A wonderfully evocative character description:
In a sense, Harper (dressed in “Gap casuals”) stands for the hip, knowing, self-conscious, weary, ironied-out, so-like-over-it-and-two-steps-ahead-of-it West, whose empty, hedonistic way of living once plagued Rose. As a restaurateur, he “did nothing extraordinary, ran the business, watched TV, read the newspaper, surfed the Web, bought a new coat every now and then, dated women — black, brown, white — consumed pornography, smoked, met friends for dinner, dreamed, honed anecdotes, got minor ailments.” He experienced, in other words, “a state of tolerable vapidity overlaid with entertainment.”
It's from the always-worth-reading Lee Siegel, in this book review.
That sounds very similar to myself at the moment. It’s as comforting to know I’m not alone in feeling this way as it is sad.
I thought the exact same thing. I’ll have to read the whole piece, thanks for posting it up.