#653 Signifier- Susan Steinberg
Another selection from Spectacle. It’s getting to feel like all these stories are going to go the same way. This one is about desire:
“Desire is desire for recognition, and I was controlled by desire just like you.”
“And desire is about the long-tailed birds as long tailed birds. Not as metaphor. Not as signifier. Not as anything other than what they are but long-tailed birds switching from branch to branch.”
Like the others, this is an internal running dialogue by a woman going through her unsatisfying life. As things happen she relates it to her childhood. A style at first that looked like a good attempt at tapping in to the modern mind, is now starting to look overly shallow and judgmental. The whole: I’m fucked up-the world is fucked up-that’s the way it is—just feels like I’m sitting next to someone at a bar that’s sharing their miserable life with me after I said "how’s it going.” At first I’ll listen, maybe find some of it interesting, but pretty quickly I’m going to just tune it out.
I’ve been here before with other authors. Once you get a bad taste, it’s hard to get it out. I see phrases like this one:
“There was what one could call a clearing, and there was trees. There was what one could call a waterfall.”
OK, what else would you call the waterfall? It’s a waterfall, call it that, there doesn’t have to be irony in everything. Like the person sitting next to you at the bar, once you tune out, you should switch seats if you want to enjoy the rest of the evening. I’m going to put this collection down for a while. I may revisit later in the project, but for now, I’ll give someone else a chance to bend my ear.
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