"Imperial Bedroom," by Jonathan Franzen
In the abstract, I completely agreed with Franzen's sentiments that privacy is invading our public, that it is not a lack of privacy that we should mourn, but rather a lack of public. Yet it was only after moving on from the essay [keeping it in mind, of course] that i realized how true it was; and not only in daily life, but in daily reading. Nami Mun's Miles from Nowhere may be a triumph of written literature, but that's not what I noticed as I traversed its pages--I noticed more that I felt invaded. The narrator's private life was so clearly and explicitly spelled out on the pages, so disturbingly present, that I felt as if an unwritten contract had been breached. Maybe that's the point, that I was not sufficiently aware of the possible horrors of life and should be exposed to them, but I certainly didn't appreciate the experience.
In the spirit of refraining from inflicting my private life on unassuming others, the point of this blog is not to share the details of my personal life. I'm not going to muse on the purpose of my life, tell you what I ate for breakfast, or expose my love affairs. As an assignment, I'm discussing contemporary Spanish works; in other posts, I hope to comment on the other things I'm reading, news I've heard, and general affairs on which I have an opinion.
I'm going to go get some coffee.
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