I read.
I read so much, I forget what I’ve read. It would be great to have even a very cursory list of everything, but I have never done anything about it. I’ll try and remedy that now, by keeping a log here.
This week’s harvest (and just in case someone wonders how this goes with my previous post: I might as well not sleep or eat than not read. In stressful times I’ve tried all three – not helpful):
John Updike: In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996)
A beautiful family epic of America in the 20th century.
She carried plants back and forth – potted yellow and orange mums into the direct sun on the south side, checking under the leaves for spider mites; red and pink rosebud impatiens grown in hanging pots; some garish flats of Kalanchoe blossfeldiana, which the old man called Flaming Katie, pinching back the flowers to give better fall blooms – and imagined herself one of them, lifted up and set down in a place where she could be happier and could better grow.
Charles Stross: Halting State (2007)
Witty cyberpunk scifi in near-future Edinburgh! Brilliantness!
On New Town: “so-called because it was new when it was built in the 1760s; Edinburgh has history the way cats have bad breath.”
Or translate this: “Promised faeco-ventilatory intersection.” (*)
Tom McCarthy: Remainder (2005/2006)
A strange and creepy satire of an average guy who has a freak accident. In recovery he starts thinking about what is real, what is important, what is life.
Apologies for the long quote, but I loved this. I thought I was the only one acting in my own private (and embarrassing) scenes; oh look, girl reading on a park bench, what a charming urban tableau…
‘I mean that [De Niro in a film] is relaxed, malleable. He flows into his movements, even the most basic ones. Opening fridge doors, lighting cigarettes. He doesn’t have to think about them, or understand them first. He doesn’t have to think about them because he and they are one. Perfect. Real. My movements are all fake. Second-hand.’
‘You mean he’s cool. All film stars are cool,’ said Greg. ‘That’s what films do to them.’
‘It’s not about being cool,’ I told him. ‘It’s about just being. De Niro was just being; I can never do that now.’
Greg stopped in the middle of the pavement and turned to face me.
‘Do you think you could before?’ he asked. ‘Do you think I can? Do you think that anyone outside of films lights cigarettes or opens fridge doors like that? Think about it: the lighter doesn’t spark the first time you flip it, the first wisp of smoke gets in your eye and makes you wince; the fridge door catches and then rattles, milk slops over. It happens to everyone. It’s universal: everything fucks up! You’re not unusual. You know what you are?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘What?’
‘You’re just more usual than everyone else.’
I thought about that for a long time afterwards, that conversation. I decided Greg was right. I’d always been inauthentic. Even before the accident, if I’d been walking down the street just like De Niro, smoking a cigarette like him, and even if it had lit at first try, I’d still be thinking: Here I am, walking down the street, smoking a cigarette, like someone in a film. See? Second-hand.
I can’t resist another long one. This is a stockbroker explaining stock markets:
‘How does it work?’ I asked him. ‘I invest in companies and they let me share in their profits?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Well, yes, that’s a small aspect of it. They give you a dividend. But what really propels your investment onwards is speculation.’
‘Speculation?’ I repeated. ‘What’s that?’
‘Shares are constantly being bought and sold,’ he said. ‘The prices aren’t fixed: they change depending on what people are prepared to pay for them. When people buy shares, they don’t value them by what they actually represent in terms of goods and services: they value them by what they might be worth, in an imaginary future.’
‘But what if that future comes and they’re not worth what people thought they would be?’ I asked.
‘It never does,’ said [the stockbroker]. ‘By the time one future’s here, there’s another one being imagined. The collective imagination of all the investors keeps projecting futures, keeping the shares buoyant. Of course, sometimes a particular set of shares stop catching people’s imagination, so they fall. It’s our job to get you out of a particular one before it falls – and, conversely, to get you into another when it’s just about to shoot up.’
‘What if everyone stops imagining futures for all of them at the same time?’ I asked him.
‘Ah!’ His eyebrows dipped into a frown, and his voice became quieter, withdrawing from the room back to his small mouth and chest. ‘That throws the switch on the whole system, and the market crashes. That’s what happened in ’29. In theory it could happen again.’ He looked sombre for a moment; then his hearty look came back – and, with it, his booming voice as he resumed: ‘But if no one thinks it will, it won’t.’
‘And do they think it will?’
‘No.’
‘Cool,’ I said. ‘Let’s buy some shares.’
(*Did you get it? “Shit due to hit fan.”)
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