Editors Note: Many of you will likely glance at this post, notice that it is not a “pump up jam”, a recipe for taquitos, something you can buy on Amazon, or contain poop jokes, and return to your web-browsing. That is fine, so long as you include this article in your browsing. It really is TBSE. This whole entry is simply a lengthy suggestion to read that link.
As anyone who has read any of my writing likely knows…i dont read many books. You would know this, not because I opine about it, but because its obvious. Its evident in my somewhat limited vocabulary and propensity to use profanity and penis jokes when I lack a more sophisticated way of saying what I want or need a cheap way to make people laugh. (Even the use of “propensity” just now is me over compensating for my limited and small…penis….see what I did just there…i substituted penis for vocab).
In the entirety of my life I would guess that I have read less than 25 books cover to cover (Good Might Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, Hardy Boys, Berenstain Bears, Seuss, and Silverstein excluded). This is not something I’m proud of. But it is something, like my other flaws, that I am quick to point out to others. Its a coping mechanism that allows me to beat people to the punch line and defuse as much potential embarrassment as possible. Lots of us do it. I’ve done so just now for two reasons. Firstly, its 1:21 a.m. and I need words to fill my post tomorrow or else Tuna is going to ban me from his Newport time share before I ever get a chance to take advantage of it. Secondly, people who know me likely scoffed the second they saw me recommend a novelist as The Best Stuff Ever. They would be right to scoff. I’ve not read Freedom, nor The Corrections, nor any other novel by Jonathan Franzen. His works will join a novel-length list of other books that sound interesting, come highly recommended, would make me a smarter person and better writer and most importantly….I will never read them.
However, despite never reading a Franzen novel, i still feel quite comfortable recommending him as TBSE base solely on his essay in this weekend’s NYT. (Feel free to stop reading my ruminations and read “Liking is for cowards. Go for what hurts.”)
For those of you who stuck around, here is an excerpt from the essay which was adapted from a graduation speech he gave:
“Our lives look a lot more interesting when they’re filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery(…)To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.(…) My aim here is mainly to set up a contrast between the narcissistic tendencies of technology and the problem of actual love. My friend Alice Sebold likes to talk about “getting down in the pit and loving somebody.” She has in mind the dirt that love inevitably splatters on the mirror of our self-regard.The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.”
If you read the whole article, and I hope you do, you’ll see there is great irony in reading that article online, sharing it on a blog, it likely then getting shared on facebook….and someone potentially “liking” the post. If you read the whole article you’ll also have spent 10 minutes of your day very well. I urge you to take the time. If you’ve got time to check this blog, you’ve got time to read it. It is extremely compelling writing that hits on a number of massive issues/questions that have been tumbling through my head recently. Among them:
People cant possibly be as happy as they look on facebook, can they?
What are the long term implications of a growing love affair with technology?
What compromises and moral shortcuts do we make in an ongoing quest to be likeable?
What are the consequences of loving incompletely and insufficiently?
Will the thickening shampoo I use still work once I shower after “getting down in the pit and loving somebody.”
I think the last question is the one I wrestle with most…not just because L’Oreal Vive for Men Thickening cost 5 bucks a bottle. But because its a scary thought..in a very real, raw, and serious way…what does that dirt look like, feel like, taste like. Can you get it off? Do you want to get it off?
Anyhow, I am most disappointed in my lack of reading when I come across things like Franzen’s essay. If I can be so moved to thought and feeling from such short pieces like this, what else must I be missing in long form? Luckily Franzen and others also write TBSE in shorter forms that keep me interested and allow me to sound pseudo-literate.
