Guilty Displeasures

I've tried. I really have. I think a lot of us have. But sometimes, dammit, it's just not worth the effort and the psychic strain.

There are things in this world that I know I'm supposed to like?great achievements in the arts and literature, in music, in culture (even low culture)?but for the life of me, I just can't do it. On the bright side, I've reached an age where I no longer feel compelled to put on the clown mask of false enthusiasm anymore.

There was a time when I pretended?like Zelig pretending to have read Moby Dick (and for the same reasons)?to like things like Hemingway, and science fiction novels, and opera and James Bond movies, because everyone around me at the time did. Hell, I even pretended to like Gandhi once, for a very short period of time, on account of a girl I had a little crush on back in high school. But it just ain't worth it.

I can appreciate the greatness of these things, their significance and why they play such an important role in the lives of so many (except maybe for Gandhi. Fuckin' hate that movie). But for all that, I just never loved them the way I probably should. They just never kicked me in the guts the way I expected them to. I did try, like I said. I listened to the records, I read the books?sometimes going back to them in later years, thinking that with age I might see something there I hadn't seen before. Some things I came around to appreciating, at least a little bit, the way you come around to liking certain foods as you get older. Things like Bob Dylan, and jazz and James Bond. That usually didn't happen, though.

Is this something everybody goes through? Is this sort of Bad Faith as rampant as I expect it might be? We are, after all, weak creatures.

I'm not sure exactly why I started thinking about this. I think I was on the floor watching a movie, having a fine time. Then one of those annoying voices in my head asked, "So, do I really like this movie, or am I just pretending to like this movie because it's what's expected of me?" I don't even remember what movie was playing at the time, but I remember quickly concluding that, yes, indeed, I liked it very much. But that kernel of doubt lingered, the question echoed and it got me to looking at the other things around the apartment. It was time I started being honest.

No, I never liked Hemingway much, even though I'd spent the last two weeks listening to Stacy Keach read his short stories aloud on tape. The reading was very good, and though I could appreciate the bare artistry of what he was doing, I just never cared all that much. In fact, his stories usually leave me in stitches.

I guess I'm the same way with Kerouac (shame on me). God, how I spent years trying to like Kerouac! To this day, I'm still trying to like Kerouac. On the Road is, without a doubt, one of the greatest American novels ever written. Maybe it's a result of when and where I was born and grew up. I don't know what it is. I don't deny that he was a great writer?it's just that it never grabbed me the way it continues to grab the youngsters. Same with Catcher in the Rye, I gotta say. I know they should?but Kerouac's prose, after a while, melted into little more than a shrill hum in my head?and I never really gave a good goddamn about Mr. Salinger's prep school boys.

(Morgan and I were talking about this at the bar the other night, listing the things we've tried to like but couldn't, when she pointed out that it was like going to confession. She's right, too?it's almost painful coming out and admitting these things. I almost feel dirty.)

A good percentage of the most intelligent people I know are baseball fanatics, and so I always feel kind of stupid telling them that I prefer football and bowling. Baseball always bored me silly. My dad used to take me to a couple Brewers games every summer, but I always spent my time making paper airplanes and looking for the hotdog guy. It was never like that at Packers games.

I never cared for politics or the visual arts (especially the Impressionists), though at various times in my life I've found myself in the uncomfortable position of having to feign some sort of enthusiasm for both. (I think I can probably get away with avoiding the visual arts from this point onward, thank God).

Although the idea of being a philosophy professor never really appealed to me all that much, I think I stuck with the academics as long as I did for the simple reason that I had nothing else to do at the time. (I'm not sure that example applies here, but I thought I'd drop it in anyway.)

I did like opera briefly, though only Wagner and Berg?which I guess is not uncommon for teenagers of a certain mindset. I can say that I never liked it quite as much as I pretended to.

I never liked Sonic Youth. In fact, I never even heard Sonic Youth until years after they were very well established. When I finally did hear them, all I could do was shrug. It took longer than it probably should have before I finally came around to actually liking Black Flag, even though I bought all of their albums as soon as they were released. Most damning of all, I was never able to work up any real, heartfelt enthusiasm for old-school New York punk rock?your Heartbreakers and Voidoids and Television and Suicide. Loved those Ramones, though.

In some cases, I like the idea of things more than I like the things themselves. I like the idea of William Burroughs more than I enjoy reading most of his novels. I like the idea of Frank Zappa, but have rarely been able to make it though an entire album. I'm still very happy to know that the two of them were around for a while, though.

As with Kerouac, I'm still trying to like Sherlock Holmes stories.

"I tried to like the Pain Amplifiers," Morgan admitted to me recently. "I guess I thought it was cool at the time.'' On that one, I don't blame her for not being able to pull it off. My band was a mess. She also admitted to trying, and failing, to like Agatha Christie, Fantastic Four comics, and Doctor Who.

We both agreed that "Cinema of Transgression"?that subgenre of underground filmmaking in the 1980s?sounded promising at first, but in the end was more silly than transgressive. Sadly, we both found ourselves in the company of people who took it very, very seriously.

I tried to like straight gin for about a year and a half, but that doesn't much count, as I was alone in my apartment the whole time.

On the flip side to all this, thinking about things I've tried or pretended to like also got me thinking about those things I was afraid to admit, in certain company, that I did like, out of fear of being called a big fag (though that never stopped anyone).

I always liked that Neil Diamond, for one. Glen Campbell, Johnny Horton, pulp novels, Toho films and Casablanca, too.

There, I said it. So sue me.

I am not a very bright man. I love the lowest of lowbrow culture. Always have, and in the purest (i.e., non-ironic) of ways. The fact that I ever pretended anything different?for whatever reason?fills me with shame. For God's sake?Sartre wrote a whole damn book about that sort of behavior!