book51ut

probably more aptly titled “the pedophiles” the book was a trip. it was excellent and incredibly well done. i think a lot about gratuitous violence and books and while i am generally not a fan, i think my main problem is when people make violent shit and are like “take a look into my twisted mind…. i am a creator of high art” and like take themselves so seriously meanwhile they’re just fantasizing about raping women. (cough 2666 by roberto bolaño cough) i would say this turns that on its head. it’s actively satirizing that way of thinking, and that is what makes it so much more palatable to me and doesn’t feel as gratuitous and instead feels like we r in on the joke.

the writing style was so sharp. because by presenting these forums where all of the characters are obsessed with this story and are actively adding fuel to the fire by engaging with it, the reader becomes a part of the fandom. right like by continuing to read, we become the audience not of the book but of the story within the book. anyway it was creative as hell. it also begs the question of “if you think these ppl r so disgusting, why are YOU still reading” and i think that is sooooo smart.

what’s wild is that these subcultures rlly exist and they’re still out there in forums, the forums have just moved from the internet to the dark web.

the first time i saw this book on shelves was at bluestockings (RIP 🙏). it was labeled as queer lit- the book isn’t queer tho maybe the author is. i am not big into the horror genre, but i enjoyed this. i lived the way the setting came to life. it was its own character. sometimes books take place nowhere, like they have location but it’s so ancillary to the story that it is irrelevant. that wasn’t the case in this book. the landscape lived and breathed like any of the people characters did.

touching and incredibly interesting. u know my CULP heart loves connecting culture and societal woes. the discussion of modern beauty standards as stemming from women being sickly is soooo interesting. like obvs u know it but then you see the citations and you’re like “ woah its real and based in facts.” i think the discussion regarding art and tuberculosis is fascinating because like, i would imagine anyone imminetly facing death would probably be more likely to start to get pretty metaphysical and produce some profound art.  

obviously there is a present day racial-political aspect to all of this. nonprofits are killing people on a daily basis through their half assed projects where they enrich themselves. the infrastructure build during the slave trade is a reason that people to this day cannot access medications. we could not have tuberculosis, but plenty of people die from it every day. it is so fucked.

i didn’t like normal people, but i did like this. i enjoyed her writing style. i did feel as though at some points she took the ~art~ of all too seriously. and sometimes the artistic aspects got repetitive in a way that didn’t feel natural. but the story was great, the themes were interesting. ivan was a fantastic character. peter was a piece of shit. 

i’ve talked about this before but i don’t love gratuitous sex scenes in the middle of books with plots. i feel like it is a way that 40 year old sexually unsatisfied women can feel less puritanical guilt about the fact that they need to get off. there should be more porn books and women should have better sex, and then i would be cool with these sex scenes in books. i just feel like we stigmatize sex so much that people read sex scenes in books and all of a sudden are into ~spicy~ books as if it somehow doesn’t count and is less “ wrong.” It feels very hypocritical because so many of the same women who read and love this type of literature hate all overt expressions of sexuality. i guess this is more of a commentary on the readers than the work itself.