Inquiry into the acquisition of language, part 2: point of view

Now she is learning the language of subject, of a subject acting in the world. I go to school. I like vanilla. Sophie [a doll] feel sad. She is still not so good with the difference between subject and object. Her is sleeping, she will say. Also gender is a vague—inconsequential?--concept. She uses him and her indiscriminately, he and she.

Listening to her reminds me of my own struggles in novelistic storytelling. A novel offers endless choices in point of view and, along with tone, it’s one of the greatest challenges to try to find a point of view that fits with the story’s throughline and author’s intent. (Wow, sorry, that was a dry sentence!) Each offers its own take on the sense we try to make of our essentially random lives.

First person has the power of memory; third person the power of distance, of the space to act more visibly as storyteller. This morning, I am contemplating which one works better for a particular scene, and I’ve sketched out two options—one in first and one in third:

Rachel let me sleep in her bed. She took the couch. I wasn’t going to school anymore. I was too embarrassed to be seen, even by the Mexican girls. I woke up one night with vice-like pains squeezing my sides. I felt like my belly was a cement mixer. Pain ran up and down my back. The sheets beneath me were soaking wet.
Mom, I called. Mom! Rachel came in. She was pale. She was already dressed.
Okay, Isabelle, she said. We’re going to get through this.

That's the first person. Or:

Isabelle slept in Rachel’s bed and Rachel took the couch. She didn’t going to school anymore. She was too embarrassed to be seen, even by the Mexican girls. She woke up one night with vice-like pains squeezing at her sides. Her belly was a cement mixer. Pain ran up and down her back. The sheets beneath her were soaking wet.
Mom, she called. Mom! Rachel came in. She was pale. She was already dressed.
We’re going to get through this, Rachel said.


Her is sleeping...
She is sleeping?
I am sleeping?

Story in memory?

Or memory in story?

The Novel Project (Resurrected)

I ‘m writing a novel again. I’ve tried to write it before. I know. For some of us this is like saying I’ve joined Weight Watchers again. What is different now? I no longer care how I lose the weight, what my smaller body actually looks like. I no longer care if it is bad. I just want it to exist. It feels hard, not romantic, not fun, not like “Oh I’m writing a novel” which really means looking at the tops of trees and pondering life.

It feels like moving bags of concrete from one place to another. Swimming, Stairmaster, Caloriecounter. My arms hurt at the end of the day. And my neck. And my head—the inside, the outside—my whole head. It is still one of the hardest things I have ever tried to do.

Inquiry into the Power of Signifying Objects

Here’s a question: What is the worth of that horse-and-rider necktie your grandma gave you when you were four? That mix tape that doesn’t work anymore that your first boyfriend made for you (he drew on the plastic tape case with glitter markers)? The Sanka ashtray that you took from your dad’s home office after he left you and your mom?

Who can say? In the zany world where economics, human sentimentality and hunger for meaning meet, there is no such thing as objective. But there is Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn’s fascinating Significant Objects project, which has been written up in The New Yorker’s books blog and BoingBoing. A Doug Dorst story attached to a bedraggled tsotchke figurine recently sold for $193.00!

Which brings me to the penguin creamer.

My assignment turned out to be not a Slavic totem or a Sanka ashtray or a Chili cat. Yes, I too have tried my hand at Inventing an Object’s Significance. I was a bit daunted by the other storytellers involved in this project—Lydia Millet, Luc Sante, Lucinda Rosenfeld, Doug Dorst, and Curtis Sittenfeld to name a few—but I mediated on my humble object and a story emerged for me. You can read it here. I hope you find it of interest; perhaps even of significance?

You can read more about the Significant Objects project here and follow it on Twitter.

Inquiry into the acquisition of language, part 1

Most of her sentences these days begin with I want or I need. This follows I like and I love, which were her first two sentence constructions.

A friend whose mother taught two-year-olds says, “Two is all about language development.” It’s amazing to watch this, this language development.

So we come to language full of desires, wants, passions. We learn through language to distinguish them.

In Michael Pollen’s fascinating recent New York Times magazine cover story on Julia Child, I was reminded of this tension in the mothering/work paradox: What do we need? What do we want? What are we allowed? How do we choose?

A recent conversation with new mother who feels feminism did not prepare her for the joy she would feel as a mother—that it let her down—because its message focused more on the triumphs and challenges of proving oneself in the work world. The phrase “the burden of choice” surfaced. This silenced us. Cut through our joy (she held a two-week old baby in her arms), brought us back to the earliest questions.

What do I want? What do I need? What do I like? What do I love?

Notes for a Feminist Comic

Image ideas:
• Simone de Beauvoir sitting in an armchair with a long cigarette holder saying, "Women are oppressed by their biology";
• Sari, 19,1980s, putting on jacket w/shoulder pads and going off to summer job as a clerk in a law firm...;
• me, bags under eyes, saying to my homemaker mother (mother of 4 kids) "you didn't tell me how HARD it was"

Possible title: Snapshots from a New Mother's Life in Which Age-Old Feminist Conflicts are Acted Out

Overview: A patchwork quilt of the last year of my life in which I have had to confront some basic issues of feminism in a more bread-and-butter way than ever before (such as economic self-sufficiency, gender roles, and childbearing).

Script ideas:
Have baby.
Lose job.
Discover that baby needs lots of care.
Lose health insurance.
Start blog!
Baby wakes in middle of the night.
Journalism collapses!
Join coop. Shop for food.
Freelance for less than you were getting in-house. Can afford some daycare!
Publishing collapses!
Baby wakes in the middle of the night.
Shop for food.
Widespread layoffs!
Baby wakes in middle of night.
Baby wakes in middle of night.
Too tired to blog.
Against all reason, wish to have another baby.

Point is not to ridicule feminist thinkers but juxtapose theoretical pronouncements and mass messages women receive with the hard-knock realities of women's lives through the centuries.

Shine some (hopefully humorous) light on the gulf between theory and inevitable realities of life.

passover reading

I’m going to be doing a reading tonight at a bar. A bar on Passover. I said yes, because it’s a great chance to read with other Slice writers, and to further the mission of this really great, ambitious publication. It’s funny; the question of whether or not to read on Passover never would have entered my mind ten years ago when we were living in Wicker Park (okay, technically, East Village) and driving the Gusmobile to Cub Foods through the often-still snowy March streets.

I remember when, one day, Josh said to me: Hey, it’s Passover tomorrow! So what? I said and then we stood there looking at each other waiting for something else to be said.

We'd never cared if it were Passover before (that was the day my parents, back in New York, went to the Bridge Club with my cousins). But the next day, I found myself going to Waterstone’s after work and buying two Haggadah’s. We thumbed through them as we ate the pad thai we ordered. We made a half-hearted attempt to conjure up a seder plate: a carrot for the haroset, a bean sprout for the pascal lamb, a piece of parsley for the bitter herbs. We did all this reluctantly, with a kind of shyness, as if someone were watching. Every year since then, we’ve found a way to have some form of a Passover seder.

Not this year. I’ll be reading at Pacific Standard, a bar on 4th Ave. I’m excited and nervous. I’ve never read this story aloud and reading aloud is always a different experience. The work enters the world in a new way. I hope I do it justice.

Reading on Passover has made the think of the story of exodus in a new way; the risks of leaving bondage; and how the decision to leave one life can give a renewed strength but also many years of living in the wilderness before one can find a new home.

slice of slice

There’s a new lit journal called Slice. I’ve been reading issue 3, In Translation. It’s a pleasure. Their format is visually engaging and the writing is smart and thoughtful. The interview with Kathryn Harrison is stellar, as is a memoir by William Giraldi of Agni. There's a powerful piece by the Diazesque Patricia Engel.

Slice releases their fourth issue next week. The theme is Home. It includes interviews with Aleksandar Hemon, Paul Auster, and Lisa See, among others. And: a short story of mine called Patriotic Dead. Pick it up at a newsstand or your independent bookstore. (If they don’t have it, request it!); and let me know what you think.