Stacked

Short stories that span time and place, that aren’t afraid to travel through harsh emotional territory, that canoodle with danger and sadness and strive for forgiveness and love and redemption. That’s what’s happening in Yasuko Thanh’s debut collection, Floating Like the Dead. And now you know.

This is the kind of book that makes me want to slap people upside the face with it when they say they don’t get poetry. This is the kind of book you read and love and mull over and then you read it again and think, “oh shizz, did he just do that?”, and “oh shizz, he totes did,” and then you carry it around with you, in a nice bag along with your lip gloss and moisturizer, to have near you, and also maybe sometimes to just pull out and show people how amazing, and heartsad and hilarious and perceptive and compelling and innovative and just plain wonderfully adept at understanding how we all function in this strange place we call society poets can be. I hope you got all of that? Because otherwise, I’ve got a little something in my purse for you. It’s a bitch slap, courtesy of Daniel Zomparelli and Davie Street Translations. I didn’t get Maltesers at first, but sometimes an acquired taste is the most delicious.

I don’t know if it’s somehow my fault for reading so many of them or the damn writers for writing about it, but here are just so many books about death and dying and the various ways it can go down and bring people down. Stephen Gauer’s debut novel Hold Me Now  is one of those books. A hate crime, a killing gets people down in this book. It’s tough. There are complicated emotions, and strained relationships, and loneliness and sex to pacify emotions and drink to further pacify emotions and desire for revenge, for peace, for something to hold onto, but there are no heroes here. Because that just makes sense in hard times. That we can have people that are important in our lives, but no one can save us from our hard feelings. That we have to muddle along. That we have to take responsibility for our feelings, for our actions. So fine, I’ll take partial blame on this whole death book situation, because sometimes the eyes and mind want to read what they want. Sometimes, it’s on me.

This book and I are acquaintances. We probably go to the same parties, we might throw down a, “hey,” or “how you doing?” but really we don’t have a lot in common. The poems in here are made of cleverness. There are word games. There are allusions. They’re not easy. I’m a bit intimidated by them, like if I’m at the party I think I’m not cool or smart enough to get into a conversation with them. But then when I get home, a little tipsy, kick off my tottering heals, just enough energy left to throw off my clothes and crawl into bed, smear mascara on the pillow, because I’m not quite awake enough to take that off, I’ll think about our relationship before falling asleep. And I’ll realize that I can’t get into every book of poems that comes my way, that I can’t be friend to all, that sometimes the emotional connection isn’t there. But I can give kudos and hang out with the shit I love, and pass on an occasional, “hey” on my way to the bar.

This book here really gets me. Like, I think we should go for beers together. Friends. I might consider us friends. These poems and I had some insightful conversation. They were charming and funny and smart as a whip snap and made me feel okay about my life choices, and further question others and wonder about what they hell people are thinking. They were supportive without being fake, called me out on my crap and weren’t afraid to give me a little shove when I needed one. Sometimes talk is cheap and we need something solid, not empty words and stanzas. None of that here. Just solid poetic realness that surprised and inspired. Like a good beer it had fizz and a lovely flavour. And I felt real good about taking the time to digest these irrational, philosophical, intellectual and emotionally relevant poems. I think I’m going to be happy in this new friendship. Real happy.

I’m going through that thing where I realize that I have all these loaner books on the bedside table and for some reason reading the loaner books is way more difficult than reading the books I have gone out and purchased. I’m not good at being that person who accepts a loaner book from a friend who tells me it is great, or when someone tells me I have to read a book and forces it on me. I just want to be all like, don’t tell me what I’ll like, if I want a book I will ask, dammit. But honestly, the books I have here are mostly things I’ve wanted to read and my friends have very good taste and I shouldn’t be an ass about it, but I am and that is just a quirk that I have to deal with. It’s like clothes. I have my own taste and don’t try to change me with your suggestions or free jeans, man! 

Surprise, surprise, I finally settle in to read Ali Smith for the first time and she blows me away with amazingness. Why did I resist her particular brand of storytelling? Probably because of my assiness, that’s why. Moderate strangeness mixed with believable feelings and comic sensibilities and also she can write in the second person without me wanting to lose my shit. The Whole Story and Other Storiesand I had a lovely morning together and I could not be happier that I experienced her view of the world, her stories about people who fall in love with trees, and mixed up sisters. She is doing something special. Her style is so refreshing that I would even read some half stories. Get it? I know. Terrible.

Mindy Kaling sometimes (ok, maybe more than sometimes) talks about how she would like to be friends with Beyonce. And why wouldn’t she? That is a reasonable wish/life goal/aspiration/whatever. Obviously she wants that. It would be awesome to be friends with someone that awe-inspiring and amazing and bodysuit-owning. I felt that same feeling about the delightful Kaling herself as I read through her first book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And Other Concerns). She is very likable. And funny and smart and she writes about clothes and family and dudes and also (so insightful and great and gives hope to other writerly types, ahem) how she came to be a writing-tv-acting superstar. And also (very important shit here) she writes about friendships in a non-self-help, non-creepy/ugly/lame greeting card kind of way. For reals friendship shizz, all right? And like any good friend (in at this point a still fake, unsubstantiated friendship) I didn’t totally agree with her on everything, (it’s okay to have a different philosophy on dudes or whatever) but I was all like, ‘you tell it like you think it, bookfriend.’ Or something like that.

So, the book and I are now friends. We’ve talked about our feelings. It’s a good companion. I suggest you befriend it too. It will even let you borrow it’s clothes. Even that cute dress. Yes, that one.

I can’t think of a subject more worthy of our attention than humiliation. Thankfully, that delightful bastard Wayne Koestenbaum agrees with me and has written a series of ‘fugues’ to examine the various ways humiliation enters our lives. How it exists in history, pop culture, how our own bodies expel it. Koestenbaum is open, whether talking about himself or others or big ideas. He deals with some real sad things, some real sexy things, some real unavoidably uncomfortable things. He covers race, American Idol, Basquiat, your mom and glory holes. This book has it all. It will fill all our your cultural, philosophical and memoirish humiliation needs. It will also make you laugh and question your television viewing choices.

Oh man. As I started to write this puny review I was worried I wouldn’t sound intelligent enough, be able to do justice to this gem with my own words. And then I realized I was going to post it on the internet where anyone could confirm the truth of that statement. But then I also realized that hardly anyone reads this thing because I am kind of lame. So in the reading and writing about Humiliation, I have gone through some shameful stages and now my ego and I are going to hit the kitchen to find some most likely shameful foods that I will most likely eat in a humiliating way while watching a reality television program that involves superiority and inferiority and humiliation.

I will not be broadcasting my humiliating lunch over the internets. I will just eat it and let my own bowel movements humiliate me later.

Marcel is one of the greatest characters of our time. He lives in a world that seems too big for his mini-mollusk self, yet he makes a full life. He has some good times and a comfy bed…I mean bread. He has wants he can’t achieve. He has ways he makes do when he can’t do anything more. We are so like Marcel, with shells that protect us, have the ability to crack. He is also a very observant and sometimes wise shell guy.  Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp (and of course Amy Lind and her illustrations) have created a wee book for kids and other people who are awesome. Tiny heartbreaks and wide smiles. That is what Marcel the Shell is for. And also for modelling some very dandy shoes.

Didion’s Blue Nights is here to remind us of average, wonderful and uncomfortable things. We will love people and lose them. We will relish and shun memories to protect and hurt ourselves. We will know certain elements of our loved ones and not others.  We may discover new parts of them as we grow old, as they do. We will get old and older. We will all feel differently about aging, about the way our bodies betray us, about the wisdom that does or doesn’t come. We will question ourselves. We will get swept up in joy and tragedy. Sure, this might not make you feel better about who you are, about mortality, about the simple facts of living. But Didion also writes so elegantly of her life, of fancy California baptism parties, beautiful cakes, Chanel suits, gardens,  New York apartments, that you remember those parts as vividly as days with her dying daughter in the ICU. In her details there is opulence and loveliness, there is social commentary that trickles in to remind us and herself of how she lived and lives, how she parented, how she loved. And even though her writing amazes it has not cured her of her feelings. Her losses still exist. Her losses sit with her everyday.