#255

Finished Waiting For Godot. It was fucking good. Then I read this book Hunted by a man named William W. Johnstone. It was fucking terrible. I found my copy of Waiting For Godot in a free library. My grandfather-in-law gave me Hunted and its sequel, Prey, to borrow.

Suppose I were the sort of man who would think Waiting For Godot was terrible, and Hunted good. I might not be that different of a man, all things considered. I think that is probably likely. But the aesthetics of me would probably be radically different, so different as to create a real difference, a gap, between this imaginary me and myself. And certainly, this gap might be very notable, even multiplied in aspect, when it comes to this blog. Different books, different stories, a variant set of purposes in mind, no doubt. It's something of a thought.

By which I partially mean of course that Hunted was fairly outside of my usual fare in a couple of key ways. I suppose my power fantasies trend differently.

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Reading Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat and Samuel Beckett's collected poems in English and French as a breather before I read Prey. Yes, I thought Hunted sucked, even to the point of anger and disgust, but that doesn't mean I didn't find much that was valuable, humorous, and interesting within its pages. Also there is so much to learn from bad writing and opinions diametrically opposed to your own. Also I gotta tell the old man what I think because that's just how I am, I guess, which also means I gotta read both books and think about them honestly. 

After that, who knows?

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Took a promotion at my job. Salary! Wow. My income has doubled, which is significant with the added bonus of creating absolutely zero class guilt. It's about as small as salaries get. Slightly less than the lower end of what a teacher makes.

Indeed, eating food that won't poison you and the shaping of young minds. Menial shit. Hey, at least we make twice what the janitors and dishwashers make, or even a shade more. So that's awesome, because our jobs are impossible without them. 

I want to be clear about my tone. These facts upset me.

Still. Movin' on up, they say. I don't disagree. T'was good to just go to the fancy supermarket and get what I wanted without feeling tightness in my chest.

--JL