Hello again!
America has renewed its national nightmare, and I have renewed my commitment to newslettering.
Remember when I said that I’d send a newsletter every time I published new work? You probably do not (why would you?), but I do, and I am here, metaphorical hat in hand, to ask forgiveness for my delinquency. I’m realizing that my particular Newsletter Journey will likely be one characterized by sporadic updates and unceremonious pauses. And to be honest, that frustrates me, because I like writing newsletters. It’s refreshing to have a blog-like forum to ramble for several hundred words about what I’m reading and what I’ve written and why I’m obsessed with this, that, or the other.
Unfortunately, this season of life is proving rather relentless. I have a toddler, who is a marvelous, incandescent ball of chaos, and I have work. Substack is sort of work-adjacent, but it’s the sort of thing I do in my uncommissioned writing time, and between commissioned writing and teaching, I don’t have much of that these days (see also: why I’m not done with my proposal for book two). Anyway, you didn’t come here for me to whine! And really, I shouldn’t. Given the state of things, politically speaking, I’m exceedingly fortunate to be safe and secure, engaged in the intellectual work I love, and I’m determined to spend the next four years doing all I can to help foster conditions of safety and well-being for those who don’t share my privileges. That sounds trite, but I really do mean it.
It’s a god-awful time. I wasn’t thrilled to vote for the Democratic presidential ticket because I am appalled by the Biden administration’s substantive role in the Gazan genocide. If, just once, Harris had uttered the words “arms embargo,” I would have been thrilled, although I don’t know that her position on Israel and Gaza did much to influence the election results. Regardless of my feeble enthusiasm, I was quite certain that a second Trump administration would be catastrophic, and I try to regard voting as a way to choose my adversary. That so many people voted for Trump—voted against their own interests, their own well-being—makes me want to scream, but this is where we are, nationally, and now I need to figure out how to be useful during what will certainly be four difficult years. If, by the way, you’re in search of a sharp and clarifying Election 2024 autopsy, I vigorously suggest reading “Exit Right,” an essay by University of Chicago historian Gabriel Winant.
But I guess I’m also here to ask you to read things by me, so I might as well do that. Since I last wrote, I’ve had some great projects, and I would be honored to have your eyes on them. You shouldn’t encounter any paywalls — when necessary, I’ve used gift links. Here’s the rundown, mostly in chronological order:
I’ve reviewed a couple of books for The Washington Post’s BookWorld: Hannah Regel’s debut novel, The Last Sane Woman, which I found quite promising, and Jamie Quatro’s third book, Two-Step Devil, which annihilated me in an extremely positive way (also, if you haven’t read her novel Fire Sermon, change that).
I wrote about Texan Jewish country singer Kinky Friedman and my childish investment in the goodness of famous strangers for Still Alive Magazine (he was Still Alive when I was writing the essay; after he died, I wrote a postscript).
For The Nation, I wrote about Cuban-Italian writer Alba de Céspedes’s vigorous feminist polemic, Her Side of the Story, which argues that women cannot be happy with men. It’s not as strong as Forbidden Notebook; you get the sense that de Céspedes was putting too much pressure on herself to produce An Important Feminist Text. The ending especially is a bit of a mess. But it’s a fascinating book, and still well worth the read.
And most recently, I wrote for The Atlantic about Cho Nam-Joo’s excellent short story collection, Miss Kim Knows, which gave me the opportunity to think about how feminist writing, at its best, grapples with the tension between the universal and the specific.
If you are so inclined, please click on my work, and maybe read it too!
On the reading front, there’s big news: I finally read a Rooney! While visiting friends in NYC I picked up Normal People, and ended up buying my own copy before returning home. It’s good! It doesn’t work for me structurally! Rooney has such tenderness for her characters! The prose sometimes feels limp, and at other points really sings! I’ll almost certainly read more of her!
I also watched the miniseries adaptation, which I probably enjoyed more than the book itself. It’s very sexy, if that’s your thing.
Some more highlights from recent-ish reading:
Janet Malcolm’s The Silent Women: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day
Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages
Vigdis Hjorth’s If Only
Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos
Like most women in my demographic, I read All Fours by Miranda July and found it pretty obnoxious. I did laugh, here and there. July’s narrator (who is definitely July) can be very charming and funny, but she seems to exist in a reality without any meaningful problems. And as Christine Smallwood’s excellent review notes, the narrative can’t withstand the loss of its central tension (the narrator’s marital crisis).
Oh! I also finally read a Franzen. The Corrections was a good time with some uniquely despicable characters. I don’t know that I’ll read more of him. It doesn’t currently feel like a priority.
I’m going to wrap up now — maybe next time I’ll write about some of my recent viewing. For now, I hope you all are hanging in there. These are tough times. We’ll find a way to the other side of them, but the progress might be painful. It so often is!
x Rachel