Kate Elizabeth Russell, author of ‘My Dark Vanessa.’
2.
I had an illicit relationship with a teacher that started when I was sixteen. I hadn’t thought much about it until recently, once I’d started reading Vanessa. Continue reading
Archive for the Reading Category
My Dark Vanessa
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading with tags Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa, sex with your teacher on July 30, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
My Dark Vanessa
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading with tags Andrea Dworkin, Feminazi, Jacob Strane, Kate Elizabeth Russell, Melbourne University, My Dark Vanessa, Ralph Lauren, Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, Vanessa Wye, Young Liberals on July 26, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
‘Romance is rape by seduction’.
– Andrea Dworkin.
1.
I used to hate Andrea Dworkin. She was invoked like a saint by all those hateful, spotty little feminazis at Melbourne University, chanting and shouting and marching, projecting all kinds of resentment and hatred. They threw the word ‘men’ like it was a paper bag full of shit. Continue reading
Share this:
Suicidal Thoughts
Posted in poetry, Reading, Real Men with tags Esther Greenwood, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar on September 24, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
4.
‘Wrapping my coat around me like my own sweet shadow, I unscrewed the bottle of pills and began taking them swiftly, between gulps of water, one by one by one.
At first nothing happened, but as I approached the bottom of the bottle, red and blue lights began to flash before my eyes. The bottle slid from my fingers and I lay down.
The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life. Then, at the rim of the vision, it gathered itself, and in one sweeping tide, rushed me to sleep.’
p.163 Continue reading
Share this:
Suicidal Thoughts
Posted in poetry, Reading, Real Men with tags Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Westside Barbell on September 17, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
3.
“I thought I would swim out until I was too tired to swim back. As I paddled on, my heartbeat boomed like a dull motor in my ears. I am I am I am.”
P. 152
I watched my grandmother Joanna die, day by day. Continue reading
Share this:
Suicidal Thoughts
Posted in poetry, Reading, Real Men with tags Buddy Willard, Esther Greenwood, Simone De Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, The Karate Kid, The Second Sex on September 13, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
2.
“A dispassionate white sun shone at the summit of the sky. I wanted to hone myself on it till I grew saintly and thin and essential as the blade of a knife.”
– The Bell Jar Page 90.
Simone De Beauvoir writes in The Second Sex that because men are encouraged to fight, they come to trust themselves and their ability to grapple with the world and its challenges. Continue reading
Share this:
Suicidal Thoughts
Posted in poetry, Reading, Real Men with tags Ariel, Colossus, Rodney Hall, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar on September 3, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
1.
‘There’s two acts of creation at work in the novel: the writer’s, and the reader’s.’
– Rodney Hall.
Some books, you read them and they go right through you like a glass of water. Other books seem to take up residence and become a part of who you are, like marrow, or muscle fibre.
I recently read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar for the second time.
Share this:
Rodney Hall: A Stolen Season
Posted in Fiction, Reading, Real Men with tags A Stolen Season, Autumn of the Patriarch, Belize, Central America, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, George Saunders, James Joyce, Mayan, Miles Franklin Award, Rodney Hall, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, Ulysses on July 16, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
At the gym – working on the gun show.
Rodney Hall is one of Australia’s greatest living writers. He has been nominated for the Miles Franklin Award seven times and if he wins this year, it’ll be the third time he’s gone home with the prize.
I have known him for eighteen years and he never fails to deliver on the subject of literature. He has been kind enough to wax lyrical at the Theme Park on matters literary and a few others that happen to intersect within his purview.
T.P: I’m guessing that if the Miles Franklin Award was predicated on biceps, you’d win that. Continue reading
Share this:
Wendy Waters – Catch The Moon, Mary
Posted in Reading, Real Men with tags Catch the Moon Mary, Linen Press Books, Wendy Waters on August 13, 2015 by Jarrod Boyle
I previously described Wendy Waters as the best unpublished writer I knew. No longer; she is now one of the best published writers I know. Her novel, Catch the Moon, Mary, will be available for purchase from Linen Press Books on September 1.
Share this:
‘Are You a Satanist?’
Posted in Journalism, Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading, Real Men, Statement of intention with tags Albert Einstein, blasphemy, Christianity, Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S Thompson, John Milton, Letters to a Satanist, Lucien Greaves, mysterious, mythology, Nikos Kazantzakis, Oklahoma Satanic Temple, Paradise Lost, religion, Salman Rushdie, Satan, Satanic Verses, sigil of Baphomet, Spanish Civil War, The Last Temptation, William Blake on December 15, 2014 by Jarrod Boyle
2.
I feel responsible. I feel that I must do something like Flanagan, or Tolstoy. Anything less is a waste of everyone’s time – both yours, and mine. If I think about it too much, there’s not even time enough to go to work. Continue reading
Share this:
‘Are You A Satanist?’
Posted in Observation, Reading, Real Men, Statement of intention with tags Alfred Kazin, Catcher in the Rye, church, Desperate Romantic, Ernest Hemingway, genius, Gustave Dore, hell, Hell's Angels, Hunter S Thompson, John Milton, Leo Tolstoy, Letters to a Satanist, Lucien Greaves, mystic, Newton, Paradise Lost, priest, Richard Flanagan, Satanic Verses, sigil of Baphomet, Spanish Civil War, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, The Viking Portable Blake, War and Peace, William Blake on December 14, 2014 by Jarrod Boyle
1.
The last twelve to eighteen months have taught me that if you put something on the internet, everybody will see it. People rarely comment on-line, but I seem to get all kinds of bizarre responses when I see them in public, ranging from facial expressions that look like they’ve swallowed a bullfrog (and are struggling to keep it down) to, ‘What’s with all the leather gear?’ Or even, ‘Are you a Satanist?’ Continue reading
Theme Park at its Darkest 