This will undoubtedly not be as interesting or inspiring of snarky commentary as my last entry was, but I had myself a lovely weekend and sometimes, that’s what a blog is for – just writing about your weekend so that maybe one day in a year when you haven’t had a good weekend in a while, you can look back and say, “hey, that was a good weekend! I should try that again”.
So on Friday night, without any good netflix lying around just yet, Stuart and I had a “thrown together from the fridge” sort of dinner (oven-roasted greek potatoes, leftover sausage and bean casserole, big salad) while we talked. I actually talked most of dinner because baby is catching these days, it seems everyone’s pregnant or going through those first few months of motherhood, and it’s a fascinating insight that the baby books really don’t cover in as much raw detail as an exhausted blogging mother can.
We played videogames and pootled on the internet and I read a lot, in anticipation of the gothamist review that I wrote up today of Julian Barnes’ latest book. Saturday was more of the same – waking up deliciously late and talking and laughing in bed for a few hours before breakfast and reading took over. In the late afternoon, I baked blondies for Shana’s party and we got dressed and went to her apartment for a few hours of animated chat and margaritas. Today was a late start again, and Stuart cleaned our desperately messy bedroom while I finished reading the book and started writing the review. Then, finally, more very necessary cleaning – I did the bathroom while Stuart vaccuumed and then I mopped the apartment.
It all sounds really boring but it was all done with good cheer, and with no one else’s schedule or needs to attend to, so it felt very self-driven and good. Now Stuart went out in the rain to get the week’s lunch-making supplies and more salad stuff for dinner. Salad and grilled sandwiches for dinner. Yum.
How was your weekend?
I just talked to my mother, to ask her if she was going to watch Oprah’s smackdown of memoirist-turned-liar James Frey. She said she was, and offered to tape it for me, so I can see it myself next weekend.
It’s taken me a while to wrap my brain around why the Frey thing disgusted me so much. I shirked my duties at gothamist.com, as literary contributor, because I didn’t post about the controversy at all. I think it’s because of two things:
1. I got the book for Christmas from my brother, having put it on my wishlist as something that seemed interesting
2. I have issues with the memoir genre that are made worse by the Frey controversy.
As for #1, I don’t think I’m going to read the book. I’m tempted to take it back to B&N*, where I know my brother bought it, but I’m not sure they’d take it back without a receipt. Perhaps I’ll just keep it around as an oddity, or take a pen to every time the word “truth” appears in the book and change it to “lie” with a nice red pen.
#2 is what really troubles me. I don’t really like memoirs. It may be elitist and unfair of me to assume that ordinary lives don’t have that much to enlighten me with, but I only read memoirs by people that have accomplished something extaordinary that I find interesting, or have survived an ordeal that needs telling to the world. It may be ironic that I’m a blogger casting aspersions on the “ordinary person perspective”, but I’m not charging you to read this blog, it’s not my career. If you want to read about my ordinary life, I’m grateful for your participation. If I write a novel, it will be born of my imagination, wit, and creativity. My life, on the other hand, was born out of a zygote. Not that fascinating.
But Frey would have fallen into my exception. He would have survived a life less ordinary, learned something about himself and destruction and addiction that would have been worth sharing with the world. I would have been willing to grant him the right, in my own mind, to write a worthy memoir, something beneficial to the world and his readers.
On the other hand, I would also have been impressed if he’d written a novel dealing with destruction and addiction, if it was well-written. I would have granted him the liberty of fiction, and taken his writing at its own face-value, not how likely it was that any of it was autobiographical. I don’t care about Frey if he’s a novelist – I care about his writing.
Which is the crux of my problem with the memoir genre, and the crux of my problem with Frey. As a memoirist, I will consider you worthy if your life story is important to me. As a novelist, I will consider you worthy if your story-telling is important to me. James Frey, you cannot HAVE it both ways with me. Or anyone else, for that matter. You cannot demand to stand up and have your life heard, because it’s such a popular genre and subject to less critical scrutiny than fiction (“It really happened!” equates not needing creativity), and then decide you’re actually a novelist masquerading your story-telling as truth.
You cannot fool people like me, who ordinarily make it a habit to politely ignore the memoir genre, into thinking your fiction is truth. Stand by your extraordinary fiction or stick to your ordinary truth. Don’t lie your way into people’s opinion.
This is what I think about the Frey controversy. I am disgusted and disappointed and hope that he isn’t secretly glad his book exploded, because the destruction his little prank has wreaked is not yet over. The consequences to writers on both sides of the literary fence – memoirists or novelists – will be devastating and unfair, and it’s all because James Frey wanted to have it both ways.
That’s what I think.
UPDATE: Shana passed me this great link, where another memoirist gives a fair assessment of the process of writing a memoir and where Frey might have turned down the wrong road – here’s John Falk’s opinion. Very well said.
* I love my mother. She emailed me this: “Can you get a refund for Frey’s book? If every person who bought it would do that, the publisher would get the message and Frey’s bank account could shrink…maybe? They need a lesson for their deceitfulness!” That’s my mom, y’all. Always ready to stick it to the Man. Go mom!
There’s this great episode of Friends where Chandler quits his job because he doesn’t want to turn into someone who only cares about the numbers, only to get lured back by great pay, and the episode closes with all his friends wondering where he is at 11PM on a Friday night, and it turns out he’s at the office, yelling down the phone about the WENUS.
It’s sort of like that in my life right now. Not that I’m blogging about work, but there’s this new system being implemented to handle the financial side of producing a magazine, and as the person most adaptable to change (and the daughter of an accountant), it’s sort of been put in my lap to handle the transition from the old system to the new one. I can joke all I like about “I, for one, welcome our new PeopleSoft overlords”, but let’s face it, it’s sort of my job now.
What’s fascinating in all this isn’t whether or not too much work has or has not been dropped in my lap, or whether or not it was ever part of my job description to do all this stuff. What’s fascinating is there’s a part of me that LIKES it. And then there’s another part of me that HATES that I like it. I’m naturally a problem solver – I’m one of those people that will ASK to untangle your necklace for it because I like knots and undoing them. Which is, I think, a jarring side of my otherwise totally chaotic, creative personality. So there’s all this really complicated work to do, and there’s attendant paperwork, and there are people to handhold as they unwillingly are dragged towards change, and there are new systems to implement, and I complain about it because it’s a pain in the ass, but the real pain in the ass is I simply won’t let it go.
My otherwise disorganized, free-wheeling personality turns into the Virgo everyone who believes in Astrology thinks I should be. And I enjoy it. What’s problematic is that this isn’t my natural state, I don’t think. A friend once said, when I pointed out how overwhelmingly messy his room was, “you’re exactly the same as I am, messy at heart. Only you fight it and make yourself miserable by guilting yourself into being someone you’re not.” I’ve never forgotten it, albeit paraphrased, because what he was saying was that it is not in my NATURE to be meticulously organized and attentive.
Which, to an extent, is true. I am organized and meticulous in very small bursts, and then completely three-sheets-to-the-wind when it comes to maintaining that level or organization. These little systems and tasks I’m setting up around myself here at work, gleefully, will only turn into crabby sullen teenagers that I hate having to nurture in a few months.
So what’s natural? Is it really possible that I’m this diametrically opposed to myself? Can I really be BOTH nitpickingly organized and then a shitstorm of mess in the same lifetime? How can I both secretly adore making Excel spreadsheets, and then let my shoes litter the entire apartment?
Is this normal? And now, I have to go back to the WENUS.
So, I never got a patch. They don’t do them anymore, on account of it slowing the natural healing process of your eye. Which is a real shame, because I was going to draw a skull and crossbones on mine and that would have been a fun time.
I spent most of yesterday relentlessly putting drops in my eyes, annoying little drops that required holding shut my tear duct so that the medicine stayed in my eye. This is all a result of having the most over-dramatic eye in the history of eyes. Of course I couldn’t just have a little corneal scratch. No, no. It had to be a corneal ulceration, and then my eye had to go and completely overreact to the thing, causing iritis (inflammation of the iris, which Kate thinks sounds made up), which is what puffed my eye up like it was the Quasimodo of eyes.
After my first appointment, I was pretty down and trodden, and it didn’t help that the sweet blissful anesthetic (from the dilation) was wearing off while I spent 15 minutes at 47th and 5th trying to get a goddamned taxi to pay attention to me. So I went home, took a lot of advil and got some rest. The boys came home in time for me to start feeling a lot better but I was still really puffy, see photo.
That night, when I was close to tears from the pain, Stuart promised to come to the morning follow-up appointment. Which helped a lot – I love my new eye specialist (who knew I needed an eye specialist) but it’s always nice to have another brain in the room to absorb information, especially when the information is about how your eye is in a little heap of trouble.
My doctor took one look at me that morning and said, “yeah, I wasn’t sure it was iritis last night but I dliated you just in case – it’s definitely iritis,” and prescribed me an anti-inflammatory drop, thank you sweet jesus Rubenstein. So armed to the teeth with four prescriptions and a schedule for dosage more complicated than Leonardo’s flying machines, Stuart sweetly deposited me, dilated and disoriented, into a taxi Astoria-bound. After filling the scripts I took to the couch and felt the drugs work their magic.
It’s been two days of paying far too much attention to my overly dramatic eye. There’s a bunch of other stuff, too, that the doctor armed me with – stuff about my auto-immune system and how it might be malfunctioning just the slightest bit and how I’m a good girl for coming right in with the eye drama but if I could just be still a few minutes longer, there’s a host of diseases that want to meet me, please.
I’m not going to let myself worry about auto-immune systems and self/non-self and things that start with the letters HLA until I absolutely have to. Proscrastination is a way of life.
My eye is fine and thanks you for all the attention.
Barrie has decided that what feels like a scratched cornea is actually an incredibly small alien named Zorth who crawled in through my ear and has reached my optic nerve and is using it to get visuals of the outside world through me.
I’m sure I can reason with him.
The internet pulled through for me – you guys helped me find my perfect bag. It was suggested in the comments that I head here and here to see the results of someone else’s similar search, and sure enough, that lead me to this bag. The promise of all those pockets plus orange interior plus a zip-compartment (flaps bother me) was enough to add it to my search list.
On Monday, an ass-bitingly cold MLK, Jr. Day, I took my list and my walking shoes and I hit six stores, ending up at the Container Store. I had a sneaky feeling this was the perfect bag so I made sure to inspect all the awesome runners-up first. And I was right – it was my perfect bag. So without further ado and with much, much gratitude, here are my photos. Thanks, internet. You rock.
Today is like a huge belated card from Friday the 13th. Friday totally overslept, missed his big day, he’s so sorry! To make up for it, though, here are some of the doozies he’s already sent our way.
Westchester is having serious power problems, schools have lost power and are sending bewildered kids home, whose parents are at work in the city and cannot figure out how to get back there because hey! Metro-North is having huge problems thanks to a derailed train! Oh, and a truck flipped over on the GW Bridge, so the city has restricted truck travel from the bridges because of the high winds that are barreling down the rivers!
And hey, on a personal level, I scratched my cornea! I don’t know what I did when I was sleeping (I usually reserve clawing my eyes out to WEEKEND sleep?) but I did something. All morning, my right eye has gotten steadily more inflamed and painful, stinging every time I blink. I’m wearing my glasses instead of contacts which, HEY! Has been SO much fun in the rain! Really! Thanks! And now, even though our magazine is on deadline, I have a 4 PM eye doctor’s appointment to see if I need salve, or antibiotics, or a patch. Yeah, A PATCH. Just strap a parrot to my shoulder and pass the rum, me hearties. I’ll be your local urban pirate, totally lacking in depth perception! Fun!
I also have my volunteering gig tonight, which was already complicated by the fact that we’re two days behind deadline in closing the magazine so I was going to be jumping ship for my committment at 5:30PM anyway. Now the entire evening is thrown into uncertainty by what the doctor will say. Can I really read to kids with an eyepatch on? Should I go home after the appointment and rest my eye?
Thanks, FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH. You rule. PSYCHE.
This is really upsetting to me. The story is this – an independent designer created a tee-shirt that Urban Outfitters liked, they were in talks to carry the shirt, both parties decided against it, and now, Urban is carrying a tee shirt with a startlingly similar design to the original idea (a jet dropping cupcakes).
It’s not just my love of all things cupcake that feels outraged here. I’ve always chided Urban Outfitters for taking ideas that are fresh and cool and making sure they die instantly from over exposure, and I don’t shop there for that reason. I also don’t shop there because unless it’s Free People, a brand I trust, I find the clothes to be shoddily made and overpriced.
But this is beyond the pale, and apparently, they do it all the time – take a fresh, original design, tweak it enough to evade copycatting it completely, and then sell it. It may not be illegal but I think it’s pants, and I’m not going to shop there anymore, ever.
(Also, Karen would probably tell me not to shop there because I doubt their labor practices are up to snuff, but I can only carry so many indignant grudges in my head right now, and plus, I love the Gap. Sorry, darling. I know. I’m terrible.)
So, I’ve never made New Year resolutions before*. Mostly because I know myself pretty well and I’m only likely to do something that seems like a really good idea right when I do it (diet, fall madly in love and get married with no second-guessing, etc). I’m not really the sort of person that can say “I’m going to do this in the nearish future” and stick to doing it. It’s all or nothing with me. Before Stuart moved in and became something really nice to snuggle up to, thus prompting me to keep relatively regular sleep hours, I used to clean whenever the mood struck, and that mood struck around 1:30 AM about twice a month. Or I’d get into some really insane project, like reorganizing my dresser drawers or reorganizing my photographs. These aren’t things I plan, so resolutions never seemed like they fit my M.O.
But I want to commit to small plans that are manageable this year. So I’ve made some decisions that are resolutionish. They’re not really hard and fast rules, this is more like a tester year for the whole pre-planned decisions thing. Nonetheless, here they are, for posterity:
1. Get involved with people that need my help: this is something I’ve meant to do, year after year, but life gets in the way rather selfishly. I’ve always wanted to do volunteer work but everytime it seems like life is calm enough to find a project, life gets uncalm. And it’s not a good idea to dedicate yourself to something when there’s very little of yourself spare. But this seems like a good year – hopefully, this year I’ll be transitioning away from a nine-to-five existence and into something more flexible, and one of my promises to myself is that I will find useful ways to fill the time between school (hopefully), part-time work, and writing. So when Jen mentioned she’d joined NYCares as a volunteer, I looked into it. It’s a great organization in its flexibility and its wide scope of projects. Tomorrow night is my first project – reading bedtime stories to kids living in family shelters. I love children and I want to work with Barrie, eventually, on some literacy projects she’s got up her sleeve, so this seemed like a good place to start.
2. Be more attentive to special days: I’m not going to go totally insane and start crafting my own doilies or pincushions, but I’d like to start planning for friends’ and family’s birthdays and other holidays a little better. I’m good at the big holidays but I sometimes forget to do more than just call a long-distance friend on his or her birthday. It’s not hard to find a card and send it, so I want to start doing that more often.
3. Be more conscientious of daily routines: I’m a pretty good creature of habit but there are a lot of things I’d like to do on a daily basis – little things – that I sometimes slack on. Washing my face every night is a big one, because I’m currently lucky enough to have good skin and I shouldn’t take that for granted, taking care of it now will go a long way later. I also need to drink more water and put things away properly when I get home. These are three little tasks I’m going to try to improve this year.
4. Accomplish at least 2/3rds of these household projects: completely rehaul our hallway of picture frames, deal with the gross brown spots on our bathroom ceiling, repaint and restructure the kitchen cabinets, install a dimmer in the dining room, get a new bookshelf for the office, find a new ceiling light-fixture for the office, TOTALLY RE-ORGANIZE OUR LINEN CLOSET FROM HELL, frame Jason’s beautiful christmas card from last year before it starts fading, re-do the art in our bedroom, get our landlord to install a new front door lock to replace the really sticky current one, and solve the desk-space problem in our otherwise perfect office.
5. Do at least some of these things that I always say I want to do and aren’t hard to do but somehow never get around to doing: visit a vineyard in the NY area, go bike-riding in the city, go row-boating in Central Park, go camping again possibly with friends this time, go apple-picking in the fall, bake bread, walk across the Manhattan Bridge (I know!), go to the Bronx Zoo in the spring, and take more pictures with my Nikon.
I’m comforted by this last one, because I know I’ll get some or most of it done. If I’d made this same list last year, it would have had all those things on it but it also would have had things like: go camping, play tennis, get involved with Barrie’s summer Shakespeare, take at least one stupidly extravagant vacation, explore Queens, and write more, possibly for publishing. So, of all the things I didn’t get around to doing in the past year, I’ve done a fair amount of the things I wanted to. That’s encouraging.
What are your resolutishions?
* this isn’t strictly true. I made something like a resolution somewhat close to New Year’s last year, which was an incredibly huge accomplishment – Stuart and I started paying all our bills on time, on the same day every month. Then my dad, flushed with pride upon hearing that his daughter was committed to never again getting her cell-phone shut off, made me this totally awesome yearly spreadsheet where I could input the amounts paid every month to each company and the confirmation numbers I got online once the bills were paid. It meant that every single month this year, on that day in the middle of the month when our joint checking account was the fattest, I sat down with twenty minutes to spare and paid all five of our bills. Not having a credit card really helped this transition – so did Stuart getting a job. It’s a tiny accomplishment and we still don’t budget or save like we should (sorry, dad) but just paying our bills on time, all at once, every month, has given us a stability and preparedness that feels a lot like adulthood. You could say, sadly, that this was my most successful resolution. Today, when I copied and rebuilt dad’s 2005 spreadsheet into page two, 2006, I felt incredibly proud. Also, what a rockin’ dad, huh? You can borrow my dad if you need someone to build you a cool little spreadsheet that makes bill-paying fun.
I think it’s particularly inspiring that Liberia, the country founded by freed American slaves in 1847, has just elected their first female president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and she was sworn in today, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I have a soft spot of love and heartbreak for Africa, and even though I was young when I lived there, I wasn’t too young or sheltered to see that the real hope in Africa is its women. In the years my parents and I lived there, my mother did a herculean amount of work with women in inner-city and rural areas, with tribes to help give them an autonomous industry and in shelters run by nuns. I saw the work she did, heard the stories she told, and couldn’t help thinking of these women when I watched Johnson-Sirleaf talk about the power of her country’s women. Not to mention, the work she has ahead of her to repair the damage of fourteen years of civil war.
I’m very moved by it. I hope this is another way we can recognize contributions from men like King and women like Johnson-Sirleaf.
