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Conundrum

de Jan Morris

MembresRessenyesPopularitatValoració mitjanaMencions
5451244,198 (3.82)35
The great travel writer Jan Morris was born James Morris. James Morris distinguished himself in the British military, became a successful and physically daring reporter, climbed mountains, crossed deserts, and established a reputation as a historian of the British empire. He was happily married, with several children. To all appearances, he was not only a man, but a man's man. Except that appearances, as James Morris had known from early childhood, can be deeply misleading. James Morris had known all his conscious life that at heart he was a woman. "Conundrum, "one of the earliest books to discuss transsexuality with honesty and without prurience, tells the story of James Morris's hidden life and how he decided to bring it into the open, as he resolved first on a hormone treatment and, second, on risky experimental surgery that would turn him into the woman that he truly was.… (més)
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» Mira també 35 mencions

Es mostren 1-5 de 11 (següent | mostra-les totes)
L ratio proto-transmedicalist agent of british imperialism so fucking racist i know this is a somewhat important book in trans historical context but it made me so mad ( )
  frailandfreakish | Sep 30, 2023 |
Morris's classic memoir of her life and her transition from male to female in midlife was a joy to read. Her observations are fascinating and the glimpse into her world is poignant. Some of her attitudes (and language) feel dated now, and I sometimes wondered at her propensity to generalize about how men and women think, but she also draws some attention to those generalizations and speculates that she may be wrong or that the time and place where one grew up may have a significant effect on how one sees the world as male or female. Stuff to think on here, and I'm glad I read it. ( )
  lycomayflower | Apr 18, 2022 |
Written in 1974 as a description of her life and steps to transsexual change, this is an illuminating autobiography.

She quotes from Cecil Day Lewis’ The Volunteer near the end:
Tell them in England, if they ask
What brought us to these wars,
To this plateau beneath the night’s
Grave manifold of stars –

It was not fraud or foolishness,
Glory, revenge, or pay:
We came because our open eyes
Could see no other way.


Others have written that it is dated, but it is autobiography and necessarily reflects life as the author found it, from her perspective.

I happened to be reading her collection of vignettes, Contact!, at the same time and noticed a number of scenes extracted and modified in the later work. ( )
  CarltonC | Jul 14, 2019 |
Conundrum by Jan Morris is a fascinating story of how James Morris became Jan Morris. James since he was four years old felt he was a girl yet he grew up as a male and served in the British Armed Services. He was a writer of note, married, had five children, looked male but knew that he was really female. At around age 45 he went to Casablanca for a sex change operation that was successful and lived successfully as a woman. It is interesting to see how she perceives the way she is treated differently as a woman by society than as a man. Whether that is accurate or only her perception is not easy to say. The book is well written. She is accomplished writer and wrote a trilogy on the Victorian Empire. The first two volumes written as a man and the final volume as a woman. This is a sensitive book, touching and well worth reading. ( )
  SigmundFraud | Sep 16, 2017 |
Memoir from 1974 of the author's life as James and transition to Jan.

James led what appeared to be a macho and cultured, not to say privileged, life in the Army, and as a foreign correspondent and travel writer, but then transititioned to become Jan. The fluent prose makes it fascinating reading, though I'm not sure how much today's trans activists would agree with her reflections on what it is to be male and female. ( )
  Robertgreaves | May 6, 2017 |
Es mostren 1-5 de 11 (següent | mostra-les totes)
Still, a comparison to later works suggests that Morris is perhaps withholding more than just the details of sex. It's almost as though Morris has traveled to some gorgeous jungle and waxed on about the landscape, the flora and fauna, the waterfalls, a chirp of a bird, but has forgotten all about the people. And maybe the parallel stays intact here: armchair travel, after all, is not travel itself, and the place in question is never quite at the hands of the reader. In Conundrum, Morris says several times that she imagines her condition as mystical or spiritual, and perhaps what all this irksome withholding is intended to do is retain, amid the candor, some of that mystery for herself.
 
Both as a man and as a woman the author has always had a remarkable capacity for sexual sublimation, feeling an estheticized "lust" for cities, for landscapes, for sights, sounds and smells. While she says that orgasm is "possible," one gets the impression that sex does not interest her, though she is still in her 40's. Obviously, what is an ideal solution for her would not appeal to everyone. "Conundrum" suggest that identity is more important than sex and few reasonable people would argue with this. But even granting that it must be an enormous relief, as well as a positive pleasure, to break through to a clear sense of long-suppressed self, one experiences at this point in the book a feeling of anticlimax.
afegit per John_Vaughan | editaNY Times, Anatole Broyard (Jul 12, 1974)
 

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The great travel writer Jan Morris was born James Morris. James Morris distinguished himself in the British military, became a successful and physically daring reporter, climbed mountains, crossed deserts, and established a reputation as a historian of the British empire. He was happily married, with several children. To all appearances, he was not only a man, but a man's man. Except that appearances, as James Morris had known from early childhood, can be deeply misleading. James Morris had known all his conscious life that at heart he was a woman. "Conundrum, "one of the earliest books to discuss transsexuality with honesty and without prurience, tells the story of James Morris's hidden life and how he decided to bring it into the open, as he resolved first on a hormone treatment and, second, on risky experimental surgery that would turn him into the woman that he truly was.

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