Day 18 – A book that disappointed you
Day 18.
No no no!
Being disappointed by a book. This is rare - being repulsed or overwhelmed or alienated or elated or inspired or surprised is the usual action. I don't read for a standard reason by which a book could fail me. Rarely does prose/verse disappoint - even if I thought it'd be revelatory and it's rotten, there's something I can learn in that, or I can turn out of my failed expectations what I thought I was in for, and I've generated some of my own favorite work that way. Disappointed still is not the word but my reaction to Janet Reitman's Inside Scientology was disappointing to me - finishing it, I realized how I was expecting to delight in something lurid that would make me befuddled and appalled as if it were a checkout rag. I cried instead, a lot, and it made me feel physically bad to read the book, to reckon with the subject and the people. I was like this watching Hot Coffee, too. So reading Inside Scientology made me disappointed with myself. And a few other people.
Next month I'm going to interview some students and administrators at the local ballet school, which I've been excited to do for some time and was going to do next week, but next month is so much better. My contact, their lovely marketing director, observed that many people would be jealous for the capacity in which I am so busy right now. Right now is outrageously liminal. I cannot abide a liminal state without suffering. Amidst this, so much time and energy was consumed in the reading of Inside Scientology that its impact on my life was pretty embarrassing.
I have put off a good night's sleep for almost a month, so that is tonight's big project. I am feeling up to it with this on my side: "Funny story, Simone de Beauvoir in the Second Sex says little girls fancy themselves as sexless creatures of God, like pixies or gnomes. So my middle school nickname was foreshadowing."
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