diary of the self-absorbed

    I haven't been feeling very talkative lately. It's a combination of a rough couple of weeks (illness and death in the families of good friends, and my own very nagging headache) and an oddly poignant lesson from a book that I just finished. Love in Condition Yellow by Sophia Raday is a memoir. Raday was a 30-something leftist wingnut from Berkeley, arrested several times for "peace" and various other protests, just coming off a bizarre (but not unimaginable) breakup when she was practically forced into a blind date with Barrett, a cop and Army officer, her cousin's best friend from West Point. She treated their first few dates as a "sociology experiment" because they clearly weren't going to last, right? That much was obvious. They didn't plan on falling in love. Well, she didn't; I think he figured it out pretty quickly.
    The book is intense - politically, militarily, patriotically, and personally. Raday reveals more than may have been necessary, and certainly more than was probably comfortable to some friends and her family. This may sound strange in discussion of a memoir, but she reveals more about herself than I as a reader found comfortable. It just seemed weird that, in order to get to the story of Sophia & Barrett, one needed to sift through the inner-workings of her brain, over and over and over. It left me with one overriding thought:
Who Cares?    In a world that's pretty much saturated with Look At Me!, this is just another example of exhibitionism, albeit under the guise of self-scrutiny and cultural considerations. But Raday is as self-absorbed in writing the book as she is in every interaction that she details within its pages, where she presumes to be more intelligent or sensitive than every other person on the planet simply by virtue of her open mind. There is a point where one's mind can be so open that shit falls out, and I think that her awareness that other people are just as valid as she is has fallen out.
    So. Where does this leave me, at the end of the book? Well, I guess "frustrated" is the word. I liked the book - I liked that it made me think about my own politics (my own openness, but also an almost perverse appreciation for taking a military stand when necessary), and about relationships (how hard I can be to live with and how stupidly lucky someone would be to have me in their life), and about writing, and privacy. Up until now, I'd sort of figured that when I start writing "for real," all bets are off as far as privacy and confidentiality are concerned. Anything to make a buck, you know, especially if I can make one by writing. But that's just bullshit; I'm not nearly as comfortable with revelations as some people obviously are.    
    The verdict: a book I didn't love, written [pretty] well.