living la vida something, oh, forget it

I want to do away with titles, I'm having extraordinary trouble not being punny with them.

This is a quick note to say that I queried Robert Silvers at The New York Review of Books this morning, with a fairly good and coherent pitch, if I say so myself. I'm sure there is no way it will yield to anything, but this makes me feel part of the solution. Or something. Both the larger solution as well as the solution for myself, personally, as a way to find some sort of work, I am thinking, maybe I could just pitch more reviews and essays and things? Although is this a way to procrastinate from writing my book? This is all hugely possible. The essay would be about women and violence, centering around a few titles that would be coming out. We'll see. Although of course it could be a bad idea to post something when the said person could Google me and then feel I'm nondiscreet and wouldn't want me to write for his publication. I feel very close to the NYRB lately because of my delving so deeply into the writings and criticism of Elizabeth Hardwick. It is also a life goal of mine to write a piece for them, although I imagine to do that I would need to be a big-press author or have a Ph.D., neither of which seem conceivably upcoming. It is also my life goal to become William Vollman and go on adventurers and write for Harper's, which doesn't seem conceivably upcoming as well, for many many many reasons.

On self-destruction, from transcribing the chapter on "The Girl" in Simone deB's The Second Sex: "Violence against herself or the universe around her always has a negative character: it is more spectacular than effective."

Simone deB is very hard on The Girl. This I must unpack and figure out, the ambivalence, the empathy, the identification, the love.