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Quit Your Weeping Wednesday
Oct. 30th, 2019 01:02 pmA Movie I Watched
There is a problem I've been trying to overcome, not always successfully, and it's that I'm constantly being embarrassed by my own reactions to books and other media, to the extent where I sometimes worry if I have any genuine reactions at all. (What does it mean to be genuine? Maybe that's a question for another time). When I find myself hating Gravity's Rainbow, for example, my mind will immediately start generating excuses, to protect itself from imaginary accusations of philistinism. Am I reading too quickly? Am I not paying enough attention? Is the cheap mass-market paperback too densely printed and the paper too discolored? I don't mind telling you (at tedious length) that I hate it, but I also have this annoying compulsion to let you know that I know that you might think I'm an idiot, just in case. Part of the purpose of keeping a public reading journal is to get over this kind of thinking and pointless hedging, but it doesn't always work.
There's also an inverse: when a work of art tells me exactly what I want to hear so seductively that I start reflexively mistrusting both it and myself. Pride was like that. It's the story of some gay activists in London who collect money to support a Welsh miners' strike in the 1980s. At first the miners worry about the optics of welcoming a gay rights group and the Londoners worry that they'll be laughed out of town or worse, but both groups take a chance anyway and befriend one another. I watched this movie while patching up some jeans, and it was NEEDLESSLY HEARTWARMING and now whenever I try to work on my jeans patches I get weepy all over again. I tried scolding myself for susceptibility, but what's the use? I'll be a soppy kneejerk liberal till the day I die, so I might as well enjoy myself.
What I've Finished Reading
Clean Up Your Act! Effective Ways to Organize Paperwork -- and Get it Out Of Your Life! is an office self-help book from 1992, which makes it as much a historical tour of the paper-based office as it is an advice book. It also slightly overestimates the value of the digital future in bringing about a world of efficiency - though not nearly as much as you might expect.
It has some good advice applicable to my 95%-online job - in fact, it might be slightly more helpful to me personally than a more contemporary book of the same kind, because it doesn't assume I'm going to download and learn a bunch of new programs in the name of simplifying my day. The prompt to think a little more about what I need to put in writing vs. what I can bring up at the weekly meeting has already brought about a change for the better.
What I'm Reading Now
Other problems I am struggling without success to overcome: Gravity's Rainbow, natch. Every now and then it has a good moment and it just makes me more annoyed with whatever convergence of Pynchon, myself, and the universe has conspired to make the rest of it a bleak black cloud of murky wit and petulant boredom.
Luckily, Codependence is very good and The Good Soldier Svejk is messy and meandering in a way that I enjoy. I'm also reading very slowly through The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and a 26-volume late 19thC aspirational monstrosity called Library of the World's Best Literature (currently reading a very small selection of the letters of Abigail Adams, which are pretty excellent). I think I've mentioned this book before? It's slated to be turned into home decor or a hip book craft eventually, but I feel compelled to at least skim it all before I let it go. This is almost certainly more than its original intended audience would have done, but so it goes.
What I Plan to Read Next
There's a brand new bookstore in town, just a 15-minute walk from home and on the way to the university library. It opened on Saturday and inventory so far is small but attractive. I bought The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker and a "blind date book" wrapped in brown paper - which I'll unwrap when I get to it.
Every day brings me closer to William Dean Howells and My Literary Passions! I can't take it home from the library yet because I don't actually have the willpower not to start reading it & spoil my motivational structure. But it's there, waiting for me! Soon and very soon! There are also the rest of the Final Nine 99 Novels, and probably most of them will be good.
There is a problem I've been trying to overcome, not always successfully, and it's that I'm constantly being embarrassed by my own reactions to books and other media, to the extent where I sometimes worry if I have any genuine reactions at all. (What does it mean to be genuine? Maybe that's a question for another time). When I find myself hating Gravity's Rainbow, for example, my mind will immediately start generating excuses, to protect itself from imaginary accusations of philistinism. Am I reading too quickly? Am I not paying enough attention? Is the cheap mass-market paperback too densely printed and the paper too discolored? I don't mind telling you (at tedious length) that I hate it, but I also have this annoying compulsion to let you know that I know that you might think I'm an idiot, just in case. Part of the purpose of keeping a public reading journal is to get over this kind of thinking and pointless hedging, but it doesn't always work.
There's also an inverse: when a work of art tells me exactly what I want to hear so seductively that I start reflexively mistrusting both it and myself. Pride was like that. It's the story of some gay activists in London who collect money to support a Welsh miners' strike in the 1980s. At first the miners worry about the optics of welcoming a gay rights group and the Londoners worry that they'll be laughed out of town or worse, but both groups take a chance anyway and befriend one another. I watched this movie while patching up some jeans, and it was NEEDLESSLY HEARTWARMING and now whenever I try to work on my jeans patches I get weepy all over again. I tried scolding myself for susceptibility, but what's the use? I'll be a soppy kneejerk liberal till the day I die, so I might as well enjoy myself.
What I've Finished Reading
Clean Up Your Act! Effective Ways to Organize Paperwork -- and Get it Out Of Your Life! is an office self-help book from 1992, which makes it as much a historical tour of the paper-based office as it is an advice book. It also slightly overestimates the value of the digital future in bringing about a world of efficiency - though not nearly as much as you might expect.
It has some good advice applicable to my 95%-online job - in fact, it might be slightly more helpful to me personally than a more contemporary book of the same kind, because it doesn't assume I'm going to download and learn a bunch of new programs in the name of simplifying my day. The prompt to think a little more about what I need to put in writing vs. what I can bring up at the weekly meeting has already brought about a change for the better.
What I'm Reading Now
Other problems I am struggling without success to overcome: Gravity's Rainbow, natch. Every now and then it has a good moment and it just makes me more annoyed with whatever convergence of Pynchon, myself, and the universe has conspired to make the rest of it a bleak black cloud of murky wit and petulant boredom.
Luckily, Codependence is very good and The Good Soldier Svejk is messy and meandering in a way that I enjoy. I'm also reading very slowly through The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and a 26-volume late 19thC aspirational monstrosity called Library of the World's Best Literature (currently reading a very small selection of the letters of Abigail Adams, which are pretty excellent). I think I've mentioned this book before? It's slated to be turned into home decor or a hip book craft eventually, but I feel compelled to at least skim it all before I let it go. This is almost certainly more than its original intended audience would have done, but so it goes.
What I Plan to Read Next
There's a brand new bookstore in town, just a 15-minute walk from home and on the way to the university library. It opened on Saturday and inventory so far is small but attractive. I bought The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker and a "blind date book" wrapped in brown paper - which I'll unwrap when I get to it.
Every day brings me closer to William Dean Howells and My Literary Passions! I can't take it home from the library yet because I don't actually have the willpower not to start reading it & spoil my motivational structure. But it's there, waiting for me! Soon and very soon! There are also the rest of the Final Nine 99 Novels, and probably most of them will be good.
