The incurious case of the dead spark

You know that wonderful fantastic nervous feeling you get when you start to fall for someone, just a little bit? You know, when the object of your obsessed interest seems wonderful to you, even if you know he isn't . . . and you want to know everything about him and you think almost all of it sounds fascinating? And all the warning signals that maybe he isn't actually as fan-fucking-tabulous as you think he is can be ignored under this swell of hormones and uncanny awareness when he is around? Well, now I know how necessary that is.

There was this guy that I had a vague interest in for a while, and then suddenly he seemed interested in me, and I started to consider him seriously, and feel that nice gooshy anxious warm feeling for . . . and then, just when things looked promising but nothing binding was said, he switched his interest to someone who blatantly angled for him, and dated her for a month. So, nothing really lost, right? He clearly wasn't as interested, and I told myself it was his loss, and most of the time believed it. But the things that I had always liked about him were still there, and so when things between him and the other girl tapered off, he makes a really nice apology and says how dumb he was, and how he really wished he hadn't gotten distracted, etc etc.

So, I did what came naturally - I put him through the wringer. It helped that he made this confession after I had had lots of beer at a party, and the other girl . . . a friend of mine, no less . . . was giving me the evil eye as this guy started flirting with me again. So I felt bad, but realized that it was the guy's fault, and let him have it. It was a lot of fun, actually, and he didn't seem to be scared off, which was interesting. Anyways, I was still naturally wary of him, and never made it easy for him . . . and then, when things never really went beyond a few dates, I really couldn't be bothered about it. Well, why not? As I said, the basic things that once had me so fascinated were still there, and now he seemed to be really trying, and I could even understand the thing with the other girl . . . but nope, the spark died, and I couldn't be bothered to work that hard to rekindle it.

So, now I know how important that spark is. Without it, how can you really go through all the potentially embarassing and important things before you know the other person and what they like, and become a couple in fact instead of just intention? Without that cushion of optimism and heightened self-awareness and giddy interest in the other person clouding your mind, what is the fun of baring large parts of yourself, literally and figuratively? Especially when, with your unclouded vision, you can actually make a relatively levelheaded asessment of the other person and their faults, and your mutual incompatibilities that are guaranteed to tick one or both of you off, sooner or later. And then, because you can already notice them, it kind of starts to be sooner . . . and you wonder, why all this effort?

And something else starts to happen . . . the part of you, that blatantly optimistic and curious part . . . . starts to tingle again, and it whispers something to you like "That guy in your bio lab was really rather hot and definitely interesting, and maybe you should have checked him out a bit more instead of that other guy . . . maybe he's the one you really want want". And suddenly, the other guy, with the known factors that you mostly like, really seems to have all kinds of limitations . . . while this new guy could be anything. His potential is infinite, especially since you don't really know him yet. And isn't that most of the fun, getting to know him?

So . . . . forget good book reviews, I have something better

So, I planned to write little book reviews into this blog, and unwisely said so when I started it. Unfortunately I read a few books a week, and more when under stress . . . and clearly I don't blog nearly so much as that. Curling up with my computer just isn't that comfortable - though now that I have a remarkably tiny laptop, I should reconsider it - but turning on my computer has some definite drawbacks.

Drawback the first: checking my email. I know, it should be fun, I should have lots of wise correspondences with my many varied and interesting friends. But really, most of my emails are spam or school-related, which reminds me of homework, studying, and deadlines. Drawback the second: I have programmed my Microsoft Office calendar to give me handy reminders for, well, everything important. This should also be good . . . but really it reminds me of all the things I should be doing, most of which I didn't want to do if I just sat down in front of the computer. Laaame.

Basically, lately I have wanted to escape life through a nice book-shaped portal into someone else's imagination, most preferably set in some other country, century, or even planet. I have read some rather embarassing novels on occasion, when I ran out of better fresh meat, umm, I mean reading material. Sure, I have read and re-read some great works as well, and I even read some really good nonfiction in the form of some excellent neurological case histories by Oliver Sacks, and I swear the book "An Anthropologist on Mars" was waaay better than I just made it sound. Thought that description hopefully makes me sound much brighter and more intellectual than I probably am. I assume that fascination with unutterably dry material makes one sound intellectual.

But just in case you mistakenly took me seriously as a reader, I have to add in a few comments on the terrible, awful, miserably written book that I am now reading with curious enjoyment. Really, I like to attribute my ability to read many of the 500-something pages of this book to morbid curiosity. I really enjoy seeing what horrible clunking words the author selected from her thesaurus and painstaking (but still patchy) research of the English Regency period. Also, I must admit that this book gives me real hope that someone might publish my writing one day . . . honestly, this THING is the true definition of 'turgid prose'.

Oh, so now you think you know what sort of book I am reading . . . a near-harlequin sort of regency romance, right? Well, not quite . . . I requested it from the library because it was a 'Pride and Prejudice' wannabe-sequel written in the last ten years by some author who isn't original enough to think up her own characters. Really, harlequin has higher standards. Also, they have better editors:
a) this THING of a book is a large, fat trade paperback with teeny tiny typeface
b) way too many REALLY BORING extraneous characters
c) paragraphs that are usually made up of repetitions of their first sentence
d) really uneven attempts to emulate Austen's spelling
e) imaginitive and highly unlikely slang insertions, supposedly from the era
f) copious ammounts of similarly unlikely sex scenes
g) and the most ridiculous euphemisms for human genitalia that I have ever imagined

As you can guess, the truly ridiculous euphemisms are what keep me slogging through, to a large extent. I should really keep a list (look forward to a blog on that topic, coming soon!). But what keeps me going the most is probably my interest in the real P&P, of which this is a travesty. So why can I keep reading it, when I knew it was going to be a sin upon literature (and especially Austen's works) before I finished reading the preface? Well . . . Austen's characters are so well entrenched in my mind, and the one saving grace of this author is that she didn't try to revamp the most important characters in any way, and I will suffer through a lot to continue imagining what they might have done after the real P&P ended. Of course, in the first 200 pages there is no sign of any character growth either, except that Georgiana has taken up writing excellent poetry. Whatever.

Here I will admit to requesting a few more Austen wannabe-sequels after stumbling over a decent one, a mystery called "Pride and Prescience". I read a lot of these Austen Wannabes in highschool, and around four of them were decent reads and sometimes even witty, and the rest should have been toilet paper or something more worthwhile.

I still can't quite figure it out myself, how this blend of miserable writing still captures enough of my attention to keep me reading on. To my credit, I do still skip passages from the point of view of any minor character, excepting John, Darcy's love-child (yes, you read that right) from a lustful dalliance with a chambermaid when he was 15. John is the only character of interest that has been added to the complement inherited from the original P&P. I still haven't figured out what his purpose is, but it had better be good. He is now a 13-year old groom at Pemberly, and has just figured out that Darcy probably fathered him. I'll keep you posted on that, honest. It will either be the one truly interesting ploy in the book, or a massive disappointment that will keep me whining for paragraphs.

Remember that preface? It is so bad that it has made three people laugh aloud so far . . . myself and the two friends I showed it to. Keltie found it so awfully bad that she insisted upon reading the whole thing aloud, in her best Speech Arts style, with small breaks for us to giggle and try to catch our breath. I fully intend to find the worst (and therefore best) quotes in this book and post them.

A poem (not mine)

'The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered'

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book --
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seeminly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.


The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.
It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion
Beneath the yoke.
What avail him now his awards and prizes,
The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,
His individual new voice?
Knocked into the middle of next week
His brainchild now consorts with the bad buys
The sinker, clinkers, dogs and dregs,
The Edsels of the world of moveable type,
The bummers that no amount of hype could shift,
The unbudgeable turkeys.


Yea, his slim volume with its understated wrapper
Bathes in the blare of the brightly jacketed Hitler's War Machine,
His unmistakably individual new voice
Shares the same scrapyart with a forlorn skyscraper
Of The Kung-Fu Cookbook,
His honesty, proclaimed by himself and believed by others,
His renowned abhorrence of all posturing and pretense,
Is there with Pertwee's Promenades and Pierrots--
One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment,
And (oh, this above all) his sensibility,
His sensibility and its hair-like filaments,
His delicate, quivering sensibility is now as one
With Barbara Windsor's Book of Boobs,
A volume graced by the descriptive rubric
"My boobs will give everyone hours of fun".


Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,
Though not to the monumental extent
In which the chastisement of remaindering has been meted out
To the book of my enemy,
Since in the case of my own book it will be due
To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error--
Nothing to do with merit.
But just supposing that such an event should hold
Some slight element of sadness, it will be offset
By the memory of this sweet moment.
Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am glad.


Clive James