Raw, but c*nsored blabbing and blogging of a young journalista
and local news producer in Southern New England.
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Today on TopStoryLive:
Friday, April 14, 2006
Another entertaining read
I have another book-report-review blog entry to tell you about. While the author doesn't seem to be as fire-breathing as Justin Henderson, she is just as entertaining.
I guess it's been a long time since I read The Sun Also Rises, and so I don't remember much of it. I guess it's in one of those times of my life when I now feel I didn't fathom as much as I do now (don't ask how or why).
But Dahne's assessment seems dead-on; those people that you think are the pillars of society are actually very boring indeed:
Possibly it was written in order to prove that, while a bunch of people sitting around cafes in Paris or bullfights in Spain getting drunk may sound like they would do something interesting, they don't. The point can't be in the plot, since I've given it all to you right there. If having your characters go on a fishing trip provides a relief because it's finally some action, you have a fucking problem.
So this roundabout concept-pushing is what all those followers of "Papa" are drooling over?
Oh, did I mention that Brett was a nurse in WWI where her fiancee died, and Jake is impotent due to injuries sustained in said war? Well, neither does the book. You're supposed to figure it out by literary osmosis or something. It's one of those "look at what he doesn't say" books, which is another way of proving that when a brain is starved enough for sustenance it will invent some just to keep from imploding. So the point is that these people are wounded. Broken.
Hey, wanna know something?
So is everybody.
Um, yeah, I suppose I should be thankful somebody must have done the deductive reasoning for me and told all the class about the WWI-backstory stuff. Oh, yeah, I knew this, I just don't remember coming to the conclusion on my own.
As for the "broken" bit, maybe it's that relating-to-people kind of thing, like, "my situation isn't as bad as Jake's," or whatever, as to why we read about the broken who never mend themselves neatly for us.
And you know what's worse? They refuse to do anything about it. They refuse to even consider trying to do something about it.
• • •
Run or limp or crawl, it doesn't matter. But don't just sit by the side of the road and bitch about the people going by.
Now this bit is particularly interesting and inspirational to me at this point in my life because I want someone to come along and give me a swift kick in the pants. I am stagnant and have no impetus or motivation to get out of this rut that I'm in on so many levels.
I'm reading recently (or, I read recently -- not the past tense of "to read") that some people, in depression, flat-out need, get, attain, help to get themselves out of bed in the morning. Roommates, perhaps not so much helpful, but what if a group of depressed people got together to try and help each other up?
Is a group home for depressives as opposed to autistic persons, people in wheelchairs, people who have less-than-average motor skills or whose minds are younger than their bodies -- a good idea?
And now we move on to Brett, since the word 'bitch' has come up and anyway you're wondering what the hell the title has to do with anything.
• • •
[I hate]... Women who ruin people. (And yes, the archetype is almost exclusively feminine, which irks me on a feminist level almost as much as the women who play along with it.)
• • •
She does nothing but make people miserable, and you know what? They can't get enough of her. They love her. They'd do anything for her. They're being destroyed bit by bit every minute they're near her, and for all you know she's so wrapped up in herself she doesn't even see it happening.
I've known at least one woman, maybe two, maybe three, in my life who is like this. And if not particularly like Brett, then just plain manipulative.
Or maybe I'm mixing up manipulative with bossy. Both are equally abhorrent.
But with the women I realized it about, I started to realize, I am really not into this. I'm not getting the kind of things out of this relationship that I want. I don't like this woman running my life like this.
This also goes to a comment in a Fark article comment thread (do a find on the page for "resent who you become") -- where, with one of the women, I started to fight back, and it was like even though we were on equal footing for decision-making, she still had to rule the roost. And even though she was bossy, I wasn't allowed to match her in "bossiness;" she would reprimand me for what she could get away with, and when I would reprimand her for the same thing, she would laugh it off with a joke. (That fucking bullshit is unfair, but how the fuck do I deal with it?)
Dahne also notes the intense worshipping of alcohol:
If you took a drink every time somebody in this book did, you'd be blind by page forty. I mean hospitalization, maybe a liver transplant here. These people aren't alcoholics. They're superhuman. Not only do they imbibe more than the combined consumption of some Soviet satillites[sic], they manage to do it without doing anything remotely interesting.
I don't have much to say here except Bravo to the paragraph for what it says. And then:
...I couldn't find a point. So I asked the teacher. [Teacher? Aren't you supposed to be in college? We call them perfessers.] Turns out, it's one of those books where the point is that there isn't a point. Cute. Everyone in it is so ruined that they're barely alive. You know what it turns out the pervasive, underlying theme is?
Emotional blue balls.
Give me a fucking break.
Hmm. So is it that we should act and be damned instead of constantly being trapped in indecision? That everlasting theme of we want it, can't have it, once we get it we want something else?
Dahne manages to stay on topic better than I have here, but she brings up good points to kick at. Brett, as though she were reading this blog, it is unacceptable to do it halfway. You tried getting Jake up? And it didn't work? Then give up.
And I think if I'm not mistaken Brett eventually does, doesn't she?
So, short version: Ernest Hemingway can bite me.
Though he is, however, one of the few authors with whom I will admit I might lose a fistfight.
