Jessica saw a funny ad in the New Yorker the other day for a book called "Sixty, Sexy, and Successful." We were considering passing it on to some friends as a gag gift, so we looked it up on Amazon.
Hilariously enough, almost ALL of the reviews complained about -- wait for it -- the tiny typeface.
My latest foray into the California history genre is Albert Hurtado's Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender, and Culture in Old California.
Hurtado's elaborated on two main themes. First, men greatly outnumbered women on the California frontier, and this was a very powerful social determinant. Second, most California settlers were obsessed with recreating the sexual and cultural norms of their previous home, as opposed to making a new start.
Some random highlights from the book:
* The ratio of men to women was never less than 2-1 throughout the frontier period, and in the early gold rush the number swelled to something like 40-1. Despite an advantageous marriage market for women, it was still a man's man's man's world. And a white man's world at that.
* The mission priests were obsessed with regulating Indian sexual behavior and abolishing settled Indian tribe sexual norms in favor of Catholic orthodoxy. Big surprise there. Oh, and "the missionary position" was preferred for its perfect expression of male dominance. After all: the man is the boss of the woman as christ is the boss of the man...
* Twice as many males as females perished in the Donner party disaster. Hurtado theorizes the males became distressed and despondent at their perceived responsibility for leading their families into ruin on the trek through the frontier.
* Chinese women were kidnapped and brought to San Francisco as prostitute slaves throughout the gold rush. Most lived in misery and were forced to work for pathetic wages. At one point in the 1850s, there were something like 450 Chinese women in San Francisco. 90 percent were working as prostitutes.
* First trimester abortion was quasi-legal in California through the 1860s. The latter day equivalent of RU486 was looked upon as a commonplace.
That's just a small smattering of the history I learned in the book. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone interested in the subject matter.
This just in from the New York Times: Vladimir Nabokov's son, despite his father's dying wish to the contrary, will publish Nabokov's last literary effort: a work in eternally interrupted progress called 'The Original of Laura.' You may remember my post on the Nabaokov 'Laura' controversy from a few months ago. To make a long story short: Vlad wanted Dmitri to burn the manuscript and notecards for 'Laura'... But ... despite having recently reached 70 years of age, Dmitri had still not burned the material. Conveniently, a recent essay/cry for help from Nabokovaphilliac Ron Rosenbaum calling for Dmitri to make a decision one way or the other had caused a worldwide literary tempest. (Such as tempests are in the literary world teapot...)
No word yet from Rosenbaum. Dmitri, meanwhile, is acting his usual droll self: Take this excerpt from his interview with the NYT...
How do you respond to those who suspect a financial motivation?
It’s true that my wheelchair requires some costly modifications to fit into the trunk of a Maserati coupe.
I highly suggest reading the entire interview with Dmitri.
Despite a daunting backlog of housework and and other pressing obligations, we've got a very enjoyable weekend mapped out. What could be more fascination than to blog about it beforehand?
Tomorrow afternoon, we've got tickets to see Gore Vidal interviewed by Jane Smiley at the L.A. Times Festival of Books. A few years back I was consuming Vidal's historical novels and early political criticism like Bubbles from The Wire was wont to consume that WMD back in season 2. I'm a huge fan, and though I've seen Vidal speak before in New York I'm really looking forward to seeing him again. He's always a highly entertaining presence. I like Smiley too, having read and enjoyed her love letter to thoroughbred racing, Horse Heaven. Later in the day we'll swing by Kevin Roderick's panel on California: The Great Experiment. My knowledge of the Golden State is severely limited, so this panel should be a positive educational experience. I'm also looking forward to meeting Roderick, who was kind enough to link here from L.A. Observed last month.
Saturday night we're going to see a play with some friends. The name of the play is Klub, and it's being produced at the Actors Gang Theater in Culver City. We more or less picked this performance at random. Report will be forthcoming.
Sunday morning, we're running a 5K in Century City with another good friend of ours. She and Jessica won't need any luck, but if you're the praying sort, I'd appreciate a kind thought or two for my lumbering, wheezing corpse. It's going to be ugly, but I'm pretty sure I can go the distance without any major coronary incident. The race is for a very good cause -- the Children's Cancer Research Fund -- but we haven't set up any sort of formal fund raising drive. It's a great organization though. If you're interested, you can learn more here.
I just read Tyler Cowen's short book review of Douglas Flamming's Bound For Freedom: Black Los Angeles in Jim Crow America. It looks like an interesting read. Evidently, L.A. had no segregation laws on the books in the early 1900s and even had some statutes specifically outlawing discrimination against black people. However, this didn't stop the widespread segregation of saloons and hotels here. Cowen calls the book a "good antidote to libertarians who assign too much blame to state
governments, and not enough blame to voluntary norms, when it comes to
Southern segregation and Jim Crow."
At any rate, I just put the book on my wish list...
The second entry on Arts and Letters Daily this morning reads:
Vladimir Nabokov wanted all of his final, unfinished work destroyed. Should his son get out the matches?... more»
Immediately, I thought, "Rosenbaum!"
Indeed, Ron Rosenbaum is back on the case in the gripping saga of Vladimir Nabokov's last literary remnant: An unfinished manuscript and a set of index cards known as "The Original of Laura."
V.N.'s last wishes were that either wife Vera or son Dmitri burn the entire manuscript.
Dmitri (in stroller at left) is now 73 and hasn't torched the papers yet. He wavers, Hamlet-like, between carrying out his dead parent's wish and preserving what he himself
once called "the most concentrated distillation of [my father's] creativity."
Rosenbaum's new column in Slate calls on Dmitri to make a choice. I hope he'll risk V.N.'s shade's wrath and keep the thing out of the fire.
Of course, a Nabokov manuscript called "The Original of Laura" makes one wonder whether it has something to do with Otto Preminger's film Laura, a murder mystery centering on an "original" painting of "Laura." Rosenbaum wonders too.
What's my Angeleno connection here? Laura the movie is playing tonight at the Aero theater in Santa Monica as part of a Preminger retrospective. Coincidence? Did that waxwing fly into the faux-blue window glass by accident? Who can say with any certainty...
