the sea, the sea



All right! Blogger is very difficult to use, and manages the not-inconsequential feat of being both idiotically basic and impenetrably technocratic technical (ETA: ?). Wow, that is kind of amazing! It doesn’t matter, though; I’ve had this account for over a year, I might as well use it before it turns into another embarrassing attempt by Google to conjugate Facebook.

I decided to start a long-form blog because: 1.) I recently read this hot New Republic article heralding the end of the blog as a form of personal expression, and 2.) I discovered that I am weirdly and forcefully attached to the writings of Doghouse Riley, but I only realized it after he died. I mean, surely anything Andrew Sullivan has grown to view as inessential must be the stuff upon which dreams etc. And what a nice thing it might’ve been if I’d noticed how much I looked forward to Mr. Riley’s opinion posts when I could’ve said something kind to him, and possibly made him smile/frown/whatever he did in reaction to digital flattery, right? Not a day goes by — quite literally — that I don’t wonder what magnificently evil things he might’ve had to say about the world’s Great Men pressing their ugly, dirty noses against the windowglass of public opinion, and then I think: Oh wait, he’s dead. I’ll never know what he thought of Rand Paul’s inability to conceptualize the utility of federal disaster relief. And I’m just a little sadder every time, and it's not even Christmas yet.

I am no eloquent political wit myself, however. I can’t squeeze out three words about a politician without one of them being "FUCK." Also I have some problems with engaging the world in a meaningful way; the accumulated wrongness of the human species makes me feel sad and angry, but it's also really boring. Like, really, really boring. And I do feel badly about my failure to care correctly, but it is what it is. I haven’t got the stamina to sift through the floods of information and sodden historical precedent that would make me a knowledgeable social critic. So, instead of writing about the world, which I dislike categorically, I would rather stay in the land that I love, which is writing about books. I don’t get to write about books as much as I would prefer. I write about them a lot, don’t get me wrong, and I do have a Tumblr — which is nice if you want to look at pictures of things, receive incessant status updates on the kind of creepy celebrity who thinks a contingent of involuntarily-virginal female nerds is a demographic worth courting, or get really, really angry over short-form explanations of global public malfeasance, but it’s not so great with the "talking about books" shit. Unless you like having all your carefully-edited criticisms adorned with breathtaking insights like "I AM ALL THE CRY" and "THANK YOU FOR FINALLY SAYING IT" and gifs of cats jumping into filled bathtubs. (I do not like that at all.)

Also, and speaking of which, I am going to talk about The Hollow Crown! One day soon! I have been trying to produce a suitably critical evaluation of it for over a year, just so my heart can rest peacefully in its eternal prison of bone, and it won’t come out. But I will make it come out, haha. It will come all the way out.

I’ll post here at least once a week (or maybe more!), unless something happens. The first works will be The Quincunx, Winter’s Tale, and King John (and maybe Mr. Simonelli, or, The Fairy Widower), if you’d like to read along. We will begin on Sunday. (Or, I will. I don’t know what you’re going to be doing.)