In Defence of the Chaotic Method
Much to some of yours horror, I must admit that some books I have read backwards (from the end to the beginning), others I’ve started on the last page and then have flipped back to the first, and others yet I’ve started in the middle, worked my way to the end, only to start up again from the beginning and finish in the middle. This, as some might call it, is the chaotic approach. Here’s why it works.
The Machine Stops: ‘men made it, do not forget that’
In 1909, E. M. Forster writes of a society in the far-off future that ‘had long since abandoned the clumsy system of public gatherings’. People entertained themselves in self-isolated cells, able to ‘see [one another’s] image […] on the other side of the earth’, and ‘never touched one another. The custom had become obsolete, owing to the Machine’.
You my friend are lonely… a lament.
I flipped through the pages at random and stopped at a text that tugged at me. I was immediately captivated by the delicate craftsmanship of the words that drew me into a mournful lament - a lament at the loss of fellowship, where words are used for ‘pointing fingers’ and splitting ‘fragments and parts’ against ‘the whole’.
Jane Austen on the Disagreeable Richness of Cake
In times of quarantine, I say, sneak a cake or two, steal a cookie from the cookie jar, no one’s watching anyway. Jane Austen writes of the outlandish sort of individual who would “earnestly try to dissuade [guests] from having any wedding cake” due it being far too rich a treat. Safe to say, she finds it truly bizarre…
The Hiatus of the Ordinary
The midsummer night, the eve preceding May Day. What did you do with your midsummer night last night? In any case, I’m sure it did not involve falling in love with a donkey’s head, getting waited on by fairies, and switching bodies with your best friend…