1st Post!

Have you ever seen someone say "1st post!" in the comment section of a blog or website? I'm not really sure if being so glued to your computer that you can respond to something in less than a minute should give you bragging rights.

This is my first post on this blog. I decided I want to have a place to post things that is not as public as Facebook (I have far more friends on Facebook than friends in real life) and I can't handle the expectation that Twitter creates (I don't have something interesting to say every two hours and even if I did, I doubt I would tweet it). So a good old fashioned blog will do just nicely (you know things change quickly when a blog is old fashioned!). There is no pressure to post on a blog like this because A) It's fairly normal to post infrequently on a blog, and B) No one is reading it anyway, so who cares? One warning: my thoughts may seem more or less random but perhaps my mind is organized that way...or perhaps I should say it's simply disorganized.

I'm reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories." This particular publication has been rebranded to attract attention in light of the recent movie. The Benjamin Button story is simply one of many stories in this collection of short stories, which is itself a collection of two collections of short stories, one of which is itself a collection of 3 collections of short stories. So kind of like a Matryoshka Doll of short stories. I think the thing I enjoy most about F. Scott Fitzgerald's writing is his style. He has a compelling storytelling style that creates concrete images in the mind, and in a way that is usually interesting. Have you ever been reading a story and the author is describing the setting or the characters to you, and you think to yourself, "Oh, this is the part where he tells me about the characters and the setting 'cause this is stuff I have to know. It's kind of boring, but I won't understand the story unless I pay attention." Fitzgerald is fairly consistent in always being interesting by using metaphor and relating the character's experiences, perceptions, and observations in a way that is both abstract and grounded at the same time.

Also, many of his stories are hopeless, depressing, or have some kind of ironic twist or cycle. I wonder what a conversation with Fitzgerald would have been like?