let’s stop seeing sex as the biggest thing you can do to show someone you love them
everyone knows that the real way to show someone you love them is to find them a really cool rock. not a diamond. just a neat rock that you think they will enjoy
Not a rock THE ARKENSTONE
Why just one rock Why not three Why not the silmarils
So what I’m getting from this is that French romantic poets really identified with Leda in that they, too, wanted to fuck swans. I’m not even surprised.
Quick Guide to Potential Love Interests in French Romanticism:
-Is it alive? -Was it alive once? – Is it Nature? – Is it Architecture?
If the answer to any or all of these is yes, then Congratulations! There is a poem about making out with it somewhere in French Romanticism.
IMPORTANT EXCEPTION: Is it Neoclassical and/or The Bourgeoisie? Then DO NOT LICK. Do Not! You will start wearing your collar high and dressing appropriately for your station and then all is lost.
Does Gautier’s Tapestry Lady count as Once Being Alive? Or is there a separate category for Classically Themed Works of Art?
You are right and I was already regretting my incomplete questionnaire
it should really be phrased as “ if the answer to any or all of these is Yes, or, indeed, No” , there is a poem and/or you should make out with it!
I forgive myself on the point of Art only because, come on, surely you’ve already made out with the art. You don’t need to be told to do that, right? Come on, friend, DO YOU EVEN LANGUISH.
(still don’t lick the Bourgeoisie or the Neoclassical. They have Respectability Cooties.)
They really wanted to fuck The Sublime/heroin
(not heroines. they were pretty lukewarm on ladies.)
Nope! Or rather, if so I missed it, which would be incredible because that story is incredible.
There’s a great story in there about Dashiell Hammet and Hemingway getting into a masculine-honor pissing contest that starts with Hemingway throwing a glass against Parker’s fireplace at a party for absolutely no apparent reason? and ends with Hammett telling Hemingway to “go roll a hoop in the park” instead of bothering him further. Also a story about Hemingway getting mad at Hellman for noticing his own terrible editing job on one of the novels and retaliating by telling her he wouldn’t sleep with her (her response: “who asked?”)
stories about how no one liked ernest hemingway are important to me. also marriages founded on a shared gift for derision.
i really want to believe i didn’t invent the typewriter story; it is very important also. can anyone source it? ( @havingbeenbreathedout, perhaps?)
This is, indeed, an amazing collection of literal and metaphorical awkward historical dinner parties. “Go roll a hoop in the park” may be the most perfect insult ever directed at a Hemingway type; I will try to remember & use it.
Re: the typewriter story, I can’t immediately find a reliable source, but it does seem to be floating around out there. It’s casually referenced in this 2009 blog entry (”I am coming to despise the very medium of my writing, just like the aforementioned Parker who threw her typewriter at Ernest Hemingway off the side of a cruise ship to New York “There goes my only means of livelihood,” she said.”) The blogger’s name is also Sophie, incidentally, so maybe this is you. The story’s also mentioned in this comment on a separate blog entry, also from 2009. Maybe there was a shared source in 2009? A Salon.com article or something? If so I couldn’t find it.
I did unearth this hilarious little series of anecdotes, about Parker, Hemingway, and Robert Benchley’s 1926 ocean crossing to France (from Marion Meade’s What Fresh Hell is This?):
Nothing like saltpeter & pubic lice to liven up a transatlantic crossing.
You chuck an old-school typewriter at somebody’s head, you fucking mean it. Those things were heavy as hell.
Kimchi and Justice 