7/5

i'm thankful, in the new issue of the new yorker, for adrian chen's article on the life of an irl streamer. i'm thankful to have thought of this passage ("If your job is to constantly share your life, your life becomes a product that you are selling, and every moment, even the worst one, can be a lucrative opportunity to please your audience") in the context of my own writing here and other writing i've done in the past, and also in the context of the writing i like to read. i'm thankful for rachel cusk's transit, which i read a lot of yesterday, after having spent the previous evening rereading a bit of knausgaard. i'm thankful for both writers and the way that they each get a reality effect, a sense that they have captured a high resolution image of life as it really is, even though their methods are very different. i'm thankful, if i had to pick one that's more impressive, it would be cusk, who can get the same effect as knausgaard in a fraction of the space and time through her precision and focus, a decisive phrase capturing a decisive moment, whereas knausgaard instead gives you everything, an unedited VHS tape of a memory, but i'm thankful that i don't have to pick one and can have both.