What is this exactly? Just like Can't and Won't Davis does her own thing. She's the Diva of Flash.
Are these short stories? Is it poetry? Is it memoir?What is this exactly? Just like Can't and Won't Davis does her own thing. She's the Diva of Flash.
Are these short stories? Is it poetry? Is it memoir? Sometimes the singular category is clear. Most stories here meld flash-fiction & with poetry. Some mix memoir with short-story. And just like reading poetry some will resonate hard and others might miss you completely. Most of these left me saying "wow".
The majority of the stories are no more than 2 paragraphs, sometimes only a few sentences. And they work, and some leave me as stunned as a powerful poem. And many more of course are just funny.
There are only a handful of stories that have the normal length of a "short story" - say 10-20 pages.
Favorites: * Incident on the train * Criminal activity in historic colonial Williamsburg * Conversation in hotel lounge * Our Network * Claim to fame #1, Ezra, Pound * Our Strangers {longer story and most reflective and even emotional} * Father enters the water. * End of phone conversation with Verizon adjustment person {very short, funny}
* Heron in the Headlights {meta} * Marriage moment of annoyance —mumble * Crepey { dark / sad }
* New things in my life { reflections on aging } * Winter letter { long, funny, sad , is she invisible ? Even a raccoon doesn’t see her }
With the opening pages this novel had my attention: Vanessa in 2017 monitors a young women's Facebook post recounting incidents of abuse that occurredWith the opening pages this novel had my attention: Vanessa in 2017 monitors a young women's Facebook post recounting incidents of abuse that occurred to her at the age of 14 in 2010 by an English teacher at an elite boarding school in Main. And why does Vanessa care? Because she too was "abused" (Vanessa's italics) by the same teacher at the age of 15 in the year 2000. Vanessa's present tense narration bounces between 2000, age 15, the time she started her soph0more year at the boarding school, and back to 2017 at the age of 32 as she tries to reconcile the wave of #MeToo voices with her own story. This is a disturbing but brilliantly written story. Russell takes us into the mind and world of a lonely and intelligent 15 year-old trying to fit in. We see the predatory actions of the English teacher, Strand, his smooth manipulations, his grooming of this lonely girl through Vanessa's eyes and thoughts. In Vanessa's young mind this is a love story. The English teacher has her read Nabokov's Lolita. She reads it again and again as their relationship (her word) gets darker and darker. Meanwhile in 2017, at the age of 32, the accusations of that old teacher keep coming. The #MeToo movement inspires girls to speak up. But Vanessa, too proud perhaps, or too frightened to face the damage, refuses to see herself as "a survivor", or as "a victim", or to even accept what happened was "abuse." No - she tells herself again and again - she's not like those other girls. She wasn't a victim - not a survivor - she wanted it, there was love. She controlled the situation just as much as Strand did. Maybe more. And meanwhile she drinks and smokes to suppress the fear, the trauma. It's clear Vanessa's is not going to come to terms with her reality very easily. There's so much pride. The last third of the novel does get a bit repetitive as we watch the adult Vanessa again and again reject the notion of being a victim. Where will this go? At times the narrator gets so frustrating I wanted to scream at the pages "Wake Up! Face it! It was a nightmare!"
This is an absolutely powerful novel. I highly recommend it but also with the warning that it's very disturbing, perhaps because it brings to light the full spectrum dynamic of such abuse. It's not all black & white when taken from Vanessa's POV. Definitely not a feel good read but perhaps perfect for reading in rainy weather....more
A love letter to swimmers, especially open water swimmers.
I found it very inspirational - I don't swim enough! I need to do more open water swimming! A love letter to swimmers, especially open water swimmers.
I found it very inspirational - I don't swim enough! I need to do more open water swimming! And go for as long as I can without a wetsuit in the SF Bay, maybe all winter.
Why We Swim mixes memoir with the science of the benefits of swimming, especially cold water swimming, and the psychology & physiology that swimming promotes.
Her book isn't too kind to competitive swimmers - she gives it a mixed review. It's beneficial as a physical discipline, but the competition can be defeat the mindful benefits of the water.
The best chapters: - Ways of the Samurai: Here Tsui tells a very different approach to swimming. Never mind being fast. How about being stealth? About being nearly invisible as you move through the water. A fascinating history of how the Samurai, like Navy SEALs, moved through the water.
- The Human Seal: Tsui covers the real-life of an Icelandic fisherman's survival from his capsized boat. He swam 3 miles to shore in water that was 41F. The man became a legend in Iceland and still is to this day.
- The entire "Flow" section which ends the book is the best part. Here Tsui covers the psychology of "flow" (an optimal state of mental performance) and "zone" (the optimal state of physical performance) as defined by sports psychologist Robert Nideffer.
The sections on competition and community were the weakest parts. It was probably a mistake to even cover the history of pools and segregation of not only race but gender - it's a big topic that gets nothing more than a mention. And of note there was no mention of water-polo, synchronized swimming, or even new sports like underwater hockey (aka, octopush).
The main point is that this is a book from a swimmer to swimmers. For those already swimming it will be big inspiration to keep doing it and a warm validation that swimming is the best thing ever.
King's advice in a nutshell: read a lot, write a lot. No d'uh, right?
On Writing mixes memoir and "how-to" with great effect. Expanding on mere rules KKing's advice in a nutshell: read a lot, write a lot. No d'uh, right?
On Writing mixes memoir and "how-to" with great effect. Expanding on mere rules King's life story gives a glimpse on how he utilizes those rules to create stories, situations, and character– how his creativity flows. King also recounts the time in 1999 when he was run-over by a van while walking on a Main country road. With the inclusion of this near-death incident King shows how "being a writer" is not merely a practiced craft - it's a way of life.
There's no need to be a King fan or to even have read anything by him to take in his writing advice and perspective on stories. Some favorite quotes:
"Your stuff starts out being just for you [...] but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right–as right as you can, anyway–it belongs to anyone who wants to read it."
"[...] stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea."
"Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation"
"Description begins n the writer's imagination, but should finish in the reader's."
"The scariest moment is always just before you start."...more
Eileen delivers. It's the same knife sharp voice, dark humor, social insight, and penetratiI read My Year of Rest and Relaxation first. I needed more.
Eileen delivers. It's the same knife sharp voice, dark humor, social insight, and penetrating psycho study. It's Eileen's pulp-fiction like story that makes it different from "Year of Rest".
And there's a clear nod here to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca with Eileen's plot device of the same name. Eileen's Rebecca is fun at first, but in the end she's a loser of a character. It would be a spoiler to say how and why.
I'm not sure which novel was better. Eileen is more raw and I like the pulp-fiction feel it has too. Meanwhile Year of Rest is more refined and has that literary feel even with all the same dark humor and psycho navel gazing aspects of character depth. It's interesting that the narrator voice of both novels are remarkably similar and yet they both match the greater stories tone so well: pulp-fiction for Eileen and & literary for "Year of Rest".
I give the win to Eileen. I think that narrator tone compliments the pulp-fiction better. I could imagine Quentin Tarantino making Eileen into a movie.
Regardless, Ottessa Moshfegh is my favorite writer these days. Can't wait to read the rest of her work.
Here are some of my favorite quotes that reveal Eileen:
I knew she was long gone. In the end, she was a coward. Idealism without consequences is the pathetic dream of every spoiled brat, I suppose.
People truly engaged in life have messy houses.
There's nothing I detest more than men with happy childhoods.
When I was very upset, hot and shaking, I had a particular way of controlling myself. I found an empty room and grit my teeth and pinched my nipples while kicking the air like a cancan dancer until I felt foolish and ashamed. That always did the trick.
... very fact that other people moved their bowels filled me with awe. Any function of the body that one hid behind closed doors titillated me. I recall one of my early relationships --- not a heavy love affair, just a light one-- was with a Russian man with a wonderful sense of humor who permitted me to squeeze the pus from his pimples on his back and shoulders. To me, this was the greatest intimacy.
Why should my heart ache for anyone but myself? If anyone was trapped and suffering and abused, it was me. I was the only whose pain was real. Mine.
Rebecca lit my cigarette with a flourish of the wrist. That thrilled me. When she lit her own, she tilted her head like a thoughtful bird, sucking in her cheeks just slightly.
A "Once Upon A Time" fairy tale. There was this boy who lived with his mother in a quiet and boring town. And then one day it was time to leave, to seA "Once Upon A Time" fairy tale. There was this boy who lived with his mother in a quiet and boring town. And then one day it was time to leave, to set off for an adventure. And to come of age.
This (very funny, quirky) 19th century (there's trains but no autos) fairy tale is about love of course. It's about how falling in love is not for cowards. Falling in love is a heroic thing, really, requiring all those European Folktale qualities such as romance, chivalry, and even conniving immorality if it should come to it. All's fair in love and war, right?
The characters are all very human, and flawed in some way. A career thief, Mewel, gives a deathbed sermon to a group of children where he does not repent but rather quasi0-endorses his life of crime. But he's entirely convincing - these are the players of the story.
And like a good coming of age fairy tale the ending is entirely ambiguous as to whether its a happy ending or not.
New category needed for Allie Brosh's work: graphic-essays. Brosh's prose perfectly mix with the childish-style drawings, it gives the essays the feelNew category needed for Allie Brosh's work: graphic-essays. Brosh's prose perfectly mix with the childish-style drawings, it gives the essays the feel of stand-up comedy routines.
Her essays on depression are not only captivating, touching, and darkly humorous, they're also very educational. The essays reveal the void with such clarity that I felt I knew exactly what it's like to be paralyzed with depression. Others (like D.F Wallace) have attempted the same, but somehow Brosh's prose mixed with those cute childish-illustrations bring it to life.
All the essays are gems. The funniest are the ones about her dogs. And being lost in the woods with her sister and mother. And the ones most like standup are the closing essays on identity, in fact I recall Louis C.K did routines about "the noble person I think I am" vs "the person I am." - Brosh does the subject much better and funnier.
This back-cover review blurb sums it well: "Imagine if David Sedaris could draw..."
The quote shows what a deep meta-thinker, philosopher, self-psychoanalyst, aware writer Allie Brosh is:
I don't just want to do the right thing. I want to WANT to do the right thing. This might seem like a noble goal to strive for, but I don't actually care about adhering to morality. It's more that being aware of not wanting to do the right thing ruins my ability to enjoy doing the right thing after I'm forced into doing it through shame.
I believe this is the first romance genre novel I've read. Really fun read. The something-different hook on this story is the protagonist, Stella, has I believe this is the first romance genre novel I've read. Really fun read. The something-different hook on this story is the protagonist, Stella, has "high functioning" (formerly Ausberger's) autism, as does the author Helen Hoang.
The surprise for me, and I don't think this counts as a spoiler, is how steamy, graphic, hot the sex scenes are. I'm convinced, with one data point, that high functioning autistic writers write sex better than anyone. And this novel shines hotly in those long scenes of romantic, graphic, paced, sexual encounters. These sex scenes also have the feel of best practices for speaking to your desires to your partner. Sex educators and sex coaches should take note of this writing as it's exemplary in this sex-positive culture.
When the novel drifts back into romance plot advancement the story gets eye-rollingly saccharine fantasy cheesy - but hey, that's the romance territory I guess - so can't complain about it epitomizing the genre.
As a romance here are the most unbelievable (or hard to digest) parts of the fantasy:
* Main character's name is Stella, she's 30 years old, and not once does anyone do a Stanley Kowalski (street car named desire) "Stella" yell at her, nor does she ever complain about how's she's sick of people doing that to her. * They drive around San Francisco, Palo Alto, Mt. View, & Milpitis and not once does anyone complain about the traffic. * Michael's immigrant mother talks like Yoda. * Michael's mother owns a house in East Palo Alto and not once does she realize its worth 2.5 million, at least. * Stella works in a Silicon Valley office that has actual offices with doors. Not believable. * Stella powers off her office computer. No one has office computers. They have laptops.
Other than that, a really fun enjoyable read. Even if it is as predictable as the sunrise. ...more
Do I exist? Am I member, a peer? Am I a citizen. Claudia Rankine's poetry is impossible to pin down. Am I reading an essay about the relentless jabs ofDo I exist? Am I member, a peer? Am I a citizen. Claudia Rankine's poetry is impossible to pin down. Am I reading an essay about the relentless jabs of humiliations that Rankine has endured since childhood? Or am I reading a poem that relates the pain of separation, the longing for your love, or at least your friendship. How about your empathy?
Citizen is an excellent work of art, poetry, and/or essay. You choose. Rankine's poetry (my choice), dressed at times as an essay, transcends race and racism as social injustice and brings the reality of it into the deeply personal. The poems tell of the longing to belong, the longing for attention, and the longing for affection, the desire to be seen. Racism is not an abstraction, it is a deeply personal if not intimate experience. Everyone can relate to these longings and frustrations. You need only be human to resonate with her poetry. Everyone has experienced the slights of rejection, of being outcasted. Some experience it more than others.
Some favorite quotes...
Watching Serena Williams:
The sole action is to turn on tennis matches without the sound. Yes, and though watching tennis isn't a cure for feeling, it is a clean displacement of effort, will, and disappointment.
Reflecting on the relentless racism:
The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.
Drag that first person out of the social death of history, then we're kin.
Kin calling out the past like a foreigner with a newly minted "fuck you."
And
Your's is a strange dream, a strange reverie.
No, it's a strange beach; each body is a strange beach, and if you let in the excess emotion you will recall the Atlantic Ocean breaking on our heads.
Rankine's core riff through out:
What did you say?... ... he blurts out, I didn't know you were black!
I didn't mean to say that, he then says.
Aloud, you say.
What!? he asks.
You didn't mean to say that aloud.
On New York's Stop & Frisk:
Then flashes, a siren, a stretched-out roar -- and you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.
Get on the ground. Get on the ground now... Each time it begins in the same way, it doesn't begin the same way, each time it begins it's the same...
Maybe because home was a hood the officer could not afford, not that a reason was needed, I was pulled out of my vehicle a block from my door, handcuffed and pushed into the police vehicle's backseat, the officer's knee pressing into my collarbone, the officer's warm breath vacating a face creased into the smile of its own private joke....
Go ahead hit me motherfucker fled my lips and the officer did not need to hit me, the officer did not need anything from me except the look on my face on the drive across town. You can't drive yourself sane. You are not insane. Our motion is wearing you out. You are not the guy. ... And still you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.
There's so many gems in here, I might end up typing the entire book. Just a few more:
"The purpose of art," James Baldwin wrote, "is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers." He might have been channeling Dostoyevsky's statement that "we have all the answers. It is the questions we do not know."
Another:
because white men can't police their imagination black men are dying
Final one:
The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much
The more accurate title for this 86 page essay would be The Frustration of Poetry.
This is Lerner's philosophical enquiry into poetry itself. What is iThe more accurate title for this 86 page essay would be The Frustration of Poetry.
This is Lerner's philosophical enquiry into poetry itself. What is it? As an art form, what does it set out to accomplish? And starts the exploration with this premise: everyone hates poetry, poets included, including the poet and essay author, Ben Lerner.
The Hatred brings to light the builtin paradox of poetry... it cannot achieve what it sets out to be. Lerner quotes the poet Grossman:
I live in the space between what I am moved to do and what I can do.
. The paradox of Poetry: It's inspiration is its purity, its devine, but its execution (the linguistic poem) always falls short of that ideal. It's a frustrating failure. This paradox gives rise to all the popular reasons for hating poetry: They don't speak to everyone. Their message is obtuse. They're too personal. They're too universal. They're just bad. And aside from just bad (which defacto they fail to be what they want to be so they're all bad), Lerner argues they can't even be what we criticize them for not being.
Lerner uses Keats & Whitman to show the "universal" poem, and how they struggled (frustratingly) to keep themselves out of the poetry. And how Emily Dickinson struggled to transcend the words and the lines. She was aware that her poems were confined by words themselves and the frustration is there in the poems. While the avant-garde (Claudia Rankine) attempt to break free of poetry form only to create poetic prose, with gimmicks such as removing line formatting, and then even the "/" (virgule) to present the poem as prose, but still... it's a poem. How frustrating! Don't you hate it?
A most interesting section of the essay is when Lerner sites examples from really bad poetry (William McGonagall) that everyone hates as a means to demonstrate, ironically, that because such poetry is easily and widely viewed as bad, it implies the existence of "Good Poetry". This was a similar technique Descartes used to provide a proof of God: "I know I'm a flawed person, so therefore I have a notion of a divine (perfect) self, A.K.A God."
The Hatred does an especially good job of rebutting critical essays of poetry - one from The New Yorker dismissing Obama's choice for including a poet in his inauguration because the chosen poem would not be "universal", and another from Harper's lamenting modern poetry's inability to motivate the masses - be politically inspiring (like it used to be). Lerner has a lot of fun dismissing these arguments as misguided, specious at best, as poetry never even attempts such goals and never has.
In summary:
Truly horrible poets unwittingly provide a glimmer of virtual possibility via the extremity of their failure; avant-garde poets hate poems for remaining poems instead of becoming bombs; and nostalgists hate poems for failing to do what they wrongly, vaguely claim poetry once did [(spoke to everyone)].
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