Ding Dong Merrily on High
Dec. 18th, 2024 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunabee341. Oh, it's like a million pounds off my chest. So earlier this semester, shortly after my Aunt Gail died of ovarian cancer, Dylan started experiencing abdominal pain and some other symptoms. They went to the urgent care, and y'all, I know our health care is totally fucked, but sometimes there are good people operating within it. The doctor did an ultrasound FOR FUCKING FREE! and saw that they had an ovarian cyst. The doc said they were pretty positive it was a cyst but that Dylan needed to follow up with their OBGYN to be sure. We did that today. We have to wait for the confirmation from whoever's going to read the ultrasound, but the tech said the cyst is gone. Hurray!
2. I got packages of wonderful gifts fromexecutrix and sheafrotherdon. Thank you so much!!
3. I introduced Dylan to the first Die Hard movie and they didn't hate it. We're going to watch the fourth one at some point before they go back to school.
4.
The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Unlike McTeague, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It follows a nouveau riche family as they navigate the upper-crust of Boston society.
This is a Norton critical edition, so it includes ancillary material at the back--contemporaneous reviews, letters to and from Howells, literary criticism. What amuses me about the contemporaneous reviews is the broad range of responses to the novel, especially the pearl clutching that runs the gamut from dismissing Howells as a Jane Austenesque writer of comedies of manners to the most odious picture of human nature with no redeeming qualities (these cannot be simultaneously true). A few of these reviews compare realism to photography, suggesting that it can't be art because it hasn't been molded into something edifying.
All the ancillary material is written by men except one contemporaneous review. Boo!
View all my reviews
I find the 19th century discussion of photography and whether it's actually art to be fascinating. Ouida was of the firm opinion that it is not art, and she was highly critical of photography, seeing it as a kind of lie. She also was very upset with the way that photography changed expectations for privacy and ownership of a person's image. She wrote an entire short story centered around the misuse of a photograph.
2. I got packages of wonderful gifts from
executrix and sheafrotherdon. Thank you so much!!3. I introduced Dylan to the first Die Hard movie and they didn't hate it. We're going to watch the fourth one at some point before they go back to school.
4.
The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean HowellsMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Unlike McTeague, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It follows a nouveau riche family as they navigate the upper-crust of Boston society.
This is a Norton critical edition, so it includes ancillary material at the back--contemporaneous reviews, letters to and from Howells, literary criticism. What amuses me about the contemporaneous reviews is the broad range of responses to the novel, especially the pearl clutching that runs the gamut from dismissing Howells as a Jane Austenesque writer of comedies of manners to the most odious picture of human nature with no redeeming qualities (these cannot be simultaneously true). A few of these reviews compare realism to photography, suggesting that it can't be art because it hasn't been molded into something edifying.
All the ancillary material is written by men except one contemporaneous review. Boo!
View all my reviews
I find the 19th century discussion of photography and whether it's actually art to be fascinating. Ouida was of the firm opinion that it is not art, and she was highly critical of photography, seeing it as a kind of lie. She also was very upset with the way that photography changed expectations for privacy and ownership of a person's image. She wrote an entire short story centered around the misuse of a photograph.
