Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever...

Swish is a delightful little romp, advertised as a man's quest to become the gayest person ever, and packaged as such, with chapters on knitting, aerobics instruction, and go-go dancing. But instead of being a shallow, if funny, look into sterotypical homosexuality, it is a much more nuanced memoir, tackling issues like the early death of Derfner's mother and his struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder. That isn't to say it isn't funny, because it is very, very funny. But instead of being a waste of time, if an enjoyable time-waster, it is an intelligent little memoir, packaged as something much less substantial.

4/5

As You Like It

I'm rarely enamoured with Shakespeare's comedies, and As You Like It is no exception. It retreads concepts Shakespeare has examined in other plays (Twelth Night as a more enjoyable example), and with the exception of the famous speech on the phases of man, offers nothing Shakespeare hasn't done, and better.

I was reading this for a queer literature course, but the concepts in relationship to queerness have been tread and retread, and it appears the only reason we read this text in particular was in order to offer a familiar author in a queer context (which his sonnets would have achieved, and in a munch more interesting way).

2.5/5

Symposium

I feel guilty; I don't particularly like Plato. There are some interesting aspects to Symposium, such as the nature of oral storytelling, and Aristophanes' origin of love story (which I have a soft spot for from repeat viewings of Hedwig and the Angry Inch), however, the prose is basic, and the concepts not particularly interesting to me. They're also just about beaten to death, which I cannot blame Plato for, but that fact did seriously affect my enjoyment of the book.

2/5

The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God

Another from Keret; I read three of his collections in short order, and this was the second I read. The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God is every bit as good as The Nimrod Flipout, if a little bit more serious, more sad. Each of these stories is funny, mostly, but the laughter leaves a really bitter taste in your mouth. Which is the perfect palate cleanser for me, and these stories are startling in their poignancy.

4.5/5

Third Class Superhero

There's a problem here. On the one hand, I'm utterly infatuated with Yu's ability to toy with style, to create meaning in so many ways within one short story collection. On the other hand, Yu focuses so much on the style of his stories, how to make them creative, unique, that the actual story, the important part, gets lost in his experiments.

Ironically, the story for which this collection is titled is both the strongest and the most straight-forward. I do like Yu's experiments, I just wish he had them under control.

2.5/5

Death & Fame

I, like so many others, adore Howl. It's not a very difficult poem to like. So I was excited that my boyfriend bought me a book of Allen Ginsberg's poetry for Christmas. Unfortunately, this was a collection of last poems before death, which often have a ragged, disorderly feeling to them. More than the organization of the poetry, however, it was the poetry itself that was so difficult for me to enjoy.

Ginsberg is a man who understands death is coming. It's threaded throughout his works. However, he is also a man whose poetry has regressed; the vast majority of the poetry contained within this collection is of a scatological or political nature. I certainly have no issue with the latter, but his stance on politics is so shallowly stated that it feels like they were written more by a political teenager than a seventy year old man. Lines such as "Native gooks work cheaper, rich get richer..." hardly enlighten.

I'm not sure what happened to Ginsberg's poetry. It's lost its edge, and, much more distressingly, the talent contained within his earlier works. Mostly, it feels like a lot of scribbled words anyone could write during their spare time, more than the final work of one of the great poets of the beat generation.

1/5

9 Songs

While 9 Songs works more as a work of eroticism than say, Salo, as a film, it consistently falls short. The few mentions of a world outside of the relationship of the leads, specifically, the sexual relationship, is rarely mentioned, and when it is, it feels out of place, added for no discernable reason. There is supposed to be some relevance that one lead studies Antarctic ice; if there is, it is out of my grip. Such analogous moments only make the film appear pretentious, not fleshed out.

The nine songs the film is named for have no bearing on the events. If the songs connected thematically, there would be a reason for their appearance, but instead it is concert footage for, again, no discernable reason. If this film had shucked its pretensions and merely existed as an erotic work, it would certainly more easily succeed, as the material is far more erotic than the standard porn film. However, as an actual film in general, it falls very much short of the mark.

2/5