Jackson Lowe > Recent Status Updates

As rough as the set up and subsequent breakdown was (feeling like it just knocked the wind out of me myself), the persistence and resilience in Lauren, building Earthseed so quickly - it’s inspiring. I’m just waiting for the other show to drop :/

Yeah no bc wtf???

I don’t know how much of this I can’t take. It’s not like it’s graphic, but I’m so emotionally welled up by this

This is so bluntly tragic already

Yes it is almost repetitive at this point, but it is so perfectly crafted together to me that it seems that way - predestined. I find it is reaching up and up, and only has one way to go…

Chapters 15-20… This is the most perfect piece of mid century fiction I’ve ever read. The Shah chapters are really shaping up, with Edgar and the barber both being fantastic distillations of the American man. And the couple’s argument was so well structured and rhythmed. Vonnegut truly understands how to slice into the inner workings of masculinity (and that’s the only reason I give him a pass for his women)

Just finished the first essay. I got a good bit out of some paragraphs, but she kept going and going, switching on dimes and then coming back to a thought again later on - it’s dense and also a lot of information that somehow also comes to a relatively simple conclusion

Ummmm ideas are great, but I was not in the brainspace to receive that first essay so I’m just gonna take a second to digest

Still chugging along

Second chapter was better, but his leaps in logic still astound me, almost completely misreading some of the various sources he brings in. Third chapter is abysmal in structure and content. I think he’s missing a lot of the sociological lens on these topics, instead creating this strange patchwork of his own brain projected on Augustine

Just getting used to the world and our characters rn. Paul is so dry, I love to think of some dude in the 50s reading this

🫪🫪🫪

Finished the first half of stories now - excited to dig into the title story soon, but I need to let these marinate as they are definitely deeper than their fast pace

As much as I love pretty much every snippet of Augustine in this so far, I’m struggling with the authors seemingly endless string of comparisons and foundational false dichotomies. I relate with many of his observations, but am wildly missing how he is reaching his conclusions. Kinda still just falling into the “fallible human is restricted by his nature, Jesus is perfect by his” cycle in everything

So many characters and just a mess of life going on here, but it’s swirling around this concept of art I find fascinating

Haven’t updated this at all, but I really get something new from every single essay and find them to mostly be very direct and narrowly tailored, but also something that you can then take as a tool for oneself to apply to other theory. So practical and a great collection of important feminist theories in the late 20th century

Still have the last essay, but after finishing the title one, I cannot believe something like this was written three hundred years ago

“Bored by the tedious and improving conversation of those who have neither the wit to exaggerate nor the genius to romance, tired of the intelligent
person whose reminiscences are always based upon memory, whose statements are invariably limited by probability, Society sooner or later must return to its lost leader, the cultured and fascinating liar.”

Finding little nuggets throughout, but not being a literature head, I’m finding the nuances lost in me. Love that Wilde is just treating this like a meta-dialogue on his contemporaries and himself for people to read. Very egocentric that he thinks people care enough about his opinions to read this many words, but I kinda do🫣🫣

Oh, so he’s like a legit fascist. Oh!😃

I knew Ancient Greece was gay, but not this gay

Restarted today at the beach and thank goodness because the stream of consciousness style is meant to be consumed pretty much in one sitting. Kinda feel seen by this quote:

“The concept of letting yourself go has always been foreign to me for a very banal reason: I don’t understand where it is I’m supposed to go.”

“This is a very bad book you’re writing,” I said to myself.
“I know,” I said.
“You’re afraid you’re going to kill yourself the way your mother did,” I said.
“I know,” I said.

How do we always come back to Freud??? I’ve never seen self-insert in this uncomfy a way

But his head no longer sheltered ideas of how things could be and should be on the planet, as opposed to how they really were. There was only one way for the Earth to be, he thought: the way it was.
Everything was necessary. He saw an old woman fishing through a garbage can. That was necessary. He saw a bath toy, a little rubber duck, lying on its side on the grating over a storm sewer. It had to be there.
And so on.

My awareness of what is going on is doodley-squat

So we all really do just have quirky family dynamics don’t we?

What if we held hands while you encouraged me to poop?

First two stories: interesting so far in the strangeness of human routine performances. I’m sure this will continue on in the rest of it. Not sure if it’s a translation thing or if the dialogue is just this plain and awkward anyway, but it’s whatever. The underlying ideas are what are keeping me reading

There’s a quote from Fleabag I think that’s like, “No I don’t find you boring! Just the things you choose to talk about and the way you talk about them.” That’s this book. I initially though I was struggling with it because of the chaos of Thanksgiving day happening around me, but nah, it’s just the book