I’m pretty sure that one of the reasons I never update this blog is because I don’t focus on any particular topic. Some people can dash off unfocused blog posts at the drop of a hat. I, for good or ill, am not a member of that set.
Back in, oh, April-ish, I found a topic that not only I could obsess over, but has proven to be an inspiration to write about online. I started looking into Hypertext with a capital aitch, the idea that writing with little interlinking bits would revolutionize literature in unfathomable ways. It was a thing in the 90’s, right? Whatever happened to that?
I went and saw the Dark Knight again. This time I went with my parents. My mom is a pretty devout woman with a decent artistic sensibility. Afterward she was still trying to process the experience, and it was good to get her take on things.
One thing she said that struck me: “Everyone says it’s lots darker than Batman Begins. I hate that. It’s not dark, it’s sadistic.”
In one sense, she’s right. It is sadistic. But the sense in which she’s right is incomplete. The Joker is sadistic, not the film. He is a twisted sadist whose mere presence should have given the film an R rating. But the film doesn’t glorify that evil, it exposes it. It presents a glimmer of hope and a dash of martyrdom in the face of such evil.
This essay on reading is captioned by the editor “An attack on the growing pretentiousness of American literary prose”. And boy howdy!
https://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200107/myers
I highly recommend it for anyone who reads fiction at all whatsoever.