I don’t know if I’m ready to commit to being a Girls fan, or a Lena Dunham fan, and I can’t tell if the show has turned some arbitrary corner because who knows where we go from here. But I loved the Patrick Wilson sexit trash episode.

I appreciated the subtlety and quiet from a show that’s often fueled by accidental crack in a Bushwick loft, intentional coke at a noisy DJ set, or lots of screaming for no clear reason. I liked the way they fit an entire relationship—the intense and bewildering beginning and euphoric, self-imposed isolation; the moments of distress followed by gradual unburdening; the revelations of incompatibility and the desire to maintain the sense of safety in the face of an obvious end—into a space that’s compact in whichever timeline you look at it. A brief twenty minutes of screen time or a somehow-briefer two days of in-episode time turn out to be ample for exploring a range of experience that more commonly occupies months or years.

I read this episode as an allegory–a fairy-tale shortcut that lies to tell the truth. Real relationships don’t begin, middle, and end in two days, but an unreal relationship that does can reveal more. In this case, we see that the things Hannah thinks make her special are actually a little ugly. Conversely, we see that the things Girls agnostics dislike about Hannah are traits she considers beautiful. Her tearful monologue reads as almost pathologically solipsistic. You want to feel everything for everyone and then filter it for them through your writing? It’s hard to blame Patrick Wilson for his “get over yourself” face.

And “get over yourself” is what Girls fans have been saying all along. I think this episode is smart for surfacing that dynamic. It’s hard to like Hannah, as a character, because she’s based her life, her friendships, her relationships on the very things that torment her and make her unhappy. Because she thinks those are the things that make her special. I no longer think I can fairly distance myself from the Hannah character—the unattractive things she believes about herself are too similar to the unattractive things I believe about myself. I’m much too busy staring at my own navel to be a thoughtful critic of anyone else’s gaze.

Hannah spends a lot of this episode putting trash where it doesn’t belong. It’s the catalyst for her tryst with Joshua and continues when she dumps her metaphorical trash on his pristine white sheets. It’s what makes the final cut of her carefully depositing Joshua’s garbage in his trash can poignant.

I do hope for a little more editorializing on that metaphor. I could accuse this episode of unfairly painting “baggage” as a woman’s issue, and a stinky, cockroach-filled one, at that. I wonder what it really means, in practice, to find the appropriate containers for one’s emotions. Plenty of people have plenty of opinions on what it means to responsibly process difficult emotional states, and I think the garbage can image might be too basic to describe an unburdening process that can comprise a range from radical psychotherapy to Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

Girls wouldn’t be Girls if it didn’t summon this sort of criticism from its target audience—after all, doesn’t every one of us harbor the deep conviction that we’re the writer who will figure “it” out for everyone else, whatever “it” is?

Problematic simplifications of female emotions aside, I took the message of this last episode to be surprisingly meaningful. Whoever you are, however you do it: Find a way to put your trash where it belongs.

(I wrote this last night and won’t revise at work, but want to shout out these two articles for being things that, maybe, someday, I’ll come back and incorporate here:  http://www.vulture.com/2013/02/attractiveness-least-interesting-thing-about-this-weeks-girls-patrick-wilson.html, http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/02/that-sex-scene-on-last-nights-girls.html#ixzz2KiGZYwTM. I haven’t seen any of the body talk they refer to, but I’m super interested in the bottle-episode/fantasy element that both these writers address.)

The demon in The Possessed is corporeal. It has a body. I do not understand how this works for a bunch of reasons, so I’m going to think about it much too hard. Cascading from pickiest to most fundamental:

1. The demon is mostly trapped in a box. But when we see the demon, it looks much larger than the box. It also looks much different when it appears on the MRI images than it does when it is crawling on the floor post-exorcism. Is it a shape-shifter? Or does it expand or contract to fill the available space? It looked like a woman in the MRI, but was definitely more of a thing crawling on the floor.
2. I don’t think the kind of demons that possess people in movies have bodies. We often see representative depictions of the demons. In Drag Me To Hell the demon is a goat:
   
   (via)
   In The Exorcist, we get this weird dude’s face:
   
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   In general, there are lots of pictures of embodied demons frolicking in their hell playground. But I figured that there’s a difference between the demon in hell, and the demonic spirit that possesses humans. I don’t want to think about the logistics of how this works–do the demons project their spirit selves into the non-hell world? Is it part of their damnation that they sometimes find their spirits topside without access to a body? How do Plato’s forms relate to their non-form counterparts, exactly?–but I never for a minute thought that there was ACTUALLY a vampire-looking dude crouching inside Linda Blair’s sternum. The Possession would have you believe the embodied demon is literally hiding inside the body of its possessed host. Which. No. Just no.
   To continue thinking too hard about this–I was totally fine with the scene where Emily looks at her throat in the mirror and sees fingers coming out of her esophagus, because she’s possessed and hallucinating. I’m fine with demon spirits casting representational shadows. I am not OK with the mother of the possessed watching her daughter’s MRI and realizing there is near-life-size woman chilling out by the intestines.
3. What does this demon want, anyway? While they’re driving back from Brooklyn, Matisyahu tells the possessed girl’s father that the demon wants most that which it does not have: life. But. That makes no sense. By every available definition of life, the thing that is possessing Emily in The Possessed is alive. I think normally in movies, demon spirits possess people because they don’t have bodies, so they can’t really do much. But this demon has a body. It’s just trapped in a box. So once Emily opens the box, all it has to do is…get out of the box. And then not go back in. If Matisyahu had stuck to the “demons are evil and they like wreaking havoc” explanation, I might have understood why it needed to get into Emily’s body. But to say that the demon is trying to live is metaphysical nonsense. If you’re dead, you’re dead. If you’re alive, you’re alive. If you’re able to possess something, you’re alive, you just maybe don’t have a body, or you’ve left your body behind in hell, or part of your soul is still with your body but another part is out haunting, or whatever. But “I WANT TO LIVE” is not an acceptable motive for demon possession.

Obviously none of these things are really problems; they are just the reasons I think The Possessed is kind of silly, based on the pantheon of other demon movies that have led me to believe I understand the mechanisms of fictional possession. And also the talking box shots just reminded me of the Geico commercials with a stack of money with googley eyeballs.

Fire of Love is one of my all-time favorite albums, but it is some depraved and twisted psychobillypunk brilliance. The lyrics to “Jack on Fire” (and “Sex Beat,” and “Black Train,” and basically every song on the album) make me feel like I need to go to confession (I have never been to a Catholic service in my life except for one wedding) or talk things out with my therapist, so I get super excited when other people are also into this evil.

Go listen! Don’t do anything weird because of it!

He just looked at us, grinning. He floated to a corner of the rock enclosure. Our shouting intensified until it registered. It was too late. He continued smiling at us the whole time.

I went to a talk about imagining peace in a time of war and it stuck with me. Either this guy or this one argued that if you’re interested in social justice and better-world building (as opposed to better world-building, a more professional obsession I have) you get the most bang for your buck by focusing on the military–industrial complex. Working with organizations like 826 and reading GOOD magazine has convinced me that engaging people with whimsy and joy is more effective than preaching or protesting.

I’m not sure what that looks like, but I think it’s something like Stockpile Designs, which makes furniture and lamps out of decommissioned bombs, but further upstream in the bomb creation-decommission process.

John: You don’t read on your phone on the train, do you? I’m trying to figure out whether instapaper or some such thing is worth looking into.
Allyson: I have an eReader, so if I’m reading on the train, I usually use that. But I prefer to listen to Yale’s iTunes U podcasts and reopen anew, every morning, the pain of not having gotten into Yale.
John: Was it really that painful?
Allyson: It was pretty much the first time I’d ever not gotten into something I’d applied to. On the other hand, I got the notification via email on my way to Hawaii with my family.
John: Bleh poor timing. Is it still painful now, aside from during podcasts?
Allyson: I cry myself to sleep every night, bottle the tears, and mix them with my Chia seeds for appetite control and colon cleansing. Have you not heard the weeping?
Allyson: Seriously, though, the lectures are terrific. Especially Death by Shelly Kagan.

Truly, listening to a philosopher lecture about whether it’s possible to survive my death has revolutionized my mornings even more than steel-cut oats have.

*John Spain runs the excellent blog The Heat Lightning and asked me to point out that he’s never met a Yale graduate he liked.

It should be noted that I’m an amateur. My credentials are: Studied philosophy in undergrad from incredible teachers, re-read a lot of things, and listened to some podcasts.

So, granted, seeing a Facebook page that says “I Hate Reading” isn’t the most heartening Internet experience. But but but.

Reading is hard for a lot of people. I wonder how many people who say, “I hate reading,” on Facebook are working through a learning difference, diagnosed or undiagnosed. I’m sure a lot of people who “hate reading” haven’t had access to great teachers or librarians. Teachers and fellow tutors, back me up: When a student says, “I hate X,” nine times out of ten they mean, “I think X is hard and I need some help.” If anything, let’s make this a conversation about whether schools are cutting the proverbial mustard.

Even if we’re not looking at kids who are being failed by their school systems, though, haters gonna hate. Especially when said haters are school-aged and are hating on a canonical school-type thing to hate. I have yet to meet a kid who doesn’t claim to hate school lunches, for example, and I can personally guarantee that the lunches these kids eat are one-thousand (or more) times better than the cafeteria food I endured, which was probably better than what the generation before me ate, etc. That doesn’t diminish the experience of hating school lunches, but there are certain things that a big chunk of school-age kids are always going to say they hate. “I hate lunch,” doesn’t mean, “I hate food,” or “I hate eating,” and kids who “hate” reading in school may well realize that what they actually hate is assigned reading, or reading novels, or reading novels by dead white guys, and go on to lives rich with other enjoyable reading experiences.

Finally: it’s Facebook. I mean, I’ve been asked to lend my meagre Facebook support to pages like, “I Bet This Picture of a Pickle Can Get More Likes Than Senator John McCain.” Just…for perspective.

• Me: I’ve been reading more books on my e-reader, I find myself considering buying physical copies of the stuff I like, so maybe it’s people like me who will buy these premium editions. But I want these books in physical form to lend to friends, so I’m not as inclined to invest in a hardback that might get lost or returned covered in crumbs and coffee.
• My dad: At first blush, it sounds like premium hardbacks might be like special DVD collections, re-releases, or box sets. If that analogy is true, then my dad and people like him are the target hardback audience. He generally considers waiting for a box set or premium edition to come out before buying a movie on DVD…and then he buys the non-premium DVD anyway. And then I take the non-premium version home when the premium version hits Best Buy. The more time I spend untangling this analogy, though, the less sense it makes. Maybe the analogy isn’t premium hardbacks:DVD special editions::e-books:DVD initial releases. Maybe instead, the e-book/paperback version is more like a movie’s theatrical release, and the premium hardcover is any ol’ DVD. No matter how many ways I try to make sense of the analogy, though, people just don’t purchase books the same way they consume movies. Serious moviegoers will watch movies on opening day, but serious readers snatch up new book releases only to keep them on our nightstand as a physical to-read list. So even for serious readers, unless the book is a status read (like Freedom) or addictive and quick (like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games) there’s not much reason to grab an e-reader or paperback when you actually want the hardcover if you can wait out the hardcover release date. And if you don’t actually want the hardcover, then it doesn’t matter if there is one at all.
• People who like signed copies: What would happen to signing tours under this model? Do we even like signing tours enough to worry about what would happen to them if hardcovers became a second-release premium option?
• People who like hardbacks for aesthetic reasons: Add “wealthy” to the beginning of that to make it feasible in this situation. I’ll generally buy hardbacks because I’m a snob, but my paycheck barely supports that. The number of people who currently buy hardbacks for aesthetic reasons will drop a bunch if the hardback publishers are asking them to buy is version of a book they already own. Granted, this is the entire reasoning behind the premium hardback idea and would result in dramatically reduced print runs for hardback copies, but I wonder if the reduction would be too dramatic. How many people are we really talking about in this category? And you’d still have to pick your books carefully and add a lot of value to them with baller designs, fresh covers, and extra content. What would that extra content look like? How much would you be spending to do redesigns and small print runs? Although I suppose if you really plan well you can gang-print a bunch of premium titles on one press and … I’m just getting carried away.

Then there’s an alternative premium edition model that stands the premium hardcover on it’s head: Melville House’s HybridBooks. HybridBooks are a print book and additional digital-only content. If you buy the book as an e-reader, you get the digital content with it. If you buy the print book, you can scan a code or enter a URL to access the extra material. I think this model makes sense, but only if there’s a compelling reason to keep the digital content digital. Also, Melville House seems to be releasing all versions of the book at the same time and the print versions HybridBooks seem to be paperback only, based on the pictures on their blog and their prices and the fact that the current offerings are all novellas. So there’s no tiered pricing or staggered release dates, which might be a little too innovative for non-independent publishers.

I can perhaps see a world where all versions of a book–paperback, e-reader, and hardback–are released simultaneously. The gap between hardcover and paperback release dates is already inching smaller for lots of high performing titles, thanks to early e-book release dates. But I’m less convinced than I was last week that hardcovers will ever release after paperback and e-reader versions.

Are you really still reading? You must be very into book pricing. May I direct you to the Publ(ish)ing blogroll on the left for the opinions of people who are more knowledgable than I am about this nonsense? And please tell me what you think and if there’s anything else I should be reading. I’m going to go put all my hardbacks into boxes now, because I need to move out of my apartment sometime this month.

I bought this for my Nook but think I’ll go get a paper version, so I can lend it out to every reader I know.

At some point, I’ll read it again and highlight all the bits of language that made me go, “wow.” There were too many to count. Nothing ever felt forced. When I wasn’t reading the book, I was wondering if Karen Russell has just wandered around life writing down every simile that has ever occurred to her, and filing them away for a time when she might need them. I simply can’t imagine the skill (or discipline) required to sit down and write an exciting, plot-driven story while also creating insightful and new descriptive connections on nearly every page. An example I remember, from the beginning of the book:

Mom fell through the last stages of her cancer at a frightening speed. She no longer resembled our mother. Her head got soft and bald like a baby’s head. We had to watch her sink into her own face.

The idea of sinking into your own face is so startling and frank and accurate. Then sometimes she gets lyrical and makes the walls move, like in this li’l sentence from the end of the book:

The wallpaper nudged its quiet spirals upward toward the ceiling fan.

How do you learn to do that? I’d love to know. I have never looked at wallpaper and thought about it as nudging anything anywhere, but now I always will. There were many other examples, but the ones from the beginning and the end were easiest to find.

At some point, I think I’ll come back here and write something less swoony about this book. I think the pacing was uneven and I’m not sure how I felt about the end; I’d love to think more about the debts Russell owes to Katherine Dunn and George Saunders; and I’m sure there are other critical things I will want to say after a little more thought. But, for now, just…awesome.