I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this book. On the one hand, Paying For It is a fascinating memoir detailing ChesterPosted at Heradas
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I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this book. On the one hand, Paying For It is a fascinating memoir detailing Chester Brown’s time soliciting prostitutes in Toronto from the late nineties through the late zeroes. It brings up all kinds of noteworthy questions about sex work, romantic relationships and the different kinds of love we experience. I have no idea what the answers to these questions are, but I love the questions themselves. Questions are almost always more interesting than answers, and sex work seems like a topic we should be talking more about right now. On the other hand, the way in which Brown approaches possible answers to these questions is at times shortsighted and irresponsible, something I'll elaborate more on later.
I’ve long thought that prostitution should be legalized and regulated in a similar manner as other “vice” industries: tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, etc. It seems strange that it hasn't happened yet. Prohibition has a long history of causing more harm than good (see Eric Schlosser's Reefer Madness for several examples). Paying For It is pushing a slightly different option for sex work legalization that Brown suggests would be better than regulation: decriminalization. Brown argues that regulation would bring more negatives for sex workers than positives, and that the eventual normalization of sex work after decriminalization would follow as a natural result, given enough time. I’m still not entirely sold on the idea that regulation is a bad option, as I found Brown’s arguments against it not always sound, not to mention a little self-serving. He does however make some very valid points in this always entertaining graphic novel; enough I think, to make anyone consider the alternative he's suggesting.
The main idea from this book that I still find intriguing a few months after having finishing it, is Brown’s suggestion that we should abandon the concept of possessive monogamy, or in other words, propriety in romantic relationships. Putting aside whether the idea has merit or not, if we are able to change this about ourselves, the problem then becomes: how should we value sex as a society if we decouple sexual propriety from romantic relationships? Brown suggests valuing it directly with money. While it is possible that money might be the best option, that option is not without its own set of drawbacks. Money, particularly when combined with free market capitalism, often has an insidious way of ruining everything it touches. This is a complicated sociological and psychological problem to tackle, but fascinating to read and think about.
I feel like the more interesting question is whether sex and love can even be decoupled from one another. Personally, I don’t think they can—not entirely at least. Like most of this book, it seems like a libertarian ideal that is decently sound in theory but falls apart in practice. Of course, that is just my subjective opinion, and speaking more in a sense of utilitarian ethics, I see nothing wrong with the separation; It may actually be better for the world, but I remain unconvinced of the concept's large scale feasibility. On a case by case basis, sure, I can see it working for specific individuals, but beyond that, I think it wouldn't be possible without a radical restructuring of western society.
All of these questions are brought up and examined fairly well in the main narrative of the comic as Chester Brown introduces himself to the world of prostitution. In addition to this, about 1/5th of the book is a set of appendices and notes containing information and arguments against potential counters to the idea of decriminalized sex work. Unfortunately, the appendices are where you start to see some of the blind spots in Brown’s perception and reasoning. I think his argument would have been more effective without their inclusion. Most of the logic is sound, but several sections, especially the Drugs, Pimps, and Human Trafficking ones, are entirely too reductive on extremely complex, nuanced issues. At one point he dismisses drug addiction as a myth, and clearly has no solution to the issue of human trafficking, so he brushes it aside as a non-issue. This is insanely irresponsible.
Brown argues his point against easily defeatable straw men of his own invention. If often feels like he is more interested in being right than arriving at the best possible conclusion, which suggests he is someone who has too much personally invested in the argument. One aspect of sex work under decriminalization that Brown seems entirely blind to, is its potential for the emotional manipulation of sex workers as well as other psychological abuses. Brown appears to be a highly logical, reasoning person, which I believe partially blinds him to the reality and experiences of those of us who may be further toward the emotional, feeling side of the personality spectrum. I would love to read some perspectives from sex workers themselves on the different legalization options. Decriminalization vs. regulation arguments aside, Brown's blind spots aren't doing his argument any favors. Whatever the solution to the issue ends up being, it needs to first and foremost address the safety and security of sex workers. That is the priority and the entire reason for suggesting a change to the legal status of the oldest profession in the first place.
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All in all, Paying For It was a fascinating, thought-provoking read. I enjoyed the visual aesthetic provided by Brown’s minimalistic, clinical illustrative style. There’s a lot of cartoon sex, and after a while it became a little visually comical, but it is presented in such a straightforward manner as to never feel over-the-top or exploitative. It made me question several preconceived notions about sex work, love, monogamy, relationships, and other social norms and introduced me to several experiences and perspectives I have never considered. If you are interested in any of these topics, especially from an epistemological or sociological angle, it’s definitely worth a read....more
I have to admit that I’m blown away. This is how you do a middle book in a series! I had a few misgivings about The Collapsing Empire (and some of ScaI have to admit that I’m blown away. This is how you do a middle book in a series! I had a few misgivings about The Collapsing Empire (and some of Scalzi’s earlier novels), but he has completely outdone himself with this second Interdependency book. It’s fun to see his writing get better and better as he goes. The pacing is tighter, the story flows with more fluidity, the characters are much more distinct from one another now, the prose is drastically improved over the last one, and the payoff is massive. I may have actually thrown the book down and said “Yes! Wow, that was satisfying.” when I finished it.
I’ve mentioned before that, thematically speaking at least, the Interdependency series is Scalzi’s Dune. That still rings true, but The Consuming Fire also feels as dense and conspiratorial as A Song of Ice and Fire, or like a solid espionage thriller. It tells a compelling story while also blowing the worldbuilding wide open and fleshing out some of the concepts that were underdeveloped in The Collapsing Empire. All of this and it does a fantastic job of catching the reader up with effortless exposition, in case it’s been a little while since you read the first in the series. I went back and reread the first book in the series just before starting this one in an effort to refresh my mind on the events thus far, but honestly, I think you could pick up The Consuming Fire as your first read in this series without really missing much. After 20-30 pages you’re all caught up and good to go. It’s impressively handled. ...more
Such a great adaptation of the Paul Auster novel. In the original City of Glass, the labyrinthine feel of the story was created through Auster's proseSuch a great adaptation of the Paul Auster novel. In the original City of Glass, the labyrinthine feel of the story was created through Auster's prose. In this adaptation, it's illustrated through beautifully creative visuals. It made me want to read Auster's book again, just to experience it through a new interpretive lens....more
Trying to live a life as tidy as possible, only following the “best” path, never taking a chance or a detour or trying a new roLet a little chaos in.
Trying to live a life as tidy as possible, only following the “best” path, never taking a chance or a detour or trying a new route is a recipe for a fearful life. It brings the fear of untidiness, fear of the new, fear of the unknown, fear of differences and eccentricities, but most of all… fear of change and its inherent force for destruction and growth.
This is a beautiful, humorous, touching story about allowing room for a little chaos in your life, and how embracing our differences rather than our similarities, makes the whole world more interesting, and in the process, makes us all a little less afraid. Particularly of each other.
When characters in this book begin to accept the chaos, they start to notice how pervasive the fear before acceptance was, how it underlined everything. The chaos was never to blame, only the fear:
“It was the fear that people noticed most, though. Within a year, most people could barely remember what they were once afraid of.” ...more
Mohsin Hamid has created something wonderful with this endearing, and perfectly formed short novel. What an evocative and striking waPosted at Heradas
Mohsin Hamid has created something wonderful with this endearing, and perfectly formed short novel. What an evocative and striking way to discuss refugees, ideological war, tribalism, and love. This book broke through my exterior barriers and nurtured something tender inside of me. It seems for the most part, people are really the same, and we all want the same things regardless of where we come from: security, companionship, and the means to better ourselves. The things we’ve lived through, our experiences, coalesce and form us into who we are, shaping the basis of what we might become.
"We are all migrants through time."
Windows and doors feature heavily in Exit West. The dangers of the ongoing war between the militants and the government in our protagonists’ unnamed middle eastern country, enter through windows. As the war grows more serious, every glass pane holds within it the potential to become lacerating shrapnel. The ongoing fighting perverts everything into something it was never intended to be. Windows into shrapnel. Streets into battlegrounds. Characters are killed accidentally through the glass windshields of their cars by misguided munitions. Windows are boarded up, taped up, or obscured for security, limiting the light available indoors.
Doors are where the magical aspect of the story comes into play. Most of the time doors operate as normal, allowing passage from one room to another, from outside to inside, or inside to out. But sometimes, at seemingly random and unpredictable moments, certain doors have started leading elsewhere, to adjacent doors in other lands. Offering a means of escape from local dangers, and passage to the relative safety and wealth of the West. Doors like these are opening up all over the world, and just as the relative size of the world was flattened and reduced dramatically with the invention of the internet, these doors literally fold and flatten the space between the Eastern and Western, Southern and Northern corners of the world. The myriad ways in which this change impacts the societies in the novel was the most interesting aspect of the story for me.
As the effective distance between continents diminishes, the realities of the world that were once far away from the wealthy and fortunate, were once nebulous and ethereal to them, are made vividly real and close. Travel, particularly meeting and interacting with those unlike ourselves, is said to be one of the best ways to overcome existing prejudices and preconceived notions about those from human tribes different from our own. With these doors that have started connecting us, everyone, everywhere has now come into contact with several individuals unlike themselves. Millions begin fleeing from the poorer nations to the richer ones, and this starts to cause a rapid change and instability among the natives of the richer lands.
"Location, location, location, the realtors say. Geography is destiny, respond the historians."
This change is met with a variety of responses: fear, compassion, intrigue, curiosity, hope, etc. What Exit West does so well is give a glimpse into the daily realities of refugees fleeing from war torn countries, the sorts of terrors they can be running from, the sort of hope they often subside on. It broke my heart, and I think will go a long way toward making me a better, more compassionate person.
In addition to the wonderful social commentary, Exit West is also a love story of the highest caliber, a magically real fairy tale, unafraid to shy away from the realities of love, loss, and the changes quickened or postponed by devastating circumstances. The relationship between Saeed and Nadia grows and expands as the narrative progresses. They are one thing to each other in the beginning and another thing entirely by the end. They meet as students of higher education in their country of origin, and I found it interesting to compare and contrast their story with that of a western couple meeting for the first time at a college in America. In a lot of ways, the extreme situations they find themselves in, possibly hold them together for longer than would be ideal had they been born into different circumstances.
As someone who has never had a similar experience, I found the ways in which Nadia was able to insulate and protect herself in a culture she felt somewhat apart from, particularly interesting. The ways in which a system sometimes inadvertently makes available tools with which we can protect ourselves from that system is a fascinating area to examine. I think it speaks toward the ingenuity of humans to utilize everything that is available to us to better our prospects and secure the future we desire.
"He knew how little it took to make a man into meat: the wrong blow, the wrong gunshot, the wrong flick of a blade, turn of a car, presence of a microorganism in a handshake, a cough. He was aware that alone a person is almost nothing."
All of my friends who have previously read Exit West specifically mentioned to me that the ending crushed them, brought them to tears or reduced them into a weeping, bumbling mess. It didn’t have that effect on me at all. Instead, I found it unbelievably beautiful, and I sat in contemplative awe, marveling at how perfect the ending was, that the author had pulled it off so elegantly. How in retrospect it was the only possible real ending, and the one I hoped the book would arrive at. It was an evocative, emotionally satisfying scene to finish the story.
To me, Exit West is overall, a hopeful novel, but it touches on deadly serious themes and the brutalities of human existence. I found it moving and beautifully expressed. It is a book that I plan on revisiting many times throughout my life....more
“The totality of human endeavor is nothing when set against the stars.”
Sometimes the best way to experience a novel is going in complPosted at Heradas
“The totality of human endeavor is nothing when set against the stars.”
Sometimes the best way to experience a novel is going in completely blind. I found The Gone World at my local library bookshop and had no idea what I was getting myself into, in the best way. Reading it split my head clean open. From the first page to the last, I was enthralled. After finishing the novel, it left me in this kind of fugue state that I haven’t been able to escape. It completely blindsided me. Usually I dislike the phrase “compulsively readable” but it definitely applies here. I couldn’t put it down, I had to know what was going on in this story.
The Gone World is a bit of a genre-bender, so I’m going to back up and talk about genre a little. Several years ago the visual artist Ward Shelley created a piece chronicling the history of science fiction. He began with the roots of the genre: Fear and Wonder, Speculation and Observation, and traced them down through Philosophy and Cultural Criticism all the way to our current moment, marking notable works along the way. Forgive my oversimplification of this magnificent piece of art (you really should check it out for yourself, it’s quite a thing), but there’s a moment along the visual line where a branch occurs, Science and eventually Science Fiction coming through The Enlightenment, the Gothic Novel and eventually Horror following from the Counter-Enlightenment/Anti-Rational thread. These disparate lineages, one born of Fear, the other of Wonder, branch out into genres and sub-genres, staying mostly separate. What The Gone World does so expertly is marry the pre-horror Gothic novel “fear” back together with Science Fiction's “wonder” in perfectly equal measure.
Usually I’ve found Science fiction suspense thrillers to be a little ham fisted. There’s often a solid idea but the execution is clumsy, or the SF aspects are merely genre tropes. Sometimes the mystery is a little too obvious, or the characters are as translucent as the paper in a cheap paperback. Worst of all is when the story gets bogged down by the science and it becomes more of a textbook than a novel. This isn’t to say that I’m not a fan of “hard” sci-fi, but story and character need to come first. The Gone World doesn’t succumb to any of these traps. It works surprisingly well as both science fiction and a modern mainstream suspense thriller. The SF aspects help the story to avoid the tropes of suspense thrillers and vice versa, each genre serving to make up for the possible shortcomings of the other.
The Gone World’s prologue begins with a hell of a hook. I haven’t been hooked like this in the first few pages of a novel in a long time. This is a disturbing and unique take on time travel and alternate worlds that’s unlike anything I’ve read. Think the horrific existential dread of Lovecraft or Robert Chambers, that so obviously inspired the first season of True Detective, filtered through Arthur C. Clarke’s grand ideas, all told as an incredibly tight mainstream suspense thriller with a terrific protagonist. Throw in a dash of Minority Report, and a pinch of the complexity of Primer and you’ve got a good idea what you’re getting yourself into. Mysteries in mysteries in mysteries, and they all resolve pretty well.
I little googling revealed that both of Tom Sweterlitsch’s novels have been optioned for film adaptations, and that The Gone World is set to be written/directed by Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium). In addition to this, Sweterlitsch co-wrote several of those incredible Oats Studios short films that Blomkamp directed last year. If you haven’t seen them yet, check them out. They’re terrific. It's been recently announced that Blomkamp's next film will be a direct sequel to the original Robocop, which makes me worried his adaptation of The Gone World may be on the back burner for now. Only time will tell.
The Gone World gut-punched my head over and over again, which is enough to solidify my interest in everything that Sweterlitsch does from here on out....more
What you should know: The book is fantastic, and I couldn’t help but absorb it in just a few days. I feel like it really got at the coPosted at Heradas
What you should know: The book is fantastic, and I couldn’t help but absorb it in just a few days. I feel like it really got at the core of human insecurity, gender and income inequality, female friendships, and our hierarchy of needs. Somehow it’s also a page-turner and an engaging story. It blows my mind that all of those things are possible in one short novel. I guarantee that it’ll get under your skin and soak in.
Ferrante vs. Knausgaard: Even though I’ve only read this first novel in the sequence, it’s hard for me to resist the urge to compare Ferrante’s Neapolitan series to Knausgaard’s My Struggle.
Both series are: multi-volume, non-English, first person page-turner novels spanning several decades of their character’s lives, first published in English in 2012, with subsequent volumes appearing annually. They both feature straightforward, simple prose, detailing the ins and outs of their characters’ lives, and are deeply, sometimes disturbingly honest in tone. They both tackle a lot of the same themes, but from inside different experiences. If you enjoyed one, I’d highly recommend the other. Especially if you're a guy who enjoyed Knausgaard, you owe it to yourself to read something similar, but from a female perspective. Ferrante’s writing really put me inside that experience in an empathic way.
They are also vastly different from one another: The Neapolitan Novels are fictitious, set in Italy, viscerally violent, told in a mostly linear, chronological order, feature short chapters, supposedly gained a lot in translation, are written pseudonymously, and have a tight focus on the friendship between two female characters over the years.
My Struggle is wildly non-linear, purportedly autobiographical, set mostly in Norway, meandering, has no chapters whatsoever, steeped in nostalgia, and is tightly focused on Knausgaard's view of his general failings as a man, before, after, and during his journey toward becoming a writer.
For more on the similarities between the two works, I’d suggest Joshua Rathman’s terrific essay for The New Yorker: Knausgaard or Ferrante?...more
Cyanide and Happiness is one of my favorite comics, but I had forgotten how rough their start was. They really didn't hit their stride until the thirdCyanide and Happiness is one of my favorite comics, but I had forgotten how rough their start was. They really didn't hit their stride until the third or fourth year of publishing, and this collection is all from their first year. It's pretty uneven, but still has some humorous strips....more
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