Lethargy Strikes

 I managed to get some legal research done this morning, and into a semi-presentable format. I did my laundry. What I did not do was leave at 8:15 AM, as originally planned. Nope, I left at 11:26, and I did not get back until 3:30. In that time, I played detective a little, looking for a lead on an old friend, and getting another mystery to carry around. I was going to the sheriff's and the food stamp office, but did not - that will be next week - because I got tired of waiting for the necessary buses. Instead, I went up to Great Clips and then to Payless. The haircut was done, and provisions purchased for the next few days. Then I had to wait and wait for the bus back downtown - afternoons the Muncie buses deliver kids and that just screws up the schedules. I took the time to call E. She sounded good. Luckily, I got the #5 back here without any trouble, or noisy teenagers.

Oh, yeah, I did get my first installment of Christmas cards out.

I still need to check up on my cousin; see how he is doing after the amputation.

Dinner eaten, a couple of emails replied to, and a few things read: Weasels, not pandas, should be the poster animal for biodiversity loss, and A New Wave of Ciders Is Bringing a Refreshing Change to Cocktail Hour, I watched the tail end of The Children Act; Emma Thompson leading and Ian McEwan doing the scripting. good, if you like McEwan's grimness (I do).

Considering we have Donald J. Trump advocating revolution, I spent some time with An Irrelevance of Talent Bigots Don't Really Care about Literature:

The reason fascists have these ideas about victimhood and free speech is because they’ve created a world full of actual victims and actual threats to free speech. And yes, literature is actually in peril for these same reasons: because fascists (and the people who protect them) are dismantling it as a public art form; because they are strangling it as an aspiration.

Some definitions: Literature (not to be confused with literary fiction) is a small subset of creative written works—of any genre—that continually set the standards for all other creative written works, even those that don’t aspire to literature; Fascism is a political ideology rooted in immutability and predestination that denies agency to anyone who doesn’t participate in its categories. Because fascism is a simple, reductive way to classify or “tag” individual human beings, it becomes the most immediately profitable politics for the wealthy elite in societies with extreme inequality and under-regulated commerce. Because one of literature’s greatest strength is to complicate individuals, to both enrich and translate their inner lives, it is, in aggregate (with notable exceptions), an antifascist endeavor.

Culture is where fascism and literature intersect, as well as where, say, disingenuous novelists, newspapers, publishers, and social media platforms can interfere with literature’s struggle against fascism. Culture is where the undermining of literature compounds and accelerates fascist politics; it’s where, in a phrase, shit really gets fucked up.

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Now, if novelists of Adichie’s stature really cared about literature, perhaps these realities of publishing are worth mentioning in a lecture about “free speech,” particularly if money is speech. Because who’s really speaking here? What are they saying? Certainly it’s not trans women, who can’t seem to get a single word into the opinion pages of newspapers that nonetheless discuss them relentlessly. More importantly, who’s being silenced? Certainly it’s not the “controversial” novelist interviewed the Guardian (guardian of TERFs, surely). If Adichie were serious about literature—if any of the authors “concerned” about “free speech” or “terrified” of being “canceled” were serious about literature—they would advocate not only for writers, for higher advances, but for workers, the people who actually make publishing function, and thereby provide for literature’s possibility as a public art form (as opposed to the private art form of, say, the Soviet novelist’s desk drawer). They would protest alongside unions on strike. They would speak out against the acquisition of cynical celebrity memoirs that extend fascism’s ideological reach. And they would support, in whatever way they can, the most marginalized and vulnerable writers and workers, and not constantly undermine their personhood—which seems to me the antithesis of literature’s project, and a direct attack on culture as a whole. They would reject becoming what they’ve become: vapid, reactionary pawns in the fascist destruction of the future—everyone’s future.

From Entertainment, Weakly, you might want to see what else he has to offer. 

Climate change is real. I figure Home sapiens has managed to destroy itself because it will not try to rise above its selfishness. Oddly, this does not depress me as it would have once upon a time. Maybe it is just the Zoloft that keeps me writing like this, rather than reverting to my self-destructive ways, but I like to think it is more, a return to an earlier way of thinking where I will thumb my nose at the end of life. Meanwhile, the Cincinnati Review published A Love Letter to Cli-Fi; which is a link you really ought to click on.

I got one Pretrial Detention post done, and will work on another for the next 30 minutes. Yes, back to that for now. Unless I call KH.

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