Paper topics and me. Daily experiences in alienation

Tonight in class we had to go around the room and give a two minute little thing about what our paper topics for the class are. Everyone was going, and they all had these topics I would never have thought of doing, but which sounded so simple and right for the kind of class this is. I’m stressing about how I’m going to explain my topic. My turn comes I get up there and this is roughly what I say. “I’m writing um about the digital archive…….. and um how historians will, um, you know, um doing historical stuff with it……. it’s really theoretical, and um, it’s about historians and epistemology, um, i mean truth, no um well maybe contexts, and um, and space and…… um the way that you know, um, provenance is affected. Um, yeah that’s what I’m writing on.”
I’m so fucking stupid. I can’t say I was embarrassed, just dumbstruck at what the fuck is wrong with me. Instead of just coming up with some archive and writing a little paper about what they are doing, and why something or other is interesting, I have to think that a good topic would be the role of the historian in an archive and the epistemological ramifications of meeting the past as an other through the archive, and running this up against what exactly is meant by the archive and the moving of something from the private sphere into the public.

Whose brain works like that? What inspired me to mash up a small part of Derrida into Levinas, and then want to top it off some with Benjamin (which isn’t even in this toned down ‘thesis’), and then run it all through a critique of instrumental reason and the culture industry? Because god fucking forbid I leave Adorno and Horkheimer out of my mental masturbation. What is it that stops me from thinking like a normal person, maybe keeping these thoughts safely tucked away in my head for when I feel like playing philosophical games with myself, and do something that isn’t trying to smash everything apart with theory? I’m an idiot.

Readers Advisory and Me

Once again I have found myself feeling alienated from the general world at large. Reading in two books about readers advisory I have realized that my approach to reading is so different from what I guess is the norm that none of the techniques they offered in the books would bring a librarian anywhere near being able to probably give me something to read that wasn’t just a super obvious choice. The questions don’t seem to have any kind of weight towards someone interested in non-genre / ’serious’ fiction, and they seem to pre-suppose a blandness in taste that I can’t say is startling, but which does sadden me. I don’t think I understand why people read, what’s the point of reading things that are no different from a movie that you can watch in a fraction of the time? Shouldn’t there be something in reading besides just either silly entertainment or ‘learning’ about something (as in, I’d like to learn about other cultures, can I have a book about India?). I read almost constantly and neither of those two things generally come into play, I don’t know how I would state what my interest is, but I know that there is something to it besides diversions or arm-chair tourism. Of course thinking things like this makes me a snob, because it’s wrong to realize that there are things out there that are really fucking awesome and amazing that people don’t experience, but which maybe they should, because they are so awesome and amazing, but since they don’t already know about it and by saying that it’s better than say a James Patterson novel you’re considered some asshole. Sigh.

A bookfair and I say the word cool a lot.

I hate that I have only ever updated this stupid blog when it was required for class.  I guess maybe goodreads.com works as my outlet for ‘public’ writing, but I still think I should be able to maintain keeping this updated without having to be coaxed into doing it by some extra points towards a grade.

Today I went to a bookfair for small and independent publishers.  I gave money to some Canadians and got some books from them in return, I wanted to give money to more Canadians in exchange for books, but I ended up giving it to some guy wearing chipped black nail polish for a second small stack of books.  So many beautiful looking books at some of the tables, books I’d never seen before and who were asking to come home with me.  If I had the money they all would have followed me home.

On the awkward side I feared everytime someone talked to me there.  A elderly gay man tried to push his awfully looking self-published book on me, the price was so low that it felt really wrong to tell him no.  He told me his father was on the cover.  I said cool.  The elderly lesbian standing next to him told me I could have her book too, it also looked awful and self-published.  She said it was about 1950’s New York and musical theatre and it was a murder mystery.  The third man with them chimed in I could have his book for five dollars too, all of their books for only 15 dollars.  The woman told me her book was available on amazon, but it was cheaper her today.  I said cool, and got away from the table.  Later a man handed me a flier for his political book company.  I said thank you, he then pointed out that they were books about the economy and it’s present state, and I told him that’s really cool.  I felt stupid, but I told lots of people I whose stuff I wasn’t interested in today that it was cool.