dept. of speculation. jenny offill. (278)

i requested jenny offill's depart. of speculation after seeing it on bj novak's instagram.  he called the novel, "funny and heartbreaking", and this is the perfect description.

a short novel, it is written like random thoughts but end up giving us a complete story of marriage that has had it ups and down. the story was told from the perspective of the wife (we never learn anyone's name) and she oftenreferred to herself and her husband in simple terms of wife/husband,and woman/man.  she was a writer and like every woman struggled with being a mother, a wife, and also an artist.  it's a honest portrayal of how tough it is for women, everyone assume motherhood comes naturally, it doesn't.  it also addressed the internal agony women face when choosing to put their family first and their work second, demonstrating it is okay to want to put your work first.

there is an affair.  her husband cheated on her.  his affair foreshadowed by an anecdote about carl sagan and his wife, ann druyan and how he asked him to marry her while they working on "the golden record" project for nasa.  however, i like the intern, was confused because carl was married and ann was engaged.  my heart broke when he explained the other girl was easier and of course when he used pronoun.  

i like every situation for cheating, want the woman to leave.  but they went to therapy or what they called "the little theater of hurt feelings."  she confronted the girl which i think she deserved and completely freaked out.  in the end, the moved to the country and the things got better.  however, i felt bad for the daughter being so isolated.

a beautiful and honest tale about marriage.  also, offill is a wonderful writer. some of my favorite instances were:

that one was so beautiful i used to watch him sleep.  if i had to sum up what he did to me, i'd say it was this:  he made me sing along to all the bad songs in the radio.  both when he loved me and when he didn't.

we applied our muzzy intellects to a theory of light. that all are born radiating light but this light diminished slowly (if one was lucky) or abruptly (if one was not.) the most charismatic people--the poets, the mystics, the explorers--were that eat because they had somehow managed to keep a but of this king that was meant to have been dimmed.  but the shocking thing, the unbearable thing it seemed, was that the natural order was for this light to vanish.  it hung on sometimes through the twenties, a glint here or there in the thirties, and the almost always the eyes went dark.

i decided to make my class read creation myths.  the idea is to go back to the beginning.  in some, god is portrayed as a father, in others, as a mother.  when god is a father, he is said to be elsewhere.  when god is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.

(this novel is filled with random facts that shed light on the narrator's life. however, when i related to this to myself, it rings true for those raised by a single mother.)

my very educated mother just served us noodles.  this is the mnemonic they give her to remember the left of the planets.

(i can't recall how i learned this, but i love subtle dig at gender roles!)

researchers looked at magnetic resonance images of the brain of people who described themselves as newly in love.  they were shown a photograph of their beliefs while their brains were scanned for activity.  the scan showed the same reward systems being activated as in the brains of addicts given a drug.

(ke$ha was right, your love is a drug.)

this novel is filled with little facts that have deeper meaning for the story, which i adored.  i really enjoyed this novel and highly recommend it.  it reminded me of one of my favorite novels, the lover's dictionary.

the fun parts: stories. sam lipsyte (195)

this cover is too dark for a good picture. i'm sorry.  i picked up sam lipsyte's the fun parts because bj novak endorsed it on his instagram.  though i am heartbroken that he no longer follows me on there, i will continue to read the books that he recommends via it.  

i hadn't heard of lipyste prior to bj's post, but i learned from the front cover that he is a writer for time magazine and has written for the new yorker, the paris review and playboy.  a nice variety and make sense because his work is witty and very tongue-in-cheek.

the stories were very interesting and twisted.  i enjoyed "deniers", the story of a daughter of a holocaust survivor that wanted to connect with her father who refused to tell her about it.  in the end, she ended up dating an ex-nazi, in an attempt to help reform him. i enjoyed the premise of "the republic of empathy", it demonstrated six degrees of separation, how we are linked in life, though i didn't get the ending.  or maybe i just wasn't intelligent enough, maybe it's supposed to be that all humans are connected but in the end it doesn't save mankind, it just an odd series of coincidences.  so that story was actually very deep as well.  i liked the idea of the male doula and imagined morgan from the mindy project as the doulo.  i also enjoyed snacks and exploration of how shitty it is to be fat.  also it demonstrated of how violence and hate is really just self-hate.  

the rest of the stories were well written but not my cup of tea.  lipstye is a great writer as demonstrated by the list of publications he worked for.  i enjoyed his references post pop culture and literary.  my favorite one was from "the republic of empathy", "she has nice, soft-looking hair, which is a tell-me-about-the-rabbits-george thing to say, but what can you do?"  lol.  well played!

enjoyable read, didn't completely wow me, but since this is the year of the short story, glad that i read these.

love, dishonor, marry, die, cherish, perish. david rakoff (150)

since i already read books based on celebrities emma roberts, and mindy kaling's instagram.  i decided to throw another celebrity into the mix, b.j. novak.

(quick digression:  i didn't think much of him on the office looks-wise until he got the glasses, than swoon!!)

b.j. novak posted this:  

so i decided to check out david rakoff's love, dishonor, marry, die, cherish, perish.  based on novak's pic and on the  fact that the cover was really cool.

quick addition, i have to give a shout out to my friend fabian for being in the know and beating novak to posting this.  i even liked fabian's photo but didn't think about checking it out until novak's post.  damn my pop culture media obeying brain!!!

here is fabian's post:  

since i based picking this book up based on b.j. novak's good looks and an interesting cover, i had no idea what this book was about.  i had never read anything by rakoff prior to this nor have i listened to this american life which he contributed to.  i also had no idea that rakoff passed away in august of 2012 due to cancer, and this book was published posthumously.  i had expected a normal size book and was shocked by how thin it was when i picked it up from the library.  but most surprising of all, was that the entire book is written in verse!  yes, verse!  its like dr. seuss for adults! and rakoff was a genius because he made it work with some impressive rhymes!

for example:

news-aperçus 

adolescence-phosphorescence

eyesore-mysore 

bon vivant-confidant

cantilever-fever 

(i could go on and on)

one of my favorite couplets was about the conservative blanche tilly who attacked clifford's gay comics:

"how i wish you would stop up that bile-spewing spigot,

you use when you speak, you rebarbative bigot."  

cruel and articulate!

but as my SAT scores will show you, vocabulary is not my forte, so the dictionary was out to help me with some of the words that rakoff used.

paresis:  slight or partial paralysis

frond:  large leaf

malfeasance:  wrong doing or misconduct 

aperçu:  a brief survey or sketch

bon vivant:  a person having cultivated, refined, and sociable tastes especially with respect to food and drink

(i really need to start a word-a-day program for myself.)

though love, dishonor, marry, die, cherish, perish is written in verse which has a lightheaded feel to it, rakoff's characters stories are quite heavy.  the novel opens with the story of a baby, margaret, born into pitiful conditions, as the midwife saw it, red haired and without a father (he was trampled by horses) and a mother without a family.  and the midwife was right, margaret ends up being raped by her mother's second husband.  luckily, she runs away to california and finds a better life.

margaret's tragic story was a lot to digest especially being the opening story.  but as the reader is introduced to other characters in the novel, suffering is just a fact of life.  mother, lost the glamour life of her youth when her father gambled it away.  clifford, an artist, gay and found freedom in san francisco, and sadly contracted and died from AIDS.  hannah, suffered from dementia and a cruel daughter-in-law.  and josh, who lost is family and ended up finding a picture that connects the all characters in the end, a six degrees of seperation. 

of all the stories in this novel, helen and nathan were the highlights for me.  

helen was clifford's cousin.  her mother was had quite the sharp tongue and would tease helen growing up, and the sarcasm, unfortunately went over helen's head.  but that ended up being the least of helen's problems though it was probably the source of her problems.  

helen's tale is a story told before, probably in amc's mad men (i haven't watched it), and sort of in billy wilder's the apartment (i actually imaged the office set up from this movie as i read).  boss has an affair with secretary.  helen's affair went on for about 5 years (i can't imagine that!) and ended with an abortion.  due to this, she got drunk and caused a scene at the holiday office party but fortunately was not fired (the affairs were quite commonplace so nothing worth being fired over.) but what i loved about helen was that though this occurred to her, she didn't play victim.  she still went to the holiday party every year, even wore her cocktail to work so to not have to go back and forth between home.  she knew people talked and in the end gave a big fuck you to her office tormentor.

nathan, i admired as well for giving his life tormentors a big fuck you too and on their wedding day.  he was caught in a love triangle between his best friend josh and josh's girlfriend, susan, and ended up the odd man when the other two married.  susan, being the bitch that she was, something her father also recognized, made sure nathan attended and gave a speech.  i really enjoyed nathan's speech, it was based on the fable about the tortoise that helped the scorpion get across the river.  in the fable, the scorpion ends up killing the tortoise and himself because it is his nature to stab.  it seemed an odd choice at first but he amazingly put it on content. 

he explained:

so what can we learn from their watery ends?

is there some lesson on how to be friends?

i think what it means is that central to living

a life that is good is a life that's forgiving.

we're creatures of contact, regardless of whether,

to kiss or to wound, we must still come together,

like in annie hall, we endure twists, bad torsions,

for food we don't like, in such tiny portions!

but, like hating a food but still asking for more,

it bears standing dry but so lonely on shore.

so we make ourselves open, while knowing full well

it's essentially saying, 'please come pierce my shell.'

love is does leave us open to pain but in the end it is worth it than being lonely.  (this coming from an old maid).  

however, nathan's speech did not end on this pleasant note but in the end, susan deserved the harsh speech.  and i love how in the end, susan's dad corrected nathan, letting him know that turtles swim not tortoises.

nathan's speech also demonstrated rakoff's cleverness.  another favorite passage of mine was clifford's mother talking about being trapped in the valley (san fernando valley for all you non-LA-ers).

"malibu's breezy.  hollywood's shady

but burbank? he might as well've brought us to hades!

i could yip when i think of the crime it,

was moving me out here was 'because of the climate."

the fan in her hand the scene's sole, languid motion,

"i once heard it said that there was an ocean

not terribly distrant from where we sit here,

but, i supoose that was just a bum steer.

escaping me now are the details specific,

but could it be named something like 'The Pacific'?"

i was in the valley when i read it.  and it was a hot day in october!  so the perfect setting for that passage.  plus i plan on stealing mother's little joke about the pacific!  

also aren't the illustrations great?  they were done by seth.  the ending illustration was especially cute:

an enjoyable read, i now plan on reading the rest of rakoff's works.

ps i saw on bj novak's instagram that the la times review was written all in verse.  here is a link.