Writers and Lovers - Lily King
COVID-19 completely obliterated my reading habit. I normally read on my commute to and from work. No work means no commute and no commute means, apparently, not much reading. I’m actually surprised on just how fickle my reading habit seemed to. Apparently my attention span for reading is at its best when crammed between two other commuters on the 134 bus.
I’m pretty sure the underlying anxiety associated with the coronavirus pandemic has contributed to my difficulty sustaining my normal reading habit too. Consequently, if I was going to get back into reading, rather than just killing nights watching YouTube, I needed a book that I could get consumed in. Normally, this would be a mystery or adventure, but for whatever reason, Lily King’s Writers and Lovers managed to keep my COVID-induced goldfish attention from start to finish.
Writers and Lovers is set in 1990s Boston and is written from the first person narrative of a recently-turned-thirty female author, Casey, trying to keep the dream alive. Casey is having a hard time. She lives in a dump of an apartment, has a Masters degree but works as a server to pay the bills, and has been working on the same book for something like five years. She’s recovering from the death of her mom and a breakup while most of her friends who once had the same dream to get published are dropping off and getting “real jobs”. During this phase, she finds herself between two relationships - one with an older and successful author whose family unit desperately needs a mother figure in it, and another with a young Adam-Driver-in-Girls type that is spontaneous and creative.
I don’t have too much specific to say about his book other than the fact that I’m really grateful for it. It does all of the things that fiction is supposed to do. I connected with Casey and her challenges and felt camaraderie with the constant inner monologue that runs in her mind throughout the story. Having just turned thirty, I connected with a lot of the professional and personal anxieties that Casey felt.
One of the best lines in the story happened when she finally went to see a therapist. The therapist asked her what her biggest fear was. She said something along the lines of, “my biggest fear is, if I can’t handle my shit now, how will I handle anything down the road?” The therapist responded with something along the lines of “well, you’re broke, working a dead-end job you don’t like, you mom just died, you want to be a writer but can’t finish your book, and you are struggling to decide which potential romantic partner to pursue. This is not nothing.”
This is not nothing. A pretty good line for these COVID-19 times.
And there is some kind of symbolism with geese. I don’t get it though.
Other Annotations and Highlights
There’s a dead spider in the blanket whose legs look woven into the wool. He would like that. It would probably end up in a poem. I take pleasure in not showing it to him.
- I love this honest inner monologue. The guilty but oddly satisfying pleasure of keeping a detail to oneself as a petty little power move.
They look older, like something is gently tugging them to the floor. I wonder if my father knows how much hair is missing at the back of his head.
- What a quick and brutal way to describe aging.
Sometimes, standing over a six-top and reciting the specials, I feel like I’m breaking up in tiny fragments, and I don’t understand how phrases like ‘with a cranberry cognac glaze’ are still coming out of my mouth or why my customers watching me don’t signal to someone that I need help. There’s some thin covering over me that hides it all. If someone saw inside and called an ambulance, I would go off willingly. It’s my biggest fantasy at these terrifying moments, two EMTs in the doorway with a stretcher for me to lie down on.
- anxiety, man…
I don’t want to be infertile. I also don’t want to be pregnant. Fitzgerald said that the sign of a genius is being able to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time. But what if you hold two contradictory fears? Are you still some kind of genius?
I liked reading, but I was picky about books. I think the enthusiasm came when I started writing. Then I understood how hard it is to re-create in words what you see and feel in your head. Thats what I love about Bernhard in the book. He manages to stimulate consciousness, and its contagious because while you’re reading it rubs off on you and your mind starts working like that for a while. I love that. That Reverberation for me is what is most important about literature. Not themes or symbols or the rest of that crap they teach in high school
- The reverberation is the whole point right? The parts of story that knock you over. I have a hard time turning off my eight grade-english-brain too though. When there are these moments happening, when I should just let the story play out in front of me, I find myself still wanting to tease out the “theme” like I’m trying to get a good grade on the next assignment