meghan daum and contributors @ housing works!

150331.jpg

150331:  selfish, shallow, and self-absorbed was published today!  and housing works hosted this fabulous event with meghan daum (the editor of the anthology) and three contributors (anna holmes, laura kipnis, and paul lisicky).

(as a woman who has never wanted children and never really liked babies/kids and is not planning or intending on having children, i am so, so happy that this anthology is out in the world.  it shouldn't be taboo for people to choose not to have children, and the discussion around childlessness by choice should be nuanced and serious open instead of reductive and dismissive and condescending.  i've only read a few of the pieces so far, but i'm stoked to read the rest of it!)

  • meghan daum:  there was something interesting about how people who didn't want kids were dismissive about their reasons [for not wanting kids] in ways that they were also irritated by the way people with kids were dismissive [of their reasons].
  • Q:  what did you first think when you got my email?
    • anna holmes:  was a little taken aback because wasn't sure how MD knew this about her and was first defensive.
    • laura kipnis:  didn't think she had a lot to say about the subject.
      • didn't really think of herself as a personal essayist.
      • started taking notes about it and found there was a lot she had to say, not necessarily personally but socially.
    • paul lisicky:  immediate response -- "i'm not sure i have a lot to say about this."
      • secondary response -- "i'm a fraud here."
      • that interested him.
      • was invited fairly late into the project and had ten days to write it.
  • Q:  have you felt that this was something you were going to hear a lot about?  (as in backlash or public reaction)
    • AH:  wasn't so much concerned about public reaction but more about her mom because, in her piece, she talks about being pregnant more than once.
    • LK:  recently saw something on twitter from a religious man taking offense (her essay [or part of it] was published by cosmopolitan) and posting an unflattering picture of her and calling her ugly -- weird pushback.
  • AH:  a lot of people assume that, if you don't want kids, you don't like them.
    • thought about defending that she liked kids but felt that she would be apologizing for something she didn't have to.
    • there seems to be such a premium in which parenthood is a competitive sport of sorts.
  • MD:  feeling that this issue is more relevant for younger women considering how fetishized parenthood has become.
  • LK:  in the book, there's a sort of theme of "but i really like kids" -- and was kind of horrified to read that.  there's a kind of defensiveness in the writing.
  • PL:  there was a time in gay culture when kids were Others because it was unheard of to have kids.
    • thought about how he might be if he were a twenty-two-year-old man today, if he would've had kids to legitimize himself in the eyes of others.
  • AH:  "i think it might be easier for men to get away with boldly saying they don't like kids."
  • MD:  the simple clarity of "i don't want a baby" seems so difficult to swallow.  instead, we come up with all these reasons why we don't want kids.  still surprised by how hard it still is to say that it's a really hard, difficult job that should be undertaken by the people who want it.
  • AH:  part of what annoys me about modern parenting is class-based.  parenting in many ways is a luxury.
  • MD:  most parents who want kids have kids.  most writers who want kids have kids.  this isn't about the artistic community vs. the non-artistic community.
  • MD:  the original title was "otherhood," but someone else stole it.  this title was truly collaborative.  it's definitely meant to provoke, and it's been working.
    • PL:  liked that that was the title.  gave his essay direction.
  • AH:  "i can't do something that doesn't feel right for me because i'm afraid of dying alone."  [...]  "i don't want to be dark, but we all die alone."
  • LK:  when that fear becomes hysteria, irrationality takes over.
  • AH:  "i think it's totally gendered."  (calling women who don't want kids selfish)  "there are expectations of women to be caretakers."

hello monday! (150330)

maybe one of the contradictions/surprises of my life is that i write short stories yet i read so few of them.  to be quite honest, i’m impressed by so few of them; there’s a sparseness to short stories that i can’t get into; and i personally enjoy being able to sink into a story and luxuriate in it, spending hours or days or weeks with the characters in their world.

over the weekend, i read alice munro's the beggar maid for book club, and this was my second munro collection.  i admit to not having been all that enthused by my first munro collection, hateship friendship courtship loveship marriage, maybe because i didn't "get it" or maybe because her narrative eye is so honed in to a particular, provincial life that i kept feeling myself drifting away -- who knows, but i can understand the argument for munro being boring.

the beggar maid was better, though, and i'd say it was because the stories in this collection are interrelated, following the same characters at different points in their lives without feeling like munro had meant to write a novel but had somehow fallen short of that.  these were decidedly short stories, and i enjoyed them for the way that they layered upon each other, though i will say ... god, munro bums me the fuck out.  she gets there in the gritty and dark recesses of human behavior, but she does so without sentimentalizing it or glorifying it or making it seem like something out of the norm, and i find that to be more off-putting because it's true -- acts of violence against women aren't a one-off thing, and they've been so inculcated into our culture that we absorb it, and i think that is the most terrifying thing about it.

the tournament of books has been going on, and, because of it, i find i have a lot of thoughts about roxane gay's an untamed state when, to be honest, had the tournament not been going on (and had it not been my march crack), the book would have completely slipped out of my mind. 

however, because the ToB is my crack and an untamed state has been advancing, which means i've read all the comments about it and had to mull over it myself, i can say that i didn't like an untamed state.  i commend it for its content and the frankness with which gay writes about rape and the violence mireille endures and her PTSD after she's set free, but, unfortunately, content ultimately isn't enough, and an untamed state fell apart in so many ways.  for one, the writing was clumsy and clunky, and, for another, mireille never convinced me as a human being, and, for another, the marriage failed to convince me and the dual points-of-view confused me and, while i did love mireille and lorraine, i wasn't convinced of that either.

setting aside the last few points and focusing on the first, though:  i understand that gay was trying to do something with the writing, that she was trying to demonstrate that, sometimes, language fails us, to communicate that mireille has been through trauma and this is her story so this is her voice and it's been fractured.  i understand that, similarly, mireille's portrayal of herself is also not going to be sweet and sentimental (as well as her portrayal of her marriage), and i didn't find any of that problematic -- it's just that intention is one thing, and execution is another.  ultimately, the language in an untamed state does not convey the failure of language or the brokenness of a woman.  mireille does not come across as an actual human being, more like a figure upon which these violent acts have been committed but not in a way of mireille having disappeared because of the trauma.  and, because mireille reads like a string of character quirks almost (her penchant for throwing things comes to mind), i fail to be convinced of everything else:  her marriage, her taking care of lorraine when lorraine is ill, her relationship with her parents, etcetera.  in the end, unfortunately, intention is not sufficient, and gay's writing in an untamed state is simply clunky and clumsy and flat instead of being fully-realized and vibrant and alive.  

and i don't think that's an unfair thing to pick on because the writing really is the foundation.  if the writing rings false or contrived or flat, it inevitably distances readers, and i pick on the clumsy writing of an untamed state because it was the reason i couldn't connect with the book -- i could make myself feel for mireille in an abstract way, but, in the end, she felt riddled with holes, again not in the sense of her having been fractured but simply in the sense that the writing wasn't there to hold her.

i’ve decided to give up on the friday posts, at least in the way they were intentioned to be about writing from a personal POV.  maybe i'm not ready to be vulnerable in that way yet.  heh.  i’d still like to keep posting on fridays, though, but i’m not sure how they’ll proceed yet.  i shall continue ruminating upon it!

that said, i am excited for this week.  i’m going to hear marilynne robinson tonight, and tomorrow is pub day for selfish, shallow, and self-absorbed, and i have been waiting for this book for months.  i cannot wait to have it in my hands to read and to hold, and housing works is hosting a launch event, so i’m super stoked for that, too!

how're y'all doing?

hello friday! (150327)

you know, i'm still so unsure about this friday post.  i've typed out several posts, but i delete them at the last moment, and i've considered just giving up on this friday post altogether or maybe making it a collection of author quotes on writing or ... i don't know.  it seemed like a great idea when i first thought of it, but i'm surprisingly finding it incredibly difficult to write, which maybe in itself is a manifestation of some of things about writing that i wanted to post about -- how it requires so much vulnerability and contains so much fear and doubt because that's one reason i end up deleting these posts i start writing -- i find myself questioning the things i write, asking myself, do i really want to put this out there?  am i qualified to put this out there?, though how one would be qualified to do so is unclear.

it's been a good writing week, though, and i am so grateful for it.  i ended up getting frustrated with a story i'm working on, so i printed it out, cut it up, and played it like a puzzle, rearranging sections and trying out different sequences and filling in the spaces that needed to be added to cushion out the story.  i enjoy the tactile demands of writing sometimes because i find that different stories require different things -- sometimes, i need to write longhand or glue a story, one section per page, into a notebook or black out sections in a story with a permanent marker -- and this is one of the ways writing reminds me that it's a living, breathing thing, that it's not just some static, lifeless document, but that it has a sort of life of its own.

which sounds kind of hokey written down like this, i know, but what can i say?

so, anyway, there's that, and here's another author on writing.  have a great weekend, all!

the stories that recognize people as they really are -- the books whose characters are at once sympathetic subjects and dubious objects -- are the ones capable of reaching across cultures and generations.  this is why we still read kafka.  (122-3)

&

the situation is never static, of course.  reading and writing fiction is a form of active social engagement, of conversation and competition.  it's a way of being and becoming.  somehow, at the right moment, when i'm feeling particularly lost and forlorn, there's always a new friend to be made, an old friend to distance myself from, an old enemy to be forgiven, a new enemy to be identified.  (124)

&

... it's a prejudice of mine that literature cannot be a mere performance:  that unless the writer is personally at risk -- unless the book has been, in some way, for the writer, an adventure into the unknown; unless the writer has set himself or herself a personal problem not easily solved; unless the finished book represents the surmounting of some great resistance -- it's not worth reading.  or, for the writer, in my opinion, worth writing.  (130)

jonathan franzen, farther away, "on autobiographical fiction" (FSG, 2012)

hello monday! (150323)

i'm currently reading miriam toews' all my puny sorrows, and i think this might be the first time i've held a book at arm's length.  the voice is incredible, and the characters are fleshed out and fully human, and i appreciate the book for its depiction of how a sister and a family rally around a depressed and suicidal loved one -- but that's also why i hold it at arm's length.  i'm wary about these narratives, am more interested in hearing from the suicidal themselves, and so i'm reading all my puny sorrows slowly with a queasiness rolling around in my stomach, hoping, don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up, don't fuck this up, as i flip each page.

thus far, though, i'm thoroughly appreciating it -- yoli's voice, the humor that prevents the book from sinking into indulgent despair, toews' generous but honest depiction of elfie.  i love elfie in ways that squeeze my heart and make me feel for her, hurt for her, and toews has done a beautiful job of showing her for all her contradictions, too -- she isn't a caricature or a stereotype (okay, part of the precocious, genius pianist part is a little much), and she's vulnerable and infinitely human in her desire to end her life.  (none of this is a spoiler, so don't worry.)  i'm a little more than halfway through the book now and hope it is good all the way to the end!

i spent yesterday afternoon with a friend, going to a reading, eating pie, and talking books, and she mentioned (or asked about, i forget which) my rereading tendencies.  as it goes, i reread quite a bit -- i know some might argue that there are so many books out there to read that time's essentially wasted rereading books -- but i love to go back to the books i love, the books that stay with me and come back to me time and time again.  and i love rereading, the discovery of new things, of things i missed previously, seeing how i read books differently now that i've changed because reading isn't a static act -- we bring our experiences and our needs and our desires to the books we read, so it's inevitable that they'll touch us in different ways at different points in our lives.

sometimes, though, i admit it's disappointing in ways, like with me and haruki murakami.  i loved him intensely when i first started reading him in my early twenties, but, over the years, as i've gone back to some of his books and read his new books as they were released in translation, i find myself less and less enamored, more and more aware and critical of the sameness of his work, the sterile tones, the flatness of his women.  even so (or maybe in such ways), i think of him nostalgically because he spoke so intimately to a specific chapter in my life, when i felt myself drifting and aimless and isolated, so i suppose i can't necessarily call it disappointing, especially because this is one of the things that makes the reader's life dynamic -- that our tastes change as we change, that the themes we respond to and seek out morph as we grow.  further, it's true that the author-reader relationship is just that -- a relationship -- and, like all relationships, it's subject to change and growth and, sometimes, termination.

it's been an ambivalent reading year thus far.  i know i've read books in 2015 that i've loved, but i'm having a hard time recollecting them.  i've read several books i've loved/enjoyed in the moment but have ultimately turned out to have no sticking factor.  i've dropped (or wanted to drop) a few books, which i hate doing, and i've resorted to skimming pages just to get to the end, which i also hate doing.  i've been wary of going into bookstores and browsing because i'm suddenly very wary of buying books that will disappoint (man, find me burned me bad), but that's okay because i've been liking oyster books because libraries and i are a disastrous pairing.

maybe i'm just in an ambivalent place at the moment.  or maybe it really is just the recent string of books that fell flat.  which, i must add, also make me reread because, when new books are disappointing, i like turning to a familiar favorite because there's a sense of safety there.  which is why i'm also currently reading franzen's strong motion for the second time because i thoroughly enjoyed it the first time around and have wanted to come back to it ever since, so i decided, what the hell?  purity (and its terrible cover) is five months away, anyway, and the heart wants what the heart wants.  in my opinion, strong motion deserves more love -- it really is the ignored second child, but it's really good!  i feel like franzen grew tremendously as a writer between the twenty-seventh city (which i reread last year and realized i didn't like) and strong motion, hideous cover and all.

heh, i suppose there's my update about my planned reading of middlemarch ...

(seriously, though, september really can't come soon enough, especially when september will also bring us a new book-in-translation from shin kyung-sook!!!  cannot wait!)

hello friday! (150320)

when i decided to start this friday writing post last week, i had all these ideas about the things i'd write about, but i've been sitting here staring at my blinking cursor for the last hour or so.

it's been a bad night.  the truth is that it's been a rough few months and i've been flailing a tremendous amount.  and i suppose i could continue sitting here, trying to force out thoughts or words, but none of it would be very sincere at the moment, and i have no desire to be inauthentic here.

so, for this week, i must apologize and leave you with a few quotes i loved from hilary mantel's art of fiction interview in the new issue of the paris review.  i will plan better for next week, so please don't give up on this yet!

you have no right to assume that you'll be able to write because you could write yesterday  on the other hand, when there are dark times, you can say, i've faced this before.  you learn that you will always have to mark time, that you shouldn't rush, that if you wait, the book will come to you.  but you only build up this knowledge through long experience.  your daily work is very much about the line, the paragraph.  it's not about the grand design of your career.  (59)

&

among writers themselves, the question is not who influences you, but which writers give you courage.  (62)

&

sometimes there just isn't a tudor word for what you want, and then you have to think hard -- if no word, could they have had the thought?  boredom, for example, that doesn't seem right.  were they never bored?  but tedium, they know.  and somehow ennui seems fine.  sometimes words play tricks, change their meaning.  let doesn't mean "allow," it means "forbid."  they call a doll a "baby," often as not.  they call a clever man "witty."  it doesn't mean he makes jokes.  so you can't be slavishly literal.  you can try to be authentic.  (68)

and here's one from lydia davis' interview from the same issue:

just because a story uses material from the writer's life, i don't think you can say that it's her life, or that the narrator is her.  as soon as you select the material from your life, and arrange it and write it in a stylized manner, it's no longer really identical to that life and that person.  (171)

have a great weekend!