Friday Links: Workers (No Matter Your Species) Rise Up Edition
"Everywhere...the same misery under a different guise...always someone with a little more money, a little more power, and he owned you." - Silvia Moreno-Garcia, 'The Daughter of Doctor Moreau'
But first, your weekly Vine: Thursday was Chapter 35: “You Can Wash Your Feet and Spend the Night and Then Go On Your Way Early In the Morning.” Today is Chapter 36: “A Van Of Hippies Meets A Hermit Of Vine.” We had some scheduling problems with the podcast this week, but it should be up early next week. In the meantime, don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter! We’re close to halfway through this novel, and we sincerely appreciate anyone who’s been reading. If you haven’t been reading, good news: I don’t read books right when they come out, either. Vine will be there, waiting, for whenever you wish hike its mystical forests or fish its abundant lake or—hell, maybe you just wanna have a whiskey & beer at Gentleman Jim’s with Jeremy The Fisherman.
What I’ve Been Reading Lately:
Unbelievably one more week in October. I’m still not totally caught up on spooky season reading schedule, this week was not the week I read two books, and Noirvember is coming. How could I be upset, though, when this week’s book gave me (and its characters) so much meat to chew on? How could I be upset, when this absolute spellcaster of an author has once again managed to overcome one of my bigger irritants (neo-Victorian syntax) by playing to three of my greatest loves: human-animal hybrids, the revolt of minding-their-business people against soulless capitalists, and Yucatán. What marvelous novel this is. I’m talking, of course, about The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
Here we have a re-contextualization of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau (without Marlon Brando’s ice bucket hat) set against the backdrop of the 1847 Caste War of Yucatán (the events of the novel taking place in the 1870s). This Dr. Moreau is no mere mad scientist; no, he is backed by a wealthy hacendado who is hoping the human-animal hybrids he creates will be willing and docile workers. The Maya that this man and his ilk have previously enslaved via debt peonage are rising up, “importing” Chinese or African “workers” is too expensive, so…what if we can sci-fi up some farmhands and get fat off aguardiente while soaking up some Yucatán sun? Well. Call the doctor that was driven out of France.
The drama at this mad scientist’s remote estate is not the creation of these hybrids, but the interpersonal problems of our two narrators, Carlota (the eponymous daughter) and Montgomery, a British drunkard who owes a lifetime’s worth of debt to the hacendado. Carlota is coming of age, coming into her own, trying to figure out who she is. Montgomery is trying to keep everyone protected from the world a little longer.
The prose here is gorgeous, the characters expertly drawn. A huge strength is how little Moreno-Garcia focuses on the animality of the hybrids, simply introducing us to Lupe and Cachito (Carlota’s closest confidants) and occasionally remarking on their animalistic trait. As a reader, you might be prepared to go in gawking at the horror—personally, I was bracing for a different Brando movie, expecting to see the brutal decay of Colonel Kurtz’s camp. Instead, it’s a portrait of a relatively peaceful (despite everything) country estate whose tranquility is interrupted by a confused girl growing into womanhood and discovering her strength, the deceptions of her evil father unraveling, and the greed of the kind of man who thinks he can own people exploding. It’s lyrical, thrilling, and Romantic. I feel as though I am going to wake up one day with a shelf full of Silvia Moreno-Garcia books, and I will not complain.
LINKS!
New The Line Break podcast! This month, we were ecstatic to welcome the switch-hitting witch of Wrigley Field, Sandra Marchetti! It was a blast talking baseball and how an image is more than a visual. Check it out: Spotify | Apple
Inside the quest to bring basketball hoops back to Beverly, with reporting by Crystal Paul at Block Club. My stance is simple: bring back the hoops, install more hoops, let more people play basketball.
Turning into part of the trees’ hive mind? Honestly, better than most afterlives I’ve been told about. “Please stop trying to run…We just want to sing together.” Check out this fun little flash in hex from Danai Christopoulou, “When We Became Trees.”
Hart Crane is a poet whose work I really loved in undergrad but haven’t returned to since. Still, there are warm feelings whenever I think of him. In that spirit, I enjoyed this poem in Bending Genres from Will Staveley, “The Bridge.”
Brendan put me on to this piece from The Anarchist Library, “Abolish Restaurants.” It’s long, and a touch rambling (says this writer of this blog, ha), but well worth a read, well worth thinking about. I’ve been a restaurant worker, and when the article says “the goal of most restaurant workers is to not be a restaurant worker,” that’s accurate. Obviously, I am a big lover of food, an unabashed Anthony Bourdain fanboy, and someone who gets a great deal of joy out of preparing food for others. It is amazing how working a restaurant can beat all of that out of you. What is it that we want out of restaurants? This may be a topic for a Wednesday blog. Regardless, we have a lot we need to rethink as a society, and to echo George Orwell in one of the epigraphs, “it is strange that thousands of people in a great modern city should spend their waking hours swabbing dishes in hot dens underground. The question I am raising is why this life goes on--”
Back to Block Club, with a story from Atavia Reed on the Envisioning Liberation exhibit from Chicago Lawn Studio and Shirien Damra. I haven’t been yet, but this exhibit opens with an eye towards uplifting the South Side and imagining a better world through mutual aid and artistic solidarity. That’s the good stuff, dudes—doesn’t hurt that the art featured in that Block Club article is totally kickass, too.
What’re you still doing here? Go read Vine!
If you’re a service worker, may you clean up in tips this weekend. And maybe pass that “abolish restaurants” article along to your coworkers.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris