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What are you reading? January 27, 2023 [1]

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Date: 2023-01-27

In WAYR?, I note what I’m reading and comment...you note what you are reading and comment. Occasionally, I may add a section or a link related to books…

I am reading:

Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks 1941-1955 by Patricia Highsmith and Anna von Planta - 1950: Strangers on a Train is published, becomes a big hit, and Hitchcock buys the rights for $6,000. The “lesbian” novel (The Price of Salt) is bought but will be published anonymously, it is decided. Highsmith becomes very concerned about her drinking, and abandons belief in a God because of the Korean War, more or less (although those seeds were already planted).

7/1/50 I am interested in the murderer’s psychology, and also in the opposing planes, drives of good and evil (constriction and destruction. How by a slight defection one can be made the other, and all the power of a strong mind and body be deflected to murder and destruction! It is simply fascinating!

11/2/1950 Outstanding characteristic of these past nine months for me: a turn away from religion, from my old introspection with mystical revelations. Not entirely explainable either by more social life and less solitude, but by world events, and a more personal participation in the world of people and events. This is an age of war & neurosis and conflict within conflict, and of Communism versus Capitalism.

Clifford's Blues by John A. Williams - Introduced to this a few weeks ago when a few Black men were, regrettably, on Twitter praising Adolf Hitler. This novel was mentioned. I had heard of the novelist but had not read any of his books. Until now.

This novel is about a gay Black blues musician who winds up in Dachau concentration camp in 1933 and spends at least the next 12 years there. Yes we learn all about the “protocols” of concentration camp life but comparisons of Nazi Germany and the concentration camp to slavery and Jim Crow are consistently made. The novel is written in the first person.

Sunday, Sept. 22, 1935 Do you suppose the Nazis— that means everyone who isn’t in a camp— been studying with some of the crackers like Bilbo and Vardaman and Ben Tilman and Hoke Smith? “Racial desecration”? Well that’s what they got old Nyassa on— even before they passed the goddamn law. Nothing changes. Whatever you are, if you’re colored it’s all the same. When Anna wasn’t watching, Dieter Lange looked at me and winked. I knew what that meant. Fuck the Nuremberg Laws. He was going to fuck me whenever he wanted to and, he told me, he didn’t have to worry whether or not I had “the rag on.”

Monday, August 20, 1937 ...Few white musicians can describe pain or joy in their music, or at least not the kind of pain or joy Negro musicians know. That’s the mystery, I guess.They want to know about it not live it. In Dachau all that changes. Fear gets to be a kind of pain you have to live with— everybody, all the time.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/27/2149145/-What-are-you-reading-January-27-2023

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