Telecommuting & fiction

This week I have remembered how boring telecommuting is, even when it's only 2 days a week. I had forgotten, which is inexplicable, as I was interviewed for an article on the subject two years ago where I talked about how glad I was to not be telecommuting anymore. Seriously - check out the article here.

Today being Wednesday, I didn't have to work today, so I spent the day running errands in my neighborhood and in Manhattan. As I have in the past, during brief periods where I wasn't working, I marvelled again at the difference between the world when everyone is working (M-F, 9-5) and the world at other times (evenings and weekends). There is a completely different vibe (for lack of a superior term) to the world during the workweek: people are fewer and friendlier; traffic is more relaxed; small talk is more enjoyable. It helps that the weather is improving. There are no leaves on the trees yet, but the sun is out, and I can get through most days with a light jacket and a fleece.

Today is my father's birthday, and I'm seeing him in two days, so I spent some time picking out a few gifts. I also went to Barnes & Noble in Union Square and the The Strand on Broadway looking for an inexpensive copy of Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, a book I've wanted to read for the last few years (since learning that it was, if you can believe it, the inspiration for V), but it's only recently come back into print. I found an inexpensive copy, but unfortunately the typeface was awful - tiny and indistinct - so I passed. Do I sound like an old man? It was pretty bad, and I don't want my glasses getting any thicker. Instead, I ordered a used copy from Half.com that claims to be a 1970 printing. Perhaps the print won't be any better, but for $5 I couldn't really lose.

I don't think I've set foot in The Strand on Broadway since shortly after moving to New York in 1999. The last time I was there, it was the middle of summer, and they had steel, industrial-strength fans set up around the floor to try to cool the place down. It didn't work. Today was much better. I wound-up buying a book on New York City landmarks, which I'll use as a guide for walking tours (with my wife or friends in tow) at various future dates. I love seeking out the city's architectural, political, and cultural history - which is often more difficult to find than you might expect.

Speaking of books, I've finished 3 in the last 4 days. All are fiction, making them - combined - more fiction than I've read in the past year, if not the past two years. First was Graham Greene's Our Man In Havana. This was a friend's recommendation, as I've never read a Greene book. I sailed through it enjoyably. Judging from the plot summaries of other Greene novels included in the back of Our Man, this is a fairly archetypical plot for Greene, with intrigue set against a vaguely late- or post-colonial background. As someone who generally can't read enough history (which explains why being on a fiction kick is so unusual for me), this makes digesting it even easier. As soon as I finished it, I headed over to a used bookstore and bought the first two Greene novels I found on their shelves, which I hope to read soon. One is The Quiet American, which I saw in its film version a few years ago - highly recommended.

Second up was George Orwell's Animal Farm, a book I was somehow never assigned in high school like everyone else I know. I picked this up for $1 when I was buying those two Greene books, and briefly panicked that my edition (as frayed and yellowed as you would expect for $1) was missing the last few pages, but on closer comparison with an online version, it wasn't. As for the contents: The book is quite short, and I was able to read it in a matter of hours. Thanks to the history background - as well as constant references to this book in popular culture - I didn't need to spend too much time thinking the book through to understand it. Moreover, I have read Orwell's 1984 several years ago, and compared with this book, 1984 is profound. Animal Farm just bashes you over the head with its meaning repeatedly. But even in this post-Soviet world, the commentary hasn't become dated and the satire is still sharp. In essence: "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." I'm glad I finally read it.

Third, and just completed today, was Tom Perrotta's Joe College. I thoroughly enjoyed this - moreso because it's set amongst undergraduate life at Yale. The setting is the early 80s - I did my time at Yale in the mid 1990s - but the characters and scenery don't differ at all from what I knew when I was there. Descriptions of campus fixtures like singing groups, secret societies, and even Wawa are beautiful executed. It's sort of a coming-of-age tale. Half of the story takes place at Yale and the rest takes place when Danny (the protagonist) is home in New Jersey during the summer preceding his junior year and his subsequent breaks during that academic year. The book builds steadily and evenly, with a few moments of laugh-out-loud humor thrown in. If I had any criticism of the book, it's that too many serious issues appear to resolve themselves too easily. In fairness to Perrotta, that's my criticism of many works of fiction. I always want a tidy ending for the characters I've come to care about, but then I inevitably get annoyed by the sheer implausability of a tidy ending (like Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby - or This Side of Paradise). Life rarely, if ever, has tidy endings, even for things that work out exactly the way you want them to.