i'm pretty sure there's no god of recovering drug addicts, just as there are no other gods, but the act of repeating a gesture or a set of random w
i'm pretty sure there's no god of recovering drug addicts, just as there are no other gods, but the act of repeating a gesture or a set of random words, putting one's mind and body into that repetition, is sometimes enough in itself to reassemble the shards of the spirit and reestablish the most beautiful fiction we are capable of inventing: the fiction that, in spite of all, some order does exist. a perhaps precarious, provisional order. a map that is in constant transformation even as we live within the territory it outlines, and which remains stamped in our memory when we—finally—move to another place.
a set of ten autobiographical essays, planes flying over a monster marks the first non-fictional book-length work of mexican author daniel saldaña parís to appear in english translation — following his two previous novels: among strange victims (an anti-bildungsroman picaresque featuring a post-capitalistic, ineffectual, millennial bartleby) & ramifications (a less playful tale of maternal abandonment and its lifelong repercussions). set across a series of different cities (mexico city, montreal, madrid, havana, brooklyn, cuernavaca, etc.), saldaña parís's essays chart his coming-of-age, both as individual and as a writer. from drug addiction and recovery meetings and ducharme expeditions and long walks across montreal island to sexual awakenings, parties, and the most vile piñata imaginable in the mexican capital city to a temporary and fulfilling foray into diversionary falconry in hidalgo to a brooklyn-based viewing of a video which captured a childhood spent, in part, within the confines of a cult.
everywhere throughout planes flying over a monster, saldaña parís may be found excavating memory and moments past, many dark and deleterious, all formative and obviously unforgettable. when saldaña parís is on his game, his writing absolutely soars, but a few of the collection's entries (perhaps most notably some of the shorter ones) seem to be more thinly constructed. planes flying over a monster's opening and closing pieces, "a winter underground" and "assistants of the sun" are the book's best. saldaña parís is a gifted novelist and his essays demonstrate his stylistic versatility, as well as a reflective candor and unabashed striving to inhabit as much of himself (on and off the page) as one might manage to muster.
from the beginning of my adult life, and even earlier, that space of values and equilibriums where everything is a sign or a warning has been romantic love, the partner in life. i have no need of a fixed direction or a mission clear enough to be articulated in a single, memorable catchphrase. i have no need of a community walking in synchrony or a ritual dance around a fire. for me, meaning is what happens between two people who, curled up on the couch of a temporary dwelling, in an apartment where they won't spend longer than four days, are capable of creating a climate of intimacy, an improvised stability; are capable of sharing stories about the past and constructing, from the few, fragile elements life hands them, a present in which those stories fit and can breathe freely.
*translated from the spanish by christina macsweeney (luiselli, barrera, mendoza, herbert, navarro, et al.) and philip k. zimmerman...more
i often think that we’re all mere composites of our favorite people’s habits: the way we talk and gesture and laugh, how we comb our hair and walk.
i often think that we’re all mere composites of our favorite people’s habits: the way we talk and gesture and laugh, how we comb our hair and walk.
new jersey-born poet august kleinzahler’s writing is possessed of both character and spirit. cutty, one rock, a collection of a dozen, largely autobiographical essays, offers examples of this dexterity in spades. whether holding court about poetry, the mob, sex, san francisco, talented poets (and otherwise!), youthful indiscretions, childhood memories, friendship, bars and drinking, riding the bus, or whatever else, reading kleinzahler’s prose is like being in the company of that one friend who always manages to turn every story, however seemingly mundane at first, into a rapt tale you wouldn’t want to miss a single second of. with strong opinions, a sharp sense of humor, and the sort of sass and delectable insolence endemic to the garden state, kleinzahler’s essays are eminently gratifying.
the book’s final entry — “cutty, one rock,” about his older brother’s suicide in 1971 — is an altogether exceptional piece of writing. recounting with candor and veneration, kleinzahler conveys his brother’s brief, troubled, but also beautifully wild life in a way that is eloquent and elegiac....more
every biped sustains a chimera; the feet succeed in compensating for this with two empirical touches. they test the terrain we aspire to, measure i
every biped sustains a chimera; the feet succeed in compensating for this with two empirical touches. they test the terrain we aspire to, measure it, confirm it. like adverbs, they tell us where and when. their melody is imprinted on sand, turning missteps into a musical score.
perhaps the most unique of andrés neuman’s eight books (yet available) in english translation, sensitive anatomy (anatomía sensible) collects thirty short pieces of imaginative, reflective, and playful takes on the human body. as neuman waxes philosophical and poetical about our individual parts, he offers a perspective beyond mere functionality and aesthetics. with humor, joy, wonder, and always resplendent prose, sensitive anatomy thoughtfully considers the body and our relationships to its constituent parts.
*translated from the spanish by nick caistor (benedetti, arlt, cortázar, marsé, onetti, saramago, et al.) and lorenza garcia (redondo, lelord, pérez-reverte, japp, et al.) ...more
opposing yet complementary archetypes, masks that dehumanize flesh and blood women and become blank screens on which to project the desires, fears,
opposing yet complementary archetypes, masks that dehumanize flesh and blood women and become blank screens on which to project the desires, fears, and anxieties of a society that professes to be an enclave of tropical sensualism but deep down is profoundly conservative, classist, and misogynist.
fernanda melchor's this is not miami (aquí no es miami) features a dozen crónicas and relatos ("reality doesn't have a will of its own; it doesn't have any predetermined meaning at all, which means that newspaper stories as much as novels are always, to a degree, 'fictional,' in as far as they are artificial constructs, not to be confused with life itself.") — each set in and near veracruz, where the unflinching mexican author was born.
melchor's collection, written largely over the decade between 2002 and 2011 (and published in its original spanish in 2013), centers mostly, though not exclusively, around narcoviolence and crime. as she does in both of her exceptional novels — hurricane season and paradais — melchor delves beneath the banality of brutality, seeking comprehension and finding humanity (if often at its worst). while the pieces in this is not miami lack some of the galvanic frenzy that marks melchor's fiction so indelibly, they possess much more of a corporeal gravitas, given their (subjective) veracity. melchor is equally adept at narrative nonfiction as she is full-length fiction, and it's evident her writerly talents are extraordinary. with three books now in english (and an as-yet untranslated debut novel, falsa liebre), melchor is among the most exciting and impressive authors at work today.
this is not miami's most remarkable entries are "queen, slave, woman" and "the house on el estero," the latter a forty-some page piece that is bewilderingly good (and within the same frightening realm of hurricane season).
'i was in shock,' he said. 'in the shock of reality. you know, that's the worst part: when your own thoughts start to surrender to that shit, that shit you don't understand, and it starts to invade your mind. because if you surrender to it, that shit'll seep into you and fill every last space. that shit comes and you accept it as real.'
*translated from the spanish by sophie hughes (revueltas, hasbún, vila-matas, jufresa, bilbao, et al.)...more
as a reader, i long for my own writer. i sift through books with promising blurbs, but few of them satisfy my readerly tastes. bookstores increasin
as a reader, i long for my own writer. i sift through books with promising blurbs, but few of them satisfy my readerly tastes. bookstores increasingly resemble gleaming supermarkets: the products look high-quality, but the flavor is disappointing. just as fruit and vegetables have mutated and lost their flavor in favor of external appearance, so books too, both bad and good, have mutated with time into mainstream literature.
as incisive and witty as it was when first published some twenty years ago, dubravka ugrešić's thank you for not reading (verboden te lezen!) collects over thirty essayistic pieces, many on the homogenizing commercialization of books and authors. writing mostly about the industry, but also culture, exile, globalization, and a enigmatic handyman, ugrešić lends every subject her abundant humor (often dark and delectable!), keen insight, and critical observation. in any kind of just world, dubravka would top bestseller lists the world over.
the global noise is indescribable. even angels, whose job description includes patience and compassion, walk around with cotton balls in their ears. the only acceptable aesthetic choice that remains for people of good taste is silence.
*translated from the croatian by celia hawkesworth (andrić, drndić, mehmedinović, et al.), with contributions from damion searls (fosse, modiano, walser, et al.)...more
one of the foremost achievements of the so-called knowledge economy is the mass production of ignorance, stupidity, and hatefulness.
a book-length
one of the foremost achievements of the so-called knowledge economy is the mass production of ignorance, stupidity, and hatefulness.
a book-length essay in three parts denouncing the faults, flaws, and failings of techno-worship in the age of anthropocenic necrosis, jonathan crary's scorched earth is a resolute, uncompromising call to imagine and implement "egalitarian self-governance, shared ownership, and caring for [our] weakest members." focusing his critique on the internet, social media, and the "world-destroying systems and operations of 24/7 capitalism," crary's impassioned pleas, well-reasoned arguments, and alarming examples are convincing, if utterly distressing. polemical in its approach and far-reaching in its scope, scorched earth adds another much-needed voice to the chorus crying in the wilderness.
in our present moment, all the new forms of digital uprootedness support the illusion of autonomy, while any vague longings for enduring emotional connections are thwarted by the transience and homogeneity of online interactions. inevitably, this reinforces our uncomprehending indifference to the unraveling of the lifeworld around us. we become blind to the mounting uprootings of a different kind, merciless and terrifying, which are on course to shatter our techno-complacency. famine, drought, and warfare continue to force millions from their homes and once-functioning communities, leaving behind lands and whole regions that can no longer support life. by casting our lot in with the "becoming digital" of everything, we drift in the hallucination that it will all somehow persist.
eighteen pandemic-era essays of healing hilarity, david sedaris (especially these days) is like a balm for battered souls. with the familiar family dreighteen pandemic-era essays of healing hilarity, david sedaris (especially these days) is like a balm for battered souls. with the familiar family drama, social hellscapes, and piquant observations of our "divided, beat-up country," happy-go-lucky is like the inappropriate joke that makes the whole ordeal a bit more bearable.
the terrible shame about the pandemic in the united states is that more than eight hundred thousand people have died to date, and i didn't get to choose a one of them.
how swiftly the academic gaze places her in a masculine shadow, as though she could only be of interest as a satellite to male lives.
an essayistic
how swiftly the academic gaze places her in a masculine shadow, as though she could only be of interest as a satellite to male lives.
an essayistic autofictional memoir about a poet, by a poet, borne of poetic language, doireann ní ghríofa's a ghost in the throat transcends the limiting constraints of genre. a deeply personal tale of motherhood; a work about an 18th century irish poet; a meditation on the past and its obsessive allure; a female text; a reckoning with the present: a ghost in the throat is so many things, but, perhaps most of all, a captivating twinning of altogether dissimilarly similar lives spanning over two hundred years.
ní ghríofa's writing is magnificent and her ability to transport between centuries and experiences and transmogrify time past and present into a compelling narrative is rather remarkable. a ghost in the throat isn't a spectral work, per se, but it sure is one that will inhabit and pervade a reader's thoughts, feelings, and daydreams in so many moments between readings and even well beyond that.
did she feel helplessness in the face of inevitability, as i do? in writing their lives from this distance, i am haunted both by the sense of looming catastrophe and by my own complicity, for in recounting this horror i must inflict it all over again. i wish i could stop the pain this telling will soon cast over eibhlín dubh, but i can't. the past never ends. or, worse, the past tells us how it ends. over, it says, over and over again.
and no one knows what to make of this, really. what to do when someone has committed themselves to sympathy, but not to mercy.
collecting over twen
and no one knows what to make of this, really. what to do when someone has committed themselves to sympathy, but not to mercy.
collecting over twenty pieces essayistic and autobiographical, hanif abdurraqib's new book, a little devil in america, examines, celebrates, and considers the past and present of black performance. whether discoursing on dance marathons, soul train, the queen of soul, al jolson, blackface, whitney houston, "black people in space," josephine baker, don shirley, merry clayton, beyoncé, joe tex, wu-tang, afropunk band fuck u pay us, times he's forced himself to dance (or didn't)–or frankly anything at all–hanif's work is always intriguing and insightful. one of the most remarkable elements of hanif's writing is his ability to mine his own past for perspective, while teasing out the nuance of whatever subject he's expounding upon, mingling the personal, the political, and the poignant.
i am afraid not of death itself, but of the unknown that comes after. i am afraid not of leaving, but of being forgotten. i am in love today but am afraid that i might not be tomorrow. and that is to say nothing of the bullets, the bombs, the waters rising, and the potential for an apocalypse.
one reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgment, and love to revel in our righteous outrage, is that it spares us from the im
one reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgment, and love to revel in our righteous outrage, is that it spares us from the impotent pain of empathy, and the harder, messier work of understanding.
witty and sagacious, tim kreider's writing is always entertaining. full of humor, cruel truths, self-deprecation, and hard-won wisdom, his essays make you think, make you feel, and make you laugh inappropriately loud. we learn nothing collects 14 pieces, spanning a broad swath of subjects, but which are all, ultimately, about the very same thing: this messy business of being mortal. come for the laughs, stay for the life lessons.
i don't know why we take our worst moods so much more seriously than our best, crediting depression with more clarity than euphoria. we dismiss peak moments and passionate love affairs as an ephemeral chemical buzz, just endorphins or hormones, but accept those 3 a.m. bouts of despair as unsentimental insights into the truth about our lives.
we have become a depressingly aged and unfulfilled civilization, as civilizations go. time has caught up with us. where once we were full of promis
we have become a depressingly aged and unfulfilled civilization, as civilizations go. time has caught up with us. where once we were full of promise and lust for life, we are now sticking to the known and the comfortable. in financial terms, we're living on interest rather than producing. in agricultural terms, we're eating the seed corn. in ecological terms, we're parasitic.
john rember's a hundred little pieces on the end of the world isn't exactly an uplifting book, but, as the great ed abbey once wrote, "better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion." the book collects ten essays (each split into ten parts themselves, hence a hundred), all of them alighting on civilization's ongoing (and ever accelerating) woes: climate change, overpopulation, fossil fuel dependence, the sixth extinction, consumerism, capitalism, impending social collapse.
that's the trouble with narcissism: start seeing the world as an extension of yourself, and the world becomes fragile, temporary, wounded by your wounds, and ended by your physical or philosophical death.
rember's approach to our collective moment is a curious one. while he believes "we've got ten more years of history before we run out" (give or take) and foresees a massive human die-off (among other eventual horrors), his attitude is one of frustrated resignation, acceptance, and sadness. while many might mistakenly read this book and conclude it a panoply of pessimism, it is instead a work of pragmatism, realism, and unwillingness/inability to indulge bullshit fantasies of magical thinking and techno-salvation.
look at greenhouse-gas concentrations and ice-cap volume loss and accelerating concentrations of wealth and you'll find that it's time to call in grief counselors. you'll see points at which the trajectories of these and many more tragic trends could have been altered toward living rather than dying, toward sustainability rather than exponential growth. that those points were ignored speaks of a great and perverse intelligence behind the decision to die.
throughout a hundred little pieces on the end of the world, rember demonstrates not only a mordant wit and dark sense of humor, but an all-too-rare ability to see things as they are, rather than how he might prefer they'd be. rember reckons with ethics and morality, all the while bearing witness to what's in front of each and every one of us. he offers neither platitudes, nor promises of a quick fix (or even a slow one, for that matter). he foregoes any attempts to let human beings off the hook for what we've wrought as a species and doesn't suggest any self-congratulatory pats on the back for recycling or the like.
after all, [americans are] a people who have already chosen to forget vast chunks of their experience, especially when that experience suggests they've lost several wars in a row, that their lives require constant and expensive medication, and that they have hocked their grandchildren for oil.
rember strikes a reader as a genuine and empathetic being, however, albeit one unable to sugarcoat what awaits humanity in the near future. a hundred little pieces on the end of the world is thought-provoking, reflective, and forthright. you might not like the message, but the messenger did his due diligence with more compassion and insight and humor than might have been expected.
it's more important to remain a careful and conscious witness to the good things that humans still embody. those are love, kindness, empathy, and caring. they don't seem to work well at the scale of billions of people. they work better if you can exercise them when folks are over for dinner.
a hundred little pieces on the end of the world is that freak book that actually lives up to its descriptive copy: "a collection of gentle-spirited wisdom and a rumination on ruin, as if distilled in equal measure from the spirits of norman maclean's a river runs through it and cormac mccarthy's the road."
it's hard to convince americans to face a world where they're vulnerable and mortal and powerless in the face of events, when they can easily be someone else, someplace else.
and when the victims are many, there's no place for them in human hearts of average emotional capacity. it bears remembering that in this society o
and when the victims are many, there's no place for them in human hearts of average emotional capacity. it bears remembering that in this society of ours, rooted in an overweening happiness, empathy has been jettisoned. everyone is preoccupied with their own life, their own little existence. and as long as people stare obsessively at their reflection on the smooth screen, there will be no room for the lives of others, there is simply no room.
combining the literary dexterity and underdog-championing of eduardo galeano, a practiced inability to suffer fools a la mr. t, and the irreverence and iconoclasm of a comedian like george carlin, dubravka ugrešić's writing is consistently shrewd, incisive, and vital. funny, frustrated, and forlorn, the essays in her new collection, the age of skin (doba kože), were originally written between 2014 and 2018, seventeen pieces in total. dubravka's mind is a brilliant one and her talent for expounding on a variety of subjects is profound.
and most awful of all, every one of us, as is true of every steady-going, enduring sadomasochistic relationship, has become inured to the daily dose of humiliation. we've lost our voice, words, sight, hearing, and reason in the process; we've dehumanized ourselves. for we, too, the audience, we have "theatricalized," we recognize each other only barely as at a play being put on somewhere else, in a distant realm where people speak another language. hey, aren't they us, we ask, and then, yet again, we forget.
with fervor and flair, dubravka censures and excoriates, calls out and questions, rouses and rejoinders. misogyny, hypocrisy, capitalism, violence, cultural vapidity, political malfeasance, blind consensus, war, the pervasive and abundant stupidity of our current and previous century, dubravka sees it all unadorned and ever clearly. with ample wit (and how!), a critic's eye, and one of the most refined bullshit detectors in all of letters, ugrešić's essays are constantly challenging, thought-provoking, and wonderfully refreshing.
how many more years until she wins the nobel prize?
don't take it personal, we're at war, we have begun to annihilate each other, our supply of food and dignity have been cut off, we're useless. no, it's not that people are being worse to you in particular, this applies to everyone, and they just happended to stumble across you, and the crueler they are, the more unfriendly—the greater their own anxiety. if you think you're sinking, don't take it personal, the people who are preventing you from clinging to the life raft are only on it themselves briefly, because they are better at shoving away the wretches who are drowning, including you. but i tell you, don't worry, soon enough they, too, will find themselves in the cold, dank water, someone else will push them overboard soon enough, unless they're kept on board to serve as food.
*translated from the croatian by ellen elias-bursać (albahari, drndić, et al.)...more
your problem is not the Problem. your problem is the part of the Problem that you're not looking at.
it's hard to imagine a contemp
the look
your problem is not the Problem. your problem is the part of the Problem that you're not looking at.
it's hard to imagine a contemporary writer with a more exciting output than gonçalo m. tavares. the angolan-born portuguese author (1970) has been published in nearly 50 countries and writes with a range that is nearly breathtaking. his newest to be translated into english, reading is walking, collects the five essayistic/aphoristic books which comprise his "encyclopedia series": brief notes on science, brief notes on fear, brief notes on connections (llansol, molder and zambrano), brief notes on music, and brief notes on bloom-literature. several of these musings, thought experiments, and observational notes would find easy company as imaginary addenda to the book of disquiet.
from his "kingdom series" (jerusalem, learning to pray in the age of technique, joseph walser's machine, and klaus klump: a man) to the "neighborhood series" to a voyage to india, it's evident that tavares possess both a prodigious imagination and a formidable talent. saramago himself said, "i've predicted that in thirty years' time, if not before, he will in the nobel prize and i'm sure my prediction will come true." as yet untranslated are novels, poems, plays, children's books, short stories, essays, and more.
most enigmatic is that each of his works end with "notebooks of gonçalo m. tavares | (#)" -- with the 5 books in reading is walking numbered 19, 22, 26, 37, 39.
who really is this curious man of letters and why aren't you reading him already?
darkness
in the dark, man sticks to his inclination to repeatedly not perceive things, in order to be free of anxiety: stupid and alone, like someone who believes in many things, but none of them tangible.
*translated from the portuguese by rhett mcneil (lobo antunes, machado de assis, a.g. porta, et al.) ...more
i understand the objections to the desire to escape from the world. i know it can be an egoistic, arrogant desire, the attitude of someone looking
i understand the objections to the desire to escape from the world. i know it can be an egoistic, arrogant desire, the attitude of someone looking down from above, from a tower. that's why i find lighthouses so attractive: they combine that disdain, that misanthropy, with the task of guiding, helping, rescuing others.
jazmina barrera's on lighthouses (cuaderno de faros) is a thoughtful, reflective melding of memoir, history, travel writing, and literary inquiry. in her beacon-bound sojourn to six different lighthouse (from oregon to new york to europe), the young mexican writer weaves her own life and reverent curiosity into a narrative exploring the nature of all things lighthouse. with the briny air, salt spray, and circling gulls nearly palpable, barrera's short, wonderfully written book immerses us seaside with a vantage into both the past and present.
*translated from the spanish by christina macsweeney (luiselli, saldaña parís, navarro, rabasa, herbert, gerber bicecci, et al.) ...more
i smell the wound and it smells like me. this wound will not heal and is spreading as an infection. stabbed by our illusions and legacies of grande
i smell the wound and it smells like me. this wound will not heal and is spreading as an infection. stabbed by our illusions and legacies of grandeur, we stagger through our forests of consumption. we are lost. we are in pain. and we don't know the cause or the cure of what is making us sick. we long for something more, when what we have is more than enough. we are becoming blind. we are becoming deaf. we are hobbling along the path of distractions, trying to find our way back or forward or sideways to a place of dreams as we bleed from the wound of longing.
activist, nature writer, and conservationist, terry tempest williams is also an american treasure. in her new book, erosion: essays of undoing, williams confronts dualities political, personal, and paradoxical. with erosion (in all its many forms) as a foundational theme, williams explores and expounds upon a variety of timely issues, many tied to the ongoing destruction of our natural world and the institutional greed and indifference that allows causes it to accelerate virtually unabated.
wilderness ensures possibilities. saving wilderness is about saving ourselves, as well as protecting the evolutionary integrity of all other life forms on the planet. an open hand and a clenched fist will be required, along with a generous heart that dares to feel enough to grieve and lament what we are watching disappear and try to slow down the destruction we have set in motion.
there are many qualities to williams's writing that make it so exceptionally evocative. her ability to distill a subject to its irreducible essence is remarkable, but perhaps what is most noteworthy is her natural gift for observation and interpretation. balancing empathy and outrage, anger and forgiveness, beauty and loss, hope and despair, thinking and feeling, knowledge and action, williams harmonizes the disparate. grace and grief and wisdom and weariness inhabit each of these essays (collected from the last seven years). there is a deep joy and a deep sorrow in her work, but williams seems to conjure vulnerability with ease, and the breadth of her passion is quite often something to behold. terry tempest williams is simply a magnificent writer and erosion is simultaneously a salvo and salve for our disquieting anthropocenic age.
not until we begin to understand the true costs of what we have lost and the pain we have inflicted on people and nature through the destruction of fragile landscapes and communities in the commodification and extraction of the earth, can a healing between us take place. our collective crisis of conscience and consciousness in this ear of climate change is based on self-delusion, privilege, and our sense of entitlement, all of which continue to fuel the power and rapaciousness of our appetites. it is killing us.
metaphor always connects two disparate points; it suggests that no pathos exists in isolation, no plight exists apart from the plights of others. l
metaphor always connects two disparate points; it suggests that no pathos exists in isolation, no plight exists apart from the plights of others. loneliness seeks out metaphors not just for definition but for the companionship of resonance, the promise of kinship in comparison.
leslie jamison's writing is incisive and insightful, and, at its best, is marked by a sort of epiphanic explication—as if the construction of her resplendent prose is conjoined with the realizations they are simultaneously producing. it's a striking feature, like she is recalling the details of a particular scene in order to convince both herself as the teller and us as the told; the tale unlocking only in its telling.
the fourteen essays in jamison's new collection, make it scream, make it burn, are divided into three sections: longing, looking, and dwelling. as found within her exceptional first collection, the empathy exams, jamison is drawn inextricably to the misunderstood, the lonely, the overlooked, the fragile, the forgotten, the quirky, and, above all, the personal. seemingly possessed by an insatiable curiosity (and perhaps a guiding desire to understand, to feel loved, to be seen, to be strong, to be acknowledged, and to fit in herself), jamison's camaraderie to and immersion in her chosen subjects strives toward objectivity, but is all the richer for its subjectivity (and self-awareness). simply put, she cares: about her craft and about the people in her essays; her skeptical benevolence inevitably yielding to a compassionate critique. ...more
everything cheerful seems to have an ominous shadow looming behind it now. the smallest images and bits of news can feel so invasive, so frightenin
everything cheerful seems to have an ominous shadow looming behind it now. the smallest images and bits of news can feel so invasive, so frightening. they erode our belief in what the world can and should be.
heather havrilesky's what if this were enough? collects 19 essays, mingling culture criticism and personal anecdote. with incisive insight and compassionate consideration, havrilesky confronts the insidiousness of our 21st century milieu. decrying the excesses of capitalism, materialism, and the relentless onslaught of america's excesses, havrilesky autopsies a culture which exploits individuals for capital gain and leaves so many frightened, forlorn, and feeling forever inadequate. with empathy, acute observational skill, sardonic humor, and a gift for linking disparate subjects, the how to be a person in the world author inspects, indicts, assuages, assures, and ultimately aims to inspire and enable both a different way of thinking and a different way of being.
while what if this were enough? betrays a restless dissatisfaction with the status quo (and its seemingly unalterable trajectory), as well as the predatory, consumptive nature of our modern moment, havrilesky envisions and encourages a return to simpler, more beneficent values. smart, funny, and thought-provoking, havrilesky's essays prove to be a salve for our bewildering, uncertain, and perilous present.
we're now, more than ever before, bombarded by hidden and overt messages about our personal worth. in spite of the growing uncertainty and anxiety of our current moment, we are meant to sidestep inconvenient emotions and fearlessly conquer the future. the slightest hesitation dooms us to the ranks of failures and losers. no wonder our capacity for nuance and subtlety has been lost, as our opinions and ideals increasingly take the shape of fundamentalist religions. poetry and art, nuanced intellectual discourse, the odd unfiltered moment—these are either misinterpreted as moral litmus tests or else they're upstaged by bold claims and extremist rhetoric. the blustery overstatements and exaggerations and lies of talk show hosts, pundits, social media firebrands, and politicians drown out all attempts at refinement, restraint, and grace, and seep into our everyday discourse. thoughtfulness is misread as uncertainty; melancholy is misunderstood as a stubborn refusal to play nicely with others. a century ago, survival was the main event. longing was accepted as part of existence. today, the inability to achieve happiness or fit in with the herd is treated as a kind of moral failure.
i don't know if we'll ever be able to see a film about an artist or read a book about his or her life without it making us wonder if our admiration
i don't know if we'll ever be able to see a film about an artist or read a book about his or her life without it making us wonder if our admiration for the work of such a creature hasn't been a big mistake.
too true, of course — so perhaps we should be especially thankful a biography or documentary film about javier marías has heretofore not been made. the great spanish writer, in addition to his exceptional body of fictional offerings (and like so many non-american authors), has also accumulated a significant output of essays, newspaper columns, and other feature articles. between eternities collects some two decades worth of such writings.
any fan of marías's novels will find much to enjoy in this newly translated non-fiction collection (perhaps, most of all, his resplendent prose), yet, overall, between eternities leaves a little to be desired (though, it ought to be said, that the bar for marías's writing is already so demonstrably high given how exceptional so much of his fiction is). nonetheless, king xavier of redonda could pen nearly anything and it would command the attention of many (this reader included). between eternities explores, alights, and muses upon a rather wide swath of subjects, including film, european cities (most notably venice, which makes up the collections's longest piece), books (his own and others), authors, the writerly profession, aging, passing time, death, etc.
while marías has always seemed like a deliberate, careful, and observant writer, there's a whiff of haughtiness to some of these pieces. for such an erudite and learned fellow, one might expect a healthy and necessary dose of iconoclasm or even irreverence, yet surely none is to be found (the collection eschews politics almost entirely). nonetheless, there's much within between eternities to slake even the most ardent marías devotee's literary thirst (though it surely does not make one any less impatient for the next novel).
any feeling of pity arises, at least in my case, from the contrary idea: far from carrying a child around inside us (which would, it must be said, be a terrible nuisance), what we think we see in our photos or in our oldest memories is that the adult we are was already contained in the child that we were, and wasn't very difficult to spot either. often, in order to get a sense of someone with whom, sooner or later, i'm going to have dealings, i try to imagine what they would have been like as a child and how we would have got on, whether we would have been good friends or have hated each other's guts. one comes to realize that if anyone contains anyone, it's the child who contains the future adult and not the other way round; and when one looks at old photos, it's hard not to think, in a way, of the burden this implies. not that there's any place for self-pity here either: throughout all of history children have always been adults in the making, and the reason childhood has been seen as important is because of the way it shapes and influences what will come later, which is what matters. nowadays, on the other hand, people give importance to childhood itself, as if humanity's sole crazy aim was to shape and create eternal, perennial children. not a good idea. but that is how it is.
*translated from the spanish by margaret jull costa (saramago, pessoa, de queirós, vila-matas, cardoso, atxaga, carrasco, et al.)
i'd happily read anything from the pen of michael chabon (how has he not yet written a non-fiction book about baseball?!), though his new collection oi'd happily read anything from the pen of michael chabon (how has he not yet written a non-fiction book about baseball?!), though his new collection of essays, pops: fatherhood in pieces, is too slight an outing to be wholly satisfying. containing seven short pieces, all but one of which were previously published, pops finds the pulitzer prize winner musing upon his son's predilection for fashion (as recounted in the anchor piece which appeared originally in gq), reading huckleberry finn to children, individuality and weirdness, feminism and not being a dick, little league and baseball, teenage coolness (or not), and his own relationship with his father.
chabon writes beautifully, of course, and pops has frequent flashes of his gorgeous prose, but the brief moments of insight, tenderness, humor, and self-reflection aren't enough to put this collection on par with his other works (frankly, it seems like it was assembled solely to capture father's day dollars).
he was not flying his freak flag; he was sending up a flare, hoping for rescue, for company in the solitude of his passion.
calypso may well be the funniest, strongest collection david sedaris has released to date. or, it simply enjoys a bit of a bump because the rest of thcalypso may well be the funniest, strongest collection david sedaris has released to date. or, it simply enjoys a bit of a bump because the rest of the world currently seems so horrendous. really, it's both. these 21 pieces are hilarious and unabashed. as always, sedaris's observational humor and self-deprecating insights (and his voice reading to you from within your own head) make his writing an incomparable delight.
a much-needed salve; to be applied generously—and, ideally, in public. ...more
Loading...
