MAGNIFICENT OBSESSIONS: Lately I’m more likely to read mediocre books that hit on one or more of my obsessions than great books that don’t. This is anything but a hard-and-fast rule–especially since great works remake our obsessions–but it’s a noticeable shift, and not one of which I approve. I find myself engaging in a lot more of the author’s misprision, a lot less of the reader’s openness. Maybe that’s what happens when you write a lot yourself. If so, okay, I will vulture others’ writing for my own purposes. Still, I have a very hard time now with books that don’t in some way slot themselves into my pre-existing fixations.

So I thought it might be fun to list those fixations. I would greatly appreciate recommendations of books, movies, comics, etc. that touch on these subjects. In precisely no order:

failure, and coping with failure

complicity

journalism

people who can’t make their minds shut up

irrevocable acts

self-image; preferring one’s sense of oneself to any and all morality or (esp) comfort

betrayal-for-the-good/man without a country/adherence to a moral code over and against all one’s personal loyalties and all one’s sense of self; attempting to maintain a sense of self after that choice.

justice without mercy (desert); mercy

evilescence

clash between different sets of expectations: one character is shocked at what another takes for granted

by any means necessary and its failures and discontents

the desire for greatness; “and he had the idea to fly”

I want, I want, I want

unrequited, unfulfilled, rejected and refused (no matter how much desired)

humiliation

bright college years, with pleasure rife/the shortest, gladdest years of life

sex that’s really about self-image

an effervescent homage to the subjunctive tense (e.g. self-fulfilling prophecies)

he’s so tired now

Better extraordinarily late than extraordinarily never.

friendship

meta- as fiction

realistic parenting

faut de mieux

repentance

indomitability; but only if combined with repentance and ambition, not if there has been no fall from grace.

inability to understand oneself