Just want to be open about that.
This blogging thing is strange. I hesitate about it because I'm afraid it's pompous to share my random thoughts with the world. But: 1. the world isn't reading; I bet only my friends are, and 2. I DO have things to share.
Like, if even one person reads Crane's Chaplinesque because of this post, I'll be satisfied.
Like, my new found love for the world "like" in print.
Like, the fact that even though David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest quite often uses the word 'like' in a colloquial and valley girl sense, I actually don't like it because it always seems tongue-in-cheek - a way to safely deflate potentially over-reaching sections.
That book, by the way, is teaching me that there is no new sentence; virtuosity in sentence writing is obsolete as far as I'm concerned. What matters instead is insight; what do you see and what do you have to say? Not whether you can eliminate passive voice and bind many phrases together into a grammatically correct sentence. I can read 10,000 of Wallace's beautiful sentences and still feel completely uninterested. He seems reluctant to say anything real. It doesn't help that Infinite Jest is peppered with misogyny and gender bullshit: stereotypes of athletic women as mustached wanna-be men on hormones; glorification of males who sleep around; winking comedy at the thought of cross-dressing!
I am persisting, trying to finish it, trying to give it a complete chance, but it is difficult. I constantly feel I am wasting my time.
Whitman, on the other hand, is redundant, over-reaching, mystifying, and real. I save doses of Leaves of Grass so that I can swallow Infinite Jest.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment