i picked this book up on the first day of april, thinking it would be a fine way to celebrate the start of national poetrWhat is grief? Is this grief?
i picked this book up on the first day of april, thinking it would be a fine way to celebrate the start of national poetry month.
turns out, it was a fine way to celebrate april fool's day, because this is not a poetry collection.
i don't know why i assumed this was poetry. i have read five other books by stuart ross, and only two of them have been poetry, but his prose always seems filtered through a poetic sensibility, emphasizing cadence and imagery and even the way he lays it out on the page is verse-shaped:
[image]
or maybe that's all just the rationalization of an april fool.
i also don't know why i thought it was such a great idea to read a book about grief so close to my own personal grief-anniversary, but decisions were made, tears were shed, and here we are.
this book is short enough that it can be read in one little sitting, but that's not to say it ought to be read that way—quite the contrary.
it's sad and beautiful and meditative, and it needs time to work its way into your soft little feeling bits, the way sand niggles at an oysterbody with, "why are you crying? why are you crying?" until the oyster suffocates all that emotional shit into an impenetrable pearl and gets on with its life.
not a great analogy, but a decent life lesson.
anyway, grief. death has taken a lot of stuart ross' people: family, friends, mentors, dogs, and even though writers are meant to take all the universal experiences of life and distill them into art, stu has some emotional roadblocks when it comes to the experience of grief.
the premise of this collection of...essays? prose poetry? thoughts? is that stuart ross—the affable canadian vegetarian poet—has an unusual writer-tic: whenever his work skews too close to something uncomfortable or "heavy," a hamburger is sure to find its way into the mix.
here, hamburgers are code for grief, and, as he tries—repeatedly—to wrap words around his "enormous accumulation of loss," inevitably he veers off into a hamburgery tangent.
It may be that I have grieved and grieved, but I did not recognize it because I don't know what grief is. I have felt pain in my chest and at the same time an unfulfillable longing. Tears have trickled down my cheeks. I am a man of sixty-one and tears often trickle down my cheeks. I sob and curse.
I don't know if this is anger or frustration or sadness. I don't know if it is sadness, the degree of sadness that reaches the depths that people identify as "grief."
Do you like pickles on your hamburger? Mayo? I've got some grainy mustard in the fridge. Pull up a chair.
it should be jarring, the incongruous image of a hamburger defusing the emotional tension with comic relief, pulling back to keep grief at arm's length, but once you internalize the subtext, the hamburgers become, somehow, even more emotionally resonant.
this collection is a series of digressive memories, ruminations, anecdotes, but they keep coming back to hamburgers, and he keeps finding clever and affecting ways to talk about grief without talking about grief.
in one piece, he revisits a poem he wrote nearly two decades ago, whose narrator is a hamburger. he's going through and critiquing it and it isn't until the closing lines that he remembers what the poem is about.
It's the only thing I've ever written about 9/11. And it is jam-packed with hamburgers.
but it's not all hamburgers and suppressing the painful examinations of loss, it's also full of wisdom:
Michael, I worry that I am too tired from grieving to grieve for you too.
But at the same time, I don't even know if I have grieved. I still can't figure out exactly what grieving is. Maybe because it's a thing that doesn't seem to ever end. If I grieved right, wouldn't it end? If it's a constant state, isn't it just living?
reading this while feeling hyper-vulnerable by my own calendar-reminder of loss was therapeutic and reassuring, and it left me feeling a little scoured afterwards.
for someone who isn't sure they've ever truly experienced grief, this book pulsates with it.
in these pages, we are confronted by the unexpected pathos in a stapler. i think the first time i cried whilst reading this book was the last sentence of page 18. it's not even a sad line—it wraps up an almost entirely factual piece about c.s. lewis, but it's the buildup to that line, the tonal shock as ross shifts the reader back into the place where his grief lives with five emphatically neutral words that could have been taken from lewis' wikipedia page, but are—when contextually connected to what seemed like a non sequitur on the previous page—absolutely fucking devastating.
i mean, but that's grief, innit? you're going about your life, doing something completely ordinary, when suddenly something resonates, twanging a memory or a mood, and you're caught off guard and left absolutely walloped.
there are several interstitial bits in-between the longer pieces—poems (his own and others'—take THAT, poetry month! i have honored you after all!), fragments of song lyrics or the last words of famous people with the word "hamburger" inserted somewhere, and, in an admirably determined stalling tactic (game recognizes game/staller recognizes staller), searching for the word "hamburger" in other people's work.
To search for a single word in a physical book is time-consuming. If you recall the particular word, you may remember that it appeared, for example, in the top third of a left-hand page somewhere in the first half of the book. But with electronic books, you can just do a search.
The word hamburger does not appear in A Grief Observed.
The word burger does not appear in A Grief Observed.
C.S. Lewis does not veer from his subject matter; he does not hide or evade. There are no hamburgers, culinary or metaphorical, in his book A Grief Observed.
As I write these words, I wonder when I will turn unflinchingly to my own grief in this book. That is the particular corner I am trying to paint myself into. But I worry that I may be too clever for myself. Or too weak.
it's the kind of book you can pick up and revisit—and i already have—rereading a passage here and there. it's moving, elegiac, and deeply sad, but it's also a comfort, and i hope that writing it was a comfort to him, too.
This book feels like one big hamburger. My intention was to make myself face things I don't think I've succeeding in facing...I want to force myself to come to terms. That's what I'm trying to do here.
i am loving this book so much and i can already tell that, when i eventually write this review, it's going to be one of those epically time-consuming i am loving this book so much and i can already tell that, when i eventually write this review, it's going to be one of those epically time-consuming ones with all sorts of extra research and links and no one will read it but that's okay. sometimes passion-projects are just as rewarding when you're your only audience.
review to come!
for now, please enjoy these links to all the cover songs featured on this album:
oooh, goodreads choice awards finalist for best humor 2021! WHAT WILL HAPPEN LET’S FIND OUT!
having enjoyed phoebe robinson's stand-up and sketch comedoooh, goodreads choice awards finalist for best humor 2021! WHAT WILL HAPPEN LET’S FIND OUT!
having enjoyed phoebe robinson's stand-up and sketch comedy, i picked up this book in the middle of a bleak-week, hoping to be wrenched out of my mood with laffs. but it's not that kind of book. it's less a humor-humor book than a book of essays written by a humorous person—the subject matter is often serious and important, but she softens the blow(s) with her comedic sensibilities.
written during the quarantimes, many of the essays address the concerns that had us all glued to our newsfeeds throughout that whole experience, nursing our collective anxieties with increasingly horrific stories about the pandemic, BLM marches, escalating violence, and police brutality.
we were all put through an emotional wringer by the events of 2020 (and its ongoing repercussions). some people used that time for introspection and clarity, and some used it to marathon The Great British Baking Show and Grey's Anatomy. twice. each.
phoebe robinson falls into the first category, and even though everything's still fragile and uncertain, she is Doing Her Part to help us all heal just a little bit.
The best I can offer at this moment is that I am a funny person and if I can make you laugh and forget your problems for a moment then I did something. Although I'm not on the front lines, I'm still living in this, too, and it's probable that my way of looking at life could be of use to someone who just needs to laugh. I crave levity because I don't want the time inside to rewire my brain or convince me to lose all sense of optimism. Because in the face of it looking like we're all fucked, giving up would be letting down those in my family and friends who haven't. So I won't give up today. And I'll try not to tomorrow.
to that end, although she doesn't shy away from examining any of 2020's Big Bads, she also shares her reflections and insights about topics as varied as pooping in quarantine,* the importance of wearing matching underwear, and the social media trend of celebrities posting culinary videos during lockdown, proving that US magazine got it wrong—stars are clearly NOT just like us, because they're prepping weeknight-prawns while we're over here scrabbling for toilet paper.
the essays are voicey and entertaining as hell, even though i frequently had no frame of reference for their subject matter: tips for running a business, traveling the world, the challenges of 4C hair, being pressured to start a family or get a dog, etc etc. the venn diagrams of our respective experiences rarely overlaps, but it doesn't matter because she's an engaging writer with a strong personality so i could appreciate it without relating to it.
as an aside: i'm not an audiobook person, but i think i would have enjoyed listening to this one, because the cadence of her writing is very conversational, and her fondness for hashtags, phonetic spelling, and truncating words (nash anth), might be less distracting in an audio format. #I'mSoOld
in any medium, she's an impressive powerhouse of a human being. she started a production company called tiny reparations, which now includes a publishing branch—tiny reparations books—and this book marks the imprint's debut. not even a pandemic can stop this businesswoman handling her business, and it's all kinds of aspirational and intimidating: she's got her shit together and is doing everything with her time, building an empire while i'm sitting over here writing silly book reports that no one's gonna read instead of figuring out a way to make some money. #PhoebeRobinsonPleaseMentorMe.
i want to call out two particular, and wildly dissimilar, essays.
first, the titular essay: Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes.
so let's talk outside clothes.
while the concept of "outside clothes" is not unfamiliar to me, i thought it was one of those antiquated notions from a bygone era, but nope! phoebe robinson, about a decade younger than myself, is a staunch proponent of outside clothes, so much so that she asserts:
We need to start redlining heaux and if you don't have outside clothes, around-the-house clothes, and in-bed clothes: YOU. CAN'T. VOTE.
i live in the same new york as she does, but even though my brain knows (and has become more paranoid about during this whole pandemic thing) that subways are germy and the outside world is dirty, it has never once occurred to me to put on a whole 'nother outfit just to go to the store.
some of the material for this essay is drawn from social-media conversations between the author and folks who are, apparently, as disgusting/careless as me:
So wait...say I get up in the morning and decide I want to pop out and get a coffee. I'm supposed to change into full "outside clothes" to go across the street for my coffee and then back into my pajamas when I get home? And then later when I need to run to the store or take out the garbage, I'm supposed to change into new outside clothes and then back into my pajamas when I come inside again? WHAT KIND OF MADNESS IS THIS??? I get up in the morning and get dressed for the day, no matter how many times I go outside during the day. My pajamas only go on when it's time to eat.
Oh, boy. This. Is. Rough. And no, we're not "hanging tough." #MomJoke #NewKidsOnTheBlockForever. For real though, I'm at a loss for words. If you're going outside multiple times a day, just have an "outside clothes" outfit by your front door that you change in and out of and then put it in the laundry bin at the end of the night. Why are we acting like that's not an option? Why are we behaving as though changing in and out of PJs is akin to doing high school trig?
although this essay made me feel chastised (don't take away my vote please!), the thought of switching between public-facing and private clothing multiple times a day seems exhausting.**
even though i am always on my best behavior and mindful of other people's house rules, in my own life i guess i'm just a sloppy person. i have never, for example, in all my years of having boobs, washed a bra. not once. but i do take my shoes off before walking around my apartment—i'm not an animal. shoes touch places where animals (and people) pee, but how is my hoodie getting contaminated on my two-block journey to key food?
i thought that outside clothes was a generational thing, she claims it's a cultural thing that white people don't get (an informal poll of my social circle suggests that we're both correct—black grannies are ON BOARD with this), but even though that's never gonna be my life, i adore her passionate stance on this matter.
We Don't Need Another White Savior
this was my favorite essay (and, yes, i DID initially read that title to the tune of We Don't Need Another Hero, which she declares makes me "[her] kind of person," so maybe i can has my vote back now? if she's willing to overlook my unwashed bras, i'm willing to overlook how she uses my name as a pejorative several times in this book).
on that note, i'm a white girl named karen, so obviously i'm the last person who should be weighing in about racial matters on the internet, but this chapter, which is about virtue signaling and performative allyship, is worth a thousand empty gestures inspired by White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, so i'm just gonna hand her the reins:
Reading, highlighting, and posting prompts on social media for robust discussions in the comments section can be fun and get the adrenaline pumping, but ultimately wind up being nothing more than empty exercises the majority of the time. I can think of two main reasons why.
One, many performative allies operate as though racism is this abstract, philosophical debate that doesn't have stakes in their world. The corporations need to step up. The executives need to do better. These celebrities should be canceled for [insert racially insensitive comment]. This white person is so unbelievably racist in a viral cellphone video. These books are teaching me about past racism and discussing hypotheticals. The racism is always somewhere other than where anyone is. Like what is racism? Fucking Nickelback CD's? The band has sold more than 50 MILLION ALBUMS, but nobody owns a copy? LOL. Okay. Similarly, there is no audacity to perform racism in any and all of its ugly forms without a system, meaning people to support it. So somebody's out here "racisting," but if folks can't even acknowledge the ways in which they intentionally and unintentionally hold up systems of oppressions, how can they change their behavior? Simply put, they can't.
So what ends up happening is the cycle of white guilt, which leads to the task of self-improvement then goes back to white guilt because change isn't happening fast enough or at all. And as we all know, guilt is never a good motivator to rectify behavior, but a license to wallow in the pity, which leads to more guilt about their participation in systemic racism, which is now combined with them feeling bad about the fact that they feel bad. Basically, white guilt is a Cathy comic, y'all. Like that bitch always has a sob story. Constantly caught up in the drama without realizing she's a key architect of the spectacle that is her life. Always getting fired and acting like she doesn't know why. It's like, "Cath, Jamba Juice let you go because you were making smoothies to bring home to your cats." (her footnote: That is a real plot from the comics. Normally, I choose a side, but I'm Switzerland this time because cats need a balanced diet.) #ThisConcludesMyAntiRacismSeminar #CanIGetPaid40K?
The other reason why most of performative allyship is ineffective is that folks move in extremes and go from zero to one hundred as an antiracist. One day, they were unaware how pervasive racism is and the next, they're flooding their social media with information, showing up at marches and protests, screaming about supporting Black businesses. WHERE DID ALL THESE WHITE PEOPLE COME FROM?! I'm serious. You ever throw what you thought was going to be an intimate get-together and it turns into a full-fledged house party and a bitch who was not invited, but showed up with napkins and red Solo cups, now acts like they call the shots and pay your property taxes? That's how this aggressiveness in being antiracist comes across sometimes. And while I'm sure a decent amount of it is well-intentioned, intent doesn't matter when it's causing more harm, and from what I can see, as the number of non-POC participants in antiracism increase so does the "May I speak to your manager?" energy. The revolution cannot and should not be Karenized.*** That vibe wants fast results, placation, and constant positive reinforcement, and recontextualizes easy wins as major victories, so that when the wins don't quickly happen or happen at all for the weightier and messier issues, disappointment and frustration settle in, threatening to dissuade future efforts.
To me, lacking patience and expecting results immediately for both the micro and macro issues that plague America shows a complete lack of understanding of how pervasive and fundamental racism is to the foundation of our society. Truth be told, systemic racism will most likely not be dismantled in our lifetime. While I would like things to change so that all my Black brothers and sisters and I can live in a better world, I know that's not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is that those who come after me will not have to experience even a tenth of what I have. Achieving that goal requires a level of acceptance in the face of glacial progress and that is, in part, what prevents burnout and allows one to stay the course.
Too often what we're seeing is people blowing off steam at the first sign of adversity and then not rolling up their sleeves and jumping back into the fray. And that combination of impatience and losing interest because massive change has not happened since they decided to get active when there have been people on the front lines for years and decades doing the exhaustive work to dismantle racism is the opposite of staying the course. It's participating in a trend, in a moment. This is not a trend. I repeat: This is not a trend. We have to undo every single institution—both big and small—in our country. And if the expectation is permanent change, then we must understand that the system cannot change unless the people in it, particularly the ones who benefit from it in myriad tangible and intangible ways, change as well.
this whole essay is GOLD. long may her empire flourish.
so, it's maybe not a book that's going to help you forget the current challenges, but you get wisdom and laughter, so it's well worth the read.
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* best opening to an essay...ever?
I'm not saying you should shit yourself in front of your significant other (IS THIS THE MOMENT WHERE I RUIN ANY CHANCE OF BEING AN OPRAH BOOK CLUB SELECTION? I. FUCKING. THINK. SO.), but I believe that unless you do mortifying things, accidentally or not, that make your partner pull a Walter White and get a burner phone so they can create a Raya dating profile to search for fresh peen or vajeen, then, frankly, you aren't in a relationship.
** although, to be fair, much of her type a/git-er-done life sounds exhausting to me
this might be my favorite one yet, but i am too broken to review it RN. go get it, though - you will not be disappointed!
************NOW AVAILABLE!!
this might be my favorite one yet, but i am too broken to review it RN. go get it, though - you will not be disappointed!
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apparently, because jenny lawson is the vaccine that will protect me against anything 2021 has in store is an acceptable response to the question "why are you requesting this book?" over on edelweiss.
WHOLEHEART THANK YOUS TO J-LAW AND E-WEISS!!!...more
fulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because ifulfilling my 2020 goal to read (at least) one book each month that was given to me as a present that i haven't yet gotten around to reading because i am an ungrateful dick.
AND
fulfilling book riot's 2020 read harder challenge task #13: Read a food book about a cuisine you’ve never tried before.
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