“I no longer aspired, as I had during my MA…to write literary mainstream or fabulist fiction.” – Molly Gaudry, ‘Fit Into Me’
Hey, I sent my poetry manuscript off to a few presses this week! Keep your fingers crossed, my dudes. What else did I do this week, but read a book that made me completely re-think another manuscript I’m pretty close to shopping. Sometimes books are that good. This one had to teach me to read it a bit, too. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with putting down a book that is more work than necessary. Reading is fundamental, but it’s also fun. That said, if a book is difficult at first, but you’re still mostly enjoying yourself? Keep pushing through the difficulty. It might end up being incredibly rewarding. This book sure was.
Oh, and we got a new Lazy & Entitled Podcast! Brendan and I talk about tertiary skills we’ve picked up for various jobs, I interview former Cracked.com editor and current host of the Wrestlemovia and WNB-Yay! podcasts Logan Trent, and then we have a pretty fitting reading from Studs Terkel. Apple | Spotify | SoundCloud
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
A book that is a novel. A book that is a memoir. A book that is literary scholarship, or at least quotes (and sources) freely from other texts. Yes, all of these are the same book. Hybrid texts are not new to me, but this was entirely new to me. It reminded me slightly of Dan Beachy-Quick’s This Nest, Swift Passerine for the way it quoted other texts. It reminded me a little of Metallic Realms by Lincoln Michel, and in turns books I haven’t read but I know have similar conceits, like Nabokov’s Pale Fire. Those sorts of metafictional comparisons aren’t quite right, because this book seems to be doing a couple of different things, but the comparison crossed my mind. I’m talking, of course, about Fit Into Me: A Novel: A Memoir by Molly Gaudry.
Fit Into Me: A Novel: A Memoir by Molly Gaudry: Yes, it’s very much both. The novel concerns the tea house woman, a character who has appeared in earlier Gaudry books. The memoir focuses on Gaudry’s summer with her birth father and half-siblings in Korea, Gaudry having a traumatic brain injury while roller skating and needing vision therapy, and Gaudry trying to do dissertation defense. There is also an out-of-whack romantic subplot, and it does all work together, though, after one reading, I am struggling to put into words how.
There’s a lot going on, and thus a lot I am afraid to get embarrassingly wrong, so I’ll be kind of detail-light. The tea house woman’s dramas and struggles do not perfectly mirror Molly’s, but you see the difficulties with writing a novel while also having a hard time telling your own story. Hell, having a hard time reading words on the page, given the traumatic brain injury. There is this fiery love for language, literature, and creating stories that I think really makes the book work. Like Vi Khi Nao’s book, there’s an undercurrent of getting to read a writer’s uninterrupted thoughts. But there is also all this fascinating stuff about how senses work, how it feels being adopted, and how scholarship works on a professional level that is super interesting. Definitely read this book—it will be challenging for normie readers and weirdos like me. Oh so worth it, though. Like I said, it is making me go back and look at a manuscript I’m mostly finished with.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? Have we listened to any of the (relatively) new Elephant Gym yet? I feel like we have, but just in case. I mean, this is just a new version of this song, but. Listen to the new Elephant Gym!
- This week in ICE: I feel like I remember vaguely hearing about more ICE stories than I am linking to today—take care of each other out there. Be in touch with your community. Know your neighbors, get a whistle, download Signal. How Not To Abolish ICE by Harsha Walia in Boston Review, ICE agents pepper-spray protesters, N.J. senator in clash outside Delaney Hall in Newark by Jelani Gibson, S.P. Sullivan, and Brent Johnson in NJ.com, Delaney Hall ICE Detainees Take Aim at GEO Group’s Bottom Line by Whitney Curry Wimbish in The American Prospect, In Focus: Evanston implemented policies to respond to federal immigration activity. On Oct. 31, EPD appeared to try to dodge them by Ryan Ottignon and Siri Reddy in The Daily Northwestern, Judge Denies Petition To Appoint Special Prosecutor To Probe ICE Abuses by Molly DeVore in Block Club, Detained Out of State, Chicago Immigrants Rely on Strangers to Find Their Way Back Home by Katrina Pham in Borderless Mag, and Police Reform Not Fully Implemented in Illinois, Five Years After Laws Passed by Max Blaisdell in South Side Weekly (this was originally published in Hyde Park Herald a month ago. And yes, a story about police reform not being fully implemented five years in is in the same news family as ICE stories. We have to stay vigilant or consequences won’t happen. Here’s almost the same story from two years ago).
- “You Were Just Here” by Chloe N. Clark in Weird Horror
- Loved this story in Defector about Cardte Hicks, an electrifying women’s basketball player from the 1970s and 80s who—despite being my exact height at 5’9″—nearly dunked in a game. Maya Goldberg-Safir wrote the piece, and the late great Dan McQuade contributed reporting. An excerpt, because Defector is subscription-based (but worth it!): “The story that the [WNBA] often fails to tell is the one that players from decades past must shoulder: that women’s basketball long predates the success of this one league. The sport is actually shaped by its so-called ‘failures,’ by the generations of women who insisted on hooping even without mainstream support or investment.“
- “TABLES LADDERS CHAIRS” by Julian Day in One Fall Review
- Really enjoying Spurs-Thunder. Obviously, I’m writing before last night’s Game 6, with the Thunder up 3-2. People seem to be in a rush to coronate these two as dynasties, and I get it. The Thunder have a ton of depth and draft capital, in addition to the current Best Player In The World belt holder. The Spurs go eight or nine deep, with the two previous Rookie of the Year winners, and I think only three of their guys can rent a car. Still, windows are short. Hakeem took the Rockets to the Finals in his second year and then had some rancid teams for almost a decade. KG took the Wolves to the conference finals in 2004, and then they became the pre-Ant Edwards Timberwolves. The Nuggets and Celtics looked poised to contend for titles for at least a half-decade after their wins, and while they’re still on people’s radars, they seem to have gone down a tier. So look: enjoy Spurs-Thunder while it lasts. May it last a decade. According to Howard Beck at The Ringer,1 not every NBA GM thinks the West is as settled as it currently looks.
What’re you still doing here? Hey, congrats to the New York Knicks on getting to the Finals. I will be rooting for you if the Spurs don’t make it.
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. If you hit your head, do not ignore it. Some incredible stuff about vision therapy and post-concussion syndrome in Molly Gaudry’s book. Also, don’t give up on your creative pursuits or physical activity. Those things are good for you, and don’t I know that we need all the help we can get with stuff that’s good for us.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
- Bill Simmons is a union-buster ↩︎