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A review by anders_holbaek
Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman
4.0
"How would I know what kinds of things were good? I had only been trained in what to avoid. No one had explained it to me very well - what mattered. My friends and I were raised without real religion and without a comparable ethics of living through which to filter our beliefs and ambitions. [...] Often we did not have the jobs we dreamed about, but more often we were not quite sure what we should dream about. It was no longer defensible to build a life around acquiring money, goods, or status. We were taught to value love yet not to rely on it too heavily, because the world of excessive freedom in which we had been made would not foster the long-suffering loyalty that love required. We were encouraged to care deeply about the state of our world but our ability to affect it personally was very much in doubt."
Det er svært at beskrive, præcist hvad det er, Acts of Service handler om. Taget i betragtning af, at stort set hver eneste scene i bogen enten indeholder nogle, der har sex, eller filosoferer over sex, er det fristende at sige, at den handler om sex og begær. Og det er langt hen af vejen også korrekt. Men mere nøjagtigt ville jeg mene, at den - som titlen indikerer - handler om, hvad vi gør for andre, og hvad vi gør for os selv, hvorfor vi nogle gange gør det ene og nogle gange gør det andet, og hvordan det får os til at føle og se os selv. Og så er sex bare lige det tyngdepunkt, man har valgt at lade de spørgsmål kredse om, eller den linse man ser dem igennem. Og Acts of Service tør gå langt med de spørgsmål, den stiller.
Så den udforsker begær, men det udforsker lige så meget selvbillede (og privilegie og etik og fantasier og selviscenesættelse), i den sammenfletning, som de ting måske altid vil eksistere i. Den er vidunderligt Rooneyesque, bare at der er blevet skruet ned for klassekampen og op for (den meget eksplicitte) sex.
"In general, we were told that the distance between desire and obligation had been closed in the preceding decades, but everyone seemed to agree that the absence of obligation would not free us. Most of all we found ourselves believing in complexity. This paradigm had some merit; it allowed us to avoid extreme states of dogma and ignorance, like militarism or participation in pyramid schemes. But it also easily justified lethargy. Looking around at the moral compromises baked into every choice, it sometimes seemed as though inertia was the least objectionable course."
Det er svært at beskrive, præcist hvad det er, Acts of Service handler om. Taget i betragtning af, at stort set hver eneste scene i bogen enten indeholder nogle, der har sex, eller filosoferer over sex, er det fristende at sige, at den handler om sex og begær. Og det er langt hen af vejen også korrekt. Men mere nøjagtigt ville jeg mene, at den - som titlen indikerer - handler om, hvad vi gør for andre, og hvad vi gør for os selv, hvorfor vi nogle gange gør det ene og nogle gange gør det andet, og hvordan det får os til at føle og se os selv. Og så er sex bare lige det tyngdepunkt, man har valgt at lade de spørgsmål kredse om, eller den linse man ser dem igennem. Og Acts of Service tør gå langt med de spørgsmål, den stiller.
Så den udforsker begær, men det udforsker lige så meget selvbillede (og privilegie og etik og fantasier og selviscenesættelse), i den sammenfletning, som de ting måske altid vil eksistere i. Den er vidunderligt Rooneyesque, bare at der er blevet skruet ned for klassekampen og op for (den meget eksplicitte) sex.
"In general, we were told that the distance between desire and obligation had been closed in the preceding decades, but everyone seemed to agree that the absence of obligation would not free us. Most of all we found ourselves believing in complexity. This paradigm had some merit; it allowed us to avoid extreme states of dogma and ignorance, like militarism or participation in pyramid schemes. But it also easily justified lethargy. Looking around at the moral compromises baked into every choice, it sometimes seemed as though inertia was the least objectionable course."