Fictional Simplicity

I would love to conduct a scientific experiment in which one version of my brain read contemporary fiction while another read an old classic, a Jane Austen novel for example, and I could sit back and compare their experiences.

I’m about halfway through Gary Shteyngart’s fantastically funny beautifully written new novel, Our Country Friends. It is entertaining and theoretically immersive and yet I can’t seem to read more than a chapter or two without drifting…(did I pay my credit card bill? I forgot to sign my kid’s sports consent form! Is it cold in here?). Not that this isn’t a fairly common experience in my life, but here’s the strange thing: Last month I re-read Mansfield Park and I sunk into it like a warm bath and came out only when I was relaxed and slightly shriveled.

So I’m wondering if there is a connection. Not in the prose so much as the world it portrays. Shteyngart’s novel is literally of the moment, full of phones, Covid, helicopter parenting and ambitious neurotic people. In Austen, a long walk could be the highlight of the day. News arrives so sporadically that each new snippet can be chewed over for days before the next one arrives.

Think of all the things we need to remember today: Passwords, who to call when the heat doesn’t work. Is it oil? Propane? How to unclog a drain, pay bills, pay taxes. Directions to the dentist, all the various doctor appointments and what your health care plan will cover. Which former republic is Russia planning to invade? What horrible things are the Chinese government doing now, without repercussions? That’s without touching on the latest music, movies, tv shows and whether or not I even subscribe to the service which will allow me to watch them.

Maybe it’s age catching up with me, this desire to downscale the input. My brain is fed up and its way of telling me is to cut me off after a chapter of the latest fiction. It’s telling me that I really should be living in a time when I could spend an entire morning hand-washing the underwear I’ve probably been wearing for days at a time. Gross? Yes. But so much less stressful!

Information Glut

I grew up in a beautiful house furnished by books and stacks and stacks and stacks…of periodicals. Newspapers, magazines, brochures and catalogues were stacked on chairs and tables. This was the decor of my mom, an information hoarder who could not stand to let a single article in The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, The Economist…go unread.

I loved this in her, even as the clutter drove me crazy and I vowed my house would be free of any pile thicker then at the width of my hand.

Then came the internet. And Evernote. I am a compulsive clipper. I have digital notebooks which, if converted, could paper the chairs of a giant suburban neighborhood.

Why? What am I going to do with this information? Read it? I am convinced there’s a hole in my brain through which 90% of what I read passes within ten minutes. Still, I persist. I suppose some inherited traits are unexpected.

Internet: Prosecco or Giant Pack of Starbursts?

I am far from alone in the conflicted feelings about the internet. Is it good? An open field of knowledge and connectivity? Or is it bad? Name-calling and people failing videos?

Of course it’s not one or the other, but both. Like an artisanal candy bar or a bottle of Prosecco — good but maybe not so great for you in bulk.

The problem is that it begs to be consumed in bulk. For my part, I may not be cycling through YouTube videos, but I do consume book news as if it was extraordinarily cute cat videos. New releases, writer interviews (especially process interviews, because I’m convinced that if I find the perfect process my novel will finish itself), essays about reading or writing or comparing characters in books…it’s endless.

Sadly, it takes time and these days time in my life is a more rarefied commodity than, say, red squirrels in our eaves or rats in the chicken coop.