Category Archives: books

Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham

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I have a [smart] friend who thinks Lena Dunham’s work is bad, irresponsible. We go rounds on this because I love her and think that he’s too caught up on having morally good, heroic main characters. He says I’m missing the point. Dunham’s work is shrouded in controversy, but if you’re a fan of her show Girls, you’ll definitely like Not That Kind of Girl. In fact, if you just sort of like her show, you’ll still like her book. Lena Dunham’s work is so incredibly personal and vulnerable and embarrassing and painful, and human. I identify with her so much.

First, I am fascinated with the way she deals with first/early sexual experience. It is the most honest depiction of the kinds of sexual experiences people have in their late teens and early twenties. It can be weird, awkward, and embarrassing. People are unsure about what to do where and for how long. There are strange acts that exist solely because porn tells us that’s what people do for pleasure, even if very few people are doing that thing for pleasure. I actually think this is unavoidable for the most part because there are very few activities that are comparable to coupled sex. In the process, mistakes are made and confusion abounds. Young women are in a constant negotiation with owning and expressing their sexuality, while simultaneously figuring out where the media pressures and social expectations end and where their own pleasure and desire begins. [By the way, I think this is true for men, too, but I don’t read much about it.] So, that’s important.

She’s also balancing art and social commentary, which can be weird and bad, but she does it well. One could easily assume that her work is this off the cuff confessional style, and it is, but there is also real artistry in her work. She has a deep familiarity with language and a knack for creative expression through  her writing. My expectation is that she will continue to write books, and they will be revolutionary, yes, and will only improve from a literary perspective.

Now, let me address the whole scuttlebutt over childhood sexual abuse when the book first came out. I assumed that it would be honest and artfully done, and even be good in that it would help us to think more critically about childhood sexuality. I wanted to read it first before forming my opinion, and after reading it, I thought it was good and important, and did the thing of making us think openly about childhood sexuality. The story is weird, and a bit uncomfortable, but true and not abuse, in my opinion. You can bet that Dunham thinks about consent and abuse because they are major themes in her work.

While I am highly invested in the topic of female sexuality, obviously, Dunham covers other ideas that resonate with me so strongly. Like, there are people who love people, and people who can’t stand to be alone, and people who are curious about other people [I might fall into that last category], but usually I have, as Dunham states, “the nagging sense that my true friends are waiting for me” (xiii). I have met some of my true friends, and when we meet, and recognize each other, there is much rejoicing! I love these people. They are my forever friends and lovers. But, they number so few I can count them on my hands, and I often feel lonely or out of place, wishing that I could be with one of my people when I’m tired of being alone. Lena Dunham—she gets me.

image from vogue.com

image from vogue.com

Here are some quotes I highlighted:

  • “There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman” (xvi).
  • “He was nervous, and, in a nod toward gender equality, neither of us came” (7).
  • “This was the time in life before I learned it wasn’t considered appropriate by society at large to like yourself” (34).
  • She quotes Joan Didion: “There is a common superstition that “self-respect” is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation” (38).
  • A list from a relationship…”One very unnecessary pregnancy test” (54).
  • “Wherever you go, there you are” (69). An old favorite.
  • “After several interactions in which he questioned my authority and pretended not to hear me speaking, it was clear he was my type” (71).
  • “I had broken up with him on my seventh try, and one try didn’t even count because all I could muster was “I love you” (76).
  • On meeting her love: “Look, there is my friend” (76).
  • “…desire is the enemy of contentment” (143).
  • “You will find,” she says, “that there’s a certain grace to having your heart broken” (144).
  • “…you’ll see that later and be very, very proud” (262).

And so many others.

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

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I just finished Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit over the course of a few evenings. It’s a *heavy* read, but it’s composed of short, manageable essays. The first most noticeable thing about this book is that it is not funny. There is absolutely nothing funny or lighthearted about it, and that was a surprise. The title is sort of funny, and alludes to “mansplaining,” which is terrible and indicative of larger social issues surrounding gender, but it’s also sort of funny. The title is not a good indication of the book.

image from amazon.com

image from amazon.com

Solnit is unrelenting in her depiction of the “longest war,” a war on women. Reading it was overwhelming—a reminder of the violence and disdain lobbed at women by our society. The statistics were staggering. Having heterosexual relationships with men seemed increasingly fraught for both genders. I was left wondering how we navigate these weird power dynamics in our most personal relationships. I felt overwhelmed by the violence. I felt overwhelmed by the reminders of the constraints I face each day as a woman.

For example, each day before dark, I try to accomplish all tasks that require me to walk any distance alone or through a parking lot. Every day, I, mostly subconsciously at this point, plan my day with safety in mind. When I overtly think about these habits, it makes me sad that I live in such a violent world, and it makes me sad that safety has to be such an underlying factor in my daily decisions. Surely this has unknown negative effects. Solnit writes, “My feminism waxed and waned, but the lack of freedom to move through the city for women hit me hard and personally at the end of my teens, when I came under constant attack in my urban environment and hardly anyway seemed to think that is was a civil rights issue” (128). Solnit argues for an emphasis on turning the lens on men and why they are so frequently the perpetrators of violence, opposed to giving women the sole responsibility of preventing violence. This “Top 10 Tip to Avoid Rape” meme has made the rounds and points out the profound role that men (obviously) play in “rape culture.”

image found here

image found here.

Like Solnit, I wonder why these problems are not viewed as a deeper crisis and as a civil rights issue. In recent years, I have felt a real personal fear as politicians have made absolutely horrifying, and often scientifically inaccurate, claims about women’s bodies. As the Hobby Lobbys and various right wingers argue about what I can and cannot do with my own body, for the first time, it has felt very personal and very stifling.

Of course, the reaction to these issues is often, yes, but “not all men.” And, Solnit carefully dedicates sections of each chapter, writing “not all men, but…” This is unfortunate. We can’t just talk about this issue without spending a lot of time reassuring men and women that not all men are bad. In so many ways it seems like this reassurance is also indicative of the problem. It’s a problem that we literally can’t even talk about women’s issues without spending a good deal of time reassuring men and talking about men and turning the focus, even just briefly, back to men. On the other hand, they’re half the population, and they’re our partners, fathers, brothers, and friends, and so it makes sense that we can’t talk about women without spending some time also talking about men.

The book isn’t entirely matched thematically, and she delves into some literacy criticism, as a way to address the larger social problems that she unpacks earlier in the book. She wrote of a criticism that “does not put the critic against the text” (101). In her exchange with Susan Sontag, Solnit writes that “you don’t know if your actions are futile; that you don’t have the memory of the future” (93). This is in response to Sontag’s assertion that resistance is required, even if it is futile, and maybe it is always futile.

On Woolf, Solnit writes of a botanist that had “a knack for finding new species by getting lost in the jungle, by going beyond what he knew and how he know it, by letting experience be larger than his knowledge, by choosing reality rather than the plan” (96), and I love this idea so much. For living life, for finding new ideas, for creating art. I am such a planner and a researcher, and I love the idea of this kind of purposeful method (which, yes, requires planning and research). I love the idea of using this method as a means of discovery, rather than following what is known: “a compass by which to get lost” (106).

Of measurement and discovery, Solnit also writes about “the tyranny of the quantifiable,” which is “the way what can be measured almost always takes precedence over what cannot” (104-105). This has been a frustration for me lately. Working in bureaucracies, and within high education, too often means a singular focus on the quantifiable, on the assessable. When other ways of being or knowing are scoffed at as being dangerous, even life-threatening, we are limited by what we can do as dreamers, thinkers, creators, and teachers.

This book reads up so quickly and so powerfully that there’s really no reason not to read it. Afterward, you can spend some time thinking through what it all means for gender, relationships, and the way men and women exist in the world. I think I’ll even pick up her other book, Wanderlust because it is about walking and maybe other things too.

Be Free Where You Are by Thich Nhat Hanh

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I’m supposed to be gearing up for a spiritual year according to sundry esoteric readings and such. I entertain these mostly for fun, but when the idea reappeared to me in multiple venues, I thought, okay, I’m listening. I’m not particularly excited by the prospect of a spiritual year, but recognize that it’s a part of being. And, there’s no time like the present.

So, the other day on a friend’s table, I saw a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Be Free Where You Are, which is a little pocket-sized book based on a lecture he have to a group of prisoners a few decades ago. “Take it,” she said. So, I slipped it into my purse and read it the other night. It is a very quick read. I read half of it, then decided to read the rest of it, and then read the Q&A after that—all in one sitting. I chose to read and reread a few key sections  slowly to try to really absorb his potential meanings.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s been on my radar after a respected mentor mentioned that his work had valid philosophical and scholarly potential. After reading this short book, I can’t say that I agree. Of course, it’s way too soon to make a definitive statement either way. But, he spoke about things like being in your heart and being positive, and while I can make a lot of assumptions about what that might mean, I’m not sure that means much. Or, maybe it means everything. The book is full of these kinds of assertions, and I can only hope that his longer works offer more depth.

Thich Nhat Hanh said that understanding is crucial for forgiveness.

He said to think about each bite of food and where it came from with gratitude.

He said to meditate always, while walking and washing dishes. While inhaling and exhaling. He encourages his audience to be present. Describing this, he wrote, “Here I am.” I read it a few times:  “Here I am.” I walked over to my full-length bedroom mirror and tore away the tens of sticky notes upon which I had scribbled affirmations in permanent marker, affirmations that I had written months earlier as they occurred to me. I threw the tiny stack of words into the recycling, got out a new sticky note and wrote, “Here I am.” I placed it alone on the mirror. Here I am.

I thought about an eye-gazing meditation I did recently that was either good or meaningless, and I thought, “Here I am. Here I am.”

The First Bad Man by Miranda July

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An autographed copy of Miranda July’s The First Bad Man arrived in a cardboard box propped against my front door. I did not order it. I was coming back from yoga. It was any old day, and my mind very slowly bended around the idea that someone had bought something for me. I brought it inside and carefully opened it. Inside was a note from Z and the book. I immediately read the first few paragraphs, smiled to myself, and set it aside for later.

I’ve been reading a lot lately and savored this one, reading it slowly over the course of a few weeks. There are so many lines in the first few chapters that made me laugh, or made me reach for a pencil to draw a thin gray line under a phrase or beside a passage. Miranda July is an artist who makes me feel not alone in this world. It is absolutely novel how she can capture all the strange little quips and quirks that brains do.

July also writes about really disgusting, gross-out, putrid sorts of things, and the sheer quantity of that mid-way through The First Bad Man started to get me down. The suffocation the main character creates for herself, her home, her kitchen, her frying pan, her throat condition, the containers of urine, the breast punching—it all got to be too much, and I didn’t want to spend any more time in the book. But, of course, I did and in the last few chapters, I started underlining things again, and smiling as I read, and once again, felt that I was not alone in the world.

When I read a particularly delightful passage, I found myself turning to the title page and running my finger over her indecipherable magic marker signature. Who was this woman? Is she like me? Or, is she commenting on what it’s like to be me?

Forever by Judy Blume

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I recently saw Forever by Judy Blume on a list of great books by women for women. I haven’t read young adult literature since…probably since I was a teenager. I was immediately struck by how bad the writing was. The book is a study in telling instead of showing. After deciding early on that it was not worth a close read, I just skipped ahead, read all of the sexy parts, and called it a day.

image from goodreads.com

image from goodreads.com

However, after a few days of reflection, I’ve come to realize that it probably is an important book. Sure, I found most of the writing off-putting, but it was probably pretty good/typical/appropriate/accessible for young adult fiction. Evidently, it’s one of the first books that’s about young people entering into their first sexual relationships. Blume portrays a very white, middle class, private school kind of normal. So, that was limiting, but still useful. It depicts young people being very straightforward with each other. All of the experiences are very consensual and thoughtful. If someone has a feeling or doesn’t want to do something, that’s okay. They talk about it. Blume is modeling a relationship, though perhaps overly simplified, is straightforward and consensual, and sadly, that’s really rare. So, after reading the thing, I’d agree that this is an important book for all women, especially young women, and the people who want to be intimate with them.

Palo Alto: Stories by James Franco

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Despite having recently lost my ability to read anything with a discernible plot, I read and enjoyed James Franco’s first selection of shorts stories, entitled, Palo Alto: Stories. And, it was good. I mean, everyone’s reading it and wondering if they’re just reading it because he’s famous, and while that might be the case, the writing holds its own. He tips his hat to his teachers, and I so hope that he workshopped this stuff like the rest of us.

While it’s got a major publisher, it feels independent. Ideally, this is the sort of text that could help bridge the gap between big conglomerate publishers and small independent presses. I don’t really think capitalism or consumerism work that way, but as a reader, I cannot tell you how badly I want to read more of this kind of work.

Anyway, these are small, plot-driven stories. They are careful and conceptually rich. While I’ll admit I wasn’t too eager to spend a lot of time with teenaged-boys or high school, I think some of the territory Franco covers is important, even necessary. The first story, “Halloween,” is really so good. It’s one that has stuck with me for the past few days. It’s one I’ll remember.

I’ve been a fan of Franco’s since his Freaks and Geeks years (or rather, when I watched it on DVD several years after the fact), but even still, I’ve been a fan, and I’m glad to see his genuine success in writing.

As you know, I read George Saunders this summer, and I actually thought Franco’s work could be categorized with Saunders. Franco’s work is much more accessible, mind you, but it is somewhat indicative of the real made strangely dystopic that is happening in contemporary male writing these days, and it’s satisfying to see that aesthetic emerge culturally.

Also, and more importantly, is it just me, or do the pages smell vaguely of cologne?

palo alto

image from amazon.com

Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty by Diane Keaton

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I read Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty by Diane Keaton because I remembered liking her Then Again awhile back. Also, more importantly, Diane Keaton has done things a little differently, and I’m always looking to read about women who are doing things a little differently because I do things a little differently too.

image from amazon.com

image from amazon.com

It’s an odd book, and much more stream of consciousness than I remember of Then Again. And, so I was glad to read something entirely different. It was insightful to be privy to Diane Keaton’s mind, which was, just like her, brilliant, annoying, confusing, legendary.

I mean, you can tell that a frenzied editor tried to assemble her bedside journal scribblings, but that’s okay. It never needed to be a perfect to begin with.

She writes about beauty. It’s mostly about beauty. The introduction is so promising, and there are only glimpses (though worth it!) of this promise throughout. She writes about the process of discovering beauty as a young girl, and hearing the opinions of others, she and writes “Don’t tell me what beauty is before I know if for myself.” I think that line is so important. The most honest, provocative moments are when we fall in love with something beautiful before we realize or understand if it meets a shared social standard of beauty: our mothers, the fabric on grandmother’s old chair, a tiny glass figurine weighted just right. Of course, soon enough, we are told what beauty is, and all is lost, and we can never again really know how much we’ve mixed up our own sense of beauty with society’s standards. C’est la vie.

Later, of Picasso’s depiction of Marie- Thérèse, Keaton writes that Picasso paints her, “through loving her, living with her, and seeing her as both ugly and magnificent. Because of his sculptures, Marie- Thérèse emerged as a symbol of unsightly, frightening, even hideous but also, I have to say, complete beauty” (xix). I can think of nothing more romantic than the thought of two people loving each other and timelessly fascinated with the ugly and the magnificent in the other—the unsightly, the frightening, the hideous, and the beauty.

Keaton is a romantic and appears to be unlucky in love, but has also had some luck in love. Her questions of love and beauty were really nice to think through with her, even if just for a couple hundred pages.

Coeur De Lion by Ariana Reines

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One of those things went around Facebook asking people to list the top ten most influential books they’ve ever read, and several writer-friends mentioned Coeur De Lion by Ariana Reines. So, I got it, and read it in a few hours late one morning (which, coupled with a cup of tea, felt amazingly indulgent, by the way).

image from amazon.com

image from amazon.com

The book is erotic and smart, and gives the impression of effortlessness. Like when the untrained eye looks at a piece of abstract expressionism and says, “hey, I could do that!” In so many ways, it feels like the emotional frenzied jotting down of ideas that happens thoughtlessly in a bedside journal. But there is such an attention to sound, such perfection throughout, it is clear the effortlessness is no accident. Here, for example: “She has curly hair like me, but in this jpeg it looks like she puts more emollients in hers.” While it may sound very conversational, the sound and rhythm are just beyond.

Here are a few other lines I liked in the order that they appear:

“She is sexually terrifying. Her elegance
And intelligence dignify the insanity so
Much I forget not to be charmed”

“The melancholic
Loses the object of desire while the object
Is still there.”
(Reines paraphrasing Zizek paraphrasing Freud)

“It’s been so easy for you
To disengage yourself from your
Behavior, as though you really
Were conjectural, as though
Your desire really were as limitless
And general as the fucking internet.”

That last one was worth the wait, wasn’t it? Anyway, go now. Read the book.

The Room Lit by Roses by Carole Maso

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Carole Maso is one of the few authors who I will read over and over again. Her work has a quality that just gives and gives each time I read it. Oddly, I haven’t even come close to reading all of her work. With the short time before work for the semester really starts in earnest, I decided to grab a few books to frantically and recklessly read before I got down to business. That has involved forsaking some exercise and sunlight to read while lounging in air-conditioned spaces–sometimes with a popsicle.

image by Publishers Weekly

I grabbed a few new books from the New York Times Bestseller list along with Carole Maso’s The Room Lit by Roses. I began reading it after working a long shift as a doula. My wrist was sore (still not recovered from a bike wreck two months ago) and my body weary. I tossed by hospital clothes in the hamper and showered the hospital germs away and propped myself up in bed with pillows on my cool white feather down comforter (enter also swamp cooler and popsicle).

I was done thinking about childbirth and labor when I cracked the spine and for the first time realized the rest of the book’s title: A Journal of Pregnancy and Birth. The universe clearly wants me to examine the issue more closely, so “here we go again,” I thought. I scarcely could put it down until it was finished about 24 hours later with the strong impulse to turn around and read it again, which I will not do right now.

Years ago, I read The American Woman in the Chinese Hat and read it again to prepare for my trip to France. I assume I’ll return to The Room Lit by Roses if I become pregnant or want to write more extensively on the topic. For now, I’m glad it exists and I’m glad I can return to it. What I love about Maso’s work is how real and raw and open she is. The ultimate sacrifice, I get the feeling that she splays herself open for us, dear reader, and for art and probably for world peace. Carole Maso is one of those authors for whom I am incredibly grateful.

Sometimes a line or two will be entirely dumb and petty and ugly, which works to magnify the stuff that is brilliant and important and beautiful. As I read her work, I find myself saying yes! That’s how it is. That’s how I feel! She wrote, “Always knew I wanted to have the experience of pregnancy.” I swear I say those exact words. The rest of it, the child, the life, that’s the part I’m not always sure about. But pregnancy and labor, yes. It’s such a bizarre and most intense human experience that is felt only a few times, or once, or never, so of course I’d like to have that. Maso puts into words how absolutely terrible and wonderful and necessary the experience can be, and I clung to each word.

Tenth of December by George Saunders

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I recently finished a collection of short stories by George Saunders called Tenth of December. I’ve never read Saunders before and didn’t intend to, but I saw the title in a favorite new and used bookstore and had to pick it up. I’ve always loved the bookstore. It used to be called Earth ‘N Book in La Grande, Oregon. Years ago, it changed hands, and I felt that it wasn’t quite what it used to be. However, I popped my head in on a recent visit to Oregon, and it drew me in—just like a good new and used bookstore (is there any other kind?) always does.

image from usatoday.com

image from usatoday.com

I scanned the new releases, and that’s when the title caught my attention: Tenth of December. You see, that’s a significant date for me. That’s the date that My Love was born. (Though for years I had it in my head that his birthday was on the seventh.) I picked it up and read some praise on the back cover. There was a conversation at the end with David Sedaris—a favorite! I decided to get it as a gift for Z, who would be visiting me in Oregon on his way through. (He is currently on a bike trek from Utah through the Northwest.) So, I bought the book, along with another great book called This is Not My Hat for my nephew. (That book encouraged a good four-year old-appropriate conversation on the ethics of stealing. Z pointed out that it also taught dramatic irony.)

Tenth of December starts with a short story called “Victory Lap,” which is absolutely stunning. It is hilarious and traumatic—something Saunders does very well. He also has a distinct and innovative voice, but doesn’t seem like he’s trying too hard—which means he was probably trying very, very hard. I know that seems so very nonspecific, so I’ll try to elaborate. Saunders does this thing where he integrates these informal aspects of text-speak and typing. So, for example, the “ha ha has” we get when we’re chatting or texting are integrated into his work in a profound and poetic, but (of course) understated way. There are a few good authors who are absolutely genius with their ability to make the colloquial profound (Raymond Carver is among them), and Saunders does that too. But, what’s most interesting, I think, is the way he integrates a really modern colloquial that is clearly influenced by the way changing and omnipresent technology evolves our language.

“Victory Lap” was probably my favorite piece. I also really appreciated “Puppy.” In my opinion, a few pieces were too dark and/or difficult for their payoff, but I am particularly sensitive to such things. As you, dear readers, may recall, I am making an effort to read mostly female authors for the time being. It’s difficult to describe why exactly, but suffice it to say that for my current creative endeavors, I want to have the voices of women in my head.

Despite that current constraint, I picked up and read Tenth of December as quickly as I could. When Z arrived in Oregon, I kept reading it for several days, trying to finish in case he wanted to take it with him on his bike trek. Though it was an emotional rollercoaster, I’m glad I read it. I’m also glad I’ve given it as a gift. I won’t mind that it is in someone else’s care for awhile.