MidLifeBloggers gets lots and lots (well, maybe not that many) of emails asking, beseeching, wheedling and whining–promote this, mention that, don’t you think this would be a good cause to tell your readers about. My answer depends on what the ‘this or that’ actually is. If I’m not at all interested–which means I don’t think you would/should be–I just say no. Because I’m polite, I usually add a ‘thanks.’
If I’m sorta kinda interested or think you would/should be, I say yes. Said this or that–a book, a CD, a promotion–arrives soon thereafter, and I am left with the task of reading, listening, trying in order to make a judgment: Is this something that I actually want to promote on MidLifeBloggers? A lot of the time, the answer is no. I don’t like the music or think the book is badly done or the product doesn’t work as promised. And then I’m left with a pile of stuff reeking with the hopes and dreams of some wannabe writer or singer. Because I’ve been in that wannabe position, it’s difficult for me to just pitch the thing.
This, as any shrink will tell you, is a boundary problem. I need to firm up that dividing line between me the wannabe whatever and the rest of the world’s wannabes. Just because I deem Joe Schmo’s creative efforts a disaster doesn’t mean mine are. The only way I know to deal with a boundary problem is by calling it out and facing it down. Which I just did when I pitched Joe Schmo’s CD in the trash. Don’t quit your day job, Joe.
Sometimes, though, I’ll get a this or that which is not bad, maybe worthy of my time–except I don’t have any. I still haven’t gotten to the point where I can say I’m reading or listening something that I’m not just for the sake of promoting it. My profs when I was doing my PhD tried to convince me that all I had to read was the Introduction to a work and skim the rest, but that seemed like cheating to me. Perhaps that’s why it took me longer than the Department allowed to finish my coursework. Perhaps that’s why I still haven’t finished my dissertation.
Here’s a book that I was sent that I would read–if only I had the time. It’s called The Case for Falling in Love: Why We Can’t Master the Madness of Life–and Why That’s the Best Part. It was written by Mari Ruti, who did actually finish her Ph.D. (at Harvard, no less) and is a professor in the English department at the University of Toronto (these bona fides, as anyone familiar with the PhD game will tell you, are sterling). Because she was a prof, I felt I could apply the Read the Intro and skim the rest theory I learned at Lehigh.
What Ruti seems to have done is variation of the usual process of lit crit. Instead of applying the tenets of a particular critical theory to a work of literature, she’s applying them to real life. This is kind of startling. In lit crit, at least when I was doing it, the big no-no was to apply contemporary values to a work written in the past. But in applying the theories of gender studies and cultural criticism, which were forged in the past, to our belief system today, Ruti is a opening a new way for us to view our relationships, both in fact and in promise (see, reading really does help you figure out life). To quote from the Intro:
“This is a book for those who are tired of hearing that men and women dwell in two mismatched emotional universes. It’s a book for those who suspect that there may be better ways to approach romance than the gender-specific advice of most relationship guides.”
And who can even argue with that?
Jane Gassner
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