{"id":84898,"date":"2015-04-17T15:51:03","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T19:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=84898"},"modified":"2015-04-17T15:51:03","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T19:51:03","slug":"mental-vacation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/17\/mental-vacation\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental Vacation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"myescapismoliviaalcock\"<\/a>

Photo: Olivia Alcock<\/p><\/div>\n

Early in Iris Murdoch\u2019s\u00a0The Sea, the Sea<\/em>, the narrator, Charles Arrowby, explains why he never learned to drive and prefers to be a passenger. \u201cWhy keep bitches and bark yourself?\u201d he asks, with impeachable logic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the course of the novel, his veneer of self-assurance crumbles. Arrowby discovers the limits of control, even in isolation. But he also begins to see the lengths we go to in seeking that most elusive pleasure: an escape from ourselves.<\/p>\n

For the overthinkers of the world, there\u2019s maybe no greater luxury than shutting off your mind. It happens so rarely that you tend to notice it, if you notice it at all, more as a state of absence than anything else. It can happen during a movie, or listening to music, or, perhaps, in the presence of a great cook. And most especially when reading. <\/p>\n

Until you stop doing it, you don\u2019t notice how often you\u2019re on the alert for clumsy dialogue, for lines that sounds brittle or translated. In a film it might be an improbable character detail or the\u00a0slip of an accent that destroys the illusion. For a musician, it may be a false note or a sloppy turnaround.<\/p>\n

But this kind of vigilance goes beyond our consumption of art: maybe you\u2019re braced for an incendiary remark at a family dinner, always on the alert for hurt feelings and fights and ruptures. We\u2019re seldom aware of this constant subconscious caution, but it\u2019s always exhausting.\u00a0I don\u2019t think most control freaks are so type A because they enjoy being in charge; they just sense that most people can\u2019t really be trusted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s a wonderful moment when you realize\u2014or accepting without realizing\u2014that you\u2019re in the hands of a master. That\u2019s not to say you can\u2019t relax when you\u2019re in the presence of obvious craft, but the quality I\u2019m talking about isn\u2019t the same as genius, or even brilliance; it\u2019s simply a matter of trust. You need to feel like the artist knows what she\u2019s doing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Escapism<\/em> has become something of a pejorative. But escape isn\u2019t easy, and it doesn\u2019t always entail the pursuit of dumbed-down entertainments; it can come as soon from a weighty Iris Murdoch novel as from a paperback procedural. In fact, for an overthinker, it\u2019s usually easier to escape into something consciously ambitious\u2014if we know we\u2019re trafficking in formulas or prescribed patterns, we\u2019re quick to try to notice the holes.<\/p>\n

Of course, second best is ignorance: it may not be bliss, but it\u2019s an effective form of opting out. It affords a kind of mental vacation, too. Not knowing how to drive, for instance, is inconvenient, yes, but the helplessness is awfully seductive, and it gives you one less thing to be vigilant about. Barking, as Arrowby might point out, takes an awful lot of energy.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Early in Iris Murdoch\u2019s\u00a0The Sea, the Sea, the narrator, Charles Arrowby, explains why he never learned to drive and prefers to be a passenger. \u201cWhy keep bitches and bark yourself?\u201d he asks, with impeachable logic.\u00a0 In the course of the novel, his veneer of self-assurance crumbles. Arrowby discovers the limits of control, even in isolation. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[17,17798,15020,7514,17799,53,6093,2900],"class_list":["post-84898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-books","tag-charles-arrowby","tag-escapism","tag-iris-murdoch","tag-over-thinking","tag-reading","tag-the-sea-the-sea","tag-trust"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn the Pleasures of Escaping Yourself<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein discusses how difficult it can be to shut your mind off.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/04\/17\/mental-vacation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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