The Reader in Exile, Apathy, and Blue Is the Warmest Color

 From Jonathan Franzen's (1995) essay "The Reader in Exile" in How to Be Alone

"The electronic apotheosis of mass culture has merely reconfirmed the elitism of literary reading, which was briefly obscured in the novel's heyday. I mourn the eclipse of the cultural authority that literature once possessed, and I rue the onset of an age so anxious that the pleasure of a text becomes difficult to sustain. I don't supposed that many other people will give away their TVs. I'm not sure I'll last long myself without buying a new one. But the first lesson reading teaches is how to be alone."

 "The New American Apathy" by Mazarin

"Once upon a time, characters inhabited charged fields of status and geography. Now, increasingly, the world is binary. You either have or you don't have. You're function or your dysfunctional, you're wired or you're tired. Unhappy families, perhaps even more than happy ones, are all identically patched into CNN, The Lion King, and America Online. It's more than a matter of cultural references; it's the very texture of their lives. And if a novel depends on the realization of complex characters against a background of larger society, how do you write one when the background is indistinguishable from the foreground?" (I really just enjoyed this quote because of his hilarious mentioning of The Lion King and America Online -- those two really did a number on society...)

La Grande Odalisque by Ingres

Also, last night I saw the movie that everyone is talking about "Blue Is the Warmest Color" starring Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux (Midnight in Paris; La belle personne; Farewell My Queen). Although the movie sits pretty at 179 minutes, it went by in a flash. I was so raw, real, sexy, and depressing (as any stereotypically French movie should be). I have the biggest lady crush on Adèle Exarchopoulos now (already had a huge one on Léa). If you get a chance to see it, GO!

Adèle Exarchopoulous

Adèle Exarchopouous & Léa Seydoux as Adèle and Emma