Don’t Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff
Dear diary,
Of the many reasons I began this blog (fame, fortune, a public forum for which to bold, hyperlink, and italicize words), the most prescient was to keep a private (???) and personal record of what I have read, in what order I read them, and what my thoughts on them were. After leaving college, it became a good way to continue practicing writing when I was unemployed and layabout. And because I am selfish in that trademark millennial way, sometimes I just like watching the hit counter go up.
From time to time, I read a book that leaves me wholly uninspired. Not this one, but it happens. It makes it very difficult to keep myself wanting to update this blog. I currently have a sloshpile of more than a dozen books, comics, and chapbooks to unload on the tumblogosphere. I read Don’t Get Too Comfortable so long ago that the only recollections I have of reading it are (1) picking it up from my bedroom floor when I was visiting home and thinking “this will do” to myself when I finished No One Belongs Here More Than You and (2) reading my favorite included essay on a wooden stool after walking the 3.4 miles from my house to the Taco Bell/KFC in Greenpoint. The essays range from dull to spellbinding; the one I read in Taco Bell concerned the political masochism of log cabin Republicans. I think Rakoff is a very charming writer, but unfortunately I don’t care how much he likes crafting. Furthermore, I don’t see what his addiction to crafting (or log cabin Republicanism, or a lot of the other things he touches on) has to do with the luxury economic, the hypothetical narrative thread that holds all of these essays together. From what I hear, he can do better than this.
Anyway, it would be nice if I could get back to writing and publishing some of these drafts I have on my dashboard. I considered giving up on this whole endeavor yesterday. I also considered taking a “photodump,” as it were, and publishing the book covers and titles without writing anything around them (of the billions of reblogs I receive daily, many are abbreviated by their posters to just the image anyway. I guess you can call me “chopped liver.” No respect. No respect.) like I did with my first ever post ever. What happens next is up to destiny…
