Manga, stupid white men, Crusie query, and another ashram memoir

Kit Kerr tipped me off to the existence of another ashram memoir, Tim Guest's A LIFE IN ORANGE, about growing up on a branch of the Rajneesh cult in England. I ordered it from amazon.uk and read it last night.

Although the sentences are well-written, the sensibility is thoughtful, and there are some moments of humor and insight, the book as a whole was in the last category I would have expected: worthy but dull. Although the goings-on were hair-raising, more was told than shown and it spent too much time as a history of Rajneesh, but retold without enough wit and flair to lift it above simple history. The author's personal recollections were recalled vividly but the telling was flat. I'm not sure what exactly went wrong, but I suspect not enough drafts. At one point my memoir had the same problems.

The Rajneeshis, by the way, resided in Pune, a charming and cosmopolitan town two hours away from the hick hell-hole I lived in. We at the Baba ashram thought they were a bunch of orange freaks and Rajneesh a sleazy sex-fiend con-man. While the latter description, at least, was dead-on, Rajneesh did show superior judgement in selecting a base of operations.

While in San Diego I finished THE DIM SUM OF ALL THINGS. It's quite charming and funny, but at some point the sheer number of stupid white people who immediately make some flagrantly stereotypical remark upon meeting the Chinese-American heroine began to strain my suspension of disbelief. I can well believe that she might have heard all those remarks in a lifetime, just not in the several-month span the novel occupies. Either that, or San Francisco needs to import a better grade of white folk.

Also read the manga DEMON DIARY volume 1, also on loan from Tweedkitten. The young demon lord Raenef, who is not a ten-year-old girl even though he looks like one, has been assigned a mentor, the extremely sexy bishonen demon lord Eclipse. Eclipse is supposed to teach Raenef magic, and also how to be evil and haughty. Raenef takes to magic like a fish to water. As for the rest of it, Eclipse gets him to memorize the phrase "How dare you admonish me, vermin?" only to hear Raenef use it in less-than-appropriate circumstances. On, and Raenef and Eclipse have a simmering attraction. It's quite funny and sweet. The two bonus stories at the end are of varying levels of incomprehensibility, and would probably be more affecting if I could tell what was going on or what gender the characters are supposed to be.

Finally, I began Jennifer Crusie's FAST WOMEN, about a depressed and situationally anorexic divorcee who takes a job at a down-at-the-heels detective agency. I love it, but I'm at the point where she steals the dachshund (this is the second Crusie novel I've read in which someone steals a dachshund) and I need a chart to follow the character relationships. Only click if you've already read the book.

( Read more... )

Manga, stupid white men, Crusie query, and another ashram memoir

Kit Kerr tipped me off to the existence of another ashram memoir, Tim Guest's A LIFE IN ORANGE, about growing up on a branch of the Rajneesh cult in England. I ordered it from amazon.uk and read it last night.

Although the sentences are well-written, the sensibility is thoughtful, and there are some moments of humor and insight, the book as a whole was in the last category I would have expected: worthy but dull. Although the goings-on were hair-raising, more was told than shown and it spent too much time as a history of Rajneesh, but retold without enough wit and flair to lift it above simple history. The author's personal recollections were recalled vividly but the telling was flat. I'm not sure what exactly went wrong, but I suspect not enough drafts. At one point my memoir had the same problems.

The Rajneeshis, by the way, resided in Pune, a charming and cosmopolitan town two hours away from the hick hell-hole I lived in. We at the Baba ashram thought they were a bunch of orange freaks and Rajneesh a sleazy sex-fiend con-man. While the latter description, at least, was dead-on, Rajneesh did show superior judgement in selecting a base of operations.

While in San Diego I finished THE DIM SUM OF ALL THINGS. It's quite charming and funny, but at some point the sheer number of stupid white people who immediately make some flagrantly stereotypical remark upon meeting the Chinese-American heroine began to strain my suspension of disbelief. I can well believe that she might have heard all those remarks in a lifetime, just not in the several-month span the novel occupies. Either that, or San Francisco needs to import a better grade of white folk.

Also read the manga DEMON DIARY volume 1, also on loan from Tweedkitten. The young demon lord Raenef, who is not a ten-year-old girl even though he looks like one, has been assigned a mentor, the extremely sexy bishonen demon lord Eclipse. Eclipse is supposed to teach Raenef magic, and also how to be evil and haughty. Raenef takes to magic like a fish to water. As for the rest of it, Eclipse gets him to memorize the phrase "How dare you admonish me, vermin?" only to hear Raenef use it in less-than-appropriate circumstances. On, and Raenef and Eclipse have a simmering attraction. It's quite funny and sweet. The two bonus stories at the end are of varying levels of incomprehensibility, and would probably be more affecting if I could tell what was going on or what gender the characters are supposed to be.

Finally, I began Jennifer Crusie's FAST WOMEN, about a depressed and situationally anorexic divorcee who takes a job at a down-at-the-heels detective agency. I love it, but I'm at the point where she steals the dachshund (this is the second Crusie novel I've read in which someone steals a dachshund) and I need a chart to follow the character relationships. Only click if you've already read the book.

( Read more... )