Friday, June 06, 2008

(Not) Reading

I haven't been reading much recently. Not really busy, but too many things on my mind. I did pick-up one book, All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen, which I found terrible and abandoned in the middle. Complete Review collects some reviews which the book has received, some of which are more enlightening and entertaining than the book itself.

It did make me think about a few things though, not all of them related to the book or its characters. Most of all, what it really means to live a life of the mind in a culture which is so hostile to it, a culture in which people can say things like "I am a marketer by profession and a poet at heart" (got it from a real blog profile) and really mean it without realizing the sad and ugly irony beneath?

2 comments:

Kubla Khan said...

Hi
You might have noticed that my blog is dying, though i continue to read listlessly.you are not as prolific as before and Antonia has disappeared.

Her disappearance without warning is another facet of blog life. you get used to a fictive people, then kaput!
life being stranger than fiction as usual.

just wondering what your thoughts are. i visit your page regularly. i also visit mine, in the hope that i might actually write.........

Alok said...

Hi Kubla, unlike you I don't have any ideological problems with the medium of blogs, late capitalism or whatever :) I am just too stuck up with work and real life issues to really concentrate... I hope you get back to blogging sometime but you should do it only if you feel like it. May even be just random reading notes...