Escapism
Last night I watched television, made dinner, cleaned the kitchen and finished reading the...
Wait a minute. That's exactly what I did on Monday night! Sweet merciful crap! My life has become a recursive loop of eating, cleaning, watching TV and finishing half-read novels! It's like something out of a bad episode of Dr Who... which is ironic, since I was watching bad episodes of Dr Who at the time!
At least the novel was better on this occasion. I finished the last 120 pages of 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' by Michael Chabon, which was lent to me many, many months ago by someone at my office.
Far better writers than I have reviewed the book, so I won't go into the intricacies of the plot here. Suffice to say that it's about two Jewish cousins, one an artist, the other a writer, who join forces to take part in the great New York comic book industry boom of the 1930s and 40s. Along the way they encounter Nazis, Orson Wells, the Empire State Building, an aircraft made of dog skins, surrealists, the Golem and too much more to mention.
The odd thing about my particular reading of the novel was that I put it down for a couple of months three quarters of the way through, just as the story's mood was turning. So when I picked it up, the comic elements of the first part were mostly forgotten and I found myself affected by its air of melancholy.The first three quarters of the novel tell of people striding into rooms declaring their outrageous intentions, then popping off to hobnob with movie stars and celebrities, then miraculously surviving disasters on little more than luck and coincidence. The last quarter, on the other hand, has people lying in beds staring at ceilings, or keeping themselves busy because any reflection would break their stoicism and lead to heartache. The last quarter is about loss, sacrifice and the soft, nagging fear that any innovative action on your part would break your world.
In the very end, hope appears in the distance for the three principal characters, which makes the story melancholy rather than just depressing. However it's the "I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow" hope, not the "O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come" hope, but I suppose it's better than nothing.
It made me sort of mopey. When I finished it I found myself tottering around the house at midnight, reflecting on the inadequacies of my own life, such as the fact that my DVD player is wearing out and refusing to play some of my dodgier Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episodes. O, the cruel hands of Fate.
Wait a minute. That's exactly what I did on Monday night! Sweet merciful crap! My life has become a recursive loop of eating, cleaning, watching TV and finishing half-read novels! It's like something out of a bad episode of Dr Who... which is ironic, since I was watching bad episodes of Dr Who at the time!
At least the novel was better on this occasion. I finished the last 120 pages of 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' by Michael Chabon, which was lent to me many, many months ago by someone at my office.
Far better writers than I have reviewed the book, so I won't go into the intricacies of the plot here. Suffice to say that it's about two Jewish cousins, one an artist, the other a writer, who join forces to take part in the great New York comic book industry boom of the 1930s and 40s. Along the way they encounter Nazis, Orson Wells, the Empire State Building, an aircraft made of dog skins, surrealists, the Golem and too much more to mention.
The odd thing about my particular reading of the novel was that I put it down for a couple of months three quarters of the way through, just as the story's mood was turning. So when I picked it up, the comic elements of the first part were mostly forgotten and I found myself affected by its air of melancholy.The first three quarters of the novel tell of people striding into rooms declaring their outrageous intentions, then popping off to hobnob with movie stars and celebrities, then miraculously surviving disasters on little more than luck and coincidence. The last quarter, on the other hand, has people lying in beds staring at ceilings, or keeping themselves busy because any reflection would break their stoicism and lead to heartache. The last quarter is about loss, sacrifice and the soft, nagging fear that any innovative action on your part would break your world.
In the very end, hope appears in the distance for the three principal characters, which makes the story melancholy rather than just depressing. However it's the "I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow" hope, not the "O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come" hope, but I suppose it's better than nothing.
It made me sort of mopey. When I finished it I found myself tottering around the house at midnight, reflecting on the inadequacies of my own life, such as the fact that my DVD player is wearing out and refusing to play some of my dodgier Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episodes. O, the cruel hands of Fate.
posted by Blandwagon at 6:27 PM
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