Sublime

Luau

I find it irresistibly interesting when people are cathected onto their bad style rather than simply oblivious to it (a description that may apply to us all; I sense the risk increases with age).

Banal, in that, despite an uncustomary gentleness of mien, the morphological type was one very much in the public domain; it exemplified what I take to be a specifically American criterion of ‘cuteness’ – which is to say, beauty untranscended by mystery, tragedy or spirituality, beauty golden and well nourished and so vacuously secure in its own na

in Hong Kong everything was compressed, anonymous, tangled. Everything was the crowd, the mass. And I was always on the outside.

the lesson of this book is not that any writer should be able to use any cultural expectation no matter her identity position. An understanding that craft is cultural will also bring up issues of how to engage with craft appropriately, and those issues are inadequately addressed here.

Paris is Burning, Jennie Livingston’s