eighty-second (2023-08-11)
“august rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. the odd uneven time” ― sylvia plath, in the unabridged journals
photo of me with a very good boy in chambers island by steph byce
i have been working and biking and planning a wedding and reading and have minimized all non-working time in front of a computer, leaving me with a gazillion books to write up. but i’ve almost cleared the backlog and my pain is your pleasure (you’re welcome)
poem (click here for my full list of poems on the docket for 2023)
Mary Oliver, “The Pond”
August of another summer, and once again
I am drinking the sun
and the lilies again are spread across the water.
I know now what they want is to touch each other.
i needed something easy this week, something digestible and wholesome like a cornmeal cake, and this fits the bill. mary oliver’s earnestness can teeter towards a saccharine cheuginess* for me but this snapshot of the late summer reprieve just hits right.
*amazing that the new yorker hasn’t hired me to write reviews with phrases like that
books
the subversive simone weil: a life in five ideas by robert zaretsky, 2021
i picked this up after listening to a great podcast with the author. this isn’t a biography (the bio by pétrement is best for that) but a succinct examination of her ideas and influences. though many are enraptured by her personal life (her jewish to catholic mystic turn, her adoption of poverty, her terribly early and unusual death) weil was singular in her commitment and ethical clarity, and her concepts of attention, affliction, and decreation are resonant personally to me and deeply undervalued in western philosophy.
bullshit jobs: a theory by david graeber, 2018
i consider this a modern classic amongst the likes of mark fisher’s capitalist realism. i agree with the critique that many claims are “enjoyable overstated” but find the core premise - that many of us have jobs that are only useful for making us miserable - to be born out again and again. graeber, an anthropologist, plays a bit fast and loose with the data but i’m inclined to forgive him as this was so compelling, enjoying, and frankly validating. (okay, maybe this lack of rigor when i’m charmed is why the new yorker hasn’t hired me.)
unscripted: the epic battle for a media empire and the redstone family legacy by james b. stewart, and rachel abrams, 2023
this was juicy! it reads like a long vanity fair behind-the-scenes article into the bizarre final years of sumner redstone, billionaire head honcho of viacom and cbs international (among others). this is rife with salacious sex scenes, hostile power grabs, devastating family drama, and striking insight into the dark reality of elder abuse. it’s easy to see how this family drama informed the show succession where no one (not even the eldest boy) emerges blameless and unharmed.
the sudden appearance of hope by claire north, 2016
north is one of steph’s favorite authors so i was excited to start this and even more excited to become so entranced by a book so different from my usual. the narrator and protagonist hope lives with a malady that causes her to be constantly forgotten by everyone in her life, a condition so dystopic and unsettling that i haven’t been able to shake it. this isolated reality vaults her into a life of thievery, a compelling narrative north laces around presciently disturbing themes of self-improvement capitalism (via a sinister app called Perfection). this review is great but it doesn’t touch on how ambitiously and innovatively the story is written (as seen above) - truly impressive for such a young and prolific author.
no longer human by osamu dazai, 1948
this was another great recommendation from my friend lauren. i’m still sitting with the themes - in this first-person narrative of a young man growing up in a distant, aristocratic family, there is obviously loneliness (medicalized as depression), capitalist alienation, meaninglessness, and self-imposed social exclusion, but there’s also a sense that our narrator is unreliable and perhaps viewed differently by people who love him. it’s a hard contradiction to integrate and reminds me, as cliché as it is, that the way we perceive ourselves is not equivalent to how we are perceived by others. much to chew on here, but it’s well-regarded for a reason - beautifully, briefly, devastatingly written.
article
Underwritten by its literalism, our trauma is the guarantor of what we believe we are owed.
this is a compelling (if somewhat arduous) read about the history and modern manifestations of traumatology and the the imperfections of the man at the center of the movement, bessel van der kolk. like most other social workers, i read and was moved by his book the body keeps the score, but i’ve long thought his singular focus breaches scientific study and leans into the murkier waters of advocacy. this article also cemented my opinion of him as difficult, flawed person (and aren’t we all); his claims to be uninterested in the sociological implications of his work strike me as deflective and frankly, a cop-out. we’re left with a ubiquitous medicalized language that is so universal as to become meaningless and ill-descriptive of our collective struggles.
thanks for reading - more to come -
bria