On the shifting nature of fiction and reality in early 2021, considering GameStop, the Capitol Insurrection, chaos magic, Pinter, Beckett, Trump, Biden, Pynchon and the Whole Sick Crew.
I'm glad the Unworkable Equilibrium has continued. I wasn't sure if the essay on seediness was considered UE3 or a new topic. I like the UE framing because it implies that change is possible and maybe inevitable.
Also, most readers of this essay might be missing this, but as a resident of Fort Worth Texas, I have the feeling that the UE is actually accelerating. I assumed it would slow down, with the end of the Trump presidency, but just as the effects of the COVID-19 vaccine are starting to show up, an unprecedented snow storm hit that is forcing us to stay home and many of us don't even have power. It makes you wonder what is going to happen next.
"These people, for better and worse, represent either an absurd naïveté (that there is a world outside the Internet), or a kind of highly evolved, future-facing wisdom (that only IRL actions have any traction now—that you can only beat the Internet by leaving it behind), both of which I feel, to alternating degrees, while maintaining my own quasi-religious devotion to the book as a complete, analogue object, against all evidence that it is an artifact from a bygone age—and against the pull of the forces that have refocused my attention, once again, into this very-online essay series."
Weird how for writers who love the book for its reassuring weight, for its being freighted with legitimacy cuz we grew up reading books so they're ingrained as 'complete, analogue object[s]' w/ a sense of realness beyond any the farcical parade but for SO MANY other people they are objects with no meaning (or obscured meaning), no realness, historical curiosities like daguerrotypes. OR if books hold meaning for them it's just a sense of oppression and not getting it, because they didn't like reading and books remind them of being forced to slog thru Harper Lee in high school. i don't mean this in a "people should read more way," i'm just wondering what, if anything, ppl who don't read or like to read hang onto as their continuum of realness, the through-line that contains the authentic. do they HAVE one?
i've turned to writers to help me make sense of our plague year, drug problems, all of that, lacking the emotional vocab (and the vocab PERIOD) to articulate what i feel.
so maybe the devotion to causes, conspiracies, is the same devotion readers/writers have for the Word that slices thru the confusion and organizes experiences for us so we can understand them.
it makes me sad, and NOT just for myself and the vanishingly small chances of my own success in the field of writing...sad bcuz there IS a calm rationality, a certain devotion to facts and characters cohering into a narrative, that books bestow at a deeper level than images or emotions. human understanding and a sense of history, talking across cities and centuries. books can give people both a refuge from the crazy madness AND the strong background in verbal audacity/creativity to make their own bold interpretations.
speaking of bold...this is a bold point to make:
"The content of what Trump says, right up to and including his “you need to show strength” speech on 1.6, may be pure lies, but the degree to which his staunchest supporters really support him, the depth and legitimacy of that, is impossible to deny (indeed, it’s a persistent fixation of the mainstream press). In this regard, Biden is surely illegitimate—he may have fairly won the election, and, like Kerry, Obama, and Clinton before him, he lesser-eviled a vote out of me, but he doesn’t have true support in this regard, by any stretch of the imagination. People support him because they feel like they should; he doesn’t filter through into their fantasy lives, touching them on the level where real and unreal combine into something dark, secret, and intractable"
if enough ppl read this you would probably be pilloried for saying it. even tho it feels absolutely right to me. even ppl who are glad biden is in are like 'oh, yeah...he'll be a one term president, he's too old, i'm just glad he's not trump.'
can easily imagine them wearing NOT MY PRESIDENT bush II era t-shirts, not angry shouting shirts in 20 point font but like...the casual shrug-off that i keep hearing re: biden
great article. love reading yr stuff.
and yes i also resent feeling compelled to pay attn to the world. not doing so is the reason i love music, movies, drugs, books...ANYTHING that hijacks my attn.
I'm glad the Unworkable Equilibrium has continued. I wasn't sure if the essay on seediness was considered UE3 or a new topic. I like the UE framing because it implies that change is possible and maybe inevitable.
Also, most readers of this essay might be missing this, but as a resident of Fort Worth Texas, I have the feeling that the UE is actually accelerating. I assumed it would slow down, with the end of the Trump presidency, but just as the effects of the COVID-19 vaccine are starting to show up, an unprecedented snow storm hit that is forcing us to stay home and many of us don't even have power. It makes you wonder what is going to happen next.
"These people, for better and worse, represent either an absurd naïveté (that there is a world outside the Internet), or a kind of highly evolved, future-facing wisdom (that only IRL actions have any traction now—that you can only beat the Internet by leaving it behind), both of which I feel, to alternating degrees, while maintaining my own quasi-religious devotion to the book as a complete, analogue object, against all evidence that it is an artifact from a bygone age—and against the pull of the forces that have refocused my attention, once again, into this very-online essay series."
Weird how for writers who love the book for its reassuring weight, for its being freighted with legitimacy cuz we grew up reading books so they're ingrained as 'complete, analogue object[s]' w/ a sense of realness beyond any the farcical parade but for SO MANY other people they are objects with no meaning (or obscured meaning), no realness, historical curiosities like daguerrotypes. OR if books hold meaning for them it's just a sense of oppression and not getting it, because they didn't like reading and books remind them of being forced to slog thru Harper Lee in high school. i don't mean this in a "people should read more way," i'm just wondering what, if anything, ppl who don't read or like to read hang onto as their continuum of realness, the through-line that contains the authentic. do they HAVE one?
i've turned to writers to help me make sense of our plague year, drug problems, all of that, lacking the emotional vocab (and the vocab PERIOD) to articulate what i feel.
so maybe the devotion to causes, conspiracies, is the same devotion readers/writers have for the Word that slices thru the confusion and organizes experiences for us so we can understand them.
it makes me sad, and NOT just for myself and the vanishingly small chances of my own success in the field of writing...sad bcuz there IS a calm rationality, a certain devotion to facts and characters cohering into a narrative, that books bestow at a deeper level than images or emotions. human understanding and a sense of history, talking across cities and centuries. books can give people both a refuge from the crazy madness AND the strong background in verbal audacity/creativity to make their own bold interpretations.
speaking of bold...this is a bold point to make:
"The content of what Trump says, right up to and including his “you need to show strength” speech on 1.6, may be pure lies, but the degree to which his staunchest supporters really support him, the depth and legitimacy of that, is impossible to deny (indeed, it’s a persistent fixation of the mainstream press). In this regard, Biden is surely illegitimate—he may have fairly won the election, and, like Kerry, Obama, and Clinton before him, he lesser-eviled a vote out of me, but he doesn’t have true support in this regard, by any stretch of the imagination. People support him because they feel like they should; he doesn’t filter through into their fantasy lives, touching them on the level where real and unreal combine into something dark, secret, and intractable"
if enough ppl read this you would probably be pilloried for saying it. even tho it feels absolutely right to me. even ppl who are glad biden is in are like 'oh, yeah...he'll be a one term president, he's too old, i'm just glad he's not trump.'
can easily imagine them wearing NOT MY PRESIDENT bush II era t-shirts, not angry shouting shirts in 20 point font but like...the casual shrug-off that i keep hearing re: biden
great article. love reading yr stuff.
and yes i also resent feeling compelled to pay attn to the world. not doing so is the reason i love music, movies, drugs, books...ANYTHING that hijacks my attn.
anything as near as now hurts to look at.