Jeez, don't get all Movie of the Week. I was just too cheap to buy you a real present.

Dawn ,'The Killer In Me'


Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.

There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."


JZ - Sep 26, 2007 7:58:18 am PDT #3970 of 28212
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.

I have read and loved the hell out of A Heartbreaking Work, and the essayist is just as full of willful misunderstanding of that one as all the others. My reading was that Eggers was damn well aware of his own drama-queeniness and the operatic OTTness of his experiences as co-orphan quasi-parent to Toph.

He spent the entire book wrestling with just how down-to-the-marrow shitty, universe-wrecking the death of one's parents is; how terrifying it is to be responsible for a child when you're not quite done being one yourself; how scary it is to be hit with tidal waves of parental love and delight years before you're ready; how going through all that does make you feel decades older than your peers - and how, if you're a college-educated member of the snarky ironic hipster generation, you can't help rolling your eyes and gagging at your own operatic suffering even as you're succumbing to it, but what the hell other language can you use to describe it? And there you go, being ridiculous again. You can't get away from and can't bear the earnestness and the sap, and you can't find the language to convey any of it without becoming even more ridiculous to yourself. All the snippets the essayist picked to mock were, IIRC, more severely sneering toward himself than anyone else.

Not to mention that all but a small portion of the memoir takes place in San Francisco -- however, it does start in Brooklyn, and heaven forfend any post-post-postmodern literary essayist should miss a chance to piss all over Eggers and McSweeney's.

But really, this bit of praise tells me all I need to know about what sort of literature the essayist truly values:

Moreover, Lethem doesn’t pull punches. On the second page of The Fortress of Solitude, a kitten is accidentally killed while the protagonist’s mother smokes cigarettes.

Oooh! How daring and raw and ripe with unhealed trauma and rooted in gritty Brooklyn reality! I love Lethem to bits too, but those two sentences caused me to practically auto-deoculate with the @@ing.


Polter-Cow - Sep 26, 2007 8:18:55 am PDT #3971 of 28212
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!

My reading was that Eggers was damn well aware of his own drama-queeniness and the operatic OTTness of his experiences as co-orphan quasi-parent to Toph.

Uh oh. I love Heartbreaking Work, but I'm going to have trouble ever reading it again without thinking his brother is TOOOOOOOPH.


Scrappy - Sep 26, 2007 8:21:08 am PDT #3972 of 28212
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

I agree one zillion percent with jz.


JZ - Sep 26, 2007 8:33:52 am PDT #3973 of 28212
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.

I agree one zillion percent with jz.

Awww! ::dances around the office::


erikaj - Sep 26, 2007 9:03:06 am PDT #3974 of 28212
Always Anti-fascist!

Fortress of Solitude rocked my socks, but "You're making my side look stupid. Get off my side." No, wait. Noo Yawk: "Get off my side, you fucking fuck."ETA: That was to Essay Man, not JZ.


Polter-Cow - Sep 26, 2007 1:40:08 pm PDT #3975 of 28212
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!

I finished American Gods last night. I was afraid it would be another "really like," but it turns out I loved it.


Strix - Sep 26, 2007 2:02:11 pm PDT #3976 of 28212
A dress should be tight enough to show you're a woman but loose enough to flee from zombies. — Ginger

Oh, I loved The Dark Is Rising series, but I think it's becauseI read it as a kid, and it (and other books) are the reason I have such an interest in Celtic mythology and Arthurian legends.

I can't read it objectively; it's always a nostalgia read.

You know, I don't remember a huge amount of my childood and teen years vividly, so much to the extent that I have occasionaly wondered about memory repression/alien abduction/Satanic cult abuse (kidding! kinda!) but I think it's because I spent so much of my childhood out of body, in some other reality brought to me by books.


DebetEsse - Sep 26, 2007 2:32:00 pm PDT #3977 of 28212
Woe to the fucking wicked.

You, too, Erin? Not on the Dark Is Rising stuff, but on the lack of childhood memory.

I'm almost done with Storm Front. Harry Dresden is made of win.

P-C, now you need to read Anasi Boys! I do love American Gods, though. I will re-read right before (or, perhaps on) my Great American Road Trip that I swear will really truly happen someday.


Atropa - Sep 26, 2007 2:34:29 pm PDT #3978 of 28212
The artist formerly associated with cupcakes.

You, too, Erin? Not on the Dark Is Rising stuff, but on the lack of childhood memory.

Same here. I mean, I have very clear memories of some stuff from childhood, but a lot of it is a haze of books I dove into.


Polter-Cow - Sep 26, 2007 2:40:31 pm PDT #3979 of 28212
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!

P-C, now you need to read Anasi Boys!

Yep! I shoved another book ahead of it in the queue, but it's getting read soon.