4/5 = Liked it.
This was my first collection of stories by Carol Oates, and I came away reasonably impressed. Would definitely recommend to others, but I think some of the stories were clearly better than others, and I did find the stories (while clearly distinct) overlapped enough thematically and with their characterisation that I was a little disappointed at the total package.
Cardiff, by the Sea (4 stars)
Not knowing at first these were gothic/horror stories, I was on the back-foot during the beginning of this story, but cued in to the vibe once the protagonist had met her two long-lost aunts and the story had taken a turn towards unsettling.
This is the longest and perhaps (tied with Phan-tomwise, 1972) the most stereotypically ‘gothic' = a long-lost inheritance from an unknown family, creepy relatives, ambiguous deaths in the past, and the haunting of those left behind. While I thought the atmosphere of the story was effective at developing tension and suspense, particularly during the car-ride to the house and in the aunt's house, I thought the story dragged on slightly, taking too long to get into the meat of the story. I would definitely have appreciated fewer words about the protagonists current life, and more exploring the gothic town of Cardiff.
Having said that, once the story got into the swing of things I was definitely hooked, and I found the ambiguity of the narrative compelling. Personally, I think the protagonist was sane, and that her father had committed the murders - but I did appreciate the lack of closure with relation to these central questions.
Miao Dao (4 stars)
As a cat lover, I had mixed feelings about the topic of this story - appreciating the focus on the mistreatment of stray cats, whilst not particularly enjoying hearing about it! This was a solid story, but I do somewhat question its inclusion in this collection - it was the least ‘gothic' in feel and had the least connected protagonist to the other narratives. I also found the sexual abuse of the protagonist slightly heavy-handed - I think it would have made the story more interesting if the father-in-law's crimes were only hinted at, or even if the reader was forced to consider the possibility that he had been innocent. Instead, Carol Oates paints a pretty despicable picture of a man who gets all that he's coming to him by feline claws or father's knife.
All in all, a solid story, but one that probably could have been removed to make the whole package tighter (or replaced with a more fitting story).
Phan-tomwise, 1972 (5 stars)
Cliche as it may be, this was my personal favourite. Young student sleeping with elderly humanities professor is a trope as old as time, but I liked this spin on it - the protagonist spending most of the narrative helping an unrelated elderly poet to the subject of her desire, who covets her as much as an object of childhood inspiration than as a sexual being. Most of the narrative was predictable, but I personally did not see the final twist of her ethereal return coming, which probably should have been guessed when you consider the genre. There isn't much to say specifically about this story, but I just found it a really strong, tight narrative with a sad ending - which is pretty much all that I'd want from horror.
The Surviving Child (4 stars)
Another solid story surrounding a depressed poet, a haunted house, and a man of ill-repute. While I did enjoy this, it was here that I started finding the narrative of the overarching collection somewhat repetitive - female protagonist who isn't sure what is happening, hostile male presence who is the main antagonist, hints at the paranormal, seeped in ambiguity. While these are perfectly good elements for gothic horror, I just wish the collection hadn't repeated them throughout, particularly after the previous story had just done this narrative but, in my opinion, more successfully.
Having said all of that, the story was strong, and I particularly appreciated how utterly creepy Carol Oates writes the boy - cold and pale, we are never quite sure if he is really there. The descriptions of the objects in the trees also stood with me after finishing. There's a cautionary tale here about marrying older men with money and no morals - but I'll leave it to smarter writers than myself.
4/5 = Liked it.
Pretty good collection of short stories, although with the sheer number of stories some were clearly better than others. Calvino is a great writer, so nothing ever warranted a skip, but I definitely found the stories at the start of the collection (thematically based on young men in the mountains) to be weaker than the latter stories (thematically based on love (hence the title)).
My personal favourite was the ‘The Adventure of a Photographer', a beautiful story on the power of the image:
‘The line between the reality that is photographed because it seems beautiful to us and the reality that seems beautiful because it has been photographed is very narrow... The minute you start saying something, “Ah, how beautiful! We must photograph it!” you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it had never existed, and that therefore, in order really to live, you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every moment of your life. The first course leads to stupidity; the second to madness.'
I also quite liked the two beach stories: the first about a man who is so obsessed with reading that he ignores a beautiful woman, and the second about a woman who is trapped while swimming because her swimmers fall off in the water.
A solid read of interesting and sometimes thought-provoking stories.
The tautological character of the spectacle stems from the fact that its means and ends are identical. It is the sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the globe, endlessly basking in its own glory. 85Of all the mid-century French intelligentsia, Debord remains one of the more prophetic chroniclers of our alienated existence. Largely ignored since the 70s with the dissolution of the Situationists, Debords seminal work has thankfully made a recent resurgence in a world where its critique of the Spectacle is more relevant than ever. In an era of fake news, decayed meta-narratives, and Laschian narcissism, Debord is a refreshing breath of air.Debord develops the Marxist conception of reification – essentially the process of turning a subject into an object, and vice versa – into the modern West. The total dominance of the market economy in production has led to the invasion of consumption. As Debord puts (more eloquently):Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the project of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society's unreality. In all of its particular manifestations—news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment—the spectacle represents the dominant model of life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. The spectacle also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process.His book is particularly potent when considering the toxic influence social media and the tech oligarchy have had on the 21st century through the pacification of subjects, the degrading of attention spans, and the polarisation of our political climate. Debords critique of the pacification of society reminds me of [a:Mark Fisher 956173 Mark Fisher https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1485275334p2/956173.jpg]'s point that disorders such as ADD should be understood as pathologies of late capitalism, born from a permanent wiring into a mass culture of constant images and stimulus. While Debord didn't live to see it, I'm sure he would revile TikTok. It's a mistake to read Debord as strictly attacking the media/ad hegemony that dominates the Western world; his broader (and more interesting point) is that all of daily life is mediated by the incoherent and all encompassing influence of the Spectacle. The Spectacle cannot be avoided, only resisted. That Debord and the Situationists failed is a lesson to us all. A somewhat difficult read in parts, especially as a translation, but not enough to seriously impede reading.