I wrote a bit about the war of the zettlekasten as my last entry, and have been keeping two separate ones; one is a set of notes on Philosophy, thus far really just notes and nodes as I read Bertrand Russell, and another which is for… life stuff, the novel I am perpetually not writing, and so forth, It’s new, and filled with strange observations, one chapter from the novel, quotes, etc. I was making notes in it today. The idea is that you pick events and things you consider noteworthy, and note them, and link them together as they relate. As I did, I thought a few of these things would make for decent entries, but not “full” entries, whatever that means in this context.
Originally, I was going to write an entry on Tampa, a book that’s given me a bit more to think about than my initial reaction would indicate. To digress even further:
A friend of mine got me into the habit of writing a short entry (originally on Twitter, now on Mastodon) after finishing every book I read. It’s a neat little ritual, to be frank; when a book ends, I take a moment, reflect, mark it off on my Storygraph, pen an entry for the Mastodon, and these days, add an instagram story with a shortened version of the Mastodon entry. I want to emphasize that none of this is necessary; one can simply finish a book and put it aside and pick up another one, or reward oneself or make a note, or simply forget about it entirely. I don’t believe in insisting on too much of a process when it comes to reading, but I find it all pleasurable, and so I do it. My entry on Tampa read, in part, “overly salacious and parts of it were, effectively, pornography. It didn’t surprise me that ‘readers also purchased’ books like ‘Cows’, also notable for doing little more than providing shock value.”
And ok, I felt that way at the time I made the entry, and in some ways I still do. But here’s an interesting note: I barely remember what goes on in Cows. I had to take a quick look at the internet to remember its plot, and while its set-pieces were certainly gross, I can’t recall many of them; I just remember feeling like I needed a shower. But Tampa, salaciousness and all, has stuck with me, so I’m writing a bit about it. Now, at this point, I’m going to warn you that the book deals with sexual abuse in a very frank manner. If you’re not in a place to read about that, it’s fine, but you should stop here.
The elevator pitch for Tampa is that it’s “Lolita in reverse”. The protagonist, Celeste Price is a woman, who is a slave to her sexual desires. She wants to have sex with young teenaged boys, preferring ones who look younger. She’s literally structured her entire life around this desire, becoming a teacher because it will give her access to boys. Unlike Lolita‘s protagonist, who constantly attempts to justify his desires, Tampa’s protagonist does not make apologies for what she wants. She’s an enthusiastic addict who uses base language and describes her activities in a frank, and yes pornographic manner,
It’s disgusting, and it’s intended to be. There’s no poetry in it, and, the key point for me, and what I have been thinking about, there’s no pleasure, either. The narrator’s salaciousness becomes a dull hammer. the pornography is never erotic. The narrator is that one person at the party who can’t stop talking about partying. She’s a craven addict, and as a result, a horrible person. She’s never going to be satiated or happy or anything approaching that, and when her life (sort of) falls apart, it’s not surprising. The only thing the addict wants is more.
There are other messages in here, as well. Despite the fact that she’s very much a predator, society treats her differently than it would a man repeatedly raping a 14 year old. Because she’s pretty, and comes from privilege, she has access to a good legal team, and while her life changes drastically, she is free by the end of the book, and her addiction remains the controlling force in her life.
So what I initially dismissed, with a little distance, became something worthy. As I sat down to work on the Zettlekasten, my thoughts coalesced as I worked on a short note about my attraction to extreme art, which came about because the network Shudder has Faces of Death, a terrible exploitation film I haven’t seen since high school at the house of a person who I remember wanted to be a chef, who claimed he had done LSD, but who’s name I cannot recall. Faces of Death was every bit as awful as I remembered it, but I did remember that even then I was in search of the extremities in art, and that reminded me of Tampa, and thinking about it a little more helped me put it into context a little more.
There’s something to allowing the connections to make themselves. My little garden of zettle-links is growing. There’s likely a balance to be struck not getting lost in the weeds, but for once, I’m kind of glad the algorithm fed me some useless garbage.
The Lithole 
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