I just want to say, I'm sorry for liking the things that I like. I try really hard to broaden my taste all the time, and to not be an Annoying White Dude with Glasses, but I also just get a kick out of things that are annoying. Yes, I like reading Jacques Derrida's essays, because he's funny and connects things in unusual ways and is always ultimately trying to undermine the dichotomies that reinforce bigotry. Even though it's annoying to read a philosopher from France in the 1970s. I'm re-reading chapter 4 of From Hell because the stuff about using architecture to create dread and prop up the patriarchy is both fascinating and terrifying, and a good counterpoint to the increasing bullshit contention that aliens built the pyramids and shit like that. But almost everyone who is Super Into Alan Moore is someone who thinks Watchmen is actually really thought-provoking (it isn't, Rorshach sucks, that's literally the point of the book but it makes the classic mistake of making its villains idiosyncratically compelling). I'm also reading Frankenstein for the first time, various poetry and essay collections by poets (Mary Ruefle's Madness, Rack, and Honey is SO good), even though there's little use for poetry in the modern world (even though all tweets are poems). I'm partway through two dozen books and so many other sources right now, by people of as many backgrounds and dispositions as I can.
I'm engaged with all this stuff because I like it, because it makes my brain tingle, because hardly anything moves the needle of my emotions, but complex texts and strange linguistic conjunctions and history-spanning mutterings about the people who have believed in magic (even though I don't) are interesting, they hold my attention for more than a few moments, and they can open new pathways of thought for me. Even though talking about this stuff with anybody is so painful for me, because the looks of skepticism and impatience people give me because the pop culture positioning of so many things I genuinely enjoy is one of ridicule and disbelief. I think I've personally spoken with 5 or 6 people who have finished Infinite Jest (which I read in an unemployed month in 2010 and mostly enjoyed), but there are so many people who not only refuse to read Wallace (maybe for good reasons, whatever!) but who actually don't believe anybody else really enjoys his work. One day when I was working at the little local bookshop here, minding my own business behind the counter, somebody came in and started going off about how much they hated the air around DFW and asserted that, "No one even really reads him! Nobody has finished Infinite Jest! They just SAY they do to impress other macho literature guys." And I, meek in my glasses and bad short haircut, quietly said, "Well, I did read Infinite Jest a few years ago, and I mostly enjoyed it." And this lady looked at me with absolute disgust and pity, shook her head, and moved on.
I know the problem with all of this stuff is masculinity. Either truth or perception of machismo on the part of the authors or, especially, their fans. It's not wrong to say most people who will talk at length about Dee Eff Double You are academic assholes. I've met these guys! It's real. And I hate deriving any pleasure from media objects that are associated with macho dudes. But sometimes I do. Usually because true friends have made impassioned recommendations, and I've approached with that pop skepticism, and then been surprised at how much depth and humanity there is in these things. But then I try desperately not to talk about it. I maintain almost-zero levels of confidence about anything I enjoy, and have found it increasingly difficult to just talk about stuff I like and dislike because I can't bear to be given these looks, or to anticipate them.
AND ALSO none of these things are my Absolute Favorite! I like Alan Moore's novels and prose, and his series Promethea is really lovely, but I don't idolize him, especially not the earlier graphic novels that have polluted our culture with their (maybe justified at the time) cynicism! I haven't read Wallace in many years; I just bring him up because I never talk about him if I can, even though a lot of his writing has resonated within me pretty vividly, particularly when I was a decade younger, more academically-inclined, and even more inward-turning if you can believe it! I keep returning to Derrida periodically, but I also understand there's plenty problematic about him and his work, even if I focus on the broader points and techniques that make disparate concepts zip together in my brain like a tight pair of jeans!
But these are all emblematic of a feeling I have that I'm cursed with the bad taste of my birth conditions and the structures of my upbringing, and that it's viscerally difficult to enjoy myself for very long privately or publicly for this, among a constellation of other curses. This is a place for me to write about whatever I want without trying to anticipate the audience overmuch, so that I can work through this stuff at greater length with the possibility of feedback, and if that means some people roll their eyes at me, I'm going to try to get over that fear being the thing that prevents me from speaking in the first place!
So, anyway. Sorry if what I like is annoying, or if a lot of people who like some of the things I like are even more excruciating products of our Monster Machine Culture! I'm going to make Posts about that shit anyway, and try to articulate what I like about them beyond their surface-level cultural sheen, because OH WELL
Also, I'm writing all of this noise about stuff that isn't immediately relevant because thinking directly about all the things that are really bothering me right now will cause me to writhe my way through the floor