Amazons, Oh My!

[handful_ofdust]

My FearZone column about Bethany's Sin just went live, here (http://www.fearzone.com/blog/bethanys-sin). Tell me if it makes you want to burn off one of your breasts with a hot axe-blade, or what...

Comments

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

Hey, good review. I remember reading Bethany's Sin in my twenties, thought it was delightfully way over the top. Loved Night Boat too.

The discovery of Amazon culture near the Black Sea was, and is, muy exciting. Have you read any of Barbara Walker's books? She gives an excellent accounting of feminine socio-political history, including the Amazons and how they chose to become pregnant. It's not nearly as bloody and cruel as what most men would like to believe, men who think they are graced with God-given dominance.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

No, but I'll definitely check 'em out. "Those Others" is eventually going to rotate to the top of the To Do pile, after all, and while I don't want it to be some massive epic, I'd like it to at least sound plausible.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

:-)

[sovay]

That is cracktasmic.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Ain't it? The fact that this book seems to be genuinely out of print is a crime against both halves of humanity.

[phantom_wolfboy]

McCammon's back catalogue is a wonder. Most of it reads, as you note, like a poor-man's Stephen King, but I always felt that Bethany's Sin was McCammon's reply to Ira Levin and the Stepford Wives.

If you haven't read 'em yet, read Boy's Life and Gone South--they're when McCammon finally found his own voice.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Re: Bethany's Sin as reply to Levin--yeah, actually, I can see that. It's always surprising to me how loaded gender dynamics were back in the day, even as late as 1980; sort of like watching Milk and going: "Really? It was that big a deal to even admit publicly that gay guys existed, and weren't just leather queens or other stereotypes? Really?"

OTOH, given how people are still driven to ask stupid questions of James Franco as to how it was to kiss Sean Penn, like they desperately want him to confirm on air that YES, it was TERRIBLE, the THINGS I DO FOR MY ART...maybe nothing much has changed, in that particular respect.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think I'd like to kiss Sean Penn.....

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

But if you were an actress and you were getting paid to, you'd just do it. And I doubt anybody would quiz you about it afterwards...though that recent Entertainment Weekly interview with Kate Winslett and Leonardo Dicaprio was pretty funny in context, along similar lines, especially the part when he just goes: "Seriously, it's always been platonic with us."