, bad or holy? In touch with genius, or another world? How do cultural norms influence our definition and the expression of madness? Can it be a way of healing or renewal? A political act? Why was it a popular 19th-century plot device? Who is considered mad these days and why?

I do get tired of mental illness being a plot device or a metaphor for the 'insanity' of society. SF is no better or worse than any other genre. As far as I know. I read more SF and 'literary' fiction than any other genre.

in time, I will tell you about fiction and non-fiction which does a 'good enough' job of representing the experience of madness and of the treatment which is meant to help.

'good enough' in my opinion, that is.

many people blog about Wiscon panels so I will keep an ear open and an eye out for coverage and link to it here.

cartoon

I like comics/cartoons. I like therapy. Here's a blog that does them both: Therapy Tales.

reading is good for you?

A conference amused me. And bemused me.

I am mentally ill. I am a reader. I am critical of the whole wellbeing agenda. And this connects them all.

It is called Reading for Wellbeing and is organised by The Reader Organisation who seem to be a top-down reading and health promotion organisation.

Some good speakers. I read Maryanne Wolf's book Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain with great interest and bought it for one of my brothers for his birthday. And there is a discussion about Why the Humanities Matter which is very topical given what is going on in universities in the UK, and the US too.

But it bother me. Maybe because I often read to get away from people, maybe because I think reading is not just about feeling good...

And maybe it is more that I feel special for being a reader and it's encouraging all these non-readers to get stuck into a good book and get talking about it and feeling better and I am cross!

I don't know.

forgot to say

I am also reading Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
like Malcolm X's Autobiography, which led me to reading the Marable biography mentioned already, it was a teenage favourite.

currently reading

• Malcolm X by Manning Marable
• The tale of one bad rat by Bryan Talbot
• What to Look for in Winter by Candia McWilliam
• Melanie Klein by Julia Segal

current fascinations - books about illness, object relations, graphic novels. a book about Malcolm X is a bit outwith these trends

the trick is to keep testing

testing, and testing, and testing yet again.

http://books.google.com/

what else?