advice, literature, my nemeses

Hey babes,
Here’s a new ADVICE! It’s sure been a long time, and this one is frankly a doozy. I would really love some other perspectives on it, and I’m sure the letter writer would as well.

I got up this morning and put on my workout clothes first thing, even though I won’t go to the Y until like 3:00, in the hopes that it will make me actually go. Then I made a huge plate of french toast and drank 4 cups of coffee while listening to THE BEST OF ENYA.

I got an old beat up copy of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Gonna dig back into this literary vibe. I’m thinking lately about the novelists who have meant the most to me, and what it means that they have, and whether I will still have feelings for them if I live to be 80 or if they will seem childish. Also the difference between Stephen King meaning a lot to me and DFW meaning a lot to me. There is a difference but what is it, and does it matter? The words that have built the person you are. In so many ways I wouldn’t be quite who I am today, or doing quite the same things I am doing, had I not spent my entire childhood intensely, intensely reading King’s entire output. At the same time, those are not good books in the same way that Member of the Wedding is a good book. What does “good” mean. These are boring questions that irritate me whenever anyone tries to embark on them in a reputable publication, with the sole exception of when Roger Ebert said Nicholas Sparks should legally not be allowed to say Cormac McCarthy’s name out loud, or whatever that fucking classic literary insult was. Oh, here it is:

To be sure, I resent the sacrilege Nicholas Sparks commits by mentioning himself in the same sentence as Cormac McCarthy. I would not even allow him to say “Hello, bookstore? This is Nicholas Sparks. Could you send over the new Cormac McCarthy novel?” He should show respect by ordering anonymously.

LOLOLOLOLOL ACTUAL LOLing ALONE IN MY HOUSE RIGHT THIS MOMENT

Anyway, if we are honest with ourselves most of us have powerful feelings about all manner of literature, and it’s all jumbled together in our hearts and minds. We know Infinite Jest is “better” than The Shining, yet they both give our heart a murmur; they both feel important to our spiritual foundation. I find notions of better/worse in art troubling and yet I also find the notion of calling all art equally good troubling. What to do! Probably nothing

I can’t believe I am even thinking about this. It is actually the most boring topic on the earth. I am like engaging with a topic that the most tedious 19th-century windbags had already exhausted in their boring-ass books on aesthetics and mass culture and how poor people are stupid. Lullabies and folk songs vs. “real” music, etc. You know what, lets all just shut up about this. Unless we are going to talk about what shitty hacks Jeffrey Eugenides and Nicholas Sparks are or something, I guess, which I’m always up for. Jeffrey Eugenides makes Stephen King look like Winston Churchill plus Gloria Steinem. I truly am the king of references. God I wish Eugenides read my blog.

My arch nemeses who I dreadfully wish read my blog:

– Gene Weingarten
– Anthony Lane
– George W. Bush
– Jeff Koons
– Mark Zuckerberg
– The government of Israel
– every police officer in America
– Michelle Rhee
– the people behind the great hipster bacon fad of the aughts
– the techno-libertarians of San Francisco
– every dude who has ever yelled gross things at me on the street
– the American criminal justice system
– whoever decided all women’s dress-pants must have flared legs many millions of inches wide
– every nation’s military
– anyone unironically identified as an entrepreneur
– basically most people who are alive
– Seth MacFarlane

I have a friend who told me Stephen King is acceptable and Marion Zimmer Bradley is not because “Stephen King has class rage.” I feel good about this assessment.