Evening looks to dawn
Warm air rises south
Smile touchs mouth
Winter soon is gone
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Hints of spring waft on Evening looks to dawn Warm air rises south Smile touchs mouth Winter soon is gone |
| date | 2001-001-14:14:59 |
| Writing |
This is as much about reading as writing, but while I'm still plowing steadly through the turgid depths of Tom Jones I've been taking side-trips, notably into a reprint of Alfred Bester's novel The Computer Connection. It certainly isn't Bester's greatest book, but it serves as an interesting summation of his life's work, which consists of a relatively few novels and short stories. Bester is good. He writes poetically, full of strange language and verbal felicities. His work is often more violent, sometimes gruesomely so, than I care for, but that's all part of the package. He's telling us: "See, I can do this. I can write what I please. Does this offend you? Too bad. Don't read it." But we do read it, because it's so good. The Stars My Destination is undoubtedly his best book, which I'm about to reread, because I'm trying to figure out how he does it. Part of it is just the language, but plot works so slickly together as well, and the characters are so hugely larger than life and full of potential for dramatic transformation, all of which is realized in the course of the book. Gully Foyle is one of the great redeemed losers of literature, transformed by the violence of his hate from an unmotivated nobody to a new kind of human being. And the burning man is a wonderful icon, a metaphor for adolescent experience, appearing out of nowhere unexpectedly, inarticulate and incomprehensible, but clearly important. The Computer Connection has a great deal of similar imagery, although written around a looser plot and a less compelling character. But for that very reason the contrast is valuable, because it should allow me to see something of why the one book works so much better than the other. A contrast object is sometimes the most valuable thing you can find. |
| Reading |
I finished Melody Beattie's Codependent No More a while back, and highly recommend the book. There are times when we all behave this way, when we get into the mindset that if we could just control or solve or deal with someone else's problem then everything would be ok. I know I get into this mindset, and I know it's bad for me, and I found the book valuable in thinking about those times where I've done that. The term "codependency" grew out of observations of spouses of alcoholics who were clearly ill somehow themselves. Because alcoholics are chemically dependent, their spouses were designated "co-dependent". But Beattie presents it as a set of behaviors that can be independent of alcoholism. "Doing good" often means trying to control other people, and that can lead to a lot of behaviors that are bad for us and bad for the very people we are trying to help. Part of Beattie's message is that we should treat other people as responsible adults, or as capable of becoming responsible adults. Sometimes all they need is for us to stop helping them. P.J. O'Rourke says this about his impoverished childhood: that the only thing that saved him from a life of chronic crime and poverty was the lack of help his family got from the state. One big issue for Beattie is drawing our own boundaries, not giving more than we feel we ought to, not giving more than we get over the long term, not sacrificing ourselves. Although this clashes with her sometimes overtly religious message, it is profoundly anti-altruistic, and it's nice to read. I'm sure the conservative press has thoroughly dismissed this book as "narcissistic" and "selfish", but if that's the case then it just exposes the conservatives (amongst whom I include the Left, in these post-Soviet days) as the mean-spirited souls they are. The central message Beattie has is very simple: there is exactly one person in the whole world over whom we have some modicum of control. Ourselves. If we have problems, if we don't like our lives, then the person whose behavior or outlook or attitude needs to change is our own. We can't change anyone else; we have a hard enough time changing ourselves! But with persistant effort we can, and Beattie gives a lot of good pointers on how to avoid mistakes, and set out on the road to self-betterment. |