Well, of course, I wouldn't really call either of these ladies a bitch but there is certainly the makings of a ding-dong punch-up in Ms. Cristina Nehring's review of Ms. Katherine Angel's book entitled, awkwardly: Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell. For me, 'the most difficult to tell' part of this story is Ms. Angel's exact job description. According to Ms. Nehring (in the blue corner), Ms. Angel (in the red corner) is "a historian of female sexual dysfunction at Warwick University". Somehow, in some obscure way, you really do not need to know anything more concerning Ms. Angel, her title tells you everything.
However, helpfully, Ms. Nehring provides a background to the contemporary academic world which, like WWII, I am forever thankful I missed!
In the groves of academe that Angel inhabits, sex is anything but a laughing
matter. The relation of Anglo-American academics to sexuality remains a troubled one—at once obsessive and puritanical, criminalizing and infantilizing—even in our day and even (or especially) in disciplines specifically devoted to gender studies. This is a culture where a graduate student can cry sexual harassment if her academic adviser closes his door during office hours, but turn around and solicit congratulations for personal tell-alls bearing titles with some variation on Vagina, which inflict far more violence on her intimate space than any indiscretion she’s ever charged. (More or less, this is the career path of Naomi Wolf.)
You see, Ms. Angel is definitely no angel! She is being shagged rotten, or, rottenly shagged (you need to read the book to find out) and is writing about it as she goes along. One has a vision of her on her back, man clamped between thighs, with iPad held high as she reports, er, from the front, as it were! Some admiration is due to the man in her life because if, back in the day, any of the ladies I knew in the biblical sense were writing up a round-by-round report on our encounters I would have shrivelled on the spot - but of course they never would because they were always in a constant transport of joy - natch! (Sorry, didn't quite catch that, Andra.)
It is possible that Ms. Angel is also a professor of contemporary, er, writing. I come to that tentative conclusion based on these extracts from her book kindly, or, dread thought, maliciously offered by her reviewer, Ms. Nehring:
Here is a sampling of the words Angel singles out for readers’ especial attention by placing them alone in the center of an otherwise pure, white, empty page:
Fuck me. Yes, fuck me!
I know what he means.
This thing in there. All
that. These.
Let the boy win at
tennis!
It’s OK, it’s OK. I’m really not that
hungry.
I am so fucking hungry!
Fuck, he says, when he’s inside me, Oh
fuck.
Dupe. Collaborator.
Victim.
Fuck me. Yes, fuck me!
Peck. Peck.
Eh? What? "Peck. Peck."? What's going on? Oh dear, my mind just boggled again!
How's your reading up of Abe Lincoln "coming" along David
Distracted I'm taking it?
Posted by: JK | Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 11:24
Ahoy, Duffers.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/150-years-of-misunderstanding-the-civil-war/277022/
"it's time for America to question the popular account of a war that tore apart the nation": no it effing isn't, it's about 150 years too late.
Posted by: dearieme | Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 17:16
Really, Duff. Have you nothing better to do than read this garbage? Go for a swim or mow the lawn or something. I fear your head will explode if you persist with this nonsense.
Posted by: Andra | Tuesday, 25 June 2013 at 20:03
It's next on the list, JK.
DM, it confirms my *suspicion* that both sides were fighting the war for different reasons. When I have finished Keegan's book I might know just a little more.
Oh, come on, Andra, you know how I always enjoy ladies wrestling in mud, don't be such a spoil sport - and I've just heard that your very own mud-wrestler, Julie, is no more!
Posted by: David Duff | Wednesday, 26 June 2013 at 11:03