Finally....

Here's "The Iceman"! Check it out, for reallll. The philosophical and ethical implications are boundless and I want to discuss them with all of you!

On a semi-related-but-not-really note, I finished reading two books in the last two days, one of which qualifies under the "recommended to me" goal, and one which I just picked up, started reading, and promptly stole from my friend because it is thoroughly awesome.

How I Became Stupid is a delightful reexamination of the age-old plague of ennui that befalls all the youthful intellectuals of the world from time to time. Although it doesn't provide any realistic* "solutions" to the deeply painful experience of being too aware of the world, it playfully deconstructs all the normal alternatives: alcoholism, suicide, and Prozac. Moral of the story: moderation is the key to a (functional) intellectual life. It's not groundbreaking or exceedingly innovative in any way, it's just a legitimately pleasurable reading experience.

The second novel, Identity, seems like a reasonably standard story plot (middle-aged couple begins to question their love because they are really - gasp - questioning their own identities) but is a technical marvel. For instance: it was not until page 150 that I became aware that every few paragraphs or so, the narration switched between past and present tense, normally something that I'm a huge stickler against. But when handled properly, tense change is an incredibly effective way to pace a story. Like most advanced writing techniques, tense changes are best experienced on a subliminal level, to be discerned explicitly upon a second, closer read. Nabokov has the same effect with his use of metaphor: there are certain sentences in Lolita that you need to read over and over again to realize exactly what has just been said. Not because the language is too dense, no - it's more that you've just been lulled into such a sense of bewilderment at the ease and flow of the language that you don't pay attention to the actual words. Since ripping one such example out of context from either book would only negate the effect in question, you just have to take my word for it. And all this is not to say that the philosophical discussions of projecting and mirroring and identity-depending-on-other-people's-perceptions-of-you-as-well-as-your-own aren't valid and equally good parts of the book, just. I wanted to highlight the joyous element of simply reading this text.

Reading these two books at the same time amplified certain themes that have been simmering in my mind lately, and each highlighted certain undertones in the other that... well, I probably would have picked up on them anyway, but the juxtaposition was lovely. Only they both cut pretty heavily into my aim to become a hard-hearted cynic, traversing the world in self-satisfied, misanthropic solitude... stupid need for stupid friends and stupid love and stupid human contact. Blech.

*Re: Realistic solutions.... spoiler alerts. See below.

What the fuck, stupid indie soulmates. That's some fucking bulllllshit. I spent ten years of my life undoing the damage Disney did me as a child, and having my hard won pragmatism battered from all pop culture angles... It isn't enough that Carrie and Big end up together, or Jim and Pam, or Josh and Donna... now the fucking offbeat literature that is supposed to PROMOTE shrugging off all that mass media crap and living your own life has to succumb to the storybook happy ending? Yes, it's very easy to live true love when SOMEONE IS WRITING YOUR SCRIPT FOR YOU.