I have been told, more than once, that I am not good at getting to the point. I have also been told (mostly by my mother) that I am a great story teller. In either case, this is my attempt.
“ Transcendent moments and mundane moments are both made of seconds and oxygen and bodies and light and atoms. ”
“ When people romanticize the ‘90s, it’s not because it was particularly “better” than it is now. It’s because it took more than ‘liking’ a status on Facebook to cement a friendship. It’s because courting someone took more effort than a text every other day or so. It’s because someone could destroy you emotionally and you’d never hear from them again, and you’d know what it really felt like to have a broken heart and what it’s like to not be able to do anything about it. It’s because you’d go to your neighborhood bar, and your drinking buddies would show up, and it wasn’t because you’d checked in on FourSquare. The ‘90s were the last decade of genuine emotion; the last time harvesting relationships took time, money, and effort. As technology simplifies communication, our lame-in-comparison attempts to build virtual relationships cease to have meaning. ”
I wonder Jonathan Franzen would think about this Thought Catalog article, titled Communicating in the ’90s, by Stephanie Georgopulos. More specifically, this quote.
In other Jonathan Franzen news, I finished The Corrections a few days ago. I miss all of the characters dearly.
“ Oh, misanthropy and sourness. Gary wanted to enjoy being a man of wealth and leisure, but the country was making it none too easy. All around him, millions of newly minted American millionaires were engaged in the identical pursuit of feeling extraordinary - of buying the perfect Victorian, of skiing the virgin slope, of knowing the chef personally, of locating the beach that had no footprints. There were further tens of millions of young Americans who didn’t have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively uncool? ”
Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
No, I am not only reading things by Jonathan Franzen and/or turning this website into a Jonathan Franzen quote blog. This is just a coincidence.
“ But if you consider this in human terms, and you imagine a person defined by a desperation to be liked, what do you see? You see a person without integrity, without a center. In more pathological cases, you see a narcissist — a person who can’t tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likable. ”
This quote is from Jonathan Franzen’s May 28th NYT Op-Ed piece Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts. I half imagined (slash hoped) that the next sentence would read “The person I have in mind is Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert.”
“ A long time ago I was in the ancient city of Prague and at the same time Joseph Alsop, the justly famous critic of places and events, was there. He talked to informed people, officials, ambassadors; he read reports, even the fine print and figures, while I in my slipshod manner roved about with actors, gypsies, vagabonds. Joe and I flew home to America in the same plane, and on the way he told me about Prague, and his Prague had no relation to the city I had seen and heard. It just wasn’t the same place, and yet each of us was honest, neither one a liar, both pretty good observers by any standard, and we brought home two cities, two truths. For this reason I cannot commend this account as an America that you will find. So much there is to see, but our morning eyes describe a different world than do our afternoon eyes, and surely our wearied evening eyes can report only a weary evening world. ”
John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley
My mom: What is a hipster? Is a hipster kind of like a modern hippie?
Me: It’s kind of like a hippie who wears clothes that look like they came out of the garbage except that it means something different to everyone and also I probably am one. Because I wear flannel shirts.
I came across this today weeks ago, and was about to send her an email with a helpful “Maybe this literature will clarify things…” when it occurred to me (for the thousandth time) that hipsterism is like one of those mind teaser games where you have to know you’re in the box to be in the box.
Dear Me as a high school senior,
Here is a quote from an article from today’s (11/4/2010) StarTribune:
“Ward 5 City Council Member Don Samuels supports the proposal to close the school on the city’s North Side.
‘When all the cards are on the table, the logic of the superintendent’s decisions might likely prevail,’ he said recently.
Three years ago, Samuels’ suggestion to burn down North created a political firestorm and public furor that many residents allege sped the abandonment of North, where enrollment has dropped almost 80 percent in a decade.
‘Low performing schools have to be closed or turned around,’ Samuels said recently. ‘Losing them is never easy, and there’s going to be community outcry.’”
So, there you have it. Four years after Don Samuels made his incendiary (pun intended) comment and you wrote an article for the school paper defending him (using the world’s stupidest lede: “Don Samuels has the resume of a schizophrenic”) everything has come full circle. Congrats, though you are probably more concerned with your/my/our imminent 21st birthday.
Love,
Yourself as a college senior
“INTERVIEWER
For ten years you waited until you were ready to write about the Holocaust in your first book, Night.
WIESEL
I didn’t want to use the wrong words. I was afraid that words might betray it. I waited. I’m still not sure that it was the wrong move, or the right move, that is, whether to choose language or silence.
INTERVIEWER
Why do you say that?
WIESEL
Maybe if we had kept quiet then—this is what I try to say in The Oath—maybe we wouldn’t have this fashionable phenomenon. The Holocaust would not have become a fashionable subject which I find as offensive, if not more so, than what we had before: ignorance of the subject.
”
“ Develop a point of view. Think about what experiences you have that many others do not. Then, think of what experiences you have that almost everyone else has. Then, mix those two things and try to make someone cry or laugh or feel understood. ”
Frank Chimero
