Ramblings of a Dreamer

Searching for myself through art

beenthinking: I came to the close of Freedom late the other night. Stretched out in my white bed under the unsatisfying weight of summer blankets and finished just the last 30 pages. Which was odd after consuming it in piles of 100 in nearly every other session; I suppose I was dragging out the conclusion. But it’s finished now and I don’t regret that it is - it’s not one of those books I want to keep on living in forever. It was enough and I am tired. Mostly, I have what I need. This is the thought that rises to the top when I reflect on it: Finishing Freedom felt like being forgiven. Like Franzen wrote me (us?) a 600 page imperfect tome of redemption. And that alone is worth defending him for.I finished this book and had to dive in to the next hefty offering for book club and I have to hold my eyes to the words, force my cheeks back toward the page.  I needed more time with the last one, even now finished as it is.  I want to sit down and write letters about why I cared about this book or what I found in it, and then not send them to anyone. Or maybe, I want to consider the old letters I already wrote and never sent to the people who needed them however long ago. The book didn’t say it for me; Maybe it is time.I don’t know what all to say about this book yet except that it didn’t hand me answers and it didn’t leave me destroyed and wondering, abruptly abandoned and unfinished as is more and more the modern way. But I will admit it and make myself fodder for the scoffers as well: I guess this book helped me break my own heart and then it forgave me. Then it assured me and tucked itself back away.You might read this and while you’re holding the buffet of criticism and wry, cynical eye-rolling in your other hand and you might not understand. You might find this brief half-review too precious. Too eager to fall in love with anything. Too undiscerning? But I’ll tell you what: I am so tired of a subculture that is afraid to like anything. That is afraid of praising what anyone else loves instead of getting Detachment and Stoicism points for loathing it, maybe for not needing to love anything. It’s just this: life is too exhausting to hate this much. And ok it’s this - I want to hang a fucking PSA across the country: You’re not allowed a finite amount of enthusiasm! You don’t have to be so greedy with it.  Sometimes I pull up an email, maybe seven or eight years old and I reread a Teddy Roosevelt quote and miss politics and trying - publicly! - and remember why he is my favorite president: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” It’s not the critic that counts. I am so exhausted and bored by the critic. I could rend my clothes and cut my hair, if I had any left, in furious frustration at this voracious appetite to consume and reject every earnest offering.  Why are we so delighted by the criticism of Freedom or Franzen or Elizabeth Gilbert or anything that dares to succeed? Why do we fall over ourselves to be the first one to post the next mean, pithy evisceration of someone’s 600 page creation? I understand the inherent right and worth of critical feedback for a public piece. I value opinions…especially those without agenda. Like it, don’t like it, read it or don’t. That’s fair, that’s your due. I am bothered though, by what seems to be an increasing disinterest in thoughtful reviews alone - in the calm offering of why the reader enjoyed the book or found it lacking. And I am surprised by this rising bloodthirst for denigration. For this hipply critical culture’s agenda for tearing down. It’s like we’re dying for someone to tell us why this book doesn’t matter at all. To give us reason to fully discount, dismantle, discredit someone else’s success or passion. It’s almost like we need to mock anyone these things might mean anything to…and I don’t understand why we care so much. And that is the part of this world that I can barely stand to look at any more. That is the worst of us.You can say it because I already know it: I am too soft-bellied and Pollyanaish and naive for this brave new world. Not too sweet, not at all too good. Just too god damned sincere, too connected to emotion and analysis and the regrettable and opportune mess of the human condition. Too on-fire to connect to those who are willing to value slogging through mistakes and change and loss in community and finding things that matter to us along the route. Maybe praising them together. So yes, I am way too earnest to ever be laid back. Way too intense to ever be cool. I never remember to make room for the calculations that seem to matter most:  Do I want to be the kind of person who admits to being moved by Franzen, who enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love, who always loved John Irving. Because that makes you a target and an afterthought. In certain circles, you are done. Maybe it is this - we are all such special unique snowflakes, we can’t stand to relate to anything that moves the masses. Actually, I hope it’s just that. Because then at least there is a chance that you might find something obscure to love. That you’ll just look the other way and find your own Franzen. I can live with that…and it’s far more appealing than my real fear today: That it’s becoming constitutionally important for us to focus on the wrong in each other and to trump up failures. That if we are not creating, we are deriding. That there is no room left for praise and grateful consumption.  So let’s say it and be done with it. I loved Freedom and even if there were devises and passages that annoyed me, it meant something big to me still and I’m grateful for how it left me. I never needed it to be perfect. warbler via I rarely reblog anything, trying to fill my blog with original posts. Maybe I set that rule in order to mentally kick myself into writing more often instead of so scarcely. Obviously that hasn’t worked, considering in the one and a half years that this blog has lived, there is barely anything to show for it. Maybe I’ve set far too many restrictions on myself… I’m rambling. Here’s the thing: I rarely reblog anything, but I was compelled this time simply because everything that this woman has written I agree with completely. I have felt it and still feel it and here it is in the words I could not find. I’m actually quite glad I didn’t find them because here she has expressed it so well, and far more beautifully than I ever could have. I had to share it. Signed,Hopeless Dreamer

beenthinking:

I came to the close of Freedom late the other night. Stretched out in my white bed under the unsatisfying weight of summer blankets and finished just the last 30 pages. Which was odd after consuming it in piles of 100 in nearly every other session; I suppose I was dragging out the conclusion. But it’s finished now and I don’t regret that it is - it’s not one of those books I want to keep on living in forever. It was enough and I am tired. Mostly, I have what I need.

This is the thought that rises to the top when I reflect on it: Finishing Freedom felt like being forgiven. Like Franzen wrote me (us?) a 600 page imperfect tome of redemption. And that alone is worth defending him for.

I finished this book and had to dive in to the next hefty offering for book club and I have to hold my eyes to the words, force my cheeks back toward the page.  I needed more time with the last one, even now finished as it is.  I want to sit down and write letters about why I cared about this book or what I found in it, and then not send them to anyone. Or maybe, I want to consider the old letters I already wrote and never sent to the people who needed them however long ago. The book didn’t say it for me; Maybe it is time.

I don’t know what all to say about this book yet except that it didn’t hand me answers and it didn’t leave me destroyed and wondering, abruptly abandoned and unfinished as is more and more the modern way. But I will admit it and make myself fodder for the scoffers as well: I guess this book helped me break my own heart and then it forgave me. Then it assured me and tucked itself back away.

You might read this and while you’re holding the buffet of criticism and wry, cynical eye-rolling in your other hand and you might not understand. You might find this brief half-review too precious. Too eager to fall in love with anything. Too undiscerning?

But I’ll tell you what: I am so tired of a subculture that is afraid to like anything. That is afraid of praising what anyone else loves instead of getting Detachment and Stoicism points for loathing it, maybe for not needing to love anything. It’s just this: life is too exhausting to hate this much.

And ok it’s this - I want to hang a fucking PSA across the country: You’re not allowed a finite amount of enthusiasm! You don’t have to be so greedy with it.
 
Sometimes I pull up an email, maybe seven or eight years old and I reread a Teddy Roosevelt quote and miss politics and trying - publicly! - and remember why he is my favorite president:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

It’s not the critic that counts. I am so exhausted and bored by the critic. I could rend my clothes and cut my hair, if I had any left, in furious frustration at this voracious appetite to consume and reject every earnest offering. 

Why are we so delighted by the criticism of Freedom or Franzen or Elizabeth Gilbert or anything that dares to succeed? Why do we fall over ourselves to be the first one to post the next mean, pithy evisceration of someone’s 600 page creation?

I understand the inherent right and worth of critical feedback for a public piece. I value opinions…especially those without agenda. Like it, don’t like it, read it or don’t. That’s fair, that’s your due. I am bothered though, by what seems to be an increasing disinterest in thoughtful reviews alone - in the calm offering of why the reader enjoyed the book or found it lacking. And I am surprised by this rising bloodthirst for denigration. For this hipply critical culture’s agenda for tearing down. It’s like we’re dying for someone to tell us why this book doesn’t matter at all. To give us reason to fully discount, dismantle, discredit someone else’s success or passion. It’s almost like we need to mock anyone these things might mean anything to…and I don’t understand why we care so much.

And that is the part of this world that I can barely stand to look at any more.

That is the worst of us.

You can say it because I already know it: I am too soft-bellied and Pollyanaish and naive for this brave new world. Not too sweet, not at all too good. Just too god damned sincere, too connected to emotion and analysis and the regrettable and opportune mess of the human condition. Too on-fire to connect to those who are willing to value slogging through mistakes and change and loss in community and finding things that matter to us along the route. Maybe praising them together. So yes, I am way too earnest to ever be laid back. Way too intense to ever be cool. I never remember to make room for the calculations that seem to matter most:  Do I want to be the kind of person who admits to being moved by Franzen, who enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love, who always loved John Irving. Because that makes you a target and an afterthought. In certain circles, you are done.

Maybe it is this - we are all such special unique snowflakes, we can’t stand to relate to anything that moves the masses. Actually, I hope it’s just that. Because then at least there is a chance that you might find something obscure to love. That you’ll just look the other way and find your own Franzen. I can live with that…and it’s far more appealing than my real fear today: That it’s becoming constitutionally important for us to focus on the wrong in each other and to trump up failures. That if we are not creating, we are deriding. That there is no room left for praise and grateful consumption. 

So let’s say it and be done with it. I loved Freedom and even if there were devises and passages that annoyed me, it meant something big to me still and I’m grateful for how it left me.

I never needed it to be perfect.

warbler via

I rarely reblog anything, trying to fill my blog with original posts. Maybe I set that rule in order to mentally kick myself into writing more often instead of so scarcely. Obviously that hasn’t worked, considering in the one and a half years that this blog has lived, there is barely anything to show for it. Maybe I’ve set far too many restrictions on myself… I’m rambling.

Here’s the thing: I rarely reblog anything, but I was compelled this time simply because everything that this woman has written I agree with completely. I have felt it and still feel it and here it is in the words I could not find. I’m actually quite glad I didn’t find them because here she has expressed it so well, and far more beautifully than I ever could have.

I had to share it.

Signed,
Hopeless Dreamer

1 year ago

  1. spaceships reblogged this from beenthinking and added:
    Freedom by Jonathan Franzen: beenthinking’s review below made me want...love this book....
  2. cenizasyarena reblogged this from beenthinking and added:
    novel, Freedom, which...less than 48 hours
  3. staceysaurus reblogged this from murmurandshout
  4. claimsatconsciousness reblogged this from bastard-brother
  5. bastard-brother reblogged this from anri-du-toit
  6. anri-du-toit reblogged this from murmurandshout
  7. wealthyinloss reblogged this from murmurandshout
  8. hopelessdreamer reblogged this from beenthinking and added:
    I rarely reblog anything, trying to fill my blog with original posts. Maybe I set that rule in order to mentally kick...
  9. emilykaatherine reblogged this from beenthinking and added:
    read Erica’s posts during times...space; her words always unassumingly fill. Her...
  10. winandtonic reblogged this from murmurandshout
  11. temporalherald reblogged this from murmurandshout
  12. werdsmiffery reblogged this from murmurandshout
  13. murmurandshout reblogged this from beenthinking and added:
    beenthinking Could someone go ahead...legalize gay marriage

1 ⁄ 1

- Inkhorn theme powered by Tumblr -