Literature

I managed (barely) to finish reading The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. The infamous novel about a girl who gets depressed and goes batshit for no reason. There are a lot of reasons for me to despise many of the literary "classics" that compose even the most generic of high school English curriculums, but this one seems to have revealed to me the chief reason why I despise them. A novel can't be engaging in any way, shape, or form if the main character is not someone the reader sympathizes with. (This only applies to character-driven literature, in contrast to Blindness, which is basically an analysis of fictional events) In the same fashion as Anna Karenina, Wuthering Heights, and the Scarlet Letter, the author constructs a character (in this case a really really poorly disguised representation of the author herself) that is so deeply flawed that instead of feeling like the character is dealing with a lot of shit and feeling bad for them, the reader wants to punch them in the face for being so fucking retarded. I guess that really limits the expanse of literature that I am capable of appreciating.

On the other hand, it might have to do with the fact that I have neither had an illegitimate child, had an affair, been suicidally depressed, or... been a freakish asshole? (fucking Wuthering Heights) It doesn't seem like you can appreciate a story like that unless you've been in the author's shoes or else in the masterfully crafted situation which I highly-doubt-the-author-hasn't-found-himself/herself.

Outside of this shit, I went to Chicago for the weekend, and did all kinds of fun shit. The city is always neat. Visited Northwestern University, which is expensive as hell but the place that I would want to be had I the money to go. I found the uber-hard-to-find remaster of Porcupine Tree's Lightbulb Sun. And bought some other entertainment items. Cool.