Tag Archives: Sex

This Book Burned My Brain Out – “Money To Burn” Ricardo Piglia

This book was less short and nice this week 🙁

“Money to Burn” was a bit of a hard read for me as I usually don’t enjoy reading action books.  I am a bit stupid in the sense that I like seeing action type stories in video form (such as movies) more… But my personal preferences aside, I did find the book a little hard to follow as I found it flip flopped between exposition about the characters’ backstories, sex scenes, and real time events quite frequently and abruptly. One moment I would be reading about types of guns that the cast were using, or their elaborate plans to evade the police, and then the next moment I would be reading an incredibly in detail sex scene. Maybe I was not paying enough attention, but this kind of threw me for a loop.

I wanted to speak on the question in the lecture that Professor Beasley mentioned about the truthfulness of the book. I found it very interesting to find out that this book was inspired by a true story. I say “inspired” and not “is a true story”, because I think that, unlike what The Narrator says at the end of the story, Piglia added some things that made it too fictitious for me to think that it is as completely faithful to the facts as he says his story is. For me, I think that the things that Piglia added to the story enhanced it, but ultimately changed it from a documentary type book about a bank robbery and resulting gang war, into the crime fiction thriller that it is.

Another thing that I wanted to mention was the incredible details of the sex scenes and sexual parts of the book. To me, some of them kinda came out of nowhere and were a bit distracting. When I was reading it kinda seemed like anytime a woman was mentioned they would have to make a comment about how ran through she was or how attractive her “features” were. I am a bit confused at why such detail was included in these kind of one-off moments in the book. Maybe I am too goldfish brained to comprehend the genius of Ricardo Piglia.

All in all, I think that I did not enjoy this book as much as I did other books that we have read. I found it a little hard to follow, but I can see the appeal to the general audience.

My question: How much do you all think that embellishment of stories effects the truthfulness of the story being told. How much is too much and is there sweet spot?

Someone Needs to Put this Girl In Horny Jail – “The Lover” by Margurite Duras

I know I said that “Time of the Doves” was one of the books of all time, but this book is a strong contender for the book of all time. “The Lover” by Margurite Duras was an interesting book to say the least. This book’s subject matter was heavily sexual, which would be eyebrow raising in a normal setting, but completely weird considering that this book is about a 15 year old. I found the very in depth descriptions of her love and love-making to her older lover a unsettling to read as much of the description was about how young and undeveloped and innocent she was, and furthermore, Duras makes sure you know how taboo and messed up the situation is by referring to the protagonist as a child many times…

The first of the themes in this book that I wanted to talk about was, unsurprisingly, love. I thought that this book’s description of love was a lot more depressing in a guttural sense than the rest of the books. While the other books’ depressing was more of an infuriating feeling that makes you want to punch a hole in your wall out of frustration at the relationship, “The Lover” creates a feeling that is akin to chain smoking in the pouring rain after losing your job. Duras makes it very clear that The Protagonist has no feelings of love or is at least trying to repress those feelings while The Lover is deeply infatuated with her.  this brought up a very interesting point of the two-sided predatory nature of their relationship. On one hand we have The Lover, who is being predatory in the literal sense as he is literally having sex with a child, and on the other hand we have The Protagonist who is using The Lover for sex and for money. I think that the kind of role reversal here was very perplexing.

One of the other themes that i found interesting was race and its impact on the story. The Protagonist’s whiteness is brought up many times and is a driving force behind many of her actions throughout the story. I found that she had a lot of white privilege, but also encountered a lot of prejudice for it. For example her lover’s father looked down on her for being white, but also she got preferential treatment from her boarding school because she was white. The Lover’s race is also an integral part of his character. The fact that he is Chinese is seen as a detriment to his character by The Protagonist’s family and the protagonist. Through my reading, it seemed as if all his other negative traits like his sickliness all stemmed form him being Chinese which irked me a bit. I also found that the Native Vietnamese population also were kind of looked down upon as lesser than the whites throughout the book which makes me question the ideology of Duras a bit.

All in all, this was a weird book. The sexual nature of it made it a uncomfortable read to say the least, and the age of the characters made it even worse. I found it difficult to find a real underlying meaning behind all the underage sex, but maybe I am too goldfish brained to comprehend the genius that is Margurite Duras.

My Question: Do any of you find that your race effects you ability to find love?

  • Jon