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Mar. 17th, 2024 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kradeelavfinished 'the reproduction of evil' by sue grand
i made a real silly little chart at 1am one night that better summed up where i think this book mentally hit versus a review.
* so i found this book through a true detective gifset with a bunch of quotes (lol).
but on seeing the quotes, i was struck at how instantaneously visceral this book felt. for the last ten years i've picked up random quotes that i feel like pokes at that nameless red-black ruthlessness of leaving-your-bloodied-nails-embedded-in-the-walls-of-clawing-out-of-hell survival, and this was one of the few entire analytical books that had that same sort of 'bzzt' live wire feeling to it.
* caveat that this book is so not for everyone, still. generally how you respond to these two quotes is going to tell you what 90% of this book is like.
the funny thing is i personally avoid ""trauma lit"" because they usually end up feeling way too too twee/therapist-y for lack of a better description. they're often swimming in the little obnoxious 'you are not a victim' gentleness when honestly sometimes the more honest feeling is being smashed over a head by a brick. i'm spooked by the feather duster feelin. i need the brutality of the brick smash. i trust the book that doesn't pull its punches more, you know what i mean? and this book talks about a lot of heavy shit like (irl) incest perpetrators, sexual crimes and genocide, you know. worst of humanity kind of shit.
* on that note, i felt like this would never be popular on tumblr other than an out of context quote or two because this book makes a direct conclusion of most malignant perpetrators of evil having some form of trauma. the metaphorical balls to suggest this intrigues me, since i feel like the current cultural tendency is to treat anybody with trauma with "always sinless" kid gloves. and not the more realistic angle of 'sometimes the fucked up people who do fucked up shit are stuck in a cycle of fucked up, and then whoever survives has a lot of jagged fucked up edges that at best get scrawled out in shadow play-acting of what was done to them and trying to separate the nuances of that is impossible but listening is a start.'
* this is tangential to the book itself but if you swap out the word "evil" with "kink" (hear me out), you get some genuinely interesting concepts of catharsis. there is so much subtext in this book that screamed to me "major delicious messy kink shit" where there's possibility of.... "healing" as a word feels far too twee, but that ragged-breath trust in baring one's worst desires is the first step to untangling a lot if this. (like, in the doujin circle we talk kinda often about the vibes how dominants/sadists are often given the stank eye/assumed the absolute worst of with their wants and ... there's something to chew on with reading this book and rotating this thought - not in a nuance-less 'they are a direct 1:1' way, but 'let's talk multiple levels deeper than just that, and get into the internal mentality'
anyway i think i would recommend this book to people who are restlessly searching for something (art or nonfiction) that hits hard and merciless at what it takes to survive, what's left behind (in the shape of flesh), and won't flinch.
i made a real silly little chart at 1am one night that better summed up where i think this book mentally hit versus a review.
* so i found this book through a true detective gifset with a bunch of quotes (lol).
but on seeing the quotes, i was struck at how instantaneously visceral this book felt. for the last ten years i've picked up random quotes that i feel like pokes at that nameless red-black ruthlessness of leaving-your-bloodied-nails-embedded-in-the-walls-of-clawing-out-of-hell survival, and this was one of the few entire analytical books that had that same sort of 'bzzt' live wire feeling to it.
* caveat that this book is so not for everyone, still. generally how you respond to these two quotes is going to tell you what 90% of this book is like.
the funny thing is i personally avoid ""trauma lit"" because they usually end up feeling way too too twee/therapist-y for lack of a better description. they're often swimming in the little obnoxious 'you are not a victim' gentleness when honestly sometimes the more honest feeling is being smashed over a head by a brick. i'm spooked by the feather duster feelin. i need the brutality of the brick smash. i trust the book that doesn't pull its punches more, you know what i mean? and this book talks about a lot of heavy shit like (irl) incest perpetrators, sexual crimes and genocide, you know. worst of humanity kind of shit.
* on that note, i felt like this would never be popular on tumblr other than an out of context quote or two because this book makes a direct conclusion of most malignant perpetrators of evil having some form of trauma. the metaphorical balls to suggest this intrigues me, since i feel like the current cultural tendency is to treat anybody with trauma with "always sinless" kid gloves. and not the more realistic angle of 'sometimes the fucked up people who do fucked up shit are stuck in a cycle of fucked up, and then whoever survives has a lot of jagged fucked up edges that at best get scrawled out in shadow play-acting of what was done to them and trying to separate the nuances of that is impossible but listening is a start.'
* this is tangential to the book itself but if you swap out the word "evil" with "kink" (hear me out), you get some genuinely interesting concepts of catharsis. there is so much subtext in this book that screamed to me "major delicious messy kink shit" where there's possibility of.... "healing" as a word feels far too twee, but that ragged-breath trust in baring one's worst desires is the first step to untangling a lot if this. (like, in the doujin circle we talk kinda often about the vibes how dominants/sadists are often given the stank eye/assumed the absolute worst of with their wants and ... there's something to chew on with reading this book and rotating this thought - not in a nuance-less 'they are a direct 1:1' way, but 'let's talk multiple levels deeper than just that, and get into the internal mentality'
anyway i think i would recommend this book to people who are restlessly searching for something (art or nonfiction) that hits hard and merciless at what it takes to survive, what's left behind (in the shape of flesh), and won't flinch.
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Date: 2024-03-18 10:14 pm (UTC)(right with tumblr gifsets?? library of alexandria right there :D )