[Part Two concluded by pointing out: "If we are to seriously consider the question of childhood sexuality, how can we do that without knowing what the children think or feel? We have no way to gauge how freely they are engaging in these activities and how much is coercion or a feeling of inescapability." We are all truly indebted to Ariel for her three-part post, concluding here, and for taking up some of the issues from Letters that none of us will soon forget, even if we don't always know how best to analyze and understand them.  -IT]

Yara’s Freedom?

This brings us back to freedom. The question of freedom, much like the questions of morality and desire, is an oft-talked about one in anarchist circles, so I won’t linger here long, but for our purposes the essential question is: How can one be sure they are making “free” decisions? This is a question left unanswered in Letters. Not only is it unanswered; Perlman seems to think it’s not a question worth considering, given that he never even attempts to address this subject in any way except through Sophia, and that’s only to show us how repressed and reactionary Sophia is to judge Tina and Ted’s relationship.

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[Part One concluded by asking what is "typical of the love found in Perlman’s novel"?  Ariel suggests that "it seems to be a predominately sexual love, or another way of putting this is that the only time the word love is used is when it is referencing a sexual relationship. While non-sexual relationships exist, it is the rare one that seems to be totally unhampered by sexual tension."  -IT]

Non-Sexual Relationships in Letters?

One of the few non-sexual relationships is between Sophia and Sabina.  Sophia says:

“When I saw tears under those long black eyelashes I felt an emotion I can’t describe with words like friendship and love. Sabina hadn’t even been ‘Jose’s Girl,’ she hadn’t ever shared his bed, she hadn’t ever desire him physically, yet she loved him; I understood her love for him only because I thought it must be similar to what I felt toward Sabina when I saw her tears.”

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[The following is Part One of a three-part contribution by Ariel Amend-All. Parts Two and Three will be posted over the next few days. - IT]

* * * * * * * *

My post will be broken up into three parts because I am covering a few chapters in one go. Also, I’m trying to cram an entire book’s worth of feelings into this, which is difficult to say the least. I am focusing on some of the more emotion-inducing topics, namely the incest and childhood sexuality. Childhood sexuality is a very complicated topic, not well understood at all, and I don’t claim to be an expert. My opinions are merely based upon my own experiences as a childhood survivor of rape and incest, nothing more or less. My take on these chapters has ended up a little more theoretical/thesis-y then I had hoped, and I look forward to your comments and thoughts!

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Around the time I was learning from Letters of Insurgents I was reading a lot of other things. For around an 8-month period when I was absorbing the book I was reading about a book every day. I was working in a graveyard job and living out of my van in Ann Arbor. I was using this as an opportunity to raid bookstores in the area, the U of M library in general, and, in particular, the Labadie collection. This was my chance to hold on the original set of SI Journal and to really dig deep into the material that has shaped my life since. I’ll probably never have another intellectual period in my life as intense as this. The problem with absorbing material in an isolated vacuum (which is what I was in at that time) is that some things you get right, some things you get wrong. I enjoyed the incredible volume of material I was consuming. Later I learned that the mixture of science fiction, post-structural classics, and everything available in English from “the milieu” would garner me a decade of being called incoherent, dense, and postmodernist.

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As we head towards the climax of the novel, I continue to appreciate the progressively unfolding politics of our now familiar insurgents. We’ve known from the very first exchange of letters that we can never be sure anyone is genuinely on the same “side.” Now, Yarostan sees that it is impossible for Alberts and Titus to have fought, in that long-ago revolution, on the same side as Manuel and Nachalo.  Albert’s role in the army is clearly exposed, and I am even beginning to be suspicious of Titus.

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Wow, what a week. There are a number of issues that pop up this time around, but I think that the Vesna situation kind of trumps everything. After the dance performance that Mirna and Yara orchestrate to visually interpret Mirna’s sexual experiences with the devil in all its permutations, Mirna gives Yarostan a slightly fuller description of the circumstances leading up to Vesna’s death. The tale so far is that she fell into a catatonic state, the doctors describing it as a brain injury and Yara calling it a game gone wrong. Before Mirna’s full confession in Yarostan’s 8th letter, the impression had been that perhaps this had something to do with Yara catching Vesna kissing herself in the mirror and suggesting that their father would kiss her when he returned from jail.

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