Reading, writing and ignoring reality
Hello,
This is my fourth attempt at my March letter. It’s difficult not to fall into the gaping manhole that is ‘a year in pandemic’ review and clamber out of it unbruised. My attempts have left me bristling and re-traumatized. I made the mistake of revisiting my journals from Spring/Summer 2020 and it’s just too soon. Instead, I would like to leave you with Megan Reynolds’s The Year We All Judged Each Other, an essay that comes closest to relaying some of my feelings.
In these 12 months, we have experienced a lot. I’m not going to touch on any of that here and instead focus on the books I’ve enjoyed recently. Because this is the only way I know how to cope.
I finished reading Gargoyles by Harriet Mercer yesterday and I’m in awe of what she has created with this brilliant memoir about health, body, loss, parents, love and so much more. It’s beautifully written, the sentences carrying depth and humor in equal measure. I very much enjoyed the literary and cultural criticism lacing this book. You can pre-order Gargoyles via Dead Ink’s website. It’s out next month and cannot be missed!
I gulped down Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters and am excited that it’s going to be a TV series. It’s a great novel that deep dives into gender identities and gender politics with a rare and breathtaking assuredness. And it’s hilarious! What I wasn’t expecting from it was an incisive look at womanhood and how we all perform our genders as part of our desire to fit in. It’s made me question a lot of things about myself that I’ve never had reason to before and I think I’m a better person from having done so.
I’m currently reading Eula Biss’s Having and Being Had. I’m not sure what to make of this one yet but I’m enjoying it. It’s making me think of how I live my life within a capitalist culture and how I respond to owning, devaluing, consuming, trading, working and other such concepts. I’m looking forward to reading this review when I’m done with the book.
Taking a Long Look by Vivian Gornick was a great read, a collection of reviews, essays and comments published by Verso Books. I find her opinions and thinking so calming and informed. Reading the book was like sitting with a sage, taking lots of notes and promising to do better with my own thinking and writing. It’s 20% off on the publisher’s website at the moment!
Bloomsbury is publishing two books on DH Lawrence this year. One is a nonfiction biography: Burning Man by Frances Wilson which I started reading last night and can’t put down. I’ve not read any DH Lawrence and know next to nothing about this man and yet the book is gripping and highly enjoyable. I’m learning a lot! The other DH Lawrence book is fictional, titled Tenderness and written by Alison Macleod. I love Macleod’s writing. Also on my reading list are
Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel Moniz
The Performance by Claire Thomas
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman
Kololo Hill by Neema Shah
Would I Lie to You? by Aliya Ali-Afzal
Making by Thomas Heatherwick
Are You Enjoying? by Mira Sethi
Something Out of Place by Eimear McBride
I’m most excited for Rachel Cusk’s new novel Second Place. I’ve been treating myself to small portions of Rachel Cusk’s Paris Review interview by Sheila Heti. Which reminds me of the lovely conversation Shelia Heti and Avni Doshi had on motherhood. It was one of the most refreshing conversations on the subject. While the interview part of the event was full of interesting tidbits, I enjoyed the hour long conversation they had with each other directly, which is available via the same video link. Their mutual admiration and curiosity was delicious to witness. You can buy access to the online interview for as little as £1 via WOW Global 2021 festival here — Sheila Heti and Avni Doshi in conversation.
At the same festival I watched Arundhati Roy and V in conversation with Preti Taneja. I’m struck by the joy these two women derive from their work and their gratitude for the privilege to choose this work. I’m sharing below a small snippet from my extensive notes and transcripts and urge you to watch the interview.
Preti Taneja: What is the cost of writing about things that are criticized or disagreed with?
Arundhati Roy: The cost is that you eventually become a person who has to protect other people around you front the backlash. So you keep moving away from people so that they don’t get impacted by what you are doing … a lot of activists, female, in India are unmarried with no children because they know the consequences … but one thing I want to say is that I don’t believe in suffering, in voluntarily suffering. I believe that one should be delighted and embrace what one does and how one does it … that is important … [young women] need to see that you don’t take that traditional path of security and protection and being in the heart of a family and yet there’s so much … so much delight in that liberation. I do really kiss the walls of my house every now and then and I am like, “Yeah! My…!”
V: You just have to keep your position long enough and people will come around.
I was moved by the positivity radiating from these women, the way they spoke about their difficult choices, their pride in themselves and their need to keep doing what they do. I always feel so lucky to come after so many great women who have paved an easier path for us all. I read V’s book The Apology a couple of years ago and I think about it often. They used to go by the name Eve Ensler and are the author of Vagina Monologues.
I know I said I wasn’t going to review this pandemic year but I did want to note a change I’ve noticed in myself since exclusively spending time at home and having a chance to think deeply and consciously about the life I lead. This is with regards to excuses I make for other people’s behavior and their entitlement over my space, feelings, time and being. I learned that I used to mistake my need to avoid confrontation as my niceness. That’s gonna stop now!
From around the internet I would like to recommend the following:
Yaa Gyasi’s ‘White people, black authors are not your medicine’.
Still Stuck at Home? It Might Be Time to Work on That Novel.
That last piece is interesting because I couldn’t even imagine writing creatively last year but am slowly warming to the idea now. I received editorial notes on my partial draft which basically means scraping everything and starting fresh. The thought isn’t filling me with dread but I’m struggling to get back to writing daily. I hope this changes soon. It’s so difficult to stay motivated when there are such few sensory stimulants to inspire creativity.
Whenever I realise it’s been a whole year of this, my breath catches in my throat and my heart constricts. This is such a difficult anniversary for so many. I hope you are taking care of yourself.
Zeba