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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5160 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 26, 2023

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So, what are you reading?

Still on Freinacht's 12 Commandments. I think I have my answer as to what post-metamodernism looks like. Metamodernism claims to be both sincere irony and ironic sincerity, but I wonder if it isn't lacking the latter in practice.

Star Trek SNW seemed to me from the start like an ideal example of both metamodernism and its failings. Pike is a Nice Guy not because he sees through your resentment and learned a better lesson than you, but because he's already decided what box he wishes to live in. As much as I loved the show, one looks in vain for a sense of actual conviction.

It runs instead on a fait accompli which says "there are Thoughtful People who won't be hypnotized anymore." I imagine people will be shocked if the general populace once again willingly chooses to be dupes of obvious frauds rather than to be this kind of Thoughtful. Something is still attempting to be expressed, and spirals of complexity and sophistication can also be used as tools of suppression. The trick would be to ironically tease out what is actually being expressed and suppressed without being duped oneself, and to derive enduring principles stated in simple, effective forms on which a new sincerity can be built.

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. It's good - it has clever writing (I've laughed out loud several times) and an interesting way of unfolding the story, but does suffer a bit from a Reddit-style "life is pain" mindset.

I recently read "The Old Axolotl" by Jacek Dukaj. It reminds me a great deal of rationalist fanfics (for good and for ill), though given the subject matter and the ending I think that is to a fair degree intentional and critical of such modes of thought.

But I have repeatedly charitably interpreted things as ironic that were in fact unironic, so I don't trust myself on that. Picking up one of his other books, "Ice", partially because I did enjoy "The Old Axolotl" and "Ice" has reviewed well and partially to get a better sense of his writing.

Double Blind. It's another pretty quality litRPG.

Looking for a new one to start actually. I'm about halfway through Barbara Pym's A Glass of Blessings, but like most of her work there's very little sense of tension and so there's not much to pull me to read it fast at all. I do usually walk away from a session with her glad that I did it, though.

Some contemporaries described Barbara Pym in the '50s as a modern Jane Austen; and I think that Jane Gardam was our latter-day Barbara Pym. I thought that Gardam's very last books, the Old Filth trilogy, were actually her best by a mile. I have only read early Pym so far, but I have some later Pym on the shelf and I'm curious how she went on to develop and if she had this same pattern.

(Update: I have just realized that Jane Gardam is in fact still alive, aged 95. I do think she's done writing though.)

I'm about 25 pages into The Beautiful and the Damned today, and possibly I'll go ahead and stick this out. Read Tender is the Night last year and it was one of the highlights of 2022 for me.

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