I finished a book yesterday, Books by Larry McMurtry, and did it knowing that I would write a review before sending the copy back to the home of a friend of mine, where it lives. I wrote the review, rated the book, and then delighted myself by reading other people's reviews. Most of them were from people who really didn't know what they were gong to get and found it insulting. I love those people. They make very easy targets for practice and very easily defined sets of ways Not-To-Be.
Reviews are one of my most favorite form of literature. I love literary criticism. Fuck that, I love criticism. So much. It is awful and pointless and pointed and relevant and self-serving. It is clear and specific and timely and vapid and wandering and uncertain. It makes me laugh and cry and throw things and want to bake a cake. For everyone. I read criticism and want to explode into anything but a thinking human being. I read criticism and bask in the glorious ability of human brains to find and pursue connections in the most unrelated entities, to find the poetry in anything, to make of a pile of shit something that might actually be fertilizer instead of just a fucking mess.
I don't write many of them, though. Well, not to share. Not written anyway.
As super-powers go, I'd really love to be able to purr. There are few other things that I find compelling or likely to not get out of hand somehow or make going out for a nice evening relatively impossible. I mean, really, laser vision? flying? power boobs? (Hovering, like a Star Wars Hovercraft? That would be cool. (In my dreams, I occasionally travel that way from room to room or down stairs or well - so I sometimes dream that I'm in a mall (why? who knows) and I get around by just sort of lifting up about 4 inches and floating with Segue-speed to my next destination. Sometimes when I wake up, I can still do it. Invisible Segue Power. That would rock.))
My actual super-power, as I've recently discovered, is that I can bore anyone. Really. It's a gift. My friends are really good at not being bored by me, but then again, I do tend to shut up when I'm around them. Usually because one of them has just interrupted me, but that's not the point! (Full disclosure: We interrupt each other. There are a few of us who are still in the middle of conversations we began 3 years ago and will never finish because it's way more fun to keep things going by butting in with something else really interesting and immediate. Also, we have to, otherwise we would all never quit yapping at each other.)
I. Can Talk. A Lot. Impressively. With no need to stop. Or make sense. Or even really know what I'm talking about sometimes, although that doesn't happen all that much anymore, I've read a lot of books, also, I revel in being right about stuff especially when I'm talking at someone because I want that person to stop talking to me and go away.
Boring people is an extremely useful skill. Being not-interesting can come in incredibly handy and allows me to not participate in any number of accepted social events ranging from oo-ing and coo-ing over 'boys' to relying entirely (and by entirely, I mean 100% entirely, not the occasional giggle-fest because someone said "I believe it is a matter of great doctrinal import!" Different things.) on movie or TV show quotes.
And yet, I am somehow reluctant to put all of the thoughts I've had over the years about stereotyping in romantic comedies to why Brigadoon needs to be remade, but set in South Asia with better songs and huger dance numbers to my conviction that a really good study would be one that compares the Mrs. Collins's from the four major film productions of Pride & Prejudice to their contemporary cultures. I will talk about how silence in film is way too underused. I can go on about the delights of seeing a movie in a theatre on a huge ass screen with many other people who would really rather not hear me react to that movie.
Just not online. I will work to change that. Opinions do change, and I respect that. My opinions change less often than I'd like to admit, but I give them time. First responses are not always reliable. Particularly when it comes to movies. Books on the other hand, well, The Great Gatsby can still suck my lint and Les Miserables is easily the book that convinced me that I love cities.
You really don't want to be around for that conversation.
Really.
Next time: I will write y'all a review. Just for kicks.
No comments:
Post a Comment