currently reading: Person/a by Elizabeth Ellen
books finished:
The Correspondence by J.D. Daniels
books received:
Minding the Store: A Big Story about a Small Business by Julie Gaines, illustrated by Ben Lenovitz
The Witch Elm by Tana French (e-galley)
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (e-galley)
Idiophone by Amy Fusselman (e-galley)
books bought:
Can You Tolerate This? by Ashleigh Young
Hey you,
I didn't understand a fucking word of The Correspondence, though large parts of it were very pretty, and much of it was batshit insane. I liked those parts, but mostly I felt there were a lot of references that were going over my head. In fact before writing this I had the thought that I should read some kind of review of it by someone who, ostensibly, understood the book, so that I would not be sharing bad information with you, but then I thought that withholding bad information from you would be in bad faith if allIhad about the book was bad information.
Thinking about your own thoughts is stupid!
It's possible, technically, that the misunderstanding stems from the fact I didn't focus on a single word of the text except for the dialogue, and I only focused on the dialogue to think, loudly, That didn't happen!!!!! You didn't say that!!!! (The dialogue was beautiful, is what I'm saying. No one has conversations that pretty in real life.)
One day I will read The Correspondence again and that time I will do it when I'm sober.
Person/a, on the other hand, makes sense, feels inherently familiar to me. This is maybe not ideal.It's 600 pages about a man she calls Ian and about writing about Ian. 600 pages of Elizabeth Ellen (Elizabeth Ellen the character, as opposed to Elizabeth Ellen the person, unless they are the same) lamenting/exorcising/obsessing over a short, would-be relationship that lasted – well, it's not clear, exactly. A week or a month or a year. It depends on what you mean by "relationship," if you mean when he loved her back or when she loved him or when he talked to her or when she talked to him.
I think that I sound derisive here, and I don't mean to. I am enthralled by this book.
I think I should wait to write more about it until I finish it, because I've heard it's more than the sum of its parts. It's already dizzying.
Right now I'm being ghosted by a guy I've kind of been seeing who I've known too long, really, for him to ghost me, and I wonder if that's affecting the way I read Person/a. I do not think it is making a difference in any substantial way, except it feels something like natural to wonder if I have 600 pages in me about him, albeit spread out over a few years.
Maybe I should wonder if reading Person/a is affecting the way I interact with him. But I think that is the less interesting question.
This week at the bookstore a girl was buying a copy of Crazy Rich Asians and she said, "I have a weird question," which I sort of look forward to hearing. People who actually have ridiculous questions tend not to announce themselves. People who say "I have a weird question" usually want to know something interesting.
The girl seemed a few years younger than me, like 19 or 20 maybe. I said, "Sure," and she said, "Do you judge people based on the books they buy?"
An opportunity for me to drag out my soapbox!
I said, "Not as much as you'd think." I explained that I try not to judge someone buying something light or something popular, because you never know, it could be the book they read that makes them fall in love with books, and even if it's not, it's just nice to see people reading. I told her it doesn't work all the time and I definitely judge people who are buying fad diet books or "the wrong sort of political books," and she said, "The wrong sort?" And then it was like,Oh fuck, and I said, "You know, like... conspiracies," and that seemed to satisfy her, and she smiled, and I breathed a sigh of relief, and she said, "So conspiracies and Twilight." And I sort of smile-nodded at her but really I was sad, really I was like,No, that's not it at all.
When my sister got her master's degree I wrote her a long card explaining that things take time and you have to let them take time and moreover it's okay that things take time, you don't have to pounce on the first opportunity presented to you. I wrote a lot in that card. A few weeks later we were shopping somewhere and saw graduation cards and one of them said something like, It's okay to fail, and she said, "Hey, that's basically what you wrote in my card." I did the same routine then, with the sad smile-nod and the same thought: No, that is not it at all. If I meant anything in the card it was that there's no such thing as failure, that this is your real life (your one wild and precious life) and you can't win or lose at it.
What I'm trying to say is: if I meant anything that day in the bookstore it's that I don't judge people who buy Twilight. (Actually I'm not sure I've sold a single copy anyway.)
I don't know why I can't stop thinking about it. I have returned to this interaction every day since.
On an entirely different note: today is the two year anniversary of my life falling apart, when I got sick, sick in the way that seems vague and fuzzy and impossible to categorize. I don't remember what I was reading then; I'm certain I didn't read anything for quite a long time. I couldn't sit still with myself long enough, not even with a book as a sort of intermediary. Two years later I am thinking of these lines from Tony Hoagland's poem "The News," which I first read in the anthology Dorothy Parker's Elbow:
This year illness just flirted with me,
picking me up and putting me down
like a cat with a ball of yarn,
so I walked among the living like a tourist,
and I wore my health uneasily, like a borrowed shirt,
knowing I would probably have to give it back.
I am grateful not to be living like that anymore.
Your friend,
Smalls
P.S. I don't have Thursdays off anymore. I'll see you Tuesdays from now on.