sarahland, by samantha cohen
DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING THESIS IS WRONG [in the end], BUT CONTAINS ELEMENTS FOR A BETTER THESIS. SCIENCE WITHOUT FEAR OF BEING WRONG.
if you want beautiful garbage, I would recommend
Fernando Pessoa, The Book Of Disquietude
It’s a rule of life that we can, and should, learn from everyone. There are solemn and serious things we can learn from quacks and crooks, there are philosophies taught us by fools, there are lessons in faithfulness and justice brought to us by chance and by those we chance to meet. Everything is in everything. In certain particularly lucid moments of contemplation, like those of early afternoon when I observantly wander through the streets, each person brings me a novelty, each building teaches me something new, each placard has a message for me. My silent stroll is a continual conversation, and all of us – men, buildings, stones, placards and sky – are a huge friendly crowd, elbowing each other with words in the great procession of Destiny. Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
https://ivananew.blogspot.com/2020/09/quote.html
media that came to mind:
The Rules of Attraction
Wetlands
South Park – Mr. Garrison’s Fancy New Vagina
Chasing Amy
Nuet #1
Compare Nirvana to Amanda Palmer
– that is the thesis of the review –
Nirvana (and Grunge in general) = boo-hoo, life sucks, do drugs, and kill yourself.
– or be gay, and thus self-select to not reproduce; or escape via sexual addiction.
[many lgbqt+ are in loving relationships – no homophobia here, power to them, power to love.]
Amanda Palmer – yeah, life sucks, get over it and enjoy the ride.
One is grating, one is beautiful.
Beauty. I walked around during the Gay Pride Parade.
the one thing most lacking – Beauty.
what I saw was queer. [edit insert: That being said, at the parade there was plenty of gaiety – and support through numbers is well and good; but a lot of overt sexuality – this is what i found queer ….]
[from wiki: “Entering the English language in the 16th century, queer originally meant “strange”, “odd”, “peculiar”, or “eccentric”. It might refer to something suspicious or “not quite right”, or to a person with mild derangement or who exhibits socially inappropriate behaviour.[3][8] The Northern English expression “there’s nowt so queer as folk“, meaning “there is nothing as strange as people”, employs this meaning”]
Sarahland.

for happy is one of the last words i would use to describe
what the book conjures
I grew up in Metro Detroit. No one I knew called it suburban Detroit. I have heard and used, the suburbs of Detroit, but never suburban. She now lives in Los Angeles – I am not surprised, having read this book – she is clearly a good fit for a certain part of LA – the book belies a decent understanding of the seedy parts of LA – porn studio adjacent brothels, comes to mind (in a plastic city).
the fact that I am reading this book [as the introductory book of a book club entitled New + Noteworthy] in a book store in Saint Petersburg, in the (free in comparison to california and michigan) State of florida. I ask why?
I knew and was Sam Cohen, growing up. There, but for the Grace of God, go I.
[side thought – if woman are equals, I assume alimony does not exist anymore – is this true? – No, the supreme court ruled in 1979 that alimony is gender neutral. Yo, that is stupid! I am not surprised, however, with stupid supreme court decisions – for i am a lawyer, not b/c of roe v. wade]
My sub-thesis: parts of homosexuality operate as a cult
– I read an article a few years ago, on this very topic. It was very illuminating. A woman was brought up by shitty parents, in an actual religious cult. She went to university, and experimented and fell in with homosexuals. She eventually worked through her childhood traumas (first the cult stuff, then the parent stuff, then I believe she unearthed blocked childhood trauma from incest/pedo shit – this eventually led to the discovery that she had unrealistic mental triggers of all men, when really she just had realistic fear-based learned instinct/habits towards the shitty men in her immediate environment growing up.
i.e., the characters speak mostly in (via?) long monologues
This is the way the book was written: free association – i.e., a deep dive, psychologically! Look, what pops up in my head! The following movie ……..
my father barely said two words to me
and any problem I had with my mother was always due to my father
i was taught to hate men
i was taught to hate myself
this isn’t a contest, however
i had to learn what love is
and it’s been the most important thing i ever taught myself and learned
The movie is called Nuit #1 (french for night). Why? Because the movie opens up with a 20 minute sex scene.
That is what reading Sarahland is like – except it doesn’t move on from that, it is ossified sexuality without the maturity of moving towards higher ideals – Beauty, Love, Acceptance.
Ah!- that is the big one, acceptance. People just want to be accepted – guess what, the world owes you nothing! The only person that has to fully, unconditionally accept me is me.
– here’s the rub, there is only one class of people that deserve unconditional acceptance and love – and that is a child from a parent. That does not mean that the child can do and be anything, however. It means that the parent comes from and with the understanding of unconditional love. That ends at 18 (13 in the jewish culture, is my understanding – bah/bar mitzvah being the cult-ural demarcation of adult-hood therein).
[as a side note, fuck the cult-ural protection of male genital mutilation]
fuck, male genital mutilation is akin to castration – what a bullshit practice that ruins sex for both partners – which is why sex becomes perverted. See pornography. Why is it that pornhub.com is free? Because it gathers information on your perversions to better sell shit to you. Why is the internet ubiquitous – loneliness, porn, and originally, free/stolen music.
By the Way – why is it that lgbqt+ main tool is to play the victim card? It’s the same thing you see that jewish comedian in ukraine play (zelensky) – it’s the holocaust game plan (read industry) ……. same victim card that is used for “holodomyr” …
disclaimer: i am not anti-semitic, i am anti-zionist. if you don’t know the difference, again, history is super interesting!- history as taught in schools is just propaganda!
so let’s get personal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton,_Michigan – the township I grew up in.
Excerpts:
Canton Township is Michigan’s second most-populated township (after Clinton Township) and ninth most-populated municipality overall. The township is ranked as the 96th highest-income place in the United States with a population of 50,000 or more and is also consistently ranked as one of the safest cities in the state and nation. In 2015, the township was ranked as the 29th safest city in the United States.
When you read that, what were you thinking?
because I will tell you the reality of growing up in such a place – dull, dull, dull.
It could be somewhat interesting, but no.
My mother’s morning routine:
wake up [more accurately, decide to get out of bed after tossing and turning for most of the night], rotely say prayers while on an exercise bike (she did not ride a bicycle outside), then turn on the “local news” = i.e., what did black criminals do last night in Detroit?
so, the mindset of fear pervaded her life [and thus my childhood] – in literally “one of the safest cities in the state and nation. In 2015, the township was ranked as the 29th safest city in the United States.” There were woods behind our house. I was forbidden to go into the woods (not safe). We had a room with beautiful windows (bay window?) that looked out onto the woods. That room was for guests only. Me and my brother ended up on folding chairs in a corner of the basement in front of a screen.
fyi, Canton is what it is
Here’s the thing, by the time I got to the University of Michigan, I still had no “me”. What I was, was a derivation of the character in the HBO series “Dream On” [which I watched as a child for the female breasts that was a weekly standard on that show]. [is it because i received such a lack of nourishment from my mother that a return to a breast is – wait, shit –
So in the book Sarahland, she revisits a womb; that short story, I argue, is mis-titled : “Dream Palace”.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/thefreebreathers/permalink/699517338013963
The last line of that post, yo!:
“When you know who you are, you will not fear that which is earthly in nature.”
– John Doeson, common law conversations
stay with me …
at one point in the book, the only worthwhile thing I re(a)d:
Sarah had a desire to do two things in North Dakota: go check out some gay club, and stick her hands in dirt and pull up a bulb of wild garlic.
What a thought, get your hands dirty!
maybe, go visit a stable, and shovel horse shit in the middle of a hot summer day for a few hours! Maybe then Sarah will disabuse herself of her childish dream of getting a pony like all the other rich girls in Bloomfield Hills! Maybe?!?
– like, I know it’s called animal husbandry, but that does not mean you should be in love with a horse-man. Early in the book, she wrote that liking horses is just a metaphor for sex.
Or, maybe Sarah’s perversions extend to furry sex, so she can pretend she is being taken by a centaur? Or, does she want a horse to fuck her, ala the propaganda used to slander Catherine the Great? by the way, I have a friend who likes horses. Guess what he does? https://www.tbnweekly.com/seminole_beacon/article_d009b960-7c1c-50fd-8082-ba314efcb19d.html – volunteers at a horse farm. What an adult does.
“He had the same trouble as all intellectuals-he was ineffectual. He knew too many things, and they confused him. He needed all sorts of gimmicks to steam him up, help him make up his mind.” – Celine, Journey to the End of the Night.
I’m not writing that out of condescension. I am writing that as a once insufferable intellectual myself; and one who still has to battle against that ennui that bubbles up via – well, via stimulus meant to instill anxiety. Work, Money, Rent, Inflation, MEDIA.
Media, man.
https://harbar.blogspot.com/2011/01/why.html
What a rant, that is to say, Sam Cohen is still working on her PhD. She is still in academia.
Sarahland starts with schooling, and the likely school she references seems an awful like the University of Michigan. That said, Rutgers has joined the BigTen recently; or perhaps Northwestern?

the world is toxic goo
and a new species emerges that is half man half dolphin
called some type of Sarah
Rainbow Power!
Jewish femme?
I am familiar with femme fatale: a seductive woman that harms/kills those around her.
but femme?– a lesbian with feminine traits (v butch), often exaggerated.
by the way, “Sarahland” contains many references to JAP – so self using the term Jewish American Princess is fairly interesting … and that a stereotype exists for “those” jews who display their wealth ostentatiously. Sam is not a self-styled JAP, or is she? [the same phenomenon exists as a “disney princess”. disney = worship the rich! ]
A national survey of female homosexuals was published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology which found that 75 percent of the approximate 2,000 respondents had pursued psychological counseling of some type, many for treatment of long-term depression or sadness.
yikes, this next part is on the “First Sarah” – the old testament book
Sam writes that all she wants is to return to Mother Nature, and run around and have sex with woman and that be the end all … I don’t know, return to a time where and when Eve was alone with nature. I don’t necessarily blame her – I’ve been there.
Sam Cohen’s Sarahland can be summed up with this :
it is the de-ranged work of a tortured soul; this was not written with the delicate help of a muse; rather, this was from the free association that marijuana and alcohol offer a writer.
It is Charles Bukowski as a depressed, powerless queer, Jewish femme still in school.
– both are not worth my time.
the same way a book about my sister the serial killer is dumb to read:
at the end of the day,
what was noteworthy of sarahland?
– just how bad that book was.
it is blaming healthy male energy
it is the domestication of man
Bonus tracks?
By the way, new woman’s world – H-H-H!
We hate that which we do not comprehend:
New thesis: this book is all about sea-men (dolphins and seahorses!)
I.e.; fuck w/ nature!?; H-h-h : she wants the toxic goo in the end = and a child emerges without a man; there is toxic goo (semen) … ugh … a gerald dolphin,
or :
We, as humans, have the power to teach ourselves how to become that which we set our sights on ……