Feeling seen by things not aimed at you

I'm a fan of Backlisted, a podcast that delves into neglected books of the 20th century – many of them English, many of them post-war, many of them by underrated female authors. I like it, for its intellectualism and its unpretentiousness, but I've fallen off. The trouble is I don't like the books very much.

Take Anita Brookner, who may as well be the patron saint of Backlisted. She was English, she was post-war, and she was an incredible intellect; an art historian who wrote contemplative novels about interior life, missed connections, the search for authenticity.

I've read two of her books, and they went down like anesthetic. Grey, Sunday-coloured. A little hung up on the differences between Men and Women. A little prim. I don't want to read any more.

Why not? I'm her target audience. My cultural inheritance can be summed up as post-war English: dogged, frugal, and emotionally stunted. I'm an interior woman. But not like that.

It's the same pattern with the other heavy hitters of Backlisted: Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor (not that one). I get it. I feel it. Quiet tracts on English desperation. Still, get them away from me.

I thought I'd met my match with Rachel Ingalls, an American expat to the UK who wrote the reassuringly weird Mrs. Caliban. It's about a grieving housewife who falls in love with a sexy sea monster – in a grey, understated way. I read it in one sitting, but I never want to read it again.

For a while I left post-war England and went for the recent "comfort reads" of BookTok and tumblr: Legends & Lattes; Red, White & Royal Blue; The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. I figured at the very least I'd catch the feeling, the cultural moment. None of them comforted me, and two of them annoyed me.

When I look back over the past few years of reading, it's not the books aimed at my demographic that have made me feel seen. Almost no book cuts closer to me than The Hellbound Heart, the book Clive Barker wrote after hustling in 1970s London. Then he made a movie out of it: Hellraiser.

So what, I'm a horror fan? That was the problem all along? Then why am I reading shoujo now?

I know it's unrealistic to expect your favourite things to have a throughline. The art you love can't add up to some representation of you as a person, because people are complex in a way that art is always catching up to. And the affinities, when they happen, aren't completely intutive. (I suspect my love of Hellraiser is related to my chronic pain.)

Still, I wish it was easier to find the things that you like. We've never had more choice, or more access, and running up against the wrong things until you find a vein of enthusiasm is exhausting.

Dad gift

This time of year I always want to get my dad a gift. He’s been dead seven years and anything I send is unlikely to reach him, but the feeling has stayed. It’s a close cousin to the feeling I had shortly after his death: that he needed my help somehow, that there was something I was supposed to do.

Last year I bought Horrorstör — symbolically for him, inevitably for myself. It’s a horror novel about mass-produced furniture, and it’s designed to look like an IKEA catalogue, of course. My dad wouldn’t have been interested in the story, but he would have loved the book as an object. He had a love-hate relationship with IKEA, from the blandness to the modularity to the bare-bones instruction manuals, that I’ve inherited.

Anyway, the truth is I try to give him things year-round. I have a playlist that I add to all the time (more Billie Eilish than you’d think). I know his taste exactly — a Roger Corman movie set, a palette I can shift into with a blink. It feels like a waste.

twenty 二十

I’m an over-optimizer, constantly putting together spreadsheets and reevaluating my habits. I like to think I have these fragile structures on the go, and if I can build on them, even half-assedly, every day, I’m doing something. And for some reason 20 is the number that keeps coming up.

I don’t always manage it, but I aim to read 20 pages a day, especially if it’s a long book. It seems to be my limit when working full-time. Andy Miller shoots for 50 in The Year of Reading Dangerously, and I love him but that’s ridiculous. 20 pages a day gets you through a 600-page honker in a month. Fine. Frankly I’d hate to read a 600-page honker in less — you’re meant to live alongside them. Like The Sea, the Sea, the Booker-Prize-winning honker I’m reading now that already feels like a neighbour.

I’ve been learning Japanese for three and a half years, and I’ve kept a habit of 20 kanji reviews a night on Wanikani. Usually while fighting off sleep. It’s not enough to move forward on their learning plan but it’s enough to keep from forgetting. (And have dreams with kanji in them.) The actual progress happens on long weekends or vacation.

20 kilometres is about as far as I walk every weekend, although it’s only in retrospect that I count them. The shin splints hit around 15 km and that’s my early warning sign to sit the heck down. Most of my walking is functional, or pretends to be functional. I tell myself I’m saving money on the metro.

I even squirrel away $20 a month for my next tattoo. That’s low, and sets a slow pace, but I’m saving my skin.

Newspaper, 52, deli

Today I pretended I was rich. I bought a copy of The New York Times (15 dollars!) and took it home with smoked salmon, cream cheese, brie, bagels, and a baguette. I spread out at the dining table and drank Prosecco and listened to Sentimental Garbage while massacring the crossword.

It’s been at least a decade since I last read a newspaper. Probably longer — what comes to mind is the book section of The Globe and Mail, which my dad would steal from work and save for me.

And it’s been at least as long since I spread out at a dining table. This one’s new to the household. I had zero claim to it but inherited it anyway. They say it’s 18th century French but that may be a lie. It is wooden, and huge, and has clawed feet — and, disconcertingly, wheels under the feet.

I’ve been browsing the 52 Book Club prompts for 2023. I’ve probably already failed the 2022 challenge. But I like the prompts. They’re a nice mix of vague enough to fit the books you already own, and specific enough to make you seek out things you normally wouldn’t. I tried writing my own list of prompts to post here, for others to use, but they’re all selfish, things I would want to read.

(“A diary or memoir that purports to be real but isn’t” — “Featuring a first contact scenario” — “Centres on a bird”)

I discovered a deli near here that opens at 6 a.m. That’s Michelle hours. I probably won’t go because I’d be alone and I’m self-conscious. But I appreciate the option.