READ ALL ABOUT IT
Since 2012, I’ve been writing about books. And the act of reading. And the importance of story and narrative. But, mostly, the underlying theme of all I write is how taking a moment to stop and digest some longform text — instead of scrolling, instead of watching a video, instead of multitasking — can be one of the most grounding things we can do for ourselves. Here’s the one-stop online home for all this writing.
You can read more about me and my work by moseying over here. Want to peruse periodic “essay drops” — excerpts from my work-in-progress essay collection about Homesickness? Here ya go.
Liars
Liars is about a long-in-tooth marriage that becomes that way ostensibly because the husband is a jackass. And he absolutely is. John is first and foremost a liar, and having observed similar nasty situations over the years, I have to say that Sarah Manguso’s illustration of John is pitch-perfect. (It’s like these things … follow a pattern or something?!) I feel like critics/reviewers and maybe even Manguso herself want readers to then question whether or not the wife, Jane, is a liar as well — “unreliable narrator” and all that. That’s fair, and maybe she really is lying to herself sometimes. (We all do on occasion, yes?)
Reading as Work
Writer Mireille Silcoff has done just as the NYT Opinion headline says — bribed her 12-year-old daughter with $100 to read The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han — and I mostly do not have a problem with that. (I know you — or she — didn’t ask, but oh well.) Silcoff admits right off the bat that the payoff is “excessive” (it is) and that she felt like a “parenting failure” when she acknowledged that her daughter didn’t read for pleasure (she’s not).
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Today I found myself perusing a Reddit thread about learning to weave, which…YOLO! (Yes, I have a weird desire to learn to weave. Weave what? Idk. But I loved bringing home a loom from Blue Birds when I was a kid, and for several months I’ve been wanting to learn a hands-on hobby to tap into a different part of the creative brain.)
Practice
What is it like to go through one’s day without analyzing every facet of one’s most basic routine? Darned if I know… (🫥)
Who’s a Critic?
Latest pet interest = criticism. As in literary criticism, not me rolling my eyes at that weird thing you said. (Am I projecting on myself??) It started with me re-discovering the work of Stanley Fish, whose book Is There a Text in this Class? helped provide the framework for my masters thesis so long ago. I then read Claire Dederer’s much-lauded Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, an exploration of how to reconcile liking good art created by people who have done really not-good things (i.e. Woody Allen) that partly — and perceptively — shifts into how Dederer approaches her career as a critic. (In a nutshell, “…a never-ending flow of judgement, which nestles together with subjectivity.”)
Shark Heart
Amy to Matt: “I’m thinking of this post and I’m starting it with how I think about death on occasion. Well, actually, a fair amount. Is that a weird and/or concerning thing to share?”
Matt to Amy: “Uh, yes. Are you catastrophizing?”
A: “No, not really. Well, don’t you think about what happens? Like, is a soul something that lives on? Does a ‘being’ really just ‘disappear’? That sort of thing. I thought everyone ponders these ideas.”
M: “No, I do not ponder that.”
Absolution
“It’s all about value assigned.” This was the key line, for me, in Alice McDermott’s latest, Absolution. Interestingly, I had been sort of turning over this idea of “value” that we assign to things even before reading that line. Said another way: “What’s the point?”
Yaa Gyasi in Charlotte
The other week, I got to see Yaa Gyasi at the closing event for a NEA Big Read event, coordinated by the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture. Hooray for a new friend who knew about it and invited me! (Too bad I didn’t know about the initiative until the end of it and too bad that I never finished Homegoing when my book club in Dublin read it just as we were preparing to move back to the US. Guess life got busy, but I will rectify that soon especially now that I have a signed copy…)
Clear
The stories we make up about others, about circumstances, about ourselves, even, when we are in need of connection and comfort. That is, in sum, what Clear by Carys Davies is about.
A State of Becoming
“We carry around ideas of people in our heads, fixed ideas of their character and firm predictions of how they’ll behave, what they’ll say before the hour is up and the facial expressions they’ll make that will unaccountably get under our skin. We tell stories about them that never vary, never improve, then confirm that our ideas are accurate every time we get reacquainted.” – from A Calling for Charlie Barnes, by Joshua Ferris. (I read this book at the very end of 2021 and I think I’d add it to my “gobble up” list too. I’ll share my wayback post about it in stories..)
Summerwater
I know everyone loves a gratitude journal. That’s great and all, but a gratitude journal doesn’t really do much for me. (Don’t misunderstand: I try to “practice gratitude” on the regular and of course am thankful for many, many things…I’m not a sociopathic lunatic, ok?)
Instead, at different points in my life, I’ve kept what I guess I’d call a “surprise journal.” (Can a stationery company please design an official version with that “surprise, surprise” lady on the cover?)
Behind the Moon
There was a tidbit on a recent This American Life episode (the one titled “Lists!!!”) that described all the lists this woman keeps on her phone. They were more than the usual to-do lists that we probably all have. Instead, one of her ongoing lists was something along the lines of “Things I Do That are Off-Brand for Me.” It made me laugh. Partly because this was a much younger — and much more unattached — person than I and one of her “off brand” items was that she hadn’t kissed anyone famous. We like collecting good questions — ones that are fun to pull out with friends that might illuminate something we might not know about each other — and this is one we’ll add to the arsenal for sure because it raises some good sub-questions such as: Do I *have* a “brand”? But also, finding something off-brand about oneself is actually kind of hard! (We did finally come up with some tepid answers.)
Truro Dune Shacks
See that little speck? It’s one of the famous dune shacks in Truro on Cape Cod; this one, I learned, is where Tennessee Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire.
Walking With Alanis
“To each of our children
I wish to bequeath two characteristics:
The capacity for independence.
The ability to love.
Much of life is lonely.
Most decision-making is lonely.
Independence of mind is the best
Insurance for a rewarding journey.”
— Rolfe Neill, former Chairman and Publisher of the Charlotte Observer, as quoted on the sculpture “The Writer’s Desk” outside of ImaginOn, a children’s library and the home of the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte.
The Alternatives
There’s a fine line between technology & tool — at least when it comes to casual parlance. I mean, yes, people will talk about personal technology as a “tool,” but I don’t think many of us think about, say, a hammer as “technology.” In grad school, I had to read Technics and Civilization by Lewis Mumford. I remember it being mind-expanding because although it was published in 1934, Technics and Civilization had a lot to say about “technology” — meaning everything from a clock (sundial, really) to electricity — and how humans use them…and for what outcome. For reference, this was in a Communications and Media Studies discipline so the lesson here is that all these tools were actually technologies that helped shaped our world. (In other words, “technology” doesn’t have to involve the internet.)
Wandering Stars
“I think most sequels are bad.” This is what a character in Tommy Orange’s new novel, Wandering Stars, says. This character — like other characters in the second half of this book — was originally introduced to readers in Orange’s much-lauded debut, There There. So that’s kind of interesting since Wandering Stars is a sequel of sorts. But Wandering Stars is also a prequel in that we get three generations of history — and “explanation,” if you will — of these characters in the first half of Orange’s second novel. On a surface level, this is Orange’s attempt at making sense of addiction and why some people might fall under its curse. But specifically, he’s tracing a trail from the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School to a family of “urban Indians” in Oakland. He is offering up detailed origin stories for Jacquie, Orvil, Opal, as well as Loother and Lony — all from There There.
Life’s a Journey
From Newsletter Issue No. 18:
In 1985, a movie called The Journey of Natty Gann debuted, and I thought it was the Greatest Thing Ever. I even wrote about it in the journal my teacher required us to keep. (That said, I think on this particular day all I wrote is “I watched a movie called The Journey of Natty Gann.”) It turns out that John Cusack was in it, but my fourth-grade self had no idea who he was or that he was on his way to being iconic Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything. I saw it with my mom in a theater in Seattle’s Southcenter mall, which was nowhere near our home, so the only thing I can think of is that we saw it en route to or from my grandparents’ house. Ergo, it truly felt like a proper “outing” — maybe we were doing some back-to-school shopping. I have a vague recollection of being in a fussy mood (not uncommon in that era, I’m sorry to say, especially when it came to clothing), but the film calmed me. Call it my journey from brat (Bratty Gann?!) to curious 9-year-old film connoisseur.
The Extinction of Irena Rey
Knives Out, but it’s a group of translators trying to figure out where their author — a famous Polish writer named Irena Rey (“Our Author” in their parlance) — has disappeared to after they convene in a forest village between Poland and Belarus to translate her newest novel, Grey Eminence. The Extinction of Irena Rey is written by Jennifer Croft, primarily (until now?) known for her translation work — she won the Booker in 2018 for her English translation of Flights by Olga Tokarczuk. I know of Croft because of her fab work of autofiction, Homesick, which she originally wrote in Spanish. The Extinction of Irena Rey is actually a novel in a novel; Croft has masterminded the story to be “written” by an Argentinian and then “translated” to English by an American. Got that?
Yu & Me (and a Bookstore Dream)
Whew, what a story. Retail is such a tough business; bookstores among the hardest of the bunch. (Any booksellers following here can attest, I’m sure.) Marketing folks are no dummies: They know that ensconcing their product with verbiage that connotes “community” or “authenticity” is the way to go. My son recently bought a pack of Italian ices, and the slogan is “Treat your REAL self.” Similarly, Oatly oat milk uses one whole side of a carton to promote its mission to “build a better society for people.” Well, ok! But at their finest, bookstores truly are the real deal, no fancy marketing required.
The Bee Sting
SPECTACULAR. That’s all I have to say.
