monk222 | Apr. 17th, 2012

Apr. 17th, 2012

I love being so enrapt in a novel that it pains me to put it down. “Strange Flesh” is just escapist fun, but it clicks with me. This does not happen nearly enough for me when it comes to such fiction. It must be like getting hooked on a drug. Once the addiction kicks in, you got to keep hitting it until you are left strung out and sucked dry.

It is one thing to enjoy Shakespeare or high literature, but a page-turner of a novel must be like a wild weekend affair of sheer carnal debauchery with a ten dreamgirl, a prostitute, of course, who happens to need the money badly, and even agrees to rough sex. It just feels nasty and wicked and sooo good.

I wish I could regularly get this charge from pop novels, but I figure that I am lucky if this happens to me two or three times a year. Although shallow and most transitory, they really are the most intense thrills of my reading life, perhaps the very best of times, even if they do not leave a single mark on my soul.

There are good ways and bad ways to die. Then there was the death afforded, around A.D. 750, to a Persian political adviser named Ibn al-Muqaffa. His limbs were dispatched from his body, and he was forced to watch as they were roasted slowly in an oven.

This punishment was visited upon Muqaffa in part because he’d committed blasphemy. He’d apparently suggested that the Shariah — God’s law under Islam — be codified into written rules to facilitate a just society.

-- Dwight Garner at The New York Times

Considering how overwrought people can become when swayed by the passions of faith, maybe it is better to struggle with meaninglessness. Even God can be taken too seriously.

As much as I can kill Sammy sometimes, for all his crying when he is kept indoors during bad weather, I have to feel sorry for him, as he always seems unhappy and disgruntled. There are times when he appears content enough in his dozing, but other than that, he looks as though he might rather commit suicide than continue this pointless existence, this charade that we call life.

I am inclined to blame the neutering, the taking of his sex life. I do not think it bothers the female cats to be spayed, but I can imagine how the male may feel that he is deprived of the essence of life, that the heart of life has been stolen from him, and that the life left to him is but a cruel mockery.

Or do I project too much?

I think of Willy. He had a short life lasting only a year and a summer, but he seemed quite content with his existence, the life of the tomcat always on the prowl for a cute kitty number, a hunter in the great game of life. It was a rough life; I know he got into fights sometimes and did not always get the best of it, judging by the wounds he brought home with him. But he was satisfied: you win some and you lose some. He was not existing just to be existing.
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Yeah, but when he gets eaten by a shark, we will be chuckling over our popcorn as we watch it on YouTube.

Julia and Winston catch O’Brien at his high-level labors, and Orwell has some fun illustrating how rank has its privileges.

_ _ _

O'Brien had a slip of paper between his fingers and seemed to be studying it intently. His heavy face, bent down so that one could see the line of the nose, looked both formidable and intelligent. For perhaps twenty seconds he sat without stirring. Then he pulled the speakwrite towards him and rapped out a message in the hybrid jargon of the Ministries:

'Items one comma five comma seven approved fullwise stop suggestion contained item six doubleplus ridiculous verging crimethink cancel stop unproceed constructionwise antegetting plusfull estimates machinery overheads stop end message.'

He rose deliberately from his chair and came towards them across the soundless carpet. A little of the official atmosphere seemed to have fallen away from him with the Newspeak words, but his expression was grimmer than usual, as though he were not pleased at being disturbed. The terror that Winston already felt was suddenly shot through by a streak of ordinary embarrassment. It seemed to him quite possible that he had simply made a stupid mistake. For what evidence had he in reality that O'Brien was any kind of political conspirator? Nothing but a flash of the eyes and a single equivocal remark: beyond that, only his own secret imaginings, founded on a dream. He could not even fall back on the pretence that he had come to borrow the dictionary, because in that case Julia's presence was impossible to explain. As O'Brien passed the telescreen a thought seemed to strike him. He stopped, turned aside and pressed a switch on the wall. There was a sharp snap. The voice had stopped.

Julia uttered a tiny sound, a sort of squeak of surprise. Even in the midst of his panic, Winston was too much taken aback to be able to hold his tongue.

'You can turn it off!' he said.

'Yes,' said O'Brien, 'we can turn it off. We have that privilege.'

-- “1984” by George Orwell

More cheery news about the death of the blog. What is more surprising is the report that Tumblr is actually becoming more popular, not just more popular than LiveJournal, but more popular than 'blogs', period.