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Women Are the Rocky Balboa of Women
- 2024/10/08
- 再生時間： 27 分
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The women I know are getting strong. They’re lifting weights. They’re powering up. They’re doing forms of exercise I’ve never even heard of. Every time I talk to a woman, she tells me about her new workout routine. They all involve some form of strength training. I’m not afraid of this development. But I can’t help wondering what the women are planning, what it is they’re preparing for that I haven’t heard about and which requires physical strength. I doubt it’s anything nefarious, at the same time that I’ve decided to focus on my own physical fitness just in case. I picked up some weights for the first time in at least a year. I’m doing Pilates.There is no sense in not being ready for what’s coming. I’m watching my back. This Is a Free Stock Photo of a “Strong Woman.” It’s Exactly the Kind of Thing I’m Talking about.Announcing: The National Adult Male Believers in Literacy AssociationOne of the problems with life right now is that men aren’t reading books. The people who read books are women. In their meaty hands they clutch the works of Rachel Kushner, Sally Rooney, and Miranda July. Their eyes bulge as they fortify their optic nerves with muscle tissue that didn’t even exist there before they read the books. They are power-reading. It’s the next stage of human evolution.I don’t know for sure if I would have more of a career if men read books. I don’t think it could hurt. Would I have sold more copies of Weird Pig if men bought books? It’s not out of the question, is it?I’m thinking of starting an organization that’s devoted to promoting literacy among adult men. Many of them know how to read, but they might as well not know how to read, because they hardly read anything. They haven’t picked up a book since high school, and they probably didn’t read any books in high school either.I’m thinking of calling this organization the National Adult Male Believers in Literacy Association, or NAMBLA. The mission will be simple: teach men to read things that aren’t statistics pertaining to baseball, hockey, football, and basketball. Help them regain the ability to read a full sentence to its conclusion, then read the next one, finish the paragraph, move on to the next paragraph, and so on. They are going to need help with this. They will complain that it’s too hard. But it happens all the time, that I speak to a woman, she tells me what book she’s reading, her biceps strain her shirtsleeves as she gestures with both arms, and she volunteers, as an aside, that her husband does not read books. He just never does. It’s a little weird.It’s not actually weird. It’s sadly normal, and we should do something about it.The time has come to start making a difference in the lives of adult men who might as well not know how to read. Join NAMBLA today. Disregard What I Just SaidPlease don’t actually join NAMBLA. Don’t even go to the website. You’ll get put on a list. As you probably know, the real NAMBLA is an organization for child molesters. I do wish that men would read books, but men are mostly hopeless. I don’t think they’ll get better in my lifetime. I am far from one of the best ones, but I do at least read books. There is at least that. Maybe soon we’ll have a woman president. That seems like a step in the right direction. Who even knows what the right direction is anymore, though. Maybe it’s northeast.I talked to my friend Gabi on the phone on Friday morning, and she said she thought the reason women are getting strong is that they’ve all found that trying to get thin is the wrong way to go. It’s unproductive and misguided, so instead they’re building muscle and the strength that comes with it. I said that sounded great. What I was thinking, though, was that her explanation is a great way to distract from whatever it is that she and the other women are planning. She said it was okay if I quoted her in my newsletter.Let’s Press Pause on Dying for a Few Days, PleaseYesterday I learned the writer Lore Segal died. She was ninety-six years old, but I kind of thought she’d always be alive. It didn’t seem to be out of the question, somehow.Also, late last week, Robert Coover died. He was ninety-two. It’s great that both of these writers had good, long, productive lives. I have admired work by both of them. We’ve lost a lot, now that they’re not here. I’d like to write more about both of them later, but in fact I have already written about Robert Coover. Just last week I was revising the essay I wrote some years ago, so I could add it to a book manuscript that will be incredibly hard to publish, if it ever gets published. I will read that essay at the end of the audio version of this newsletter. The short version: I used to see Robert Coover around town, when I lived in Providence. I never introduced myself to him. That’s what the essay is about, though it goes in several directions from there. Lore Segal was the author ...