“Little by little, this conjunction of circumstances strengthened Leonardo’s certainty that his power was incontestable and his whims legitimate…” – Rosario Castellanos, ‘The Book of Lamentations’
CW: The novel below features, right ding-danged in Chapter 2, a depiction of what I imagine Ghislaine Maxwell’s alleged job was. The “Epstein” character in this analogy continues to be a central character. I don’t discuss it any more in this newsletter, but in case you’re thinking of picking up the book, heads up.
My mother, who is a saint and a genius, told me once that the thing she worried most about with the direction of the country was income inequality. Talked about how since 1980, income inequality metrics had done nothing but go up, and that’s unhealthy for society. This was back in like 2003-2005ish, before the 2016 Bernie campaign resurrected mainstream socialism. More recently, she expressed what read to me as incredulity that capitalism wasn’t working out. Like a “how did they screw this up” kind of thing. I’m not saying this to say my mother’s gotten conservative, far from it. I’m just saying it’s interesting how one day you can be all “looks like a problem is coming” and before you know it you’re all “holy shit what do we do about this problem.” Speaking of, the book I read this week!
What I’ve Been Reading Lately
Back when I worked in a warehouse at a used bookstore, one of my weekly tasks was recycling books. It sounds horrifying to any reasonable person, but the fact is there is not enough space for all the books. Our biggest metric for deciding what was recycling bin fodder was where the book ranked on Amazon’s sales list. Under #5,000? Not a title any of the employees had heard of? Recycling bin fodder. Fortunately, being a person with some say in recycling bin fodder, I could rescue some books.
Let me tell you, if there’s a book that steals its title from the Bible and has a Mexican author? My dude, I am rescuing that book every time.
Man am I grateful I took a chance on this book. It sat on my shelf a while, too. The Book of Lamentations by Rosario Castellanos is a broad-scoping book of expanding and contracting fractals where each chapter reads like a mural. It’s dense, it’s sweeping, it’s zeroed in on single, sometimes unexpected moments that lead to years of massive change. It’s so so good. It’s tenderly and empathetically written in a way that’s frankly amazing when you learn Castellanos is the daughter of a landowning family in Chiapas. There was a worry for a second that I’d picked up Mexican Gone With The Wind; do not worry, this book is excellent.
I lead with the recycling bin story because so much of what is described in this novel set in 1930s Chiapas is still extremely relevant to the present-day US. How quickly things can change, how long-simmering angers that should have been obvious can be. The 21st century seems hell-bent on repeating all the worst parts of the 20th, maybe everyone everywhere should give this book a read first.
LINKS!
I was very lucky to get to review Patterns of Orbit, the forthcoming story collection from the one and only Chloe N. Clark. It’s a marvelous collection of mostly sci-fi, but there are horror and fairy tales thrown in too. The writing is lyrical, the characters are cared about, the details rich. I thought about Lydia Millet and Aimee Bender while I read it, which is close to the highest compliment I can pay a book. Chloe also got this sick spread in Electric Lit that’s worth checking out.
I title this “Accidental Revolution” because I stumbled on this next one, completely unrelated to The Book of Lamentations. I was cleaning out tabs on my phone this week and ended up checking out the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan for the first time. I kinda need someone I trust to recommend a history podcast before I’ll listen. Never know when some old white guy’s gonna slip a “but the Nazis had cool uniforms…” in there. Anyway, I’ve been listening to the episodes on the Mexican Revolution in conjunction with reading The Book of Lamentations. It’s well done and interesting, and absolutely infuriating to realize how ignorant I am of Mexican history and politics. I could probably name three presidents and 10 states. Shameful. Thankfully, learning is a lifelong journey, and I’m enjoying what Mike Duncan has to offer.
Again, cleaning out tabs on my phone, and finally got around to this Baffler article from 2020 by Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, “The Map and the Territory.” Its entrypoint is Indigenous language rights in Mexico and the United States and from there goes into how that relates to the concept of a nation. It’s easy to forget how recent of a concept nations are, or as Aguilar Gil puts it, “The official narrative of Mexico as a country is rooted in a more than two-thousand-year-old ‘pre-Hispanic’ world in which the concept of Mexico did not exist.” What endures, nations or no nations, are communities.
Linking two podcasts really gives this week’s column a “syllabus” feel, but at least they’re both limited runs. When You’re Invisible by María Fernanda Diez has the host interviewing people not used to be interviewed—mailroom workers, food service employees—and the results are me asking “why isn’t every podcast this” in the middle of the produce aisle at Aldi. I’ve long held the opinion that everyone should be conscripted into a service industry job for a minimum of two years at some point. Since Congress and Joe Biden are cowards, we’ll just have to make sure everyone listens to this podcast instead.
I can’t remember if I’ve linked this band before, but my neverending quest to find “Other Bands That Sound Like CHON” led me to DJ PERRO a few months back. Their Canis Allegro record is my favorite so far, but I also haven’t heard anything I dislike. Here’s a sick set from Algazara Sessions. Let this carry you into the weekend on golden wings:
Sorry you got an email,
Chris