Tag Archives: literary criticism

Danika reviews Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature by Emma Donoghue

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I don’t think I can properly express how much I adored this book. As I was reading it, I wrote down the page numbers where there were quotes I wanted to post on my LesLit tumblr, as well as books I wanted to add to my TBR list, and thoughts/comments I had. Typically when I do this, I end up with half a page of notes. This time, I ended up with 5 full pages.

When I posted a quote on tumblr, I suggested the subtitle of Inseparable should be Or: How All the Authors You’ve Ever Heard of Wrote Lesbian Love Stories and No One Told You and I stick by that. Ovid? Shakespeare? Apparently every author who was anyone wrote lesbian love stories and I was somehow not aware of it. We are taught that lesbian literary history begins with Radclyffe Hall, with Sappho a distant anomaly. That’s not true at all. Desire between women has always existed, and it’s been written about throughout time. It’s just that somehow our history has been hidden from us.

Emma Donoghue excavates this masterfully. The breadth of works covered is astonishing, and it clearly took a huge amount of work. There are even passages in the novel that Donoghue translated from the French herself! And it is meticulously arranged. The book is divided into sections: Travesties (cross-dressing), Inseparables, Rivals, Monsters, Detection, and Out. Some are brief, and some have subsections of their own (the cross-dressing section is the most detailed), but it flows together very organically.

Inseparable is a fantastic academic resource for les/bi/etc literature, but it’s not written in an academic voice. It’s extremely easy to read. If you’re looking for a casual read, there are no footnotes to distract you, but if you want to go more in depth, the notes at the end are packed full of information (they note the page they are referring to), as well as gems like this note, referencing the introduction to the book: “In the ongoing controversy known as essentialism vs social constructionism, both extremes seem to me to verge on silliness (“Joan of Arc was a dyke” vs “lesbianism was invented in the late nineteenth century).”

I can’t recommend this book highly enough. If you like les/bi/etc literature (and why else would you be here?), check Inseparable out! You’ll be amazed at the explicit f/f romances in literature going back more than a thousand years! And it will give you plenty of ideas for more lesbian books to find. This is definitely now my favourite nonfiction book, and one of my general top five!

Danika reviews Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read edited by Richard Canning

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I’m going to get my major problem with this book out of the way right at the beginning. I didn’t think it would be a perfectly even split between gay and lesbian books (and don’t get me started on those being the only categories), but I wasn’t expecting it be so heavily weighted on one side. By my tally, there are 38 essays on gay books, and 12 on lesbian books. I wasn’t expecting nearly triple the gay books than lesbian books; it’s really more “Fifty Gay (and Lesbian) Books”. It’s not that I don’t like reading about non-lesbian books, but it got a little old about half way through that there were so few lesbian essays. This is exactly why I agree with Rosalarian that GLBT is a strict hierarchy, including in terms of recognition/coverage. Moving on…

Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read is interesting in its diversity of theme. Some essays are straightforward discussions about books with gay or lesbian content, but some are more about queering text: looking at stories from a queer point of view. The essays also range in terms of length and academic content. Some were a little difficult for me to get through because they were so academic, while some were extremely casual. I especially liked the essays that showed how the novel affected the essay writer’s life, how their personal story interacts with the narrative.

This book doesn’t claim to be a canon, but it does claim to identify books that everyone should read about the gay/lesbian experience, not just queer people. I’m not sure if it really achieved that goal, especially since many of the essays are more about their personal experiences with the novels and not everyone’s experiences. I’m sort of glad it didn’t. Do we need to have mandatory gay/lesbian books? Aren’t all people allowed to have their tastes differ and be able to identify their essential books for themselves? Again, I’ve been pondering the concept of canon lately, and it fascinates me.

Have you read Fifty Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read or something similar? What did you think of it?

Also, I’m sorry if I go a little while between updates; my laptop won’t charge. I’m taking it in to be fixed soon, but until then posts might be a little erratic.

New York Times article on Inseparable by Emma Donoghue

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The New York Times has a review of Emma Donoghue’s book on “desire between women”: Inseparable. The article is here. I’ve been wanting to read Inseparable for a while now, partly because it has to do with lesbian in fiction, but also because I really liked the book that I read by Emma Donoghue, Kissing the Witch. According to the NYT review, Inseparable seems to be somewhat controversial, too–which is always fun–because it places all relationships between women on a sort of lesbian continuum.

Have you read Inseparable by Emma Donoghue? What did you think of it? Do you think there’s a continuum of lesbian relationships, with intense friendships being somewhere in the middle?

Lesbrary Lust: Lesbian Pulp Fiction

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Well, I haven’t read any new lesbrary books since last post (I’m still working through a stack of library books), so I thought I’d introduce a new feature: Lesbrary Lust. Lesbrary Lust posts are about books I desperately want to read, but don’t yet own and can’t get through my library. This Lesbrary Lust post is about two books on a central theme: lesbian pulp fiction.

I’ve had a fascination with lesbian pulp fiction for a while now. I have lesbian pulp fiction magnets and the lesbian pulp address book, though I’ve only read three of the actual books: Another Kind of Love and Love is Where You Find It by Paula Christian, The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, and Spring Fire by Vin Packer. That’s because those were at my public library (yes, I have an awesome library) and honestly, they were pretty forgettable. Regardless, just the covers of these books are enough to fascinate me. Just look at the Strange Sisters collection of lesbian pulp covers (wow, I’m using a lot of links this post). The women are almost always at least partially undressed, and often there’s a shadowy, sinister man in the background. The titles are also something, like the classic Satan was a Lesbian, now going from $300-500, though it first sold for 95 cents, which explains why I haven’t read more of it: lesbian pulp fiction tends to be expense, at least $30 for a small used paperback.

It seems odd that lesbian pulp is such a major part of lesbian history, considering it was primarily written for and by straight men. They were considered pretty scandalous for the time, so to get around obscenity laws, these books had to Lesbian Pulp Address Bookhave a moral. Usually this moral was “homosexuality is wrong”. That meant that the vast majority of lesbian pulp ended terribly for the lesbians involved. One or both of the women either died or went crazy. A popular ending was a terrible car crash. Often the remaining partner was swept off by that shadowy man in the background of the cover, having learned her lesson.

Lesbian pulp wasn’t all bad news, though. Regardless of the content, they were proof of one thing: we’re not alone. Closeted lesbians in the 50s and 60s would squirrel these away under their mattress, or pass them between friends. They also advertised a sort of queer mecca, a wonderful place where you could be out and happy (Greenwich Village). Besides, there were even a minority of lesbian pulp writers who were lesbians themselves, or at least sympathetic to them. The Price of Salt was the first lesbian pulp to have a “happy” ending (as in, not a terrible ending), proving that lesbian pulp helped to pave the way for more lesbian literature.

So, to sum up: lesbian pulp is a) campy and hilarious and b) an important part of our collective history. How could anyone not be fascinated by that? Obviously, I want to read more of it, but I don’t have the money to build a collection (at least not yet). I’d be happy to just read more books about lesbian pulp, though, which brings us to the books I’ve been lusting after.

Lesbian Pulp Fiction by Katherine V. Forrest provides a collection of excerpts from 23 of some of the best lesbian pulp out there, as well as a brief overview of lesbian pulp in general, I think. This has been really highly rated and seems to be the book on lesbian pulp, so I obviously want it quite desperately. Well, hopefully I’ll find the cash for it soon, as well as for my next object of lesbrarian lust: Strange Sisters by Jaye Zimet.

Where Lesbian Pulp Fiction is about the best stories lesbian pulp has to offer, Strange Sisters is an examination of the artwork. Strange Sisters includes about 200 different hilarious and sexual covers. Although my lesbian pulp address book has a bit of this (it has about 26 covers and a brief description of the plot), but it’s only a taste; I would love to be able to look through all of these.

Have you read any lesbian pulp, or Lesbian Pulp Fiction, or Strange Sisters? What did you think of them?

Also, feel free to send me a review! I haven’t had any guest lesbrarian posts yet, and I’d love to put one up! It’s easy: just click on the Guest Lesbrarians link at the top (or click here) for details.