another important discovery

A few days ago, I learned that Julie Powell is not the person I imagined her to be. After reading her real blog and reviews of her book "Cleaving," I can't help but be disgusted with her.

Please take my opinion with a grain of salt. A huge grain. Notice, I said that I read a "review" of her book. Also, I have not read Julie and Julia. All I knew of Julie was from the movie. And I am embarrassed to even admit this because of how hard I took the true knowledge of her.

More deeply, I hate my temptation to judge her (and others I don't know) for mistakes that anyone of us could succumb to and it is also not my job to "forgive" her. So I don't even like that these are my feelings on the subject.

The thing is, I had so much hope and delight invested in the phantom, onscreen depiction of her. And so my important discovery lies in the fact that I fantasize other people's lives and get really disappointed when reality hits. Disappointed or bitter, and at my worst self-justified. My sorrow is very self-centered. So many things wrong with this tendency.

Some other things I learned:

My tolerance for snarkiness and foul language is limited to people I already know and love. Babs or Willbaer can drop the f-bomb as much as they like and I will love them forever. Random blogs or characters in books, not so much.

Finally, I cannot give up my enchantment with the film "Julie and Julia" and so I've allowed myself a modicum of denial. From now on, when I watch it, I will pretend (knowing full well that I am wrong) that Julie Powell is actually Amy Adams.

And instead of reading the novel "Julie and Julia" (or the follow-up "Cleaving" for that matter), I will read Julia Child's "My Life in France." Maybe someone more resilient than I could pick up Julie Powell's books and remain unscathed, but I don't think I'm mature enough. If you are not convinced, you didn't read this post carefully enough.