I was a rather lousy person a couple nights ago. You know, a former friend of mine once said she preferred books as friends over people. At the time, I thought this was a sort of pathetic view on her part, that it essentially meant she didn't have the fortitude to handle friends who were capable of looking back at her with consciousnesses that could note her imperfections. But now I think she was pretty smart.
It's been a long time since I read Fahrenheit 451, but I remember a scene where the character named Faber talks about how the power books have is in the power the people have who read them to be able to put them down at any moment.
I've been thinking about that. I think it thereby makes every piece of information or imagery that comes out of a book consensual by default. It's an intimate and fully engaged relationship because the reader can only engage voluntarily, which results in some dissolution of the reader's potentially fearful and numbing reflexes.
So, since I feel like I haven't been a very good person lately, I'm going to see if I can be more of a book.
Thursday I finally saw Juno. It's a pretty good movie. The first twenty minutes felt like a flat, Bugsy Malone version of Citizen Ruth, but after that, the characters start to seem a little more interesting and complex and it becomes a nice little story that only puts you at arms length on one or two more occasions with what it apparently thinks is wit.
Oh, and I've also been re-reading Dostoevsky's White Nights. Maybe there really is something to be said for books as friends, because Dostoevsky never fails to make me feel less alone.
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