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Genius writer Katherine Dunn talks about her new book on boxing (which she has reported on for decades) in this recent interview.<\/a> Her honesty is, of course, startling, raw, and refreshing. She’s brilliant. She makes the rest of the goddamn world just seem so insufferably POLITE. Well, the rest of the world can have their little social interactions that keeps everyone safe and secure, they can have their little acceptable lies they tell one another – about the world and about themselves. Count me out.<\/p>\n I love her thoughts on … well, everything.<\/p>\n I love that she acknowledges brokenness as not just part of the human condition, but its very essence. Brokenness is not the end. Brokenness is just the way things are. Like Auden wrote, “You shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart.”<\/p>\n That’s all we can do. Yearning for straightness and wholeness (after a certain point, I mean) is a weakness. It is the desire for utopia, which is a delusion.<\/p>\n Geek Love<\/i> has, in its title, its message. It is love, pure and simple. Crooked bodies and crooked hearts and what it means to love. For the most part, love given will not be received. At least not received in full by the one it is given to. It will be rejected, or brushed off, or ignored, or laughed at. Or, worst of all, not understood to be as deep and true as it is. But love should be given anyway. And that’s what makes a wreckage of life, and yet that is also what makes it most worth living. But please. Let’s not just skip over that whole “wreckage” part and try to pretend that these are two equal halves. They are not. Katherine Dunn understands that. She understands that heartwrenching struggle. It is that which breaks us. Geek Love<\/i> was all about that, but what I find really interesting is her perspective on boxing, and how many of us need that hard tough persona. It is undervalued today, especially in certain sectors. But it has its uses. It is one of the most important survival skills we can practice. Yes, the risk is that the hardness of the outer shell will go deep into the core. Oh well. There are risks in everything.<\/p>\n Wishing that we were not “geeks” (ie: broken) is a waste of time.<\/p>\n I love her for getting that. And putting it into words like nobody else.<\/p>\n Here are my thoughts<\/a> on Geek Love: A Novel<\/a> Her new book is called One Ring Circus: Dispatches from the World of Boxing<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=thesheivari-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0375713344\")
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