Clarissa's Blog

Is it a stupid idea to do a risotto with wheat berries? Has anybody tried?

I have a bunch of wheat berries and no idea how to use them. It will be a seafood risotto.

People are so easily manipulated and riled up.

This is supposed to be the mega important crisis novel everybody is going crazy about right now, but God, how I hated it. Vilas is this very stereotypical postmodern writer whose novels are like Seinfeld without the jokes. You know the kind of thing. Everything is meaningless, we are all going to die, there won’t be any hint of a plot, the narrative is aggressively fragmented, etc. I don’t like this kind of literature but I used to like Vilas. I think there are some reviews of his previous novels on the blog somewhere.

This novel, though, just stank. The sentence “we will all die anyway” is repeated at least a hundred times. The whole thing is beyond soppy. Here are a few quotes to give you, folks, a taste:

“My son was born the same day his grandparents got married. Coincidence? If coincidence is the same thing as love, then sure.”

“Victims are always irredeemable. That is, contemptible. People love heroes, not victims.” And I’m like, move to the US, you boring sumbitch, and you’ll get all the victim appreciation you’ll ever need.

“Cookies that are past their expiration date are like dead bodies.”

“It was never easy to smell clean. Historically, it was never easy. Don’t forget that if you smell clean, that’s because others don’t.”

“If I caress my kitchen, that’s like caressing my mother’s soul. If I caress all of the kitchens in the world, it’s like caressing the slavery of millions of women whose names were erased and are now music.”

“Life’s complexity doesn’t exist. It’s a lie. All that exists are the people you love. There’s nothing but love.”

“The only meaningful thing in life is to know that somewhere somebody is waiting for you. That’s the only real achievement.”

Four hundred pages of this shit. Everything is meaningless. We are all going to die. There is an economic crisis but who cares if we are all going to die anyway. It’s all meaningless. Except love. Because love is so lovely. Until you die. And then everything is meaningless. Except love. Which is very lovely. I like love. But I don’t like death. Because it’s not lovely.

The novel is enjoying great success because it’s like a litany of Facebook posts. It’s soothing in its absolute inanity.

I urgently need to read something smart because I feel like my IQ has dropped to below 100 while I was reading this novel.

Some kids go to the gym to jump and run. My kid goes to do this:

I didn’t pose the shot in any way. This is all her own thing.

If you are passed by for a job and your first reaction is that it’s because of what your successful competitor has in the pants, where they are from or what color they are, there’s something wrong with you. And it doesn’t matter whether you think “of course, she got hired. It’s all about hiring for diversity and affirmative action these days” or “of course, he was hired. Patriarchal imperialism and racism rule.” You are a dick either way. And it might be the reason you weren’t hired. Nobody wants a colleague who is a whiny, jealous idiot.

By the way, the subfield that “feminine voices” is in is very endangered. It’s a rare university that has a professor in this field. If “feminine voices” has zir (hir, schmir, or whatever) way and forces of diversity are unleashed on the field, it will not survive.

But who cares as long as the righteously indignant continue to emote in unimpeded fashion.

A person in my field proposed that “it would only be fair for universities to stop considering candidacies from European and American white men for a decade. That would be a real commitment to diversity and a way for white male Europeans and Americans to understand what we feel. Our field is desperately in need of feminine [sic] voices.”

Words fail me to transmit the disgust I feel for such people.