{"id":105315,"date":"2015-07-27T11:25:30","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T15:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=105315"},"modified":"2016-02-19T10:02:54","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T15:02:54","slug":"stuff-ive-been-reading-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=105315","title":{"rendered":"Stuff I’ve Been Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

— I have been obsessed with the meltdown going on at Gawker. As with most things at Gawker, it may only be of interest to people from the media who have been obsessed with what is going on, on a minute-to-minute basis. I’ve been a Gawker reader from its earliest days. I was part of the world they reported on, all things NYC media. On one memorable day, the employees at the website I worked for learned that there were going to be gigantic layoffs at our company from Gawker<\/em> – we heard it on Gawker first<\/i>, before we got the word from the higher-ups. This was classic Gawker. The Gawker post read something like, “We hear that people at [such-and-such-website] are not going to be happy in about an hour.” We all had Gawker up on our computers, as we usually did back in those days, and there was a rustle of alarm that flowed through the cubicles. We all whispered conspiratorially. An hour? What the hell? That soon?? We had felt something coming. Then – right on schedule – came the email from the CEO: “Could everyone please gather in the conference room? All hands on deck for a company meeting.” Someone had clearly leaked the upcoming catastrophe to Gawker. Being afraid of stuff appearing on Gawker influences firing practices, severance packages. (I made the cut, by the way. I would be laid off the following year, but I survived that round.) Gawker has changed a lot over the years, but I do like a lot of their stuff. The piece that caused the meltdown, though, was despicable. Indefensible. And watching the whole thing crumble so definitively has been quite a spectacle. It’s not over yet, but anyway, I’ve been riveted. And the comments over there at Gawker! The regular commenters turning on the website with articulate outrage (for the most part, it’s articulate)! It gives me hope for humanity to see the sheer amount of outrage and sharp moral compasses on display. Go, us. <\/p>\n

— I’ve also been obsessed with Pedro Martinez’s induction into the Hall of Fame. He was the greatest Red Sox pitcher in my lifetime, and I was fortunate enough to get to see him in action, live, a couple of times. It was a thrill. Surviving Grady, a wonderful Red Sox blog I’ve been reading for years, has a wonderful post about Martinez’s extraordinary gift and career.<\/a> “His mastery was so immense, so otherworldly, you were transfixed by it.”<\/p>\n

— Paul Theroux’s wonderful review of the new collection of writing by the great Shirley Jackson<\/a>. I love his crankiness. You can see it in the opening paragraph. Have you read his travel books? He has to be the crankiest travel writer alive, filled with judgment and sneers about the places he visits, and he’s unrepentant and hilarious. I cannot wait to read this new Jackson collection. Much of it has never been published before!<\/p>\n

— Slowly making my way through Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. You would have thought that with a title like that I would have read it already. I have read her Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil<\/a>\"\"<\/i> multiple times, and enjoy her unexpected perspective. It certainly makes you think. The Origin of Totalitarianism<\/i> is not exactly what the title suggests, which she admits in the afterword. She wrote the book quickly, in a rush to get it out, feeling the urgency. It’s not about the origin of totalitarianism, but about the seeds that made it explode in its monstrous 20th-century form. The book is split up into three Parts: Antisemitism, Imperialism, and Totalitarianism. I’m in the Imperialism section now – the South Africa section, in particular, and she is so vicious about the Boers (rightly so, I suppose) that you wince at the ugliness beneath that rock. She has some very VERY interesting things to say about the difference between “the people” and “the mob” (calling to mind Elias Canetti’s great book Crowds and Power<\/a>\"\"<\/i>). As long as the mob is somewhat marginalized, civilization can continue. But when the mob takes power, as opposed to “the people,” as happened in Germany, world-wide devastation is often the result. Those Enlightenment dudes may have had their own problems and hypocrisies but one thing they understood was that the mob needed to be protected from its worst impulses. There needed to be checks\/balances built in place to keep the mob from running the show. This has borne out as true throughout the centuries. <\/p>\n

— The Third Man<\/i> has been on my mind recently, having gone to see it with Charlie at its theatrical run at the Film Forum. It was my first time seeing it on the big screen, and it was breath-takingly beautiful and dark, projected large. Also, the audience was riveted and silent. My experience at the Film Forum with old films has been up-and-down. I walked out of High Noon<\/i> because the audience treated it like an episode of Mystery Science Theatre.<\/i> I included Harry Lime in the recent list I participated in, 50 Greatest Film Characters. Harry Lime should be on any list of this nature. I wanted to point you to Kim Morgan’s beautiful 2010 essay on The Third Man<\/i>.<\/a><\/p>\n

— At long last, I am reading William James’ classic philosophical\/theological study The Varieties of Religious Experience<\/a>\"\"<\/i>. I can thank Jessa Crispin, aka Book Slut, for drumming the William James drum so repeatedly. The book comes up all the time, as a reference point, but she was so insistent about it, and her taste is so unique and in line with my own, that I finally picked it up. I admit, it’s slow-going at times. There are three-page excerpts from this or that religious fanatic’s memoirs and it can be a slog. But ultimately, I can see what the fuss is about. It is an examination of the uses\/experience of religion, given by a melancholic skeptic in a series of lectures. I’m very glad to have read it. (I’m almost done.) I also love his clearly personal experience with “melancholy” and how a melancholy person, faced with the chipper “feel better” of some types of religions, will feel entirely alienated. This loops into Inside Out<\/i> and its radical suggestion that Sadness has its place in the world, it should not be shunned, and it – and only it – is equipped to deal with certain difficulties. There’s one chapter in James’ book called “The Sick Soul” that really goes into that and it was fascinating. <\/p>\n

— Norman Rush has a new book out! He’s only written three novels, and one collection of short stories, and I believe he is about 81 right now, so … you know. We take what we can get. Subtle Bodies<\/a>\"\"<\/i> is his latest, and unlike Mating: A Novel<\/a>\"\"<\/i> and Mortals<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, it’s relatively short. I finished it in a couple of days on my vacation. Unlike Mating<\/i> and Mortals<\/i>, and his short story collection Whites<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, it does not take place in Africa and it has nothing to do with Africa. It’s a comedy (it’s often hilarious: I laughed out loud often, especially in the sections where Nina, the wife, is featured), and it’s a Big Chill<\/i> sort of thing. A group of college friends gather, many years later, to mourn the death of their “leader”. The leader is somewhat of a cipher, and everyone has different opinions on the guy. He was revered and idolized and all that. Subtle Bodies<\/i> is also a “comedy of marriage.” Norman Rush is interested in monogamy, and how that operates, what it means, what casual domesticity means to a couple. It comes up all the time in his work. (He himself has been married to the same woman for decades.) It’s pretty cynical, too, about Baby Boomer optimism\/change-the-world activism. Y’all are living in a dream-world. Rush is very interested too in activists\/altruists\/people who believe in political theories\/ideologies. It’s one of his ongoing themes. I really enjoyed it. <\/p>\n

— Wesley Morris’ Grantland piece on Magic Mike XXL<\/i> is right on the money<\/a>. I saw it for a third time with my sister on vacation. The film gets better with repetition. Morris gets into it, analyzing what works, and also mentioning how radical it is, not just in its prioritizing of female pleasure and men willing to do whatever it takes to put a smile on women’s faces, and not only the sheer casual level of inclusiveness built into the wacky adventures (races, body types, sexual orientations, ages, all thrown into a big pot), but also, on a technical level, the structure of the film. It’s really a “and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened” film, completely unlike the original. This new film veers off-course, got rid of the melancholy surrounding stripping as a dead-end life, and embraced the joy. It shouldn’t work. It does. It is a miracle of working<\/i>. You can’t believe it. Morris’ piece is well worth your time. He really really gets it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

— I have been obsessed with the meltdown going on at Gawker. As with most things at Gawker, it may only be of interest to people from the media who have been obsessed with what is going on, on a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[2444,86,145,25,214,2134],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105315"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105330,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105315\/revisions\/105330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}