Today I Learned

Today I learned the opening to Henry James's The Golden Bowl is as unprepossessing as rumored. It has just enough narrative feints to make you think, 'Oh, who cares?' But a co-worker told me it was worth it if you could make it past page 100.

Fat chance.

Today I also learned just how unbearable and snotty younger people can be -- and I try not to condemn them because I was super-unbearable for ages as a young person -- but these kids were especially heinous! In my office, they were discussing a mutual friend who "likes really cheesy people, like the kind of people who are singer-songwriters and play at the Living Room - you know, I just hang out with my own type of people, in my intellectual-snob kind of way -- she hangs out with people I would never, ever hang out with." I sat there in shock, having met principally this kind of person in my early years in New York and having prized them as sensitive individuals who could also write a decent pop song.

I couldn't believe "singer-songwriters" was a whole category of lame-type people!

Plus, part of my sense of outrage as I sat there, was, that I actually consider the Living Room to be a really good gig! I've never played there, for instance. I never got that high. I frickin played at smaller places and I would consider it a goddamn honor to play at the Living Room!

But I also couldn't believe the sneering, confident tone these people expressed their opinions in -- they set their ideas forth as if no one had ever said "how stupid! How stuck up! You guys are assholes!" ever once! In all their lives! To them!

I also realized how down-at-heel my entire life had been, full of nothing but humble people who thought playing at the Living Room was kind of a big deal.

I value people who would never say anything like what these kids said - and I feel sorry for them because I'm sure they'll grow up and realize how retarded and offensive it was, and they'll cringe and moan in shame, like I've done over my moments of arrogance.

But it won't ever be as bad for them because someone gave them license to think they're better than other people. Which I think sucks.

Today I Learned

That a new red dress can provide more happiness than nearly anything.

I got a new red dress. It's nicer than the one pictured here. It's a heavy-ish rayon, with this swingy full skirt that starts from under the bust, in the current fashion. It has tight sleeves to the elbow, and is a declarative, fabulous crimson color.

Wow. I forgot how much a really good piece of clothing can do for your state of mind.

Watching Your Hairline Recede, My Vain Darling

I haven't posted in ages -- I've been waiting for beckett to show up and give his opinion on the Elliot Spitzer thing. But he, beckett, is very busy right now and it seems unlikely he will drop by, though I wish he would -- I miss him.

I'm not enjoying London Fields by Martin Amis. I started it in a Granta magazine someone left in the lobby of my apartment building. You know how the font and presention of a piece of writing can affect your response? I found the opening of London Fields (in Granta) riveting. The magazine is so high quality and the excerpt seemed excellent - Amis in control, some vivid characters, some well-crafted trouble brewing. I got the book out of the library and am finding it interminable and sour in mood. The woman character is sheer male fantasy; the male characters unappealing to the point of horror. It goes on and on in the same mood about the same subjects, and is so boring... I think Amis might be trying to emulate American gigantism, a la Saul Bellow (his idol), but that blathering-about-any-old-thing-at-length isn't a good tendency in any writer, I don't think. James Wood rightly denounced it as an emotional-distancing ploy in American writers, citing J. Franzen's flights of erudition about chemical compounds, industrial parks etc. in The Corrections.

In general I like Amis, though -- he writes with a real snap. That sharp, caustic narrative voice is very welcome to me after I plowed through Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman. That novel was devoid of humor and nothing made up for it. Certainly not the plain, artless style. Not the poignancy of the romance though that was definitely the best thing in the book. For a novel about two young men who have a steamy affair one summer, it just feels too elegiac, somber and lifeless. Aciman may be trying for a Proustian tone -- he's a Proust scholar -- but it's a misfire. The tone is more like one used by and about middle-aged lovers who are stunned by the beauty of the past as much as the love affair they had in it.

Today I learned ... after Googling for a while, that Martin Amis's wife, Isabel Fonseca, has very beautiful ankles.