#Moods of stories skin
Helga’s own skin narrows her possibilities, and so she experiences life itself as a surface-level irritant. The literary critic Sianne Ngai, whose 2005 book, Ugly Feelings, helped inspire this list, points out that Larsen packs the novel with language referring to sores, abrasions, and other maladies of the skin. Helga’s constant irritation is a response to a hostile environment, one filled with bad smells, shabby surroundings, and the indignities of racial subordination. Her habit of compulsive walking provides no relief: In one scene, as she strides agitatedly down a city street, a gust of wind tosses her into the gutter. “Existence in America,” she thinks, “even in Harlem, was for Negroes too cramped.” There is no place for Helga and her love of beauty or her desire for leisured comfort. No matter where Helga finds herself-teaching in a southern vocational school committed to racial uplift strolling aimlessly around Chicago and Copenhagen working as a secretary in Harlem-she is bored, exasperated, and perpetually constricted. This classic of the Harlem Renaissance introduces us to the aloof and beautiful Helga Crane. Read with caution, and a glass of sweet liqueur in hand. Against Nature offers little in the way of plot instead, we get glittering descriptions and an immersion into a strange and disturbing psychology. It was immediately recognizable to Oscar Wilde’s readers as the poisonous “yellow book” that corrupts Dorian Gray. The novel’s preference for the artificial over the natural, imagination over reality, excess over moderation, made it a sensation across Europe when it was published, acclaimed in some corners and despised in others. When his doctor recommends returning to Paris to lead a “normal life,” he snaps: “But I just don’t enjoy the pleasures other people enjoy!” In the novel’s most famous scene, he encrusts a tortoise’s shell with gems. As his health weakens further, he meditates on his eccentric sexual biography. He gorges on literature and art, inhales homemade perfumes, strokes animal skins, and decks his rooms with tropical flowers. Plagued by ennui, he wallows-but in style. In it, a sickly aristocrat, Jean des Esseintes, retreats to his silk-lined rooms, removing himself from the world so that he can plunge into reverie and aesthetic intoxication. Huysmans’ novel is about what happens when we surrender entirely to sensation. And in yielding to irritation, contempt, or indecision-or any of the psychological states represented on this list-we might learn something about the depths we contain. These titles affirm that marinating in negativity can be a source of glee.
What follows is a list of books that submerge us in ugly feelings. It is a risky but vital path to knowledge: a way of exploring what we fear and what we value. And so, all things considered, I am on the side of wallowing. Art that makes us feel “bad” allows us to explore rage, shame, and other destructive passions within the safety of our imagination. When we peek through our fingers at a slasher film, or wince at a sitcom crammed with cringe, or hum along to a mournful aria, aversive feelings are transmuted into aesthetic pleasure. As you fling yourself on the furniture, why not languish with a book in hand? After all, art is the domain where dark emotions, and the insights they make possible, are most powerfully explored. The sense of power is delicious, even if we’re only punishing ourselves. In succumbing to our stormy feelings, we give vent to ordinarily proscribed thoughts. Or it can lead to catharsis, leaving us in brighter spirits than when we began. Giving in to bad moods can clarify features of the external world, as when our anger alerts us to the presence of injustice. Such self-willed agony, though, has its element of delight.
Taking pleasure in negative emotions might seem morally suspect or maladaptive, a case of pointless narcissism.
Shame, because instead of doing anything to solve your problems, you are lying around, indulging yourself. Embarrassment, as you replay humiliating conversations in your mind. As your dejection grows, other bad feelings intrude. From there, you sink into the cushions, urging yourself more deeply into the recesses of despair. Your dive into dysphoria might start with anything from passing irritation to a genuine blow. Anyone who has spent an hour on the couch wallowing in self-pity knows that it can feel good to feel bad.
0 kommentar(er)
