Skip to main content

The Husbands by Holly Gramazio



The Husbands by Holly Gramazio is the next book for the book club, that I can't seem to meet with. I've fallen asleep before the meetings the last two times. 

It's speculative fiction where a woman comes home to a different husband. It could be horror because she's so scared at this alteration of reality, but it's more like Groundhog Day. Reality changes enough so that it makes sense, and she has a pictures of the surprise husband on her phone lock screen, and in her photos. There are changes, but not enough to be a completely different world. It becomes a mystery, who is my husband? It's a rorschach for who she wants to be. In the 3rd chapter we learn the mechanism, if he goes into the attic, a new guy comes down and the walls and whatnot change. Some are more handsome than others, one is naked, they have different accents.

My first thought was of a German movie called I’m Your Man (2021) (Ich bin dein Mensch). In that movie, a woman is given a companion android. The men love it, but she's wary, and busy. She has great sex with him, but she sends him back. Though that's not the end of the movie, and I'm not giving it away. The novel The Husbands changes reality to see what shakes out. What do we learn just like in the German movie. 

Note: I asked Gemini 3 if speculative fiction is the genera of this novel. It said high concept speculative fiction, but also magical realism first. I asked if there was a male version of this type of novel, and there isn't. To say you don't write with AI is to say you don't google things and research on the internet. But I don't have AI write my blogs, that seems silly to me, I want to write them. I'm not put upon, and forced to write papers of my own choosing like in school, just trying to get things done. Anyway, if you rewrite a AI paper, even just one change, does that mean it's not your own? I think there are levels of ownership. In some ways we're not alone and if you read acknowledgements, many people alter texts because of editors and readers. AI is not another person, but it's some kind of input. Even the squiggles that note misspelled words is AI. Do you say you are AI free, and you don't correct your spelling? I've never tried to write a minimalist paper for college with AI, with the AI doing the heavy lifting. I also wonder if humans are changing the way they write to not seem like AI. 

Usually I divide the pages by the days till book club, but I have failed to keep pace quite a lot so I'm just going to read it and hope I get it done before book club. 


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Manet and Degas

  Brilliant video explaining the exhibit. Go to the Met and see the exhibit! It's really quite special.  In the last gallery the painting this sketch is based off of, of the execution of a Mexican president. The painting has been cut into sections, and the surviving Degas has reassembled them. NY Times review
Post a Comment
Read more

The case for Harris

Motley Kamuka Blog endorses Kamala Harris. In general, Trump just wants to lower taxes on the rich, and do nothing, sell whatever influence he can to line his pockets. Apparently the emoluments clause in the constitution has no teeth. Harris has a set of ideas about policy that are fairly middle of the road. In most countries she's would be seen as a centrist. Spin about her radical agendas are exaggerated.  I'm not sure how he got past " grab them by the pussy ", but he did and here we are. Women: Obviously the idea of giving women pregnancy tests at the borders of the state, and then if they come back and don't have a baby, they go to jail, isn't really what most women want. Pick Harris.  I understand if you think abortion is murder, maybe you've been told that by the Catholic church, which has the same ideal of Buddhism that you don't kill--so follow your religion for yourself. Not everyone is Christian or Buddhist or even has a religion. Women are ...
Post a Comment
Read more

AOC

Dark Brandon meet Dark Alex. I see her advising the republicans to stick to their guns and never compromise. They don’t want to do anything, only obstruct. So they don’t actually need to be unified. Chaos isn’t organized. This is fine. Read all about it from Heather Cox Richardson , a historian who covers current events. "As their policies threatened to lose voters by concentrating wealth upward and hollowing out the middle class, Republicans increasingly warned that minority voters wanted socialism and were destroying the nation to get it. Trump rode that narrative to power, and now tearing down the current government is the idea that drives the Republican base." While we're at it, here's another funny photo from the Onion: And then: I listened to the Times podcast about George Santos . He basically lied about, I don't know, 80% of his resume, and has a mysterious $700k in his "corporation" which has no clients. So he's a Russian or Chinese plant, o...
Post a Comment
Read more