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There are some novels you read that make you think, ‘Why can’t all books be like this one?’ Continue reading
Archive for the Real Men Category
Jocko Willink and David Goggins versus Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway and Hayden Carruth
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men with tags David Goggins, Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hadji Murat, Hayden Carruth, Jocko Willink, Leo Tolstoy, sonnet, Unit 731 on July 10, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
Jocko Willink and David Goggins versus Leo Tolstoy, Ernest Hemingway and Hayden Carruth
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men with tags About Face, Anthony Swofford, Apocalypse Now, Can't Hurt Me, David Goggins, David Hackworth, Extreme Ownership, Jarhead, Jocko Willink, Ken Burns, Platoon, SEAL, The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, The Joe Rogan Podcast, The Vietnam War Documentary, Tom Wolfe, Willem Dafoe on July 2, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
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I just can’t come to a place of peace with either Jocko Willink or David Goggins. Continue reading
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Is ‘Joker’ the Best Film of 2019?
Posted in Film, Observation, Real Men with tags Anthony Lane, Arthur Fleck, Barack Obama, Batman, Breaking Bad: El Camino, Donald Trump, Gary Glitter, Gotham City, Hitler, Incel, Jesus Christ, Joachim Fest, Joker, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Rock and Roll Part 2, Sam Peckinpah, Sandy Hook School Shooting, Taxi Driver, The Art of the Deal, The King of Comedy, The New Yorker, The Wild Bunch, Thomas Wayne, Vice, Wim Wenders on December 26, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
“Hitler, as the point of convergence for so many nostalgias, resentments and anxieties, became a historical figure.”
– Joachim Fest, Hitler
In the wake of the Sandy Hook School Shooting in 2012, President Obama gave a press conference during which he beseeched Americans to support the introduction of basic mental health screenings for gun buyers. Continue reading
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Suicidal Thoughts
Posted in poetry, Reading, Real Men with tags Esther Greenwood, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar on September 24, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
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‘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
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Suicidal Thoughts
Posted in poetry, Reading, Real Men with tags Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Westside Barbell on September 17, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
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“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
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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
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“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
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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
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‘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.
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Sylvia Plath: Godmother of Punk Rock?
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men with tags Ariel, Black Flag, Buddy Willard, Catcher in the Rye, Colossus, Esther Greenwood, Henry Rollins, punk, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar on August 6, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
If you google Sylvia Plath, it’s hard to find her described in any terms other than the superlative. ‘One of the finest lyric poets of the twentieth century,’ is pretty close to the general assessment. Continue reading
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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
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Jordan Peterson
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men with tags Eurydice Dixon, GQ Magazine, Helen Lewis, Jordan Peterson, Nietzche, patriarchy on February 5, 2019 by Jarrod Boyle
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Perhaps this is a function of modern life; every time Peterson posts a lecture, it is watched by millions of people. This is a highly intelligent, eccentric and (by his own admission) fragile person. It is foolish to think this kind of attention would not be difficult to adjust to, and put a profound strain on his character. Continue reading
