Through Metafilter I learned that Jack Saturn has written his final blog entry. I’d never really read his site before, but I clicked on the link and read the piece. Wow — he’s a damn fine writer.
Ever since I began blogging, I’ve come across various blogs that are so well written that it makes me envious. I thought I was a good writer. But then I look at people’s sites and I see that they have such a better sense of irony than me, a better sense of wit, of humor, a more creative use of language. My writing style tends to be too honest and straightforward. I present my thoughts but I don’t do it creatively — I do it honest and straightforward, like I’m analyzing. Like I’m being a therapist. Where’s the writer? Why all the scientific analysis? Why can’t I just hop onto flights of fancy and have fun with it? Why so earnest?
Tonight I bought Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It’s supposed to be an amazing sci-fi novel, supposed to be the best sci-fi novel of the 1990’s, one reviewer wrote. I haven’t read science fiction in ages. When I was a kid, I was into math, and computers, and D&D, and the Lord of the Rings; but I grew up to be gay, a fan of American history, of classical music, of The New Yorker. When I was in middle school I was a fan of both DC Comics and “Days of our Lives.” Anything strange about that? Comic books and soap operas — they’re both about storytelling and interwoven plotlines. But one is typically seen as masculine and the other as feminine. Batman submerged his emotions, his grief over his parents’ death, so he could capture criminals. But the Bradys and the Hortons and their travails — that’s all about emotions. Bathos. If Batman had acknowledged all the emotions built up inside him, it would have killed him.
I see myself as eclectic and consider that one of my strengths. I’m an intellectual omnivore. And lately I’ve regained an interest in computers and technology and so forth. Lately I’ve wished that I’d been an engineer in college, that I’d majored in Computer Science. I know nothing about C++ and right now I wish I did. And I’ve wanted to be a computer geek. Math was my best subject as a kid — so clean, so perfect, you were either right or wrong and you didn’t have to argue about it. Maybe I’m feeling nostalgic for all the stuff I was so good at. Recently my dad said to me that, with all my interest in computers and math as a kid, he thought I was going to grow up to become an engineer or mathematician or something similar. Maybe I’m trying to fulfill that. Maybe this is just another flirtation, one in a long line of many. It wouldn’t surprise me if it were.
I still will read Snow Crash.