My second assignment for my archives administration course is due in a little under two weeks time and I'm starting to feel the tingle of deadline nerves. I drafted my first assignment nearly a month ahead of the due date, and discovered as a result that, yes, you can be stressed by having *too* much time to do a piece of work. I decided that this time I wouldn't rush myself; I would take it slowly. But, of course, events have conspired against me - I've had to take off three consecutive weekends for various reasons, both delightful and not so much - and am now having a silly little panic. I am also reading for, and preparing to write, a multiple-book review for Strange Horizons which I promised for the end of June. Eep. I'm sure it will all get done, but in the meantime Alexandria and several other projects have fallen by the wayside. I patently haven't started reading Ulysses for example (apologies to Fabio in particular!), or reviewed the Orange New Writers shortlist (which I must, must do). I'm appealing to the gods for more hours in the day. Honestly, I don't know how Stephanie at So Many Books manages to study to be a librarian, and work, and blog nearly every day. I bow down. Hopefully I'll be back on track in a couple of weeks time.
To top it all off, I've just been defeated by a book. I put Daren King's Jim Giraffe down after just 12 pages. The quote from DBC Pierre on the cover is glowing - 'Jim Giraffe is a work of the uppermost echelon of imagination, a twisting supercharged affront to the mundane' - and the back is covered with praise from various quarters, but I couldn't bare to read it. Why? I sheepishly admit that it offended my sense of propriety.
The blurb (which I only read after acquiring it through BookMooch) sounds an initial warning. It introduces us to Scott Spectrum, a frigid SF geek who receives a ghostly warning, ala Scrooge, that his days are numbered if he doesn't 'quickly perform every act in the lovemaker's lexicon.' (By this point I'm already wincing. Oh dear...) It goes on to promise a novel about sexual repression, also populated by Jim, a perverted ghostly giraffe, and Continence, a woman who dreams naughty dreams about black stallions. (Oh dear, oh dear...) Yet I kept an open mind and read on. The first line made me smile - I have of late been visited by a ghost giraffe - and I dared to think that you shouldn't judge a book by its blurb. You have to admit that it has a certain folksy charm. Very quickly, however - in 2-3 pages at most - the book had degenerated into a crude, unfortunate volley of sexual puns and scenarios as Jim (you remember, the aforementioned giraffe) plays the ghost of Scott's sexual past, present and future.
I don't like to think of myself as a prude; I hope that I'm a relatively open-minded person when it comes to sex. I'm not ordinarily embarrassed by nudity or genitals, and I'm all for talking and writing honestly about the body and its urges. Still, I have my limits. I had to stop reading when, on page 11, King slotted in a 'fifth leg' joke about Jim's 'huge' and 'dribbling' penis, and then proceeded to suggest he should hide it up someone's 'arse'. I felt...dirty, like I was reading a little graphic porn at bedtime. I was enormously discomforted and had to put the book down, never to be picked up again.
Yet I find this discomfort discomforting in itself. I feel as though I've perhaps failed some test that Daren King was setting me as a reader; I fear I'm just a silly English prude after all, ashamed of bodily functions and unwilling to admit it. Am I like the parent who complains that two men kissing in an advertisement for mayonnaise is beyond the pale? Am I subconsciously censoring my own reading? I reflexively shied away from King's explicitness, and I keep questioning myself: was I justified? Should I have given up on his so soon?
Has anyone else felt a violent reaction against a book's content, so much so that you couldn't go on? Are there some places you can't go, even in the name of literature? On the one hand I think my reaction is perfectly normal - there is no reason why I should be ashamed of drawing a line in the sand for myself, so long as I don't want to do it for others - but on the other I feel that King has revealed a flaw in my liberal credentials. Maybe that was what he intended all along.
~~Victoria~~