Favorite Books of 2021

 My favorite books published in 2021 were...

Ghost in the throat, Doireann Ní Ghriofa

No one is talking about this, Patricia Lockwood

Fake accounts, Lauren Oyler

Detransition, baby, Torrey Peters

Winter in Sokcho, Elisa Shua Dushapin, tr. Aneesa Abbas Higgins

Tomorrow sex will be good again, Katherine Angel

Migratory birds, Mariana Oliver, tr. Julia Sanches

Interior, Chinatown, Charles Yu

Keeping the House, Tice Cin

 

And overall, favorite things I read this year...

 

 

Garden by the sea, Mercè Rodoreda, tr. Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent

Bright dead things, Ada Limón

Minor feelings, Cathy Park Hong

The biggest bluff, Maria Konnikova

Dancer from the dance, Andrew Holleran

Collected Body, Valzhyna Mort

BTTM FDRS, Ezra Clayton Daniels and Ben Passmore

Spare room, Helen Garner

Emperor’s Babe, Bernardine Evaristo

Sky country, Christine Kitano

Voices from Chernobyl, Svetlana Alexievich, tr Keith Gessen

Moon of the Crusted Snow, Waubgeshig Rice

 

Here's to more good books, and more time to write about them, in 2022! Happy New Year, everyone!

Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan

 I heard about this one from a Guardian article of best books of the year, chosen by various authors — a format I especially enjoy, and this one seems particularly good. It was chosen by Damon Galgut, whom I haven't read but want to, and was particularly appealing because it was one of two "slender" novels that he recommended. I love a short book! Further research informed me that it's a Christmas novel (but not the treacly kind), so boom, I was sold. And it is very, very good. 

I guess it would best be called a novella, for various technical reasons, but in simple terms — because the plot feels like a contextualized snippet, but the inner world of the character is incredibly developed. Indeed, what makes the book so extraordinary is the richness of the setting. Some of this, I suspect, is the Irishness of it (there's a reason that Angela's Ashes was so popular. Ireland is special.) And this is a wonderfully evocative slice of small town Irish life. It's tender, and tough, and lovely. 

But what really sets it apart is the finely tuned balance of good and evil. The book is a moral drama, a subtle reckoning with the atrocity of the Magdalene laundries and people's complicity and complacence, and the art of it hinges on how it threads the needle of realism and idealism. It's a quietly suspenseful book; one that brilliantly produces a deeply unsettling sense of dread and horror. A powerful indictment of these horrific institutions, but not a bombastic one. Exactly the kind of Christmas story I wanted, in these grim times.

Moon of the Crusted Snow, Waubgeshig Rice

 I don't read apocalyptic fiction all that often, but this one, which has a snowy cover and a book jacket that talks about winter looming, kind of called to me as a good onset-of-cold-weather read, and boy was it ever. I listened to the audiobook, which has an especially excellent narrator, and this book blew me away. What makes it so brilliant, I think, is that it avoids a lot of the tedium of having to theorize/explain how the world ends that other apocalypse fictions are essentially centered around, and instead hones in on the question of what it means, really — how does life go on? Because the story takes place on an Anishinaabe reservation, this question is very different from what it would be elsewhere, and the events described are subtly folded into a longer history of the Anishinaabe people. The book is deliciously suspenseful and absolutely riveting, and very very real about the human casualties, but without being sensationalistically awful. It's a remarkable feat of storytelling.

The story begins with a sense of unease — a power outage, phone lines down — but it's a mild one, because after all, as the various characters remark to one another, this kind of thing happens all the time on the rez, just usually not all at once. The beginning of the book moves slowly, doing a lot of the work of world-building, and establishing a sense of isolation and detachment from the Canadian society beyond. We get to know and love our characters, and to learn about their lives. But tension and dread are building. Two young boys return from college in Toronto with grim tidings about the world's collapse, and then a stranger arrives. The community is confronted with the question of how to survive the harsh winter without any electricity or supplies from the outside world. And the rest of the book just dwells in that discomfort, exploring its nuances. It's absolutely brilliant.

In the Eye of the Wild, by Nastassja Martin

 I've got a new review essay up at the KGB Bar Lit Magazine, check it out! On Nastassja Martin's In the Eye of the Wild and how the romance of the anthropologist has migrated over to stories of human-animal encounter.

I WIll Die in a Foreign Land, by Kalani Pickhart

Note: what follows is slightly spoiler-y: I don't give away anything specific, but I talk about the structure of the plot, so it tells you something about what will happen (though I suspect many will guess long before they reach the end).

I was just reminding you all recently how much I hate it when a novel does that thing where multiple unrelated seemingly stories turn out to be connected... Thinking about it more, I was reflecting that it's one of the most blatantly fictional devices out there — not that it's unrealistic, exactly, because this is certainly a thing that happens in the world, but that it always feels overdetermined (because, of course, it is!). Whenever it happens in 18th century (or earlier) texts I'm teaching, my students roll their eyes and see it as ridiculous, but they seem to love it in contemporary stuff. Whereas I generally find it charming in those earlier works, but the present-day version annoys the hell out of me.  I think the difference is that in modern-day works, the revelation in laced with dramatic irony: we, the readers, know, but the characters don't. So the point is a kind of wonder at how the world works, that the characters don't get to share in, or respond to, and I suppose the deeper point is to also signal to us that perhaps, we are experiencing such things as well, without being aware of them (in fact, we almost certainly are), wow, isn't the world amazing! I mean, it is, and that is an effective way that fiction can illuminate this aspect, but it's just really, really overused. 

It especially bugged me in this book because it really wasn't necessary! There was already a perfectly reasonable connection between the characters — they were all experiencing the Euromaidan protests in Kiev in 2013, and interacting with each other as a result. That was sufficient! I didn't need more! I think I felt particularly cheated because I enjoyed the book SO much for the first 2/3 of it, and I didn't realize that it was heading in that direction, though of course in retrospect, I totally should have.

But the beginning is great, it totally sucks you in, the characters are complex and absorbing, and it's telling a story about an event that I care about (I was actually in Kiev a few weeks before the protests started, to celebrate my birthday with my good friend who was living there and working on a dissertation, and who was also at the Maidan, and whose book ended up being about the revolution as a result). It was a really big deal, and I suspect that in our fast-moving new cycle, globalized world, etc, etc, not enough people really know about it. Anyhow, this is a very good book, and one that most people without my grumpy pet peeves will absolutely relish — an excellent holiday gift.

Fake Accounts, Lauren Oyler

 I've been enjoying Lauren Oyler's critical essays for awhile (this recent one, on the new Sebald biography, is absolutely brilliant), and, full disclosure, have also been enjoying hanging out with her and talking to her about literature and people and life, etc. I hadn't gotten her book yet, despite being curious about it, because I refuse to buy books in hardcover, but then she gave me a copy, so yay, I could read it! And surprise surprise (not really), it's great. 

There are so few really funny novelists working today — the only two contemporary writers who have really made me laugh that spring immediately to mind are Maria Semple and Taffy Brodesser-Akner — so it was such a treat to launch into a book that literally had me cackling on damn near every page. It is very, very funny. Oyler has a razor-sharp wit, and, like the best Millenial authors, finds the perfect balance between a wry irony and a vulnerability that evinces a commitment to being a part of the world; a sense of proportion that ensures that the narrative doesn't remain suspended in the clouds mocking the mere mortals below. 

The novel is surprising, less because of the more spectacular plot fireworks of the opening, as for the slow, subtle work that follows them. It made me reach once again for Stephanie Insley Hershinow's Born Yesterday, a book that brilliantly analyzes (18th-century) realist novels in which characters resolutely do NOT develop (thereby showing us new things about our idea of character, and realism as a form. It's just so smart, and has made me notice things about novels featuring young women protagonists that I otherwise wouldn't), because here, too, we have a story about a character who doesn't know what to do with herself, which therefore turns out to be a story in which not much really happens. Or so it seems, because there isn't the neat and tidy plot of Bildung that we tend to expect — the formative lessons of the Grand Tour that bring some kind of clarity and purpose to the protagonist's life. 

But actually, all kinds of things are happening — indeed, the book is a startlingly accurate portrayal of what it's like to be an American living abroad on a day-to-day basis, rather than in the tidied up Story of An American Living Abroad version. The little frustrations, the odd quirks you notice about the culture, the loneliness, the sense that you're trying to be cosmopolitan and interesting, or perhaps the main character in the Story of An American Living Abroad, while suspecting/worrying that maybe your life... isn't really all that interesting. There was an added pleasure in it, for me, because I lived in Berlin for a year in high school, and have had my own sort of experience of being a confused young woman in that city, and so some things were extra familiar, but also from the perspective of an older person, in a Berlin that has changed in some ways but not others (and is still one of the greatest cities in the world, just saying). 

It's also interesting, as a work of realism, for the way that it minutely describes various things that seem utterly obvious, but are of course incredibly of-the-moment. So, for instance, what an iPhone home screen looks like, how you open an app, how instagram works. It's startling at first, and then incredibly fascinating (and really well done — if you've never tried to write descriptions like that, I'm telling you, it's HARD. I used give my comp students an assignment along such lines and I stopped because they were terrible and reading them was no fun). In many ways, the novel is a really precise ethnography of a very specific cultural moment.

Finally, amidst all this apparent lack of action, things are happening conceptually, as the ideas that the book circles coalesce and combine in really intriguing ways. I guess people probably think of this as a novel about social media and inter-personal relationships in the internet age, and it is that, but it's more broadly a novel about identity, authenticity, and social life. The internet gives a particular inflection to those issues, sure, but they also aren't fundamentally different simply because they're mediated through Tinder, I don't think. Perhaps because I know Lauren, and thus could recognize parts of the story as drawn from her life, and because we've had a lot of conversations about auto-fiction (and what that term even means), I was also musing on the book's own playful blending of fiction and reality, which is heightened by the moments when the narrator pauses to comment on the form of the novel. 

The ultimate effect, for me, is a text that dazzlingly brings together literary form and self-presentation, and playfully questions (challenges?) the notion of straightforward honesty in both art and life, and the idea of intimacy. 

It's a cool novel, definitely on my top 10 of books published in 2021. Check it out.

Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, Katherine Angel

 Every year in my Intro to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies course, I teach Kristen Roupenian's "Cat Person" and ask my students whether the sex in the story is consensual. And every year, but increasingly more so, over the course of our classroom discussion I am distressed to realize how much work the notion of consent is doing in current cultural conversations about sex, such that it seems as if they have no way to conceptualize sex that is consensual, but bad, or consensual but unwanted. It is, however, very difficult to convey such notions without verging on sounding like a rape apologist. Or without potentially undermining the very positive and worthwhile work being done by all those who are promoting notions of affirmative consent.

So I appreciated this book so much, because it did an absolutely spectacular job of explaining why the idea of consent, though very important in some ways, is not the gateway to liberation that it is often presented as being. As Angel convincingly argues, to rely so heavily on the notion of affirmative consent is to demand, not only that people express what they want — but that they know what it is, exactly. Such a demand is not only unrealistic, is also fails to account for the ways in which desire is both responsive, and social. It's a really powerful meditation on what we actually want from our "sexual revolution", and how current approaches are falling short. The book is definitely centered on the experiences of cis-het women, but it's up-front about that, and is also careful to acknowledge some of the complications attendant to thinking about sexuality for woman of color, especially Black women. 

A short, compelling read, well-researched, and with some great examples from a variety of films (and some really good ones at that). Strongly recommended!

Soft Science, by Franny Choi

 I'm pretty sure that I was introduced to Franny Choi when Anjuli Raza Kolb quoted her poem "The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On", and I looked it up and read it over and over and over, and saw this  collection at the bookstore a few days later and of course bought it. 

 

  These are smart, tough, and deeply unsettling poems. They bring together the human/cyborg distinction, and stereotypes about Asian women, and dissociation as a response to violence and awfulness, in really remarkable ways. Extremely powerful stuff.

Interior, Chinatown, by Charles Yu

We've been living in an age of irony for years now, it seems, but more recently, at least in literary fiction, there's been a wave of really dense satire about race. I know people have written, and are writing, about this, and I need to read that stuff, but I will confess that I often struggle with the novels. They are, of course, intentionally inhospitable, so it's not surprising, but my discomfort is not that I feel called out so much as that it can often feel like telling rather than showing. Everything is exaggerated, when it feels like nuance would be more illuminating. But sometimes, in the most successful versions of this kind of thing, the exaggeration is so extreme that it goes all the way through and back to nuance again, forcing you to excavate the specificity within the outsize shapes. That, I think, is how Interior, Chinatown works. 

It took me awhile to get into it, because you have to negotiate the utter artificiality of the conceit, the intense layers of irony and parody. The novel is a script/story about Willis Wu, Generic Asian Man, who yearns to become Kung Fu guy — but also to break free of cliche roles. The commitment to the form means that the story can be frustratingly rote, emotionless, and of course, that's the point, as is the disorientation of not knowing whether this is a movie or "real life." 

But once you get into it, it's absolutely brilliant, and quite lyrical. I'm realizing that I've read more than a few texts this year by Asian American authors that are grappling with the complexities of Asian American identity in the racial eco-system of the US — not out of a concerted effort on my part, more by happenstance, but doubtless inspired by the reckoning emerging as a response to the increasingly blatant outbursts of anti-Asian violence. This one is more specifically engaged in the question of representation in movies and tv shows, and how that shapes identity, and it examines these issues in really powerful ways.

Summer, by Ali Smith

 I can't really write about Summer without writing about the rest of the quartet, though actually, I might have liked it more if I hadn't read the others. I've complained enough on this blog (though maybe not recently) about how much I despise the "multiple unrelated stories that get woven together" form (or better to say, how picky I am about it; I actually love it when it's done well, but usually I find it trite). So you'll understand why I say that I might have enjoyed this book more if I didn't know that the characters had appeared in previous books. The fact that I didn't completely remember their stories from earlier didn't actually help (or maybe it did!). 

The thing is: I loved Autumn. I read it 2 years ago and thought it was just gorgeous, and a wonderful meditation on different forms of love, and so clever in the way it subtly referenced extremely recent events. I was already a huge Ali Smith fan, and I was so excited to read the rest of the quartet, but decided I'd wait until all of them were out, and read each in its season. I read Winter in March, and liked it not quite as much as Autumn, but appreciated its slightly surreal quality, and its loving meditation on Shakespeare, and the way it really did capture a feeling of winter, just as the previous book had gotten something right about autumn. But then I kind of hated Spring. I hated the way it used magical realism to talk about some of the more appalling aspects of the political present, and I even started to find Smith's style somewhat grating. 

I disliked it so much that I put off reading Summer for as long as possible, so that I wouldn't still be annoyed when I read it. And so I didn't actually start it until summer was over, in late October, and then things got veryvery busy, so I only just finished it. And it was fine. I was surprised by how heart-rending it was to read about characters experiencing lockdown and the beginnings of the pandemic (too soon?). It did, at moments, evoke a very specific kind of summer feeling (but I am still in the thrall of Garden by the Sea which is just the perfect summer book). I was mostly charmed by Smith's style, though I definitely think it will be a good long while before I pick up another book of hers. But mostly, I found the novel largely forgettable.

Autumn Quail, by Naguib Mahfouz

 I picked this one up at Cherry Valley Bookstore, a cool little shop with a really excellent selection of high quality used books. Mahfouz is one of the authors in my personal pantheon, that is, one of the authors whose works I am trying to read all of. He's an especially fascinating one, because there are observable changes in his style over the long arc of his career, from more typical realist-style fare (though with a goodly dose of symbolism) to more formally experimental (which I prefer, I think). He writes a lot of bitter, angry male protagonists, which I initially found abrasive, but now have grown accustomed to, I guess. 

Anyways, this one was especially interesting, because it's set in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1952, and chronicles the story of a man who is on the outs with the new regime. I am not especially knowledgeable about Egyptian history and politics, but I was really struck by the way this novel captures a sense of frustration, confusion, and malaise connected to massive political changes, and I kept thinking of it in relation to US politics of the last 10 years or so. The thing about political upheaval is that life goes on, in many ways, unchanged, but then it also doesn't. Your individual life is deeply shaped by those various forces and happenings, but there are also aspects of it that seem entirely separate (even if they aren't). There was something about the way this story see-sawed between broader social concerns and deeply selfish individual ones that was really compelling to me. And is curiously echoed in the way that I, in turn, read it as both a particular account of a specific time and place (one I know very little about — but I was dimly aware of the ways that the novel was referencing its particular moment) — and a more universal, or at least transportable, story that resonated with my own time.

 

Transit, by Anna Seghers

 This has been recommended to me more than once, so I was somewhat surprised not to like it more than I did. I think the big problem is that the plot device of, "I saw this woman once and instantly became obsessed with her and completely reorganized my life to stalk her" is just...not that interesting to me. Or convincing. It's kind of hard to believe that this is such a cliche, because really, wtf?

That said, this is in many ways a wonderfully atmospheric novel about bureaucratic morass, and the absolute misery and panic of people caught in its clutches. It has a distinctly East German feel to it, I was thinking to myself, and then I wondered what I meant by that, and decided that it's mostly that something about the prose reminds me of Christa Wolf. 

That I finally got around to reading it is in large part because of a tweet from Dan Sinykin calling for someone to do a Buzzfeed style ranking of all the NYRB books,* which inspired me to collect all my unread NYRB books in one area of my to-read shelf:

                                                    Of course, I immediately found 4 more I'd left out, but whatever

...and to really make a point of starting to read them. And then I was on a TRAIN, and I had a bookmark from TRANSIT BOOKS, and it was just irresistible.

It's not a bad book, but I'm not sure why so many people have specifically recommended it to me.

* It also inspired me to take a stab at selecting my top 10 NYRB books, here it is:

1. Fair Play 

2. Dud Avocado 

3. Skylark 

4. A High Wind in Jamaica 

5. Season of Migration to the North 

6. Late Fame 

7. The Captain's Daughter 

8. Berlin Stories 

9. The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes 

10. The Door

Maluchem do Raju, by Kazik Kunicki i Tomasz Ławecki

 This started out as a book review, and turned into a meditation on what we know about the past, and the kinds of stories we tell about it. It's one of the more personal things I've written, in that it's about my academic interests, but also my family history, and my translation work, and even has a little scene, of sorts, of me interacting with my parents.

Anyhow: here it is, my piece for the Field Notes of Modernism/modernity, with big thanks to Jeanne-Marie Jackson for inviting me to contribute!

A Ghost in the Throat, Doireann Ni Ghriofa

 KGB Bar is one of my favorite bars in the world, so I was absolutely delighted to contribute a review to their lit mag! All the more so because it gave me the opportunity to really think through why I admired A Ghost in the Throat so much. Here's what I ended up saying!

Sidenote, but — you might think that as someone who studies 18th century lit, and Irish fiction, OF COURSE I had heard of this book. But in fact, I learned about it, as I learn about many many many excellent books, from Caitlin Luce Baker's twitter feed. This just reaffirms what I've said many times before, that booksellers are far more up on the important stuff than academics are. And also, that bookseller twitter is so so good! If you want to hear more about excellent literature in translation, or stuff being published by indie presses, Caitlin is a great person to follow.

The Awakening, by Kate Chopin

 It's hard to believe that I somehow made it this far without having read this book. I've always heard it described as a classic, as important, as formative, and just generally soooo great, so I was delighted when a student who is writing an Honors thesis with me wanted to write about it, because it forced me to finally read it. 

So, the big thing that it made me realize is just how little I know about American literature and its history, because I was kind of bewildered by the apparent scandalousness of it. Weren't European writers, especially French ones, writing stories like this for a good 30 years or so already? The Awakening is published in 1899. Madame Bovary is 1856. A Doll's House is 1879. Was this stuff not translated until much later? Was it a big deal because it was an American woman who was articulating these ideas?

And also, OMG IT IS SO RACIST. Maybe if I read more 19th/20th century American lit, I would be more accustomed to this, but WOW. And nobody ever mentioned that, in all the things I've heard about the book! Is it because the racism is not the kind where there is lots of explicit discussion of people of color as lesser (though, ahem, Mariequita's "broad and coarse" feet might give you pause), but is rather the kind where the book is full of Black characters and none of them have a name? My student wants to write about the institution of motherhood as oppressive to the protagonist and I'm like, ok, sure, but you're gonna need to get into the fact that the vast majority of the actual work of caring for her children is done by "the Quadroon". The shit is blowing my mind. I bought myself a copy of a newer edition with an intro by Carmen Maria Machado, thinking that surely she would have something to say about this, but nope, not a word! And then I found this truly unfortunate NYTimes essay (no, I'm not gonna link to it), where a white women suggests — with only the slightest of disclaimers — the the summer of 2020 and the rise of "wokeness" can lead us back to The Awakening and the idea of pleasure as freedom. What the holy hell?

But ok. Calm down. I'm not saying that we have to cancel Kate Chopin. I just think that it is deeply wrong to talk about how this book can be seen as liberatory, inspiring, etc, without also AT LEAST acknowledging, but preferably reckoning with, the fact that Edna's pursuit of freedom is deeply entangled with her racial and class privilege. I mean, this woman up and decides to move out of her house into her own little apartment, and she actually does it, and it's FINE. Her husband isn't delighted but he works it out, her kids are with their grandmother, who is absolutely thrilled to keep them at her place — she not only hasn't taken anyone else into account, but even when this obliviousness becomes clear, there are no negative consequences. One of the most telling moments in the book, to me, is when her kids ask her where they are to sleep, in this new home of hers, and she tells them that the fairies will figure it out. Like, ooops, totally forgot that you existed for a minute there, but, uh, *throws a pile of glitter into the air* I mean, at this point, you really have to wonder, what else does this woman need to be free?

And this, of course, is actually a really interesting question, and one very much worth exploring. There's a great essay by Molly Hildebrand that really lambasts the protagonist as a negative example of solipsism (but also, maybe, a proto-vision of the female artist?), but I think it might be a bit too quick to dismiss some of the difficulties of these issues, I don't know. 

I will say, though, that this is a book that richly rewards close reading and re-reading — it's wonderfully opaque and ambivalent in a lot of ways. I'm having a terrific time wrestling with it with my student. But at the same time, I'm...kind of glad that I didn't read it at a more impressionable moment in my life.

Bright Dead Things, Ada Limón

 Just a short post, because I have such a backlog of books to write about and a lot to do these days... 

Awhile back, Pilsen Community Books posted a poem from this book, and I was so taken by it that I immediately ordered it from them. I started reading it and was absolutely blown away, and then, wonder of wonders, it turned out that Limón was doing a reading at Cornell! So I got to go and hear her read some poems, and tell stories about them, and about her family, and talk about her process, and her worldview, and it was all just so absolutely magical. What an incredible presence she is. 

Of course, maybe it was also just the pleasure of being in a room with people appreciating poetry, which I haven't done in a very long time (my classes don't count, heh heh), but I do think this was an exceptionally good reading. Some credit goes to the audience, who asked really interesting questions (those fancy Cornell folk!). I was especially struck by a person who asked whether she does the line breaks in the first rush of composition, or adds them later (apparently this person had heard someone, maybe Victoria Chang? say that their first draft is one line of prose, and the line breaks come after), and another person who asked whether she composes out loud, or in writing. These are maybe very obvious questions to ask a poet, but I hadn't ever thought of them, and I was very interested in the answers (she does the line breaks in the initial composition, and she does compose out loud, fyi. In my own feeble attempts at poetry, I do line breaks immediately but am constantly playing with them and changing them, and I never compose out loud.)

It's really hard for me to explain what is so absolutely magnetic and immediately captivating about these poems. I gave my copy of the book to a dear friend so I can't even look over it and try to figure it out (though I will definitely be buying myself another copy). But really, they are incredible, and you should go buy this book right away.

In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play, Sarah Ruhl

 This is a fun, witty play. I borrowed it from the library because, having read Ruhl's essays, I was curious about her plays, and it didn't disappoint. It's simultaneously daring and kind of quaint, in a really interesting way — the tone teeters between irony and wide-eyed sentiment. I think this is in part because the subject matter — the use of vibrators to treat hysteria — unavoidably involves a certain amount of dramatic irony. We know what's really going on here (sex!), except we also sort of don't, because it's so difficult to really understand how people at the time experienced this kind of thing (or at least it is for me). Is it really possible to be so disconnected from your own sexuality? I know it is (and I know I'm very lucky to find it so hard to fathom), but then what does this mean for your sense of your body, for instance?

The brilliance of Ruhl's play is the way it activates multiple meanings of electricity, and the thrills and dangers attendant to it, and subtly plays with our sense of the Victorian era and its moral milieu. There is a faint suggestion, for instance, that sexual identity is more fluid, precisely because less explicitly categorized. There's also an interesting way that the play activates contemporary taboos by confronting us with the "innocence" of certain aspects of the Victorian era, like the racial politics, or the all-knowing authority of medical discourse, without a clear commentary to comfortably situate it in relation to current norms (is the doctor sexually abusing his patients? is the treatment of the African American character racist? The answers will seem obvious to many viewers, but the play withholds comment). This inevitable sense of then-vs-now is neatly echoed in the way the play is staged, with action taking place in two spaces simultaneously, the division between them alternately fixed and porous.

It would be really neat to see it staged, but it was a pleasure to read as well. In one of her essays, Ruhl says something like, stage directions should be meaningful, they carry important ideas and tone, etc, and this is very true here, such that you feel like you're being let in on a secret, in a way, by getting to read them. And you realize with particular clarity that any staging of this play is going to be a particular interpretation (most intriguingly, in the directions to the actors for the sounds they are to make during orgasm). 

It's a really sweet, enjoyable text, I'm looking forward to reading more of her stuff (and hopefully seeing it performed someday!).

Mothers: an Essay on Love and Cruelty, Jacqueline Rose

This book returns me to my questions about the difference between theory, auto-theory, and essay. The subtitle claims this to be an essay (and it's an expanded version of a piece from the London Review of Books), but I guess I nonetheless expected it to be more like a work of theory, or I guess just...more rigorous? Not rigor in the sense of hard, but rather, I wanted it to follow up on the promises it made, and develop the ideas more.

The first chapter was really compelling and laid out a bold and interesting argument about motherhood being a repository for cultural anxieties and unreasonable expectations; the idea that mothers are expected to both shield us from the horrors of the world, and also fix the world, but without every being granted power or resources. But the book doesn't really follow up on that argument. Instead, it's a sort of meandering, often personal, meditation on various ideas connected to motherhood — eros, ambivalence, how the experience is portrayed. Is this because it's an essay — is that what essays get to do? We think of auto-theory as fragmentary, but I think there is an expectation of circling back and having a clear through-line of an overall point.

Something interesting, that I think will end up really dating this book, is that there's a whole chapter on Elena Ferrante's novels, which Rose sees as the best representation of motherhood ever, it seems. It reminded me of just how much critical adulation there was for Ferrante, around that time — I think it's passed now (on to Sally Rooney, perhaps) — I enjoyed those books, but I just don't think they're quite as amazing as they were believed to be back then, or maybe, it's that I think the critical consensus on them sort of got them wrong. Anyhow, the fact that Rose devotes this much time to them (and really just says that they're fantastic because they show you the negative sides of mothering — the implication is that no one else really does, which I think is just not true, especially outside of Anglophone lit) sort of makes it seem like this book was written rather quickly, at a moment when Rose (and others) were still just SO excited about Ferrante.

Anyways. Overall, I liked it, I just wanted it to be something slightly different (in part because I read it with a student who is working on an Honors thesis with me, and thought it would be a good work of theory for her to dig into). I wonder, though, if my frustration also stems from a somewhat uneasy balance in the book between the various things it wants to do — theorize, discuss current politics, discuss literature, and do some personal reflection. These are tricky things to weave together, and I guess maybe it also requires some clear sign-posting (and marketing) about what you really intend. Or just a reader who isn't entering the text with strong expectations!

Garden by the Sea, Merce Rodoreda

I loved this book so much that I almost don't want to write about it. It was the perfect summer read. A lovely, melancholic novel — a gardener who describes the amusements and dramas of the families whose summer homes he cares for. The prose is gorgeous (the translation is excellent), the tone is perfect, I just wanted to crawl inside this book forever.

100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write, Sarah Ruhl

 I struggled a little with this book — I felt very, very jealous that I don't get to write one like it. You see, my problem is that I tend to write short, and to think in an abridged, sketched-out sort of way, quickly throwing together a few concepts, or hazarding an idea, but rarely finding the time (or patience) to actually write the complete essay. I've at least gotten to the point of starting to jot down those brief thoughts, in the hopes that I might someday write the essays, but it feels a little like amassing a graveyard of ambitious projects, tbh. So a book like this, where I could just make the biggest version of the claim and pencil in some of the ideas connected to it, without having to color it all in and carefully shade it (why is this all drawing metaphors, no idea, but probably because I'm still thinking about what Brandon Taylor wrote about Elaine de Koonig's preparatory drawings), is, like, the ultimate dream. 

(You've probably noticed that these blog posts all suffer from being half-formed ideas that would really benefit from some development and revision. I try not to think about that too much because I'd rather keep writing them, and if I make myself make them better, I'm likely to stop. I'm letting myself write these very quickly, read once for typos or egregious errors, and hit publish. It's scary.)

Anyways. So my feelings about this book are very clouded by my intense desire to be given the opportunity to write such a thing. And also by the fact that the author has a job at Yale and, I suspect, a lot more money than me. This made me especially grumpy about some of the motherhood parts, because I strongly suspect that she can afford much better childcare than I have (currently: none, until September 9th, wtf Ithaca preschools). So let me say the meanest thing I have to say about this book now, while my own biases are right at the forefront of your mind and you're likely to ignore me: it gets a bit repetitive towards the end. She circles back to the same big ideas, seemingly from different directions, but not really. And sometimes, you really do think: you know, this one, maybe it really did need more development...

But overall, it's a wonderful book, and a lot of the, I want to call them sketches but I have ground that metaphor to dust... fragments? Vignettes? Ideas? Are really fascinating, and are, actually, the perfect size — you get the idea without needing more development. As someone who enjoys theater, and has read plenty of plays, especially, I loved reading more about the perspective of someone who creates plays, and has thoughts about what makes them work, and why. 

It's a mostly charming and enjoyable book, and one that is great to read little by little, in the snatches of time you can steal from other things.

Migratory Birds, Mariana Oliver

In the early 2000s, I wrote an undergraduate thesis on exile autobiography. Theories of migration, dislocation, borders, cosmopolitanism, were pretty trendy back then, and although acknowledged as a painful experience, exile was still being romanticized as providing a privileged kind of perspective (Kader Konuk writes compellingly about this moment in theory in East West Mimesis: Auerbach in Turkey).

Anyways, after really immersing myself in that work for ~2 years, I got…kind of sick of it. And remain a little leery, even today. So I admit that I was a little skeptical of Migratory Birds. But the description mentioned essays about Berlin and Cappadocia, two of my favorite places in the world, and I was already buying Aftermath from Transit Books, and getting another thing would mean free shipping, so...I bought it. And then it arrived and it was so beautiful looking, and invitingly slender, and I was so heartily fed up with unpacking and all the millions of other things I was supposed to be reading and writing that I thought: I’ll treat myself and dip into this.

And I was instantly hooked. The opening essay is about migratory birds, yes, but also, unexpectedly, about a man who built a flying machine, who ended up flying with birds. It’s lovely and tender and surprising, and strikes just the right balance between lyricizing sentiment and cool detachment — an increasingly tricky balancing act, these days. And the rest of the essays follow suit. Though the book covers some terrain you might expect — language, historical trauma, sense of place — it moves over it in unexpected ways, and from the vantage point of a broad collection of places (Berlin, Istanbul, Havana). It’s a real treasure of a book. I wanted to read it in one sitting, but was called to other obligations, and spent most of the time away from it yearning to return. Already, I’m looking forward to rereading it.

The Secret Place, Tana French

 I listened to the audiobook while I was packing up the house in preparation to move, and it was perfect for that — so propulsive and absorbing that it took my mind off of the dreary task I was engaged in.

  That said, it's definitely the weakest in the series, I think, and I cared a lot less about this story than I did about the others. French does something new with this book, shifting between two different perspectives, and jumping around in time, and it's interesting, but also somewhat distracting. Curiously, the technique isn't used all that much to show us each character through the other one's eyes, even though such (mis)perceptions are a central focus of the book. 

 

 A major theme in the novel is the idea of deeply close and intimate friendships, and whether or not they can persevere. We watch the powerful bond between a group of teenage girls fray in various ways, even as they fight to keep it together, and this seems to suggest that such closeness is the provenance of youth, helpless against the onslaught of the demands of the adult world. But curiously, the question resurfaces in a different way in the relationship between the two detectives on the case, as they grow increasingly close. Here, French plays with inter-personal perceptions in a different way, especially, in a key moment, by having another character attempt to play the two detectives off of each other, exploiting both of their insecurities. But they will use this same technique against against the teenagers they interrogate. So there's an interesting entanglement here, an exploration of the subtleties of detective work, and in mechanisms of transference, counter-transference, etc. 

 

 There's a really strong focus on socio-economic class, also a major theme in Broken Harbour, the previous book in the series. It's something that seems to come up a lot in contemporary Irish fiction, far more so than in American or British writing, which is interesting to me (I still want to write something about Sally Rooney and marxism...). 

 

Finally, it's a fairly searing take on the social construction of femininity in adolescence. It really cleverly shows how a choice to abstain from (hetero) sex and relationships can give young women a real jolt of power and confidence — the possibility of removing themselves from a fairly toxic social scene (more like a market) that revolves around hook-ups and impossible expectations (the slut/prude problem). But of course, this seems like a great option until you have to deal with...desire. And French reminds us that teenage desire is a hell of a drug, and that there are, after all, some really lovely things about teenage romance. 

 

As with all Tana French novels, there are just so many fascinating threads to unpack. And her prose is absolutely riveting. So though I liked this one the least of all the others in the series, it's still a pretty solid read.

Cork Dork, Bianca Bosker

 I am convinced that this book — especially towards the beginning — was shaped by an editor, or person at the press, or someone, who gave Bosker some bad advice about what she needed to do to make the book better, by counseling her to play up the eccentricities of the culture she was describing, and make herself more "relatable." I am willing to believe that this was some outsider's input, because about a third of the way through, that annoying fembot routine (mercifully) falls away and the book becomes far more interesting, and better written. 

And I'll even add that, in the defense of the bad advice giver, this book faces significant challenges in identifying its audience, and speaking to their interests. Because basically, it's a book about how Bosker learned to love wine, or rather, it's a book about why wine is interesting, which means there are lengthy sections that detail various things about wine that a lay-person...will probably not find interesting. The ostensible plan is to convince the average reader that they *should* find it interesting, but the fact of the matter is, it's really hard to do that through words alone. You can talk about your own experience, you can talk about the various properties of wine, but I suspect that none of that will really persuade someone who isn't already at least somewhat on board, and frankly, they probably have to be a bit of a nerd, too. But for such a reader, the first chunk of the book, when Bosker is trying to do that persuasive work to spark the initial curiosity, is likely to be tedious, if not downright annoying. I found it so obnoxious that I almost stopped reading. 

The other tough pill to swallow is watching Bosker repeatedly talk her way into incredible opportunities that she is completely unqualified for. How nice for her! If you are a person who works, or has worked, in the restaurant industry, this will drive you absolutely up the wall. Watching her use connections to get into events that other people would kill for, or get hired and make awful mistakes that not only cost lots of money, but also screw over her co-workers, is so, so infuriating, and the blithe way the she skates past it all doesn't help. This is not really a book about the restaurant industry — yes, at the end, she is working in a wine bar, but she still always seems like an outsider, and like someone who is only there passing time until she can do the thing she really wants to do (which, of course, is true of plenty of other people in the industry as well). She also remains deeply skeptical of a lot of the pomp and pretension in fine dining, fair enough! But the result is that she implicitly casts people who make a career out of it as mostly insane.

Despite all that, I did come around on the book in the later portion, largely because what she says about wine really is quite interesting, and you can tell that she genuinely gets into it. Some internet sleuthing tells me that she did, however, quit her wine job, and it seems that she's devoting herself to being a full-time writer. I wouldn't mind reading another book of hers, but I hope that whatever she pursues next, she isn't just inserting herself into a new subculture and being a privileged, incompetent asshole while wringing whatever good material she can out of it.

Foucault in Warsaw, Remigiusz Ryziński

The topic of the book, ostensibly, is Michel Foucault's sojourn in Warsaw in 1958. The problem is, very little is known about it, and almost all records seem to have been destroyed. So the book is also a kind of detective fiction, as Ryziński tracks what few leads are available, trying to piece together what happened, and to imagine what Foucault's experiences in Poland were like. There's not much to work with, so the book wanders a bit, trying to evoke the milieu of queer life in Communist Poland. Which is a fascinating topic!

A few years ago, I did a handful of translations for a zine called DIK: a Fagazine, and one of the issues focused specifically on queer culture during Communism. I loved learning about that world (and the photographs, especially, were just so marvelous) — gorgeous, brave, sometimes tragic. And Karol Radziszewski, the force behind DIK, did such fantastic work in bringing it to life, in no small part because of his incredible talents as an interviewer and artist (DIK isn't available online, but Karol's instagram is also excellent).

Foucault in Warsaw, unfortunately, is less effective. Because the book relies heavily on information drawn from secret police files (part of Operation Hyacinth, a project to create a database of queer people in Poland and track their activities), there's a much grimmer tone to the whole thing. Of course, homophobia past and present is a big part of this story, but I think it's absolutely crucial to also capture the vibrancy and joy, and Ryziński struggles to do that effectively.

I wanted to love this book, and it definitely has some wonderfully poignant moments. But it feels like it's stretched a bit too thin. Ryziński actually has no lack of material to write about, despite the lack of information about Foucault, but he doesn't organize it effectively, and the mostly elegiac tone that the book is written in doesn't do the subject justice. The book is worth reading — it really is a fascinating subject! — but I wish it were better.

Packing My Library, Alberto Manguel

 This book is exactly what I expected it to be — a collection of lovely, meandering reflections and reminiscences about books, reading, and libraries. The title is a play on Benjamin's essay, of course, and these meditations are somewhat Benjaminian in nature. I have been interested, of late, in the difference between so called auto-theory and what is often just called the essay, and this definitely seems to be more in the vein of the latter, but that still doesn't help me get a better grip on the categories! 

There is something about this collection that feels very "old school," but not in an oblivious, gross sort of way. There's an explicit shout-out to the need for a national library to have books on LGBTQ history, for instance, and other moments that mark the author's more progressive political orientations, though there are also complaints about digital culture, distraction, etc. It doesn't feel curmodgeonly, I guess is my point, though it's definitely written in a very classic sort of way.

Nothing in it surprised me, but it was a very pleasant read.

Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe

 This is not a book about America's opioid epidemic. I think it's important to make that clear: the opioid epidemic is a complex phenomenon, with a lot of moving parts, and the mainstream media hasn't done an especially great job helping the public understand it. This book isn't fixing that. In some ways, it probably contributes to some of the more damaging misrepresentations of the issue.* The real focus of this book is the Sackler family, and, basically, what craven, awful people they are. Truly. You get the sense that Keefe really tried to be neutral, but gradually became so appalled by Sacklers that he just couldn't be, anymore.  Simply detailing the facts already paints a pretty devastating portrait, but actually expressing to readers what some of the implications of these facts, it becomes impossible not to sound like you're attacking them. The effect is exacerbated if you listen to the audiobook, read by the author — there's no way he could have kept it out of his voice.

I read the book mainly because I loved Keefe's previous book, Say Nothing, so much (if you haven't read it, get yourself a copy asap; it's phenomenal). And it must be admitted that this one really isn't as good. It's somewhat sloppy, with lots of minor repetitions (where he tells you something damning, with a kind of DUN-DUN-DUN air, and then awhile later, tells you the same thing again). The timeline is mostly straightforwardly chronological, but once you get into the third generation, it gets a little fuzzier, and it also gets much harder to keep the various people straight (especially because the family recycles first names). And the unwavering focus on greed and ambition — while laudable in some ways! — leaves little room for a more detailed character exploration. In particular, I wanted to know more about the family's interests in fine art. Keefe somewhat suggests that it's motivated by a desire for prestige and respect, but I wanted to know more. Of course, the material for such a profile might not have been readily available. Still, at times, I wanted less of a chronicle of what they were doing, and more insight into who these people were, or are. But honestly, despite these flaws, the material is so juicy and salacious that the book is a gripping read anyhow. 

The thing I ultimately found most fascinating was the role that artists, and performance art-style protests, had in the family's decline. Nan Goldin becomes a minor hero by the end of the book, and seems to have been the most formidable force in ending the cozy relationship the Sacklers had with many museums. This is a super interesting insight into the complex relationship between art itself and the high-powered, extremely wealthy, art world. You *can* buy some measure of success and acceptance in the art world! But only up to a point. It turns out that museums care more about their reputation than their donors. 

Ultimately, this is really a kind of pleasurable hate-read. You gain some insight into the crisis, sure — and you definitely get some insight into politics and the power of corporations (horrifying) — but mostly, this is about channeling your vitriolic hatred in a worthy direction.

 

 

* A lot of the narrative about the epidemic has been about the individual people struggling because of their drug use, or about the potency of the drugs they're taking, or maybe about the evils of Purdue pharma, and very little of it has been about the way our society treats drug users, and how criminalization of drugs invariably leads to a lot more injury and death. Keefe acknowledges this, a little, at the end of the book, where he not only says that the book doesn't get into the intricacies of the epidemic, but also notes that he does not weigh in on controversies over how chronic pain should be managed. He makes two points which are both important and valid — first, that there is a genuine stigma attached to long-term opioid use, and that it means that people who struggle with chronic pain also struggle to receive proper care. Second, the Sackler clan has callously exploited this fact to sell more oxycontin and make more money, and we shouldn't give them a pass on that. The book very clearly demonstrates the latter, but only glancingly mentions the former. It would be easy to walk away from it with a sense that the major problem is the potency of the drugs, and increased access to them.

Ticket to Childhood, Nguyen Nhat Anh

 Picked this up randomly on a recent visit to the Seminary Co-op, and I've been feeling pretty blah and unfocused lately, so I treated myself to a morning of reading in bed. The joy of short novels!

This is a charming and winsome little book — a quick read whose sly humor and meta-fictional play keeps it from being an overly saccharine meditation on the nature of childhood. It's a light and playful read, one that could easily seem grating if you weren't in the right mood, but is perfectly pleasant if you are. You can easily see why it was a massive best-seller — it's just the right amount of good cheer and casual philosophy.

Things We Lost in the Fire, Mariana Enriquez

 I was feeling sort of so-so about this collection of short stories — nothing wrong with it, just not really blowing me away — and then it was a hot hot Chicago day, and I was at my partner's mother's apartment, and she has no air conditioning, and I felt absolutely swollen with heat, so (taking advantage of my child being distracted by his grandmother) I ran myself an ice cold bath, and grabbed this book. The specific story I started reading is one about halfway through, called Adela's House, and it is terrifying. Reading it in a silent bathroom, slipping slowly into the icy water, was absolutely incredible — literally chilling. And that fantastic experience totally changed my relationship to the book: I tore through the rest over the next few days.

These are fascinating stories, to me, because they are so hard to place, generically. You want to call them gothic, but they're more like actual horror — at times, almost unbearably so — and yet, they're also deeply interested in the inner lives and feelings of the characters. The terror stems both from deeply weird and creepy things happening in the world, and from subterranean traumas in the characters' own psyches. And so the plots balance between the two, emphasizing the impossibility of any real resolution. 

It's a intensely unsettling collection, and I'm honestly not sure how I felt about it, but it's definitely unlike anything else I've read.

Provence, 1970, by Luke Barr

It seemed appropriate to follow the Bourdain with another food book, this one focused on one of my great loves, MFK Fisher. I listened to the audiobook, and maybe zoned out a little here and there, unfortunately, but nonetheless absolutely relished this book. Written by Fisher's grand-nephew, it focuses mostly on her, and a pivotal moment in 1970, where she felt the world, and her life, changing, as the food scene evolved, and France no longer seemed as idyllic as it had formerly. It's a wonderful portrayal of an older woman who is reflecting on her successes, and relationships, and loves, and pondering what she wants. And for Fisher fans, it's just a pleasure to be in her orbit, so to speak. The pleasure was heightened, because over the weekend I got to have dinner at one of my all-time favorite restaurants, and they still have one of my favorite dishes on the menu, the boquerones, and having those with a small glass of sherry just feels like the perfect way to pay tribute to the woman.

But in addition to all the great MFK Fisher content, there's also plenty of wonderfully gossipy stuff about the (sometimes catty) social scene of all the major food writers — the Childs, James Beard, Elizabeth David, Richard Olney. And some interesting reflections on the changing American food scene, from the loving embrace of French cooking, and local produce, and the later rise of appreciation for various ethnic foods. There's a particular interest in the links to snobbery and pretension, and some occasional gestures towards our foodie present, and the culture of celebrity chefs and cooking shows. I didn't track this as much, regrettably, because my attention is rather divided these days, but there's some good stuff there.

Overall though, it's just an excellent summer read. The prose is lovely, and there are plenty of great descriptions of incredible meals. A very enjoyable book.

Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain

 Seeing this wonderful trailer for the new documentary about Bourdain inspired me to finally pick up Kitchen Confidential, which I'd somehow never read. I was fond of Bourdain: though I only watched his various shows occasionally, my partner would generally watch the episode of Parts Unknown that covered whatever place we were traveling to to get recommendations (and then sometimes we'd re-watch the episode after coming back, as a way to revisit our trip), and so perhaps part of my love for the man is because all of his recommendations were fantastic, so I am indebted to him for some really wonderful experiences. We also have some of his cookbooks, and have made some great meals out of them. I like his style, which is a kind of no-bullshit attitude that is leavened with a deep solidarity with people experiencing any form of oppression. And so it was interesting to finally read the book that made him famous — or rather, to listen to it, read by the man himself, in his wonderfully distinctive voice. 

You can see why Kitchen Confidential rocked the foodie world when it came out. I've read a handful of restaurant memoirs, and this one is still by far the most explicit in revealing some of the less appealing sides of the business. And not just the gross stuff, like days-old fish being served up as specials, but also the exploitative labor practices, and more significantly, the hard realities of what they drive people to do. Bourdain is open about the toxicity of the culture in kitchens, and he doesn't exempt himself in his descriptions of it. Actually, one of the most interesting moments is towards the end, when he describes the kitchen of a chef whom he admires, and marvels at how it essentially contradicts almost everything he's said about what restaurants are like. Maybe, he realizes, the chaotic conditions in places he's worked is due in part to...himself, and the way he operates. Maybe he's part of the problem.

It's hard not to read this book through the lens of knowledge about the tragic end of Bourdain's life, and I think it's unavoidable that the many passages about depression, rage, and a sense of futility resonate differently in light of it. From this angle, one could say that this is a book that traces the trajectory of a single man's growth and development, from a bratty privileged asshole to a far more self-aware, and openly flawed, man with a deep appreciation, not just of food, but also of what it takes to make it, and perhaps a renewed sense of moral obligation. Something that is especially wonderful is that this development is very clearly a work in progress, and one where you can see some of the seeds of what came later — one of the final chapters of the book describes a trip to Japan, and it's really fascinating to see Bourdain not only thrill to the experience of a cuisine that's entirely new to him, and recapture an excitement that had seemed somewhat lost, but also to watch as he learns how to travel. It's kind of amazing to see him be so bad at it at first — having to hype himself up to go into a noodle bar and order rather than eating his first Japanese meal at Starbucks, for instance. 

Though the central narrative here is really about Bourdain himself, first, and about restaurant culture and labor, second, there's also a fair amount about food and cooking that's kind of fun and interesting to. It's because of this book, for instance, that my partner disdains garlic presses (and I will admit that in the full context of the entire book, I might be a little more convinced, though I will absolutely keep using it for the garlic that goes in salad dressings). My favorite part was the paean to shallots, which he says are just utterly underused in home cooking, and I fully agree.

Anyways. I don't think Bourdain was a saint (and he would no doubt think you were an idiot if you disagreed), and I don't think his various shows were without problems,* but I have a great appreciation for the man, and this book made it even stronger.

* Total tangent, but something that really annoyed me was that his Istanbul episode was filmed during Ramadan. Wtf? That's just dumb timing, and a poor representation of the city. But on the other hand, maybe it actually did some valuable work in demystifying and unpacking some stereotypes. I dunno. This is part of what makes me a bit leery of Parts Unknown, and I kind of think that it was something that Bourdain struggled with as well — wanting to share an appreciation for travel and different parts of the world, but also being aware of the ethical problems involved, and so much of the awfulness of tourism. You sensed that he felt responsible, and in a complex way, even as he also wanted to refuse that responsibility and pretend it was just about enjoying the food. Or so it seemed to me. In the grand scheme of things, I think it was actually more honest and open about the politics of it all than a lot of other foodie shows are these days. But I haven't really watched enough to make a strong claim in that regard.

How Much of These Hills is Gold? by C Pam Zhang

I had such mixed feelings about this book! I freely acknowledge that probably, part of the problem was that I was drawn to it because I loved Téa Obreht's Inland so much, and I kept wanting it to be more like that, which is ridiculous and unfair. 

That said, this is a challenging book, and a very uneven one. It's absolutely absorbing, and wonderfully vivid, at times, but it also has big chunks that feel utterly contrived. As I was reading, I found myself thinking, "This is made up. This is all just made up." Which, of course, is all fiction, so what was it that was bugging me here? Was it the plot twists? Was it the writing style? Was it that it seemed like the author was trying to say something profound about gender, cultural identity, etc, but it was actually kind of incoherent? Or — to be charitable to the author — was it that the text was subverting my expectations of what The Olde West is "supposed" to be like, when as I recognize that those expectations are largely invented fictions?

Similarly, was the odd pacing — where crucial details that utterly changed your sense of the entire story were casually tossed out at random, and entire years jumped by in a few paragraphs that were so crammed with plot points that they could be spun out into their own novel — a brilliant innovation that was challenging storytelling conventions, or just... clumsy plotting?

Certainly, there are parts of this story that feel incredibly cliché, and not in an intentional way. But it also does have some wonderfully nuanced explorations of the fluidity of identity. 

I don't know. I think Zhang has a ton of potential, but this book...feels like a MFA thesis.

Confessions of the Fox, Jordy Rosenberg

 I have this weird problem, which is that when a book aligns extremely closely with my particular intellectual interests or loves, it makes me uncomfortable. I am far too accustomed to being an outsider, I guess, even within particular communities that I am a part of. So this novel, which is first and foremost an engagement with the 18th century, its history and fiction, and the scholarship written about it, from a perspective that is strongly oriented to studies of sex and gender, queerness, and race, was just so firmly in my wheelhouse that I kept metaphorically looking over my shoulder as I read it, like, this is a joke right? It was super interesting to me to read this with my bookclub, none of whom are 18C lit people (but one of whom is a historian), and to hear about how it came across to them. Academics are so accustomed to thinking that nobody else finds their area interesting that it's kind of revelatory to realize that other people might also be into it.

On the other hand, I also kind of hate the whole trope of scholars working on a discovered manuscript cast as thrilling adventure. This is very much a me problem, not a problem with this book. Actually, Rosenberg's version is almost a parody of this mode, told through footnotes, with a genuinely hilarious satire of the corporate university occasionally interjecting in chirpy all-caps. But I nonetheless found myself somewhat impatient with the repeated mentions of a coded meaning available for those with eyes to see. And frustrated by the half story told in the footnotes about the narrator and his various relationships — I wanted to hear more, which is of course a nice reversal of the historical novel idea, and I also wanted him to get his shit together, which is maybe in part a send-up of the whole tormented genius male academic thing, I dunno. The post-modern footnote aspect is definitely part of the book's charm, and I truly loved seeing scholarship that I care a lot about being cited, but maybe it was just a touch too conspiratorial for me.

But the body of the novel, ostensibly Jack's memoirs, is absolutely gorgeous. So beautifully written, such lush and vivid detail. It was lyrical and warm and sexy and just wonderful. A story you could completely sink into.

Overall, I really can't wait to see what Jordy Rosenberg writes next.

Traveling Black: a Story of Race and Resistance, Mia Bay

 I was thinking this would be sort of like the book about travel in the Polish People's Republic that I read recently, except about African Americans in the US. But it's actually more about how travel creates legal complexities that scramble segregation efforts. Like, it turns out that a big part of how the Civil Rights Act of 1964 actually got reinforced was through the angle of interstate commerce — though it also turns out that Plessy vs. Ferguson was a case about train travel. As Bay notes at the outset, a lot of social history tends to focus on how groups inhabit a given place, not so much how they move from one place to another, or where they vacation. But a closer look at travel, especially in 20th century America, illuminates so many different aspects of society — infrastructure, laws, leisure, relationships of race, gender, class. And the history of segregation and the struggle for civil rights is such a fundamental part of American history (as we are increasingly coming to realize...), and it's really kind of astonishing stuff, when you dive into the details.

It's a fascinating and important history, but it must be admitted that the book is a little dry. Isabel Wilkerson sort of spoiled me for reading history — I'm like, oh, it's not all riveting page turners?? This one feels a bit more academic. And though there are anecdotes throughout that give you some sense of the lived experience behind these various issues, overall the book is more focused on legal history. I bought this book, Driving While Black, at the same time, and it will be interesting to see how it compares.

Minor Feelings: an Asian American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hoang

 This is terrific. A collection of autobiographical essays, loosely gathered around the theme of Asian American womanhood. I'd been thinking about the specificities of Asian identity more after a fantastic panel on Critical Brownness Studies at the MLA earlier this year, and this book returned to some of the issues I had heard about there (especially the position of Asians within a US racial hierarchy organized around anti-Blackness), but it also went in some unexpected, and incredibly thought-provoking, directions. I'm especially thinking about the essay about Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, which starts with the observation that the volumes of writing about her rarely mention her rape and murder, and then goes on to explore how to write about that, as well as an excellent essay on Richard Pryor and stand-up comedy.*

  The more autobiographical essays — especially one about college friendships and becoming an artist — are also fantastic. I found myself reflecting on the difference between essay and auto-theory — these are definitely essays, and I'm still pondering what that means exactly. Certainly, they do not feel self-indulgent in the way that auto-theory often can, and I think that's partly because, although they go in all kinds of surprising directions, there is a consistent theme or idea that holds them together. I like the looseness and whimsy of auto-theory, sometimes, but there's a limit. This book, though, strikes the exact right balance of meta-reflection, a judicious use of the pause to stop and ponder the thing one has just said, or openly worry about whether to say something else. The book's wonderful dry humor is crucial as well — it doesn't appear, as you might expect, in those meta-moments, but at other, unexpected points that provide a helpful leavening in a book that also pulls off the admirable feat of having really compelling moments of intense anger.

Required reading!

* A persistent fascination of mine. If you know of some good writing on stand-up comedy, please, tell me about it.

Spring, Ali Smith

 I love Ali Smith, and I've been enjoying the Seasonal Quartet, but I kind of hated this one. It felt sensationalistic and gross. The blend of magic and realism was exactly wrong for a representation of immigration detention centers, and the characters seemed utterly false. I don't know if I just wasn't in the right mood for it or what, because even Smith's style, which I typically love, came to seem twee and grating.

I'm determined to read each book in the quarter in its season, but I might wait until the very end of summer for the last one, to let the grumpiness wear off...

The Biggest Bluff, Maria Konnikova

 I started playing poker in graduate school with a group of friends, and quickly fell in love with the game. We played pretty regularly (like every other week) for years, and I missed it terribly when I left. I'd come to think of myself as being a decent player, and when I was in Vegas for a friend's bachelorette weekend, I even spent a few hours at a cash game, and came out of it $100 richer. Then, last January, I signed up for free poker lessons from Poker Powher, this super awesome organization that teaches women to play poker (for free!!!), and reconnected to my love for the game. I also discovered I wasn't nearly as good as I thought I was, heh heh, but after three months of weekly lessons, and lots of (free) practice games, I got a whole lot better. And now I just want to play all the time.*

I had posted something about all this on facebook, and a friend recommended Konnikova's book. I'll confess, I was a little skeptical, but I got the audiobook from the library (read by the author, which is always nice), and 10 minutes later, I was hooked. This is a really great book. It's not so much an account of how Konnikova learned to play poker (and play it well) as it is an investigation into the nature of poker as a game, and more broadly, into the way people conceptualize luck and risk. What does it mean to gamble? Why do we think of poker as gambling, but not, say, attending a PhD program in the humanities (surely the riskier endeavor, with more on the line). I've been super fascinated by these questions for awhile — not just because I am the graduate of such a PhD program, and have dealt with the roulette-like job market more than once, but all the more so during the onset of the pandemic, which was a particularly vivid illustration of the totally illogical way people understand risk — and Konnikova brilliantly shows how examining poker is actually the ideal way to study them.

On the way, you get some fun stories about the eccentric characters she meets, and a few brief scenes of the heart-pounding, nerve-wracking experience of playing Hold 'Em (especially as a woman, an aspect of the book I particularly appreciated). If you're an aspiring poker player, what you get in this book is not really a set of lessons for how to play, but a philosophy of play that helps you wrap your head around its particular combination of luck and skill. A lot of poker lore is focused on the idea of bluffing and tells, and yes, that stuff matters, but it's not quite as all-encompassing as some movies make it out to be (though I do think the mental aspect of the game is one of its biggest challenges, and one I'm still very much learning). The Biggest Bluff is really useful in the way that it carefully sorts through all those aspects. But the particular pleasure of this book, I think, is that Konnikova also subtly, gradually, draws out the beauty of poker — the things about it that make it, really, the perfect game.

It's a really fun read, and a much more intellectual one than I'd expected. Highly recommended!

* Free games are great, but they're really not the same as playing for money. Hence I am currently seeking a generous patron, interested in sponsoring me...

The Black Unicorn, Audre Lorde

You may be thinking, wow Kasia, you already abandoned the blogging, so soon? But actually, I've been a terrible reader. This might actually happen to me at the end of every semester — I get so excited about having additional reading time that I start running around like a headless chicken, picking up every book I pass. So I'm in the middle of, like, 12 books right now, and that's the main reason why I haven't posted.

But I did finished Audre Lorde's Black Unicorn. I pretty much always have a book of poetry going, usually in the bathroom (sorry poets). Lorde is in what I've termed my pantheon, aka, the collection of authors whose complete works I intend to read. Her work is so, so amazing. My first introduction to her writing was actually Cancer Journals, which is not where most people start, but it's an incredible text — she writes about her mastectomy and cancer treatment, and it's just a completely mind-opening work on gender, intimacy, self, illness. If you haven't read her, I think Sister Outsider is really the place to begin. What makes her essays so astonishing is the incredibly straightforward way that she moves through her ideas. We often think of difficulty as a marker of intelligence, when it comes to critical theory, but Lorde's writing is extremely accessible. As I write this, I'm wondering whether I'd call her ideas complex, and I'm really not sure — but certainly, they are profound. 

This was my first forray into her poetry, and it's actually very similar, in some sense, to the essays. The language is mostly fairly simple, but there's just an incredible force to her words, and you find yourself re-reading them over and over, working through the enormity of what is being said. For example:

TO MARTHA: A NEW YEAR

As you search over this year

with eyes your heart has

sharpened

remember longing.

I do not know your space now

I only seek a woman whom I love

trapped there

by accident.

but such places do not change

so much

as what we seek in them

and faith will serve

along the way

to somewhere else

where work begins.

This is writing that is openly spiritual, full of feeling, connected to a sense of ancient, elemental ways of being, and that's the kind of thing that can be difficult for soul-less intellectuals like me, heh heh, but truly, Lorde's writing is the closest I come to religion, and these poems feel like sacred texts.

Friends of the Library sale

 People had mentioned the Friends of the Library book sale as one of the great perks of living in Ithaca; an annual springtime ritual. But I was nonetheless surprised to arrive and find a line extending down the block! It felt kind of thrilling to be in a long line for something fun — remember concerts? People ahead of us were chatting (masked, from 6 feet away) about how long they'd been waiting, rumors flew about how much time it would take to get in. We quickly realized that we weren't able (or in the mood) to wait a few hours and decided to come back early the next day.

 

And so we arrived on Sunday bright and early, and got in line (only about 10 people ahead of us), and after maybe half an hour, we were in! They limit the number of people inside even more so than usual because of covid, and everyone was very considerate — if you were looking at a particular shelf, people waited until you were done. I wonder if it's usually more of a push-and-shove sort of affair. It was hard not to feel that delicious urgency to grab at whatever gem you saw before someone else got to it, even with less people — with more, I would have been a complete maniac. 

    I made a beeline for the literary criticism section first, then went to fiction, then poetry, then graphic novels. Next time I'll know to start with graphic novels first — that section was totally decimated. I didn't even make it to the children's books, because I'm the worst mom ever, but luckily my partner picked up a few things (a Richard Scarry and The Runaway Bunny).

 

 

 

And then, here's what I picked up...

 

I'm a little embarrassed at the size of these stacks, tbh. I definitely went overboard. But what a haul!! Some highlights I'm especially excited about:

   I was reasonably into the Wrinkle in Time series as a kid, but as a teenager I discovered L'Engle's books for adults, and those, I really got into. I haven't read either of these, and I'm very curious what they'll be like. 

    Barbara Pym, Muriel Spark, Penelope Fitzgerald, and Joseph Roth are authors I'm completist about — steadily amassing and reading everything they've written. 

    I read Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other when it won the Booker, and liked it, and then randomly picked up The Emperor's Babe (it was on a semi-decorative bookshelf at a bar and they let me have it) and enjoyed that too. Blonde Roots imagines a world where Africans enslaved Europeans. I tend to hate this kind of fantasy alternative to historical atrocity stuff, but I'm curious what she does with the premise.

    I read Kitchen in January and people came out of the woodwork to tell me about their high school obsession with Banana Yoshimoto. So I'm clearly overdue.

    Will I actually tackle Marguerite Yourcenar's Abyss? It's rather dauntingly long, and I imagine it to be the same kind of dry, bejeweled, slow burn sort of experience as her other works. I feel so overwhelmed with work right now that it's hard to imagine having the time to sit and sink into this, but someday... Surely summer is precisely when one finds time for such things? The Elizabeth Taylor and Rebecca West novels, and The Makioka Sisters, too, seem like the quintessential summer read — sprawling sorts of stories best read on a towel or blanket outside... (I was just saying on twitter that I don't quite understand the category of the beach read).

Second Skin by John Hawkes and Woman at Point Zero are the only two of the novels that I really know absolutely nothing about, and picked up entirely out of whim (I did a quick check of goodreads and saw that Chad Post had liked Second Skin, so boom, sold. Goodreads is good for stuff like that). All the others, I've either read something else by the author, or have had them, or that book, on my radar for awhile. The poetry I'm much more random about — I flip through it and read a few, and if it calls to me, I take it home. 

But now I really, REALLY, should not buy any more books for a good long time. Except Ali Smith's Summer when it comes out in paperback next week, because I randomly decided to read each of the books in the quartet in their season, and thus started on Spring last night because jeeze, summer is almost here! 

But after that, really, nothing for a few months. Really!

Poetry to-read stack

 

I really bought into all that April is Poetry Month propaganda...

The Cook, Maylis de Kerangal, tr. Sam Taylor

 I was just talking to some friends last night about the restaurant industry world, and what a unique ecosystem it is. They were surprised to hear that I had never really been an industry worker, because my partner was one for 10+ years. As I explained, it helped a lot that I was in grad school at the time — one of the few other (bizarre) ecosystems that has an extremely variable schedule, such that, sure, I can meet you out for drinks at 1am, why not? 

So I got to know the industry over the years, sort of, but from the outside. I haven't lived it, but I've heard lots and lots and lots of stories, and learned a bit about how things work (and how messed up they are). And after a few years of that — and especially after starting to read various industry memoirs and other such things — I also started to realize that many people (most people!) don't know this stuff! And it's actually kind of amazing, just how unaware so much of our society is about the day-to-day realities of workers in this entire, massive portion of the economy. You see this, especially, in a lot of the conversation around AOC and her bartending experience. But the pandemic also lays bare, both how unbelievably difficult (and exploitative) the economics of restaurants are, and how clueless so many people (including lawmakers!) are about it. Why aren't they re-opening, they can now seat at 50% capacity? Because  they can't make enough of a profit to stay open at 50% capacity!!

Ok, but why am I on this soapbox about the industry? (I was intending it to be more meditation than rant, ooops) It's because this slim novella is the story of a chef named Mauro. And so it's (ostensibly) about the industry. I love reading about this world, because there are so many fascinating things to explore about how it works — not just the economic stuff I mentioned (though that is interesting, especially if you're the angry marxist type), but also the nature of the labor (grueling, repetitive, but also artistic), the characters (SUCH characters), the inter-personal dynamics — so much good material! Plus, it's an opportunity to have lots of descriptions of FOOD. What's not to love?

So this book is what happens if you write about the industry, and...don't do any of that.

I don't like being negative about books, especially literature in translation, unless it's already massively popular and really doesn't need more support, so I'm just going to stop there. Not a must-read!