Bobolinks Changed My Life
How I found books, the tyranny of shoulds, and a new essay in LARB
When I was a ripening teenager, my sense of reality was shaky at best. My parents were fighting all the time (actually, they just rarely talked—mom slept on the couch), and my sister was crashing cars and getting into trouble with boys. I quit the only sport I ever loved after a bad experience with a baseball coach and fell in with the skaters and the punks. I was playing in a band and going to shows at First Avenue and other, smaller clubs. (We bemoan all-ages shows now, but in the nineties and early aughts we fought for them. Some bands even wrote songs about it.)
The silences at home hemmed me in. Tacit expectations of how to be and how to become hung over every clipped conversation. Disappointment was palpable. Claustrophobic, religious strictures at school compounded my confusion. It all made my jaw ache. That’s when I discovered books.
In a computer programming class (why in the world did I take that?), I would finish the work early and pull up Edgar Allen Poe poems from the painfully slow internet. I copied the poems into my notebook, where I would then mutter the lines to myself, trying to commit them to memory. I later did this with T.S. Eliot and Emily Dickinson.
Here are the first two stanzas of Dickinson’s “A Day,” one I tried to memorize:
I’ll tell you how the sun rose, —
A ribbon at a time.
The steeples swam in amethyst,
The news like squirrels ran.The hills untied their bonnets,
The bobolinks begun.
Then I said softly to myself,
“That must have been the sun!”
J—, a popular kid who drove an F150, caught wind of my poetry consumption. He sniffed at me one day, “What are you, a faggot?” His entourage laughed. (Why is there always an entourage?) This was Christian school, so homophobia was as common as prayer. At night I’d go to shows with my “secular” friends. I went to a Plea for Peace concert that required food donations for a local shelter to gain entry. Strike Anywhere and Hot Water Music played, and we raged, and they preached about anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-homophobia. Plea for Peace sold patches and buttons that said “Fight Racism” and “Free Mumia.”
Where I’d endured many silences at home, language was coming alive—in music, in the books I was reading (a teacher started feeding me classics), and in the poetry I memorized. “The steeples swam in amethyst”: that assonance and alliteration! And “Bobolinks”? What the heck was that? I bought a pocket dictionary at the neighborhood thrift store. Other words and phrases funneled into my screen-soaked brain. (I was weaned on the teat of television.) Poe’s “sepulchre" and “nooks of melancholy.” Eliot’s “headpiece fill with straw.” The world became unfamiliar, new. Imagining a life beyond working construction or at the corner gas station suddenly felt possible.
Why am I telling you this? Well, two people called me “cerebral” last week, and I got to thinking about how hard I have tried, since those teenage days of literary discovery, to be perceived — as something—anything—other than who or what I came from. I wanted to be different. I wanted to be smart, well-read, funny, eloquent, adventurous, fun to be around. I wanted to brim with stories. I wanted to be clever and knowledgeable and articulate and expressive. I wanted to take in the world with long arms, and learn, well, everything. I wanted to banish the silence. I wanted to live a loud life that radiated with tall tales and jokes and relished in wordplay and the music of language.
So, I tried. Barely got into college, but kept at it, got the degrees, worked hard, started publishing stuff. And by digging so deeply into this brave new world, I have, at times, forgotten to have fun. I’ve been too hard on myself. I’ve left some people behind, disappointed others, perhaps confused or confounded others still. I get obsessive, single-minded, and fanatical, often driven by fear. Fear that I’ll be found out. (Leslie Jamison’s piece on imposter syndrome hit me pretty hard.)
Part of what prompted stepping back from writing so much criticism a few years ago was this very feeling of pretending. I could turn on SmartyPants Mode™, but it wasn’t bringing me much satisfaction. This week, though, after publishing a piece in Los Angeles Review of Books1, I felt some semblance of contentment. I wrote about about a writer whose work I’ve loved for seventeen years. I think the piece is pretty good, and that’s a new feeling. Very rarely do I feel proud of the things I write. Yes, my inner critic says I could’ve gone deeper, that the essay suffers from skimming on the surface, but it’s a step in the right direction for my wholeness, and for writing about books with a sense of joy, and that is why I am proud of it.
As I said last week, I’m going to therapy again. (I promise this won’t become a regular thing – me talking about all the great things I’m learning in therapy.) One thing we’re talking about is banishing the shoulds that hang over my life and my writing. “The tyranny of shoulds” is apparently a popular phrase in Therapy Land. Back when I wrote a lot of reviews and critical essays, I was jumping through the hoops of “should.” I was jumping through the hoops of ideas rather than simply trusting my own mind. I should publish here, I should publish there, I should write about this “difficult” writer or about a book from that indie press. I forged ahead for the byline, and for the chance of getting closer to success—whatever that meant. I bought other peoples’ ideas of “the role of the critic” and put them on like outfits and SmartyPants-ed all over town. Check out my fancy outfit. Check out my big ol’ brain. When I read those old reviews and essays now, I don’t recognize that person. When I read those old things now, I feel no sense of joy nor satisfaction. I feel strain, anxiety, and lots of Trying Hard. When I read those old things now, I laugh. I can see through the posturing, the delusion. “This book is a heroic achievement.” (No, it’s not.) “This strangely moving book..” (false, that book was a slog and left me cold). Oh, Lord. Another reference to a writer I’ve never actually read. (Face smack.)
If I’m being honest, book(ish) has been extremely challenging. I’m constantly trying to find the joyful, life-giving way of writing about books without teetering too much into the anxieties of SmartyPants-ing. I have to check myself, question my own motives, and reassess what this is all about. I do think there are times and places in my own life for deep, well-researched criticism, but criticism’s performance—and it is a performance—every week simply isn’t sustainable, nor is it very much fun. And so, when I felt myself slipping back into that performative mode a few months ago, I was reminded of the old days and the mounting anxiety with each deadline.
So, I pulled back and tried a few new things. I’m trying to have fun. Which is why you may have noticed things getting a little experimental—writing in the voice of Bob Dylan, or my first “mommy blog.”
Because if I’m not having fun, you’re not having fun, right?
Right?
For the next two weeks I’ll be running a two-part round-up called “My Year in Reading” from friends and supporters of book(ish). They have been so fun to read as they trickle into my inbox, and I’m excited to share them with you. So, stay tuned! And thank you for being here, for opening these emails week after week. It means a lot.
In the New Year, I’m planning some fun things to keep it fresh, mix up the format, and, yes, still talk about books. No shoulds about it.
Happy Solstice,
Josh
I didn’t feel like I was done with the conversation, though, so the outflow lead to writing this piece about Zadie Smith’s Swing Time. I’d recommend reading the LARB piece first, then the Zadie piece, then you can tell me if I’m wrong, and what you think style and “stylist” means.