Pity Party
Oct. 5th, 2008 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraI’m reading a lot because I’m very blue.
Last night I started Margaret Drabble’s The Peppered Moth, a fictionalized biography of Drabble’s mother who is also A.S. Byatt’s mother because the two writers are – rather famously – literary rivals, the Olivia de Haviland/Joan Fontaine of Great Literature (with a trilled R.) Of the two, I much prefer Drabble. I read Possession when it first came out and hated it, found it ice-bound and derivative, John Fowles-ian with all Fowles’ pompousness and none of his humor. Drabble is a stylist too but a cozy stylist. Closest American analog would be Anne Tyler.
I’m blue because I’m discouraged and exhausted, too exhausted to buoy myself up right now. Maybe the universe will send me a message in a bottle: I think you’re great… Though of course belief in omens or signs or cosmic messages in bottles is a sure indication that one is becoming unhinged. I really need some sort of outside validation though. Fan mail from a stranger. An unusual traveling suggestion – Vonnegut’s preemptive “dancing lesson from God” – from an old friend. The Red Sea parting, the clouds swirling together spontaneously to spell out P-A-T-R-I… A telegram from God.
Something to make me believe I’m not invisible, interchangeable, expendable.
Yes, yes, I’m feeling sorry for myself. Yes, yes, the people in [your oppressed and/or beseiged culture goes here] have it a whole lot worse.
Last night I started Margaret Drabble’s The Peppered Moth, a fictionalized biography of Drabble’s mother who is also A.S. Byatt’s mother because the two writers are – rather famously – literary rivals, the Olivia de Haviland/Joan Fontaine of Great Literature (with a trilled R.) Of the two, I much prefer Drabble. I read Possession when it first came out and hated it, found it ice-bound and derivative, John Fowles-ian with all Fowles’ pompousness and none of his humor. Drabble is a stylist too but a cozy stylist. Closest American analog would be Anne Tyler.
I’m blue because I’m discouraged and exhausted, too exhausted to buoy myself up right now. Maybe the universe will send me a message in a bottle: I think you’re great… Though of course belief in omens or signs or cosmic messages in bottles is a sure indication that one is becoming unhinged. I really need some sort of outside validation though. Fan mail from a stranger. An unusual traveling suggestion – Vonnegut’s preemptive “dancing lesson from God” – from an old friend. The Red Sea parting, the clouds swirling together spontaneously to spell out P-A-T-R-I… A telegram from God.
Something to make me believe I’m not invisible, interchangeable, expendable.
Yes, yes, I’m feeling sorry for myself. Yes, yes, the people in [your oppressed and/or beseiged culture goes here] have it a whole lot worse.
