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July 01
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Adrianne Mathiowetz
read and liked
Jessica's
review of The Easy Way to Stop Smoking: Join the Millions Who Have Become Nonsmokers Using the Easyway Method:
"Training for the New York City marathon last fall didn't magically stop me from smoking, but maybe watching a beloved client die abruptly and excruciatingly of lung cancer last week will do the trick? In case that's not enough, I've got Allen Carr's ...more
Training for the New York City marathon last fall didn't magically stop me from smoking, but maybe watching a beloved client die abruptly and excruciatingly of lung cancer last week will do the trick? In case that's not enough, I've got Allen Carr's annoying self-help book to back me up!
I love fucking smoking. I love, love, love, LOVE it. Except, Allen Carr's going to tell me, I actually don't. I can't possibly love smoking because smoking's disgusting! All the loving I think I'm doing is actually just the insidious mendacity of addiction that is warping my mind and encouraging me to flood my otherwise gorgeous long-distance runner's lungs with carcinogens and emphysema and all other kinds of gnarly. I totally believe this, he's obviously right, and I know what Carr's gonna say because I've read this before. And it totally worked the first time -- but of course, quitting smoking's easy, it's the staying quit that's a drag.
I don't relate to a lot of quit smoking stuff, because my smoking occurs under pretty specific conditions. I'm not the kind of smoker who smokes every day, but nor am I really a true social smoker who has one or two on special occasions. I smoke when I drink, and when I do then I binge. I can go weeks without touching them, but once I get started, I'll smoke a pack -- sometimes more -- in a night without batting an eye. Drinking gets me every time, as do smoker friends. Also driving. Rock shows. Writing papers. Etc.... Why do I do this? Because I love smoking!!! No, Allen Carr tells me: that is not why. I do it because I'm addicted, and I tell myself all these crazy lies about cigarettes, like that they're fun and make me happy, and that I enjoy smoking them. God, but I believe that. I believe that I love them. I hope he talks me out of that.... it's a tall order!
I do feel pretty ready for Carr to convince me. I'm thirty years old, and I know smoking's gross. I've had two friends my own age undergo intensely difficult, painful battles against cancer, and i've spent these past few weeks watching a man I really cared about suffer in agony, knowing he wasn't going to get all the years he deserved, probably because of this addiction he'd had since age nine. When he was diagnosed with lung cancer about a month ago, he told me he couldn't wait to get out of the hospital so he could have a cigarette. He even laughed about it, and said that he just couldn't imagine his life without cigarettes. He did get discharged, with referrals to radiology, and I'm sure he smoked his face off once he got home.... only he didn't have much time to enjoy that because he was rushed back to the hospital right away, when it turned out the leg pain he'd been complaining of was metastasized cancer. He died just a couple brutal weeks later without getting to smoke again or even go outside for fresh air. One of the many very, very sad things about it all is that I'd watched this man successfully fight addictions to other things that are a lot more serious in terms of their immediate effects on a person's life. Smoking cigarettes doesn't make you homeless (though with NYC's $10 pack, that could change) or exacerbate mental illness (according to some sources, it can actually soothe symptoms), and cigarettes don't estrange you from family and friends and the rest of society. But in the final analysis, smoking cigarettes can obviously have a way bigger impact than any of those other substances, because terminal illness makes all the rest of that stuff completely irrelevant. Homeless people can find housing, schizophrenics can manage their psychiatric symptoms, and people who've lost touch their families can reunite with their loved ones -- I saw this guy accomplish all those things recently, after seeing him struggle so much in the past. But he didn't ever get to enjoy what he worked so hard to regain, because he died of fucking lung cancer right when he'd finally -- and heroically -- gotten his life together.
I guess it's not so shocking that as I get older, I understand all the moralistic hysteria about kids smoking way more than I used to. I'm from a generation for whom there was no mystery or obfuscation about the health risks of smoking, and I was fully aware while choking down my first Marlboro when I was twelve that this was a horrifically unhealthy and addictive substance that almost inevitably caused lethal diseases. I mean, as a little kid I was terrified of cigarettes! They spent so much time at school screaming at us about lung cancer that I was distraught for days after walking in on a parent smoking at late night, convinced I'd be orphaned by what I, in my innocence, had assumed was a cigarette....
But I digress. No, what I was going to say is that -- as we all know -- kids start smoking because they know it's bad, and kids love bad things, and they absolutely don't believe for one second that they'll ever get older, let alone die. They really just don't. It's documented fact. See, but now I've gotten on a bit in years so I'm starting to get that if I don't figure something out soon, someday I will die. The older I get, and the more people I see get really sick and/or die, it does get a lot harder to deny that it could happen to me. That.... well, it will happen to me.
Part of me thinks that's why I love smoking -- there's some adolescent nihilism there that I'm really attached to, some big "fuck you" to the horror of mortality when you light that bitch up and suck in a big drag -- GOD, I love that feeling! But what Allen Carr would say, and what he's going to remind me, is that that's total bullshit. That feeling's just some half-assed, asinine, transparently juvenile rationalization for a dull and simple addiction I've been senselessly feeding for close to two decades. Allen Carr's annoying self-help book is going to remind me that all that romance and glamour, all the emotional and intellectual pyrotechnics I associate with my smoking, are just more sophisticated versions of a drug addict's most pathetic excuses. All those reasons aren't true. I don't really love smoking.
Anyway, even if some of that stuff is true, it's way past time to stop. I'm too old for nihilism, and that's not how I want to go, in horrible pain and all fucked-up on morphine. If I want to make some statement, I should jump off a building.
This weekend I hung out with a friend of mine who just went through the unbelievably awful experience of breast cancer treatment, and she was talking about how when someone gets sick, everyone wants to blame them for it. I'm sure you've noticed this too, that whenever something bad happens to someone, other people just go nuts coming up with explanations of how the sick/murdered/hit-by-a-car person's brought the misfortune on themselves. Susan Sontag talks a lot about this in Illness as Metaphor, and one thing I thought was weird but that I also kind of liked was that she shoved "smoking" in with "unresolved grief" and "pent-up rage" as ridiculous factors that people use to blame other people for getting cancer. It's true that lung cancer is one of the last acceptably stigmatized illnesses -- people can happily pass judgment on smokers who get it in a way that they're just dying to but can't for anyone else who gets sick. And I will be DAMNED if I ultimately give any smug asshole that satisfaction! When I have a terminal illness -- and unless I have some kind of terrible accident, chances are that at some point in the future I most likely will -- I hope it'll be one people can't blame me for giving myself. Or, much more importantly, that I can't blame myself for getting. Because that's not a fun thought.
Anyway, I'm planning to read this thing by the weekend. If I can make it through the Fourth of July without smoking, that'll surely be cause for a huge celebration. And if I can't.... well, then it'll probably mean that I'll have to stop drinking.
And that, my friend, is another can of worms.(less)
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June 24
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Adrianne Mathiowetz
gave  to:
The Pin-Up Poet (Paperback)
by
Andrea Grant
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my rating:
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read in June, 2009
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June 22
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Adrianne Mathiowetz
read and liked
...'s
review of Oleanna: A Play:
"Since I recently moved to an area that SHOULD have an excellent theatre scene, I thought I should try to take advantage of it. Actually go see some things that break me out of my own internalized little world. Theatre is a special kind of derivative ...more
Since I recently moved to an area that SHOULD have an excellent theatre scene, I thought I should try to take advantage of it. Actually go see some things that break me out of my own internalized little world. Theatre is a special kind of derivative experience for me. Maybe for others as well. So I decided to see Oleanna at the Taper Forum this past weekend. It is a nice segue from between the covers.
I should say up front I realize this is goodREADS, and that I have not, in fact, read this play. As a general rule, I do like to have read the plays before I go see them performed so I have my own understanding or interpretation framed out beforehand. But. I figure. People review books on tape. Maybe it is apples/oranges. Either way… I guess I do not give a shit because it was actually kind of a powerful experience and I felt like writing something. Especially since I have not written a review (that anyone would understand) in a while. This play has been sticking in my brain all weekend.
I will say that it was a very well executed performance all around and leave my theatre reviewer hat at the door. I did have some problems with the set design and some of the decisions the actors made…but whatever. It is obvious by my introduction I am interpreting a specific instance.
This is a two person play that was written at roughly the same time as the Hill/Thomas affair back in the early 90s. It is about power, gender, and the role of knowledge and misunderstanding. I do not want to give away too much of the plot because it has way more depth than the descriptions you will find in reviews. I will just say that sexual harassment is only an armature from which all of these other power struggles are hung from. It contains classic themes that transcend any relative understanding that may be penned by that fat fucking rat-bastard Roger Ebert (maybe I am jealous. I want a job as easy as his).
[As an aside: it is not really a two person play. There is the telephone which is a third character throughout. I liked the telephone. The telephone had some of the funniest lines in the whole damn thing. ]
The three acts are framed around continuously supplanting the role of the power-wielder over the course of the play. So while I had not read the play before seeing it, I had read enough around-and-about-it to generate my own idea of what I thought Mamet was trying to do. And while I was in the theatre I was paying attention to the audience around me to gauge people’s reactions. It was interesting actually….there were points in the play where all of the old privileged white men were cheering, and points when every woman in the audience gasped. There were points when all of these same white men sat -- arms folded -- in an act of defiance, while the women were laughing. But in reality, there was way too much ambiguity for a rational person to take sides. At different points in the play I found myself empathizing with the young woman, while at others I found myself empathizing with the older man. Both characters were extremely unlikable. Everyone in the audience was invested in the denouement though. And it was fantastic theatre.
I realize I am withholding value judgments about thematic content. But it is my nature.
I knew that the play was known for provoking discussions by the theatre goers…this was part of my decision for choosing it. My date for the evening decided to immediately ask me whose side I was on upon exiting the theatre. She is a new one. I suspect she thought the question’s answer would tell her something about me, good or bad. I thought the question rather strange and beside the point. It is funny how life can imitate art. An interesting discussion ensued over some fried chicken and waffles. I suspect it occurred a number of times that night around LA…in many different forms.
And I know some people find Mamet to be wholly misogynistic. I guess seeing this play, with that in mind, might not change your mind. But. I suspect it would not be the last time your preconceived notions about the world would screw you out of a genuine experience of it.
So while I think Mamet did an exceptional job of manipulating the audience throughout the play (maybe I am understating here…Mamet was masterful in this instance), for me this play is about what happens when two people are really trying to communicate to each other without really listening to each other. It has all of the hallmarks of Mamet dialogue to supplement this. It looked like the actors deliberately chose to play their parts as an individual who was desperately trying to understand the other -- working really hard to do so even – but could not do the simplest thing to bring this understanding to fruition. They did not listen to what the other person is saying. This kind of “you don’t understand me/let me show you” mentality is pervasive in our society now. People are so busy trying to be individuals that they do not understand that what makes them human is that other people can see them. It is why Blindness goes straight to the core of Identity. You are only you because of the person observing you. Not in spite of.
I am rambling… it could also be that I am seeing elephants in the clouds right now. Too involved with my own life and projecting… Anyway.
There was a mantra you were constantly being beaten over the head with over the course of the play: What is it you want from me? It really seems like such a simple question. But it is a question that neither of the two could answer for each other. It was telling. That line kept bringing me back to what is wrong with it all. And why there were no sides to be had. Because they were not even in the same play. The foil for both of them was an internal one, and not the one they were facing off with in dialogue. The question need not be asked aloud, yet it was repeated over and over again. For whom? I feel like if I explain that in detail…this will go on forever. So I will stop at that.
In the end. For this pair of people anyway…their misunderstanding of what the other is resulted in a lot of fear and anger and trying to teach the other a lesson. It ended up being a hard lesson to learn for both of them. But a hell of a lot of fun to watch and talk about.
(less)
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June 07
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Adrianne Mathiowetz
read and liked
Adam's
review of The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil:
"After enjoying many of Saunders' essays in The Braindead Megaphone, I figured I would like his short stories even better, that being what he's better-known for. Since this book is, essentially, a single short story, I started with this one. I didn't ...more
After enjoying many of Saunders' essays in The Braindead Megaphone, I figured I would like his short stories even better, that being what he's better-known for. Since this book is, essentially, a single short story, I started with this one. I didn't like it. Saunders' language and the world it describes are weird and fascinating -- the characters live in an ambiguously described, maybe-not-quite-spatial world, with vague, alien features -- Phil, for instance, has the problem that "the bolt holding his brain in position on his tremendous sliding rack occasionally fell out, causing his brain to slide rapidly down his rack and smash into the ground. This happened now." A good deal of the humor comes from the narrator's presumption that we understand how the characters' bizarre anatomy works, even as we are completely unable to.
The story itself, unfortunately, doesn't live up to the language -- it's an such an obvious allegory of contemporary politics that it keeps yelling "HEY LOOK AT ME I'M AN ALLEGORY OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICS" at you. This is both smug and boring, and caused me to quit halfway through. I'm going to give Saunders' fiction one more shot, but this left me not nearly as impressed as I wanted to be.(less)
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May 31
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Adrianne Mathiowetz
is currently reading:
Dune (Dune Chronicles, Book 1)
by
Frank Herbert
bookshelves:
currently-reading
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my rating:
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May 28
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May 26
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Adrianne Mathiowetz
gave  to:
When You Are Engulfed in Flames (Hardcover)
by
David Sedaris
bookshelves:
short-stories
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my rating:
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read in May, 2009
Adrianne said:
"Believe the hype.
Things I have heard about this book:
* "It's fine and all, but not nearly as good as any of his previous books, and when you get down to it just proves Sedaris' declining talents. The man is running out o...more
Believe the hype.
Things I have heard about this book:
* "It's fine and all, but not nearly as good as any of his previous books, and when you get down to it just proves Sedaris' declining talents. The man is running out of things to write about."
Things I have said about Sedaris' past books:
* "His writing isn't actually very good. All of his talent is in the delivery. I am a booby, and I belong in a booby-hatch."
These essays are great. Hilarious. Meaningful. You will Laugh Out Loud. You will tear up. You will say "it's so true!" The final essay on smoking is especially well done.
So now I'm wondering: is everyone else ridiculous, or am I only just emerging from ridiculocity?
If the latter is true, then this is his best book yet. And if it's the former, I should go back and reread his earlier work, because if this is the worst he can do -- shiiiiit.
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April 25
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Adrianne Mathiowetz
marked as to-read:
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (Paperback)
by
Angela Carter
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
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April 22
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Adrianne Mathiowetz
gave  to:
Music for Landing Planes By: Poems (Paperback)
by
Eireann Lorsung (Goodreads author)
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my rating:
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read in April, 2009
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Adrianne Mathiowetz
marked as to-read:
The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (Hardcover)
by
Jean M. Twenge
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
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