Slippery slope of distraction

How we waste our time is how we live our lives

I secretly love the quiet retreat that is January. It’s the month when I'm actually enthusiastic about denying myself yummy treats, when the social calendar is blank, and all the compulsory joyfulness is behind us. 

I know it’s become passé, but I’m still guilty of looking at the new year as a time to set impossible-to-meet resolutions for myself. Most of my friends and all of my family categorically dismiss this ritual; they are more modern and sophisticated than me. I don’t lack sophistication, mind you, but mine is largely spent on knowing that a crisp white blouse is an essential wardrobe element and where to get the best value on a premium cashmere wrap.

But I digress. All the time, in fact. Which is why all those resolutions are bound to fail. I’m a fabulous procrastinator, and the digital age has only energized my ADHD. I get diverted all the time, I wander away from whatever I'm supposed to be doing in order to do something else, I online shop without any intention of actually buying anything, or I just scroll and scroll and scroll. Distraction is my self-care. Distraction is my love language. Distraction is my superpower.

Diversionary tactics

I’m not alone in this. We all do it. After all, we have the time. We don’t have all the chores of our forefathers. HA. Psych. As if our forefathers did chores. But we don’t have all the chores of our forefathers’ wives and servantry either. Heck, these days our cars can drive themselves and I don’t even need to write this anymore. I could have ChatGPT do it for me¹ (you can link to what it came up with in the footnote). As busy as I say I am, I seem to have lots of time to kill with stupid distractions. So the trick for me is to try to make at least some of my distractions healthy. In other words, I’m trying to not spend so much time staring slack-jawed at my social media feed. Instead, I do the NYT crossword and text about it with a friend who it turns out is way smarter than I thought she was, I walk my dog, and I read genre fiction.

Yes, I read literary stuff all the time, as this newsletter chronicles. And I love the way these stories expand my worldview and strengthen my compassion. But sometimes I just want the joyful distraction of a great yarn. Some people go for sci-fi or fantasy, lots of people tear through romance novels, and I like to read mysteries, preferably of the “cozy” variety.

I find the formula of a mystery satisfyingly soothing. I know what I’m in for: a death, a cast of characters whose suspicious motives are revealed, a couple red herrings, and an oddball main character who will solve the case; i.e., a happy resolved ending, something you can’t count on in literary fiction or sadly, life itself. When you get an author who can create an intricate and surprising plot, and write convincingly flawed characters who engage in witty and authentic dialogue, all the better. 

You could build a soggy paper bridge from NYC to London out of all the paperback cozy mysteries in circulation. This isn’t a survey, and I'm certainly no expert partly because I’m not the ideal customer. As much as I come for the formula, if you hew too closely to it I’ll get bored. I’ve enjoyed a few of Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs mysteries, then faded on that plucky gal. I know Louise Penny is a juggernaut but after listening to the mystery she wrote with Hilary Clinton, I didn’t feel an urge to return to Three Pines. Lucy Foley’s The Guest List was a ball, but I dropped The Paris Apartment after the first chapter. Call me a genre snob.

Meta is bettah

I think my favorite is Anthony Horowitz. He’s a bizarrely prolific author² so I’ve only read a few of his books, and I loved them all. These are pure entertainment with droll writing and clever stories that wink at the formula in ways that make the whole thing meta and smart.

The first book of his I read was Magpie Murders, a mystery-within-a-mystery that sends up the English cozy mystery genre itself. A bestselling mystery writer dies mysteriously (of course) but his final manuscript is missing the last chapter (of course). The author’s eccentric Hercule Poirot-esque detective has the delightfully gynecological moniker of Atticus Pünd. The author’s editor sets about finding the final chapter of his manuscript, and we get to read the mystery he wrote while she somewhat inadvertently solves his murder.

Horowitz also writes another ultra-meta series that begins with The Word is Murder where he himself is a major character. His character Anthony Horowitz in the books is comically inept and vulnerable to his ego. He’s reluctantly tied to a preternaturally taciturn former police detective named Daniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne is ascetic, grumpy, and of course brilliant. They’ve teamed up to write about the detective’s illustrious career but inevitably get wrapped up in solving a mystery. I listen to these as audiobooks and cannot overstate how entertaining they are. “Glass Onion” wishes it was as good as these.

A few other authors whose mysteries are magnificent: The incredible Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series is reliably fantastic–no surprise from the woman who wrote Life after Life. Case Histories might be a perfect novel. Anyone with even a mild curiosity about reading a mystery and hasn’t yet read a Tana French novel could do worse than to start there. And the first three Cormoran Stryke mysteries by the now canceled JK Rowling³ writing as Robert Galbraith are delicious. Haven’t heard great things about the newest one.

An endless process of transformation

I don’t like when people call a non-literary novel like a romance or a cozy mystery a “guilty pleasure.”  We banned the term at Audible because unless it’s Mein Kampf, why feel guilty about reading? In this age of infinite, pointless, sinisterly addictive distraction, I'd say reading a light work of fiction is downright highbrow. Instagram is my guilty pleasure (and, really, is it pleasure?). Mysteries are more like an amuse-bouche between more challenging works of literature.  

We are all going to pursue some form of diversion in our day, it’s human nature. The goal for me anyway is to not make so much of my diversion wasted time on my phone. Scientists have proven it’s all addictive yet we don’t take it away from our kids. The least I can do is try to model better behavior. That’s what I’ve resolved to do this year anyway. And I intend to enforce serious restrictions on family smartphone time but I don’t yet have the courage for that battle.

I’ll leave you with a snippet taken from one of my most erudite distractions, The Marginalian (fka Brainpickings). I’d call this the highest brow of highbrow distraction.  If you’ve never checked it out, it’s like a weekly dose of hyper-smart free-association. Recently she wrote about the novelist Olga Tokarczuk’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech. She highlights this very cool quote, and I’m going to do the same, because while diversion is inevitable, how we spend our days is how we live our lives⁴. Great writing makes life better.

 “We are all — people, plants, animals, and objects — immersed in a single space, which is ruled by the laws of physics. This common space has its shape, and within it the laws of physics sculpt an infinite number of forms that are incessantly linked to one another. Our cardiovascular system is like the system of a river basin, the structure of a leaf is like a human transport system, the motion of the galaxies is like the whirl of water flowing down our washbasins. Societies develop in a similar way to colonies of bacteria. The micro and macro scale show an endless system of similarities. Our speech, thinking and creativity are not something abstract, removed from the world, but a continuation on another level of its endless processes of transformation.”
–olga tokarczuk

Whoa.  ok, who’s ready to do some online shopping?

1. I’m serious. I gave ChatGPT this prompt: Write a 900-word wry essay about the value of mystery novels, and Anthony Horowitz's mysteries in particular--especially Magpie Murders and the Word is Murder--and why genre fiction is a wonderful form of distraction. Here’s what it came up with.

2. Horowitz has dependably churned out one of these mysteries annually while also taking the helm of both the James Bond and Sherlock Holmes franchises, writing an enormously successful kids’ series called Alex Rider, creating a couple tv shows, and maybe ingesting copious quantities of methamphetamines? I honestly do not know how he finds the time or focus. I can barely write these 1,500 words without taking 75 breaks. 

3. I won't try to get myself canceled by trying to understand or explain her canceling.

4. Annie Dillard