Still no polemics. Girl, Interrupted is, by the way, quite a disturbing film in its portrayal of mental illness, and not in a good way. I'll post my rant about it at a later date.

Commodify your heroes

Today I wore this t-shirt (minus the big 'exploited at home, not abroad!' stamp):


It’s great the looks you get with a picture of Trotsky on your chest. From uncomprehending, to quizzical, to intense stares, the latter from older, bearded men. Get your own Trotsky-wear at Zakat, an online store at cafepress.com. You can also start your own online store at cafepress – if anyone’s considering it, I’d love to have a t-shirt series of the Bolshevik Central Committee. I could wear Kamenev Monday, Bukharin Tuesday, and if I was in a shitty mood I’d put on Dzerzhinsky.

Felix Dzerzhinsky – that twinkle in his eye means you better get some callouses on your hands, quick.

Those who can't, teach

I had my second solo tutorial today. We got into a big discussion of Hurricane Katrina. I had been concerned students would stare dumbly at me, but in fact they’re quite talkative. The conversation got heated, even. I’m discovering that, despite my distaste for authority, children, and authority over children respectively, I don’t… hate… teaching. (These aren’t children, but it’s what I associate with a student-teacher relationship.) Anyhow, it’s kind of cool to tell a room full of people what you think, and have them respond. And when they ask about the tattoo, that helps too.

Book review: Daughter of the Revolution and Other Stories, by John Reed

John Reed famously wrote Insurgent Mexico as an early journalist ‘embedded’ with the revolutionary troops under Pancho Villa; and 10 Days That Shook The World, an eye-witness account of the Russian Revolution in October 1917. Daughter is a collection of his earlier journalistic sketches. Well before he became a Bolshevik, he was a committed radical, and he tells stories of the downtrodden and oppressed: the homeless, the addicts, the poor. He tackles racism, sexism and masculinity in short, pithy pieces.Check out Mac-American, a dissection of racism, sexism and nationalism, as Reed recounts meeting one of those people who makes your skin crawl.

John Reed - A Harvard education and babycheeks didn't stop him from championing the people's cause

He has a particular sensitivity for women and their role in society: his heroines are young women, often working as prostitutes or mistresses. These aren’t token gestures, as they form the backbone of many of the stories. This is from The Rights of Small Nations, where Reed is visiting Bucharest in Romania during WW1. He runs into a fellow American, who tells him:

England is fighting for the rights of small nations, and I don’t see how anybody can keep out of it that’s got any guts!”

Some hours later I saw him on the station platform, talking to a thin, plain girl in a yellow cotton dress, who wept and powdered her nose simultaneously… He caught sight of me and brusquely quitted her… “Be with you as soon as I get rid of this damn woman!” he said, brutally masculine. “They can’t leave a man alone, can they?”

Lighting a cigarette, he swaggered back to where she stood staring fixedly out along the track, her handkerchief crammed in her mouth, making a desperate effort to control herself. She had on excessively high-heeled slippers, such as Rumanian street-walkers wore that year, and carried a leather wrist-bag; everything about her was shabby. Her young breasts were flat, starved, and her knotted hair thin and dull. I knew that only a very unattractive girl could fail to make a living in Bucharest, where they boast more prostitutes to the square male than any other city in the world….

Frank dug into his pockets in a surly way, pulled out a roll of banknotes, and peeled off two. The girl stiffened, went white and rigid; her eyes blazed. His outstretched hand with the money was like a loaded gun. But suddenly the dull red crept up her cheek like pain, and she clutched the bills and burst into violent sobbing. After all, she had to live.

Diane Keaton as revolutionary & Reed's lover Louise Bryant, Warren Beatty as John Reed, from the 1981 film 'Reds'. Note lack of humility.

Oppressed women, working women, rich men exploiting poor women - themes addressed with compassion but never pity. In 1912, Reed is calling sex work an economic necessity, 'money like a loaded gun'. I think this shows a sensitivity to gender and class even many current writers don't have, and which stems directly from his radicalism. It's part of the social history tradition like Zola's Germinal, Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and pretty much anything by my blogsake, Victor Serge (who knew Reed, by the way.)

Reed doesn’t just turn his critical gaze on other men; he looks at himself, too. In A Taste of Justice he recounts getting arrested for loitering. In the dock, he watches a prostitute get 10 days in prison for soliciting, while he himself gets off free because the judge knows him. Reed understands class power and his place in it. He writes in a witty, concise form, informed by journalistic spareness of prose and free of sentimentality.

My 80 year old edition was published by Vanguard Press, naturally. I'll return to the topic soon.