Jernigan

Some­times I feel I should just give up reading.

A cou­ple weeks ago, I read a Star Trek nov­el to get some cheap enter­tain­ment. It was bad. Real­ly bad. I’m a life­long read­er of sci-fi so don’t give me shit about this. I haven’t read Star Trek nov­els since I was in fourth grade. But I decid­ed to try out a Voy­ager nov­el that took place imme­di­ate­ly after the TV series end­ed; I’d been curi­ous about what hap­pened to the char­ac­ters after the events of the final episode. I liked it a lot; it was clear­ly and com­pe­tent­ly writ­ten and the char­ac­ters showed some signs of depth. I fig­ured this sub­genre might be read­able. So a few months lat­er I bought the first of the New Fron­tier series.

First of all, there was­n’t a sin­gle char­ac­ter that was­n’t clear­ly an exten­sion of the author’s most super­fi­cial van­i­ties. From the nav­i­ga­tor who could detect a course change even when nap­ping at the con­trols (revenge on the third grade teacher who would­n’t let him sleep in class and would­n’t believe that he was real­ly lis­ten­ing? Puh­leeeze) to the her­maph­ro­dit­ic alien that has vam­pire fangs, a snap­py retort to every ques­tion, and even gets a Vul­can hot for hir (yes, we were treat­ed to an entire­ly new sys­tem of pro­nouns) there was­n’t a sin­gle char­ac­ter por­trayed in even two dimensions.

Fur­ther, the author reused the same tired phras­es to beyond the thresh­old of pain. If I read about some­one “foun­tain­ing blood” one more time, I was going to scream.

So next I read House of Sand and Fog. I don’t know if it was just because I’d recent­ly fin­ished the pro­fes­sion­al fan­f­ic, but it was a dream to read. The prob­lem was that it broke my heart at every turn. I can’t count the num­ber of times I closed my eyes and sim­ply wished that the char­ac­ters would try a dif­fer­ent way, because through­out the nov­el it seemed as though each was on the verge of break­ing through, and then at the last moment find­ing rea­son to act out of fear. Plus there’s some­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly painful and fright­en­ing to me about fic­tion­al­ized accounts of alco­holics going back to drink­ing after being in recov­ery for a lit­tle while. Read­ing House of Sand and Fog

After that came Neu­ro­mancer which restored my faith in Sci-Fi, bad­ly need­ed after the thrash­ing it had got­ten at the hands of the New Fron­tier nov­el. Hard to believe that was writ­ten back in 1982, but part of it’s prophet­ic nature has to be self-ful­fill­ing. Gib­son showed us what it could be like and we went and built it. Sure, we’re not quite there, but we built it and con­tin­ue to build it based on what he wrote.

Fast for­ward to present-day. Yes­ter­day I stopped by a big-name chain book­seller to find Jerni­gan, which had been rec­om­mend­ed to me by wil­hem­i­na. I can see why she point­ed me to it. I also picked up a book on Ara­bic script so maybe I can try to learn the alpha­bet, but I’m about six­ty pages into Jerni­gan thanks to the bus ride to work this morning.

I’ve been strug­gling with Gates because for what­ev­er rea­son I’m prej­u­diced to hate him. I think I’m just jeal­ous because wil­hem­i­na likes him and I can’t stand to see any­one else get cred for any­thing else; I’m just that com­plete­ly inse­cure. Which is pret­ty sad; I mean, I’m not even a writer and I can’t stand that some­one else might get more atten­tion from their writ­ing than me. Ugh. Some­time ask dra­cun­cu­lus about my rival­ry with Mis­ter Bad, which is all the more absurd because it’s a one-way rival­ry. I can’t stand that peo­ple think he’s such a good writer—and he is a good writer—because I nev­er get fan mail or groupies’ panties or any­thing like that.

So I opened the cov­er of the book seething with desire to find every­thing wrong with Gates and want­i­ng to smug­ly put it back down pish-tosh­ing him for being just anoth­er lit­er­ary pre­tender. Or whatever.

Well, um. So I’m read­ing it. And it does­n’t suck.

It is a lit­tle annoy­ing, though. It both­ers me more than a lit­tle. It was rec­om­mend­ed to me because it’s about some­one who lives almost entire­ly in his own head. He’s more self-con­scious than most char­ac­ters in lit­er­a­ture, which is say­ing a lot. Yet, he seems to be a much more func­tion­al human being than I am. That’s scary.

So my lash-out bah hum­bug is that all this guy Gates is doing is tak­ing his own neu­roses and run­ning them through the fil­ter of his own intel­li­gence to come up with some­thing that the rest of us intel­li­gent neu­rotics can relate to. And that makes me mad. Except that, well, yeah. I relate to it. And sad­ly enough, I wish that I pulled off life as well as the pathet­ic wretch in the novel.

Last­ly, just to show how sen­si­tive I am, I cried because he men­tioned the beach I used to go to at lunchtime in high school. I’m pret­ty sen­ti­men­tal about my school. Just anoth­er sym­bol of my being total­ly lost in the world and with­out roots. Even the high school I went to, the expe­ri­ence of which pro­vid­ed me with my val­ues and gave me an eth­i­cal struc­ture with which to live, dis­ap­peared nev­er to return. So just see­ing the name “Ham­monas­set.” and read­ing descrip­tions of the Guil­ford Green drains me of the joy in my life.

All of this serves to remind me how utter­ly alone I am being wrapped so tight­ly into my own solip­sism. It’s my great­est fear per­haps because I’m so close to that edge. How long before I for­get to believe that there are oth­er real peo­ple in the uni­verse? Oh, hell.

Hell.

That is Hell, right? The pro­found sep­a­ra­tion between the self and the oth­er. No con­nec­tion to fel­low beings, no con­nec­tion to God, no con­nec­tion to even the inan­i­mate objects in the world? Dis­con­nec­tion and mean­ing­less­ness, a/k/a Hell.