ring around the rosies

It's me again

Yeah, I know, on my own blog. Who knew? As if anyone else would be writing here without my knowledge. Anyway, I finished two books since the last time we spoke and I wanted to tell you about them. Can you tell I haven't been doing much else but reading? Not even sleeping very much, and that is a crying shame. I'm a big sleeper from way back, even try to take a nap every day, but for some reason--I don't drink caffeine, seldomly consume alcohol, and I exercise--the last three nights have been short and fitful. Maybe it's anxiety about my current working situation--which is from home, part-time and, because of who I am, ridiculously unstructured--and guilt from the fact that even though I don't have kids, I have many things I could be doing around here but for some reason am not getting done. Ennui has set in and it's not pretty.

I'm working on this current situation with a variety of self-improvement strategies, however, but I just felt I had to get that off my chest. I'm a closet slacker who has been masquerading for the past 25 years (about how long I've been in school and working) as a Very Busy Person and I just wanted you all to know that. Rectifying this situation may require some drastic measures, which I'm not prepared to share these at this juncture.

Anyway, yesterday afternoon I finished Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, which is a total gossip rag masquerading as a work of literature, and I loved it. I wonder why I never read this when I was teaching Modernism for the past four years. I could have told my students the dirt on some of these people I preached about, even if it may all have been a figment of Hemingway's nostalgic imagination he drummed up some 30-odd years later. I could have told them about times with Gertrude Stein and her "roommate" and how Hemingway really liked her until he realized she wasn't, ahem, the one who wore the pants in the relationship. And then he only sort of liked her. I could have told them about Hemingway's love-hate relationship with Fitzgerald, whom he called Scott until he was angry at him and then just Fitzgerald. How Fitzgerald couldn't remember Hemingway's last name at first, how unreliable and emasculated Fitzgerald was, especially after his crazy wife told him he should never sleep with any other women because he was not very well-endowed. That's one way of keeping him faithful, I guess. How Hemingway and his wife would leave their toddler son in his crib alone in their apartment for stretches of time with only the cat to babysit him. How Hemingway just worked and drank and worked and drank and worked and worked some more on his writing in cafes--and became annoyed when people came in a cafe to talk to him (gasp! The horror!)--and just waited until the rest of the world came inevitably to realize something he never doubted, his own greatness. This book makes one want to go to Paris on one hand, read all the novels, learn so much more about this time and about this generation and, on the other hand, makes me very glad that I never had these people as my friends. That's what I wish I could tell my students.

Last night I picked up My Friend Leonard, the new book by James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces. This morning I finished it. It was a quick read, a memoir that continues Frey's saga of his sobriety. This book, however, focuses on his friend Leonard, the mobster, to whom Frey feels he owes so much. It's a moving tribute and a very enjoyable book. I really like Frey's books even though they get on my nerves sometimes. His writing and his personality are very much like Hemingway's, in fact, and annoy me for the same reasons. Like Hemingway, Frey has all the braggadocio, the arrogance, the machismo, the love of violence and strange characters and poverty, the romantic male view of love and the idealism, yet unlike Hemingway, Frey has no punctuation and pitbulls and crack. So there you are. Anyway, his books are not for everyone, are self-indulgent, etc. But a good read, nonetheless.

Okay, now, gotten that off my chest. Maybe I can get something done today.

Posted by Rachel at August 4, 2005 10:09 AM