Get Your Car Out Of That Gear

 Fought a sinus infection last night. No, writing, but I got some of the dishes done, fixed dinner, and watched movies on Tubi. I finished Bullitt - I forgot just how steady to the point of sheer determination it is; no prettier than Bullitt's Mustang. Then I saw Hard Times offered, and I accepted. This was one of the movies I got to see when I could go to movies by myself; it is why I watch Walter Hill movies; and although, I left it unfinished, it remains as good as I thought it was.

Going to the convenience store at 6:15 AM was the first time I had left the apartment since Friday.

The Brisbane Times reprinted a Maureen Dowd piece, How men can reject Trump’s crude masculinity and rediscover their richer selves. I will go to my grave without understanding why men find Donald J. Trump masculine. He is a cowardly, blowhard who wears more makeup than a drag queen.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about how getting my master’s in English literature from Columbia University underscored for me that we need the humanities even more when technology is stripping us of our humanity.

And what happens when we dehumanize people? A license is issued for destroying those we consider non-human.

Such as putting forward corporations over people - something we've had to deal with in Indiana for decades:

I admit the idea of a "darkly funny Swedish autofiction" in Bloody Awful in Different Ways by Andrev Walden review – darkly funny Swedish autofiction (The Guardian) too tempting to not read. 

It’s easy to see why the book has been such a hit in Walden’s native Sweden, where it was the bestseller of 2023 across all genres and won the August prize, Sweden’s most prestigious literary award. Walden’s instinct for observation and his ear for prose are flawless. His understated humour is particularly winning. Going to stay with relatives, Andrev is amazed by the number of cousins in the house: “There are so many rooms and so many cousins that I keep finding new ones. It’s like opening doors on an Advent calendar – wow, here’s another cousin.” And then, a few pages later: “When we return to the apartment on Tomtebogatan, new cousins have emerged from the walls.” (He hasn’t yet realised that his aunt is a childminder.)

 The Confessions of Samuel Pepys by Guy de la Bédoyère review – journal of a predator (The Guardian) did not seem worth noting until I got to the concluding paragraph:

While Pepys’s dark side has long been known, it is something else to be confronted with the evidence laid out quite so starkly. The man who emerges from De la Bédoyère’s meticulous filleting is no Restoration roustabout but a chilling embodiment of male entitlement. This newly explicit view of Pepys does not negate the continuing value of his diary – which remains a magnificent historical resource – but from now on it will be impossible to go to it in a state of innocence, let alone denial.

As a federally-certified unpleasant and distasteful person, I do not want to sound self-serving here. What I want to make clear is that this seems to me the proper way of dealing with people like me - and those worse - is not excuse us or ignore us, but to understand the value of the work regardless of the creator's morals. We are all sinners, aren't we? 

And for a dose of gloom (as if we need it in these days of Trump, Putin trying to annihilate Ukraine, and starvation in Gaza): Progress by Samuel Miller McDonald review – humanity’s greatest myth? (The Guardian).

What accounts for our complacency? False consciousness, claims McDonald in this sparky polemic against the myth of progress. We have been hoodwinked by elite propaganda. The “progress narratives” of the ruling classes assure us that history only moves forward, that we should trust the system and surrender agency to our betters. Even when protests have erupted, they have mostly sought modest tweaks rather than revolution. But progress, argues McDonald, is a false prophet. History hasn’t followed a tidy upward arc. Moreover, what counts as progress has often produced huge collateral damage, including ecological devastation.

Calling out the billionaires may not change the world, but it cannot hurt. 

I could not afford the fee for Indiana's Midwest Writers Conference here in Muncie. Hopefully, next year. I hope someone, somewhere else is banging the pots drawing attention to what seems to me to be the biggest effusion of attention to writers in Indiana. We can learn how Saskatchewan promotes its Festival of Words.  (See The Saskatchewan Festival of Words from Terry Fallis — A Novel Journey Substack). Although, there may a certain romantic resonance to being in a place called Moose Jaw as opposed to being in Muncie, Indiana.

Well, I am ready for church. The sinus infection feels under control. Writing and cleaning are on the menu for later.

sch