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Book Notes: SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas

SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas

Finished 2/09/20

A justifiably famous, passionate call for the destruction of masculinity.

I had never really planned on reading SCUM, but the combination of a recent political art show in which I was reading through historical quotes by feminists, and the siren’s song of Verso’s ebook sale put it easily before my eyes.

A few scattered thoughts:

1.)It’s really funny. Quite apart from the fairly standard view of SCUM as satire, the text itself is blisteringly funny. I laughed out loud at her description of the Hippy man as wanting to leave society and go “all the way out to the cow pasture where he can fuck and breed undisturbed and mess around with his beads and flute.”

2.)Like all manifestos, it has an element of utopianism, but this one wears its science-fiction on its sleeve–like, from the second paragraph. Solanas argued that eventually, science would lead us to a point where automation, genetic manipulation, and social engineering would create a society without males and male-ness. She speaks of men transforming scientifically themselves into women, of reproduction occurring only sporadically in laborities or not at all as death-curing technologies proliferate, of the replacement of males by machines. The result is a society without violence or coercion, where women can “explore, discover, invent, solve problems crack jokes, make music – all with love. In other words, create a magic world.” This is well within the science-fiction utopian tradition.

3.)Yeah, she says we should kill the men. But (perhaps strategically on my part, being a man) I read this more in parallel with James Baldwin’s famous dictum “As long as you think you’re white, there’s no hope for you”. Given that 3rd wave feminism’s critique of the coupling of sex and gender as an eternal, bio-behavioral essentialism didn’t exist when Solanas was writing, I’d like to think that what she was describing was the abolition of masculinity and patriarchy–the end of the linkage of being a man to violence, authority, the suppression of critique, and the subjugation of women. In any case, Solanas' real life violence against Warhol has grossly overshadowed her riveting writing, while many famous male authors visited worse violence upon their partners and excused for it.

4.)I skipped the contextual essay by Avital Ronnell. A quick scan suggested it wasn’t something I’d get a lot out of anyway, and in any case, she’s got her own problems.

5.)There are some really astonishing and gorgeously written insights in here about behavior, social life, and material culture. I re-read this passage multiple times and kept finding new things in it:

Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units. Desperately insecure, fearing his woman will leave him if she is exposed to other men or to anything remotely resembling life, the male seeks to isolate her from other men and from what little civilization there is, so he moves her out to the suburbs, a collection of self-absorbed couples and their kids. Isolation enables him to try to maintain his pretense of being an individual nu becoming a `rugged individualist', a loner, equating non-cooperation and solitariness with individuality.

Everyone should read this.

Quentin's Weeknotes 2/1/20-2/7/20

This Week:

• I was saddened to hear of the passing of Andy Gill. Gang of Four’s first two records are unimpeachable classics of skronky political funk-punk. Gill’s guitar playing, shoehorning vicious shards of noise into pop structures, was as revolutionary as the band’s Marxist lyrics (I think the first time I heard the term ‘marxist’ might have been in reference to G04, in Roni Sarig’s book). It’s is in the DNA of a huge swath of the music that has thrilled and sustained me in my life.  I saw them live in 2005, more than 20 years after those early albums came out, and they were mesmirizing. Rest in Power. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2JVX1ExGaM&w=560&h=315]
• I finished Jason Ridler’s essay collection “FXXX WRITING: A Guide For Frustrated Artists." It’s a collection of essays about trying and failing, and seeing yourself as a writer not because you get published or find success, but because you can ride the waves of pride and shame that come with living a creative life.
• On a lark (well, actually they were on sale), I picked up a Parker Jotter stainless steel pen. I’m very particular about my pens, preferring Uniball Jetstreams fine points, and Pilot Precise V5s (though I have a bunch of Sharpie Felt Tips as useful back ups). I’ll probably get a different cartridge for it (1 mm point, blue ink? No Thank you!) but it feels good in my hand and writes well.
• At work, I finished installing dadibaajimo, and made the last minute preparations for the visits of the two artists in the show.
• I also started teaching MUST204: Collections Management at Hartwick. I continue to try to make the class more immediately hands-on, more collaborative, and with a linkage of collections practice with theory.

Book Notes- Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

Finished 2/5/2020

A stunning book that links together two prominent phenomena of the 20th century–pulp horror/science fiction, and American Jim Crow White Supremacy. Atticus Turner is a Black veteran and sci-fi fan who moves back to Chicago after getting out the Service. When he discovers that his father George is missing and has been taken to an obscure village in western Massachsuetts, he, his uncle Montrose (publisher of a tourist guidebook telling African-Americans where to travel safely), and his friend Letitia embark on a journey that shows them both supernatural and racial horror.

Some thoughts:

Despite his presence in the title, Lovecraft and his mythologies take up very little space in this book, appearing as the author of fiction beloved by Atticus in the first chapter (and loathed by his father). This differentiates the book from other Lovecraft homages, which revel in the author’s open-source mythos but do not reassemble or comment on it in any grander way.

The title derives from a term coined by Lovecraft fans and scholars in the 1970s, who referred to the author’s pseudonomizing of prominent New England towns in his fiction. Salem became Arkham, Newburyport became Innsmouth, Marblehead became Kingsport, etc…Thus, Lovecraft Country is playing with geography, and the alternative ways we can imagine places and populate them. This parallels the Green Book, which articulates an alternative map of America.

The Green book, published by Atticus' uncle Montrose, is likewise a fictional book with a real referent, the Negro Motorist Green Book, which provided African-American tourists with a map of places where they could safely travel and receive services without the indignity or violence of Jim Crow. Montrose and his family verify such locations by travelling, which forces them to serve as test subjects for the relative safety and danger of places, and also provides a framework for several of the chapters

Thus, the book entwines Lovecraft’s virulent racism with his literary influence on fantastic fiction. Each chapter focuses on a member of this Chicago African-American family, and places them in story-settings that draw from the classics of horror and weird canons. There is a Lovecraftian piece of cosmic horror, a haunted house story, a science fiction story, Jekyll-ish body-horror, and other similarly pulpy or Victorian settings. At the same, by foregrounding the African-American experience at navigating and avoiding the boot of White Supremacy, these familiar literary settings become unfamiliar and shocking:

• Ruby drinks a potion that turns her into a White woman, but also discovers that the priveleges she accrues change her behavior, and bring out aspects of her selfishness and entitlement.
• Montrose tries to track down the current owner of a dead wizard’s notebooks, only to discover that he was killed forbeing married to a Black woman during a racial pogrom in Tulsa in 1921.
• Letitia gets an opportunity to buy a house, but is forced to deal with segregated housing policy and practice of a legal and supernatural nature.

The book has an overarching plot, but is organized around these “monster-of-the-week” chapters. This was risky maneuver, but it ultimately pays off with a rich exploration of various aspects of the racism experienced by African-Americans in the middle 20th century, as well as a satisfying, if open-ended, conclusion.

There have been lots of great re-workings of Lovecraft lately that have focused on racism (I’m thinking especially of Victor Lavalle’s masterful “The Ballad of Black Tom"). This was among the best I’ve ever seen, taking Lovecraft’s simultaneous problems and vast influence as a starting point, rather than an endpoint, and using them to tell a story about the horrors of American racism. Really brilliant stuff.

Quentin's Weeknotes 01/25/20-01/31/20

This Week:

• I coordinated the receipt of art for our upcoming exhibit ‘dadibaajimo: Two Mississauga Artists Share Stories’. It’s been a long time in the works (almost three years!) and there’s still a lot left to do before the formal gallery opening on February 12th, but I’m glad this part is over and done with.
• I also started installing the exhibit, which is a new skillset I’ve had to develop since I started at the Museum. Perhaps counterintuitively for an artistic environment, installation is 90% math and 10% aesthetics, and once I figured that out, it became much easier for me.

Standard practice for hanging a two-dimensional work of art is that the center of the work should be 60" above the floor. If the work has been wired on the back, then the equation you use is

(60 + (1/2x) - y)

where x is the height of the work in inches and y is the distance from the top of the work to a taught wire in inches. Put your nail or hangers in the wall at that point and the painting or print should look great.

• Soundtrack this week:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PVGlWKXMLU&w=560&h=315]

Quentin's Weeknotes 1/18/20-1/24/20

This Week:

• M. John Harrison’s writing advice, worth quoting in full:

Start with images, not ideas. Themes, not concepts. Having an idea isn’t having something to write about: having something to write about is having something to write about. People & settings aren’t something to flesh out a story; a story is something you use to flesh out people & settings. Never favour plot. Story & narrative can be ok, but plot is like chemical farming. Closure is wrong. It is toxic. Work into a genre if you like, but from as far outside it as possible. Read as much about Hollywood formalism as you can bear, so you know what not to do. Break the structures–don’t look for new & sly twists on them. Never do clever tricks with reader expectation. Instead be honest, open and direct in your intention not to deliver the things they expect. You won’t always be successful in that, because it’s harder than it looks—after all, you used to be a reader too. Oh, & that’s the last thing. You aren’t a reader any more. You’re a writer, so don’t try to get reader kicks from the act of writing. Never tell yourself a story. That romantic relationship is over for you. From now on the satisfactions will be elsewhere.

• I finished reading Volume 2 of Scott Westerfeld’s “Spill Zone” and Jeff Vandermeer’s “Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction” The former was an excellent conclusion to the delightfully weird story, which I can best describe as if Tarkovsky’s Stalker were a young adult graphic novel. The latter I am currently taking notes on, some of which I may post here. Suffice it to say that it’s a rich and useful writing guide with lots of good advice that is enlivened by fantastical artwork, and imaginatively rendered charts and figures.

Quentin's Weeknotes 1/11/20-1/18/20

This Week:


• I oversaw the installation of some new wall storage options in the Yager Museum’s painting Vault.
• With my boss, I finished the first draft the Yager Museum’s collections policy, which has not been updated in a looooooong time.
• I started scheduling events and programming around our upcoming exhibit "dadibaajimo: two Mississauga Artists Share Stories" featuring the work of Cathie Jamieson and Luke Swinson.
• My parents came to visit, but weather and ill health in the family have made it a tough week for us to do much of anything together.

Quentin's Weeknotes 1/4/20-1/10/20

This Week:

• I did some research for a few upcoming exhibits at the Museum.
• I devoured (and then promptly re-read more slowly) Emily Carroll’s Through The Woods. It’s one of the most delightfully dark and rich horror comics I’ve read in a long time.
• I also read the much shorter and in some ways more shocking “When I arrived at the Castle” also by Carroll. It’s a dark fairy tale with subtle references to Dracula, the Robber Bridegroom, Alice in Wonderland, and filled with Carroll astonishingly rich and surreal illustrations.
• The Yager Museum hosted musician and activist John O’Connor for a concert and program of historical political music.
• I read with great concern this long article about presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s difficult relationship with African-American officers in the South Bend Police force when he was mayor. It seems pretty clear that Buttigieg, at best, refused to listen to concerns that Black officers had about racism in the police force, and at worst, actively worked to stifle or subvert those concerns. He’s not my choice for a Democratic nominee for other reasons, but this story feels particularly damning in light of the revelations that his much-vaunted “Douglass plan” for African Americans contained a list of prominent Black supporters that was fabricated.
• I did some background work trying to move an upcoming exhibit towards completion.

Quentin's Weeknotes 12/28/19-01/3/20

This week:

• [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSgHGFuPNus&w=560&h=315]
• I started the week on vacation in Toronto and ended it back at work, in a new year and new decade. I’m mostly trying to get back into the rhythm of the Museum, which will be fairly busy this coming Spring. We’ll have a new exhibit in early February, multiple programs (including our first-in-a-long-time concert next week, featuring John O’Connor), and a big push for some intensive collections work. Also, I’m teaching Collections Management again, which will probably be slightly different this year than in previous iterations, as we have some big external projects that we are going to help with.
• I grabbed a copy of the new Hallelujah the Hills album “I’m you”. It’s a tuneful, strange, exuberantly hopeful album. I’m thinking a lot about this lyric, from the title track:

Don’t quit, it only makes your enemies glad
They’d celebrate your decision, then feast on what you had
The rolling hills of lifer-arcs reflect the light from distant stars
Don’t quit, it only makes your enemies glad

• I finished reading Ann Leckie’s Ancilliary Justice. This is the kind of sci-fi I love, filled with deep, thoughtful meditations about complicated historical issues (in this case, colonialism, slavery, class-conflict, and gender identity) wrapped in unusual and weird narratives. The story centers around the human host of an Artificial Intelligence that once ran an entire spaceship, and how he/she seeks revenge for the ship’s destruction. It’s not surprising to me that she studied with Octavia Butler–both of them share a fascination with working through humanistic ethics, in the face of non-human (or inhuman) conditions.

Book Notes- Marx at the Arcade--Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle

Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle

By Jamie Woodcock

Finished 12/22/2019

A Marxist analysis of video games, along the axis of production (historical-material and labor relations) and consumption (games as play/anti-work, hacking, and online communities).

Woodcock takes Stuart Hall’s call for understanding popular culture as a site of social struggle. He uses video games as a locus for such analysis, examining their history, the class composition of their production, their links to imperialism and state violence, and their consumption.

His history of video games is rich, though still partial, highlighting their connections to military technological development as well as the anti-work philosophy and lifestyle of the counter-cultural people who ended up working on the earliest computers at Universities and corportions.  These two trends (hierarchical control and experimental “hacking”) for the nexus of video-game labor relations to this day, with big multi-national companies attempting to regiment, deskill, and control a labor force (programmers and designers) that is still rooted in creativity, loves their own product (he uses the term “playbour”), and rejects the ideas of work handed down from fordism, particularly a clock-punching eight hour day. As a consequence, the major labor issues inherent in the video game industry are the problems crunch time (long, hard hours as a project nears its end) and a tolerance for White, masculinist ideologies among workers, leading to the exclusion of women and people of color from success and advancement. He concludes with some discussions of efforts at unionization in the gaming industry, and the problems and possibilities of organizing a highly precarious but well paid labor force.

The second half of the book focuses on the consumption of games, and the ways in which the messages of many games repeat dominant ideologies that reify class relations and state power. At the same time, he also focuses on some alternative games that play against such ideologies, as well as the idea that experimental play inherent in video games may allow players to reconfigure or improvise alternatives to powerful ideas and social relations. There is also a simple but thorough discussion of the Gamergate phenomenon, largely framed as an anti-diversity patriarchal backlash movement. Overall, it was nice to see an analysis of games that recognized some of the ways that their ideas are problematic, while still locating them as an important site of cultural production, community-building, and counter-hegemonic activity.

As a gamer, it was fun and enlightening to read a critical history of an activity that I’ve loved for a long time. As a progressive with an interesting in labor politics, it was enlightening and inspiring to read about the complexities of organizing in the new flexible-information economy, in a way that provides pathways for future action.

My yearnotes for 2019

via GIPHY

My year, professionally:

• I taught classes at Hartwick College in Collections Management, and (with Dr. Doug Kendall) taught Collectors and Collecting, a First Year Seminar. Both were fun and interesting in their own ways, and both keep me on my toes as a Museum professional and an educator.
• I curated my first art show at the Museum: “Art/Politics: Power, Persuasion, and Propaganda” which features political art from the Yager Museum’s collection. It was a daunting but rewarding experience, and I’m looking forward to doing more curation and exhibition at the Museum in the future.
• I assisted in the installation of “Earth/Water/Sky”, “Silent Lakes and Flashing Rivers”, and “From Viking to Insight."
• I concluded a funded Native American speaker’s series at the Museum, with visits and talks from members of the Tuscorora and Mohawk communities of New York State.
• I co-organized a First Nations Film Series, featuring movies about Indigenous impacts on popular Music, cultural reclamation and renewal, and the American Indian Movement, respectively. We hope to continue this type of event, moving forward at the Museum.
• I attended the Museum Association of New York conference in Cooperstown, and saw the wonderful and inspiring work of my colleagues across the State.
• I also attended the New York Archives conference, where I presented a co-authored paper about archaeology and archives at Hartwick College.
• Though the work has been ongoing for several years now, this year finally saw the publication of a special issue of the journal Historical Archaeology, co-edited by myself and two colleages (who I’m lucky enough to also call friends), and featuring work by scholars studying the archaeology of the Connecticut River Valley. I’m proud of this publication, and honored and delighted to have such intelligent and generous colleagues.

My media consumption was a bit more sparse than in previous years, but I still found some interesting things to read and see and listen to this year.

• I didn’t buy a lot of music this year.  Digitally, I acquired albums by Ibeyi, Trans Am, and Purple Mountains. I also picked up vinyl copies of Fairport Convention’s “Liege and Lief”, Husker Du’s “Zen Arcade”, Ian Hunter’s “You’re Never Alone with a Schizophrenic”, Led Zeppelin IV, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark’s “Dazzle Ships”, and the Halloween party record “Monster Rally." I also bought a few things at Oneonta’s Grand and Glorious Garage Sale.
• By the end of 2019, I will have read 36 books and a little more than 9000 pages. A lot of what I read was pretty good, but the works that stood out to me included:
  • Viroconium by M. John Harrison. This collection’s masterful prose and oblique but stark deconstruction of the high fantasy genre has continued to sit with me as I read other things (and try to write myself). Also, Harrison’s blog is is full of bite-sized but nutriciously enlightening posts about writing, politics, and aesthetics.
  • Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. I actually read two books by Butler this year, but this one has stuck with me, as its depiction of life after the end of the world (in a manner not disimilar to the one we seem to be facing down) feels daunting but hopeful.
  • Barraccoon by Zora Neale Hurston. I wrote some notes about this book, but the truth is that it was a really monumental achievement, and I’ve found myself recommending it to everyone this year.
  • Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 by Ryan Walsh. I spent four amazing years living in Boston, and have visited many times since (including in late October. At a basic level, I’ve always been drawn to its patchwork of old and new things, spaces, and ideas, and what Walsh’s book on the music of Boston in the late 1960s shows us is that “old” and “new” are a circle that continue to loop around us as we step uncertainly into the future.
• I didn’t go out to the Movies much this year, and what I did see was mostly movies that appealed to my six-year old. Thus, my theater experiences consisted of seeing How to Train your Dragon: The Hidden World, Aladdin, The Secret Life of Pets 2, and Us (he didn’t go to this one).
• On the home front, I also saw Apostle, A Serious Man, Await Further Instructions, The Banshee Chapter, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Bone Tomahawk, Bruce Springsteen on Broadway, John Wick, The King, Lincoln, Midsommar, The Perfection, The 13th, and Under the Skin.
• For podcasts, my regulars remain WTF w/ Marc Maron, Drunks and Dragons/Greetings Adventurers, The Best Show, Pseudopod, and the Memory Palace. This year I’ve played around with listening to Why is this Happening?, the Writer’s Almanac, Deconstructed, Our Opinions are Correct, Odyssey Bookshop podcast, Podside Picnic, Intercepted, and This Land.

Other things:

• Our street hosted a block-long garage sale, which combined three of my favorite things–community building, material culture, and sitting outside.

• I wrote about 25,000 words of fiction this yea. I had planned on trying to finish a novel this year, but that wasn’t really in the cards. I struggled with a YA novel for the first part of the year before abandoning it after about 12,000 words. Since then I’ve been trying to find the time to finish editing a long-ish short story (close to 8K words before it’s done) that I’m going to finish before the year rolls out.

• I took care of my family, and they took care of me.

  • Sometimes this took the form of getting our house into the home we want it to be. We painted two rooms, put up a lot of artwork, re-worked our living room, and whipped our garden into better shape. I used a stump grinder for the first time, which was an exhiliarating experience.
  • Sometimes it took the form of visiting new places. Various combinations of us went to the Museum of Science and Technology in Syracuse, NY, Robot City Games in Binghamton, NY, Longwood Gardens in Chester County, PA, and riding the Cooperstown and Charlotte Valley Railroad. Additionally we visited King of Prussia, PA and Salem, MA, and both times in the company of the Minister of Intrigue and his family. He and I have been friends for a long, long time and we are finally living in (basically) the same part of the world. It was delightful to see him and his family and I’m looking forward to getting together more regularly from now on.
  • Sometimes it took the form of celebrating. I turned 40! I had a legitimately great birthday, thanks to my lovely wife who went to Leslie Nope-levels of planning and forethought to make it special
  • My son continues to delight, confuse, and inspire me with his boundless curiousity, energy and creativity. This was a year where I felt like I could start sharing some of my favorite things with him, in music, literature, and film.
  • My wife is an unparalled and devoted partner in everything I do, and I love her so much for her humor, her moral clarity, and her perseverence in adversity.
  • Finally, my year was overshadowed and forged and propelled by the birth of my daughter in late December of last year. Basically everything I did (or didn’t do) was a product of her presence, and her growth into the delightful and curious person she’s becoming, and which I’m honored and bewildered to watch and shepherd. So this was her year, even as it was also mine.