Narnia

The other day I finished reading A Brief History of Anxiety by Patricia Pearson. It was a wonderful book that I enjoyed a great deal & found I could relate to it a tremendous amount. I made a half-assed review on LibraryThing. I was a little bit sleep-deprived when I wrote it. Writing reviews is incredibly difficult! (or at least it is for me...)

It contained a quote that I thought a rather neat one to ponder. It was from an anonymously-written article published in a magazine (I think it was Time or People something like that, although I'm not sure exactly which, I've forgotten & since I already returned the book to the library I cannot consult it to be certain.) back in the early 1960s. The article was about the self-aggrandisement going on in American/modern culture & all that keeping up with the Jones' stuff. People being compelled/driven to spend & consume & desire more & more & more, over-reaching their means. It was talked about in the book in terms of the anxiety created by demands/expectations of consumer culture, the obsession/pressures to have more & the willingness to cross or disregard any line or boundary in achieving those desires (yay for run-on sentences!). "Fake it till you make it!" "I want it cheaper, I want it now!" Always more & more & bigger.

Here's the quote:

"The most orthodox tenet in the American creed is that the individual can accomplish anything if he tries hard enough. It may be one of the glories of a free society, but it also carries great potential for danger... From the noble notion that man is free to do anything that he can do, the US somehow subtly proceeds to the notion that he must do anything he can and, finally, that there is nothing he cannot do. This leads to a kind of compulsory freedom that encourages people not only to ignore their limitations but to defy them."

I find that commentary particularly interesting to contemplate in the wake of the whole mortgage crisis/financial meltdown/"global economic downturn" hoopla.

On much the same note: "Lebow and his cronies got together to 'create' the modern advertising industry, which plays to primitive beliefs," says Rees. "It makes you feel insecure, because the advertising industry turned our sense of self-worth into a symbolic presentation of the possessions we have," he told me. "We've turned consumption into a necessity, and how we define ourselves."

But now to digress...

I'm a little more than halfway through Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. I am absolutely in love with the book. Its kind of making me want to read the original Pride & Prejudice upon which it was based. I'd like to see how much they differ in story/plot/details/etc. Obviously, I expect it wouldn't contain zombies or ninjas or violent combat, etc. But I am really quite curious about how different it is & what has been changed & so on. So perhaps I'll read me some Jane Austen someday.