"hell no"

i would not call this a book recommendation, exactly...

Recently, after recovering from a bout of mysterious illness, I decided I’d gone too many days in a row without leaving the two blocks around my apartment and set out for an Event. A writer of novels I find hilarious and brilliant in equal measure was presumably giving a talk on writing in a stuffy room in a warehouse in Red Hook, although the conversation kept tripping over itself. At one point, after a brief discussion of heroin, she mentioned that she wished she’d thought of autofiction. She would have liked to have done that, she said. Then she asked a man sitting in the front row if his name was Tony before the conversation turned on its head and cartwheeled slipperily along. Two men in front of me were watching a football game on a phone. Someone leaned against the light switch when the topic of death came up, plunging us into a pleasantly poetic dimness. An impromptu, unscheduled Q&A session broke out: nerd mutiny. I had absolutely no idea what was happening. It was a forty-five minute talk, and I would have gladly stayed and listened all day.

The whole thing made me think of Ellen Gilchrist, another writer I can imagine conversationally cartwheeling, immensely enjoying the confusion. She was born in Mississippi in the 1930s, wrote over twenty books, and won the national book award sometime between marrying and divorcing three men four times. She was fond of the state of Arkansas, did not like croutons, and, in the last interview I can locate¹, it’s important to her that we know she “did not fuck Frank Stanford!²”

The most memorable book I read this year was Gilchrist’s The Annunciation. It is not for the weak stomached. In the novel’s first chapter, Amanda, age four, is sent to live with her grandmother in rural Mississippi, becomes infatuated with her cousin (aptly named “Guy”) and is pregnant by age fourteen. After her baby is given up for adoption by nuns, Amanda is put on a train and sent to a boarding school. And that’s only part one! Amanda grows up and marries a wealthy New Orleans lawyer and becomes obsessed first with an eighteenth century french poet and then with moving to Arkansas. She is horrible, deliciously so. Unbelievably so. As woman who also moonlights as a writer, I cannot imagine the notes Ellen Gilchrist received from her editor. “Does phrase “what in the shit” make sense here?” “Tone down incest plot?” “This is the 14th time Amanda has used phrase “hell no”…reconsider??” This book is not concerned so much with practical matters such as believability but instead: DRAMA! PLOT! The dialogue—internal as much as external—is luxuriously titillating. Such as: “Georgia O’Keefe has a husband young enough to be her grandchild³. Well never mind.” The switch from inside of Amanda’s head to outside of it is quick and hilarious. Nobody I know would ever write internal dialogue this way, so unabashed and there on the page. It’s just stunning. It changed the way I write—I think about Amanda almost every time I work on my own characters.

I have amassed a collection but The Annunciation is the only one I haven’t been able to shake!

Of course the cradle of the story itself is pretty heartbreaking. And, it seems from what I can glean from the internet, close to Gilchrist’s own life, in some ways at least. Amanda—her privilege, her boredom—is both the heroine and villain of this story. I wonder how intentional her flaws were. Anyway, I doubt Gilchrist ever used the word “autofiction,” but this weaving of truth and fiction is some of our region’s finest work. About ourselves, with a loosey-goosey grip on reality. Based on “true” events. Air quotes, two fish hooks on a front porch. I can just see Ellen Gilchrist rolling her eyes at all this. Autofiction…you mean: writing? A novel? she asks during this imaginary conversation of my dreamy-dreams. Then we get absolutely bombed on white russians in styrofoam cups, she beats me at cribbage while pinky swearing she’s not homophobic, and we tattoo I DO NOT PITY FOOLS across our knuckles.

my next novel will be called “incomprehensibly horny” don’t steal it

The Annunciation is not a perfect novel. It’s maybe not even very “good.” It’s maddening, sickening, fabulous. Impossible to talk about without sounding deranged. Riddled with pathos. Often upsetting. But, as Gilchrist says, “You can’t be a pussy in this game.” And that, I suppose, is that.

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SUNDRIES

1. After same mysterious illness resulted in three migraines over the course of a week, I’ve found myself wading into all sorts of strange health-related behaviors. For one, putting your feet in a tub of scalding water does something allegedly beneficial to your capillaries, mid-’graine. Another more painful activity: this benignly labeled “Acupressure Mat and Pillow Set.” Looks cute, feels like an interstate of martini picks stabbing at your skin. Fun holiday gift!

2. What do a priest and a seahorse have in common? This is not a joke. I’m reading My Mother Says, a slim novel by the Danish writer Stine Pilgaard who has a preternatural ability to turn phone conversations into high art. A truly excellent breakup novel.

3. I was delighted to stumble upon recording artist Swamp Dogg’s new cookbook. As someone who appreciates cookbooks as primarily aesthetic objects, this one is particularly fun to look at. Bonus points for the Wire-O binding reminiscent of the church cookbooks of my youth.

4. You may have heard that 2026 will repeat several calendar years including 1931, 1942, 1959, 1970, 1981, and 2009. I’m finding the vintage calendar or weekly memo much more appealing than my g-cal, I must say.

1. I can’t think too much about how an interview with a national book award winner became an article on her “men” without becoming nauseous but here you go… https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-126-fall-2024/ellen-gilchrist-s-real-man

2. But who amongst us wouldn’t be tempted by a man dubbed the “swamprat Rimbaud”? https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/frank-stanford

3. A truly inspired use of the word “confidant” here https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/juan-hamilton-xk83nxl6f

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You can find other things I’ve written here. If you care about me at all, you can order my first novel here so that I may continue having a job doing something I like (this is 84% a joke). Thank you so much for reading!