Subject: Happy 2000's
From: Sundeep Dougal (holden@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in)
Date: Fri Dec 31 1999 - 17:28:47 EST
Since in these parts it's been Y2K for some hours now, and because my
computer hasn't spontaneously combusted, here's adding to the usual best
wishes to all and birthday greetings to old JDS as well.
Sean it was, I think, who said something about JDS and the puritanical
attitude towards sexuality in his work. I think Holden is only concerned
about 'stopping when asked to stop' or words to that effect, and about
"responsibility", but otherwise is quite comfortable with his sexuality and
other such. His being "seductive as hell" and ruing over how it took him an
hour to get a brassiere off once and how the parents get back home early and
so on almost always kills me, if I allow myself to lapse into his
vernacular. The prudes and the puritans had quite a lot of trouble in that
day and age, from all the available material, and apparently still do. That
by and large, by later or today's permissive standards when nothing really
seems scandolous or shocking, short of anything non-consensual or below a
certain age, is a different matter altogether, but in my book, that is not
phony -- and I am sure this is not just a cultural thing, Holden _is_ as Tim
said the "good" guy and I'd reckon that even today the concerns for a
general adolescent would still be the same.
I don't know where I am going with this one, and I do not have Sean's
message in front of me, but I read something today which perhaps reminded me
of that message, in a tangential sort of way:
<quote>
Professional Relationship of the Year
'There was an atmosphere poised nicely between a seance and
a chess game and the purest flirtation, of the sort you have with
a beloved character in a book, with no question of the vulgar
imposition of the physical.'
Candia McWilliam, describing her working relationship with Stanley
Kubrick in The Guardian
<unquote>
But then I guess one could read the "physical" above in more ways than one
too.
Anyway, Happy 2000's all.
Sonny
finally going away for the weekend.
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