The characters seem to be vehicles for the author's masturbatory fantasies, and say really nothing about actual, real people. — Bitter Crank
He thrusts, she heaves — John Cleland, Fanny Hill
They therefore set me this problem of the equality of appearance and numbers. — Paul Valery, Variations on the Eclogues
a complex deconstruction — Baden
fabulist — Wikipedia
metafiction — Wikipedia
(fwiw my copy - used bookstore - has all sorts of sober, analytic notes (feminine handwriting) in the margins, but under the final paragraph it just says 'What the hell?!') — csalisbury
I was gonna object, but then remembered I also wrote a paper in college about how Joyce's The Dead was about female butter fantasies, butter coded as 'snow'.The short story as Rorschach Test
I tend to prefer stories that clearly reflect the author's understanding of the world
If you, Gaelic fellow, haven't read and enjoyed -- actually marveled at -- Ulysses, you are not eligible to call me a Philistine, or a Palestinian, either§ I'll have you know I attended and enjoyed the opera, Four Saints in Three Acts, libretto by Gertrude Stein. En Gard: — Bitter Crank
(My guess is he is a pervert, and writing smart stories about perversion gives a kind of cover, even though he means it.) — csalisbury
I'd say that the story does say something about the nature of desire, though. — Moliere
There's a number of times that the babysitter is either looking at a penis or imagining that she has a penis. It's never flattering -- the penis is small and rubbery and she imagines how funny it must feel to have it come out of the hole in male underwear. In some sense, to my mind, it almost seems like a desire to escape being the object of desire. Because the men are never mistreated in the story. And it points out how funny that a little rubbery bit flopping between the legs ready to piss over everything (as evinced with the Jimmy) makes such a huge difference.
The tv aspect is huge too, and I'm having trouble pinning down its significance — csalisbury
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