Poetry! Social conscience! Tiny books! So cool.

Ridiculous but persistent fear #783: mistaking the Lysol bottle for the Listerine bottle, as they're both under the bathroom sink, and I keep forgetting which brand name belongs to which product.

Re-reading more of the books that I rescued from storage, including in immediate succession two of my favorite novels: Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley, and Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. Both offer a satirical picture of mid-to-upper class English society uncomfortably adapting to modernity, Crome Yellow right after the First World War and Lucky Jim a few years after the Second World War. Each has a young man as its protaganist, in Crome Yellow a pathetic, ineffectual poet, and in Lucky Jim a frustrated, reluctant academic. I've read each of them several times, once every few years. I'm not sure why they have such a hold on me.
Lucky Jim is laugh-out-loud funny, with that British kind of humour that's witty, absurd and ridiculous, like Monty Python or Will Self. On this reading, however, I noticed the pathos more than the humour. Most of the comedy comes from characters who are stuck, either in their careers or in their neuroses.
Crome Yellow has its funny moments too, but it's much more subtle. It seems quite rooted in the era it portrays, and I get the sense that I'm missing some of the satire, because I don't really know what Huxley is referencing. Some of it hits home, though, like this:

Mary looked at the picture for some time without saying anything. Indeed, she didn't know what to say; she was taken aback, she was at a loss. She had expected a cubist masterpiece, and here was a picture of a man and a horse, not only recognizable as such, but even aggressively in drawing. Trompe-l'oeil -- there was no other word to describe the delineation of that foreshortened figure under the trampling feet of the horse. What was she to think, what was she to say? Her orientations were gone. One could admire representationalism in the Old Masters. Obviously. But in a modern...? At eighteen she might have done so. But now, after five years of schooling among the best judges, her instinctive reaction to a contemporary piece of representation was contempt -- an outburst of laughing disparagement. What could Gombauld be up to? She had felt so safe in admiring his work before. But now -- she didn't know what to think. It was difficult, very difficult.

Melancholy, adj.:

Re-reading ribsauce, an anthology of women's writing published in 2001. When it came out I wrote a positive review for filling Station, but I couldn't remember any specifics. All the work has definitely stood the test of time (not that 2001 was very long ago...). It's particularly interesting to read works-in-progress from writers who've since published some awesome books, i.e. Heather O'Neill, Emily Schultz, Emily Pohl-Weary, Larissa Lai, Rita Wong...

found non sequiturs:

Non-profits spark an interest.

... showing what's owing...

Buy Yourself a Bacheelor,

Thanks for served you!

Very happy to be the featured poet for June on the excellent ditch, the poetry that matters.