On Reading
I have been existing in a bit of a fog lately. I spend consecutive days wasting away in my dorm room scrolling Facebook and then have 48 hours of panic lucidity where I complete all my work for the week. After a period of relative illiteracy, slowing down has allowed me to rediscover The Novel which has been a welcomed distraction from the new season of The Kardashians and my favorite youtube reel creators.
I loved Blonde, the recent Ana de Armas porno that was torn to shreds for its sexualized falsifications. I had already exhausted my appropriation of the Marylin persona; after my screening, I learned the choreography to diamonds are a girl's best friend and dressed like her for a week. So instead of picking up Joyce Carol Oates’ original text, I opted for her more recent thriller- The Babysitter. The back cover made it impossible to resist despite its steep price tag in the London airport- “a novel about love and deceit, lust and redemption, against a backdrop of child murders in the affluent suburbs of Detroit.” I devoured it through Ireland and Morocco, only pausing briefly to look up at the foreign landscapes that I worry I will too soon forget.
Feeling satiated by my return to the world of text but still hungry for more, I stopped in at five different discount bookshops on my walk to school until I finally found one with an English language section. My pickings were slim, most books pertaining to WWII, and so I coughed up two euros for Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot. I knew I was in for a treat, the main character is a college senior who loves Jane Austen written by the same man I have to thank for the existence of Sophia Coppola’s adaption of the Virgin Suicides. This one was read in Cordoba, and while my preferred romantic interest contemplated religious studies in India, I toured the Great Mosque.
Both books seemingly random, united only by their status as the lesser famous works of two popular authors, but unexpectedly complimented each other as a double feature. The books struggled to satisfy me in the way I often hope my escapist literature will, they both navigated the decaying reality of marriage in modern America. These devious authors know of the reader’s desire for the Type of Love You Only Read About In Books and effectively withhold it from us, making the stories all the more tangible and romantic. Apparently, our postmodern reality is subject to lack of stylistic innovation, according to the readings assigned by my Almadolvar professor, we will only ever be referencing what has already been created. But as the marriage plot becomes something of the past and enters into the realm of fairytale, it seems like a new, more depressing era of style exists. I’m just happy to be reading again.
