metaphortunate son (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
metaphortunate) wrote2013-01-14 09:57 pm
metaphortunate) wrote2013-01-14 09:57 pm
Entry tags:
red not much
I just finished Red Plenty. I'm honestly not 100% sure why I was reading it; I mean, Soviet Russia isn't a big one of my interests. Not that it's not an interesting subject, but just not something I've been drawn to so far.
On the other hand: 1) it seems to be in the zeitgeist somehow, like Code Name Verity* was six months ago, and it's always kind of appealing to be able to participate in the big fannish conversation; 2) I like to make sure I'm reading some nonfiction or at least semi-nonfiction regularly, because I think it is just as temptingly easy and just as bad for me to feed my mind nothing but junk food as it is to feed my body that; 3) however I am shallow and lazy and the truth is I like spending time with history better if it's squeezed itself into a showy dress and stuffed a couple handfuls of plot into its bra. I know, shameful. Still, one must be honest with oneself, if one doesn't want a bunch of virtuously begun and never finished books lying about cluttering the bedroom or the hard drive.
Red Plenty, however, did not provide enough plot or characters or anything to make me like that aspect of it, and yet is fictional enough that I feel dumb now for having read it to scratch the learning itch. It is one of those books where you read it and then wish you had read the books listed in its bibliography instead. Also I feel dumb about the fact that it's the first book about Russia I've read in years and it was written by an English dude who doesn't speak Russian.
So I was thinking that I have never read any Solzhenitzyn, and maybe I would pick up Cancer Ward. But I have two arguments against that. The first is, as I have maybe mentioned earlier, that my general level of anxiety these days is such that I can't bear to look at cute animal pictures on the internet. They make me think of how animals are mostly treated, and how most of those animals are going extinct. God forbid I see a picture of a baby animal doing something cute because I either can't help thinking of its mother panicking just outside the frame, or else that it's being held by a human because it's been abandoned by its mother, because it's being raised in a zoo because its habitat is gone and all her instincts are all fucked up and the baby has been abandoned, and… yeah, I have to close the tab and compose myself. Can't really deal with cute animal pictures right now. So it seems to me like maybe it's not the right time to read Cancer Ward.
The other reason is that I tend to avoid Famous Important Narratives of Resistance by Oppressed Dudes because in my experience they tend to explore the depths of human nature and the cruelty and resilience and cowardice and anger and nobility in all people except for women, who get dragged in occasionally for real people to have sex with. (Elie Wiesel, Malcolm X, I'm talking to you.)
So now I'm not sure what to read next.
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*Have you read Code Name Verity? Go read Code Name Verity right fucking now. If you're local, I can loan it to you. Seriously. So good.
On the other hand: 1) it seems to be in the zeitgeist somehow, like Code Name Verity* was six months ago, and it's always kind of appealing to be able to participate in the big fannish conversation; 2) I like to make sure I'm reading some nonfiction or at least semi-nonfiction regularly, because I think it is just as temptingly easy and just as bad for me to feed my mind nothing but junk food as it is to feed my body that; 3) however I am shallow and lazy and the truth is I like spending time with history better if it's squeezed itself into a showy dress and stuffed a couple handfuls of plot into its bra. I know, shameful. Still, one must be honest with oneself, if one doesn't want a bunch of virtuously begun and never finished books lying about cluttering the bedroom or the hard drive.
Red Plenty, however, did not provide enough plot or characters or anything to make me like that aspect of it, and yet is fictional enough that I feel dumb now for having read it to scratch the learning itch. It is one of those books where you read it and then wish you had read the books listed in its bibliography instead. Also I feel dumb about the fact that it's the first book about Russia I've read in years and it was written by an English dude who doesn't speak Russian.
So I was thinking that I have never read any Solzhenitzyn, and maybe I would pick up Cancer Ward. But I have two arguments against that. The first is, as I have maybe mentioned earlier, that my general level of anxiety these days is such that I can't bear to look at cute animal pictures on the internet. They make me think of how animals are mostly treated, and how most of those animals are going extinct. God forbid I see a picture of a baby animal doing something cute because I either can't help thinking of its mother panicking just outside the frame, or else that it's being held by a human because it's been abandoned by its mother, because it's being raised in a zoo because its habitat is gone and all her instincts are all fucked up and the baby has been abandoned, and… yeah, I have to close the tab and compose myself. Can't really deal with cute animal pictures right now. So it seems to me like maybe it's not the right time to read Cancer Ward.
The other reason is that I tend to avoid Famous Important Narratives of Resistance by Oppressed Dudes because in my experience they tend to explore the depths of human nature and the cruelty and resilience and cowardice and anger and nobility in all people except for women, who get dragged in occasionally for real people to have sex with. (Elie Wiesel, Malcolm X, I'm talking to you.)
So now I'm not sure what to read next.
----------
*Have you read Code Name Verity? Go read Code Name Verity right fucking now. If you're local, I can loan it to you. Seriously. So good.
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I realise the Author is Dead (which is handy, because he can't sue me for libel) but I do think it's a useful thing to know, whether it affects the literary style or not.
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I can't understand why this isn't more widely known about Koestler (though I have my suspicions - probably once you get to a certain level of "grand old man of letters" you can get away with any old tosh - there were people citing William S. Burroughs on the folly of gun control approvingly last week notwithstanding that a man who decides to start playing William Tell while drunk/stoned with his wife and a handgun isn't exactly a poster boy for responsible gun ownership)
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*blink*
I would probably unironically describe myself as a Burroughs fan, and that is the dumbest shit I have heard this week if not year. (Which is saying something.)
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"'After a shooting spree,' author William Burroughs once said, 'they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.' Burroughs continued: 'I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.'"
Um yeah, can we get Joan's opinion on that? Oh wait...
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I'm sorry you're feeling so anxious. I'm dealing with my current stress levels by reposting pictures of trees and untroubled landscapes on Pinterest.
ETA OK, trees, landscapes, pretty buildings, recipes, rocks, uplifting quotations, and the occasional skeleton.
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If you maybe want Memoirs of Heroic Resistance written by women, uh, later, two of my faves are Grey Is The Color Of Hope by Irina Ratushinskaya (1988) and the much earlier Hope Against Hope (1970) and Hope Abandoned (1974) by Nadezhda Mandelstam. But they are really heartrending. But good!