currently reading: French Exit by Patrick DeWitt
books finished:
How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
Minding the Store: A Big Story about a Small Business by Julie Gaines, illus. Ben Lenovitz
Idiophone by Amy Fusselman
The Trouble with Being Born by E.M. Cioran
books purchased:
How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
books received:
How to Date Men When You Hate Men by Blythe Roberson
Lose Well by Chris Gethard
Hey you,
What day of the week does this newsletter go out?
You don't know and neither do I.
It's very conceptual.
Tell all your friends!
I was reading Amy Fusselman's Idiophone the other day on my dear friend Carl's porch and we spent a decent bit of time discussing how to pronounce "idiophone."
I was hoping it was pronounced like Persephone, like maybe there was a minor Greek goddess Id-ee-aw-fun-ee who I'd never heard of.
Carl asked me what she would be the goddess of and I said I didn't know, which was true.
It turns out idiophone is pronounced exactly how you'd think, assuming you'd think it's pronounced id-ee-o-phone.
An idiophone is an instrument that makes a noise when you hit it, like a gong or a cowbell.
I keep trying to think what Idiophone would be the goddess of but it feels like everything's taken.
Communication?
Isn't Hermes in charge of that?
Music?
Feels like Apollo's got that pretty much covered.
Also, and I'm making this claim without any evidence, but I feel like there are a bunch of nymphs and minor gods/goddesses who were pretty big into music too.
I can't think of a single thing that's not already taken that I want Idiophone to be the goddess of.
I can see why people hated How Should a Person Be, and I can see it reflected in a ton of what I read now, and I can see why it's been hailed as so Important. I was thinking of it when I read this passage from Idiophone:
Why can't more fiction be like The Nutcracker?
Why can't more authors just abandon their lumbering storylines halfway through and move onto something more interesting, like dancing candy?
Why do you have to be stuck in a horrible world as it plods to its logical end?
Why can't there be mercy?
Why can't you just leave one world and move into another?
If you replace "dancing candy" with "Israel's cock" it fits pretty much exactly.
Here is why I love books like How Should a Person Be and Interior by Thomas Clerc: they make me think, You can do that?
Like, that can be a book?
Sometimes I read books with clear, predictable structures and plots that make sense and I have a thought I would find terribly annoying if someone else said it to me: I've seen this before!
Sometimes it doesn't matter how fascinating your plot sounds once I know it has a plot I can follow and predict and understand.
I don't think this is a good thing.
It's not bad either, I don't think.
For a while I felt like maybe it was a good thing in that it made me an interesting person. But it doesn't!
And anyway, I am not unique in liking books such as the two I named above.
They were put out by major publishing houses!
I was grateful for Idiophone because it made the act of reading manageable.
(Also because it was a really good book.)
Sometimes I can't focus on anything – that's what makes reading feel sometimes unmanageable.
(Probably it sounds really annoying to see someone who reads as much as I do complain about how hard it is to read.)
(Like, I know I find it very tedious when writers write about how difficult writing is – I'm worried this is kind of like that.)
If you break it down sentence by sentence – probably I can handle that.
Sometimes I can't and then I like to return to one of my favorite books of all time ever, Yours by Margot Ferrick.
Once I sent a tattoo artist pictures from Yours and told her, I want a tattoo that looks and feels like this, and she said (I'm paraphrasing) No prob, bitch, and now I have that tattoo.
I was grateful, too, to sit on Carl's porch and read with him, grateful for the sunshine and grateful that I didn't have to say anything.
I sat and looked at his backyard and thought, I know well the grass blades you mention, the furniture you have placed under the sun.
Lately I have been followed around by the feeling that I am missing something very important, and if only I could figure out what it is–
I don't know what comes after that part.
It was nice to read Idiophone and to think Amy Fusselman's thoughts and to not feel that for a few minutes. It was really nice. It felt important.
Your friend,
Smalls