{"id":326,"date":"2008-03-03T09:24:18","date_gmt":"2008-03-03T14:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=326"},"modified":"2008-03-02T23:17:47","modified_gmt":"2008-03-03T04:17:47","slug":"these-doomy-gloomy-over-psychologized-terminally-ironic-post-humanist-post-postmodern-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=326","title":{"rendered":"These doomy, gloomy, over-psychologized, terminally ironic, post-humanist, post-postmodern times"},"content":{"rendered":"

But this love business – so far, it had been not very satisfying.\u00a0 He had been involved with girls he liked; he had been involved with girls he didn’t like. In neither case had he ever really felt…whatever it was that he imagined he was supposed to feel.\u00a0 He was shy, so that even though he showed determination at work, and playing hockey he positively enjoyed giving an opponent a hard check, he shrank before a girl who attracted him, and this made the search for someone who would make him feel whatever it was he was supposed to feel particularly difficult.\u00a0 Moreover, he wasn’t cold-blooded, so he couldn’t pursue and abandon girls with the same relish as some of his friends, his best friend in particular, rather, he had a sympathetic streak that, in the matter of making conquests, seemed much more like a weakness than a strength.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From pages 5 to 6 of Beginner’s Greek<\/em><\/a> by James Collins. \u00a0 I just started reading the book a few days ago.\u00a0 James Kaplan of The New York Times<\/em> described the novel as:<\/p>\n

…a deeply strange book. In fact, it is, to the best of my knowledge, a nonesuch: a 400-plus-page first novel by a 49-year-old American male, dedicated to the highly dubious proposition that such a thing as perfect romantic love is possible in these doomy, gloomy, over-psychologized, terminally ironic, post-humanist, post-postmodern times. Part comedy of manners, part chick lit in male drag, James Collins\u2019s \u201cBeginner\u2019s Greek\u201d is a great big sunny lemon chiffon pie of a novel, set, for good measure and our sociological titillation, among the WASP ruling classes, people who work at white-shoe investment firms and own villas in southwestern France and can instantly tell the difference between fine Bordeaux and plonk.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is also apparently already a fight over the movie rights – with Anne Hathaway and Harvey Weinstein involved.<\/p>\n

I will say now that the novel wears better than Mr. Kaplan’s wearying review of it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But this love business – so far, it had been not very satisfying.\u00a0 He had been involved with girls he liked; he had been involved with girls he didn’t like. In neither case had he ever really felt…whatever it was that he imagined he was supposed to feel.\u00a0 He was shy, so that even though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-prose"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-5g","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}