I have recently begun reading Michelle McNamara's true crime book I'll be Gone in the Dark. The book so far is pretty good. Part of the challenge of reading a posthumous work like this is realizing that the authority is not completely hers. Editors worked to complete the book that she was writing, so this might not be the completed project that she had envisioned. I have not read a lot of true crime in the past, so I was not sure what to expect coming into this. I was interested in this because I have always liked her husband Patton Oswalt, and I found his open letter to her and his earnest way of speaking about the devastation he endured losing her deeply touching. I had heard that the book was good and I figured this would be a good way to break into a new genre. I have read and taught smatterings of true crime here and there (this means that I forced college freshman to watch and write about In Cold Blood).
I included the opening caveat because I don't know how much of what I have read is in line with other true crime writing or how much of it was influenced by either McNamara's own style or the editorial contribution of others. What strikes me about the book so far is that way that McNamara personalizes the story. Her discussion of the crimes include passages describing her efforts to uncover truth and a chapter about her own family. This helps to develop context for her interest in cold cases and in this case in particular. To extend this, it provides a sort of rationale for all of our interests in this macabre topic. Many are ashamed of their interest in true crime or serial killers, but this book and popular podcasts such as My Favorite Murder reveal the truth about this: it fascinates a lot of us. When McNamara explains the connection between her youth and the unsolved murder in her neighborhood, she awakens the connections we may feel. She may even embolden more of us to own our interests.
I haven't gotten terribly far into McNamara's book, but I can see why so many like. I am going to leave this incomplete for now, and maybe forever because I can't think of a way to end this post.
Tuesday, August 21, 2018
Sunday, August 5, 2018
Bertrand Russell and the Conquest of Happiness
Just recently I began re-reading Russell's collection of essays The Conquest of Happiness. I read this the first time a number of years ago when I was in graduate school. I read a bunch of Russell at one time for reasons that are not particularly clear to me now. I got a lot out reading his A History of Western Philosophy, which is more of a greatest hits of Euro-centric philosophy than it is an actual book of philosophy. Much of my reading in philosophy has been piece-meal, as I would read whatever seemed interesting to me in the moment and I took few actual philosophy classes or studied it in any major way. I once took a graduate seminar in Descartes' work from one of the big names in the field, but otherwise most of my study in this area has been self-directed.
In any case, as I have been reading through The Conquest of Happiness again, I am getting more of a sense of the arrogance that others find distasteful about Russell's perspective. The essays are not, properly speaking, philosophical but fall into his popular work. He strains to apply religious concepts to his atheistic worldview as a way of explaining unhappiness, or lack of contentment in modern life. There is some home-spun wisdom gussied up as insight, such as the suggestion to work toward goals and to avoid gossip and enviousness.
At the time I read this initially, I was struggling with a failing marriage and trying to get a dissertation written. Russell's soporifics didn't always strike a chord with me then, but provided enough for me to remember it fondly. I am currently about halfway through the book and intend to finish it. I remember that being an essay that was a bit more analytical that attempted to break down varieties of happiness and their sources that I found informative and I have some hope of regaining some of that enjoyment I got out of it before.
Reading this book has been a part of a broader re-reading of many books that I have been doing over the last couple of years. I have always enjoyed re-reading books to re-experience ideas and narratives. I subscribe to the notion that the reader brings a lot of him/herself to the experience of reading and that our acts of interpretation depend upon our personal and cultural history as well as our prior reading experience. When I re-read books, I see new things or I see the same things differently. I likely will have more to say about the processes of reading and re-reading and I certainly will continue to revisit books the have made an impact on me in the future. At some point I plan on digging back into Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, but don't anticipate having the time to dedicate to it before the end of the year.
As one example of the necessity of re-reading, I draw from my own experience. Years ago a friend of mine recommended David Foster Wallace to me. This was in the early 2000s and I had heard the name but not read anything. Eventually I picked up Infinite Jest and struggled through the thing for about a year. I hated everything about the novel. But as I began at a new school, I found that I could not stop thinking about it. I kept thinking about how it pieced together and the significance of certain portions of it. In the ten years since then, I have re-read that novel another half dozen times and written extensively about it. It became one of the major novels of my dissertation and I presented on the topic from a variety of directions. I am particularly proud of the work that I have done regarding the novel and the state of irony in contemporary America. For whatever reason, I was not in a place to enjoy the novel on a conscious level the first time I read it but it stuck with me. I kept working over it until I could put it in a new context and find its value. Northrop Frye once remarked that whether or not we enjoy a piece of literature has no bearing on our jobs as critics. This is a nice idea in general and I tend to think that we can gain a lot from works we do not like or enjoy reading. Although, admittedly, I can't always follow this idea and am often happy to dismiss books I don't care for.
In any case, as I have been reading through The Conquest of Happiness again, I am getting more of a sense of the arrogance that others find distasteful about Russell's perspective. The essays are not, properly speaking, philosophical but fall into his popular work. He strains to apply religious concepts to his atheistic worldview as a way of explaining unhappiness, or lack of contentment in modern life. There is some home-spun wisdom gussied up as insight, such as the suggestion to work toward goals and to avoid gossip and enviousness.
At the time I read this initially, I was struggling with a failing marriage and trying to get a dissertation written. Russell's soporifics didn't always strike a chord with me then, but provided enough for me to remember it fondly. I am currently about halfway through the book and intend to finish it. I remember that being an essay that was a bit more analytical that attempted to break down varieties of happiness and their sources that I found informative and I have some hope of regaining some of that enjoyment I got out of it before.
Reading this book has been a part of a broader re-reading of many books that I have been doing over the last couple of years. I have always enjoyed re-reading books to re-experience ideas and narratives. I subscribe to the notion that the reader brings a lot of him/herself to the experience of reading and that our acts of interpretation depend upon our personal and cultural history as well as our prior reading experience. When I re-read books, I see new things or I see the same things differently. I likely will have more to say about the processes of reading and re-reading and I certainly will continue to revisit books the have made an impact on me in the future. At some point I plan on digging back into Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, but don't anticipate having the time to dedicate to it before the end of the year.
As one example of the necessity of re-reading, I draw from my own experience. Years ago a friend of mine recommended David Foster Wallace to me. This was in the early 2000s and I had heard the name but not read anything. Eventually I picked up Infinite Jest and struggled through the thing for about a year. I hated everything about the novel. But as I began at a new school, I found that I could not stop thinking about it. I kept thinking about how it pieced together and the significance of certain portions of it. In the ten years since then, I have re-read that novel another half dozen times and written extensively about it. It became one of the major novels of my dissertation and I presented on the topic from a variety of directions. I am particularly proud of the work that I have done regarding the novel and the state of irony in contemporary America. For whatever reason, I was not in a place to enjoy the novel on a conscious level the first time I read it but it stuck with me. I kept working over it until I could put it in a new context and find its value. Northrop Frye once remarked that whether or not we enjoy a piece of literature has no bearing on our jobs as critics. This is a nice idea in general and I tend to think that we can gain a lot from works we do not like or enjoy reading. Although, admittedly, I can't always follow this idea and am often happy to dismiss books I don't care for.
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