I am legitimately confused as to whether you're talking about sociology, porn, or both.
Although it's still kind of a mix of sociology and softcore porn, I guess.
Hey, I've read The Exurbanites. There was a copy in the Vaipouli College library in Samoa when I was teaching there. It was amusing.
Sort of a Paul Fussell's Class knockoff.
Salacious but not actually pornographic mass-market midcentury paperbacks, realistic fiction or superficial description.
John Cheever gets mentioned once, right before the sentence "But the books didn't last."
I like John Cheever's writing very much, both the stories and the Wapshot novels. The single sentence about Cheever is the closest the author comes to paying attention to other writers who are not hacks. She does not mention either Highsmith or JG Ballard.
Is this a coding thread? Because I never know what the hell anyone is talking about in those either.
11. Procedurally generated suburbia
Thematically related art from Ross Racine: http://www.rossracine.com/artwork/subdivisions-group-3-2008-2/the-hills-beckon-2.html
Highsmith is an overrated hipster language (no insult meant to Patricia's work). nosflow wrote a bunch of stuff in Ballard last year but said it was a mixed bag, iirc.
Ballard a mixed bag?! Nosflow?
Now I gotta run, finish packing, catch Tarkovsky's Mirror, then sleep for 4 hours and catch a flight to Knifecrime Island.
I don't remember writing in, or about, Ballard. I do remember being delighted by The Price of Salt.
Mother of God, I am just about done trying to make jokes. 13 was a riff on 11 (and 10). As a literary matter who can deny that Ballard's oeuvre is uneven?
It makes so much more sense now. I will blame residual tiredness.
Should I read and/or see High Rise?
She does not mention either Highsmith or JG Ballard.
She's writing about American suburbia, yes? Ballard was English.
Don't know why she doesn't mention Highsmith. Maybe she doesn't feel familiar enough with her stuff. I wouldn't- never been able to finish one.
18: I saw it. Basically it didn't work for me because everyone goes totally batshit for no apparent reason. I'm guessing the book makes more sense, but haven't read Ballard so maybe not. That said, it's a very well made movie. So yes, watch it.
Sorry for being irritable. In my defense I'm still multitasking and on day 5 of mostly-solo childcare (planned 3-day weekend + 1 day of work + two days, of which this is the second, of a pretty spurious pinkeye diagnosis that bounced the small child out of daycare). I don't think I can get her to watch "The Mirror," but I could try it.
18 Read, an emphatic yes. My favorite mid-period Ballard. Watch, NO.
18 Read, an emphatic yes. My favorite mid-period Ballard. Watch, NO.
You could probably get her to watch High Rise, but the consequences would be unpredictable.
Double posting reviews counts as 2 crowdsourced anonymous IMDB comments so even Bob should approve.
22: per linked review, the apocalypse was indeed very sexy. Maybe reading the book doesn't help with the movie.
22/23: I mentioned that review to snarkout and redfox and they thought it was totally off base.
I finally skimmed the link. I was expecting more about late-60s smut.
OT, but about millennial anxiety, so I thought it could fit in this thread. I'm a thesis preceptor, and the grades for graduating seniors are due this Friday. I've been getting a spate of emails from anxious millennial students asking 1) when their grade will be posted, 2) whether they received honors, and 3) for notification when I post their grade. (FWIW I don't actually post their grade, I email them to the administrator and she handles the logistics. I also had to have grades in awhile ago, and we're not supposed to tell anyone if they got honors before the official announcement.)
I'm a crotchety person who's super grumpy right now, but these emails are really annoying me. I want to email "chill the fuck out, worry about it once the deadline passes and the grades not up, and also, it's not my fucking job to notify you specially and hold your hand because you're anxious about your grade not being posted several days before the deadline." Like, whatever happened to just waiting for things? Or living with a state of uncertainty for some period of time? Or not bothering authority figures/decision makers and figuring they will do their jobs without being reminded/pestered on a regular basis.
I liked the movie and thought the linked review was el wrongo.
As nosflow already reported!
* vanishes in a cloud of obsolescence *
Like, whatever happened to ... figuring they will do their jobs without being reminded/pestered on a regular basis.
I think the answer there would have to be pretty obvious...
(I think the answer generally is "those things became way way more important in their lives", but with the last one I wouldn't find it that surprising if the answer is "they learned that wasn't true".)
30: I thought the linked review was basically right, but the movie is so well-executed it sort-of works anyway.
29. Tell them that until the grades are read by the administrator they have both passed and failed.
Tell them that you're hurt that they only seem to care about their grades and honors and that they should care more about your feelings.
Haha.
Maybe I will email them asking them to notify me when they check their grade, and how they feel about me after seeing the grade they received.
"There, there! All will be fine soon, or it won't!" Write that.
I will send you actual money, Buttercup, if you take the advice in 34. It's entirely in the spirit of the institution and it depresses me to think any of its students wouldn't cheer up instantly after getting that message. (Yeah, I'm sentimental today.) I remember seeing a note above a light switch in the admin building that said something like "Please turn lights off after use to conserve energy," below which a youthful hand had written "Energy is ALWAYS conserved." It was so cheap and obvious, and yet it was enough to break up the black mood I was in.
Is there a professor or administrator that you really don't like and/or who is your enemy?
If so tell them that they provisionally have a really good grade/honors, but subject to review by that person. So they should celebrate - unless Dr. Soandso decides to reverse the current grades as they stand they'll have something really great on their record!
Maybe do this over the phone rather than on email where there's obvious evidence of what you did after the fact and you can't just pretend they misunderstood what you were saying.
My daughter graduates from there a week from tomorrow, but then she was raised on those kinds of jokes.
Wasn't all the Ripley stuff set in Europe? Also not much to do with USian suburbs
Love in Suburbia ("They spiced their lives with other men's wives") is supposedly set in the same Tucson surburb where I grew up. That part of town existed in 1960, really? Now I'm tempted to look for a $0.97 copy on Amazon in case there's local knowledge, but if the point is homogeneity it might be a long shot.
Suburban US Highsmith is a subset of Highsmith. The Blunderer, Deep Water.
I can speak to the OP, a bit. Commie sailor grandad, as you know, moved to Ba/sildon with my grandmother as one of the very first families into the new town. They remembered - as does my mum - a steady flow of newspaper publicity of people supposedly getting "Ba/sildon syndrome" or forgetting which houses were which or suddenly getting into swinging in a big way. You know, all the clichés in the OP. Just they never met or heard of anyone who was affected, and presumed the tabloid journos made it all up/cribbed it from American sources who probably made it all up.
The sociologist quoted in the OP who did fieldwork in the original Levittown described its citizens as "joiners" who were constantly forming clubs and being self-consciously civic. That, by contrast, is right on point. That era of Ba/sildonites had social capital like *Germans*.
with the last one I wouldn't find it that surprising if the answer is "they learned that wasn't true".
MHPH beat me to it. Basically they worked out rather earlier than our generation did that most people in positions of authority are lazy, stupid, incompetent and/or corrupt, and won't do a stroke of work unless you really hound them, and they are acting accordingly. Your being pestered is just collateral damage.
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Everyday life in the British suburbs.
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"It was shocking. I've never seen anything like it in my life. Certainly not in a graveyard. It was such a beautiful day too."
Well they're not going to shoot it while it's raining are they?
Rule 34 suggests they have shot it in the rain also.
I like the leafy, quiet inner city.
47: They just made that up, right? So they could make jokes about willies, sandwiches, and on-off?
I think it's probably legit. Certainly credible if you know Hull, which has, shall we say, seen better days.
"The cemetery has a rich history. Philip Larkin used to ride his bike through it. So we all hope this is a one off."
"They fuck you on your mum and dad".
54 is wonderful (catching up on old threads here, don't judge me).