Book Club
Wherein I talk about the books I’ve been reading, and you fall asleep.
Do you ever ask yourself why you read books? Well, I have the answer: because of the bald brutal horror of reality!
Movies are good for that too, but there’s another reason for reading books: the irreconcilable loneliness of having a brain. Always whirring away, locked up inside your skull, etc. Movies are absorbing and all, but exist outside of you, on a screen across the room which you look at. And they stay out there, separate from you. The thing with books is that the words go right into your brain. You hear them in your own voice! Hence, pretty much the intimatest thing ever, without the barbs/effort/inevitable disappointment of actual intimacy with another person. Brilliant, really.
And still, sometimes reality is so inhospitable that even books seem threatening, because you have never read them before, and don’t know what is going to happen next. Panic attack! Luckily there’s a solution to that: reading books you’ve already read.
Uh, so I don’t know exactly why but I’ve had a rough couple of weeks. I am admittedly a tender vittle in the feelings department. And lately it’s gutter city, baby!
In an attempt to soothe myself, I went on a rereading jag. First the Bell Jar, then Layover by Lisa Zeidner, then Jernigan by David Gates.
It is really late and I am going away for a week tomorrow and I still have at least 20 more minutes of neurotic over-packing to go, so I’m not writing any book reports tonight. I will say: You’ve probably read the Bell Jar but you should read it again now that you’re not sixteen. It’s like acid: both the hallucinogenic kind and the skin-burning kind. Plus it’s funny. I had forgotten that. Read the other two too. Lisa Zeidner writes a beautiful sentence, and there’s so much sex! David Gates is so brilliant it hurts, and nobody knows better what it is to be your own worst enemy.
Partway through Jernigan, I realized something: all three books are first-person accounts of nervous breakdowns. And, completely heartbreaking. And, will destroy you. Knife in heart, knife in throat, knife in brain!
Yep, kind of ironic: the books I chose to reread in order to escape reality are all reminders of how exactly how ghastly it is to be a person and have to wake up every morning, walk around, eat, speak, have a body, and so on. Which is to say, I’m a masochist. Also, am I fixing to have my own nervous breakdown?
Funny thing is, ever since I finished Jernigan, I’ve been feeling better and better. So phew.
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