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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Have you ever been in a social setting, overheard someone making a controversial point about a subject and found yourself agreeing with them only to be appalled by their delivery and lack of social awareness? That's how I felt reading this book.
This is a pretentious book. It's unreservedly, happily-rolling-in-it pretentious. That's fine. I'm also very pretentious. Rothfeld simply seems to find the concept of politeness completely foreign. Let me explain in the briefest way I can manage.
Rothfeld has a plethora of opinions about activities that are not only a waste of time, but a personal affront to the essence of humanity. She has taken not shutting the fuck up when other people are doing something she's deemed stupid, self-delusional or contrary to her beliefs as her life calling. Some of these things include decluttering, meditation and reading Sally Rooney.
If I may one-up Rothfeld in pretentiousness, since being able to call people out on stupid shit is clearly one of her core beliefs, I can only comment on the things about which I know she's wrong for lack of contextual information. I haven't read Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey or Sally Rooney because I don't read books I know are not for me only so I can complain about other people enjoying them. I have, however, watched video essays about why other people like them. It's about giving other people the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming they're all morons, you see? Or conflating escapist fantasy with people's actual desires for themselves.
There are many moments in the course of reading this book when Rothfeld is so close to getting it. So close to extending other people the common courtesy of assuming they know themselves better than she gives them credit for. So very close to understanding others in a shining moment of empathy that it's painful when she fails to do so only to explain to the reader from the point of view of a Jane Austen character what she's failing to do herself.
I could get into the specific misunderstandings she has regarding people's personal beliefs and the imposition of those practices as a corporate tool within capitalism, of the impossibility of marketing an unsellable idea as a product, and the disconnect there is between what these ideas are meant to be and what they have become, but Rothfeld has decided people have been prescribed empty-headedness as a cure for every ailment in a monumental feat of assuming she is smarter than everybody else because she's the only one who sees through this charade.
Rothfeld discusses neo-Protestantism and the resurgence of puritanical morality as the source of many evils. This is correct. And yet she fails to understand that the use of "Let people enjoy things" in context had to do with this angle, and is not necessarily a complaint against people criticising Marvel movies for their artistic value or lack thereof. This happens as well, of course, but there is a rampant problem on Tumblr in which people conflating the content of a text taken at face value with the author's morality take it upon themselves to ostracise and harass people who express any enjoyment of it (e.g. Nabokov was a paedophile and if you like Lolita you are one as well). This is a manufactured problem within the American school system because children have not been taught to read for the past 15 years, but we don't have time for that now. We also don't have time to discuss how little she seems to understand about BDSM dynamics.
To sum up, Rothfeld thinks other people are wasting their lives trying to empty them rather than filling them. This is a perfectly reasonable opinion to hold. It may even be a perfectly reasonable opinion to express. Despite this, I would advise her to make sure she knows how to communicate with others without coming across as a supercilious asshole.
This is a pretentious book. It's unreservedly, happily-rolling-in-it pretentious. That's fine. I'm also very pretentious. Rothfeld simply seems to find the concept of politeness completely foreign. Let me explain in the briefest way I can manage.
Rothfeld has a plethora of opinions about activities that are not only a waste of time, but a personal affront to the essence of humanity. She has taken not shutting the fuck up when other people are doing something she's deemed stupid, self-delusional or contrary to her beliefs as her life calling. Some of these things include decluttering, meditation and reading Sally Rooney.
If I may one-up Rothfeld in pretentiousness, since being able to call people out on stupid shit is clearly one of her core beliefs, I can only comment on the things about which I know she's wrong for lack of contextual information. I haven't read Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey or Sally Rooney because I don't read books I know are not for me only so I can complain about other people enjoying them. I have, however, watched video essays about why other people like them. It's about giving other people the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming they're all morons, you see? Or conflating escapist fantasy with people's actual desires for themselves.
There are many moments in the course of reading this book when Rothfeld is so close to getting it. So close to extending other people the common courtesy of assuming they know themselves better than she gives them credit for. So very close to understanding others in a shining moment of empathy that it's painful when she fails to do so only to explain to the reader from the point of view of a Jane Austen character what she's failing to do herself.
I could get into the specific misunderstandings she has regarding people's personal beliefs and the imposition of those practices as a corporate tool within capitalism, of the impossibility of marketing an unsellable idea as a product, and the disconnect there is between what these ideas are meant to be and what they have become, but Rothfeld has decided people have been prescribed empty-headedness as a cure for every ailment in a monumental feat of assuming she is smarter than everybody else because she's the only one who sees through this charade.
Rothfeld discusses neo-Protestantism and the resurgence of puritanical morality as the source of many evils. This is correct. And yet she fails to understand that the use of "Let people enjoy things" in context had to do with this angle, and is not necessarily a complaint against people criticising Marvel movies for their artistic value or lack thereof. This happens as well, of course, but there is a rampant problem on Tumblr in which people conflating the content of a text taken at face value with the author's morality take it upon themselves to ostracise and harass people who express any enjoyment of it (e.g. Nabokov was a paedophile and if you like Lolita you are one as well). This is a manufactured problem within the American school system because children have not been taught to read for the past 15 years, but we don't have time for that now. We also don't have time to discuss how little she seems to understand about BDSM dynamics.
To sum up, Rothfeld thinks other people are wasting their lives trying to empty them rather than filling them. This is a perfectly reasonable opinion to hold. It may even be a perfectly reasonable opinion to express. Despite this, I would advise her to make sure she knows how to communicate with others without coming across as a supercilious asshole.
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
dark
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
I found the essays written when Rothfeld loves a thing (pasta, Melville, director David Cronenberg’s horror films, the comedies of remarriage from the 1930’s & 40’s, erotic sex with her partner) way more pleasurable than those when she writes about her hatred for a thing (minimalism, fragment novels, mindfulness). This is funny because Rothfeld herself draws attention to “the pleasure of hating,” a term coined by nineteenth-century essayist William Hazlitt.
Part of my personal joy over excess, though, is the way in which it gives us license to embrace. I’m not hunting for things to cast away from me; I’m searching for ways to add to myself and to my world. Therefore, the essays in which Rothfeld takes pleasure in her hatred — joyfully squishing ideas, art, and ethos with her shoe — are not what I was looking for from this collection.
There are, of course, plenty of ideas that are dangerous to embrace. I’m not advocating for a judgment-free existence. I see the value in “extolling virtues” AND in “condemning inadequacies.” However, I’m currently in a place where I’m desperately craving celebration, as it’s been profoundly lacking IRL. This is what I expected “essays in PRAISE of excess” to do. The subtitle feels like false advertising. As the world burns, there are enough people around me taking “pleasure in hating.” I don’t need it in my reading life, too.
Part of my issue may be format and tone. As a thought experiment, I asked myself, “What if Rothfeld’s essay, “Wherever You Go, You Could Leave” were reformatted into a handful of jokes in a standup act?” I think I’d laugh riotously! In essay form, her serious smackdown grates and has a tendency to come across as wildly arrogant. She says she’s always associated herself with “spikiness,” and that’s exactly right. It’s hard to embrace something prickly.
My frustration with tone kept me from fully embracing this collection, which is a disappointment because I thought, at first blush, that I’d love it! Rothfeld’s writing can be strong (when it’s not embarrassingly overwrought); there are some knockout sentences and ideas here.
I guess what I’m saying is that if she ever undergoes a midlife crisis, has a change of heart and a change of career, and takes her standup show on the road, consider my ticket purchased! Given that jokes require the boiling down of material, however (Norm MacDonald’s brilliant moth joke notwithstanding), I don’t think it’s in the cards. 😅
Rothfeld writes, “To live at all is to yearn to be somewhere besides where we are, and to make every effort to get there.” Despite my occasional yearning to be somewhere other than reading her book, I found that making every effort to fulfill *my* desire was to keep reading. The bitter end was the “there” in question. The only way out was through — and the only place to be was exactly where I was (between the pages).
Along these same lines, Rothfeld also agrees with a character in one of her favorite films, that “the prospect of quiet happiness stretching indefinitely before me depresses me.” This is where our dispositions diverge most drastically.
I didn’t always agree with Rothfeld, which was dispiriting because I thought we’d be kindred spirits. In particular, I firmly believe that sometimes (though certainly not always), “living” IS resting and luxuriating — in *exactly* the place we find ourselves.
But disagreeing doesn’t amount to disliking, and I’ve judged the reading & writing of Rothfeld’s essays to be a worthy effort…most of the time. Okay, some of the time. At least 50% of the time! 🙈 Tbh, I think her true calling is as a film critic.
At times I enjoyed the author’s self-proclaimed “spikiness” but I found my interest waning after the 9th essay. Her sardonic wit was refreshing on topics I was interested in, but with some topics I found my thoughts drifting to the next book on my to-read pile.
reflective
slow-paced
Not sure why I bounced off this one so hard because I thought I’d be super into it. Instead it felt like a scattered pile of book reviews that didn’t make a strong point. And the arguments I could pull out of the drone, I disagreed with. I didn’t expect to be pro-decluttering but the tone of that essay in particular was so smarmy I can’t believe I listened past it. Anti-mindfulness? ?? This one just wasn’t for me.
challenging
slow-paced