memories

Schadenfreude and Other Tongue-Twisters

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The term schadenfreude literally means damage-joy. When one enjoys the news that a rival is encountering trouble, one is experiencing a sense of schadenfreude. Most of us have experienced this feeling at some point in our lives, but most of us also have been jerks at some point in our lives, and the two sometimes come at the same time.

There is no real-world term for its opposite, so some people have begun to use a made-up word, freudenschade, to describe the distress one feels when a friend or rival is doing well or has had a success.

And then there are some people, I am thinking of the late Gore Vidal here, who appear to take pleasure at others’ distress at one’s success. Vidal confessed to feelings of schadenfreude over other writers’ freudenschade. (That is as hard to type as it is to say.)
Read More

The Story so Far …

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I never looked for his book online or in a bookstore. He showed it to me, or he showed me a galley proof of it. And now I do not remember his name or much about the book.

We were on a plane, and 98% of my personal air travel history dates from the years 2000 to 2004, when I moved from upstate New York to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and twice a year I returned home for holiday visits. The typical route was Eastern Iowa Airport to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport to Stewart International Airport or Logan in Boston, because there are no direct flights between Iowa and anyplace else I have ever lived.

Sometimes I am a tense passenger, one of those who grips the armrest so tightly that I may as well pocket it and carry it home, and sometimes I am relaxed and almost human. Air travel offers an intensification of experience; one deals with emotions not often felt on the ground, from the fear of permanent change to the excitement of temporary reunions.
Read More

Head-Scratching

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Among the many things that are better left to professionals—piloting a jet, performing almost any surgery, copy editing—cutting hair always should be included. I did not know this until the day I did.

It looks so easy. The professionals talk while they are doing it, for crying out loud. How do they do that? Interrupt me while I am typing away and I will pretty much stop typing and begin to glare at you until you decide to ask someone else what I am doing.
Read More