BOOKS I JUST READ

I read AFTER BIRTH on maternity leave, seemingly an apt choice, but in reality, a bad one. AFTER BIRTH is claustrophobic with voice, allergic to peacefulness, and repressive in personality. All of which to say, it’s a very good book.

I read GET IN TROUBLE some time ago, and when I finished it, I felt satisfied, but not much else. I closed the collection as a smug reader, verging on glad it was over. 

But, for reasons large and small, I haven’t been able to write about Kelly Link’s story collection for months, almost a full year. So it surprised me when I realized, about halfway through that time, how much I thought about Kelly Link’s writing, her voice, and the miniscule worlds she creates, not just narratively, but even within her stories. There are worlds within worlds in GET IN TROUBLE. 

Kelly Link’s short stories could be spun into novels is Kelly Link were Karen Russell. They both share a twisted imagination and a fantastic ear for flights of fancy. Instead, Link chooses to keep things brief, to tantalize. Perhaps that was why, when I first read this collection, I felt such satiety. The stories themselves are encapsulated, like a snake eating its own tail. So much completeness can begin to wear on a person.

10:04 is one of the many books I’ve read that has shown me how bad I am at art. Ben Lerner, Chelsea Hodson, and Rachel Kushner are the most notable writers I can think of who have shown me this, that I overlook art continuously, underestimate its power in the written world. They show me that the only kind of art I allow myself to know is writing, it’s the only art I’m comfortable with.

Lerner has the uncanny ability to render visual art with the written word. He describes it, yes, but it’s not corny, it doesn’t make me cringe. There’s an approachable aspect to Lerner’s artful writing, it’s not criticism or heady, it’s accessible. It comes from a point of view of appreciation.

I’ve always been pretty sure I’m a psychopath, so the fact that this book exists appeals to me. I thought, maybe I can finally prove to my husband that I am indeed a psychopath. Turns out what I actually thought I was is a sociopath, and I’m not one at all.

I read Scott McClanahan’s books out of order, which was interesting.  By out of order I mean I read HILL WILLIAM before I read CRAPALACHIA, when he wrote CRAPALACHIA first.  They’re not related officially, neither are prequels or sequels to the other, but reading them in reverse chronological authorial order gave me a lot of insight into both of them.  

It has been a long time since I have fought this hard with a book and the book eventually won.  I always really regret what I find to be one of my biggest flaws as a reader, that I can’t put a book down if I’m not liking it.  It’s caused me some big headaches and it also makes me less likely to take a risk with a book, since I know that if I try it and don’t like it, I’ll still be stuck with it due to my stubbornness.  

When I started Eimear McBrides’s A GIRL IS A HALF-FORMED THING I didn’t like it, and I think another reader would have closed it and put it back on the shelf and maybe give it away the next time she moved.  But for once, this bad habit benefitted me, because a third of the way in I hit a groove, and started to feel so obsessed and in rhythm with this book.  

The narrator is a strong, almost overwhelming presence, and the book is entirely in her mind so she is inescapable.  There’s no solace elsewhere.  Her life is difficult, she is willful, and her experiences are hard to watch as a reader.  The author seems to know this and embrace it.  She makes the book difficult on another level. The prose is jagged and stilted and stream of conscious.  There’s an exponential factor to the difficulty, then, it feels almost pigheaded.  Again, no solace.  The book is all hard edges and dark tunnels and repeated wrong turns. Every aspect of it seems built to repel.

DOES NOT LOVE seems like the kind of novel a lot of young male writers aspire to write.  It’s got a lot of those elements: crumbling marriage, dystopia, superficialty, affairs, mid-life crises.  But James Tadd Adcox’s novel, when you get up closer, has more depth then this description indicates.  DOES NOT LOVE escapes typicalness, and instead it’s an exciting, heartfelt contemporary novel that incorporates elements from a lot of interesting American literature into something new and unusual.

Strangely enough I found myself thinking that this book would make an incredible graphic novel.  The story, imagery, and characters are so bright and well-rendered, I almost started picturing the scenes in black and white illustration with jagged thought bubbles above the main characters’ heads.  Robert and Viola, the couple whose marriage is at the heart of DOES NOT LOVE, felt like old-fashioned doomed lovers, struggling in a classic way, making their thoughts and talks innately dramatic.  

When I turned to your author photo at the tail end of my time reading your book THE ARGONAUTS, you didn’t look anything like I expected. I was shocked at that reaction, and I realized I hadn’t actually pictured you in any way. My feeling of surprise, I think, was centered around the fact that seeing your picture and not recognizing you meant I didn’t, in fact, already know you.

Reading your book I felt like we connected deeply.

If I wrote a book like yours maybe you’d feel like you knew me too. I’d write how everyone asked how the cats were handling it in the weeks after my son’s birth. I’d write how I still can’t believe he’s a son after all the time I spent with him in my belly not knowing he’d be a boy. I’d write how I shook violently in the minutes after he finally slipped (slipped, after so much work pushing, he had the gall to slip) from me, saying, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” I'd write that putting a little bit of Earth Mama Angel Baby Natural Nipple Butter on the inside of the flange made pumping a thousand times better. I’d write about how much I’m looking forward to playing soccer with my son, how scared I am that he’ll like some other sport, like baseball, instead. How I assume he’ll like sports since I did, how foreign the idea of an unathletic child of mine is to me. 

Those are things that I want to share with the world for some reason.  They seem trivial. There are some things I particularly would want to share with you. You wrote your book while pumping milk for your son. I'm writing this letter to you pumping milk for my son. It is hard to find community for me, as a mother, but you’ve written in a way that makes me feel a part of a certain tribe of motherhood.  You taught me not to be afraid of sharing my experience of motherhood, that even though birth and having children and family and pregnancy are universal things, they are special and individual too.  I’m not scared of either of those aspects of starting a family anymore.  The tribe I want to be a part of exists to me now.  We all had something scary happen to our bodies, and we all had to face it.  We all have to keep on facing it as the extension of our bodies, our babies, are put at risk every day they wake up again.  It’s easier to face now after I read your book.

Maybe I’ll give my copy of your book to my next friend who gets pregnant and hope that she gives it to her next friend that gets pregnant.  I wish I could have read THE ARGONAUTS while I was pregnant.  It’s reassuring in its wildness.  It’s educational in its careful philosophical curation. THE ARGONAUTS is a lot of books at once, so much so that I hesitate to make the slim tome too heavy in my mind.  My husband read it before me, so we talked about certain passages twice- the ones we both liked enough to pause reading to point out to each other.  A lot of them overlapped.

In the end, you wrote about so much more than babies and motherhood.  It’s easy to feel like no one cares about this totally visceral (and to be honest disgusting) experience, that you shouldn’t talk about it openly.  One book I read said not to mention certain words like “dilation,” “cervix,” or “placenta,” when discussing your birth experience in public.  I knew already that was bullshit.  THE ARGONAUTS is living proof that women can say those words, can feel them, and remain themselves.  We can keep our identities, us mothers.

I don’t know how to sign this, so I’ll just say: