CARLOS CASTANEDA QUOTE from THE ACTIVE SIDE OF INFINITY

page 78-79 paperback

"I began my story, telling don Juan that the circumstances of my life have never permitted me to be introspective. As far back in my past as I can remember, my daily life has been filled to the brim with pragmatic problems that have clamored for immediate resolution. I remember my favorite uncle telling me that he was appalled at having found out that I had never received a gift for Christmas or my birthday.

I had come to live in my father's family home not too long before he made that statement. He (Don Juan) commiserated with me about the unfairness of my situation. He even apologized, although it had nothing to do with him.

.... He (my uncle) insisted over and over that I had to forgive the people who had wronged me. From what he said, I formed the impression that he wanted me to confront my father with his finding and accuse him of indolence and neglect, and then, of course, forgive him. He failed to see that I didn't feel wronged at all. Asking me to do required an introspective nature that would make me respond to the barbs of psychological mistreatment once they were pointed out to me....

I never had the opportunity to think about it, but my uncle must have talked to my father, because I got a gift from him, a package neatly wrapped up, with a ribbon and all, and a little card that said "Sorry."

I curiously and eagerly ripped the wrappings. There was a cardboard box, and inside it there was a beautiful toy, a tiny boat with a a winding key attached to the steam pipe. It could be used by children to play with while they took baths in the bathtub. My father had thoroughly forgotten that I was already fifteen years old and for all practical purposes, a man."

I AM I AM I AM : SEVENTEEN BRUSHES WITH DEATH by MAGGIE O'FARRELL : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

 

  Saw that this book was on the London Times best seller list, found it as bought by the Friends of the Library, and sunk right into it.

The experiences author Maggie O'Farrell relates are all causes for alarm and some it it made me think that the author had an uncommon number of incidents of death threats in her life, from a run in with a killer to the fear of her own baby's death. That said, what makes this book a best seller is the creative writing, the distinct voice, the way with words.  There is an almost visceral quality to images and the chapters are the names of body parts, Lungs, Cranium...

The short Cranium chapter is a test.  Would you think that falling in love or lust with someone was a brush with death? But that's not it.  It's that spontaneity and a certain mindlessness puts her in harms way, an arm hair away from a fast moving truck because she's concerned for a dog.  The mood of this chapter is tantalizing and so I'm going to excerpt from it.  (Note the symbolism.)  It takes place in 1998

page 151

A man and a woman are walking beside a river. The water is so slow-moving as to be almost current-less, motionless. They pause on a bridge, looking down at their reflections in the mirror-flat leaf-dinted water: he looks at hers. she looks at his.  She has been collection acorns in her pockets, greenish-brown and set aside in their cups,  and as they have walked, she has sifted them with her fingertips and ascertained that, yes, each acorn will fit only inside its own cup. No other cup will do.

The woman is me.  The man is - well, never mind.

They are talking about their situation, their conundrum. They have fallen in love, instantly, surprisingly, dizzyingly, but there are problems. There are obstacle. Other people stand in their way - other hearts, other minds, other situations.

*****

 Simply loved this book, a unique idea, carried out with the moving pacing of a drum beat.

C 2024  Christine Trzyna

The pacing is also good and 

NATURAL CAUSES by BARBARA EHRENREICH : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

SUBTITLE : AN EPIDEMIC OF WELLNESS, the CERTAINTY of DYING, and KILLING OURSELVES TO LIVE LONGER.

Note: Ehrenreich earned a PhD in cellular immunology from Rockefeller University.

So... I loved this book and I happen to agree that people are obsessing over their heath and their upcoming death way more than they used to, way more than it is healthy to.  I agree with Barbara Ehrenreich that medical treatment often feels just like a Ritual of Humiliation.  (And frankly, conversations that detail recipes and cooking, and medical conditions and treatment are probably my least favorite. But if we are friends and you get sick, I won't dump you over it like a fair weather friend will.) We need to strike a balance between the effort to remain well and allowing ourselves some foibles 

In this book she also talks about how certain foods and habits such as smoking, and so on have had socio-cultural assumptions about class tied into them. That is to say fast food, cigarettes, and a lounge chair in front of the T.V. - beer can in hand, is assumed to be low class. Into Wellness? You're rich!

What about doctors who only want rich patients?

What about all those TV shows, celebrities, and their audiences hawking colonoscopies and mammograms? The audience applauds...  These people come off as heroic but also as medical treatment sales people and promoters.

Over diagnosis - Over-medicalization - not complying with the wishes of a patient who does not want to be resusitated. 

Here are some Excerpts:

THE MADNESS OF MINDFULNESS

page 71)  In the struggle between mind and body, perpetually reenacted by fitness-seekers, the mind is almost universally conceived as "the good guy" - the moral overdog that must by all rights prevail. Contemporary fitness culture concedes a certain advisory status to the body" We should "listen" to it, since, after all, the body is capable of doing a great many important things on its own, from healing wounds to incubating fetuses, with no discernible instructions from the conscious mind,  So if your hamstrings are squealing with pain it may be time to recalibrate the leg lifts and squats....  

Page 72-73) But can the mind be trusted? Surveying today's fitness culture, a mid-twentieth century psychiatrist would no doubt find reasons to suspect a variety of mental disorders ; masochism, narcissism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and homoerotic tendencies (which were viewed as pathological until the 1970's) -- any of which could indicate the need for professional intervention.  Even the untrained eye can detect the occasional skeletal anorectic in the gym, sweating through hours of cardiovascular training, and start to question the assumed intellectual superiority of the mind.  We have come, hesitantly, to respect the 'wisdom of the body' but can we be sure of the wisdom of the mind?

***

Page 85) It was Silicon Valley, through, that legitimized mindfulness for the rest of the business world. If mindfulness had first taken root in General Mills, it would never had gained the status it's acquired from Google and Facebook.  Baking products just don't have the cachet of digital devices.  Silicon Valley, is, after all, the 'innovation center of the universe," according to its boosters, home of the 'best and the brightest," along with the new "masters of the universe" who replaced the old ones after the financial crash that temporarily humbled Wall Street  Mindfulness may have roots in an ancient religion, but the Valley's imprimatur established that it was rational, scientific, and forward- looking.

***

Quick note.  I edited this for errors in spelling that were mine but also the result of auto-"corrects," on November 11, 2022....  I hate auto corrects, especially when what appears to be correct, doesn't show up after one sends.  Shocking also to learn well used words that are not in the dictionary.

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

GREENLIGHTS by MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

McConaughey first states that this is not a memoir, but that is the best genre the book fits. A memoir, unlike an autobiography or biography, does not seek to cover an entire life and more detail, though the author does give us the basics, choosing scenes or descriptions that pretty much say it all about his parents and their parenting.  That's important because it moves the story along.

Frankly, I personally find it difficult to think of people who are abusive as also loving. Does he ever say the word abusive?  No. Perhaps there's an argument for people not knowing better.  Or that his dad was a Texas 'Good Ol Boy' : I had hoped such characters who use violence and extreme control to teach or discipline or get even with their friends and family had been left behind in the Wild Wild West and were capable of the (admittedly slow) progress of intellect and understanding.  However, who deserves their parents?

Personally I think McConaughey's family of upbringing was dysfunctional and that causes me to have anxiety: I hope he is not duplicating this in raising his own children. You see, McConaughey says that from a young age the only role he ever wanted in life was to be a father. He repeats that.  Also, but, however... he tells his story without apology or over-explanation.

As for women, apparently this celebrity used his fame as an advantage and had many every which way but when he met his wife, who he calls a mermaid, it was love at first sight. He says there never was and never will be any other woman for him.  (Never was? He was in his thirties when he met her. Did he not break hearts as he had many women every which way?  No insight into that expressed.)

Matthew McConaughey is a highly successful actor, and it seems acting is rather natural or effortless to him, though he does explain the risk he took in staying firm: No more rom-coms.

I was impressed with the writing in this book flows, it delivers, and McConaughey seems also to be a natural writer.  It was, as they say, a good read. I recommend it - highly.

My biggest criticism of the book is that it also intends to be a red light, yellow light, green light (go) book, enlightening, sharing wisdom, and, in order to do that, excerpts from a long ongoing diary that the man kept are included and are near UNREADABLE. These excerpts are sometimes in small lettering printed on intense black and frankly my vision was not up to the task. It was annoying.  Also sometimes I did not get the point or the connection. There's probably important connections to the text, but I missed out. I'm sure this blackness was an attempt by the publisher for the book to look a bit scrapbook-like and arty. It was a waste of ink.

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

SAVE ME FROM MYSELF by BRIAN HEAD WELCH : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

THIS IS A BEST SELLER ?  That's bad news for all of those who have dedicated themselves to writing a book with substance.

First there is the cover, in which Welch looks a bit like a tattooed Jesus himself - taken down from the cross. 

Full disclosure: I don't think I could identify a single Korn song, Heavy metal might be my least favorite genre of rock and roll, though I know the definition of what it is goes all over the place. I don't enjoy the dark side or violence - and that includes all those video and computer games that are war and destruction stories training humans to have a certain mentality. How can that training and glorification of  violence be separated from school shoot ups?

The subtitle is "How I found God (he means Jesus) Quit Korn,Kicked Drugs and Lived to Tell My Story" 

So, Welch was absolutely no doubt a total addict - speed /meth especially. His is a horror story also of violence in relationships begot by drugs or perhaps what is revealed as a total lack of inner awareness. The reportage is of Korn's success without any mention of their creative process. Highly successful, earning millions of dollars, the money and chaos indulged in allowed Welch to have a massive and steady supply of drugs.  Maybe he was too obliterated to know how it was they succeeded.

So you may be wondering, as I did, where the rubber meets the road.  Why do you suppose drug addiction and chaotic excess seems to be so much part of rock and roll, because - hear this IT WAS NOT ALWAYS and IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE.

Here is a scenario from my life worthy of my TALKING TO STRANGERS series, except it happened years ago, that might relate.

In my series about friendships with mentally ill people a while back, one of the people I mentioned, a woman in an unenviable marriage, who was not on drugs nor was her husband, did not take to my loving suggestion that she try therapy. She, as is apparently typical of people with Abused Woman Syndrome, found a way to blame me and take it out on me, even though I had nothing to do with her meeting the man she married, the decision to marry him, or the decision to stay with him but have an affair with a Bad Boy to keep on in the marriage. This was all her doing.

I had been the listener for many months - years - as she described in as much detail as possible - the tiny interactions with the Bad Boy that kept her hopes going that he was Mr. RIght. The whole ordeal had been hard on me too because I did care about her and no longer lived nearby so what I was hearing and seeing was via her reportage in long distance telephone calls. Then when I finally traveled and saw her and met the Bad Boy, I knew it was all wrong and I had to say something. 

So what happened was the friendship ended.  After several attempts on my part to both stand my ground and let her know I cared and wanted the friendship, her onslought of punishments for speaking my truth - the truth - went on and on.  I was bewildered at the turn of events.  

At that time of my life I was barely aware of mental health issues or Abused Woman Syndrome and as for drug addicts, I didn't keep friendships with any knowingly and was also barely aware of their machinations to get what they wanted out of people. 

One day I was sitting in a coffee house, a rather bare-bones place where there were no barristas and nothing fancy but there was an ongoing pot of your average drip coffee. When a group of AA Twelve Steppers came in and sat together having after-meeting talk, I couldn't help but listen in a bit and decided to run what I had experienced with this ex-friend past these AA people.

They told me that she had never been my friend, that she was a user (i.e. her only use for me was as an unpaid therapist substitute) who didn't care about me. They said that the Bad Boy was her drug. I felt hurt, though not by them.  I knew they were speaking their truth and were not trying to hurt me.  

What happened after this was that very slowly I started having contact in the very same coffee house with people who were addicts on stuff and off stuff. Over time I learned the hard way some of these people (on or off drugs) were also liars, cheats, and manipulators. I became convinced that it was this lack of integrity, this amorality, this narcissism, that was really behind an addict psychology.  (I want to clarify here that I'm talking addicts like Brian Head Welch, though an addict often starts as a casual and once-in-a-while imbiber or experimenter.)

I also learned this from the AA Twelve Steppers: People who are addicts, on substances, like Brian Head Welch, are obliterating experience, they are not growing, and when they get off their drugs, they are usually at the age emotionally and so on, that they were at before they started.  Which means that, if you were 16 when you started and stop at 36, well, non-addicts who are 36 don't get it right away that we're dealing with a 16 year old.  

Causing oneself pain while taking drugs and taking drugs to avoid paid is an unwinnable situation. 

Now, this may or may not be the case all the time, but I really do not know what comes first; Books like SAVE ME FROM MYSELF suggest that the drugs themselves are so strong, so conning, that its near impossible to talk back to them and say NO!  And since I have 0 experience with meth, or cocaine, have not taken knowingly and willingly any drug* that is not a prescription, I can't say I've got any experience to rely on as a reference. 

As for the conversion to Jesus, I wish Welch luck on that one, as addictions go its probably one of the least harmful. A small last portion of the book is filled with the usual you hear from the recently converted or brain-washed, bla bla bla.

So 'save yourself' some time and after reading this review, don't waste your time with this best-seller. You have better things to do.

* Years ago I did try grass a few times.  I'm in favor of medical marijuana but hate the smell of weed - especially skunk  - which is always drifting over my neighborhood and can incite asthma. I cannot live in a house with people who smoke weed.  

C 2022 Christine Trzyna

WHAT IS IT ALL BUT LUMINOUS : NOTES FROM AN UNDERGROUND MAN by ART GARFUNKEL : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

Picked this one up at the library new book shelf on a whim as I was heading out the door and wish I had the time to deeply read rather than dip in and out. 

It's a poetical book, many stanzas between scenarios with George Harrison and the Beatles, with James Taylor, as well as, of course,his long time associate, sometimes partner, Paul Simon.  Entwined with music legends as he himself became,  born and bar mitzvah'ed Jewish but a Buddhist just the same.  And lists ; the books and the songs and the accomplishments but which leads no doubt that his wife and son and grandchild are the epitome of his life.  He has had a long time writing habit.

A song  is a poem is a song.

I liked this one page 140 of this small hardback.

I was her love pest.
Like aphids in her garden.
Mold on her bloom.
I was fungus underneath her nail.
Crust in her eyelashes.
Trust in the atmosphere.
Dust on the pictures of places we've been.
I'm her old bed linen.
The thrust of the argument.
Honey for the tea in a bear.
There in the X-rays.
I'm the horn in her side
cornucopia.
I am her underwear.
Solder and weld.
Fused in our children.
    Behold and beheld.


Even if you don't know who he is, the poetry is worth it.

C 2019  Christine Trzyna  Book Review All Rights reserved.

MOP MEN : INSIDE THE WORLD OF CRIME SCENE CLEANERS : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

Narrative nonfiction : Alan Emmins MOP MEN was a terrific book, sensitive and just gory enough. He was the everyman gonna look at that long dead body, and finally he overcame his gagging reflex and started doing some clean up for cash himself.


I think the recent Costa Concordia cruise ship beaching story, which I follow, might have influenced me in picking this book up from my library new book shelf (even though it was C 2008). You see, the story of the search for drowned bodies off the coast of Italy or on the sunken ship had been in the news almost daily. Nothing has been so newsworthy when it comes to finding drowned bodies since JFK Junior crashed his plane off the coast of Martha's Vineyard.


Alan's experience depends on Neil, who owns Crime Scene Cleaners, Inc. Neil is just the kind of guy who is business minded enough to consider what a top writer could do for his business if he lets him follow him around.

In the end you're not going to learn exactly how they do it, no Murphy's Oil Soap apparently, though elbow grease is in order. Instead you get inside the brains of Alan Emmins; what he's thinking, what he's feelings, and how the experience of cleaning up from murders, suicides, and accidents changes him. Luckily, not for good.


MOP MEN book is C 2004 and 2008 Alan Emmins Thomas Dunn Books
Saint Martin's Press


C Christine Trzyna 2012 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

LISA SEE : DREAMS OF JOY : A FANTASTIC PART TWO OF THE SHANGHAI GIRLS STORY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

Dreams of Joy is C 2011 Lisa See

LISA SEE : DREAMS OF JOY : A FANTASTIC PART TWO OF THE SHANGHAI GIRLS STORY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

This book is a fascinating page turner rich with historical details, cultural and generational conflict.

The story begins where Shanghai Girls left off. It's 1958, Mao is in power, and China is Red with Communism. Joy, the young daughter of two sisters, May and Pearl, has just found out that her aunt is her mother and that her father was a somewhat famous artist in China 18 years before who used her aunt and mother as models for his advertising posters.

Thinking herself to be one Chinese-American who wishes to return to the country of her heritage to embrace Communism wholeheartedly and stay there, Joy finds herself living in a village commune and marries the first man who has ever sparked her desire. Life in the country is much different than in the cities, and only by youth can she bear it. The communes banish western thought and individuality and starve doing so. Can May, the sister who raised Joy with her husband, who recently commit suicide and left her a young widow, make it to Communist China from Canton or Hong Kong and live there long enough to find Joy and bring her home?

You know she will, but not until years of struggle.

There will likely be another book to carry this story of the sisters May and Pearl, who came to the United States through arranged marriages, forward into the 1960's.

These women shared a daughter and kept the secret of her parentage until she was 18. Now they return to the United States with an entourage that includes Joy's birth father, a new husband, and an adopted son. Now with the sisters who stick together through everything ready to start life over, and some would argue for the first time, tell me, how can there not be more story?

C 2012 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

LOVE IS THE CURE : ELTON JOHN : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

LOVE IS THE CURE
On Life, Loss, and the End of AIDS
C Elton John AIDS Foundation
Publisher : Little Brown and Company

The writing was smooooth; Strunk and White would be proud!

Elton John kept the focus on AIDS, so while some personal information is woven in, it's not the focus, and the focus feels relentless.

The information Elton John has to deliver is appalling. Most utterly appalling is the frequency - normalcy - of RAPE OF WOMEN IN SOUTH AFRICA, where Blacks have extremely high rates of AIDS.

I cannot help but apply my own values; it's horrific and disgusting. Apartheid ended but insane sexism and homophobia has not. South African leader Nelson Mandela appears in ads but maybe these people DON'T WANT LIFE! This is not about Whites oppressing Blacks in South Africa. This is about Blacks doing themselves in. Elton John is too kind to say so.

There are other examples, other countries. In South Africa the women are raped and it's strangly frequent enough to be implied acceptable and yet they are afraid to admit it which means it is not acceptable, so people go without medical treatment until they are about to die, hiding the secret of their rape... and the children... they become orphans... they die too.

Yes, there are other countries where AIDS is taking lives because of ignorance, other examples in the book. Elton's not picking on South Africa.

So, after getting over my fury about South Africa, I took a moment to ask myself the question that that was part of the "prime directive" on the old Star Trek series.
(If you don't remember, on Star Trek the crew beams down to various planets surfaces where they are, by their very presence, going to influence the culture, while trying not to. They are supposed to attend to their business for going there, take care of a problem, and leave.) Can we take our values and try to make another culture conform to them because we think or know that these people would be better off with our values or can we avoid doing that?

How can we as outsiders address RAPE CULTURE in another country on another continent when we still have a rape culture here, though not as horrible as in South Africa? Or does change have to come from the inside, from people there admitting the truth about what's going on and how they are ruining their own lives and the lives of others and stop behaving that way?

Hard question. Left unanswered.
Celibacy still has its charm

C 2012 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

AMY MY DAUGHTER : MITCH WINEHOUSE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

AMY MY DAUGHTER
Mitch Winehouse C 2012 (Amy's father)
itbooks - an imprint of HarperCollins is the publisher

There are words Mitch Winehouse does not use about his daughter, the singer Amy Winehouse who died a couple years back at the age of 27.
Let me use some of them. Amy Winehouse was a mess - long before she was famous - and she was mentally ill - she cut herself. She was into this seriously mentally ill behavior before she became addicted to... of all substances, her man - husband and ex-husband - Blake.Amy, who's artistry I admire, is on the cover of the book in a photograph that reveals a huge tattoo going down her arm that reads "Daddy's Girl." Maybe that's why, though Mitch was married to Amy's mother, and then her stepmother, the involvement of these women in Amy's life is not part of the big story - his story of being the protective but anxious father of a superstar.
I did want to know how her upbringing effected what seems to be Amy's long standing lack of self-discipline, but as it reads Mitch in his capacity as father, and as a man somehow involved in her management of finances and career, was the one she kept making the promises to - to quit - and the one who was there for her, offering love and advice as best he could even when she couldn't or wouldn't.

To hear Mitch tell it, Amy was brought down by Blake and could have been saved by marrying and having children with her next serious boyfriend.

The ups and downs of her medical history and her on and off again attempts to beat drugs and then alcohol might be typical of any addict. What wasn't typical was Amy's talent. Mitch never says that talent was a burden to her, or that she kept medicating herself with these substances because being famous and keeping a career going like that are damn difficult.
Amy was in very poor health and she had pretty much done herself in with substances. I came to feel that bad boy Blake was another symptom.

Those of you who know me know that I think, have long thought, the whole Psychiatry/Psychology profession is way too powerful. I believe this self propagating profession is hand in hand with pharmaceutical companies and that it is now true that everyone is diagnosable and therefore medicateble. I'll never be a Scientologist but on this they have it right.

I couldn't help but wonder though if Amy Winehouse would still be with us here and now if, earlier in her life, someone had recognized her cutting of herself as serious mental illness. Would psychotropics have killed the creativity and spirit in her? Or would be the best substitute for all those street drugs, all that booze? Mitch doesn't say it. I do.

Towards the end, Mitch mentions that there's a possibility that he got spiritual signs that he thinks were about Amy - butterflies - and a bird and a butterfly flying together. He has used these symbols for AMY'S FOUNDATION, which will address the problems of addiction, ill health, and homelessness among youth.

OZZY OSBOURNE : TRUST ME I'M DOCTOR OZZY : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

Christine Trzyna Book Review:

First, let me say that I'm not a big fan of heavy metal and don't think I could identify a single song that Ozzy Osbourne ever sang or played on.

Second, let me say I'm not a big fan of Reality Television. I think you must be very very bored to watch other people living their lives instead of living yours. So I never watched a single episode of the Osbourne family reality TV show, whatever it was called.

However, any book subtitled "Advice from Rock's Ultimate Survivor," draws my attention.

Truly, Ozzy is an original voice and original sensibility, and this book MADE ME LAUGH OUT LOUD (LOL! Yeeesh!) again and again.

Besides the "way out-there "confessional tone about all the drugs and alcohol that he consumed (I'm against the abuse of substances) or which consumed him, and how he actually physically and mentally survived all that, probably by having a sense of humor, the thing that most fascinated me was his telling of having been called to supply DNA so that he could be studied as a survivor! (Truthfully!)

The format is Q AND A.

Where did he get those questions?

Apparently from readers who feel they can tell this man anything, ask him anything. Example (page 103 hardback): "Dear Doctor Ozzy: Do you think people should be allowed to rate their doctors on the Internet, like they can rate albums - or do you think the medical profession is too important to be subjected to the kind of abuse you got in 1970 for the first Black Sabbath LP?"

So while Ozzy's confessing, so are his questioners and some of his readership's problems are doozies.


TRUST ME I'M DR. OZZY is C 2011 Ozzy Osbourne
Grand Central Publishing New York

C All Rights Reserved Christine Trzyna 2012 including Internet and International Rights

POEMS FROM THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT : EDITED BY HONOR MOORE : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

POEMS FROM THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT

Edited by Honor Moore
American Poets Project
The Library of America


(Poetry by Alta, Rae Armantrout, Olga Broumas,Rita Mae Brown, Jan Clausen, Michelle Cliff, Lucille Clifton, Jane Cooper, Martha Courtot, Beverly Dahlen, Toi Derricotte, Diane Di Prima, Rachel Balu DuPlessis, Carolyn Forche, Kathleen Fraser, Elsa Gidlow, Louise Gluck, Jorie Graham, Judy Grahn, Susan Griffin, Marilyn Hacker, Jana Harris, Fanny Howe, Erica Jong, June Jordan, Carolyn Kizer, Irena Klepfisz, Maxine Kumin, Joan Larkin, Denise Levertov, Audre Lorde, Cynthia MacDonald, Bernadette Mayer, Honor Moore, Carol Muske-Dukes, Jane Miller, Robin Morgan, Eileen Myles, Alice Notley, Sharon Olds, Alicia Ostriker, Maureen Owen, Pat Parker, Molly Peacock, Marce Piercy, Sylvia Plath, Katha Pollott, Marie Ponsot, Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Alice Walker, and Fran Winant.)


Several of these poems brought me back to the time when I still met women who were on fire about women's rights. Mostly since then I have met women who are bitches to other women. (Erica Jong has a theory that these creatures aren't women at all.)

Browsing through the bios in back of the book, I started searching for years of birth. Seems the youngest woman whose poetry is presented in this book was born in 1950.

I had to wonder. Are women younger than this not credited with:

Being important in the woman's movement?

Not writing poetry considered to represent the woman's movement?

Not interested in the woman's movement and the rights, responsibilities, and privileges (which they have inherited as simply their right as women)?

Writing feminist poetry that is not identified or accepted as feminist poetry by "mothers" of the movement or "mothers" of poetry?

Writing poetry that is not identified as worthy by the "literary cannon" and it's supposed upholders? (I yawn at the cannon.)

(Many "older" self identified feminist women who I've talked to about women of younger generations think they're a disaster when it comes to behaving and believing in a way of life that upholds feminism; So many of them lost to the importance instead of being "girly girls" whose lives revolve around what nail polish color to wear and shopping. Or we've talked about the horrific and sick influence of rap music on women; who the hell wants to have in their lives anyone who calls women "ho's", thinks women are "ho's" or self identifies as a" ho"? Why else is the female teenage ambition in high school to reduced to becoming experts at giving blow jobs boys demand so they can have and/or hold onto a boyfriend and/or starving themselves model thin? Are these young women the result of rotten parenting or what?)

Consider then that POEMS FROM THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT presents poems by poets who are and were unafraid to make the personal political and to write about subjects such as rape, bad sex, lesbianism, marital boredom, the effects of racism and sexism on their ability to live life independently and to the fullest.

I wish with all my heart that this poetry and the women who wrote it could have had more impact on society because it feels like not much has changed. The last sexist asshole I encountered just a few months ago was in his twenties, healthy, handsome, black, and highly educated and going to law school and working full time. He told me he did not "feel sorry" for me because I had no idea how hard it was to be a black man. He told me to "dumb down" as well. I was reminded that in college not one male student took the Women's Literature class I took.

C Christine Trzyna 2012
All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights

STEVEN KING'S 11/22/63 : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

This is a big, heavy hard cover book. It's a long read and it's also a page turner, if, like me, you've been reading around the Kennedys and the Assassination in 1963 for years.

Steven King's 11/22/63 is a book with a few genres intermixing.

It's a story with a mystical - spiritual - quality to it, though King's reputation for gore is maintained with murders and mass chaos. You have to accept that a form of time travel is possible, though it's not science fiction but more a time warp that can be accessed.

There's a love story, one that provides the funniest moments.

But mostly what the Kennedy assassination story and Steven King's book is, is a MYSTERY story. Writing this book was a challenge not only because of the many genres that might have competed for prominence and become confusion in a lesser writer's manuscript, but because it's easy to find yourself searching for the information that his research brought forth, information that you know is controversial, such as if Lee Harvey Oswald was really the assassin and a lone gunman or not, and not sticking with the fictive story.

Steven King is so successful, a master, so maybe it's difficult to say anything revealing about his work overall. I've read Cell and The Dome, and one or two other titles over the years. I'm not a fan of gore but at least he's generally realistic with its possibilities. I do love the way he has set his characters in circumstances. I was left feeling satisfied with the read, which required that I stay home an entire weekend, in bed, with some crackers and cheese and the book.

ANGELINA by ANDREW MORTON : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

ANGELINA (Unauthorized biography of Angelina Jolie)
by Andrew Morton C 2010
St Martin's Press

This review isn't so much about the CONTENT of Andrew Morton's biography of the famous actress and world traveler, who along with life partner Brad Pitt, has become the mother of 6 children, three who've been adopted from Africa and Asia, and who is now also an official Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations, and perhaps one of the most powerful people in the world, the pair being philanthropists.

No, this review is of Andrew Morton as an outstanding writer in his genre, which is the celebrity focused biography. Morton has, through research and interviews of those surrounding the life story of a celebrity, made a great story of it, which meant making choices about what information mattered to make a book of it.

Morton's book held my interest, not because I'm a special fan of Angelina Jolie, since I'm merely curious about her. Morton's book held my interest because he presented a character so fascinating, that the story held even if she had not achieved the fame or infamy that she has. What's fascinating is the conflict within Angelina and in her life, which she seems to have succeeded because of or in spite of.

First, because motherhood has become her claim to fame if acting isn't, Morton begins with a scene of her infanthood, baby Angelina in an all white on white room, being tended to by an array of babysitters because her own mother is too depressed to deal with her.

Then he shows us, Angelina,as a young adult. She hardly seems to have overcome any psychological problems she might have developed because of this early deprivation, or growing up with divorced parents who never did agin become real friends, and a mother who never forgave a father for his cheating.

Morton shows Angelina as she was; a drug addicted person who used this that and heroin, bisexual and a dabbler in bondage, a wild child, so to speak, who without apology or a lot of explanation makes good anyway. She's unconventional and she seems to be doing a fine job of raising children with her life partner, Brad Pitt, so is it despite or because of her own childhood?

How does someone who collected knives from a young age and took to cutting herself (and then got all those tattoos - ouch!) become stable enough to raise happy children while globe trotting, granted there is "help?" Morton mentions the opinions of a couple psychologists, and mentions neither have ever met her, but their theories don't actually seem to make a lot of sense when life as lived now is evidence. She's a Method Actor, and she becomes her roles, but seems to relish the mom role that she made up on her own the best.

Angelina's father John Voight, the actor, attempted many interventions, and got not much gratitude for the bother. Angelina has a habit of freezing out those who she no longer likes. That means that she froze out two ex husbands, but went back and befriended one of them a while, at least until Brad. So I am left with this question: Is Brad Pitt actually the stability that made it all possible?

C 2011 Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

MY HOLLYWOOD by MONA SIMPSON : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

MY HOLLYWOOD
C 2010 Mona Simpson
Borzoi Book Alfred A Knopf Publisher

Filipina nanny "Lola", the dominant voice and sensibility in this wonderfully rendered portrait of new century life in Santa Monica, California, comes to Los Angeles to work and send money home to her own Hallmark card artist husband and four good children. She, over several years, works long hours and seven days a week to send the family about half a million in USA dollars so that they can go to college and become professionals, raising their status and class in Manila. In the meantime, focused on her own real work of mothering the children of strangers, she slowly loosens her own marriage and roots in the Philippines.

To succeed at sending money home, Lola raises the infant children of two career couples and single mothers attached to television writing and the Hollywood business until they are pre-schoolers and then some. She falls in love with her charges, first Williamo, and then Laura, and becomes an important player in the local nanny network, helping to rescue one woman who is held as a slave, brokering marriages, and providing mentorship and referrals. She is there when the parents are too busy to have had (in my opinion) children in the first place. She is self sacrificing and these children of parents who are self-involved, but besides meeting her goals, where is the thanks?

IS THERE EVER THANKS IN MOTHERHOOD?

As dedicated as she is to raising Williamo, the only son of a mother who cannot handle raising a child and compose music at the same time named Claire, and a father who spends the vast majority of his life at the office where he writes situation comedy but is not even in his marriage, the boy will, a few years later, not even remember her.

The important woman's work of raising children - with help - has not been fully left behind by the birth mothers in this book, it's just that they have to hold onto their marriages at the same time, and childbirth and marriage turn out to be not so romantic after all.

The individual language and mentalities of Claire and Lola balance the overall view point of this book, which is to expose their individual and collective delimma as they raise and lower their class through hiring help or getting divorced. Upper class women, many accomplished and educated, slowly move their lives to leaving careers behind and dependence on husbands, and sometimes husbands have affairs to keep their marriages, but what is most important for them all is supposed to be the children, but that's not it either. They have left their goals behind for taking it one day at a time, making playdates, worrying if their child seems behind his peers or unpopular. Knit in a community like this, having your children get along with the children of your husband's work peers or boss is essential.

Laura, born slow but able to catch up with the ongoing attention Lola provides as a devoted babysitter rather than a professional special ed teacher, has a single mother who is mostly absent and self indulgent, and we get to know her so little we are, like Lola, not so sure where she goes or what she does. Despite Lola being in the traditional role of stay at home mother to the working woman who brings the income like a man in a traditional role, another relationship with a man who would be father, displaces Lola once again.

This then is the short short of the novel.

The clash of cultures and the mutual ambivalence about marriage and raising children that is cross-cultural, along with the broken English talk of Lola, which is more revealing than if she spoke English well, provides the nuances as well as a series of small informing shocks. This is no doubt a feminist novel, one that reveals intricacies between women who seem both striving and misguided, and who have things in common even when they are from different cultures and are kept from closeness by the employer - employee role they play out. It's one for my permanent bookshelf.

I've linked to Mona Simpson's site!

C Christine Trzyna 2011 All Rights including Internet and International Rights Reserved

OTHER PEOPLE'S REJECTION LETTERS Edited by BILL SHAPIRO : CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW

OTHER PEOPLE'S REJECTION LETTERS
"Relationship Enders, Career Killers, and 150 Other Letters You'll Be Glad You Didn't Receive"

edited by Bill Shapiro
Published by Clarkson Potter Publishers (Random House/Bertelsmann)

OK, with a SUBTITLE LIKE THAT, WHO WOULDN'T WANT TO GIVE A LOOK-SEE? I like this kind of collection, scrapbook-like with it's reproductions of the actual letters including, it would seem, some real addresses on the letterheads, like the letters recieved by persons dumped from the LDS church. I'm a sucker for books that are scrap-book like!

But rather than horrified, I thought it was all FUN! Perverse Fun maybe but still fun because we know that those who contributed their misfortune to this book must have gotten over it already in order to reveal it to the world! And if they didn't get over it, then they GOT EVEN by showing just how cold and without compassion some letter senders can be!

Will this book stop YOU from forgetting to be kind when you ought to be? Will you tear up that Dear John letter and figure out a better way to say goodbye? If only this book didn't have so many REJECTIONS FROM PUBLISHERS in it!

C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW : THE GIRL IN ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S SHOWER by ROBERT GRAYSMITH

The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower
by Robert Graysmith
C2010 Berkeley Publishing - a Penguin Group

Marli Renfro, a nudist, and early Playboy Playmate, was the BODY DOUBLE not the STAND IN for Janet Leigh in Hitchcock's Psycho. The murder scene, filmed for days in a shower set, and then cut cut cut to build fear in the audience and get past the censors. Despite the black and white film - or perhaps because of it - the innovative flashes of pictures went so quick it was almost subliminal and the audiences' tension in watching the film exploded. Hitchcock's attention to detail was unprecedented and the scene was part of movie making history.

The author, true crime author Robert Graysmith, has long had a thing for this model, Marli Renfro, that spurred him on to detail a life gone bitterly ironic when she was murdered, but it turns out that the press had reported erroneously, because the reporters didn't know the difference between a Body Double and the Stand In. Turns out Marli never was murdered and has lived an OK life defined by outdoorsy activities.

Within this book Graysmith not only takes us on the behind the scenes making of a Hitchcock movie, but also the history of Playboy magazine and Clubs and the players in the early hours of the sexual revolution in the early 1960's.

Is it awful to reveal that I felt kind of wrongly lead on that Marli Renfro had not been murdered? I wish only that Graysmith had, at the point of revealing this to us readers, gone on to tell the story of the woman who had been, the Stand In!

All and all a fascinating tale and one that made me think of the days I worked as a movie extra.

C Christine Trzyna All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW of MACKENZIE PHILLIPS HIGH ON ARRIVAL

BOOK REVIEW by Christine Trzyna C 2010

Maybe in part, because I recall the urgency of her voice, I feel the tone of Mackenzie Phillips' memoir is incessantly passionate till exhaustion. As I passed this book on to others to read, I warned them, "Be prepared to be devastated." Do memoirs ever help others really? (I think sometimes they do.) Was this one intended to imply forgiveness to one's self and others? Isn't forgiveness over-rated?

Reading this one, I remembered years ago I read the memoir of Mackenzie's dad, John Phillips, famous writer of hit songs sung by the early 1960's quartet The Mamas and the Papas. I was stunned by his calm unapologetic amorality. He shrugged his shoulders about what an unmoved Papa he had been. He had not protected his daughter.

John Phillips, who used up most of his song writing money on drug addiction, had other children - a son, and two daughters by Michelle Phillips, Mackenzie's sisters, who may not have had the same experience of good ol dad. But maybe it's biology; whatever was amiss with John Phillips that his moral compass kept spinning was passed on to just one. "The problem," was and is, apparently drug addiction. But maybe drug addiction is too convenient and superficial the excuse. Mackenzie has had a horrible life, despite being supplied with economic and opportunity wealth, and despite all the pain she describes which we imagine she FELT, she did not know better to not participate in (drug fueled) incest as an adult with her father.

None of us who read this book believe Mackenzie will stay off drugs and a few of us felt irate that she did not know better.


High on Arrival was written by Mackenzie Phillips with Hilary Liftin
It's a Simon Spotlight Entertainment book
C 2009 Shanes Mom Inc.

CHRISTINE TRZYNA REVIEWS THE AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS ! "I didn't feel entertained. I felt HUMILIATED for Womankind."

I and a group of friends, many African American, and ranging in age from early twenties to sixties, watched the AMERICAN MUSIC AWARDS last night.

My prime curiosity was Lady Gaga, who I expected to be over the top. She was on the edge of performance art and owns a voice with a range and power that surpasses Madonna, who has no doubt been an inspiration and, I hear, is a follower.

I also pride myself, whatever my musical tastes at the moment, to have a good idea of what's happening in pop culture music now, and fully expected the Micheal Jackson legacy to be continually enhanced, which it was.

I find it interesting that so many women singers are solo acts these days. My generation of women had a hard time infiltrating the music business, coming after the girl groups of the 1950's and the soulful strummers of the 1960's, and pretty much regulated to being the groupie- sidekicks of punk rockers and hair bands of the 70's and 80's. But exactly how it is that rauch got to be mainstream, I'm not sure.

Let's not forget that Micheal Jackson, now forgotten as highly inappropriate with children, and Madonna, now raising her children as Kaballists, started the crouch rub as a dance move craze years ago. As a matter of fact, at a dinner some of my friends attended recently there were kids running around dancing and doing the crouch rub. Five year olds. Which is where the dance probably originated.

Last nights show disappointed us all. The main reason was that the special effects and displays, the smoke, the fire, the costuming, the chronic sadio-masochistic posturing, imagery, and props, made us feel like we had taken a trip into something far further south than Dr. Suess' 9th floor dungeon. We are uncomfortable with the sickness, both spiritual and psychological, that came with it. No doubt some of the entertainers had amazing voices, but overall it was dark, very dark, and we wondered exactly why the competition had been about special effects and outrageousness. Adam Lambert, the American Idol star who is openly gay, featured a bare-chested-but-for-the-straps dancer who he pushed around. Pee Yew Adam!

Even Carrie Underwood, a country star, went prancing around with a bevy of demonic ladies in waiting! And this is a five time winner? Is this how desperate you are Carrie?

What the hell happened to country ?

Does anyone really want to listen to lyrics that are poison to the mind and heart over and over again? A lot of the words - sometimes entire sentences - to the lyrics were bleeped.

As a woman who has long been a feminist, and who is not shy about erotica in the right place, or lyrics that challenge us, I never the less almost felt a shame that what top women singers do now is disguise their voices with all this calamity around them. I'd rather they leave the stripping to strippers in clubs one chooses as a destination and the pornography to the porn stars and the private bedrooms.

I didn't feel entertained. I felt humiliated for womankind.

C Christine Trzyna 2009 All rights reserved including International and Internet Rights. Contact author for permissions.

CHRISTINE TRZYNA REVIEWS THE LOST SYMBOL by DAN BROWN

THE LOST SYMBOL is C 2009 DAN BROWN REVIEW BY CHRISTINE TRZYNA C 2009

So many reviews have already been made of this book, dare I add to the chaos?

Having seen ANGELS and DEMONS on the big screen, for my entire read I kept seeing the actor TOM HANKS in my mind's eye when I encountered the character Langdon.

Is it possible to read a Dan Brown book and not be completely fascinated by cutting edge technology and science clashing and meshing with ancient occult wisdom and spiritual controversy? It's his forte and the long wait for this book was worth it.

Would it be going too far to suggest that this book may be the ANTIDOTE for 9/11 because ultimately it is patriotic? Will the Masons have a resurgence of interest in their organization? If so, what about the Anti-Catholicism of the Masons?

What does it mean when you take notes because you want to look up Noetic Science? Like the aftermath of his other books, I fully expect that Dan Brown has created interest enough in his research for the book for others to go after him for accuracy.

For some reason I felt the story was a bit slow until it got really good. Life intruded and I had to put it down many times but about three forths of the way through I didn't want to.