It’s been at least six years since I was first recommended this book. At the time it could still have been considered contemporary; now it’s at the top tier to describe the popular memoir genre popular circa Y2K. Not unlike stumbling across Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential amidst a random stand at Printer’s Row Lit Fest, a cosmic event considering the time his show has recently consumed in my life, so too did I find this book, at the same exact stand. Ok, fine. I’ll finally give it a shot.
The first chapter involves his mother living with cancer.
I immediately feel another cosmic event. Well, not really. But it’s an astounding coincidence that piques my interest and I’m hooked. It becomes less personally relatable from then on, but the self-conscious writing style is right up my alley. The breaking of character dialogue, his younger brother becoming more poignant than himself, acting as the voice inside himself, the beyond honest (post-honest?) style of writing, the vulgar language, the overall…ok, this book pretty much hits all of my buttons (let’s call this style “me(ta)moir”). In particular, it’s the honesty. That one trait that will hold me back from being a good or even decent writer. I don’t anticipate writing novels (my attention span has unfortunately become Twitterized) but I want to at least write a fucking blog post, which only five people will even read, and just. be. honest.
I wanted to write about this book, but I didn’t know what to write. So I thought more about writing about writing about the book, which became overly self-conscious and I soon found myself playing directly into the author’s hands: should I be considering my life this objectively? Well, for one I already do, so when confronted with a piece that only reasserts that position, it becomes that much more intense. Isn’t the act of writing in general supposed to be overly-objective? And not in the subjective/objective sense, but in the sense that what all these little symbols that are categorized into words stand for are objects, scenes, abstract ideas turned into objects. Perhaps I mean objective in a demeaning sense: does writing dehumanize language? If so, why do I feel such a strong connection with language? I’ve felt for some time now a stark inability to articulate myself well through speech (thus, shyness / anxiety / sarcasm) and therefore the expressive outlet of writing seemed natural. But if writing demeans language, than every word I type, every time the epidermis at the end of any of my distal phalanges touches a Dell laptop key, I am killing the most important invention of human history.
So now I’m a murderer. I’m no better than the older brother who left his kid brother unattended at home so he could go get laid somewhere else. Hey! I just came full circle. Did I do that on purpose? Is this circle as metaphorically sound as Eggers’ use of throwing a Frisbee (Microsoft Word auto-capitalizes Frisbee by the way)? Do metaphors have purpose in me(ta)moir writings? How can a metaphor be created out of every day events? Oh, but how could it not? The brilliance of self-conscious and objective thinking is the ability to see beyond what is directly in front of us. I don’t mean that in any spiritual, religious or even a Sophie’s World book-about-a-book-being-written-by-an-author-but-who’s-writing-that-book sort of way.
As I type this, I am listening to a 7” single. I feel ridiculous getting up every three minutes of typing, flip the record, play, type, repeat in an almost Beckettesque circle of futility. Every time I get up from the futon, I notice how hard I was pressing the back of my leg against it, an indentation forming deeper and deeper each time I get up, becoming noticeably itchier.
Where was I? Yes, objectifying life. So is there any way out of this? Is there any honest way to write that does not involve this objectivity? I wonder what’s at the end. That is, if I keep thinking about thinking about thinking…does it end? I remember a friend telling me in a cab on 90/94 heading south that I’m not as objective as I think I am. I may have taken that as a challenge. For what reason I do not know. But I do know I don’t want to turn it off.
Now I keep asking: am I tired? Am I true of heart?
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