The reading was incredible. My set was 30 minutes! What fun! Everyone who read at the open mic was great, like, honestly. Strangely, it felt like our poems went together\u2014lots of shared themes. Love when the poetry stars align. Many thank yous to Maya Williams for the invitation, much love to Port Veritas for being an amazingly welcoming place (especially for my wife and kid) with a kickass library. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ll be at Tuesday Funk at Hop Leaf in Andersonville this Tuesday, 7\/1. I am seriously enjoying doing readings for the first time in 10 years. If you’re in Chicago and need a reader, hit me up. Let’s keep this going. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A book that it would be cliche to call \u2018Proustian,\u2019 so let\u2019s just get it out of the way that this is heavily about memory. I\u2019ve never read Proust. To me, it\u2019s a higher compliment to say this book is like Aimee Bender\u2019s The Butterfly Lampshade<\/em> as written by Diane Seuss. It\u2019s a higher compliment to say this book and its narrator reminded me of years ago, when Diannely Antigua was on The Line Break<\/em><\/a>, saying she wanted to wring as much as possible from life, saying something along the lines of \u201cmy grandmother fucking lived<\/em>, and I want to, too.\u201d A book narrated by a character the author calls \u201cdisaster bi,\u201d and that seems about right. I\u2019m talking, of course, about Still Alive<\/em> by LJ Pemberton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve mentioned the idea of \u201cmirror\u201d and \u201cwindow\u201d books before, and boy is this first-person narrative a window. Something I\u2019ve learned about myself (and that I have in common<\/a> with Tom Waits<\/a>, apparently) is that despite my love for adventure, need for novelty, and comfort among the stranger elements, I do actually crave stability in my personal life. I have no desire to ever do anything to rock the boat in my marriage, I don\u2019t do any drugs except weed, coffee, and kayaking, and\u2014again, same as Tom Waits\u2014I like chaperoning my kid\u2019s field trips. Got a free trip to the Shedd this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHey Chris why\u2019d you waste a whole paragraph of book analysis talking about yourself?\u201d Because this novel, with its intense yet explanationless interrogation of narrator V\u2019s life, makes you think a lot about why people do the things they do. If there\u2019s an inciting incident, it\u2019s the car crash that happens in front of V\u2019s childhood home. V sees a decapitated head roll across her yard, watches a passenger die, and will spend the rest of her life occasionally return to the crash site to think. But I don\u2019t know that the car crash fully explains why V flits from temp job to temp job, never really pursues her writing even as her partner becomes a semi-successful painter and gallery curator, and why V remains restless and unsettled, even when she gets what she wants. Maybe V is the way she is because her mother was similarly restless and unsettled, or her brother, James, is (James is like if the wannabe Buddhist kid from White Lotus S3 had a spine). Or maybe the crash and family predilections don\u2019t matter as much as the fact that capitalism encourages unhappiness, and living in the 21st United States is trying to scratch an itch on a body part you don\u2019t know you have. V makes no excuses for herself, and she wouldn’t want you to, either, but you can’t help but understand her, even though she’s not asking you to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n (Some spoilers for the first half of the novel)<\/em>: Let\u2019s talk about that partner. Lex\u00a0is a cool-as-hell, shaved head painter who, despite being V\u2019s moon and stars, still feels somewhat hazy at book\u2019s end. I say that not as a critique of the writing\u2014I think one of V\u2019s major issues is she\u2019s too in her own head to form a complete picture of anyone but herself. It is Lex who first cheats and V who first ends the relationship, but when they reconcile, it\u2019s V who starts messing everything up. Neither of the two is \u201cthe good guy\u201d or \u201cthe bad guy,\u201d but it\u2019s a fascinating narrative move, watching as Lex goes from being V\u2019s everything to slowly fading out of frame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of which is a very long way of saying this: spending 280 pages in V\u2019s head was as foreign and strange to me as any horror or sci-fi I\u2019ve ever read. It\u2019s every bit the thrill ride, too, even if the thrills are more contemplative, domestic. Read this book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LINKS!<\/strong>![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/IMG_6112-1024x768.jpg\")
Something to listen to while you browse? Have I ever linked to Simon Micas II’s nylon cover of Chon’s “Rosewood?” Apologies if so. But not really, it’s worth listening to again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n