“Life is sad. Here is someone.”

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Excerpts, Fiction - Novel, Lorrie Moore

Benna looked back at her knees feeling that she’d been made, forever and for now, like her marriage vows, stupid with loneliness, bereft of any truth or wisdom or flicker of poetry, possessed only of the wild glaze of a person who spends entire days making things up.

Story of my life these days c/o La Lorrie, haha. I haven’t stopped reading, folks. That’s silly. But, as trite as this may sound, I’m still trying to figure out life and loving, and, [small-]partly, literature. Writing has taken a backseat, yes — my own, and for this blog.

But sometimes I have to crawl out from wherever I’ve been hiding to share something just so mind-blowingly good, even though I’m very much aware that I’ll fail to do justice to the experience.

Hello, Anagrams by Lorrie Moore. You are, basically, one of the best books I’ve ever read, one of my favorites. I read you, and it was the perfect time, and you were relevant — there was no other book I could have read. And I can’t wait to read you again, because I’m absolutely certain I’ll love you in any way we set things up between us.

Miss Moore, I am even more ardently, and cultishly, a fan. And I feel so smug that I’ve read this novel — and I really can’t wait to read the rest [there are two of yours I'm yet to read, but I'm getting there.] Here, you’ve written a [literally] multi-faceted love story with the quirkiest, saddest, most charming heroine at its center, Benna Carpenter.

By the end of our marriage I was sitting in our house in outer suburbia, wondering, Where does love go? When something you have taped on the wall falls off, what has happened to the stickum? It has relaxed. It has accumulated an assortment of hairs and fuzzies. It has said Fuck it and given up. It doesn’t go anywhere special, it’s just gone. Energy is created, and then it is destroyed. So much for the laws of physics. So much for chemistry. So much for not so much.

How many ways can you write about love and romance? Why are they so goddamned good? Why am I inclined to simply quote the book in its entirety, because talking about it, well, I’m just fuzzily grinning right now? Why are you so good, why are you always so right for me?

Our laughs grow louder and hazy. Soon we are kissing. Soon we are unbuttoning. I haven’t kissed or unbuttoned in a long time and it’s like, at long last, a meeting of friends, falling into a familiar, ineffable dance we’ve both learned elsewhere, long ago, but have revived here, a revival! perhaps like Agness DeMille’s Oklahoma! something like that. It is as if our separate pasts were greeting each other, as if we were saying, This is how I have been with other people, this is how I would love you. If I loved you. Everything always seems to boil down to Rodgers and Hammerstein. Off you would go in the mist of day and all that.

I’m so besotted — and this book is so good, so good to me — that there is no way I can correctly approximate feelings, find the right words. You are goddamned awesome. And it’s not the debilitating kind of awesome. You’ve always been the kind of writer who urges me to go directly to my own notebook after reading you, to write my own stuff. And yes, you’ve always been the best kind of literary memory.

This book is my literary doppelganger. That’s so self-indulgent to say, no? But, heh, this book is mine. You wrote this with me in mind, Miss Moore. You’ll have to admit that sooner or later.

The problem with beautiful women

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Excerpts, Fiction - Novel, Lorrie Moore

Words to live by, from Anagrams by Lorrie Moore:

The problem with a beautiful woman is that she makes everyone around her feel hopelessly masculine, which if you’re already male to begin with poses no particular problem. But if you’re anyone else, your whole sexual identity gets dragged into the principal’s office: “So what’s this I hear about you prancing around, masquerading as a woman?” You are answerless. You are sitting on your hands. You are praying for your breasts to grow, your hair to perk up.

I look at all the pretty girls, and in my head I grumble, “If I had your face, I would go out and break hearts.” Especially your face, yes, you. I want to curl your hair and put you in a summer dress, dammit. [Today, I am wearing heels that shoot me up to just a smidge over six feet. I feel like flamingo. But without the cheery pinkness. And the saucy behind.] Happy Monday, everybody.

elsewhere || “The Missteps of Lorrie Moore, Literary Hero” at POC-Metakritiko

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Fiction - Novel, Lorrie Moore, Metakritiko

My review of A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore is up on the Metakritiko section of The Philippine Online Chronicles. It’s part of an [bleep]-word essay called “The Missteps of Lorrie Moore, Literary Hero,” and has been divided in two because we want to be considerate of the TL;DR crowd. Aherm. So. The first part’s a backgrounder on my literary relationship with La Lorrie. Excerpt follows:

[E]very moment of bewilderment, to this die-hard fan, is akin to seeing one’s beloved aunt getting drunk in a seedy bar, insisting on dancing topless at countertops. That, or seeing aforementioned beloved aunt throwing away her tunics and Jesus sandals to live a relatively torpid existence at some lakeside. Either way, the missteps in A Gate at the Stairs—and there are many, despite my resolve to try not to take notice of them—hurt. They hurt a lot.

And then the second part is actually the (more-or-less) full review of the novel. A note, though: Since the essay’s more analytical than anything, there’s a widdle spoiler at the bottom. So there. A snippet:

That’s how Moore reveals: Patch by patch, section by section. Fragments of the human condition is revealed, but not without some smears and smudges. The haphazardness isn’t even conscious—This is what Tassie is, this is how things are revealed to Tassie. The authorial power is muted. The form of novel takes a backseat toTassie’s story. In A Gate at the Stairs, Tassie Keltjin is in control.

Take a look-see, if y’all are so inclined. Also, some of the reviews are going to be sent that-a-way. Once I get off my lazy ass & actually start writing them. But I’m too busy reading. Hee.

marginalia || A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore

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Excerpts, Fiction - Novel, Lorrie Moore

Tragedies, I was coming to realize through my daily studies in the humanities both in and out of the classroom, were a luxury. They were constructions of an affluent society, full of sorrow and truth but without moral function. Stories of the vanquishing of the spirit expressed and underscored a certain societal spirit to spare. The weakening of the soul, the story of downfall and failed overcoming—trains missed, letters not received, pride flaring, the demolition of one’s own offspring, who were then served up in stews—this was awe-inspiring, wounding entertainment told uselessly and in comfort at tables full of love and money. Where life was meagerer, where tables were only half full, the comic triumph of the poor was the useful demi-lie. Jokes were needed. “And then the baby fell down the stairs.” This could be funny! Especially in a place and time where worse things happened. It wasn’t that suffering was a sweepstakes, but it certainly was relative. For understanding and for perspective, suffering required a butcher’s weighing. And to ease the suffering of the listener, things better be funny. Though they weren’t always. And this is how, sometimes, stories failed us: Not that funny. Or worse, not funny in the least.

I’ve wanted to read this book for so long. And now that I have–What could I possibly say about Lorrie Moore’s first novel in ten years, the hyped and lauded and bewilderment-triggering A Gate at the Stairs? Did I like it? Yes. Was it perfect? Only because I wanted it to be. Elaborate, please? Oh, Lorrie Moore is Default Love for me. But? But I realize the novel is flawed, very much so–but I didn’t mind those flaws so much. Why? Go back to the beginning of this conversation, why doncha.

That’s it in a nutshell. Add the words baffled and breathless here and there, and we’re set.

No, really. I’m not being cute here. I put this book down days ago, and until now I don’t really know what I ought to say about it. Yes, it’s a good novel–yes, Tassie Keltjin is one of the most memorable characters I’ll ever come across–yes, the book’s a good read. But there are so many buts to these statements. Primarily: Why do I love A Gate at the Stairs, even though I find so many flaws in it glaring at me? And, ultimately, when I do devote a deeper examination to those flaws, what would I feel about the novel then? I do not know.

In the meantime, one of the many passages that I have scrawled onto too many pieces of paper: This was love, I supposed, and eventually I would come to know it. Someday it would choose me and I would come to understand its spell, for long stretches and short, two times, maybe three, and then quite probably it would choose me never again.

I promise to come back less baffled. Or, rather, with an elaboration on said bafflement. [Reminds me of that poem by Jose Garcia Villa: Proceed to dazzlement, Augustine. Yes, sir, will do.]

marginalia || Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore

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Fiction - Short Stories, Lorrie Moore

I fell in love with Lorrie Moore when I found her short story “How to Be an Other Woman” in an anthology of love stories. There, by pure accident (I was scouring the library shelves, just because), I fell in love. She just blew me away—her language, her quirkiness, her ability to sucker-punch your right between the eyes.

And so it was a pleasure when mah homey Petra let me take this book home with me (originally Sir Larry‘s, hello!) Birds of America is a collection of twelve stories from Miss Moore, and the stories were good. They were. But were they yummy?—

It pains me to say that these stories, though masterful, did not fascinate me the way her stories in Self-Help did. Yes, I recognize how well-written the stories are, how precise Moore’s observations can be, how she has retained her ability to charge a single phrase with so much meaning. The stories in this collection are great stories, created by a writer who knows her way around the craft, has mastered it.

But these stories, they aren’t magical—not for me. I was not compelled to go on a little walk (cigarettes in my pocket, a boatload of heartache as well) after every story. I was not compelled to sigh at the general direction of walls. I was not compelled to run to the nearest scrap of paper and emulate. Kids, I did not gasp. Not once.

But yes—yadda yadda—these stories were written by a master. The craft was flawless. And I’m not even saying these stories didn’t have heart. Because they did. Not just the kind of heart that spoke to mine—these are stories you let a Creative Writing major read, not the kind she has to discover on her own, those stories that spark that Ooh writing is the shiz inside her. Am I making sense?

Well. Which is not to say that I hated this boo. I mean, I like it enough. I like it very much. Sigh. You can’t deny that these are kick-ass stories, ya know?

One of the stories I like best is “Charades”—it’s a night with a family, and this family happens to be playing that most scorned of parlor games. Testament to Lorrie Moore’s genius is how she’s able to create a story about what an awkward little monster a game of charades can be. And, at the same time, display all those undercurrents working within a family? Champion.

Of course, I suspect that given time to soak in, I’ll have other stories “I like best.” I give this new collection—and the author—that: it’s all so very bothersome in oh-so-many levels.