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Entry tags:
bookishness.
I went to down to the basement of the library today, in search of something to read at lunch, because they keep all the interesting books downstairs. I mean, okay, we do have a copy of The Lorax, but I don't eat that fast.
Anyway. Downstairs. Looking for a book. Looking, specifically, for Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, about which more below, but what caught my eye was a book on the next shelf. The title, printed in nicely spaced caps, white on a black spine, was FANON.
Wow, I thought, staring at it. I didn't realize the fandom-studies field had gotten so advanced that they'd do an entire book just on the phenomenon of fanon. That's really interesting, I wonder--wait, no. It can't be--
But I couldn't think what the hell else a book called Fanon might be. It turned out, of course, to be a biography of the psychologist Fritz Fanon, who was, I believe, Algerian. There was another book about him right next to it, with the title printed in a slightly less eye-catching fashion. Still, I look forward to the day when I can read a scholarly study of fanon over lunch.
Instead, I'll be reading pop-nonfiction about a young man named Chris McCandless.
A while back,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
qe2 sent me some mp3s, among them a song called "Sahara" by Eddie from Ohio, which, if I had ever remembered to bring it to work, I would share with you now. It's a sweet, sad song, and I had no idea it was about a real person until Q remarked, "I thought you'd like a song about Chris McCandless." I confessed my ignorance, and Q promised to find me some info, but life-y things and distract-y things intervened, so eventually I got around to googling young Chris myself.
What I discovered, in a nutshell, is that a kid - about my age, actually - just out of college, having grown up in the American South and having read an apparently unhealthy amount of Tolstoy and Thoreau, divested himself of all possessions and set off into the Alaskan wilderness and then four months later was found dead, having eaten poisonous berries.
Okay, and the thing about that is that my first reaction isn't "tragic," but, "my god what an idiot." I've never had a lot of patience for people who do things for the sake of their ideals which then proceed to get them killed; it sounds rather like something my next-younger brother, #3, would do. He'd get all caught up in the romance of the idea of hiking off into the wilderness and living off the land, burn the money in his wallet, conclude that even a field guide to the local plants was one more possession just tying him down to the capitalist machine, and then, in a wretched state of malnutrition and disorientation, eat poison berries and die. And I wouldn't know what had happened to him until some moose hunter found his decomposing remains.
Tell me again how this is noble and tragic?
Still, I like the song, and I figure it's good for me to broaden my savagely pragmatic horizons, so I'm going to read the book. Maybe then this will make sense. I'll let y'all know if I learn anything useful, right after I go fasten this tracking collar on brother #3...
Anyway. Downstairs. Looking for a book. Looking, specifically, for Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, about which more below, but what caught my eye was a book on the next shelf. The title, printed in nicely spaced caps, white on a black spine, was FANON.
Wow, I thought, staring at it. I didn't realize the fandom-studies field had gotten so advanced that they'd do an entire book just on the phenomenon of fanon. That's really interesting, I wonder--wait, no. It can't be--
But I couldn't think what the hell else a book called Fanon might be. It turned out, of course, to be a biography of the psychologist Fritz Fanon, who was, I believe, Algerian. There was another book about him right next to it, with the title printed in a slightly less eye-catching fashion. Still, I look forward to the day when I can read a scholarly study of fanon over lunch.
Instead, I'll be reading pop-nonfiction about a young man named Chris McCandless.
A while back,
qe2 sent me some mp3s, among them a song called "Sahara" by Eddie from Ohio, which, if I had ever remembered to bring it to work, I would share with you now. It's a sweet, sad song, and I had no idea it was about a real person until Q remarked, "I thought you'd like a song about Chris McCandless." I confessed my ignorance, and Q promised to find me some info, but life-y things and distract-y things intervened, so eventually I got around to googling young Chris myself. What I discovered, in a nutshell, is that a kid - about my age, actually - just out of college, having grown up in the American South and having read an apparently unhealthy amount of Tolstoy and Thoreau, divested himself of all possessions and set off into the Alaskan wilderness and then four months later was found dead, having eaten poisonous berries.
Okay, and the thing about that is that my first reaction isn't "tragic," but, "my god what an idiot." I've never had a lot of patience for people who do things for the sake of their ideals which then proceed to get them killed; it sounds rather like something my next-younger brother, #3, would do. He'd get all caught up in the romance of the idea of hiking off into the wilderness and living off the land, burn the money in his wallet, conclude that even a field guide to the local plants was one more possession just tying him down to the capitalist machine, and then, in a wretched state of malnutrition and disorientation, eat poison berries and die. And I wouldn't know what had happened to him until some moose hunter found his decomposing remains.
Tell me again how this is noble and tragic?
Still, I like the song, and I figure it's good for me to broaden my savagely pragmatic horizons, so I'm going to read the book. Maybe then this will make sense. I'll let y'all know if I learn anything useful, right after I go fasten this tracking collar on brother #3...