29th Jan 2007
Anger, Work, and Writing
I’m a fan of anger. Not that I’m comfortable with it. But I do get it.
The tricky thing for me with anger is that often when I’m angry, I feel like I’m a little kid flailing my arms around, not hitting anyone except, perhaps, myself. It’s hard for me to direct anger at the appropriate target, and its hard for me to be lucid when I’m furious.
And that’s what makes me embrace Julianna Baggott’s response to Esquire’s The Napkin Project, in which writers are solicited with napkins and the promise of a few bucks and a tumbler to write some prose. Julianna’s response is angry, it’s appropriately-directed, and it’s extremely lucid. Read it here.
My favorite line? “…I’ve been REDUCED + REDUCED + now you ask me to fit on a cocktail napkin?”
Fact or fiction? I don’t care. I like the anger. I even like that Esquire published it, which seems to acknowledge the anger in some way.
I like, I like, I like. Perhaps a bit too much for my own good.
