currently reading: Motherhood by Sheila Heti
hey you,
when i first pitched this newsletter on twitter i described it as “a shameless rip-off of Nick Hornby’s ‘Stuff I’ve Been Reading’ column" and i want to let you know right now that’s something of a disservice to Nick Hornby, who does not deserve the comparison. this will definitely be much less thought provoking. congrats on signing up!
here's what i'm thinking this will look like: every week* i’ll tell you the books i’ve bought and the books i’ve received and the books i’ve actually read. books received are generally going to be ARCs or galleys i got from publishers or books i got for free at the bookstore for whatever reason. even though i don’t anticipate this is going to be a series of book reviews (sorry if that's what you signed up for), it still feels better to be open with you about what i paid for and what i didn’t. more importantly it will keep me from panicking about the amount of money i’m spending on books when i type this out every week.
and then, you know, i’ll share some…. thoughts about all that? i’m going to be just as surprised as you! what an adventure we'll have together!
in fifth grade i was in an English class, which was at that point still called Language Arts, with a bunch of other precocious, adorable, annoying ten year olds. at the beginning of every class we would have time to freewrite and after we were finished we could volunteer to share what we’d written. everyone who volunteered always started with so much preamble – “i mean, it’s a freewrite, so it’s not that good, i don’t know why i thought it was a good idea to share this, i’m really embarrassed about this one,” etc. – that eventually every time we read our work out loud we all started by saying. “this is the worst piece of crap i’ve ever written in my whole life, but here goes…”
here goes!
books bought:
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Autoportrait by Edouard Levé
Motherhood by Sheila Heti
The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw
books received:
The Final Voicemails by Max Ritvo
Letters from Max by Sarah Ruhl and Max Ritvo
Insomnia by Marina Benjamin (e-galley)
books finished:*
Heavy by Kiese Laymon
Tell Me by Mary Robison
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Autoportrait by Edouard Levé
one of the things about working in a bookstore that i didn't anticipate is how infrequently i get to talk about the books i really want to talk about. it's something i should have anticipated, because it's obvious if you give it even a moment's thought – customers want to know what books they should be reading, and tend to not be at all interested in discussing works of esoterica with me.
that's where you come in!
the other morning around 3 (my insomnia is something to be reckoned with, feel free to tweet at me if you're up in the middle of the night, it gets a little lonely**) i finished Edouard Levé's Autoportrait. it is a book that is made up entirely of declarations about Levé's life, 117 pages with no chapters or paragraphs or breaks. nothing's in any particular order. here's an example of what it reads like:
When I walk down the street, the words on signs and in shop windows get mixed up in my head and turn into absurd slogans. I would forgive a woman for cheating on me if the other man was better than I am. I like the smell of my hair, even dirty. It amazes me that I can lift my arm without understanding how my brain transmits the order.
sometimes when it comes to books like these – and when i say "these" i am thinking primarily of Matias Viegner's 2500 Random Things About Me Too, and maybe also Darcie Wilder's literally show me a healthy person – people tend to make the mistake of thinking that reading such books implies a certain level of intelligence on behalf of the reader. there is a pervasive idea that in art nothing can be easy, or simple, or be what it says it is – there must be some deep meaning hidden in the text if only you're smart enough to find it, if only in your college literature classes you received the secret codex that makes the whole thing make sense.
recently i read an interview with Elisa Gabbert in which she said:
It's kind of amazing when you think about it: By organizing text into lines, poets magically make the text much more difficult for most people to read and comprehend. It's as though the extra white space on the page somehow creates complexity – as though the absence of meaning to the right of the line (seriously, there's nothing there) creates a void that, in horror vacui, the mind tries and fails to fill.
i thought about this the whole time i read Autoportrait. it's so simple and so basic that it must be a trick.
i am not saying there's never a deeper meaning. i'm trying to say i don't think literature is a trap, even though we – i – tend to assume it is.
i liked the book, and books like it, for a number of reasons, but perhaps particularly because they make me feel as if i am mainlining someone else's life, one not cut with extraneous thoughts, which is a really fucked up way to think about it, i know, but there's something about the purity that guts me. there is a part of me that loves the banality, that finds comfort in it. so when people think i read Autoportrait because i'm "smart" and/or "get it" i feel as if i could laugh – the other day i felt it was the only thing in the world i had the attention span to read; if anything i found it evidence of a lack of discipline or focus or intelligence. but when other people talk about Autoportrait, or Levé's other works, or, really, plenty of books in general, i assume they got much more out of it than i did. i assume the publisher and the other readers understood it better. i assume i skipped class the day they handed out codexes.
(sometimes the moment i fall in love with a book is the moment when i'm most certain i'm an imposter. surely they didn't publish that just because they thought someone like me would love it? surely there's something i'm missing?)
with all of that being said i can't think of a single person i'd recommend it to. a lot of books i love are like that – i have a tattoo of a line from Julian Barnes's Nothing to Be Frightened Of (which you can see at the bottom of the page here, on his website, whatever, it's not a big deal), and the book is important to me, but i can't think of anyone i know who would actually enjoy it. in fact i've had an extra copy for months, and i'd like to give it to someone, but i haven't been able to think of anyone who would want it. (do you?)
(there is something lonely and something gorgeous about loving a book i know i can't persuade others to pick up. on one hand i am all alone; on the other hand the book is all mine.)
Nothing to Be Frightened Of is in the stack of books i keep next to my bed on a shelf that's right next to my head when i fall asleep. if you asked me i couldn't tell you why i keep them there – i just know the thought of moving them, integrating them into my actual bookshelves, feels suffocating. The Friend by Sigrid Nunez is also in the pile, and the last few days the book has made me feel paralyzed. one of my dogs died on Tuesday and even though (minor spoiler alert) the dog in The Friend doesn't die, i feel cut open just seeing the book's spine. but of course i can't move it, and anyway i am going to be spending a lot of time feeling cut open regardless, i think.
i am not, however, expecting any slack from our customers, one of whom called the store this week to ask if we sell books.
your friend,
smalls
*yes, i did read all these books in the last week! yes, i'm showing off!
**unless you're creepy! then please don't!