chain-gang all-stars
this seems like it’s going to be adapted into a hit TV show soon enough. as someone who enjoys gladiator media, i’m here for it. the stabs at real-world practices of imprisonment and punishment didn’t really work for me—which sounds very callous to say. i did enjoy though.
Biography of X
This book took me to unexpected places. The form and contents of Biography of X both sucked me in; I found myself reading from it hours before I would normally wake up each day. There are depths which are only hinted at in this world.
Parable of the Sower
I didn’t think the prose was amazing—very utilitarian, taciturnly written—but I enjoyed the way that the narrative progressed. In the same way that an apocalypse must end the stories of people in their middles, without any sort of pat resolution, the lives of the people surrounding the protagonist also were snuffed out. Painfully, with no meaning, sometimes no understanding of what had happened to them. This seems realistic.
something about having trouble being creative
Lately whenever I write, I find it hard to find any authenticity in what I put down. Is it that I’ve become so boring that the only things I can think to write about are inherently “fake,” in such a way that it can’t help but exude from whatever I put down? Or is it that I’m unable to separate myself from the technique of adding a superficial gloss, no matter the topic, because it lends me some weird psychic surety of having written something “worthwhile”?
Last year when I was taking a stab at creating a ’zine, I wrote a piece about seeing the mountains around me explode into nuclear fire. I just felt my skin shimmer with the effervescence of the finest douche chill, just writing that sentence. In retrospect it had the same energy as someone who claims that they have synesthesia. Of course, it would be so nice if I actually couldn’t stop seeing the San Gabriel mountains immolated whenever I looked at them, because that would be such a statement as to… something… about how society is doomed, or how my mind can’t help but go to incredibly dark places, or some other bullshit.
The authentic feelings I have are… maybe not that interesting? Or maybe it’s that I try putting them down (or to be more honest, think of putting them down) and I don’t really get anything cathartic out of the experience, which is ultimately what I’m looking for, I think. The feeling of complete uselessness that subsumes me when my son is wailing, nothing I’m doing is working, and I find myself thinking about how so much I have attempted (or at least entered into attempting–maybe I didn’t give these things the old college try, exactly) has resulted in failure or just the wasting of time, a big old psychic brand across my soul with the letters DNF: I would like to be able to purge that feeling, somehow. But writing hasn’t succeeded in doing that, not yet.
Even when I’m feeling doom-and-gloom about the world, it’s not like the troubles that plague this planet or this country have ever redounded unto me, I have to admit.
It’s times like this that I wonder if Jack Torrance had the right idea. Would I get anything out of “all work and no play”-ing myself down a few hundred pages of text? Seems boring to try.
Sorcery
A common trope in fantasy books is the student of magic who hunkers down with a vast selection of books that cover various topics: methodologies, dictated incantations, warnings to the beholder, encyclopedias of subfields, and so on. I see a similarity between the benighted student, who seeks to accumulate knowledge by gathering as many books as possible, and myself. I find myself seeking the true solution to whatever problem I’m working on–physics, film, English literature, political theory–in assembling a cavalcade of books to peruse. This hasn’t ever actually worked for me, but I find the collecting tendency manifests again and again, nonetheless. I should probably just give in. It’s not like it’s bad to have a ton of books I hardly ever read, right?
Privacy
There are things I won’t talk about even on this site. No one knows about it, so I have total privacy with regard to the content I post. (The very fact that I refer to it as content belies its supposed obscureness, though, doesn’t it?) But there are thoughts about myself and the world that would never make it up here. I wonder if there’s a person out there who can be truly honest with the world, about everything, or if nobody manages to completely escape the specter of shame.