girlsdontcry's Diaryland Diary

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The Corrections

I was given the book The Corrections for my birthday, the book by Jonathan Franzen that everyone was raving about sort of this time last year.

It's sat in my bed for weeks, waiting for me ... I wanted to read it because everyone said it was so great, and because my colleagues gave it to me and I didn't want to feel guilty reading other books when they knew I had it.

Anyway, it was tough going, I was reading a sentence at a time, practically, and then falling asleep or whatever.

Until this morning, when it suddenly turned into this brilliant book everyone's been raving about. So good that I kind of want to stay and read it all day and night, but I think I really should go out.

But I wanted to remember this bit, so I'm going to write it here. It says: He couldn't figure out if she was immensely well adjusted or seriously messed up.

That line ... it seems so true. This idea that it's all a straight line and that being well adjusted, or adjusting well, is at the opposite end of being messed up -- suddenly it seemed like it was, in fact, a circle. When coping with everything, when getting on with everything is really just as messed up as falling all apart.

I say this because my goal in life is usually to feel nothing, to let it all wash over me. I avoid being in any kind of situation where I might be influenced by a mass high or a mass low. I have to pay attention to the small pleasures because they're the only ones I think I can bear, or that I can trust. And I guess because of this thing I have where I usually see both sides of the argument, where I can understand why someone is shouting at me, feelings of anger are kind of... well, certainly not alien, but I guess I don't know what to do with them, it all feels so hopeless. I despair at the thought that I could ever change anyone's mind.

..........

The world seems to be different today. No. I am different. I read the news headlines with gasps and outloud comments of disbelief. And I've been laughing outloud. At several things in The Corrections -- I was really laughing at the description of one of the characters shoplifting a fillet of salmon. And at these two entries by cruel-irony and hodgson.

12:37 p.m. - 2002-09-28

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