crazywonderful

I’m reading the best book right now – I knew it was going to be great when I bought it, I had an even better idea after Ang (mid-divorce) borrowed it and declared it her new bible, and now that I’m actually reading it I have decided I was right. It’s called Against Love: A Polemic by Laura Kipnis, and the paragraph that most recently made me laugh out loud is:

How we love and how we work can hardly be separate questions: we’re social creatures after all – despite all those enlightening studies of sexual behavior in bonobos and red-winged blackbirds claiming to offer important insights into the nuances of human coupling. Harkening back to some remote evolutionary past for social explanations does seem to be a smoke screen for other agendas, usually to tout the “naturalness” of capitalist greed or the “naturalness” of traditional gender roles. Man as killer ape; woman as nurturing turtledove, or name your own bestial ancestor as circumstance requires. (When sociobiologists start shitting in their backyards with dinner guests in the vicinity, maybe their arguments about innateness over culture will start seeming more persuasive.)

She’s bloody brilliant. Plus I love reading a book that not only makes me go: “Yes, yes, yes, that’s it exactly!” but also posits new theories that resonate deeply. Not to mention humorously. Ahhhh.