Geek Brains: August 2011

I took this summer off from school, allowing me time to catch up on some much deserved reading. Ideally, I would’ve read more, but I ran out of time. I applied for a job at a local bookstore, and it didn’t work out. So, obviously I’m being punished for not having read more. Still, the books I did manage to squeeze in, I’ve ranked and rated. I tried to read books that I wouldn’t normally read during the school year, as an English major.

1. Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

I had high expectations, but I didn’t know what I was getting into when I googled “Top 10 Most Disturbing Novels of All Time” http://listverse.com/2008/09/29/top-10-most-disturbing-novels/. Geek Love was ranked as #5, and I was immediately intrigued because it had been referred to me in the past, but I never could recall the title, only the excitement the reader got from talking about it. This realist horror follows a family of travelling circus “freaks,” who call themselves “geeks.” It’s a Romantic, carnival, gothic world that makes the “normal” humans seem bland and ignorant, seeking enlightenment and beauty that only the freaks seem able to achieve. The story is narrated by Oly, the complex albino dwarf who envies and idolizes her siblings for their grand abnormalities. The family is doomed from the moment of conception, but their real downfall lies in the manipulation of Arturo the Aqua Boy’s cult-personality and following, as he manipulates his parents and siblings, Oly, the Siamese twins, and the telekinetic Chick, into mental and physical destruction. Overall, the novel, not unlike the film Freaks, is so attractive because it feeds on our voyeuristic desires to dwell on these asymmetrical humans and their aberrancies.

"They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born."-Oly (Geek Love)

2. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind

I’d had my eye on this novel for a long time, but never found the time to pick it up. It is also considered as one of the most disturbing novels of all time but in a much more subtle way. The entire novel is narrated in the head of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, and of the 300+ pages, he never utters a single line of dialogue. It is probably the most sensory dense novel I will ever read. The catch is that Jean was born without a scent on him; however, he has the strongest sense of scent in Western Europe, as far as we know. Because of his lack of scent, people are weary and disturbed by him, viewing him as alien, but unable to articulate why. While, with his strong sense of scent, he is repulsed by the magnitude of retched auras humans carry with them at any given moment. Still, later in his life, he discovers one scent that he absolutely obsesses over, I mean, this novel really demonstrates the human heart’s ability to cling onto something to the point of madness, and he just has to have it, and bottle it, and soak in it. Overall, this novel gave me the creeps, and I finished it because I’d started it, but I don’t see myself reading it again.

3. Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read

Basically, on October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of rugby players from Uruguay to Chile crashed on the Andes mountains, sixteen out of forty-five remain, their story made headline news, for they were middle/upper class conservative young men, and in the end they resorted to cannibalism. Enough said.

4. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga

Look this up on Amazon; at used, it starts at $89. I found it for $12. Best deal of my life! I’ve read this book before; my university’s library keeps it on reserve, so I’d stop by and read a little every week in between classes. Still, now it’s mine, and I open it almost every day. Probably one of the most inspiring, beautiful collaborations or anthologies of poetry, history, and essays ever contrived by either men or women. This anthology discusses and liberates cultural stigmas, women interrelationships, and female self-images. I would recommend it to any person of any background.

I've been getting a lot of questions regarding the title of my blog. Well, I didn't really look for blogging; blogging kind of fell into my lap, and even now with it here, I tend to forget about it, thus the recent lack of posts. Blogging has a heavy stigma attached to it that I didn't bother questioning until I ran into Walter Mignolo's blog, http://waltermignolo.com/, after having researched his theory of "Decolonial Aesthetics" for my senior seminar's final paper. His theory suggests that only through aesthetics, art, can the oppressed classes, a product of Modernity, be given a voice with the purpose to liberate sensibilities and aesthesis of the oppressors and raise the oppressed classes to equality; I recommend checking it out if you're interested or asking me if you have any questions regarding his theory. After dedicating so much time to this theory, my interest in his published works came close to idolatry; so, I was pretty enthused and confused when I realized he had a blog. That was the first reason. The second: one of my favorite English professors has a blog specifically focusing on mestizaje and the politics, psychosis, and cultural phenomenon within pop culture as a result of that, that I began to follow. Thirdly, my sister has a blog that she fell in love with and was very insistant that I should birth one too if ever I want true meaning in my life:)

So, that's how it started. Now that I've justified this thing, I never have to explain it again. On to the title now.

It's pretty simple, and way cooler than you probably would've thought possible.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Freaks and Geeks, Punks and Dwarves, Hermies and Scholars,
"Geek Brains" is simply a synthesis of the novel, Geek Love, and the band, Bad Brains.
Happy?
I am.