I had a fierce admiration for these little stories. And probably my highest recommendation these days-- they made me want to sit down and write. Good translation by Robert Lumley:
He went on writing stories at night, but after he had written about fifty he realized he didn't like them. He thought that only in the desert or close to death was it worth writing something.
from "A parable for the disenchanted"
I HATED this book. HATED it. I am so FREAKING TIRED of urban fantasy books featuring waif-like women with masses of tangled hair of whatever goshdarn color. I wanted to drop-kick Isabelle and her precious waif-like paintings out of a plate glass window. And WHY in the name of all that's good in the world are the main characters in urban fantasy novels always painters or lute players or madrigal singers or earth mothers or writers? Does nobody in Newford have an actual job?
I would give nearly anything for an urban fantasy novel that features a stocky banker. With short hair. Who studied accounting. At least then I would have the feeling that I wasn't reading a singles advertisement from the writer over and over and over again. Bookish male, 40s, seeks waif-like artist with masses of tangled hair for a carefree and magical existence. Likes Celtic music and pre-Raphaelite painting. WE GET IT, OKAY? Sheesh.
I’ve been following the story of the election in Australia a little bit. You know--Julia Gillard. Childless. Modern. Boyfriend.
Lightly following. Noting with some interest. Nothing more.
(This isn’t about her policies. I don’t know much about her policies.)
A friend’s blog ran a little blurb—small article noting that Gillard was being attacked for her fitness for office due to childlessness. I expressed surprise someone would attack her on that basis. Someone else agreed. It’s how those conversations go.
But then someone else said:
“See, here's the thing. I'm prejudiced against any public official who is deliberately childless. The concern about "living in sin" part is completely alien to me, but I completely understand the reticence at handing over policy decisions to somebody who has chosen to avoid raising children, either biological or adoptive.
It speaks of selfishness and suggests a lack of connection with the greater society. Unfair? Yup. It's a prejudice; obviously it doesn't hold for everyone. But I'm also going to say that as a heuristic, it's reasonable ... and as a negative emotional reaction, I have it quite quite strongly.”
I was a little surprised by the intensity of my own reaction. On the Interwebs, I’ll argue about films. I’ll argue about books. I’ll even have the occasional discussion about politics. But I’ve been out here a long time online, and a troll rarely gets to me. Rarely hooks me in the gut.
I thought about many things. Shoes and ships and sealing wax. Cabbages and kings. I even cried.
It doesn’t seem very worthwhile for me to discuss the arguments against this point of view rationally.
I wonder if it’s even possible, actually, to discuss it rationally. I think many of my friends who intellectually would agree with me, actually agree with him. Hold that heuristic too.
A cross to bear, so perhaps I should just bear it?
During my disaster pregnancy, a (younger) friend who had her children at 23 said to me with a tone of smugness: “now you’re finally going to be an adult.”
She never mentioned it again later. Threshold fail.
He never reached Concord, and to Concord Church he, like the rest of mankind who accepted a material universe, remained always an insect, or something much lower—a man. It was surely no fault of his that the universe seemed to him real; perhaps—as Mr. Emerson justly said—it was so; in spite of the long-continued effort of a lifetime, he perpetually fell back into the heresy that if anything universal was unreal, it was himself and not the appearances; it was the poet and not the banker; it was his own thought, not the thing that moved it. He did not lack the wish to be transcendental.
