Book club last night. The feta and black olive turnovers, peanut butter nutella brownies and mojitos were a success. The book (I Love Dick), not so much. In fact, everyone but me hated it, saying, “I couldn’t tell if I wasn’t smart enough for it, or if the book really wasthat bad” and “I kept waiting for something to happen” and “pretentious!”
I opened up the discussion saying, “I enjoyed the book, but realize it was a bad choice for book club.” Not every book club, mind you, but I knew better. Not that I’m judging (except maybe I am, a little), but people are still talking about how greatAbraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunterwas, and we read that at least a year ago and it is, in my opinion, one of the worst books I’ve ever endured. So there is a definite clash in taste there. I also admitted that, while I sort of did know it was going to be a bad choice for book club even before I picked it, I wanted to read it, and wanted to have a conversation about feminism, and it was all a devious ploy to get that, even though, in the end, I didn’t really get it, because I got so flustered when speaking, and couldn’t get my thoughts from my head to my mouth without my tongue tripping over itself, and so all the things I wanted to say, like, “Our experiences, as monotonous or quotidian as they are, are valid! live art! live theory! We have a right to our lives, a right to fuck up, a right to air our dirty laundry, hang those underwear proudly! We have a right to want, to pursue, to speak up and out, to exist and to show that we exist, and to create our own words and works and canon!” went unsaid. I did manage, after someone said, yet again, “But I just kept waiting for something to happen!”, to squeak out, “The thing that is so exciting to me about this book is not what actually happens in it, but the thoughts that arise outside of it,” which took us back to, “I guess I’m not smart enough to get it…” No, no, no!
