Shakespeare in Love, and a Vibrator

Day 73 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project. It's Shakespeare's birthday! Is anybody reading some Shakespeare to celebrate? I put Shakespeare in Love into the machine last night to celebrate, seeing the opening, her audition, the Queen reminding her to bow as Kent, and the shipwreck, sort of a sleep montage.

It's also Vladimir Nabokov's birthday! Is anybody reading Lolita to celebrate? Is anybody Reading Lolita in Tehran?

And it's Kingsley Amis's birthday. (Thank you, Garrison Keillor, Writer's Almanac!) Is anybody reading Lucky Jim? I don't think I ever have read that one, an early campus novel (according to Keillor...'s staff). But I bet it's on my parents' bookshelf, if I want to. I say that to help me resist buying any more used books with my employee discount at Babbitt's. The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson, came into the store yesterday, and, yes, by now you know what happened. And I haven't even read the other one yet! But I figure these will be great books to take on vacation to the beach this summer. And share!

But, speaking of campus novels, who has read Straight Man, by Richard Russo? It's hilarious. I gave it to my department chair when I left a teaching job I loved (had to move) and as he was leaving the chairpersonship, a rotating position. (See him twirling?!) Anyhoo...

As you can see, this is another of my whimsical, hodge-podge entries, and I will also let you know now that I am going on a 2-day retreat, with women, so I will ask them what they are reading, and will post two entries in one someday on Sunday, instead of one on Saturday. Today's Friday, right? This is turning into a sort of 2-in-one, too, or 3-in-one, etc. Anyhoo...!

The theme of the women's retreat is passion. Passion as enthusiasm, passion as love (various kinds: romantic, sexual, or strong feeling, compassion, etc.), and passion as suffering (that kind of strong feeling, as in religious passion). Perhaps I will learn about books on passion, or books with passion in the title. Shakespeare in Love had passion, but I was asleep through most of it.

Franny and Zooey had passion. Of the various sorts.

Also set aside for purchase with employee discount at a future date is The Lost Sisterhood. Not the one by Julia Ingram, about The Return of Mary Magdalene, Mother Mary, and Other Holy Women, which does look like something I'd want to read and will snag if it comes into Babbitt's, but The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900-1918, by Ruth Rosen. It's about the profession of prostitution, about women who chose and developed that line of work, and about it being rooted out as society's major ill at the time, without, of course, rooting out the cause/need of it, as usual. I look forward to reading that, as I enjoyed Sex in the Second City, by Karen Abbott, focusing on brothels in Chicago, and the businesswomen who ran them, the men who frequented them, and the police who protected and/or raided & closed down their establishments.

This is on my mind a bit after a little discussion in the blog of poet Martha Silano about women being able to choose their work and their pleasures, and the complicated history and values attached to this. (Read her book Blue Positive, pictured & available to click at her blog of the same name! After all, it is National Poetry Month!)

And, along those lines, where is my copy of The Technology of Orgasm, by Rachel P. Maines, another great Babbitt's find, subtitled "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)? I know I bought it, read it, and did not reshelve it in either Women's Studies or Technology at work, so it's here at home somewhere. Unless I loaned to my mom. Or dad.

Also, I suspect Sarah Ruhl may have read it researching her play In the Next Room, aka The Vibrator Play, and that's what those women are doing in the picture, figuring out what the heck this 19th century medical device is.

Sarah Ruhl is one of my favorite playwrights. And that brings us back to Shakespeare!