I. Books
"His desire was so small in the end that [he] could slip it inside his desk or a pocket and forget about it, and this gave him a feeling of safety and accomplishment, of having dismantled a perilous apparatus that might have crushed them both. [She] was baffled at first, then distraught [...] but eventually a sort of amnesia had overtaken [her]; her rebellion and hurt had melted away, deliquesced into a sweet, eternal sunniness that was terrible in the way that life would be terrible, [he] supposed, without death to give it gravitas and shape. He's presumed at first that her relentless cheer was mocking, another phase in her rebellion, until it came to him that [she] had forgotten how things were between them before [he] began to fold up his desire; she'd forgotten and was happy- had never not been happy- and while all of this bolstered his awe at the gymnastic adaptability of the human mind, it also made him feel that his wife had been brainwashed. By him."*
Sometimes in passing people like to drop these tiny bombs on me where they say things like, "oh but you get along with everybody." I know when it's said it's meant well, I'm never really offended, but I always think excitedly, internally, "holy shit they're right!" Then I spiral a little bit, worry about who I'm too nice to, who deserves it, if I'm not critical enough in my personal relationships. I'm not ever too nice, it's just that I might try too hard to like everyone. I mean to say that I tend to gloss over certain things in order to attain a balance- left over from a real shitty divorce (my parents) most likely- where everyone gets along and no one is trying to kill each other. I like playing this part; the middle man, camp counselor, whatever you want to call it. I like plans. I like difficult people. I like to organize, mediate, and all that stuff that probably drives my best friends crazy (but they like me because of their own fucked up problems too). With that being said, I am wild about this book by Jennifer Egan.
I am fully aware of the criticism surrounding this book, but I can gloss over some of the criticism and focus on what's really amazing. Do I need to explain? Have I become one of those people that asks rhetorical questions? Fuck no. I bet if you didn't like the book it's because of some of the last chapters (I sort of skimmed them, not really my style but I think it took some guts, you'd have to read the book to know what I'm referring to). Cool, write about it for your professors while you get your MFA but I'm working 40 hours a week at a bar. I just want to say that the book freaked me out more than anything I've read in awhile and that's saying a lot (the next two books freaked me out too actually). To me, the best parts of the book were about how people loose touch with one another, destroy each other, forget about themselves, and betray their own instincts, all because of time passing and their own very small, innocent decisions that amount to tragedy- their own or someone else's. The redeeming quality of the book was that most of the characters go on. They just keep fucking up or eking out whatever shitty life they're trying to live, a few are redeemed (debatable) but it seems very realistic that no matter how you fuck up your life, it's just going to keep happening.That might not be a saving grace, but it's true. Characters in the book that you felt sure were going to "make it" just totally fell apart, by I guess my own standards. The book made me question my own ideas about growing up, about marriage, about a career, about what was important. I'm not even sure I had appropriate responses to parts of the book. Still, I'm glad I read the book when I did.
"Ana Iris once asked me if I loved him and I told her about the lights in my old home on the capital, how they flickered and you never knew if they would go out or not. You put down your things and you waited and couldn't do anything really until the lights decided. This, I told her, is how I feel."**
I think it's important for everyone to be intolerant of men whining about women, in every medium- music, books, poetry, tumblr, you name it. I don't mean whining in the sense of showing emotion, everyone deserves their own allotment of feelings, even self-centered miserable ones (goodness knows I've hammed it up a little on my own) but there's a fine line between "I have these feelings I want or need to share" and "this girl broke my heart and I didn't deserve it and she's a bad person" blah blah blah bullshit. Too often men get to use art as a cover up for their own bullshit, their own mistakes, and a mysterious girl gets the blame. I would say oh, about 90% of pop punk. However, This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz doesn't fall into that trap.
The collection of short stories, mostly centered around the same character (a sort of shadowy reflection of the author) completely fucking up relationships for his whole life. He really takes the blame, and not in a passive aggressive way, but with really tangible self-loathing that I found myself relating to (there was an old Gomek lyric, "four years of youth wasted/fucking up relationships/and several houses"). Dead pan depression, sometimes witty, mostly just sad, and I kept waiting for the characters to stop, to just...stop being so fucked up to one another, but they don't. That's real life I guess. The quote above is from one of the singular chapters with a female perspective, but that doesn't mean the other women in the book aren't given incredible dimension. The mother in most of the stories is the strongest character (the one really deserving of respect and never getting it) but the woman in this chapter, who is sort of patiently waiting for things to work out or fall apart, that really resonated with me most. I used to think that, like anything else, when you fall in love you could control it, wrestle with it, rail against it...I think I know now that when you fall in love you just have to allow it to happen, take a deep breath and see how thing's turn out. Sadly, for almost every character in this book, nothing works out, things fall apart, and the main character ends up alone. Refreshingly though, he knows it's his fault. These are the accounts of all the ways he betrayed his partners, and also himself. He says at the end, "that's about it. In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace- and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get."
"'A writer needs four things to achieve greatness Pasquale: desire, disappointment, and the sea.' 'That's only three.' Alvis finished the wine. 'You have to do disappointment twice.'"***
Another book about betrayal, complicated human interaction, and the degrading and redemptive qualities of time. Not quite as depressing as the first two. Inspired me to actually stay up last night and write these book reviews though. Don't judge it by the cover (literally awful, didn't pick it up several times from three different book stores) it's actually captivating and quite funny.
I read it in the van on my way up to Richmond with Mauser. I don't mind being cramped with seven people for ten hours if I have a good book to read, so if you find yourself on any long trips this summer it would be a good book to have. I don't have beach reads. I have van reads.
*A Visit From The Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
**This is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz
***Beautiful Ruins, Jess Walter
