Four Books – All Different – All the Same

Four Books – All Different – All the Same

The last four books I have read in the last four weeks are (in this order)


1. Genealogy: A Novel by Maud Casey
2. The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere: a Memoir by Debra Marquart
3. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
4. A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas by Chuck Klosterman IV

Seems like a weird combination when you think of it, though three of the four have a directly connection to me in some way and the fourth ended up making me feel like I had a direct connection to it.

First, Maud’s book. This came out a few months ago, but I did not read it when it came out, nor did I go hear her read parts of it in NYC when she was there – The reason – because I knew it would make me fall apart. Maud writes about mental illness in this book, specifically bi-polar disorder. This illness is something that we both have experienced intimately though from completely separate vantage points. When I worked with her (she as my advisor at Goddard) I knew about this connection at first only by instinct, then later after a little research through her writing about herself and her experiences. We never verbalized this connection between the two of us, but I have a few letters from her (ones that were writing to me about my writing during the course of stuffy at Goddard.) She actually helped me not quit Goddard when things became particularly bad. During one of my residencies I was getting phone calls every few minutes and crying a great deal, my heart split in two with my desire to hold and comfort my husband in his time of breakdown and my equal and seemingly opposite desire to stay and be a student and learn. My now Ex-husband sent me the mixed messages that bi-polarity brings into a relationship so I was constantly unsure and overly sensitive to not going to be glued to his side. He had his family and ways to work through tings but neither of us were confident he could make it without me. He ultimately did (though he did come to visit) and I ultimately made it through the residency (which I have to mention here is only 8 short days but seemed like an eternity). Maud helped with her attentiveness and kindness and, believe it or not, reading assignments for class that dealt directly and openly with aspects of the relationship people have to their own mental illness.
I know I haven’t actually talked about the book here. All I can say is read it. I marked several sections where there were lines that I had to read over and over again because the sentiment was so beautiful or the words and the way they sounded together were so visceral. I love Maud’s writing. It is intimate and fully realized and makes one weep with the context of all of the pain and promise rolled up into one.

My connection to the Horizontal World by Debra Marquart is a physical one. I grew up very close to where she did, though, it seems, about ten years later then she did and a bit more our of the cultural loop then she was. It was amazing to me to read this memoir, which is partly told in story form and partly told with historical and cultural context. Some of the things she said rang so true it could have been me. Particularly the working parts. Butchering chickens and castrating calves and some of the other things (town girls verses farm girls) did not enter my life at all. I love seeing how people who grow up in literally the same place can have such different views on things. The decade makes the difference in some cases, but in others it is a matter of personality and perspective. She does, however, talk about her father in the same way I talk about mine. A kind of longing reverence that hints at a closeness not really discussed or physical, but one of mutual respect realized after the heart attack. It did drive home one thing though, my mother really does know everyone. She knows Debra’s sister who owns a bar on Main Street in Napoleon. She knew of her family and talked to her mother at some meeting or another (I think maybe the electric cooperative meeting, but verifying this would mean calling my mother). When I write the memoir I plan on writing about my life in North Dakota – aspects of it will be the same. How I am now a stranger in my own community, though I have to admit I felt that way much of my kid-life. Also, my perspective on how I will always be drawn back there. Something about the people and the landscape IS in you, always. Perhaps it is the wind that always blows, it pushes the dust straight into your cells to bond with your DNA. This book is not really about North Dakota – it is about being a special person from a special place and trying to connect all the parts of your life together into something that makes sense – and each one of us can identify with that.


Now it is truth time… I picked up The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger at the airport wanting one of those “plane ride” books that you can breezily read on the plane and leave at wherever your destination is without guilt because the book was candy for your brain and didn’t make you think at all and you left it on the table at the B&B after finishing it without a second glance. But that is not what happened. What happened was an instant and searing connection to this book. It doesn’t really need help from me to sell it, but I have to tell you to buy it and read it. It will be one of those books you keep on your shelf and look at from time to time (after reading it) and remember how it made you feel. For me it was like reading the book “She’s Come Undone”. The author found some way to tell a story really foreign to my own experience (or anyone’s I would think) but tell it in such a way as to make you believe it and sympathize with it and hope beyond hope that time will bend, just this once, for these people and the inevitable will not happen. I think that is what the connection was. The inevitability of time and of being and of what will happen in your life are so starkly illustrated here that you can’t help but see your own lifetime rolled out in a single line like a heart monitor print out with the steady and rhythmic peaks and valleys getting scattered and messy near the end and finally stopping all together. Such a wrenching book that I cried several times and hand to have tissues within easy reach for all of the last four chapters.

So why, after that roller coaster of a ride that was the Time Traveler’s Wife did I pick up the new Chuck Klosterman book? Because he was coming to read and I really wanted to see him and get him to sign a copy of the book for me. I actually wanted him to sign my hardcover of Fargo rock City (which is a book that is funny as hell – as they would say in my home state) but that hard cover is at my sisters house and I literally found out he was reading near me the day before it was to happen, so there was no time to get that book to me from North Dakota. Chuck’s reading was fantastic. Filled with Emo kids that he constantly made fun of without them knowing. I love seeing how he has changed over his years of living in the cities and writing. I met him once when I was younger. I hadn’t realized that he was actually a SENIOER when I was a 7th grader; I thought he was a freshman that is how awkward he was. But I have a friend whose older brother was his friend and we went to a football game and I met him. I didn’t actually remember this, but when his first book came out, my friend called me and said “OMG that’s Chuck – I haven’t thought about him since we met him at that football game.” So I had to read the book. This new book is a collection of pieces he’s published with extra commentary for context or things that got left our of the original piece or updates on things that have happened since the essay (article) was published. It also has a piece of fiction in the back. I’ve read this book mostly in the bathtub. My singed copy now sports curled pages from the humidity of a steamy bathroom. Now Chuck, don’t take offense – I read in the bath thing I really want to pay attention to and absorb. Your book is like bath salts that soften the water of my brain and make the ideas flow into the soft cells like softness into soaked skin.
It was weird to get him to sing a copy of the book. I waited inline with all of the kids and actually talked to him about where I was from etc. I know I am one of the slew of people he will see during his singing tour and he will not in anyway remember me or our encounter, but he doesn’t have to, because I will and I will write about it and it will affect me and he will go on with his NYC writing life. I did, however, give him a copy of my CD. He will probably not listen to it, but I had to do it. Who else is a rock writer for famous magazines that I once met at a high school football game and grew up in the very same small rural state that I did. Right – you guessed it, no one.

These four books seem to be emblematic (sorry about the over used word) of my life at the moment. At once looking to my roots and my past. Dealing with what happened to me and the ramifications of mental illness, looking to the future of my band and where I want my life to go and connecting with different experiences with that one thin filament of emotion. I think anyone could read any of these books in any order and feel how similar they are and how, in spite of the subject matter, they connect to each other and to the world in similar ways.

Thinking about this makes me excited for what is next – suggestions welcome.