Fantasy
It's late Sunday afternoon, and I'm about to sit down with an oppressive stack of magazines. I won't be looking at The New Yorker or The New York Review of Books, nor probably the London Review of Books, either. Or Harper's. Those are the periodicals that I look forward to reading. It's the homework mags that I've got to look at: The Nation, The Economist, the Wilson Quarterly, and Foreign Affairs. France-Amérique doesn't get the attention that it deserves, and I can't make up my mind about The Atlantic. Bookforum shows up from time to time, its continued existence always a faint surprise.
In a fantasy that I find increasingly beguiling, an efficient intellectual expert shows up one fine day and tells me how to do my job. Sometimes, the expert even tells me what my job is. I know what some of my duties are. I have to publish a fresh entry every day. I'm expected (by whom?) to review The New York Times Book Review - a weekly task. Ditto my trip to the movies every Friday. I used to read the blogs on my list every weekday, but I've lost that habit and must fight to regain it: this is a two-way street, buster. But a list of duties doesn't add up to a job. The one thing that the expert does every time that I indulge my fantasy is to persuade me that I don't really need to read The Nation, The Economist, or even The New York Times. Yippity yay!
Yes, that's the problem with fantasies.
It does occur to me quite regularly, however, that although I may want to run a daily Web log, writing about books, ideas, and the bits of New York's cultural life that I make time for - although this may be my desire, and although I may actually get it done, somehow, it does not follow that I know how to do it. But perhaps the very idea that I'm not doing the job very well is the first step to enlightenment.
