women are mostly water
you mean: the earth is mostly water
you mean: the earth is mostly women
its been on my mind for days. i'm 64 pages in, and i don't particularly find anything exceptional about the novel up until this point but i'm thinking, "maybe it's like life of pi?" i mean, let's be real, that book didn't pick up till 100 pages in. i don't know about you, but i don't even remember anything about the book before the boat crashed. anyway, so i'm thinking, i'll give it another 30 or so pages until i return it back to aswi like it was never checked out without filling out the paperwork, but then two consecutive instances let me know author sigrid nunez and i have no future together.
first, there's a rape scene, which, on its own is not innately a red flag; however, this one is so passe it's abrassive. i felt like my media over-fried sensories were not even given a chance to prove their empathy because as soon as it happened it was forgotten. it's still a rape scene. you still have to be careful the way you tell the story and i think it was written by a woman who has never been raped nor has had experience with people who have been raped.
next, and perhaps even more baffling, nunez introduces "sasha," a radical who wears a sickle and hammer charm bracelet. what's more, sasha isn't even her real name! her real name is jenny/heather/amanda/whatever but she picked up sasha somewhere along the way. i just don't like other people with my name. or other red heads. i get this alpha red, alpha sasha name complex. it's NBD.
another thing that really chaffes my behind, lately, is this conversation (read: argument) i am having with a friend of mine. okay, so, i don't know if you've heard of eight belles but she is a kentucky derby race horse who was about to finish in second place when she tragically fell going 9,000 mph, or something, and fractured her two front ankles. Then i guess some horse medics came with horse killer injections and put her down, right on the track. NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/sports/othersports/04derby.html?hp#
So friend X argues that
okay, but, i don't think any human, if giving the option between a body cast and eventually a wheelchair or death, would chose the latter. all animals have an undeniable essential will to live and just because something is painful doesn't mean the correct option is to give up. also, who gets to decide what is to live and what is to die? it's just really queird logic. but, i don't know, maybe the horse should go to horsey heaven and let its giant over-muscled over-worn body get some rest. i mean, my bones are brittle and i'm not 200x over the recommended muscle mass for my frame. i bruise easy, too. but that's unrelated. in a way, this may have been a good thing for the kentucky derby itself. think of all those delusional upper-class white tom and susan families bringing little thomas jnr and sallie mae to their first horse race. at least it showed them the actual cruelty of horse races instead of the glitz 'n glammer of dry martinis and jessica simpson.
listening to: one more hour by sleater-kinney
