reading Wednesday!

Reading Wednesday, whoo! .....damn, fewer people I know appear to be still doing this. Oh well.

What are you reading now?
Lawrence Wright's book on Scientology, which is much less awesome than his book on Al-Quaeda -- it reads more like a bunch of fragmented pieces stitched together, and I get tired of reading about nothing but Tom Cruise and Paul Haggis (to the extent that there is a long loving description of the latter's Crash -- surely one of the most awful White Liberal Guilt movies ever filmed) (Haggis seems like EXACTLY the kind of guy who would never think about racism until his Porsche got carjacked on Wiltshire). Haggis is Wright's main informant, so of course he gets off very lightly, and if you've read Wright's New Yorker profile of him, that's the structure for the book. I'm not sorry I bought it, because I want to support critiques of Scientology (I remember wayy back when this was just about the only critical piece online) but it's just not very informative or enlightening. In a way it's a blessing some of the atrocities are so sketchily reported -- the breakup of families, forced abortions, spouses informing on each other, slave labour that would rival Communist prison camps -- because just realizing how terrible Scientology is for everyone but a few hundred people on top is upsetting. I wanted less dwelling on the psyche of the rich white privileged man who felt really bad about being in denial for nearly four decades, and more of the actual stories about people like Paulette Cooper and Lisa McPherson, or even just more from Haggis' own daughters.

What did you just finish reading?
The Horned Man, by James Lasdun, which was very well-written but sort of....airy? Fluffy? Hard to get hold of. It's very self-referential in a way -- the narrator mentions teaching the Bacchae to undergraduates and then, many chapters later, there's a very long (and unconvincing) sequence where he cross-dresses to try to get into a women's shelter (don't ask).  Other literary references -- to Kafka, mainly -- play out in the character's "real life" as well, but somehow the parts just don't organically come together into a meaningful whole. It's very well-written, though, and features perhaps the most unreliable narrator ever; intriguingly, he can be read either as a complete victim, or a self-deluded monster.

What do you expect to read next?
Scientology makes me feel rather ill, but I might read Janet Reitman's Inside Scientology, or the amazing Paulette Cooper's The Scandal of Scientology -- available in full, for free. It would just be nice to read something about "the church" that wasn't so intently focused on Hollywood starfucking. Am hoping those books will be better, or at least have fewer pages devoted to Tom Cruise's motorcycle's paint job.