Some quick book reviews…
Paul Theroux’s “The Happy Isles of Oceania”. While a nice break from grey London skies, Theroux has an irritating habit of following a fresh, perceptive comment with an vexatiously inane comment. Amazingly, this travel book didn’t make me want to pack my bags and visit the countries he has. It did, otoh, make me want to start canoeing or sea kayaking again.
I’ve also recently read Ann Bannon’s “Odd Girl Out”, and “I Am a Woman”, partly because I love pulp fiction and I guess partly because it puts modern lesbian life into perspective.
Ann Bannon’s website includes the introduction to “Odd Girl Out”, which includes the fabulous phrase, “She found herself climbing down a ladder of flesh into a cesspool of Lesbian depravity”. Not so fabulous if that was the only depiction of lesbians available to society, but I wouldn’t mind climbing down that ladder now.
I have to agree with you about THIoO – it’s years since I read it but I had much the same reaction (although I’ve never been sea-kayaking). It’s the only Theroux book I’ve ever read, so it makes me wonder why he’s so popular.
As for climbing down a ladder of flesh (etc), I’ve just got back from Sydney for Mardi Gras weekend. The group immediately behind us in the parade was the Rural Fire Service. I’m not quite sure it qualifies as “lesbian depravity” but I dare say you’d have appreciated our heroic dykey fireys.
I’ll probably read one more Theroux to try and figure it out, because there must be something more to him than that.
I can’t believe you were one of the Kate Moss Line Dancers – they made what little I saw in the news of Mardi Gras over here.