I won't be blogging for the next week, but instead will be finishing these half-finished books.
Bonfire of the Vanities: This is an excellent book because you can impose your own meaning onto it. Is it about race in New York? The unfairness of the criminal system? Or is it about the mid-life crisis of the 38-year old protagonist? Or about the dangers of infidelity? Or about the futility of pursuing status? I told a friend that being around New York hedge fund people at a party made me not regret checking out of the status game. He, in turn, recommended Bonfire. He was right. There's no way to win, and you will always be malcontent. Why play a rigged game?
I suppose the counter is that you cannot escape the status game. Even the boojis in Middle America need a new minivan when Bob Smith rides up in his new Dodge. Yet the status came can be escaped by not caring. Whenever I start to get riled up about something, I stop. I ask myself: "Why care?" Usually there is no good reason to care. My emotions boil due to some heating of the collective unconscious stew in my head. (I'll probably finish Jung, too.) Very few things are worth caring about.
And consider what we do care about. There's a hurricane in Puerto Rico. Everyone "cares," but do they? Are they writing checks or actually doing anything other than "caring"? If you're not going to do anything but play a Peeping Tom, why care at all?
This attitude can lead to apathy and inaction. If you stop caring about everything, then you'll have no motivation to do anything. The best strategy is to care, just not about most things. When an emotion is trigged, ask, "Why care?" If you can't find a good reason to care, dismiss the emotion and continue with more important business.
The Devil and Dr. Barnes: I read this after watching "The Art of the Steal," which is required watching in itself. Albert Barnes was a visionary who knew it. He brought Impressionistic art into the United States, and made it famous worldwide. While he was spreading the Gospel of a new art, critics rejected him and his "vulgar" paintings. He told them all to fuck off. Because of this, he's a "bad" man. What about the critics who, had they won, would have kept Impressionism from coming to American? The critics are the villains, yet they were polite - even though in reality they were passive-aggressive cunts. Thus the Great Man who brought Impressionism to America is the bad guy - possessed by the Devil. What a joke, and yet it's an American joke. We've gone from a nation of empire builders to go-along-get-along beta males. The joke will be on the rest of America soon enough.
The Imperfecionists: Life in a newspaper. It's not great, like Bonfire, but is still a very good look at human relationships - in the workplace and beyond.
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession: Best understood as a collection of excellent New Yorker style essays on crime and criminals. The introduction was a fascinating piece on the unsolved murder (or was it?) of a Sherlock Holmes fanatic. The piece on the Aryan Brotherhood was good, too.
Hitch-22: So far a disappointment, as Hitchens lacks reflection. His life story is interesting, but in an autobiography I expect existential musings. It's supposed to be narcissistic, self-involved, and reflective. Hitchens, for example, wanted to bang his mom - or at least that's how it seemed to me. Yet he never examined his own erotic feelings for his mother. Instead, he just kept talking about how beautiful she was and how everyone else must have wanted to bang her.
And while he is someone who takes pride in his looks and youth, he avoided talking about his transition into middle and old age. Surely this caused him psychological trauma. How did he feel when he could not longer score hot chicks using his looks and charm? Surely he has groupies even at 60, but it's not the same thing.
Incidentally, no guy has written a great piece on transitioning to middle and old age, yet every guy has sorrow in his eyes when noting his 40th and 50th birthdays. (Once you hit 60, the happiness research shows, you are "over it," and actually look forward to birthdays again - since it means you're alive.) Why not? Are men too afraid to write about it, or would other men be too afraid to buy it?
Probably the only type of man who'd write such a book is such a huge pussy that no one would find his transition from swinging dick alpha to whiny beta of interest. A.J. Jacobs is probably the kind of person who'd write a book on transitioning to middle age. His entire life has been one of supplication, and thus he has no transition to write of.
With men, we have emotions, and then we get over them. Whatever emotions we had when transitioning through life cycles are in the rear view mirror. What's to talk about? That was so yesterday?
Done right, it'd be a fun book. Fortunately, I'm still too young to write it. Time stops for no man, though, and aging is going to slam into me eventually. It'd be useful to learn from those who have actually aged. What would my 50-year old self say to my 30-year old self? They will never meet, but they are interdependent.
I've been thinking of aging as stewardship. I'm 32, but I am eventually going to be 42. I am thus only borrowing my body/self/soul on behalf of my 42, 52, and 62 year old selves. The choices I make today are going to impact them - although the "them" will eventually be "I." What would they want me to do? How would their interest conflict with my own interests?
Probably they'd all want to me to make some memories to nurture their old souls, and so I'm off.
See you next week.
P.S. The poem on growing old has been written:
evening class, 20 years later
the hungry tug of too late;
webs of needles,
the same trees are here;
and grass grown on grass
but the faces now are young
and as you walk across the campus thinking
"memory is a poor excuse for the present"
the legs want to let the body fall as
old images cling to you like mollusks
and the girls now gone who once
claimed your substance
hang like broken shades
across the windows of your mind;
—at one time here
everything was mine—
now young lions claim the territory
and look out casually
over loose paws
and decide
mercifully to let this poor game crawl by. he, of course,
no match for the young lionesses,
or the Spring in the early sky.
at one time here—
once—
I enter a room and stand against a wall
and hear my name read, and
no, it is not the same:
my old professor looked like a walrus
as he spit my name out
into the spittoon of the world
and I said, HERE! while
feeling the sun run down
thru the hair of my head
like wires feeding life into life:
white rain, sea wild;
but this new one whispers my name (and it is dark);
and like a claw reaching down into some pit of me,
surrounded by walls like tombs I answer meekly,
here, and he moves on to another name.
I am older than he
and certainly not as fortunate
as the lionesses curl at his feet and purr delightedly,
and one gray old cat
twists its neck
and asks me: have you been here before?
yes, yes, yes, yes
I have
been here
before.
