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So this story isn't really applicable anymore since at this point I am in kind of a good mood, or at the very least a neutral mood, but I thought it was an interesting experience so I am going to tell it anyway.
A few nights ago I was feeling unwell so I went to bed relatively early, around 7 PM (1900), and slept till about 1 in the morning. This in itself isn't super unusual since I often go to bed between 4 and 5 in the morning, and so I get tired and fall asleep super early every few weeks. I did wake up after only having slept 6 hours though, so I was a little annoyed and decided to read. I have been reading Dostoevsky's "The Idiot" for the past few months (because school got in the way, other stuff, etc.) and the last week have finally managed to sit down and read a 100 to 200 pages of it.
I read "The Idiot" from around 1 to around 5 in the morning before I went to bed again, but it was probably one of the most awful experiences of my life. It wasn't that the writing was bad, or I hated the story, or something like that. It was that the story was affecting my mind in all the wrong ways. I just started feeling vile and dirty reading the book.
The best way I can describe it is with references to other things, and then explanations after that. I had a similar experience reading "Lolita", just not as intense, and the closest word I can use to encapsulate it would be Pettiness. Pettiness is an awful thing. There is a scene in the movie "Closer" where Clive Own is talking to Jude Law about Julia Roberts, and he says something like "you know she loves a guilty fuck." All of the examples in the book were similar to that, only more vile and yet less objectionable. It was as if everyone in the book were the most normal people ever, doing the most normal things, i.e. talking, drinking, listening to music, reading, taking walks in parks. And yet, there was a through-line of this vile Pettiness that ran through it and it just put me in the worst possible mood I have ever been in my life. It is difficult to describe since it did not really affect my emotions, so much as my mind and my imagination.
I tried explaining this to my friend and the closest I got was a fictitious example. My friend is kind of shy, one of the politest people you will meet, and in a steady relationship in which he is very happy. The way I described it to him was as if I saw a girl at a bar that I liked, tried talking to her and failed. He would then talk to her, fuck her in the bathroom, and come back to tell me did it, for the sole purpose of showing me up. It is an incomprehensible Pettiness.
I'm not even sure I am describing the way I was feeling at the time well enough, and I am not even sure if I felt that way because I was in a bad mood, or because the actual book was written this way, but I have never felt more awful about life in general, or myself than in that moment. I was kind of impressed actually that Dostoevsky managed to bring that out, but I am not even sure that it was on purpose. I just hated everything I was reading on this weird mental level that almost became visceral. I think my face was cringing some of the time that I was reading.
At the very least it was a unique experience, but I am still sort of upset that I felt that way at all, and I now I have this extreme hate for Petty behavior where before I found it mildly annoying. Has anyone else had a similar experience with a piece of media before?
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I'm not sure how the bit about Closer and your friend's example are related. ARe you saying that's a guilty fuck??
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I'm still at the book "The Brothers Karamazov" also written by Dostojevski.
Though stopped reading it like 2 months ago and therefore I don't know exact details. Still it has situations of the protagonists which make you feel weird, even depressed to some extend, dunno why. The thing is you sometimes even don't recognize the reason at the first view.
Dostojewski imba!
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I get you. But I think a more Dostoevsky-like Pettiness is if your friend fucked the girl in the bathroom (and maybe again, later) but never told you, but used that knowledge as his own psychological fuel to prop himself over you, and you buckled under the slow wash of paranoia that your object of affection was changed forever by someone you thought was your friend. Even unrevealed information has a weird gravitational pull in Dostoevsky. It's pretty cool.
Anyway, I never got that feeling from Lolita, I don't think. Could you explain that in more depth?
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On June 17 2011 06:15 Hawk wrote:
I'm not sure how the bit about Closer and your friend's example are related. ARe you saying that's a guilty fuck??
They were examples of pettiness. My friend never did that, it was just an example situation of a vile sort of pettiness. And the example from "Closer" only makes sense if you've seen the movie. It was an unnecessary comment from Clive Owen just meant to hurt Jude Law.
On June 17 2011 06:26 jellyfish wrote:
I get you. But I think a more Dostoevsky-like Pettiness is if your friend fucked the girl in the bathroom (and maybe again, later) but never told you, but used that knowledge as his own psychological fuel to prop himself over you, and you buckled under the slow wash of paranoia that your object of affection was changed forever by someone you thought was your friend. Even unrevealed information has a weird gravitational pull in Dostoevsky. It's pretty cool.
Anyway, I never got that feeling from Lolita, I don't think. Could you explain that in more depth?
Haha, yeah that would be very Dostoevsky if he never told me. I wasn't really thinking that in real life I would make it Dostoevsky since to be petty towards me he would have to tell me, but that is a good a point. It was just an impression anyway.
As for "Lolita", well I just got the same sort of impression from the story as a whole. + Show Spoiler +"Lolita" is about the relationship between Humbert and Dolores, but it was such a weird story. I went into it thinking that it would be a story about a pedophile, either how gruesome he is or trying to humanize him by making it into a love story. Instead, it was a role-reversal with all of the power in Dolores's hands. The descriptions of their sex life were essentially him being pathetic and cloying, while she reluctantly allows him to have sex with her and remains disgusted with him throughout. It was an uncomfortable read, not because of the pedophilia, but precisely because of that power relationship. His seems to be entirely lust, while hers is disgust.
It wasn't Pettiness, so the comparison isn't perfect. But the relationship I describe in the spoilers is still extremely uncomfortable for me. It is still, I think, vile, but not petty, so I did not have as negative a reaction as I did with that part in "The Idiot". Anyways, I haven't quite finished the latter yet, and it was only that one night that I got this extreme unpleasantness, so I don't know. I think I may just have been in a bad mood.
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haha sorry I wasn't trying to be nitpicky. I just got really excited about someone talking about Dostoevsky  And I just remembered I tried to read "The Idiot" a few years ago but never got past the first few chapters...=/ much more of a fan of crime and punishment.
I think I get what you mean about the pettiness now. It's a kind of disorientation, right? With Lolita, everything was so vivid and powerful and real, and it was easy to get pulled in except for that one vile detail that you can't forget...like being pulled in two directions at once. Or like those weird optical illusions where your brain can't decide which perspective to take and you just feel queasy.
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EPT
