Stuff I’ve Been Reading

— “I think she is a terrible driver + an ENORMOUS PIECE OF SHIT MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE. How fucking entitled do you have to be to behave like this? She should be arrested and have her license revoked, and if I were in the position to make that happen, I would do so, with pleasure.” Captain Awkward says what I feel. If you text while you drive, you deserve to die. You deserve to die, you hear me? I have zero sympathy if anything happens to you while you are engaging in such a blatantly dangerous activity. Unfortunately, your dangerous activity puts ME at risk and so it has to be my business that you think typing “LOL” on your FB page is more important than the safety of your community.

— The nerd linguist in me thrills to discussions such as this one. Seamus Heaney interpreted “hwæt” as “So”, which gives Beowulf the feeling of its oral tradition, the fact that it was a story told over and over again, by individuals and by groups. You are starting up a story by saying, “So.” It’s an attention-getter. But other Nerds have other Ideas. I hope the conversation never stops.

— A hell of a fine piece of writing by Chuck Klosterman. Can’t be excerpted. Not really. My take on the whole Eminem-college-football thing was similar to Klosterman’s. In awkwardness is often truth. Slick smooth capability is often just indicative of the presence of facile lying. At least that’s my experience and is why I am drawn to awkward people and can be quite awkward myself. Yes, it can make social gatherings horrible. You have to wait it out, you have to white-knuckle your fight-or-flight response. But if you do, then awkwardness can sometimes be drawn to awkwardness, and a kind of comfort can then arise in such encounters. Had a tremendously awkward and yet totally gratifying one-hour conversation with a guy I have a crush on at a party. Neither of us sidled away, or made excuses to move on, even though we experienced awkward silences, awkward interruptions and talking-over one another, awkward searching for the next topic. It went on forever. “Soooo ……….. been reading anything good lately?” was an actual moment after a long awkward silence. I don’t know, there was something Zen about the whole thing. The awkwardness felt truthful and somehow authentic. Anyway, go read Klosterman’s piece. Packs a pretty big punch.

— I love Stephanie Zacharek’s writing so much. Here she is, in her review of the new Coen Brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis: “If Llewyn had a bell, he most definitely would not ring it in the morning; he’d be too hungover, or at least just too pissed off at the world.”

— My great friend Rachel Hamilton on her ass-kicking great-grandmother, Florence Bates. You may remember her from Hitchcock’s Rebecca (her debut!), but there are so many other films. And her acting career (which began at the age of 50) was only one of her many incarnations. An amazing woman.

— Finally reading Donna Tartt’s 1992 novel The Secret History. From the first page, I knew I was hooked. (If you’ve read it, then you remember that prologue, and you remember the opening lines.) Please don’t tell me what happens. I am about 200 pages in now and it is pulling me along, compelling me to turn the page. The best part is: it acts sort of as a thriller, almost a whodunit: you only see what the narrator sees, and from the outset, the narrator is only shown a small sliver of the important events. His confusion, then, is ours. And it makes you need to keep turning those pages to find out what the hell is going on. I can’t believe I haven’t read this book before, and I also can’t believe that more people haven’t said to me, specifically, “You, OF ALL PEOPLE, should read this book.” It is a brilliant evocation of a cult-like atmosphere, and how the brain is lulled to sleep by the seductive power of one man who holds sway over his students. I have zero idea what is going to happen and have to force myself to put the book down and go to sleep. It will wait until tomorrow. I know Donna Tartt has a new one out, but this is the first of hers I have read. I am not a big contemporary fiction person, so it sometimes takes me a long time to get around to something. So glad I picked up this book.