I don’t want to be a genius; I have enough problems just trying to be a man. – Albert Camus
If he could get the damn thing to sit still, just for a moment…
The old man subscribed to The New Yorker because the pretty magazine enhanced his sense of sophistication.
And he got an additional subscription as a FREE GIFT! which he gave to his daughter. She was already sophisticated but now he felt generous. And painlessly thoughtful.
But the damn thing shows up every week, week after week, chock-a-block with erudite shit you’d never know about otherwise. Maybe not ever.
Here’s just one random recent sample: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-novelist-whose-twitter-feed-is-a-work-of-art?mbid=nl_TNY%20Template%20-%20With%20Photo%20(98)&CNDID=39455882&spMailingID=9596275&spUserID=MTMzMTg0NjE2MzMxS0&spJobID=1002289628&spReportId=MTAwMjI4OTYyOAS2
So, as one can plainly see, you don’t want to miss anything but you can’t possibly keep up. The pile of brightly colored always artful covers rises next to his chair like a mute child growing daily.
Mocking me. Feels strange just reading the cartoons, then throwing the thing out. Trees have died.
He felt like the last person on Earth to learn about Martha Nussbaum, but guessed he was probably the first in this lamentable neighborhood. Rachel Aviv profiled the famed philospher for the July 25th issue. The old man must have read some of it because right there circled in red ink, “We become merciful, [Nussbaum] wrote, when we behave as the ‘concerned reader of a novel,’ understanding each person’s life as a ‘complex narrative of human effort in a world full of obstacles.'”
Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. That there about explains all of it, don’t care who you are. Lived his life just like that. He thought.
Had an image of his grandsons using back issues of The New Yorker as TV tables, the magazine’s thickness protecting their young laps from hot buttery bowls of popcorn.
The old man was something of a philosopher himself. He had only recently rationalized his inability to complete writing a novel with the concept of living a novel, which left him too busy to actually record the events so rapidly flying past. Faster lately.
The New Yorker didn’t seem to have any problems getting its words down on paper.
Yet ponder, what is life after all but stuff coming at you on a regular basis often with more information than you can absorb and responsibilities you might not be ready to handle at least just not right now. Not to mention the unexpected.
Life IS obstacles.
Great example, this damn fly…
