currently reading: Impossible Owls by Brian Phillips
books bought:
Impossible Owls by Brian Phillips
Seasonal Associate by Heike Geissler, trans. Katy Derbyshire
The Journal of Jules Renard, ed./trans. by Elizabeth Roget and Louise Bogan
Oh! by Mary Robison
books received:
Socialist Realism by Trisha Low (e-galley, out 8/13)
Policing the Open Road: How Cars Transformed American Freedom by Sarah A. Seo (out 4/8)
books finished:
Seasonal Associate by Heike Geissler, trans. Katy Derbyshire
Lanny by Max Porter (out 5/14)
The Journal of Jules Renard
Hey you,
I'm writing with wonderful news—I've read three books in a row that I've loved, and I'm on the fourth one that I love, even, and how often does that happen? (Almost never. I'm a terrible judge of my own tastes! I'm just as surprised as the next person by what I want to read. This is why a) no one buys me books and b) I'm a wonderful person to send galleys to.)
Seasonal Associate is a work of autofiction, assuming autofiction stands for autobiographical fiction. (Sometimes people call a book autofiction in order to, like, dunk on it?) Here's a one-sentence summary of the whole book: the novelist Heike Geissler takes a seasonal job at an Amazon fulfillment center near her home in Germany. It starts like this:
Is all this a matter of life and death? I'll say no for the moment and come back to the question later. At that point, I'll say: Not directly, but in a way yes. It's a matter of how far death is allowed into our lives. Or the fatal, that which kills us. To be precise: compared to that which kills us, death is nothing but an innocent waif. Or: death, compared to that which kills us, is a gentleman with good manners and a shy look in his eye.
A relatively easy thing for a writer (and a publisher) to do is to put out a book with a great first few pages, and for that reason I am usually skeptical of any book that starts off really strong, but this one read as strong at the end and in the middle as it did in the beginning. Towards the end there's this passage I've thought about every day since I read it:
What you and I can't do, though, because you and I don't want to, is to think your employer into a better employer and to compare these working conditions to even worse, less favorable conditions, so as to say: It's not all that bad. Other places are worse. It used to be worse.
We don't do that. You and I want the best and we're not asking too much.
When I was working at the bookstore, let's say when I found out about the not-getting-back-pay thing, I thought to myself, what is it you want? What is it you were expecting? And then I would answer myself, the same thing over and over, the ongoing hamster wheel of my mind, More than this!
Lanny isn't necessarily a book I'd ordinarily pick up for myself, but I loved Max Porter's first book, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. (This is a weird flex but I've read my fair share of dead-parent books, and Grief, which features a giant anthropomorphic crow, is the truest-to-life novel about grief I've ever read.) Even when I'm reading a book I love, I don't usually stop every dozen pages or so to think what a fckn genius! but I did while reading Lanny. I think Max Porter is a genius in the way he gives the reader credit, which is to say he expected the exact right amount from me. I said last newsletter that when I was working at literary agencies, probably my main piece of advice was: give the reader credit! I mean, there are other things I liked about the book, but this was honestly? A real high point for me as a reader. It's always nice to see a respected author taking advice directly from this humble newsletter.
Jules's Journal has a lot of wonderful aphorisms and this one is my favorite: "A poet is a man who wears a beret."
I'm not sure I can tell you about Brian Phillips's book of essays Impossible Owls without first telling you about Lee Klein's Thanks and Sorry and Good Luck. Thanks is a collection of rejection letters sent to people from Klein, who was the editor-in-chief of an online lit mag called Eyeshot. The rejection letters are sometimes educational and always completely, completely mad; wonderful reading for an outside party, but I would die if I ever received one of them. Here's an example of one in its entirety: "When I see something involving the third grade, my eyes glaze over—I swear it! It's not your fault, nor mine—but my damned eyes! Send another one!" Here's another: "Learn to spell FELLATIO! I'm not going to post this because it's not funny at all. But thanks for sending it." And here's the one I want to talk to you about today:
There are no real rules. But there are unreal rules related to taste, to intuition, to textually triggering some corner of the pineal gland, which when set off by something semi-inexplicable in a succession of words, engages this reader at least, lets one's third eye see something not there—we're talking neurologic magic, man. Imagination induction. That's the only rule. Make someone see something that's not there via a succession of engaging words. Also, if possible, vaguely amaze and if possible make laugh. Do that and you can make whatever rules you want.
If you asked me for a list of everything I'm looking for in a work of nonfiction, I would...not be able to answer you, nor would I be at all interested in the question, but Impossible Owls is ticking every single one of those boxes I can't be bothered to even think up. Impossible Owls is doing all of that shit Klein just listed above, and Brian Phillips can make up whatever rules he wants. I've long maintained that any really great writer will make their interests your interests, too, someone who can take something you don't care about and render it thoughtful and brilliant (like Gabe Habash did with wrestling and North Dakota in Stephen Florida). Brian Phillips does that with sumo wrestling, and aliens, and animation... One of the problems I have with short stories and essay collections is that some of the pieces are necessarily better than others, and while there are certainly standouts in this collection—that essay on the Iditarod, fuckin wow!—they're all great so far, nothing I want to skip over.
And I almost skipped over this one! I didn't pick it up for a while because the sales rep from the publishing house said he'd sent me an ARC but I never actually did. That's how I make reading decisions! That's who I am as a person!
There is such pleasure (sorry for using that word, I hate it too) in reading books you actually want to read, instead of the books you think you should—sometimes I forget! Crazy!
Your friend,
Smalls
P.S. For any interested parties, I stumbled upon literally exactly the sort of financial explainer I was looking for, by accident and for free, literally minutes after I sent my last newsletter!
