Fran Magazine: Issue #38

The walking & talking issue

You’re reading Fran Magazine, which is available to be purchased by major media news empires globally. No, seriously, I’ll go to Russia or whatever. I don’t even care anymore. Just kidding. This is an issue for paid subscribers, which means it is both more boring and better written than free issues. Included is a free preview of this issue, for those who are interested in becoming paid subscribers for a penance of $40 a year.

Feigned intellect

I have been devouring these Colleen Hoover novels for a piece I’m working on at the expense of my quote unquote “real reading” that I do within the realm of 20th century classics and contemporary work by women. It is funny to read through these Hoover books in about 36 hours, an experience that feels very close to this. Back in July, or maybe June, however, when I was in Buffalo with Spencer and Sydney and Walter, I got a copy of W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn. I had long heard good things about Sebald’s work from various literary friends, and this book in particular seemed similar to Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek which I read earlier in the year. The Rings of Saturn sat on my nightstand for the rest of the summer. It never really seemed like the right time to pick it up.

I grabbed the Sebald on a whim a few weeks back at the start of NYFF. During the three weeks I’m at the festival, I have to make these hour-long commutes and wait in line, and lo and behold, The Rings of Saturn was perfect for such an experience. Sebald’s prose is dense and lyrical; it is narrative, certainly, not in the way of, say, Colleen Hoover (LOL). The book is set in England wherein Sebald, both the guy in real life and the guy as protagonist, take walks, allowing bits of memory and history to filter into his thought. He often falls into holes of obsession about things he sees: landmarks, television specials. It’s all kind of boring in the best possible way, and it made for the ideal picking up and putting down sort of book. “Wait, where was I?” is infused into the language itself—you’re always getting lost in Sebald’s frame of mind, his curiosities and obsessions.

I prefer both Sebald and Dillard’s writing to Proust, admittedly, though I am sure this is the most controversial thing I have ever said in Fran Magazine and people are going to write me hateful emails the way they do whenever I point out that Brad Pitt is kind of an asshole. Proust’s writing, grounded in personal memory and the French countryside, was ultimately much more esoteric and arduous than Sebald’s historical revelations and Dillard’s fucked up nature observations. Maybe this makes me a simpleton of some kind, I don’t know. I did read four Colleen Hoover novels in half a week.