People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. I don’t want this book to leave an impression on me but I can feel it. I can feel that it has. I feel it in the way that I remember the first lines of the book, the way Bret just has to repeat those lines through the book « the merge ». I don’t like it.
I use the word « don’t » instead of « didn’t” because no one goes into a book thinking « Oh, you know, I really hope this doesn’t leave an impression on me. » We all want to be impressed upon in some ways I suppose, especially by art forms like literature. Or, maybe I should say, we all would like to be impressed: with kindness, fulfilled potential, equality, love, epic prose. I went into this book wanting it to stick with me, wanting it to be good. After all, the back cover synopsis had called it a “cult classic” of LA youth and since some of my formative youth years were spent in the seedy after-hours, bars and not-so glamorous clubs of LAs finest (subject to rebuttal) I was surprised to have come across this in a bookshop in London rather than when I was living in LA. This book defies being good. There’s nothing particularly good about it. It’s a story that feels real, though is listed as fiction (?) and is a work that took a very long time for me to get through. Nearly a month — actually, I went back and counted; it was only 13 days but man did it feel like I was trapped in this book for a lot longer than less than two weeks — to read 192 pages, much to my eternal dismay. If I could sum up the experience of reading this book it would be this, legit: I got sloughed down. I would flip a page and get stuck in the page, sink down to my ankles, heave my legs up and out of the page, take a step, and sink back down to my ankles again.
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She was really good at three things: 1. Baking sweet things. 2. Loving immensely. 3. Researching history. The numbers don’t necessarily correspond to the effiency with which she did one or another of those three things. Nor, should it suggest to you readers that she enjoyed doing those three things in chronological order. It’s not a numerical system of importance, it’s more fluid; like an infinity loop; like grief. Which seems proper because currently, she was bereaved. She wasn’t sure what stage she was in, only that grief wasn’t a linear progression and thus, she could be in any. She could even be in a stage she’d already been in before. She was married. Married in the way that was somehow for some reason rarer to findthese days. She and her husband believed they were meant to be, obligated to be, wanted to be, worked hard to be: together forever. They took Judeo-Christian vows they believed in, stood in front of a preacher, and said “I do.” She didn’t regret marrying him for a second, though, her marriage had led to an imbalance in the ratio to how much she researched history compared to how much she baked and loved. She was okay with that? She thought. Because she had Jon and, Jon, well Jon was really a good guy. So good. The kind of good that makes you stop, stare, and wonder where time goes. Why it moves forward? Why does it always have to move forward? You see, Jon came into her life and he wrapped his armed around her and he never let her go. Jon told her: “Hon, I’m going to protect you from all the bad in this world and I’ll never let you get hurt again.” Because you see, she’s been hurt a lot in her life. It had aged her twice the amount it ought to have. So, they ran away. Straight into the welcoming arms of the Wyoming visitors center and their bright blue big skies. They bought a house on a piece of land and Jon worked the land. He worked it like it wasn’t 2018, but 1930. Like he was desperate for it to turn out produce. And she, she baked, she made cakes, and pies, and cookies for neighbors who knew her name and smiled and waved as she rode to town on her bike that was red and had a yellow basket. They had a wooden porch made of oak that was softly sanded but not stained. They had cedar rocking chairs that felt sturdy and grounding when they sat in them. They had a swing made of ropes and a railing with five posts that kept their roof on when the snow came. Buffalo came to their porch but she tried so hard not to pet them There were elk, and wild animals that could hurt her and if there was one thing the world couldn’t do it was hurt her. Jon wouldn’t allow it. She was happy there. Author note: This story is a part of a series of short stories wherein I talk about moments of female activity. It doesn’t necessarily have to be true and it’s not necessarily fiction either. It’s just an emotion and an event in a timeline of other events.The woman had spent an hour hot-iron curling her auburn hair into perfectly pinned ringlets that fell to her shoulders. She had to be perfect, this was it, the day, the day she became an adult. The test was supposed to prove if she was ready to be an adult or if she was to go into the field of matrimony instead. Biting her thumbnail she looked down at the paper in front of her, twirled a number 2 pencil around in hand, and read. INSTRUCTIONS: There is one question and a total of 30 possible points. You must score a total of 21 points to receive the Adult Cert and a plastic bag containing two XENIX. A few things to remember before getting started: Please answer the questions to the best of your ability. Take your time. Inhaling and exhaling are required at every stage of the exam. When you are ready please turn this page over, WRITE YOUR LAST AND FIRST NAME at the top left-hand corner and begin. Question #1: You have gone to a local pub and had a pint of Cider containing 5.6% of alcohol and costing $7.50. You bring your MacBook Pro with you and write 1,500 words of an essay that is due tomorrow. You spend the four hours you were at the pub doing which of the following activities:
Author note: This is the third story in the 12-part series that looks at one aspect of being a female and what it feels like to live in a world where you're not sure of anything.I’m running away, but it’s acceptable now because I’m 24. 24 year olds are supposed to be away from their childhood home. So it’s okay. Except it’s not because my dad just died and 12 months prior my grandma died and 5 years prior my grandpa died. Everyone is dying and I’m running from death. I’m also running from him. Because, fuck him and all the lies he told me to get into my pants. So this is where my story starts. On a plane bound for London. God save my heart. I thought I started planing our lives the moment I saw him. I was wrong, I started planning my life way before I met him. And he, well, he had qualities that synced with the imaginary man in my fantasy. But that’s what we were. A two week fantasy bound to dissolve. If I could have one more conversation with him — and I’m not sure I’d want to. I’d tell him that now, when I think of love, I don’t see it as something worth dying for. I think I would die to save my brother, my mother, my three best friends because that’s all that love I have in my life. But I wouldn’t die for man. I’d tell him that he made me that way, that every single person who rendered me insignificant and unimportant in my life has irreversibly implanted an idea of irrelevancy in my mind. I’d tell him that his leaving me, his unwillingness to even try has set me on a path to carve out this notion that I am irrelevant. Because I am magnificent and I’ll prove it. I’d tell him that he met me during a time in my life when I was hopelessly lost and not looking for a way to be found. I’d tell him that his hurting me, his liking me, his presence in my life showed me just how deeply I had been digging a hole and burying my pain. I’d tell him that I hope he gets those three kids and never has to know what it’s like to kill someone. I’d tell him that I mourned for a long time how I won’t be apart of his life. I’d tell him I’m sorry that I used him, that I’m angry he used me. I’d tell him goodbye. This isn’t a story of magic, it may contain intrigue and it most definitely will have moments of mortification. But it’s going to be true and real because I’m amazing all by myself. Fuck the people who made me think I wasn’t. I’m not looking for miracles. I’m looking for people who’ve struggled. I’m looking for survivors. I’m looking for hope. This is the story of that journey. This is my opportunity. Author Note: This is the second short story in a 12 part series that deal with the pressures associated with being a female and not understanding what that means exactly.★★★★☆
First, man I'll tell you: S**T gets real at Chapter 20. My advice to you is to stick it out till Ch.20. If you can just do that you'll be fine. I swear. Lara Jean Song Covey will have hooked you, the simple sentence structure will have become endearing, and if you're like me and decided to binge read this trilogy after watching the Netflix movie, then well, pfft EVERYTHING starts to happen in Chapter 20. That being said, don't try to skip ahead y'all really need to experience the context of Chapters 1-19. Next, if I had written a book in high school, if I had actually gone to school in high school instead of homeschooling, then, this would have been the book I wrote. Last, and most importantly,
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This is a classic tale of awkward high school love. It is complicated by a girl who lost her mother at a young age in a truly tragic and freak accident and is facing her Junior Year of high school without her sister, Margot, who has gone off to college in Scotland. Talk about a tough break. During the course of Lara Jean Song Covey's Junior Year we are told about how she's struggling to be an adult-teenager, deal with possibly loving Margot's ex-boyfriend and thus betraying her sister, on top of facing her fear of commitment when a new love interest falls into her lap. |
characters:
Lara Jean Song Covey: The main protagonist. The epic feeler. The Love-Letter sender. Lara Jean is perhaps the most relatable teenager I've experienced in a YA-Contemporary novel. Lara Jean was who teenage-Anna was back in high school, and let's be real here, still kinda is today. Her issues with commitment and her fear of love is spot-on for why I also fear men, love, and commitment. Her internal thoughts mirror Past-Anna thoughts so perfectly that I often found myself chuckling fondly at tidbits like: "I wonder if they have stalls in there, or just a bunch of shower heads and no privacy." Like on the real though, how do boys feel comfortable showering in locker rooms? She's also apparently funny, quirky, and cute; all the things I literally have been called before and seriously probably am. She also does things like run up to a boy and kisses him, movie-style, just to convince another boy she actually likes that she does not in fact like him, when she does. Classic Anna move. Like Lara Jean, I also wrote letters and kept them in a wooden box that looked like a very large book that my grandma had given me. Also like Lara Jean, I take those letters out and reread from time to time to affirm my emotions at the time and see how different I am from that scared, traumatized, little girl. Unlike Lara Jean, my letters never got out. Honestly, I could just continue forever to talk about how Lara Jean's voice progressively, throughout the entire book, just gets more real and more: YAS *poetic snaps*. Margot Song Covey: The perfect one. The good "craic". The Good. The one who left for Scotland while simultaneously breaking Josh's heart. She doesn't feature much in the meat of narrative but she's an inspiration. I think Margot and Lara Jean's relationship is a bit like my brother and I's relationship, post-his move out of the house during my sophomore year of high school. Kitty Song Covey: The feisty one. The one who set things in motion. Also Kitty and Peter's relationship is just about the second best part of this book. Josh: The boy next-door. The coveted. Often referred to as "Margot's Josh". Peter K.: The handsome one. AKA Kavinsky. AKA the handsome at first glance but really beautiful one. The beauty boy. The one with long eye lashes. The one with unfairly long eyelashes. Honestly, he's my favorite, next to Lara Jean. Every interaction Peter and Lara Jean have together is perfect and witty and the best. That's all. Chris: The stray cat you always wanted. Or, if you're like me, the stray cat you abducted from the golf course you live adjust to and hid in your room for a day until you found out that you may or may not have gotten lice from it. On a more related note *cough* I seriously had a friend just like Chris in high school. The rebellious, running away from family drama teenager who feels unheard, unloved, and somehow picked on at home and so turns to the wildness of the night. Her brash, wild-n-crazy, tell-it-straight attitude was great. She kinda wasn't emotionally there for Lara Jean but you know the Chris's of the world never really are. I also know 100% that I would genuinely follow the Chris's anywhere in the world, solely because I believed in their vision. Gen: The popular one. The Gen of the Gen and Kavinsky Institution. The kinda mean person. The one you kinda felt for by the end but didn't actually want to admit that to yourself because like the main protagonist is YOU and you have to back YOU up. |
overall:
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Fav Quotes:
"Did you run up to Kavinsky and kiss him like a manic?" "I miss her so much. Nothing's the same without her. " "It's a cozy day: it's nearly six o'clock, and I'm still in my pj's." "Josh gives me a funny look. 'That's not what he was saying today at McCall's.' What in the world was Peter K. doing at a bookstore?" "'Yes, of course I know what that means.' I have no idea what that means. I make a mental note to ask Chris the next time I see her." "I think throwing Peter off guard could be a fun hobby for me." "I smile a secret smile." "My favorite decade is the aughts, which means the 1900s." "Peter's so Peter." "I'm just waiting for the next question. You never just have one question." "When that piece makes sense, everything else starts to." "He has a high emotional IQ." "A zany little detour..." "I guess Santa shops at Costco too."
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If you’re wondering who I am. If you’re curious to know my mind’s inner thoughts and feelings
I can give no better example than the words I write on my poetry blog: “Annie and Grandpa’s Poets”.
I’ve been blogging (first on blogger then on Wordpress) since I was in high school.
During a period of isolation in my life, I found a community and an outlet for expression in the annonimity of the online world. Before social media was a thing and all we had was MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook; digital platforms like Google Blogger and Wordpress housed my journals for me. For that, I, and my young adolescent self, am ever grateful.
I have since not kept up with my Blogger accounts, though they still exist, a living monument the the high school girl who didn’t know how to cope. And, can still be accessed by the public if you search hard enough through the ethers of the World Wide Web.
The poems you find on Wordpress I have kept up with. The account, founded when my grandfather passed away, are an unfiltered (as much as that’s possible) reality of what it is like to be me. They chronicle my drug addiction, eating disorders, self-harm issues, depression, coping with social anxiety, and experiences with lust/love/happiness/faith/ and loss.
They continue to the present-day as poetic inspiration strikes.
Forever proud, am I, of this account and these poems which express the true events of my life ever so unflinchingly. In all the ways that I have always been afraid to express verbally this digital Anna boldly proclaims.
It is a journal.
They are my thoughts.
They are Anna.
They have been Anna over the years.
They will continue to be Anna.
The girl wondered as she people watched from the checkered patio of a tiny café, how she got to the place she was at now. Sipping slowly, almost methodically one could say, on the Vietnamese iced coffee she watched as the condensed milk separated from the melting ice.
What am I doing here? A swirl from her straw stirred together the milk-coffee and water. The girl had never gone anywhere in her entire life, and she was cresting the rip old age of 19. She was still living in the tiny town she'd been born in, still praying to her parents' God, wearing her mother's handed down Levi's, grandma's pearls, and great-grandma's locket. Spoiling herself with a once-a-week 'exotic' coffee. If one were to believe Mrs. Babanoux's menu.
It had never occurred to the girl to leave her town, to get on the local bus, take that bus to the nearest functioning city then get on the nearest Amtrack and take that Amtrack somewhere where they had more than one coffee house, more than one outlet mall, and less slightly-racist iced coffees.
No one ever leaves, she realized.
Barbarous. She thought. Ludicrous.
All these people staying in the same place, like sedentary animals disinterested in the unfamiliar.
Maybe it was because she'd started community college last Fall that she had all these adventurous thoughts. Maybe it was because Summer session had made trek into Finals week and the girl felt like even the air suddenly had so much more weight to it. Or rather, it was that she could no longer exert enough force to counteract the airs weight. Either way, she had gotten to a point where she no longer wanted to read of History or look at the Mona Lisa in a Textbook. She wanted her life to be a history novel, compact, intriguing, but above all scandalous. She wanted to live in a world where people didn't stay in the same place for more than two years. But most of all, she wanted to see just how tiny the painting of Mona Lisa actually was. She to see the face of God, pray because she had faith, eat very little or very much without fearing how her nonexistent husband would react if she gained four or ten pounds.
An hour later with her coffee gone, croissant finished, and Roman history final studied for, the girl picked up her crocheted bag, unlocked her pale green Electra bike and rode home. She turned down the dirt path flanked by leaning Spanish moss trees and sunflowers, dropped her bike with a clatter, and sunk her sandaled feet into damp marsh. Her cotton dress swayed around her legs in the breeze as she walked up the four creaking steps to that never changing house of hers. Sidestepping the broken strip of wood in the middle of her Mama's wraparound porch the girl, like always, kissed two of her fingers and placed them onto the front door of the white house her family had had for generations.
Closing the door beside her and letting her bag sag onto the hook next to an iron mirror and picture of a Confederate solider she couldn't help but think: I'd probably just end up on the wrong side of history if my life was a history book anyway. This family always seems to choose the wrong side.
And so Amandine, like her bag had, sagged into the monotony of finding enjoyment in familiar things.
What am I doing here? A swirl from her straw stirred together the milk-coffee and water. The girl had never gone anywhere in her entire life, and she was cresting the rip old age of 19. She was still living in the tiny town she'd been born in, still praying to her parents' God, wearing her mother's handed down Levi's, grandma's pearls, and great-grandma's locket. Spoiling herself with a once-a-week 'exotic' coffee. If one were to believe Mrs. Babanoux's menu.
It had never occurred to the girl to leave her town, to get on the local bus, take that bus to the nearest functioning city then get on the nearest Amtrack and take that Amtrack somewhere where they had more than one coffee house, more than one outlet mall, and less slightly-racist iced coffees.
No one ever leaves, she realized.
Barbarous. She thought. Ludicrous.
All these people staying in the same place, like sedentary animals disinterested in the unfamiliar.
Maybe it was because she'd started community college last Fall that she had all these adventurous thoughts. Maybe it was because Summer session had made trek into Finals week and the girl felt like even the air suddenly had so much more weight to it. Or rather, it was that she could no longer exert enough force to counteract the airs weight. Either way, she had gotten to a point where she no longer wanted to read of History or look at the Mona Lisa in a Textbook. She wanted her life to be a history novel, compact, intriguing, but above all scandalous. She wanted to live in a world where people didn't stay in the same place for more than two years. But most of all, she wanted to see just how tiny the painting of Mona Lisa actually was. She to see the face of God, pray because she had faith, eat very little or very much without fearing how her nonexistent husband would react if she gained four or ten pounds.
An hour later with her coffee gone, croissant finished, and Roman history final studied for, the girl picked up her crocheted bag, unlocked her pale green Electra bike and rode home. She turned down the dirt path flanked by leaning Spanish moss trees and sunflowers, dropped her bike with a clatter, and sunk her sandaled feet into damp marsh. Her cotton dress swayed around her legs in the breeze as she walked up the four creaking steps to that never changing house of hers. Sidestepping the broken strip of wood in the middle of her Mama's wraparound porch the girl, like always, kissed two of her fingers and placed them onto the front door of the white house her family had had for generations.
Closing the door beside her and letting her bag sag onto the hook next to an iron mirror and picture of a Confederate solider she couldn't help but think: I'd probably just end up on the wrong side of history if my life was a history book anyway. This family always seems to choose the wrong side.
And so Amandine, like her bag had, sagged into the monotony of finding enjoyment in familiar things.
Author's Note:
The above passage you just read is part one of a series of 12 short stories. Each story will center on a female protagonist and cover one moment, thought, event, or feeling they may have. The titles of each story is the name of the woman. The series itself does not have a title yet, but it'll come.
I was 17 years old when I met André Aciman. It was the year I had exhausted all the available titles in the Young Adult section of my tiny local library, which honestly isn't that hard when you're 'homeschooled' and your library's YA section contains only 104 books. Faced with a conundrum, I flipped a quarter and turn down the magazine isle instead of the adult fiction isle. There I found a single Paris Review magazine from 2007, four years out of date and the only one of its kind. Inside it rested Monsieur Kalashnikov by André Aciman an Egyptian-American writer. It was the first piece of work I remember reading that insulted me deeply. I found myself incredibly angry with and jealous of Mr. Aciman and from that moment on vowed to never read another word of him. I'd forgotten all about him too, until my email notified me that a blog I follow Literary Birthdays did a post on him for his birthday. The blog post even listed a link to the very same short fiction I'd read in high school.
Rereading Monsieur Kalashnikov now, as a 23 year-old with a degree in Literature, I find myself more curious than angry, and him, more problematic than an a source of envy.
Rereading Monsieur Kalashnikov now, as a 23 year-old with a degree in Literature, I find myself more curious than angry, and him, more problematic than an a source of envy.
The same words that had triggered the angsty teenager still today triggers the budding historian who flinches at absolutist statements. What makes American women different from all the other nationalities of women? Can we not, by this logic, extrapolate the even more general: all women, like houses, are constructed by external forces? Yet, Aciman's character, this Monsieur Kalashnikov is suggesting something else entirely, he is suggesting that American women are particularly vacant. Why? Aciman doesn't make Kalashnikov expound. Instead, we are thrust into a world of opposites where Kalashnikov, the cabbie, is contrasted against the Harvard PhD candidate whom, the reader finds out is the main protagonist.
The reminder of the short fiction is about the two man becoming unlikely friends based on their shared knowledge of French and their love of speaking the language. They both meet very different woman and fall in some sort of love that resembles self-destructive infatuation. It is deeper than engaging in destruction to stave off loneliness. The story was always about the imposter syndrome academics feel. My anger as a teenager was larger than the dismissal of women. I was angry that Kalashnikov could be eradicated from the educational system so simply as with a letter. I was angry that he had believed, against his better judgement, in the system and been let down.
Now, as a 23 year-old graduate from an Ivy League, I resonate more Aciman's two characters. Coming from a small city in the middle of the desert, during a time when federal grants and funding for college was obscure information; I never expected to be anything really. Until I found myself in community college, studying history. I don't think the worse of the imposter syndrome hit me until I received my the first critique on my first graduate level essay. I'm not sure what makes some people feel as if they have pulled a great swindle on the institution of academia in order to get them into those pearly Ivy league gates, and other people feel as if they belong. And I think this is precisely what Aciman's short fiction is trying to discern as well. What made Kalashnikov different from the nameless PhD candidate in the end? When levels of fabricated prestige dissolve, in the end both men are equally hoping for unconditional acceptance.
I'm not sure if I'll ever read more of Aciman's work, though I think his style to parse the boundary between memory, fiction, and autobiography appeals to me. I think I like the idea of these characters being isolated over-exposed thought experiments. Should I continue, I suppose I'd continue with these characters in his novel Harvard Square.
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