A friend's Facebook post about television & reading right now describes a feeling oddly related to feeling of mine. She says, "For reasons I don't quite understand, for the past couple of months I found myself reluctant to watch television. This is not because of political ads because I don't get them. Instead, I have been climbing into bed and reading."
I've been climbing into bed (after being disgusted with tv) and not reading - looking at the phone instead, the latest news I could find written well enough not to add insult to suppressed nausea.
The last few days I've been reading again. During the day! Day-reading, alone!
But the phrase & feeling that's been crystallizing in me over the last few days is that most books were not meeting the savagery of the moment.
That's why I wasn't reading much. That's why I couldn't settle to much, couldn't stand the clunking away of the plot after the setup, the vastness of the 2-3 inches of spine-thickness to come, the however many hundreds of pages of simultaneously clotted & attenuated language that failed to be even faintly aware of the geist's psychic zeit: dammed-up, carefully-distanced, smoothed-over, banked-down, shrieking, howling rage.
That's why I've re-read "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" a couple of times over the last 2-2½ years - the betrayals in that book are so complete there's almost nothing left.
& re-reading "A Legacy of Spies" about the same number of times - that smug governmental, quasi-corporate interlocking cover-up & blame-shifting is so reprehensible, so disgusting, all you can say is, "Yes, this is what this is. This is where we are."
Le Carré's fury is vast and controlled. As ours had to be.
I've been climbing into bed (after being disgusted with tv) and not reading - looking at the phone instead, the latest news I could find written well enough not to add insult to suppressed nausea.
The last few days I've been reading again. During the day! Day-reading, alone!
But the phrase & feeling that's been crystallizing in me over the last few days is that most books were not meeting the savagery of the moment.
That's why I wasn't reading much. That's why I couldn't settle to much, couldn't stand the clunking away of the plot after the setup, the vastness of the 2-3 inches of spine-thickness to come, the however many hundreds of pages of simultaneously clotted & attenuated language that failed to be even faintly aware of the geist's psychic zeit: dammed-up, carefully-distanced, smoothed-over, banked-down, shrieking, howling rage.
That's why I've re-read "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" a couple of times over the last 2-2½ years - the betrayals in that book are so complete there's almost nothing left.
& re-reading "A Legacy of Spies" about the same number of times - that smug governmental, quasi-corporate interlocking cover-up & blame-shifting is so reprehensible, so disgusting, all you can say is, "Yes, this is what this is. This is where we are."
Le Carré's fury is vast and controlled. As ours had to be.
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