Love Me Tender

Reading “Love Me Tender” was a very interesting experience. The writing felt a bit similar to “The Book of Chameleons” in that some of the chapters are extremely short and the narration is simple to understand.

I like that Constance decided to live her life as authentically as she possibly could, not bending over for someone else’s needs. She’s so very courageous for doing so but it sort of felt like something was lacking, and I feel maybe I am just saying that because society has made me believe that there is something else to be desired. Books and life don’t really need to be dramatic, sometimes it just felt as if Constance was just gliding through life rather than really enjoying it!! Everything just felt a bit dull.

A thing I found interesting is that she constantly compares herself to men and sort of does things that men stereotypically do. When it came to parenting and her relationship with Paul, she would compare herself to an absent father. Then her relationships with other women are sort of like how SOME men treat women. She’s completely emotionally absent but that’s technically fair because she seems to be that way with everything else. Then there’s the way she’ll talk about the women, she won’t bother remembering their names or the details of their life that they share with her. She treats them like a quick fuck and a place to stay because that’s really all they are to her. The way she treats these women is unfortunate. I won’t say that she doesn’t make an effort in all her relationships because she does to some extent for her son. She tries to perform so they would let her see her son, she throws out the books that supposedly reflected poorly on her character although near the end she ultimately decides that maybe the effort isn’t going to change anything and that it was okay to move on with her life.

Every mention of Laurent made me upset, the first few of his appearances when she tells him she’s into women and despite knowing that fact he still tries to initiate something with her just goes to show how inconsiderate and disrespectful he is 💀‼️Then going as far as to lying when he realises that she’s into women and making it so she can’t see her son is just horrible. This guy sucks‼️Poisoning a son against his mother💔. I guess it just goes to show how marginalised people will often be in the weaker position when it comes to formal and informal institutions. I was really hoping that Constance would be able to have a somewhat good relationship with her son, but maybe a lack of a relationship isn’t so bad when compared to active resentment.

Question: Do you think that she’s happy with the decisions she’s made or even happy with her life in general?

should I burn my loonie?

The book started off very suddenly, in media res. Descriptions of characters and details of the heist. Introducing the characters, names and nicknames. It was all very confusing here, I found it hard to keep track of who was who and what exactly was happening which I imagine what a bank heist must feel like. Confusing and hard to keep track of, maybe it was just me because I found it difficult to understand the first chapter of the book. I thought the heist was a bit clumsy and disorganised! There were a lot of names being thrown around, even near the end of the book, they’d tell me all the names of the officers who went into the building and whatnot.

It was a very interesting read though, I like the way it was written, switching between narration to text that’s almost written like a report. Giving specific timestamps of what had happened and the policemen who had lost their lives! It was very unique. Though at times I felt myself wanting to gloss over some of the action towards  the end because I really just wanted to see the characters interact and speak to each other. 

I found the relationship between Kid and Guacho to be very touching. Their closeness being described as needing no words to understand each other, is very sweet. Something like a comfortable silence, not feeling the need to converse for long amounts of time but rather just enjoying each other’s presence. It was super heartbreaking that Kid died in Guacho’s arms!! Then after Guacho’s thought are all longing for Kid again</33333

The opening quote is a quote from The Threepenny Opera. The main message of that play was that under capitalism everything becomes a commodity. The founding of a bank does way more harm than a robbery, that thousands are going to be exploited. The crowd’s reaction to the burning of  the cash was extremely interesting. I had thought that because this all happened due to money, they’d assume “oh money is the cause of all this chaos” but no! They claim that the money was innocent. The action of them burning the money was what set in stone for these people that these criminals were never to be redeemed. Do we as a society tie our worth to how much capital we can generate? In The Threepenny Opera, Macheath’s crimes are a result of capitalism. The corrupt system lets him out time and time again, no one cares about justice or humanity under capitalism. He grows up poor and he comes to the realisation that through the exploitation of others he can generate wealth. In Piglia’s novel some of these characters are from well off families (Kid) so it really makes me question their motives. I’m under the assumption that they’d been cast out and so they turned to a life of crime.

Question: Can we imagine a life outside capitalism anymore? and what would it look like?