Friday Links: I Am In The Best Mood Edition
"...you will say, 'Kris, I'm not dead, see? I'm right here, buying deodorant without antiperspirant again.'"- Marisa Crane, 'I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself'
Congratulations to the Denver Nuggets on winning their first NBA championship. Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray are two very cool and creative players, people who play basketball in a fun way. Nice to see that style win. It does make the latest Line Break—where Bob, José Olivarez, and I predicted a Jimmy Butler Finals MVP—look pretty bad. But did I mention that we were lucky enough to interview José Olivarez on The Line Break?
What I’ve Been Reading Lately:
Like I said Wednesday, I’m on vacation. Very much thought I would have this book finished, but that was overly optimistic. That said, this book has grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and thrown me around the room. It’s one of the more lyric novels I can remember reading while maintaining a certain hardness to the prose, and it’s got a narrator I relate to more than any I can remember in a while. I’m talking, as the cover photo to this article suggests, about I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself by Marisa Crane.
Told in short bursts, this novel unfolds like a series of prose poems, each little segment of a cluster of ideas floating from Point A to Point B to Point C before arriving at some moment of devastation. Our narrator is Kris, widow and new mom who is—along with her infant—marked as members of a permanent underclass in a dystopian police state. Kris is a grieving mess but also insanely kick-ass, just makes herself become a good parent despite grieving the loss of her partner (who actually carried the kid). The way certain aspects of parenting are brilliantly rendered—at one point Kris says she is “appalled by [the kid’s] wisdom” in a scene where the kid realizes no one cares if you can play guitar—really pulls at the Dad Of A Young Child in me. And really, it feels weird to say given the heavy subject matter, but Kris is just cool, just a narrator I really like hanging out with.
LINKS!
I have seen a lot of people compare Marisa Crane’s novel to the poetry of Ocean Vuong. That comparison is right on, if you ask me, so let’s read an interview with Ocean Vuong.
Love this idea of 1,001 books to make a map of the US, what a cool project. Haven’t dove all the way in on this one yet, but it seemed appropriate to share an LA Times article while in LA.
Had my eyes opened with this essay in Ploughshares on the shape of nations. My Japanese history doesn’t go much farther than what you’d find in a Crash Course episode, so I was interested to read about the Ainu people. The world is so much bigger and richer beyond nationalism, we have so much to learn from all of our histories.
After gesturing towards anti-nationalism, let’s make like the Judaean People’s Front and give the Romans credit for the aqueduct. This essay, “Unspeakable Fermentations” by Diego Rodríguez Landeros, gets into the history of revolutions in cities that smell like shit. You hear that, G8 members? Keep our infrastructure running, particularly the trash pickups!
Cool essay in Fangoria on the concept of Enduring Women (aka beyond the Final Girl). The headline is “enduring women” as in “women who endure,” not “women it is a struggle to endure.” The latter is how I initially read the headline, and I was very confused. Don’t be stupid, like the author of this blog.
Try stuff you think shouldn’t work next time you play basketball.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
