Reviews: LSD, sex work, and the Tower of Babel

[roadrunnertwice]

Ayelet Waldman — A Really Good Day

May 28

A journal of the author's month-long experiment with LSD microdosing (in an effort to alleviate some heinous mood problems), interspersed with some informed digressions on drug policy. (She used to be a public defender, among other things.)

This was an entertaining read, because Waldman's just a really good writer. (I picked up a collection of her murder mysteries at the Wave based on the strength of this book.) But also, the material was seriously fascinating and I'm VERY curious about microdosing now. This article is a good run-down of the theory (such as it is) and history of it, but Waldman's direct experience was what was really compelling. Like, basically it did exactly what she wanted: gave her a fighting chance at being a better version of herself every day, with basically no side effects to speak of. Who the fuck doesn't want THAT. Sign my ass up.

Remy Boydell and Michelle Perez — The Pervert (comics)

June 5

This was intense.

It's a story about a trans girl in Seattle, doing sex work (first as a guy, later, reluctantly, as a girl) to make ends meet. It kind of meanders around; it has the feel of someone trying to explain to themselves why they made some major decision, chewing back over events that seem like they might be related but might also just be dead ends. But paradoxically, it also feels like it moves at a breakneck pace, which I think is because of how precarious everything in her life feels. Any mundane moment could be the moment everything goes wrong, you know?

I liked this a lot.

Boydell draws most of the characters as anthropomorphic animals. And there's a lot of sexually explicit stuff in here. So a side question I've been pondering: are parts of this book furry porn? I mean it's way too much of a downer to be "porn" in a practical sense, but is it drawing from a furry porn artistic language and tradition? I think mostly it isn't, because part of the point of furry media is a fascination with the animal aspect; exploring what it'd be like to exist in a humanoid-animal body. And there's none of that here: from the way the characters interact, they're all normal human bodies that are just being depicted as animal-alikes. Right? It spends most of its time somewhere in the other various traditions of anthropomorphic comics art, even if there might be some furry influence in spots.

WELL, I ain't no scholar of the topic or anything. This is just something I was mulling over. Also, the book itself draws your attention to the tension in its depictions during that scene where the protagonist gets kind of cornered into a threesome, because when her client's husband appears from around the corner he's drawn as goddamn Jon Arbuckle and I just about hyperventilated when that happened.

Ted Chiang — Stories of Your Life and Others

June 15

A solid collection of odd SF stories. (Of which I'd previously read more than I remembered!)

• "Tower of Babylon:" Almost Borgesian, and one of my favorites in the set. What a cool setting, up in the reaches of this tower.
• "Understand:" This is the only one that really pissed me off. It's not just a bad story and insufferably smug, but it also perpetuates some of the dumbest and worst ideas our society has about what constitutes "intelligence." Skip this story.
• "Division by Zero:" Cold and elegant.
• "Story of Your Life:" This is the one Arrival was based on. I'd read it before, and it's very good. I spent a long time thinking it over back when I first read it.
• "Seventy-Two Letters:" This is the most bizarre setting/conceit in the collection, and untangling it was very entertaining. But I'm a little uneasy about how half of the setup is based on Jewish esoterica, and yet Jewish people are almost entirely absent (there's one; he's crucial to the plot but has very little agency and also dies). Like, does a mainstream industrialized Kabbalah that excludes Jews make any sense?? Well, maybe it does; not the first thing industrial capitalism would have expropriated and monetized, is it. Still, I read that as a major hole in this world, and also just generally iffy. 😬
• "Hell is the Absence of God:" Read it before; I kind of grew out of this type of gonzo engagement with atheism, but I have to admit the underlying Job joke is darkly hilarious.
• "Liking What You See: A Documentary:" Read it before. This one has problems (among others, there was an aside about autism that made me go 😒), but it's mostly thoughtful and thought-provoking.

Joey Comeau and Emily Horne — The Anatomy of Leftovers (comics)

June 22

This was the bonus A Softer World PDF for Kickstarter backers, collecting strips that one author wanted for the best-of collection but the other one vetoed.

I already mentioned last time that A Softer World is great, right? Ok, end of review, good job team.