PriorBlog

The main reason I started posting here was to cut down on the excess of bullshit that I began filling my friends’ inboxes with. I started to notice that, when certain people would send me an email, I would respond with lengthy essays that they most likely wanted nothing to do with. A lot of times I hear myself saying something, and I begin to think, ‘Will you just shut already.’ Other times I’ll be rambling on and notice Bambi retreating into an impenetrable Zen like calm, as though she is sitting right there next to me, but the world around her has ceased to exist. To get back to the emails though, because they offered proof, like a litmus test would, of an imbalance of my blathering on and on in relation to a “c u later” or something, PriorBlog was started as an effort to purge myself of this bullshitting with the hope that I would appear as normal as possible in polite conversation, on and offline.

Last night Bambi and went to see our friend Michael Lowenthal read from his new novel, Charity Girl, at Brookline Booksmith. It should be noted that Lowenthal is very charming. However, it is also important to note, that virtues* do not necessarily beget happiness. Oftentimes, it is just the opposite. Let’s say, for example, that Lowenthal, in an effort to be his charming self smiles at some moronic thing I say, the same type of thing that would allow Bambi to float on off to her other-worldly Shangri La. In this instance isn’t Bambi better served by not being charming, since I eventually catch on and stop bothering her?**

As Lowenthal began reading from his new novel last night, I was struck by a feeling of ‘I should never talk to him again,’ because it quickly became apparent that he’s a genius, and that if anybody would be bothered by bullshit, it would be a genius. I had read his novel Avoidance a few years ago, and came to a similar conclusion, but the distinction between charming man and printed work eventually worked itself back into my way of looking at him, to the point where I completely forgot he was brilliant, and found him suitable for boring to tears with my plans for a taxonomy of farts, or my reasoning behind being in favor of reinstating the poll tax.

I haven’t been able to get to Charity Girl yet because Bambi got to read it first, but the first chapter, which he read last night, was chilling in light of what the book is about. Not a single detail is misplaced, every little incident, from the snarling of a string to the loitering of an aggressive cad, played a part in well constructed sense of doom. This was my favorite thing about Avoidance as well, the way Lowenthal created a feeling of intense dread, to the extent that- horrible as it sounds -I almost wanted the main character to be completely condemned in the end, just to enjoy Lowenthal’s ability to wallow in it all. His pull is akin to that of film noir. It’s all about the dread. Something bad is going to happen, not because of a character flaw, but due to circumstance, and in a lot of ways, this ambiguity makes things more interesting than tragedy, because even if the character does get off the hook#, you’re still left with the sinking feeling that it doesn’t matter whether you’re a good person or not, you’re just as likely as anybody else to get crushed with a falling piano later in the day.

To me, this formulation leads to a broader social context of morals than the more individualized hubris of a tragic individual. When the arbitrary takes precedence over the willed, everybody, despite the array of individual wills, is subsumed. The issue then becomes not individual, but political. I bring this up not to comment on the political nature of Lowenthal’s work, but to show what I think is an interesting and effective conduit from the aesthetic to the political. As much as I would like to delve into political commentary, I have to stay to the sidelines, because “everything’s a fucking joke to [me].”

I guess this means taking a break from Marcel for a while.
* Although I think in a classical sense, being charming would not be equated with virtue, never the less, with apologies to the Platonists in the audience, for our sake, let’s agree that charm is a virtue in a modern sense, in fact it may very well be the virtue of the modernity!##

** Or has Bambi learned what Lowenthal is still yet unaware of, that beyond the limits of being charming one finds oneself having charmed a blabbermouth who will never ever go away?

# In a way, unlike tragedy in which the protagonist is forced to die, in film noir, as in Avoidence, the protagonist is forced to live, but again, I’ve only seen 4 or 5 of those movies, so I can’t speak with any authority on them, or anything else for that matter.

## Where else can you get bullshit like this?###

### All over.