Around the Web: Miley Cyrus and Porn, But Not Together

It’s like a car accident: you don’t want to look, but you just have to. That is, Miley Cyrus’s new Wal-Mart collection. [via The Frisky]

A good citizen calls the police to report a drunk driver. A better citizen calls and reports herself. [via Jezebel]

Dakota Fanning was just crowned her high school’s homecoming queen—that must have been a shocker. Check out a gallery of other celebrities who got the royal treatment from an early age. [via The Daily Beast]

Clutch gives us a list of the symptoms of “racism in treatment”: could you be afflicted? [via Clutch]

Porn magazines often depict women who have been so injected, enhanced, and airbrushed that they’re hardly real. In its November issue, Playboy takes things a step farther. [via Feministing]

Reflect on Halloween with this gallery of the admirable costume efforts of residents of New York’s Lower East Side. [via Nerve]

Around the Web: Judy Blume + Aunt Flow

We’ve all been there: a flight across the country, a million things we could be catching up on, and we’re reading SkyMall. But maybe there’s something to be said for those cheesy in-flight magazine. [via Jezebel]

For those of us who are still smarting about missing Judy Blume at the National Book Festival, Double X brings us an interview with the controversial Young Adult fiction writer herself. [via Double X]

Want to look cute this season without poring through ad-clogged fashion mags? Clutch makes it easy with a report on Fall Fashion for Dummies. [via Clutch]

We have Women’s Studies, African American Studies, and Queer Studies. Introducing the next step in the socially conscious college majors evolution: Gat Studies. [via Bust]

In high school, “come over and watch a movie” was code for “come over and make out.” If you’ve outgrown this, take a cue from Nerve’s list of 15 Movies to Guarantee You Sleep Alone. [via Nerve]

Do we need a “menstrual activism” movement to de-stigmatize the period, or is that just bloody ridiculous? (Fun fact: a woman uses an average of 11,400 tampons in her lifetime!) [via Salon]

--Allison Geller

Front of Book: Sweet September

It’s September: the time to follow your fourth grade teacher’s suggestion to fall into a good book. Things are not so elementary, however, in this month’s magazines’ reading suggestions.

At Vogue, Anna Wintour’s underlings are raving about the “astonishing first novel” of a bright young talent, Evie Wyld, titled After the Fire, a Small Still Voice. The story chronicles a disturbed family history, set in Australia in 1965 and today. Wyld’s gift for language and empathy for her characters makes this outback drama a good bet. Vogue also endorses Nick Hornby’s latest, Juliet, Naked. Sucker that I am for anything Hornby, this novel should be no less of a delight than, for instance, High Fidelity, whose themes of rock music and its obsessive fans are repeated in the new novel. The protagonist is a typical Hornby hero—boy in a man’s body—but the complex female character Annie asks the intriguing questions.

Over in Oprah’s ever-increasing territory is a myriad of reading suggestions. The most intriguing include Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist, a novel about a hapless poet who just can’t find the words. The book is interspersed with wry lessons on poetry, while making insights on the paradoxes of the artistic career. Things continue on the artsy vein with Dancing in the Dark, by Morris Dickinson. While I’m biased towards anything with “dancing” in the title, the subject of this cultural history is actually the Great Depression and the art that got America through it. From the highbrow to the entertainment of the masses, the book gives an intriguing look at an era that may not be so distant. On a graver note is Strength in what Remains by Tracy Kidder, a “ young genocide survivor’s tale of escape, healing—and hope.” The book follows Deogratias, who fled Burundi for New York in 1994, from sleeping in Central Park to attending medical school, without ever turning away from the place of his birth, despite the dark stain of genocide.

This month O takes us through the bookshelf of Jennifer Garner, who says she grew up reading and believes strongly in the importance of education, which got her mother out of poverty. Books that made particular difference to Garner include Crimes of the Heart, the first play she related to, and Possession, by A.S. Byatt, which she read while struggling to find employment as an actor. A history buff, Garner also loves John Adams, as well as the Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, which she reads like a novel. If Jennifer Garner does it, it must be OK.

Elle recommends Joyce Carol Oates’ newest, Little Bird of Heaven. “Vintage Oates”, the novel is fraught with violence, ambition, sex-crazed teens, and family troubles. I’m especially intrigued by the first English translation of the trilogy Love, Anger, Madness by Marie Vieux-Chaquet. Suppressed in 1968 for exposing Haiti’s sexual, racial, and social tensions, the book evokes the terrors of life under regime in an intensely emotional way. Elle and O both recommend Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow, a work of fiction about legendary characters: the Collyer brothers, two New York hermits found dead in their apartment in 1947. Doctorow imagines the minds and lives of these two eccentrics from folklore, to compelling results.

This month’s women's mags agree on one thing: Foodie Frank Bruni’s memoir Born Round is a must-read. Just what you need to store up for the winter.

--Allison Geller

The English Major: The Importance of Reading Ernest

Hemingway: Not to Be Lost In Our Time

When Ernest Hemingway wrote In Our Time, he declared in a letter that it “will be praised by highbrows and can be read by lowbrows.” The fact that it remains part of the English major canon, yet can easily be put away an hour before lecture proves that Hemingway knew what he was talking about.

The book contains many famous short stories that are often anthologized, including “The Battler,” “ Indian Camp,” and “Cat in the Rain.” However, the work is worth more than the sum of its parts. Blurring the usual genre boundaries, the stories are broken up with short italicized vignettes, unrelated in subject to the stories. Some of the stories have the same protagonist—Nick Adams—while others do not.

Yet Hemingway insisted that some thread of unity binds the work. One of the most satisfying parts of the book is pondering what that is. Reading it, I was forced to ask myself: is Hemingway’s time anything like ours, today? Is our world, too, one that cannot be evoked in a novel of chronological order and a neat plot?

Breaking out of the usual novel bubble, I’ve found as an English major, can yield satisfying results.

So why’d they give him a Pulitzer?

"I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and make a big knot in the back that I can feel," she said. "I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her," says “the American wife” to her husband in “A Cat in the Rain.”

In the story a young American couple lounges at an Italian hotel on a rainy day. The wife sees a cat crouching under a table at the café across the street. She decides she wants it, but goes out in the rain only to find that the cat is gone.

At the end, the maid brings the cat up to the room, telling the wife that the hotel padrone had asked her to.

And that’s it. Barely four pages of simple prose.

What, then, about Hemingway’s style makes him part of the syllabus?

The greatness of the story is that in telling so little, it reveals so much. We see that the anonymous American wife is in need of something that her husband is not giving her. We see two people pretending to be at home in a foreign land that is not just geographic.

The pull of the work is in all the things we don’t see. In all of the stories, Hemingway lays out the facts like a good journalist. Often they are violent. But he does not tell us how to feel.

In Chapter XIII, one of the italicized portions on bullfighting, the last lines are spoken by the famous bullfighter Maera: “Yes. We kill them. We kill them all right. Yes. Yes. Yes.

And that is what we are left with.

Like any great work of fiction, you can return to these stories again and again, but not because the paragraphs are heavy with symbolism or tied up in clauses. Hemingway also said that his stories were like icebergs—1/8^th visible above water. Because he chooses that 1/8^th so carefully, we must continually dive below to see the rest.

Hemingway the Macho Man

Hemingway often gets labeled as a misogynistic he-man. This isn’t a misrepresentation. Hemingway’s heroes are always men, always detached and unwilling to lay out their feelings. Hemingway knew war to be a defining experience for a writer, and was fascinated by the ritual brutality of bullfighting. Guts, gore, and death were subjects he embraced.

But that’s not to say that his work lacks emotional texture. While the violence in the stories of In Our Time does not always go down easily, there is a subtle psychology to the journalistic description that renders it even more emotionally powerful. The Nick Adams character that we follow throughout the book also leads us subtly to dark emotional terrain, particularly in the two-part ending story “Big Two-Hearted River.” Here is a man scarred by war, reluctant to confront his own mind, and verging between happiness and despair.

Though of course, from first read all he seems to be doing is fishing some trout.

It’s always a struggle to find time for pleasure reading, let alone a space big enough for so-called “literature.” But whether you’re a highbrow, a lowbrow, or somewhere in between, it’ll be worth your while to make time for In Our Time.

--Allison Geller

Allison is an undergraduate English major at the University of Virginia, and a regular contributor to Uptown Literati. Her column, "The English Major," appears every other Wednesday.

Around the Web: Lipstick Tomboys + Sexy Librarians

Pastel prints? Fashion mags? Abbreviated words? If these things make you shudder, you may just be a “lipstick tomboy.” [via Clutch]

Does objecting to sexism make you a “ranty-pant”? I don’t know, but we think we’ll start using that word. [via Jezebel]

In a completely unscientific but nonetheless fascinating survey, the UK’s Daily Mail asks women to rate men from various countries on their bedroom abilities, as reported by Bust. [via Bust]

You’ll want to flush your contact solution down the drain when you check out these “sexy librarian-inspired” glasses. Tortoiseshell never looked so good. [via The Frisky]

We sometimes wish Sex and the City were real, with its sparkly, punny dialog and glamorous clothing. But according to this writer-cum-extra, being cast in the new movie is nothing short of a nightmare. [via The Daily Beast]

Photo: Clutch

Oh Snap!: Bedtime Story

Rainbow slippers, monkey pajama pants, and a novel-- time to say "good night."

--Allison Geller

Photo courtesy of Chapendra via Flickr.

The English Major: Going Greek

Going Greek--Without the Hazing

Of all genres of literature, the ancient Greek tragedy is no one’s first pick. We might be stirred to pick up the classics of Austen and Bronte, even the plays of Shakespeare, but we rarely get the hankering for a few lines of Euripedes. English major that I am, I feel it’s my duty to rush in the defense of these sadly neglected works. Not because the man in the ivory tower tells me so, but because they are great.

What’s more, these plays—of the three major tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—can be read and enjoyed in an hour. Take that, Tolstoy.

You can expect, of course, mythological allusions aplenty. I say, don’t worry about the footnotes; they just take away from the pure enjoyment of reading. Go back and look at them at the end if you like, but while reading, don’t bother breaking the flow of the dialogue with pesty and largely unnecessary background notes.

You can also expect vengeance. Someone usually gets tricked into killing, eating, or killing and eating their own child. It happens.

But for work this ancient, the plays are surprisingly easy to get absorbed in. After all, they were meant for performance. It was assumed the audience knew the story, so drama and tension had to built in to keep them interested.

We Brake for Aeschylus

Start off with Aeschylus’s Agamemnon. It takes place with the end of the Trojan War, when Agamemnon arrives back home to Argos, a hero. His wife Clytemnestra awaits him. Of course, the play follows a long and bloody back-story: the family is typically and complicatedly cursed. Agamemnon’s father tricked his cousin Aegisthus’s father into killing and eating his sons (Aegisthus’s brothers), so he’s none too happy with Agamemnon. At the same time, Agamemnon scarified his and Clytemnestra’s daughter Iphigeneia in order to gain a favorable wind for his voyage to Troy. So despite her exaggerated claims of love and fidelity toward Agamemnon, Clytemnestra can’t be pleased either.



A great scene takes place that reveals the power play between prideful man and bitter wife. When Agamemnon gets home, he doesn’t even spare his wife a word, but gives a speech that is just short of “I’d like to thank the academy” about his war feats. The queen then induces him to walk on red cloth—a sign of dangerous hubris that would indicate Agamemnon thinks himself equal to the gods. At first he resists, but eventually gives in and walks the fateful red carpet. Clytemnestra has won.

It doesn’t bode well. At the same time, Aggy’s brought home a little something something- a prophet named Cassandra.

When he goes into the palace, the queen tries to get Cassandra out of the carriage, but she remains silent. Finally, though, she starts to sputter frantic and prophetical things (“of the grief, the grief of the city/ripped to oblivion”). Eventually, she proclaims “no more riddles” and gives it up: Agamemnon will die, and so will Clytemnestra; their son will then avenge his father’s death. I’ll save the climactic scene for you, but suffice to say it’s going down.

In my opinion, Clytemnestra makes the play, and makes it relevant to our time and place, when the we don’t take part in the revelry and theatre that was the context of this play (the festival of Dionysus, roughly 450 BCE). She is at first belittled (“rumours voiced by women come to nothing,” proclaims the chorus when Clytemnestra declares that Troy has been taken). She is treated with all brusqueness by her husband, ten years absent. She has also lost her daughter to a sacrifice at her husband’s hand. At the same time, there’s a lot not to pity: Clytemnestra has been shacking up with Aegisthus, and prepared to do what it takes to get rid of Agamemnon and take the throne. Aeschylus gives her a complexity and depth that he doesn’t quite spare Agamemnon, the title character. Along with the play’s ambivalence about war, the emotional territory of the play is far more sophisticated than its antiquity suggests.

In the end, the message is the same as all Greek tragedies, uttered by the Herald: “Who but a god can go through life unmarked?” Who, indeed.

--Allison Geller

Allison is an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, and a regular contributor to Uptown Literati. Her column, "The English Major," will appear every other Wednesday.

Around the Web: Oprah's 'Precious' + RomCom Lessons

Oprah is said to have the magic touch—but why should Precious need it? [via Jezebel]

As far as transformations go, this one is a little beyond losing 20 pounds: little boy to little mermaid. [via Lemondrop]

When the Harry Potter movies were in the works, I dreamt of playing Hermione. But to hear Emma Watson tell it, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. [via Nerve]

New York Fashion Week got colorful with the This Day/Arise African Fashion Collection, featuring unique prints and pieces. [via Fashion Bomb Daily]

When the fire is literally burning on the dance floor, never fear—you can put that baby out in style. [via LimeLife]

Full of learning and wisdom, the romantic comedy has many—or 10—pertinent life lessons to teach. [via The Frisky]

--Allison Geller

Oh Snap!: A Student's Right to Chose

Letting students read what they want doesn't seem too revolutionary, but it's causing quite a stir in the education community, headed by this 8th grade teacher, Lorrie McNeill. Her unique approach to assigned reading: there isn't any. As long as it's a book, anything goes.

--Allison Geller

Photo courtesy The New York Times

Oh Snap!: Well Trained

New Yorkers don't let jerky stops and loud cell phone conversations distract their concentration: these urbanites have the art of reading on the Subway down to an art.

--Allison Geller

Photo: The New York Times, who have also put together an entire slideshow on the art of subway reading! Click here to check it out.

Around the Web: 'Glee's In + Summer's Out

The glory days of Chuck Bass and Serena van der Woodsen are over, says Nerve, making room for a new kind of a high school reality that we’ll all be singing our praises for. [via Nerve]

A little adorable never hurt anyone: revel in this video of panda’s first trip to the doctor. Open wide and say “aw!” [via Jezebel]

We all secretly wonder what it’s like to be an Obama. Live vicariously with this photo album of how Malia and Sasha spent their summer vacation—Martha’s Vineyard, Paris, and the Grand Canyon among the sites these lucky presidential daughters got to see. [via Essence]

Sick of peeing in nasty public toilets? A new product called “Go Girl” may be just what you’re looking for. [via Feministing]

France wants you to protect yourself! Though something tells me this ad campaign wouldn’t be so well received chez nous. [via The Frisky]

--Allison Geller

Oh Snap! Like Riding a Bike

Once learned, reading is a skill that can't be forgotten.

--Allison Geller

Photo: Big Mike Photo Blog

Around the Web: Shaved Heads + Fag Hags

For ladies seeking hair liberation, Honey brings you a few tips to ease the transition when you decide to get “chopped and screwed”: aka, shave it all off. [via Honey Mag]

She sure doesn’t sound like Nicole Kidman: a clip of Virginia’s Woolf’s voice was recently released, the only one known. [via Jezebel]

We live in a “rape culture”, asserts a new video. Could we really live in a culture of fear and political correctness? [via Double X]

A list of the Top 10 Sexiest Chefs, from Colicchio to Cora. Let’s just say I’ve got absolutely no reservations. [via Nerve]

“I can be your fag hag, and you can be my gay,” sings Lily Allen in her new album. But according to this writer, the era of the “gay boyfriend” is overdone, and simply done. [via Salon]

Catch the season premier of Mad Men on Monday? If not, beware of spoilers, in Feministing’s analysis of some of the show’s key moments. [via Feministing]

--Allison Geller

Photo: HotAtlantaBuzz

Front of Book: Summer's Last Hurrah

The best—and worst—book picks of the month from our favorite magazines.

Summer is winding down, but time still remains to cram in a few, last good reads before your tan fades or you exchange novels for textbooks.

Oprah typically has a lot to say on the subject. This month’s issue of O has many promising, if not a little heavy, suggestions. On that score there’s Methland by Nick Reding, about a small town in Iowa where images of quiet Main Street and wide open fields are replaced by the horrors of a methamphetamine epidemic. Reding doesn’t shy away from any details about this very real tragedy, but he also doesn’t remove himself from compassion and empathy for those who are embroiled in it. On the lighter side is Thomas Pynchon’s latest, Inherent Vice. While I’m not an avid mystery reader, a detective story with an intriguing hero (“a blend of classic California noir hero and committed hippie stoner”), a gripping and intricate plot, and the evocation of years past—the novel is set in the ‘60s—is just the recipe for a last end of summer getaway that starts and ends on your front porch.

One pick I’m not quite sure about is The Magicians by Lev Grossman, which at first skim reads like Harry Potter, except that the protagonist and his entourage live in Manhattan, move past first base, and drop F-bombs rather than “you-know-who”'s. A modern fantasy novel meets coming of age story, this doesn’t look like the Pulitzer, but if you’re itching for something to fill the void that J.K. Rowling so callously left after book number seven, this might be a good bet.

Catching on to the latest "Mad Men" buzz, O also features John Hamm’s book picks. Among this suave and serious actor’s recommendations is The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene, a tome about string theory and the laws of the universe that has been sitting on my shelf for years. I swear I’ll get to it one day. Hamm also suggests Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys, the modern classic about an aging writer who just can’t find the words, sure to satisfy any bibliophile.

Over at Vanity Fair, the magazine’s Fanfair culture section takes us to elite beach clubs, dim sum, and dirty martinis before arriving at their short and sweet book feature. After reading an excerpt in The New York Times magazine, I’m right beside them in recommending food writer Frank Bruni’s memoir Born Round. Instead of imitating a foodie’s passion à la Meryl Streep, Bruni displays it with exuberance, along with humor, pathos, and a touch of David Sedaris-like self-deprecation, making this a read you’ll want to eat up in one bite. Less digestible but equally engaging is Love is a Four-Letter Word, a collection of short stories about break-ups. Don’t expect pints of Ben & Jerry’s and gallons of self-pity: the stories are sharp, poignant, and recounted with candor and wit. The collection also includes two mini graphic novels, by Emily Flake and Lynda Barry.

Elle gives us three books that won their Reader’s Prize 2009: Laura Moriarty’s While I’m Falling, Cathy Marie Buchanan’s The Day the Falls Stood Still, and Sarah Dunant’s Sacred Hearts. The first two are undeniably well-written, but the basic premise of female protagonists whose lives are falling to pieces—in Moriarty’s, a young woman in college and in Buchanan’s, a girl from a well-to-do but ailing family in Niagara Falls who falls inevitably in love—don’t pique my interest for a last summer page turner. I’m voting for Dunant’s Sacred Hearts, sucker as I am for period drama. The book takes place in an Italian convent where things are not as holy as they seem. Careful research and plot drama make things come to life behind this convent’s walls.

Here’s to summer’s last few rays.

--Allison Geller

Oh Snap!: Reading Railroad

Travelling by rail is the way to go, when you look stylish, snag a window seat, and bring a good book.

--Allison Geller

Photo: Clutch

Lifestyle Gumbo: Vanity Fair

This fall, models are turning over a new leaf.

Models got bookish as they showcased this season’s looks, from the pages of Italian Vogue to the backstage of fall 2009 runway shows. Tatyana Usova, a Christian Dior model, perused Proust, while Steven Miesel shot a wild and glamorous library scene for Alberta Ferretti’s fall campaign.

Could designers and models be intentionally defying the stereotype that their industry is vapid and utterly opposed to reading? Are books the next big accessory?

Whatever the reason is for this recent phenomenon, the fact remains that a good book, like a good handbag, never goes out of style.

--Allison Geller

Photo: The Cut

Oh Snap!: Hitting the Books

School is just around the corner for many of us, which means putting in long hours at the library. If only we could always look this cute while doing it.

--Allison Geller

Photo by Ziko-C via Wikimedia

Oh Snap!: Generation Gap

Great books are being replaced by MacBooks for the younger set, begging the question: is reading via a lit screen better than no reading at all?

--Allison Geller

Photo: The New York Times

Around the Web: Chick Flicks for Guys + Feminist TV

As Funny People makes bank at the box office, read another take on Judd Apatow’s films: they’re chick flicks for guys. [via Double X]

Could Chanel N.5 be Love Potion Number Nine? A writer takes pheromone-laced beauty products, that ever-growing cosmetic gimmick, for a test drive. [via The Frisky]

Check out this interview with young modern artist Dawn Okoro, along with pics of her striking and colorful work. [via Clutch]

President Obama’s “Cash for Clunkers” program seems like a good idea—but could it really be hurting our country more than helping? [via Salon]

HBO takes on the f-word with a new, as yet untitled series starting Diane Keaton as a middle-aged feminist who starts a porn magazine for women. Clear some space on the TIVO! [via Bust]

--Allison Geller

Oh Snap!: Kram Session

D.C. locals browse quality reads at Dupont's Kramerbooks & Afterwords Café.

--Allison Geller

Photo: Flickr