Good books and not good books
People keep asking me whether or not I like things. Books, movies, people, food, political institutions. Throughout my life I have taken this question very seriously, because it has always been the fact that what one says, to this, defines oneself in the world’s eyes. And this has always been a source of confusion to me because I have thought myself in poor taste. For example, I like to eat the strangest foods, and the strangest combinations of foods. I often like to eat bland Grapenuts microwaved with milk. I fry eggs and put them on top of spaghetti with tomato sauce and garlic pickles. So I have often been embarassed about my tastes in most categories.
As time goes on I realize that I do have taste in things. I have feelings about books, and these feelings are based objectively in facts. They reflect my “person-hood”.
Right now I am reading “Pale Fire” by Vladmir Nabokov. At first I was put off by its strangeness. Now I have really warmed to my understanding of it. The old man writing this poem, I don’t think he’s very good at poetry. He knows this, but he feels so deeply, for his daughter, for his wife, for his uncertainty. And this pretentious sonovabitch prick writing the commentary is utterly self-absorbed — and just making things up! He ignores the sincerity of this swansong of a graceless old man coming to terms with his life. It is a wonderful juxtaposition. It makes me laugh while I read it, to feel the same things that Shade feels, to see my own pretentious insecurities in Kinbote. The same insanity. Earlier today I felt no creativity. I felt bored and tired and dead. Now I feel alive again. That’s the power of a book: of a moment and an idea that we share and see through different eyes, although at least one of us may be dead.
