#literati speculation

[frazzledsoul]

I've got a long meta in my drafts no one will like about Literati class issues and why Rory is inclined to think the worst of Jess when she's actually dating him, but I'm just going to get to the point. Rory was immensely privileged to be raised by a teenage mom invested in her welfare who worked herself up to middle-class life, as well as wealthy grandparents who were there to provide the things that Lorelai could not give her by herself. Jess did not grow up with those advantages. Stars Hollow judges him harshly for being a troublemaker and not being the socially compliant middle class kid who is satisfied with social life in that tiny town, but all of that is heavily influenced by class snobbery.

He's a working class kid from the big city who grew up poor and is being haphazardly raised by his uncle who is also working class. Jess doesn't live by their social standards: he skips class, causes trouble around town, would rather work than go to school, has sex with his casual girlfriend, and wants to get away as soon as possible. They judge him for not viewing their way of life as superior to his and Rory judges him for that, too. She's physically and intellectually attracted to him and has lost interest in Dean, but she's not willing to give up the advantages she has of being the socially compliant "good girl" and doesn't do so willingly until Dean jumps ship. Even then, half the time she is either ashamed of him, inclined to think the worst of him, and views his responsibilities as inferior to her social life and almost dumps him when he doesn't plan adequately for dates. She did view him (at least subconsciously) as inferior to her because of where he came from and for his lack of ambition but most of all because he did not want that middle-class life, either. He didn't like Stars Hollow and Stars Hollow didn't like him. He didn't want that life for himself. Luke may have failed at easing his transition into the next phase of his life, but he did need to leave there and figure out where he needed to be on his own.

There's more one can say about Rory's selfishness in season 4, when she rejects Jess in the hopes of clinging to Dean and getting that small town middle class status back and believing Lindsey is a minor inconvenience to be disposed of, only to use her upper-class advantages to run away from the situation and rejecting Dean for that life once she's actually free to date him again. That's not the point here: the point is that Jess deserved a life where he could be accepted and loved and respected without having his class status weaponized against him, and he could only find that life if he wanted to be there and wouldn't resort to his troublemaking antics out of boredom. He could not have that life in Stars Hollow, and Rory was part of the reason why. Eventually he needed to be free of her judgment, too.

Could these two work it out in a hypothetical future where these issues don't trip it up? Maybe. Jess comes to Rory's rescue twice after he's grown up and found a home for herself and she's still spiraling because upper-class life hasn't satisfied her, either. However, she ultimately rejects Jess again for life with Logan and she hasn't quite escaped the appeal of it a decade later, even though she isn't willing to commit to it full time by actually marrying (or by the AYITL era, even dating) him. She also weaponized Logan's wealth against him in arguments more than once in the OS, too, so this is a tactic she resorts to when she's unhappy. In AYITL, all three guys have settled into lives they're more or less content with and Rory still doesn't know what the fuck she wants. Same old story, I guess. She no longer judges Jess, so maybe there is hope.

[anne-bsd-bibliophile]

Retrogression by Dazai Osamu

Translated by A. L. Raye

"He was not an old man. He was only around 25 years old, but at the same time he was, undoubtedly, an old man. For every year that a normal person lived, this old man lived it three times over." - Dazai Osamu, "Retrogression"

"And so, through Dazai’s own efforts, I hope that a day will come to pass where Dazai’s work will be instinctively understood by a great many people." - Satō Haruo, "A Respectable Yet Tormented Soul: Regarding Dazai Osamu"

"Having been metaphorically torn apart by his critics, every time he finished writing anything - anything at all - regardless of public opinion, the wounds of his humiliation would ache more and more, so keenly and so painfully, that the unfulfilled hollow in his heart spread further and deeper until finally, he died. He was deceived by the illusion of a masterpiece, enchanted by an eternal beauty, carried away by a fever cream and ultimately couldn't even save himself..." - Dazai Osamu, "Retrogression"

"I’ll stab him! I thought. What an absolute scoundrel! It didn’t take long however before I suddenly felt the hot and twisted love you bore towards me, an intense love which reminded me of Nellie from Dostoyevsky’s Humiliated and Insulted, a love that I felt deep within my heart. No. No, how could this be? I couldn’t believe it, I shook my head but that love of yours, concealed behind that cold exterior, felt Dostoyevskian in its deranged passion and made my body burn feverishly at the thought. And of course, you were completely unaware of any of this." - Dazai Osamu, "Letter to Kawabata Yasunari"

"Don’t say behind someone’s back what you can’t say to their face. I followed this principle and for that I was thrown into the looney bin." - Dazai Osamu, "Human Lost"

"Somebody put a live snake in my letterbox. I’m furious! This must be the work of someone who enjoys making fun of unpopular writers who feel the need to check their letterboxes twenty times a day. I was in a strange mood after that, and spent the rest of the day in bed." - Dazai Osamu, "Diary of My Distress"

"I’m jumping at shadows. I feel like my body has been ground up and picked clean, right down to the bone." - Dazai Osamu, "Human Lost"

"It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It really wasn’t supposed to be this way. You of all people should be clearly aware that being a writer exists within a perpetual state of ‘foolishness’." - Dazai Osamu, "Letter to Kawabata Yasunari"

"The cicada realised in the afternoon that it was going to die soon. Ah, it would have been better if I had been happier! I should have fooled around more, with nary a care in the world. Oh, do forgive me, I just wish to fall asleep among the flowers." - Dazai Osamu, "Human Lost"

"He has the kind of romantic spirit of a selfish, good-for-nothing wastrel, but more than that, he has let this seep deep down into the very marrow of his being. The uninhibited yet fragile self flows out of control, and it is the lot in life of this particular variety of man to continually contemplate himself until his self-awareness becomes intertwined with his bones." - Satō Haruo, "A Respectable Yet Tormented Soul: Regarding Dazai Osamu"

"Now, within the limits I have allowed myself, I believe I have accomplished everything I set out to do. As for the rest, I calmly entrust myself to fate." - Dazai Osamu, "January Letter to Satō Haruo from Dazai Osamu"

From the Introduction by translator A. L. Raye:

"This book aims to piece together the fractured and disorderly lifestyle of one of history's greatest romantics and pairs it with a particular moment in his life; losing the Akutagawa Prize. The ensuing drama that unfolded through private letters, newspaper articles, diaries, obituaries, and fiction created a scandal that disturbed the early Showa literati with its coarse and indecent honesty. Dazai's fiction, fiction about Dazai, speculation and reality intertwined to create an explosive event that not only changed the desired trajectory of his life but also raised issues of discrimination within prominent literary circles and the treatment of mental illness in 1930s Japan."

"If we encounter Dazai without taking into account modern ideas of disability, there is a danger we might subject him to the same myth-making mindset that surrounds Van Gough; that of a tortured genius who needed to suffer for his art - or, perhaps more accurately, for our entertainment."

"Dazai was a complicated man, a man who couldn't even decide for himself who he was."

Retrogression also includes annotations and background information on every story, letter, diary, and eulogy, adding history and insights that are difficult to find available in other English translations so far.

You can find more information and free translations on Yobanashi Café. Retrogression is available for purchase in either paperback or eBook format on Amazon.

[communist-manifesto-daily]

The Communist Manifesto - Part 16

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It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written. The German literati reversed this process with the profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic functions of money, they wrote “Alienation of Humanity”, and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois state they wrote “Dethronement of the Category of the General”, and so forth.

The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the French historical criticisms, they dubbed “Philosophy of Action”, “True Socialism”, “German Science of Socialism”, “Philosophical Foundation of Socialism”, and so on.

The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely emasculated. And, since it ceased in the hands of the German to express the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of having overcome “French one-sidedness” and of representing, not true requirements, but the requirements of Truth; not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests of Human Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy.

This German socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such a mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence.

The fight of the Germans, and especially of the Prussian bourgeoisie, against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the liberal movement, became more earnest.

By this, the long-wished for opportunity was offered to “True” Socialism of confronting the political movement with the Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very things those attainment was the object of the pending struggle in Germany.

To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, country squires, and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.

It was a sweet finish, after the bitter pills of flogging and bullets, with which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class risings.

While this “True” Socialism thus served the government as a weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of German Philistines. In Germany, the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century, and since then constantly cropping up again under the various forms, is the real social basis of the existing state of things.

To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction – on the one hand, from the concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. “True” Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic.

The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry “eternal truths”, all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst such a public.

And on its part German Socialism recognised, more and more, its own calling as the bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine.

It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German petty Philistine to be the typical man. To every villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the “brutally destructive” tendency of Communism, and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all class struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul and enervating literature.*

* The revolutionary storm of 1848 swept away this whole shabby tendency and cured its protagonists of the desire to dabble in socialism. The chief representative and classical type of this tendency is Mr Karl Gruen. [Note by Engels to the German edition of 1890.]

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[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

this got me wondering who the intended audience of venacular novels were. what porportion of the population were literate? i know there would have been "town reader" type people at teahouses who read things to people, as well as streetcorner storytellers who retold abridged versions to people in the same manner as a singer or actor. how quickly did the story spread in wu cheng'en's lifetime? were there fanclubs breathlessly waiting for Anon to post the latest chapter of his Monkey Story, even as mr wu became increasingly depressed and disillusioned with society? the literati looked down on novels as a rule, but looking down on something doesn't stop people consuming them. was authorship an open secret in writer circles? (there is speculation that luo guanzhong might have edited the later half of Water Margin. was. was he shi nai'an's betareader????). i was thinking it was tragic to devote so much time and effort to something you could never publically take credit for, but i realised im thinking about novels in the modern sense. having your name and face attached to a work of fiction in the year 1500 would be like if someone doxxed your AO3 and nailed photocopies to your workplace building, martin luther style.

[maya-matlin]

This is probably an idiotic question, but how much do you think Chad/Sophia and Milo/Alexis being in love in real life and that chemistry naturally translating onscreen has to do with why you ship brucas and literati: not a factor whatsoever, a small factor, a mid-sized factor, or a major factor?! I never thought it impacted why I shipped either of them but, honestly, on paper both ships are 'eh' to me and the writing has me cringing at points, but somehow when I actually WATCH them my heart is like 'yup, no matter what your brain says, we want these people together' and I really do think the actors' chemistry factors into that a lot more than I had realized. (The reverse is often true too---like my brain *wants* to ship brulian because they're a 'healthier' ship and Julian gave Brooke her fairy tale ending and all that but my heart is like 'eh, sorry, just not feeling it.') I swear there are a few Gilmore Girls scenes where I'm like 'that's not even Rory and Jess---you can tell by the tone and expression that it's Milo and Alexis lol' and same goes for Chad and Sophia when I rewatch parts of OTH. So I would say the actors' real life love coming through onscreen influences my shipping both those couples a lot, or at least more than I'd realized before. I'm so curious what your take is!

I would personally say that the chemistry has a massive impact. Not necessarily the real life relationships, though I'm sure for some that was part of the fun. Oftentimes, when fictional couples turn into real life couples, both the on screen and off screen dynamics are shipped simultaneously. I mean, it especially plays a large role in terms of Rory's relationship with Jess and their continued popularity. Their on screen relationship didn't last long at all. Milo choosing to leave at the end of season 3 and only appearing sparingly after that meant Rory and Jess never got a proper second chance or even a semblance of one beyond one kiss in season 6. Yet, their relationship is massively popular and touched so many fans. It's the definitive Rory romance even though she dated both Dean and Logan for longer. While Jess got a big push considering he was a real character with his own arc and story lines as opposed to Dean and Logan who primarily revolved around Rory with little things happening in their lives here and there (Dean's failed marriage, Logan's constant battle with Mitchum) that Rory would typically be there to observe, it's undeniable that what they shared on screen can't really be described as a successful romance. Both Rory and Jess had good intentions, but Jess also had a lot of problems that he needed to work through. He genuinely loved Rory, wanted to make her happy, and seemed committed to staying together after high school, but then his personal demons got in the way. So as a result, Jess let Rory down and failed to properly communicate the things that could have brought them closer as a couple. But, damn. The chemistry.

You see little moments like this on the show and also out of context in so many edits. You almost forget how badly things ended. Because how can you not love them?! And back to the chemistry. It never felt as natural with Rory's other boyfriends. I think it was more believable with Logan than Dean, but overall this looked effortless.

Also, Chad and Sophia. Good god. I don't know specifics about Milo and Alexis, but by all accounts Chad and Sophia's short-lived marriage ended in complete disaster to the point it's widely speculated that it played a role in how the endgames played out contrary to what everyone behind the scenes claims. Whatever Brooke and Lucas were intended to be in any given season (and I personally think that during season 2 at the least they might have been endgame), their chemistry far outshone the official Lucas/Peyton pairing. It was just so raw, you know?

These are all different phases. Through their initial relationship to the separating/divorcing era to firmly divorced, that chemistry never went away. Even when the underlying subtext isn't supposed to equal Brucas, the fact their love was once real off screen meant that it never 100% went away. Lucas could say a million lines about what Peyton means to him and how he's never been happier, but it never packed the same punch as the look on his face when he's around Brooke. And I'm not stupid. This is not pro-Chad and Sophia. The man got engaged to a high school senior. I'm not here to debate his real life thoughts and feelings for his ex-wife. I'm also aware acting exists. But if we're talking about real life relationships and on screen chemistry, it's relevant. For them at least, what went down in real life made the love story between Brooke and Lucas feel real.

As for Brooke and Julian/Sophia and Austin, it's interesting how it all kind of inverted. This is a good example of how other times, what's happening in real life doesn't make a difference in regards to on screen couples. On screen, Brooke and Julian were perfectly fine. I'd probably say they had the most heat in season 6 when Sophia and Austin were still figuring out whether they wanted to be together, but the Brooke/Julian relationship overall never had the same passion and effortless on screen affection. It never looked as put on as Lucas/Peyton scenes, but it was never exciting. So I definitely see what you're saying. On paper, Brooke and Julian was the right ending. It was evident how much Julian loved Brooke and that they'd formed an incredibly strong relationship throughout seasons 6-9. But because of the differences in chemistry, it doesn't feel quite as impactful. With Brooke and Lucas, it's like their love for one another is so overwhelming and impossible to turn off even when they want to. With Brooke and Julian, they love each other and it's really nice to have that comforting love after years of failed romances. But it's not necessarily the romance that jumps out.

See, this is very sweet. They're doing everything right. But it's just not the same.

[grandhotelabyss]

Worst thing you read that is regarded as "good" by academics/people that should know better?

Hardmode: Not including any obious political things people have to pretend to like to not get into trouble, cause I think it won't be surprising if you say "well actually anti-racist baby isnt the best picturebook for toddlers out there..."

I have been vocally baffled by the taste in contemporary literature of academe and the elite literati for a decade now, starting with the apotheosis of Knausgård and ending with Ernaux's Nobel, and encompassing Ben Lerner, Sally Rooney, Jenny Offill, Sheila Heti, Rachel Cusk, etc. Plain prose, self-fixation, hostility to artifice, and, yes, excessive attention (in the mode of self-congratulatory self-abasement) to politics. Did I mention plain prose? I don't actually think Knausgård is terrible, but I've pretty much never finished a novel by the other authors named except the one I once forced myself to teach (i.e., Dept. of Speculation). Some novels in a broadly similar vein have been good: I've praised My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Leave Society, and Lost Children Archive before. Still, I long for the return of imagination, of romance, of style to the literary/realist novel. The Iris Murdoch Revival now underway is a sign of better days ahead, I hope, not that she too wasn't only a romancer in spite of herself, as is Knausgård's own turn/return to the fantastical in those new books of his I'll have to read eventually.

[deltaruminations]

geez louise ok i just need to get these thoughts out of my head lol. stream-of-consciousness rambling about Secret Boss "Someone" to follow

gaster or not, i think the idea of Someone being an "insider" to the dark worlds makes a little more intuitive sense than them being a Lightner (or shapeless fourth-dimensional entity, i guess). the simplest answer to "how were they contacting Darkners before the Fountains were open?" is, well, Someone themself was a Darkner. they already lived on that layer of reality.

beyond that, i think there's a certain clarity of motivation to be found if we take the stance that they're a Darkner rather than something else. consider the Someone’s M.O. — give these underdogs knowledge of what lies beyond, help them transcend their limitations, then leave them to take fate for themselves; this reads to me like an effort (however misguided) of liberation. why would Someone want to do this? maybe because they empathize with them -- and/or, maybe, they stumbled into some kind of eldritch knowledge themself, and were desperate to share it, to have someone else understand what they did.

if we do want to bring in gaster as a possibility for Someone… fuck it. let's say his "object" really is the font Wingdings. why, from a watsonian perspective, Font Darkners would manifest as skeletons is… unclear… but let's go with it for now. Wingdings is a digital dingbats font that sparked confusion, misunderstanding, and even conspiracy theories among users. It's always been a misfit among common typefaces, and over time its usefulness as an ideographic system has been challenged by easier and more available alternatives, including, of course, the implementation of Unicode emoji. contrast this with comic sans and papyrus, which, despite the chagrin of design literati, have historically been widely-used and beloved due to their availability, versatility, and ease of use. by this logic, wingdings fits the profile of a secret boss, designed for a purpose that left him underutilized and discarded.

no real ideas as to how he would have acquired The Knowledge or whatever, aside from ENTRY NUMBER 17 seeming to allude vaguely to opening a Neo Dark Fountain, a process that i guess could expose the planar nature of reality, like he figured if he can go down then maybe he can go up too, or something. listen i have no fucking clue ok. in any case he certainly seems like the type to go digging for it in the first place, Mad Scientist, etc., and maybe it's in his nature as a Darkner designed for communication to feel a need to share it. an obtuse, near-unintelligible font struggling to be understood. or something. lol

as to how gaster (and the brothers) would have "ascended" to the Light World… who knows lol. Magic Science Doors? there are still a ton of issues with this line of speculation and i'm not sure how much it really holds water beyond Being Interesting and proposing a couple of answers to things. but. still. it needles me

....................though. i mean. at the time we meet him, gasty guy does seem to be in possession of a human SOUL, and kris doesn't seem to have one otherwise….................................... nah jk that's silly LOL. unless...... 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 no for real i'm kidding

[chicago-geniza]

One of my stupid speculative death hills is that if Walter Benjamin were alive today people would be really viciously mean to him on the Internet if he made a name for himself at all and the circumstances of his own lifetime would repeat, amplifying and reverberating, i.e., his work would only be published and recognized posthumously, and he would be ridiculed & unemployed & made a laughingstock among self-styled ~leftist academics and literati, Jewish and otherwise lol

[missroller15]

WAIT I JUST NOTICED A DETAIL ABT LITERATI I HADN’T CAUGHT BEFORE

Ok so it’s well-known their outfits typically have them wear each other’s eye color. It means (at least I think so) that they’re mutually thinking of each other or of themselves (this can be dived into deeper specifically in the grocery scene in s3 but back to the point.) Something I caught when looking at gifs was that Rory wore a brown coat quite a bit in s4 while we know Jess is gone. The significance?

Well, the color brown represents security, dependability, safety. To Rory, Jess never showed those qualities. He never stuck around, he was never secure nor dependable. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t have wanted him to be just that. Given the circumstances near the end of s3-s4, it’s obvious that while Rory says she’s fine and she’s over it, she clear is not. She’s going through this phase where it’s all sinking in that she made a mistake with him. That he couldn’t stay, be secure. So when I saw this scene, that’s how I depicted it personally.

Her brown coat represented what she wanted from him in a sense without her outright saying it from a narrative standpoint. I know it’s completely reaching and this is total nonsense but I thought I’d just get this observation out b/c it made sense to me when I watched it. 😅

[frazzledsoul]

So the Rory/Logan/Jess timeline in S6 is a little...insane. I may have concluded that S6 lost all sense of time and logic when plotting out this story (if they actually bothered to do that, which they may not have).

Jess comes to visit Rory in Hartford on the Nov 5 episode (6.8). We know it takes place more or less in real time because he mentions that her birthday was a few weeks beforehand. He more or less causes Logan and Rory's breakup by getting Rory to realize that her current lifestyle is making her unhappy and she needs to refocus on her goals and ditch the aimless partying. I believe Rory moves out of her grandparents house right away and goes to stay with Lane.

The next episode is 06.09 (Nov. 15). Rory badgers her way into a job at the Stamford Eagle Gazette, reunites with her mother, and starts making plans to go back to Yale. People rag on Jess for not knowing the "real Rory", but his methods are pretty effective.

6.10 airs on November 22. It's Thanksgiving, so we are more or less in real time. Thanksgiving happens at the Dragonfly: Liz cooks. Jess does not attend. Logan's sister Honor calls Rory to tell her she's sorry about her breakup with Logan. They haven't spoken since Logan left her alone at the bar right after having dinner with Jess, so Logan decided to cut the cord by sending the word through Honor. As we find out later, he then starts sleeping his way through Honor's friends.

6.11 aired on January 10. Rory is back at Yale, so we're still in real time. I wonder if she saw Jess over the holidays. She moves in with Paris and Doyle.

6.12 airs on January 17. Logan decides he wants Rory back, but she rebuffs him. He goes to Lorelai and begs for her help, and Lorelai writes Rory a boyfriend recommendation letter. I think Rory is still undecided by the end of the episode.

6.13 is the infamous (and IMO, overrated) fighting episode. It aired on January 31. Rory doesn't reconcile with Logan until this episode, when he comes to her rescue at the paper.

6.14 is February 7. Paris is kicked out of her position as editor of the Yale Daily News and Rory is voted in. Paris kicks Rory out of the apartment and she moves in with Logan.

6.15 airs on February 14. It's the dreaded Valentine's Day episode. Logan (because he is insane, apparently) invites Luke and Lorelai to Martha's Vineyard for a couples weekend. As you will see, we are in real time here. Rory and Logan mysteriously have a weekend and domestic routine after being back together for two weeks and living together for one. What? How is that possible? He's also taught Rory to cook. I rather like this detail, but there is no way this was accomplished within a week. Did they take advantage of a time loop to accomplish this? So strange.

Oh, and they weren't living like this when Rory was at her grandparents during the summer and fall, because they spent all their time partying, Rory didn't have time, and the grandparents would have noticed if she was out of town with Logan every single weekend. Domestic Martha's Vineyard Logan is obviously someone who is trying harder and not partying so much, which is not who he was before the breakup.

Luke points out that he doesn't want to spend all weekend with Logan because "we don't know where we stand with this guy" and points out that Rory and Logan's relationship status changes every week. Luke was a giant douchebag this episode, but one can't blame him for being right.

6.16 aired on February 28. Rory finds out that Logan slept with Honor's entire bridesmaid party while they were separated, is upset that he "cheated" so soon after they stopped talking to each other, and moves out of his apartment and back in with Paris.

So basically they were back together a little less than a month.

I don't feel Rory is terribly sympathetic here. First of all, she had her tongue down both Tristan and Jess's throats within a day of her first two breakups with Dean, so she really is in no position to talk about moving on too fast. Second of all, the fact that they didn't clarify when exactly they broke up is on both of them because neither of them picked up the phone and asked the other one what was going on. No, Logan shouldn't have broken up with her through his sister, and yes, he should have told her what happened, and he certainly should have given her a heads up before she hung out with his sister's friends, but he technically did not cheat. At least not in the way Rory has done in the past or will a few weeks later with Jess. I don't feel she has the moral authority to proclaim herself as the aggreived one here.

6.16 airs on April 4. I'm not sure if this episode happens a week later or if it's an actual month. It's mentioned that Zach has been working his way up to asking Mama Kim for Lane's hand in marriage and he proposed the previous episode, so it very well could have been a month. Anyway, Logan talks his way into Rory reconciling with him and she moves back in.

6.18 (airing on April 11) is the episode where Rory goes to Truncheon and breaks Jess's heart into a million tiny pieces (again). This time she apologizes to him and admits that he deserves better than to be treated as her sidepiece. She returns to her Logan drama, while Jess is consoled by the many, many willing men and women of Philadelphia. Your slut destiny awaits, Jess. Enjoy.

As we all know, Rory dedicates herself to Logan when he gets injured, and he moves to London at the end of the season (which takes place on May 9) despite Rory accusing Mitchum of trying to interfere in their sacred love and begging him to let Logan stay (Rory, you've broken up and gotten back together twice in six months and have only actually been together about half of that time. Also, you were making out with your ex three weeks ago. Calm down). This relationship does not seem particularly stable. However, we get new writers the next season, so it calms down and both of them actually mature a little before having all of that growth reversed in AYITL while Jess stays awesome. Oh, well.

The thing is, imagine if Jess had made a move sometime in the two months when Rory was officially broken up with Logan (the first time) or if they got together over Christmas or if he had made a move after the second break-up while she was living with Paris. I'm not sure if Rory was mentally stable enough for Jess or if this version of her could handle a long-distance relationship, but that's not the point here. It could have gone so much smoother for both of them, and Jess wouldn't have to be roped against his will into another cheating scenario.

But, alas. Not to be.

[anne-bsd-bibliophile]

Retrogression by Dazai Osamu is the #1 New Release in Japanese Literature!

"This book aims to piece together the fractured and disorderly lifestyle of one of history's greatest romantics and pairs it with a particular moment in his life; losing the Akutagawa Prize. The ensuing drama that unfolded through private letters, newspaper articles, diaries, obituaries, and fiction created a scandal that disturbed the early Showa literati with its coarse and indecent honesty. Dazai's fiction, fiction about Dazai, speculation and reality intertwined to create an explosive event that not only changed the desired trajectory of his life but also raised issues of discrimination within prominent literary circles and the treatment of mental illness in 1930s Japan." - From the Introduction by translator A. L. Raye

Retrogression also includes annotations and background information on every story, letter, diary, and eulogy, adding history and insights that are difficult to find available in other English translations so far.

You can find more information and free translations on Yobanashi Café. Retrogression is available for purchase in either paperback or eBook format on Amazon.

[stellaluna33]

Hi, I propose that we don't use the term "Should Have Been Endgame" in regards to Rory/Jess anymore and switch it to a more positive, "Would Have Been/Will Be Endgame." With where we leave Rory and Jess at the end AYITL even if it took another 10 years and a few other relationships on both sides it would have happened.

I might opt for a more middle-of-the-road designation like, "Still a Contender." 😉. I don't trust TV storytelling enough to call ANYTHING a sure thing if it hasn't already happened or the writers say it outright. Haha! There are just too many whims and outside factors that can push a storyline one way or another in television.

BUT, I absolutely agree with you that "Should Have Been Endgame" is too pessimistic for Rory and Jess, namely because Rory's story ISN'T OVER YET! Whether they make more or not, Amy has explicitly said that she INTENTIONALLY left Rory's storyline open ended. And she hasn't said THIS explicitly, but do you know what else definitely SEEMS to have been left open intentionally? Jess as a future love interest. They wrote Dean as being married with kids, and his interaction with Rory was firmly in the realm of "emotionally distant but friendly nostalgia." They were given an Ending. That door was closed. With Logan, despite their affair, Logan is also getting married, and he and Rory have officially broken things off and said Goodbye. Even after their "relapse" they made it clear that Rory had thought things through and she was firm in her decision (HER decision! I'm so proud...). They were given an Ending. Though an implied pregnancy does leave that door open a crack. But Jess? They made a point of having Rory ask about Jess's personal life so that he could reply with, "Stable, nothing permanent." They could have easily given him a girlfriend, but they made sure to state that he was single and available instead. They wrote Jess's last scene, the last we see of him, as looking at Rory longingly. They wanted to make sure the audience knew that for Jess, despite what he might tell Luke, this is Not Over. Jess was the catalyst for Rory's major change of trajectory, he still has an almost astounding effect on her, and despite what I've seen some others claim, Rory isn't written as being "uninterested" in Jess as much as UNAWARE of his interest in her, heavily evoking Luke/Lorelai circa Season One. And they're still very much in each other's lives, not only because their families are connected, but because (as, AGAIN, they specified) they now have "a work thing between them." The door, friends, is wide WIDE open.

Is it a sure thing? No, I'm afraid I don't feel confident saying it is. Logan's got his foot in the door too, unfortunately. But so does Jess, and they wrote it that way on purpose. They're not NOT Endgame! Because the game isn't over yet. And Jess is definitely still a contender!

[st-just]

Books I Read In February

(not counting web serials, etc)

6. Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Ah finally I have found real literature! Two hundreds pages about an upper-middle class New York creative’s failing marriage!

Do kind of wonder if it’s all some sort of elaborate flex – ‘look, I’m so good at writing that I can take the most boring possible subject matter and still make it entertaining!”

I mean it was actually really readable. The book’s really very well done on the level of craft, and the whole central conceit – story told in a long series of disconnected vignettes and streams of consciousness, ranging from a paragraph to a few pages – is well done and makes reading it like eating a bowl of potato chips, kind of, if that makes sense?

But in terms of plot, or stakes, or anything else, yeah, it’s really every stereotype of litfic written by, about, and for the literati.

And I mean, I read it in two sittings (and could have been one if I hadn’t needed to get to work) and at this point almost none of it has stuck with me. So, decent, I guess? Good airport novel, except for being so short?

7. Persuasion by Jane Austen

Because it’s vaguely shameful I’m in my late 20s and haven’t read her, and I’ve already seen the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice so figured I’d start with something else and a blog I read mentioned it.

So, like, in terms of reading as a social activity, leaving this lying around the apartment has been the cause of more real conversations than any other book I’ve read in, like, years. Which means ‘3’, but still. You see the argument for a shared cultural canon.

So I feel slightly bad in how I probably appreciated this more as a cultural/historical artifact than, like, a story. But the descriptions of life for the minor rural gentry in early 19th century England were actually really interesting! The relationships between families, the incredibly casual attitude towards incest (between cousins, anyway), the way that basically no one without money or a respectable name was even named or directly refereed to, and how claustrophobic and small the protagonist’s social circle felt as a result, the way that no one actually did anything, and the only occupation any had previously filled was ‘naval officer’, the way that there was just absolutely nothing to do, so being given tasks and being asked to help with things/given an oppurtunity to be useful by one’s social circle was something of a compliment, the customs of hospitality, the fact that writing from 200 years ago is still perfectly readable (if with weird vocabulary) compared to Shakespeare or similar, the attitudes towards courtship and marriage, just the way people amuse themselves and spend their time. It’s all really interesting!

As a story it was, um, fine? Interestingly low on drama, honestly. Like, the love triangle resolves with the tearful confession and proposal and their just isn’t any sort of confrontation with the villain. Or any real confrontation in general, really. All the conflict is gossip, miscommunication, and Anne’s crippling internal angst. All extremely British.

8. The Causal Angel by Hannu Rajaniemi

Because someone in a discord I’m in mentioned the series and I remembered I’d never actually finished it.

Honestly this is probably my favorite of the series? Or, well, properly, the Zoku as a culture and setting are just orders of magnitude less interesting than the Oubliette or Earth were, but in terms of actual plot? Actually cashed all the checks, very satisfying.

Though, like, for all the hard sci jargon technobabble, the entire plot was racing to get the hidden gem which allows you to make a wish and rewrite the universe before the evil spirit which is wearing the Emperor’s face can seize it for itself. So, you know, genre is fake, and the fantasy/sf distinction especially so.

Anyway the book gets bonus points from me for never having anything like a romance between Jean and Mieli. Like there’s a whole conversation at one point where someone offers Jean a chance to build a new life away from all the people trying to kill him and he says he can’t because he promised to help a friend and they go ‘a friend. Sure. C’mon now.” And he just rolls his eyes and it’s never followed up on! Truly a breath of fresh air (besides, Mieli exclusively falls for girls designed from scratch by superintelligences to be attractive to her, and Jean still isn’t over the milf he once literally destroyed the world to try and impress).

But yeah, lots of fun heists and schemes and gambits, I really enjoy most of the characters, and all the scene/environment descriptions are gorgeous and trippy and I want an artbook.

...still no idea what the takeaway from the last bit of the Mars chapter was supposed to be, though.

9. Lakota American by Pekka Hämäläinen

Because I’d seen his Comanche Empire recommended a couple places, but the book store couldn’t order that for whatever reason. And I’ve been meaning to learn more North American history. Also it’s kind of comforting to go back to nonfiction where the last hundred pages are all footnotes. Feels all virtuous and edifying compared to the usual educational diet of blogs and esoteric shitposts.

(Would you believe this took me longer to get through than all the previous books in this post combined?)

Anyways, incredibly interesting book, at least if you (like me) are starting with a knowledge base of ‘Great Plains, horse nomads, buffalo, Little Bighorn’. Hämäläinen’s insistence on spending a few paragraphs repeating the book’s thesis every chapter does admittedly get annoying, but still. (Also, you do occasionally get the sense he’s laying it on a bit thick, portraying the Lakota as heroic protagonists of history. But I’m kind of chalking up to the same sort of thing where anyone who writes a good book-length biography of someone ends up either kind of in love with their subject or else viscerally loathing them).

I mean not that ‘heroic protagonists of history’ isn’t probably a useful corrective, given how much the popular imagining of most indigenous nations still consists of ‘lived harmoniously with nature in perfect stasis until white people brought History to the Americas, which consisted exclusively of their being exploited and genocided’.

The thesis, for the record, is that the Lakota as a people were unusually opportunistic and adaptable and (combined with some luck of geography and having a relatively large population) were able to not only survive migrating from the Great Lakes to the plains but genuinely thrive, making themselves one of the first intersections of the spreading technological frontiers of horses (from the south) and guns (through trading relationships brought with them) to create something like a genuine nomadic empire in the northern great plains through the in the late 18th through late 19th centuries (an empire without an emperor (or central leadership at all until conflict with the US required mass mobilization and coordination), granted).

Reading it has also left me infinitely more convinced of the correctness of that famous Sankara quote about foreign aid, though. Even at their richest and most powerful (which was really very rich and powerful!) they were entirely reliant on trading (basically exclusively buffalo products) to Europeans and Americans (and later Metis) for manufactured goods, metal tools, and guns (or just being supplied them as treaty payments, and you know with horse nomads throughout history the lines between ‘charity’, ‘payments for land/goods’, ‘political subsidies’, ‘tribute’ and ‘protection money’ are all very thin and easy to confuse), and after Little Bighorn that’s the lever the US used to break them as a military and territorial threat to white settlement, more than anything else.

Both by denying them access to those goods and encouraging the destruction of the buffalo population to leave them nothing to trade others with/subsist on on their own, I mean.

10. Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Because I have an incredible soft spot for books that are clearly worldbuilding exercise first and everything else second, and Tchaikovsky really writes some of the best xenofiction I can recall. Plus I really did love Children of Time, so figured I’d give the sequel a shot even if it seemed totally needless. (and hey, now I can check off the ‘hard SF’ category on some imaginary bingo card)

And hey, despite my misgivings about where he’d go with a sequel, it worked! The story of Senkovi and the Octopuses doesn’t feel like much of a retreat of Kern and her spiders at all, and the octopuses themselves are wonderfully distinct from both the spiders and humanity in terms of how they think and express. And are just a lot of fun to spend time with. (The actual aliens are a lot of fun too, of course, though they were rather more high concept and space-opera-magic-ey than any of the earth’s descendants).

Despite not technically being aliens, Tchaikovsky's uplifted animals really do always manage to be both psychologically alien but also believably able to maintain a civilization of themselves, something that’s, like, vanishingly rare in SF write large. They’re great.

And I mentioned a bit back how these books are more Star Treky than anything I’ve seen recently, (including all the scraps of modern trek I’ve watched). By which I mean there’s just a real underlying optimistic xenophilia to them? That even the maddened computer after-image left by a myriad-old megalomaniac scientist and the alien parasites with an instinctive drive to assimilate the entire universe can be talked with, negotiated with, understood, integrated into a society that’s greater and more vibrant for their inclusion (this is, in fact, the argument that convinces the parasites, that diversity and coexistence allows for a richer and more adventurous life than merely consuming everything to understand it through recreation in your own image). And then the kind of accompanying assumption that a cosmic sort of noble curiosity is something like life’s highest calling, that given the option of course people would want to come together in a grand adventure exploring the universe. It also manages the impossible task of actually selling that hopefulness without coming off as twee or saccharine.)

It’s also kinda Star Trek-ey in ‘using an alien culture for social commentary of humans, despite also having humans right there’. I mean less so than trek, obviously, but the juxtaposition of humanity just, like, not caring* about anyone’s gender or sexuality and Fabian’s whole character arc of being a male Portid spider trying to excel and make a name for himself in a formally-equal-and-you-aren’t-literally-hunted-for-sport-anymore-but-c’mon sort of matriarchal academic environment did feel a bit on the nose.

*Like really, you know how on writing 101 boards you get guys asking how to write female characters, and sometimes the response is something like ‘just write everyone as characters, and then go back and flip a coin to see what pronouns to give people’? You could probably actually convince me that’s how the humans in this story were written. (Well, not quite. But, like, close).

11. That Time of Year by Marie NDiaye

I have zero idea how this ended up on my TBR list, except that I wanted to read some more works in translation and this was originally French. And okay maybe it’s because it’s French or something about the translation but this one’s officially too literary for me. (I mean I’m absolutely sure the translation didn’t do the dialogue any favors, at least.)

It’s an interesting concept, at least, somewhere on the edge between magical realism and outright horror, I guess? The imagery of the little village getting buried in fog and rain the day after the tourists leave, the eerie similarities of all the locals, the ghosts, it’s all really quite vivid. But even at ~150 pages it felt like there was a lot of padding and wheel-spinning. And the ending literally made me go online and make sure the library’s copy wasn’t missing some pages, somehow.

More dammingly, even short as it was it just felt like a slog to get through.

[georgianadarcies]

Hi! How do you think Amy would have written Literati's story if Jess had stayed on the show when he came back in season 6, if She had ended up writing season 7 and Milo decided to stay on Gilmore Girls how different do you think it would have been? How do you think their story would play out, do you think if would be similar to the way it is, or a bit different?

honestly a lot of it I can't confidently speculate on. I feel like so much of jess' story relies on him having left so I hope that it would have been similar, just maybe following his journey more? but if he'd stayed on, it's likely drama would have been dragged out and probably would have been more frustrating. I love a lot of asp's writing but soooo much of the drama on the show is so contrived so... but just for season seven, I feel like they would've built up a close friendship between him and rory, that is implied to be able to be more but they wouldn't be endgame. the show would still end with rory being pregnant with logan's baby, and I think jess and rory's story would have been similar, it just would have had more.

[grandhotelabyss]

Could you speak to Joyce’s real-world relationship to Wilde? Had he met him, how much do we know about his (Joyce) reading of him (Wilde), was there some continuity between their social circles?

Wilde's fall happened in London when Joyce was only 13, years before Joyce was in touch with the Irish literati. He certainly knew people who knew Wilde—Yeats, to take the most famous example—but I don't believe their circles overlapped much. As far as his reading, aside from allusions in his fiction, the main text of interest is his essay, "Oscar Wilde: The Poet of Salomé." He published this biographical piece in Italian in the Triestine newspaper Il Piccolo della Sera in 1909 on the occasion of Strauss's opera of Salomé opening in the city. The essay isn't online, but you can get it in the Oxford World Classics volume of Joyce's Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing. Here's my reading of the piece from my doctoral dissertation, necessarily oriented toward my own thesis:

In a 1909 article on Wilde that he wrote for the Triestine newspaper Il Picolo della Sera, Joyce demonstrates his grasp of the essence of Wilde’s fraught achievement. Joyce’s short piece of workmanlike journalism on Wilde, written during the ten-year process of composing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is for the most part painfully condescending. It reduces Wilde to “the logical and inevitable product of the Anglo-Saxon college and university system, a system of seclusion and secrecy” and speculates eugenically on “the epileptic cast of [Wilde’s] nervous system” (150).[*] Even so, Joyce rightly concludes that Wilde’s work was a “polyphonic variation on the relationship between art and nature, rather than a revelation of his psyche,” which is to say that Joyce comprehends the difficulty and sophistication of the questions Wilde’s work raises for the novelist, ostensibly committed to mimesis (151).

That Joyce sees the import of The Picture of Dorian Gray’s generic innovations is shown when he incisively quotes Wilde’s own defense of his novel: “Oscar Wilde’s self-defence in the Scots Observer should be accepted as legitimate by any bench of impartial judges. Each man writes his own sin into Dorian Gray (Wilde’s most celebrated novel). What Dorian Gray’s sin was no one says and no one knows. He who discovers it has committed it” (151). This might at first seem like nothing more than a simple quip meant to vindicate Wilde from charges laid by those who, then as now, moralize over others’ transgressions to conceal their own. But it actually encodes a nuanced understanding of what Wilde’s destruction of the realist novel of temporal progress and explicit social criticism portends for the twentieth-century novel. Each reader, Joyce implies, now becomes a writer of the text in the act of interpreting it. This shifts the burden of criticism, whether moral or political, onto the reader, who becomes a critic of society in the act of reconstructing the text of society as it manifests itself in the form of a novel. Furthermore, the identity of author and protagonist, once ensured by the protagonist’s intellectual and moral growth over the course of the progressive narrative to the stature of the author, now shifts to an identity of protagonist and reader. Readers investigate a psyche made, like their own, of cultural discourses and thus come to understand their own subjective constitution.

_______________________

[*] The piece’s occasion is a Triestine performance of Strauss’s Salomé, based on Wilde’s Symbolist drama. Joyce’s perhaps surprising de haut en bas posture toward Wilde could be explained as self-protectiveness: the latter sexually-dissident cosmopolite Aesthete tries to avoid a too-close public association with the earlier one, perhaps for fear of incurring a similar fate. On the other hand, considerations of class/religion in the Irish context may be the explanation, as the downwardly-mobile petit-bourgeois Catholic takes discursive revenge on the privileged Protestant member of the professional/colonial elite.

[scoopsgf]

I may or may not be obsessed with your Literati headcanons so please may I have some more!!

Okay but how do you think Rory and Jess would be in these scenarios:

In a concert

On vacation/travelling together

In fancy/official social functions

Out on the town (if they ever even are?)

Interacting with each other’s friend groups/colleagues (Jess and Brad? Jess and her Yale roomies? Rory and the Truncheon guys?)

concert: oh my god they’re so annoying they don’t even listen to the music they just talk about it/the band the whole time and debate what songs on the setlist are the best etc etc. also they make a tradition of always going for burgers and fries after a show. & if they’re with other people they usually slip away to go make out but that’s true for like. every social situation with them.

travelling: i think it depends on where they are & what they’re doing, but they typically do a lot of on foot exploring and tend to seek out book shops in whatever city or town they’re visiting, which they’ll get lost in for hours. they’re also like. surprisingly punctual people, then both of them. they never miss a flight. jess ALWAYS takes the aisle seat for rory so she doesn’t have to suffer through getting her elbows bumped.

functions: god they really do just kind of get drunk and make fun of everyone. they’ll stand on the sidelines and rip people to shreds for wearing last season’s fashion (even though neither of them have any idea what the fuck they’re talking about and don’t recognise any of the brands); they’ll speculate conversation topics, eat more than their fair share of catered hors d’oeuvres, and they make up excuses to leave early whenever they can.

i think of matthew as a slow to warm up kind of guy, so it takes a bit for him to bond with rory, but once he gets to know her dryer and more ruthless side he’s her self-proclaimed bestie. chris is a pothead who watches too much reality TV, so they’ll like, roast KWTK together or what have you. they also correct each other’s grammar constantly and even make shit up/incorrectly correct just to get under each other’s skin. as far as jess and rory’s friends, we know that he and paris were destined to be best frenemies, & he and lane totally bond over music. i like to think that lane divorces zach and takes over the music store in town, and jess is always willing to help her unload shipments of new records or drum sets or amps or whatever. anyway dkdjfj <3 im weepy now