What made it probably excruciating for him was that rather than playing each opera all the way through and alternating, I would simply move the needle back to the beginning when it ended, and hear everything all over again. And again. And again. And again.
It was an early, explicable, and irritating manifestation of the Asperger's Syndrome with which all members of the household were touched. Him quite likely far less than any of us, but without fully realizing or objecting he functioned as the enabler of the three oddments, that being his wife and two sons. Plus the neurotic cats, naturally; they were opportunists.
All my life I have enjoyed re-reading books over and over.
Not, however, the best books a man could read.
Read Ulysses by James Joyce only once.
It's art, but it's gibberish.
The Asperger mind wants everything to remain exactly as it was while becoming more so. More Kipling, more Simenon, more Nabokov, more early period Heinlein before he become an egomaniacal drit writing grandiose mysogenic garbage.
Repetition is the key to excellence.
[Credit: Bill Watterson, a rare genius.]
On the minus-side, I have never understood the appeal of the full three-volume set of Lord of the Rings. None of the characters appeal to me, and the potential destruction of Middle-Earth does not clench my bowels. The linguistic aspect would be better illuminated in several short-stories, the sheer poetry of imagination comes across as dross and doggerel.
[The author did smoke a pipe, though; apparently Tolkien's constant tobacco was Capstan, a very nice medium flake in a blue tin, now available once again in the United States. And many Gandalf wannabees purchase a long churchwarden as their very first pipe. I shall imagine them swanning about in wizard-robes while learning how to smoke.]
Having recognized the pattern in myself a few years ago, before I even heard of Asperger, I consciously try to break it. Within very strict parameters of habit, of course.
Go to Chinatown as usual, but try to find something different to eat. Cook what I always cook, just vary the recipe, sometimes enormously.
Shift from this pipe-tobacco to that. Talk to different people.
[That last is very useful. We all tend to tell the same anecdotes, which eventually drives our nearest and dearest up the wall good lord is he on about THAT again?!?]
As a bonus, experiment with different authors. Find something that looks vaguely worthwhile at the very least, then read it. Don't limit yourself. Find out why every one else has damp knickers over this golden prose.
Results
Charles Bukowski: crap.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti: crap.
Allen Ginsberg: pretentious crap.
Deepak Chopra: New-age crap.
Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code): Loathsome, pretentious, badly written, and balderdash. The popularity of his book proves that the great American public doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Urgh!
Barbara Cartland: unintentionally funny crap. "She..., she..., she... moaned as she fainted limply into his huge manly arms. Oh!"
Danielle Steel: I'm going to be sick crap.
Stephen King: uber-creepy crap.
Stephanie Meyer: sick crap.
Anne Rice: romanto-nauseating Goth crap.
Tom Clancy: spy crap.
James Michener: long-winded crap.
Actually, the list is longer than that. Far longer. But I didn't want to get repetitive. Trust me, though, when I say that the length of time it took to read this stuff was a painful waste.
Not a single one of them is worth re-reading. Some not even worth finishing.
The most exciting experiment in this period was "Hardhat Butterfly", a gay romance about a young lad from the farm states who gets a job working in the high rise construction industry, and has rough forceful sexual romps with a succession of heavy equipment operators, plumbers, pipefitters, sheet metal workers, rodbusters, and strong cement-pouring men.
It was simultaneously educational and hysterical.
Barbara Cartland, for hot hairy males.
I wish I knew who wrote it.
It bears repeating.
It was in a stack of books I donated to Goodwill.
AFTERWORD
I also tried reading Fifty Shades of Grey, but failed to complete the task, for two reasons: primarily because I refused to buy a copy and couldn't borrow it from my ex girlfriend, as she has absolutely NO interest in popular sado-masochistic filth and to the best of my knowledge may not have even heard of the book -- she's never mentioned it, and please remember that I have access to her bookshelves -- and consequently had to furtively leaf through it at bookstores like a trenchcoat pervert; and secondarily because what I have managed to scan is unbearably turgid, jejeune, and well-nigh excrementally unbearable.
E. L. James: filthy creep crap.
Calvin & Hobbs (by Bill Watterson), Bloom County (by Berkeley Breathed), Shermans Lagoon (by Jim Toomey), Frumpy the Clown (by Judd Winick), and George and Martha (by James Marshall) remain infinitely enjoyable. Likewise Edward Gory (Ogdred Weary) and his entire oeuvre.
See aforementioned access to "her" bookshelves.
She's read 'A Tree Grows In Brooklyn' (by Betty Smith) hundreds of times.
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NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
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3 comments:
Don't worry, re: 50 Shades of Grey. You're probably not missing much.
"On the other hand, the film, by dint of its simple competence—being largely well acted, not too long, and sombrely photographed, by Seamus McGarvey—has to be better than the novel. It could hardly be worse. No new reader, however charitable, could open “Fifty Shades of Grey,” browse a few paragraphs, and reasonably conclude that the author was writing in her first language, or even her fourth." - Anthony Lane, from his review in The New Yorker.
From English into several languages one by one, then spellchecked.
Result:
"Other unilaterally withdraw Film Competition grace great plays such measure virtue simple written, photographed without too long and somberness, by Seamus McGarvey, is better than draw new resort. No might be worse. No teacher Saul displaces one paragraph, but it could work for charity, open "Fifty Shades of Grey", and that reasonably draw conclusions date of the report of the USSR that wrote connection of mother tongue, or even arches writing. "
- Anthony Lane, writing critically in the New Yorker."
Now THAT is poetry! She should have written it in Spanish or Dutch first.
When are you posting your list of top ten (or one hundred or one thousand) books? With learned commentary, of course.
Manga comic books of psycho teenage tartlets are inadmissible. No matter how much you may lust after them.
M
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