Pop Culture Goes the Weasel
and other forced activities that shouldn't be in one place
Gather ‘round the mulberry bush!
The Monkey Chased the Weasel could be the title of my memoir. My birthday is a week from Tuesday and I’m a monkey—seem to always be off chasing weasels. Or otters. Or I dunno, seals and walruses. But I digress.
This post is about the way I consume entertainment.
I’m reading What We Can Know by Ian McEwan who is an author I trust. His novel, Enduring Love, is one of my favorites of all time. I don’t always enjoy the winding literary sentences that entangle the philosophical questions he is raising, but I do always enjoy the thoughts that his novels bring to mind.
However. This book is a slog. I need a machete.
I don’t like nonfiction and this is a book about a writer lost in the research for a study. There is a lot of academic analysis. A lot of historical digression. Most of the book is written in the tone of a researcher enthused about his arcane subject - and like talking to a historical expert on some minute aspect of minutiae, I feel constantly lectured and rarely entertained. And in this case I’m being lectured about a topic that is dull to me. (In this case the circumstances surrounding a lost poem that may or may not exist.)
I do, however trust the author, and therefore I will finish this book: not because I am enjoying the act of reading it but because I believe with all my heart that I will be provoked in some thought-filled way by the ultimate message and will want to discuss the ideas raised by the book.
I’m in it for the message: not the book itself. The book is just a conduit. And yet, reading just a synopsis of the main idea isn’t enough for me. I need to follow the author’s path of thought, be led to the conclusion and look at it for myself having gone on the same journey as the writer.
Many of the books I read are conduits to make me think. For me, thinking is entertainment. That after-midnight, souls bared, rapid fire pooling of individual experiences and knowledge to amass a sliver of comprehension about some aspect of humanity’s existence? That is my relief from this daily onslaught of bills and quarterly reports and tech-driven delays and personal disappointments and years-old passwords that must be changed before you can order a shirt, even though the retinal scan was successful and the device, the bank, and the store all recognize you.
(Is anything more ridiculous than being addressed by name by someone in real life who knows you in person and then having them wait while you put in a password to prove you are who they already know you are?)
But about the book: most of you are already itching to tell me that I have the right not to finish this boring book, that I have the right to read something I’m dying to enter (an ARC of Sarah Langan’s forthcoming novel Trad Wife is on my bedside table standing by like a willing lover who knows everything about me and is ready to play—I am so impatient to dive into this book, you have no idea. Sarah is SUCH a good writer and never fails to craft a book that you can discuss for hours—both on the idea level and the craft level—and dear lord her books are impossible to put down and such a fun ride. What a writer.)
But let’s get back to our right not to finish something vs the inclination to get to the end of something you think could be worthwhile.
I have frequently been teased for the way that I stream shows - when watching a series, I rarely watch to the end of an episode, instead, I stop where a plot point is resolved. If I love the show (and there are some that I truly love: Severance, Shrinking, Ted Lasso, For All Mankind, and even mindless fluff like Emily in Paris, Bridgerton, and The Crown) I will generally eagerly watch the show for a short amount of time while having lunch or dinner. I will watch for 15 or 20 minutes while I eat and then turn it off, mid-episode. Why? Because all the shows in the world always end on cliffhangers. Chapters end on cliffhangers in books. Reels start up the next one. Movies have teasers after the end credits. Shops send you a discount the second you’ve purchased something. We are always grabbing at the back of the shirt of the person who is walking out the door.
Metaphorically.
If you want to get off the cycle of being manipulated by your entertainment, you have to learn to pause in the middle. The better the writers, the more they employ their craft to manipulate you in to continuing to consume (this probably has repercussions in products as well, adding addictive substances to ordinary things, for example, or implying that stopping something will lessen its effectiveness, etc)…
Point is, I want to be in control of my time - and yet I want to finish those things that I believe will ultimately be worthwhile to me. If that means stopping in the middle, so be it.
(I am prepared, however, to stay up all night to read Trad Wife in one or two sittings…whenever I finish this British novel. Which I am going to get back to just as soon as I’m done writing this post for you.)
Writing News
I’ll be reading from Book & Baby and discussing all things Pen Parentis with Richard Jeffrey Newman on Thursday, June 4th at 6:30pm at the World’s Borough Bookstore in Jackson Heights Queens. Come hang out with me!!
Meanwhile, many of the things I sent out in a frenzy in late March and early April are being “sadly” rejected—as in “we are sorry to inform you…” —but on the good side, I’m still getting notes that they would like to see “anything else” that I have written. Immediately.
My issue with publishing is always that they love my writing but don’t love the content. I probably should deep dive into “give ‘em what they want” - but oh friends, that is SO not me.
So I just keep consuming everything NYC has to offer, in the hopes that eating culture will result in some kind of spectacular epiphany. This week was the last Pen Parentis Salon of the season.
The conversation around kids and writing was terrific! (you know, it’s so funny - in my 20s I would have been in awe of being able to talk to even one of these four writers, but here I go, just happy that we all had fun and not for a second thinking of this as a pinnacle-win, just another fun day at the office).
Otherwise, I went to a grand gathering of Nonprofit Leaders at the Ford Foundation - their atrium contains not only a forest glade with real trees, but also a stream and two pools. Later in the week, I was lucky to get a ticket to opening day at the Armory Art Show—which proved to me that men do still have suits and women still do wear gowns to daytime events when they are under 25 and their mothers are billionaires. I had my writing group this week - and we are SO lucky to have such a fabulous group. We ended up talking writing bios for the first time (we all met because of one writer and only know each other socially as nice people, and professionally as editors of each other’s work - but hearing the bylines and book awards…it was frankly a little intimidating (and I have more than 25 awards and two books myself!!).
The coolest thing I did this week though, was a SoFar concert. These are apparently global and they gather locally sourced talent to play on stages in quirky or amazing locations. Ours was in 70 Pine Street which is my favorite downtown building (I love the coffee shop and I loved the immersive show that was there - Life & Trust Co, based on Faust). The talent in this case was extraordinary - though because it was a QR code and not a paper program I can’t tell you even one of the names of the nine performers in three jazzy sets that we heard. But all were outstanding, particularly the lady-drummer and the song stylist—but okay the sax was great too and the three pianists were great too…okay it was a good night all around.
Weekend is lovely and after a bike ride or two I will be devoted to reading (if I’m not writing up a Quarterly Report for my Pen Parentis Board meeting this week.) Know any lawyers who want to be on a Nonprofit Arts Board? We are looking — they have to love books. Meetings are via zoom. Let me know!
Random Final Thought
Multiple piercings are so 90s. Tattoos are ubiquitous. Plastic surgery is old news. What will the new body modification be that rebellious teens get to shock their parents’ generation? Tech implants that are visible? Or what about this: trading body parts — grafting little pieces of someone else’s skin onto yours in a kind of patchwork quilt of friendship.
