okay, this is an actual about me page. for those who haven't had the pleasure of reading shirley jackson's magnum opus We Have Always Lived in the Castle, merricat blackwood is the main character and jonas is her black cat whom she talks to. i happen to have a black cat named jonas with whom i talk to as well, so that's why i chose to make the millennial "my cat is the one who owns me" bit on the other page.
i've already had a blog before and i wanted to share my writing somewhere, and substack, rentry, blogger and tumblr are not really My Thing.
but really, about me:
i enjoy literature, all sorts, but particularly gothic. despite the entire page being a shirley jackson altar, i prefer 19th century victorian gothic. southern gothic like falkner and o'connor as well. and edgar allan poe, naturally.
i also like contemporary japanese literature like mieko kawakami and sayaka muraka (don't ask me about murakami). the traditional classic japanese ghost stories and dazai-like stuff is not really my thing, but i read them as well.
when it comes to brazilian literature, i am guilty of having mostly geração de 30 in my repertoire, despite lack of passion towards it. graciliano ramos, jose lins, you name them. i prefer lygia fagundes telles and clarice lispector's short stories, i am a casual adelia prado appreciator, but if i were to pick a favourite school it would naturally be romanticism. i think it's the closest brazilian literature gets to the gothic and the fantastic, and macunaima might just be my favorite book amongst them. nope, i have't read bras cubas yet (shocking!). and i like latin american magical realism too.
to finish off, besides shirley, another favourite book of mine is paradise lost. which i find particularly funny because although i recognize the great aesthetic quality of the classics, this sort of literature - epics, tragedies, comedies - are not really my thing. and i prefer poetry with meter. so i don't know what it is that draws me to this book. maybe it's adam and eve. maybe it's sadboy satan. but i know milton was able to make me actually read the bible - indeed, a miraculous feat my religious school was not able to accomplish in 9 years of evangelical education.
so that's it. abrupt ending. i write rants, which i call essays. personal things and musings - most likely unedited because i am this type of terrible writer who does not take the craft seriously! and perhaps, maybe, creative writing, short stories. i will edit this about me page later too. because again - bad writer, no seriousness whatsoever. xoxo, yours truly, merricat.