August, reluctantly

books that didn't hit and cultural consumption

I apologize for my absence once more! I’ve been getting lovely comments about your summer reading along with some new subscribers on here. Thank you and welcome!!! I promise to show up as my best self!!! Now the reason I’ve been mute is that, put simply, I haven’t had much to say. Summer is my forced thinking time, and while these thoughts remain mere seeds in soil, I also hate to report that I unfortunately picked up a handful of books this summer that did not land well in whatever state they found me. I was just not absorbing them. Infinite Jest being the chief culprit (I really put in the time and effort but I just couldn’t get myself to care about the quebecois separatist plot line).

Last month, I had a euphoric city vacation with friends, where I spent my time laughing until my cheeks hurt and walking until my feet bled as opposed to reading and writing my brains out. And then went on a more remote trip with friends where my fear of losing data or back-ups of my life’s work was so significant that I left my computer at home, something which I haven’t done since high school. I still had a bit of work to do and stuff to figure out so I brought a notebook and wrote by hand all week, another thing I haven’t done since high school. You know my thing about typing; I even journal on my computer etc. etc. I packed my favorite muji pen and a notebook so gorgeous I had been saving it for years. I had files loaded onto my phone incase I needed to access something and for the rest wrote everything out by hand. The conclusion of this isn’t some trite realization that my thoughts blossomed via the handwritten word but I’ll say that I got more writing done than I thought I would.

But as we inch towards the middle of the month of august, I have finally picked up a novel I cannot put down, and that is Brightness Falls by Jay McInerney which is so gdamn fun and exactly the stuff I have been seeking out all summer. Late in June I read another of McInerney’s works, The Last of the Savages, which was just about the only other novel I enjoyed reading this summer. Brightness Falls really is more fun though, in that it is very Fitzgeraldian, set against the background of the ambition, money and power of New York in the 80s. There’s also marriage troubles, and a plot to take over the publishing house the protagonist works at. I’m almost done with it and will be handing my copy to friends (and adding it to my douchebag lit list).

McInerney is but of course a peer of Bret Easton Ellis, and I think the last two years of my literary explorations have been that of discovering novels from the 80s. Like every other insufferable teenager of my generation, I proclaimed the 60s as my decade of choice but now come to think, the 80s were pretty cool and complex!!!! That is to say, my algorithm seems to indicate that I am the only person enjoying the TV adaptation of The Shards. Is the book better? Of course, but I am still enjoying myself a lot and by now have cultivated the good sense of knowing what I can and cannot expect of Ryan Murphy, and visually I love the universe he recreates!!! The bedrooms and set design in general I find to die for and so illustrative of 80s spoiled brats. The actor playing Bret I find also great!

Another curious thing happened: this has been the summer I have once again been taken captive by trash television.

I have watched trash television since the wonderfully impactful and developmental age of 14 but acquired an intolerance to it the year or two, not being able to stand let alone feel entertained by women trivially shouting at each other. Nature heals and so does my appetite for reality television. I actually wrote an entire essay about The Secret Life of Mormon Wives, but decided to shelf it, at once for my own self-preservation and your opinion of me, but also because the updates and scandals relating to the cast have been rolling in all summer (and continue to) at a pace I couldn’t adequately chronicle. Whatever I wrote would have been rendered an incomplete, historical document by the time I hit post. I then had all these ethical qualms about my enjoyment of reality tv that I decided to simply unload my theories to my friends. I am free for now, but only until the next season drops.

I also finally got around to watching the Bonjour Tristesse remake, which I did not hate at all!!!! It is without a doubt different from the book I've loved for so long. It is a modern retelling though modernity isn’t being stuffed down your throat either. It’s just wistful and sweet and I won’t complain about movies like these being made! Plus, Chloe Sevigny is so good in it (and watching her this week on this new show The Five Star Weekend playing the opposite character just reinforces the thought that she is the coolest and can do absolutely everything).

As with every summer, I feel like something of an outsider because it seems everyone loves summer except me. I also celebrate my birthday in July, and the date threatens to almost take me out every year. To my surprise, my 27th birthday (a joyful day against subconscious attempts of mine to ruin for myself), I came out of it actually feeling younger than I’ve ever felt, which is saying a lot for someone who felt she was traversing a long and senile girlhood ages 19-22. Life gets so much better every year and I couldn’t be more grateful for all of it!! Still, I cannot sit still and am eager to fulfill all the promises I have made to myself and make something out these seeds hopefully not in soil for much longer!!! This august, like all the others, I feel ready to apply the lessons of a new age, like a New Years Day, or more amply perhaps, a september first. So I trundle along, restlessly, september almost in sight.