June 1, 2020
The city’s landscape, natural and constructed, leaves me dead. Is inert a better word? Has familiarity accustomed my eyes? When I travel, I experience discovery. Tempered by my family in Athens; intensified by my loneliness in Cuba. Is it my age? Is it my family? There is less possibility today. Now, I have something to enjoy rather than the imagined possibility of whatever catches my fancy. I can no longer lust after anything, because I have declined the possibility. My desires are lies.
….
Aug 9 – I had to stop writing. Probably A.
The tone of this writing does not reflect a modern (contemporary) taste (diction and syntax). When I do write contemporary, I write dialogue; I write it like they say it. I don’t read contemporary anything except the LRB and the news. I did: Franzen, Wallace, DeLillo and the other White Male Geniuses. I did, because I wanted to be one. I was, perhaps, of the last generation of white boys that grew up with this fantasy entirely unchallenged.
The question: is my lack of interest in most contemporary writing imbricated with this disgraced identity that I aspired to?
Exceptions (contemporary writers I’ve enjoyed): Marlon James, Maggie Nelson, Hilton Als. Are Audre Lorde and James Baldwin no longer contemporary?
I tried Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other but did not enjoy it. The Topeka School by Ben Lerner had some moments, but overall I found it unsatisfying.
