‘Published in 1988 and set in the Florida Keys, Joy Williams’s Breaking and Entering is a strange waking dream of a novel. Liberty and Willie, young married drifters, spend their days breaking into expensive, unoccupied houses, which abound along the Gulf of Mexico. They drink the owners’ champagne, shower in their enormous bathrooms, sleep in their beds, read their romance novels, attend parties at their private clubs. Willie and Liberty are not homeless—they have a rental they don’t like much, or bother locking, which sits under a giant banyan tree that Liberty greets when she returns to it because “it did no harm to keep in touch with the vegetable world.” Willie and Liberty are unemployed but have some money from his parents, from whom they are estranged. Willie says that his occupation is saving people—literally saving them, from drowning or choking or car accidents. He is aloof and cryptic and prone to disappearing; when Liberty asks him to lie down with her in one of the borrowed beds, he misunderstands her as asking for sex, when what she really wants (and what he doesn’t offer) is comfort. She fears their joint “fascination with the buzz saw, the stove’s red electric coil, the divider strip, the fierce oncoming light.”
‘Liberty, for her part, has saved Clem, an enormous Alsatian dog she found, near dead, as a puppy, and befriends two young children, Little Dot and Teddy, whom she cannot save. She is reserved, a depressive, “one of those wives,” Willie tells a chatty, clueless guard at one of the gated communities they break into. Liberty is preoccupied with her own barrenness: “Stolen houses made her think of babies all the time.”
‘Breaking and Entering is not an overtly political novel, but it makes you think about capitalism, waste, and the general threat posed by adult humans to everything they touch. Little Dot’s mother ties a rope leash around her daughter’s wrist to keep her from wandering off. Teddy is shuttled from activity to activity but prefers climbing Liberty’s banyan (“There are twenty-eight places to sit or lie on that tree,” he tells her). Houses breathe chilly air conditioning into the atmosphere; pelicans become tangled in fishing line and starve. The people in positions of relative power—the gatekeepers, the parents, the wealthy homeowners—are poor caretakers of anything but what they own. As Liberty notes, “They protected their possessions as though they had given birth to them.”
‘Breaking and Entering is a perfect novel to read on the cusp of adulthood, when trespassing remains an active interest, even a pastime. I trespassed all through my childhood—through fields and woods and sometimes into old barns and abandoned homes. In college, too, I was interested in rooftops, cemeteries, night swimming, examining specimens in the back rooms of the medical school. I liked to be anywhere that was empty and off limits, and I cultivated, too, an appreciation of the kind of odd, stylized encounter that Williams represents. I lived off campus, with a roommate who dropped out of school on the first day and would get up in the middle of the night to go to work at a bakery. I was always searching for jobs that would pay my rent while also allowing me time to read—I tried paid medical experiments, but fainted at the sight of needles. I worked during the week as a salesclerk in a fancy boutique, on weekends as a character at an amusement park. This was the person Sally Doud saw outside her office, every other Tuesday or Thursday, looking for a new book or words of encouragement. I wonder whether she noticed that I forgot to return this book, and whether she replaced it.
‘Because Breaking and Entering is also a fine novel to return to as an older person. A sort of test: Who have you become? Where are your allegiances now?—and do you really live a life in service to those allegiances? Do you turn away from strangers, from your own loved ones? Do you like to pee in the sand and look at the stars (like Little Dot)? Do you climb trees (like Teddy)? Are you preoccupied with owning things?
‘What do you make of a paragraph like this:
In the silence, Liberty could hear Clem drinking from his water bowl. One has these assumptions, Liberty thought, these foolish assumptions about life. This is the day that the Lord hath made—that sort of thing. It proceeds from sunrise to sunset. Dare, don’t adapt. Rejoice. Be truthful. Get enough rest. Take it easy on the sun and salt. Love. Reflect. Praise. Learn. As a child, Liberty had learned how to write with ascending accuracy between increasingly diminishing lines. That’s a child’s life. A child starts with intense admiration for the world. It’s him and the world. But there are too many messages. Most are worthless, but they still must be received. One must select and clarify. One must dismiss and forget. One is in a lighted room, then it turns dim. Inexplicably. One’s intense attachment turns to fear, then hate, then guilt. Finally, sorrow.
‘Do you sit in mystery, in wonderment? Does that paragraph make you cry? Do you recognize the “increasingly diminishing lines,” the light that “turns dim,” the path from attachment to fear to sorrow?
‘Joy Williams was forty-four when Breaking and Entering was published, two years older than I am now. It was her third novel, her fourth book. Recently my friend sent me a beautiful black-and-white photo of her—maybe taken around this time—rowing a boat with a German shepherd as her passenger, smiling big, in some river or tributary. Looking at it I think of my professor, Sally Doud, and her sly but welcoming smile, her door always open—just a crack—the air around it faintly clouded by smoke.
‘To be young is to be in a space that belongs, always, to someone else. The young are always trespassing, and getting older seems to be carving out space, possessions, territory that is ours alone. Life’s encounters become less stylized. But the genius of Joy Williams, and this novel especially, is that her allegiance remains steadfastly with the young, even as she recognizes that there is a tide of life that carries us away from wonder and in the direction of fear.
‘Perhaps by watching the young we can relearn our wonder, our attachment to one another rather than to things. The other day I was in a poetry writing workshop at my university. The poet Kaveh Akbar was leading us through a series of exercises designed to connect us back to our unconscious, back to a sense of awed bewilderment. It was a two-hour workshop, held in a large room we had reserved in our library, a place where students often gather to work on homework or read between classes. We kept the door propped slightly open, and near the end of the workshop, as Akbar read a long, intensely personal poem of his own to us, a student wandered in. Akbar paused in his reading and said, “Hello, welcome.” The student nodded and said, “What’s up?” then sat down in one of the few remaining chairs.
‘I watched the student, curious to see whether he would get up and leave—he hadn’t registered for our workshop, and clearly was there by accident. But he stayed, and took his backpack off as Akbar returned to the poem, and during the question-and-answer period he raised his hand. “How does your mind go to a place,” he wanted to know, “where you can write this poem?”
‘It was an unanswerable question, in its way, but important. It was the question of a person who has not lost his admiration for the world or his ability to trespass. It was a reminder to keep the door open, always.’ — Belle Boggs
____
Further
Joy Williams Does Not Write for Humanity
JW @ goodreads
Joy Williams, The Art of Fiction No. 223
The Misanthropic Genius of Joy Williams
What is the point of an environmental-literary cynic?
‘Great, Beautiful, Terrifying’, Joy Williams on Cormac McCarthy
Directly to the Heart: An Interview With Joy Williams
“Maybe More People Should Have Writer’s Block.”
‘Web’, by Joy Williams
My Son the Medium Can’t Even Tell Me Why We’re Here
Joy Williams Explains How to Write a Short Story
The Consolation of Joy Williams
Q&A with author Joy Williams
50 Reasons Why You Should Read Joy Williams
____
Extras
Joy Williams: National Book Festival 2021
Live! At the Library: Joy Williams
UA Prose Series: Joy Williams
Joy Williams Reading an Essay at the William Gaddis Centenary Conference
____________
Box of index cards with notes for Breaking and Entering
_________
Manuscript page
______
Interview
by Rebecca Bengal
The language your characters speak and think in is untrendy. It’s not tied to slang, yet it’s always exactly right, no matter when it is from—even when you write from the perspective of teenage girls, which you frequently do.
That’s because they’re so desperate to become. They’re desperate to make themselves understood, to discover what they want to say. And maybe that’s what keeps the stories in motion.
Do you think there are people out there who really are devoted to the short story rather than the novel? We’re talking about a very small group of people who care about literature, about writing in general, and why they care about the short story rather than the novel.
I guess I’m far more likely to be disappointed by novels. They can so often fail to deliver on their promise, they burn out. When they don’t work I think it’s because they’re loaded with the extra things that a good story is stripped of. But what do you think? And has your idea of what a short story should be changed for you over decades of writing them?
No, I don’t think it really has. I mean, these are the characters, this is their moment, they’ll never be heard from again. Even if they don’t recognize that this moment is integral to what their life will become and what it’s been. After O’Connor, it’s the mark of a good story whether a moment of grace is offered or not. Whether it’s accepted or not is irrelevant, whether it’s recognized, but it’s there, it’s in the story. This is another angle on their life. This is the mustard seed of their life, within the story.
But I don’t believe I know “how” to write a novel. I don’t have the board or the organization or the family tree. With the story it’s the same way. Any rules I have are rather abstract. Powell’s Books asked me to do a list: rules for the short story and one way it differs from the novel. I said that a novel tries to befriend you and the short story almost never. That was my distinction. A novel is like that, isn’t it? You read it in bed, or in your hammock, you spend a long time with it. And then there’s the short story, you know, bang!
And maybe that’s why I often feel that way about the novel—at least, when it doesn’t work—that it can then be the false friend who betrays you.
Oh, I like that.
Do you ever feel that way? About certain novels, that is.
Well, I return to certain novels like old friends. But they’re odd novels, like Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. Or Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone.
Yes. Some of the gloomy greats, as you’ve called them. You’re working on a new novel now.
That novel’s finished. But I’ve got to revise it.
And you’re not a big reviser.
No, I never was. And that’s why some of the advice I give to writing students, I don’t know if I even agree with it. They go back and back and back, and it just loses more of the juice, I think.
But do you ever discard things as you go? And if so, do you ever go back to those things?
I don’t, really. I’m very thrifty that way. I don’t cannibalize them, either. Once I get involved in a story, I just try to make it as perfect and complete as I can and not think of it as a drawer of parts for something else.
That makes me think of this, the ending of a version of your essay “Why I Write,” when you speak of DeLillo: “I said that he was like a great shark moving hidden in our midst, beneath the din and wreck of the moment, at apocalyptic ease in the very elements of our psyche and our times that are most troublesome to us, that we most fear. Why do I write? Because I wanna be a great shark, too. Another shark. A different shark, in a different part of the ocean. The ocean is vast.”
Right, my part of the ocean—what is my part of the ocean? Didn’t they drag up all those poor creatures, the one that has survived happily for eons or something and they found it and they got to figure how it survived and managed to elude—that’s the part of the ocean I want to be in.
Circling around each other in your distinct parts of the ocean. The two different worlds, different Americas.
You know, critics want you to go and “capture the American experience.” But I don’t think you can, consciously. So much of it is unconscious. To think of all that you lose when you’re not sitting there at that desk—just with the knowledge, I want to work, I haven’t been working, I should be working. I have to sit there and wait until something starts to stir itself. That’s how it has to happen. Just think of all we’ve missed because we’re experiencing the American experience instead of going to the desk and sitting down.
___
Book
Joy Williams Breaking and Entering
Vintage
‘This compassionate and original book is about love and loneliness and courage in the new wilderness of out atomized society. It is also funny, awful and gruesomely Floridian without sacrificing its seriousness. Joy Williams is as fine a writer as you heard she was.’ — Thomas McGuane
‘An ominous and enthralling novel …. truly significant fiction, of which there is not very much around. Breaking and Entering reminds me again that life is short; it is also very wide.’ — Jim Harrison
‘To put it simply, Joy Williams is the most gifted writer of her generation. For her, the human personality is of most interest and most truth when it is under the most extreme pressure…. This notion of truth emerges in Joy Williams’s work in a complete Americanness of setting, language, and psychology that I find to be of great beauty and meaning.’ — Harold Brodkey
Excerpt
*
p.s. Hey. ** Charalampos, Hi. I’ve never heard them described that way, but I can imagine that happening. I think the reason is because people usually only see them in groups looking for food. If you observe them when they’re living and hanging out more privately, you get that they’re much more individualistic and interesting than they often appear. That’s my favourite Purdy, and the West novel is great. Yes, I read lots of articles and things about Corll before I wrote ‘Jerk’. He was the first serial killer I’d ever heard of, and I was fascinated. Love from cloudy but not overly cold Paris. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Record stores are special. And not just in a nostalgic way. I know people who’ve been driving for decades and are still nervous wrecks behind the wheel, but they’re rarities. Upward intake on the vitamins then. Do you know which one is missing? Well, practically speaking, I would ask love to reopen Bimbo Tower here in Paris. An amazing, weird store, and there’s been a real hole out there ever since it closed. Expressing my thanks to love who surely had a part in buying me a new desk chair yesterday with wheels (!) so I can roll around the room like in the movies, G. ** adrian, Bonjour! It’s staring me in the face, and I’m excited. Amsterdam has a porn festival? I only knew about the Berlin one. Zac’s and my first film played there, and, even though it’s meant to be a porn-shaped movie with no (or hardly any) sex, they still didn’t boo. We were worried. I want pizza. I’ve been dying for pizza. My favorite pizza place here closed suddenly, and I’ve been in mourning, but life and eating must go on. Excellent on the score re: your thesis supervisor. And, you know, that she has, ahem, such good taste. Concerto! When I lived in Amsterdam in the mid-80s I shopped at Concerto all the time. It blows my mind that it still exists. It used to be very good back when vinyl was the only option. Cool, tell me how it is. Good day to you! Mine’s work-y, but I’m in the mood to work hard, so it’ll be a pleasure. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. When I posted the original Dead Record Stores #1 post it was before the big vinyl comeback, and it felt much, much grimmer. Interesting. ** Misanthrope, Hi. Oh, really, about dying bookstores? In LA at least, they’ve made a huge comeback. There are more really good bookstores there now than in the pre-Amazon days. Interesting that you imagine me preferring serial killers’ teeth instead of serial killers’ victims’ teeth. The latter is something I can almost imagine myself collecting. ** Jack Skelley, Rhino was a mecca for me too. And PooBah Records in Pasadena, which may still exist. And Arons. I think you know John Rechy lived a block away from me for years and years. Total prima donna. Love, Jackie Collins. ** Mark, Hi. It pains me that I don’t have a record player here, but I don’t, because, yes, I barely have room for the books I keep seeming to think I need to have. Disco vinyl is worth a pretty penny. I was, of course, an anti-disco punk rocker back then, so I’m bereft. But I do some awfully valuable punk 45s somewhere. ** Justin, Hi, Justin. I was actually surprised not to find more Portland entries for the post, but maybe they’re all still alive. I read ‘Container’ on video.?Huh. There’s a lot of early (as in ‘too’) in ‘Wrong’, but I do still like ‘Container’. Nice, thank you. Are you guys getting any Pineapple Express action up there? ** Tosh Berman, It’s true: when I think of record stores, I think of you. Crazy that Rockaway is still there. That’s something. I loved Arons even though I get why Amoeba kind of made it superfluous. Bomp! was great. Greg Shaw was a real cool guy. Did you know him? ** Fredrik Nilsen, Hey, Fred! Whoa! Super great to see you here, old chum! Shit, okay, I’ll go delete Earwax Records from the graveyard. I must’ve read its signals wrong. Thanks about the blog and ‘I Wished’. man. I’d love to see you. Next LA jaunt, let’s coffee up together or something. Hugs and love from Paris! ** Bill, Hi. You went to Crazy Eddie? I walked by it a billion times, but I never set foot. Welcome to the other side of the seemingly overhyped deluge. I just got tickets to the upcoming Presences Electronique Festival. Some pretty good things this year. ** JG, Well, hey to you! Wow, it’s a major refresher to see you, pal! Lovely reminiscence. How are you? What’s going on? I’m all ears, or, wait, eyes. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. No, no clue on why it was closed. That is really strange that Rough Trade survived the move without dying immediately or ‘selling out’, whatever that would involve. I don’t have a record player so I almost never go to record stores here. It’s too painful. Everyone, Steve Erickson’s ‘February music roundup for Gay City News, covering Brittany Howard and Astrit Ismaili, is out‘ ** Guy, Hi I have no idea what’s going between your email and mine, but, no, I haven’t received it. Very strange. And vexing. Shit. I’m going to see if my email has some kind of option to search my storage in extreme detail or something, because it seems inexplicable. I’ll do my utmost to finish the little collection, thank you! At the moment it’s looking … likely? Bisous! ** Darbyy🐖🐷, Uh, that’s a good reason to get heat. Given that ‘I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream’ is one of the all-time great titles, I accept your comparison with bells on. It’s awfully nice to see your current physical incarnation. Such expressive eyes, my friend! And pretty good scrubs. I think that was the Monster in question. I don’t know if French Monsters look different from American ones. I’m so happy I don’t eat pigs and have no nostalgia around what pork looked or smelled or tasted like when I was a child who still ate in such an evil way. You ever seen that movie ‘Babe’? A lot of people think it’s just sentimental dreck, but it’s actually a great and kind of perfect movie, if you ask me. Verbosity is in the eye of the beholder, and I detected none. ** Uday, Hi. Being an LA resident in 80s, Missing Persons were inescapable. And, you know, their songs are kind of cheap thrills even now. Bob Flanagan and I were super great friends. As was Sheree Rose. We were all in a poet/weirdo posse together. Good about the grant headway. Is that interesting to talk about? I will alert you upon my return to that country because it would be big fun to hang out. ** Joe, Hi, Joe! I’m all mp3s now too. I don’t even have a CD playing option anymore. I do miss packaging. Sometimes. I still have …. mm, most of my lifelong accumulation of vinyl and CDs and cassettes. Lots of things that I really should sell since they’re probably worth a ton. They’re all in LA. Just sound files here. Loveliest day, my friend. ** Okay. I haven’t turned the blog’s spotlight onto a book by the great, great Joy Williams in several years, so I did. Glory in her glory. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
*
Dennis…. Roll your chair to the front door, for I have ordered you a pizza.
Thin crust or thick? (I’m religious about thin. “Burn it!”)
Yours, Jacqueline Susann
I’ve enjoyed whatever Joy Williams books I’ve read so far, although Breaking and Entering seems to be unavailable in the UK. Maybe I ought to shell out the postage as it seems like a winner? Strange how she never found an audience for her talents here.
Hi!!
I love it so much when you put manuscript pages in your posts about specific books or writers!
My guess would be that I’m low on either vitamin A or D. I’m gonna change up my diet a bit and see what happens.
I love record stores that are a little messy and absolutely overwhelming at first glance. Ones that give me that “I can’t even guess what treasures I’ll find here today” feeling right away. Based on the few photos I found, Bimbo Tower was one of those places.
Desk chairs with wheels are the best, right?!
Love turning you into a Barbie with three “must-have” accessories, without whom you wouldn’t be you – what would those be? Od.
Dennis, The good thing about a Joy Williams post is that I can say, yeah, I’ve read this!
Oh, it was serial killers’ victims’ teeth, not serial killers’ teeth. I think I know you well enough, haha. 😉
Yeah, in my area, all we have is a Books-A-Million. I can imagine big cities have decent bookstores and maybe even more bookstores now. In my little suburb, nah, nope, nada. And this BAM is a glorified toy store. If I want a book, I have to go to Amazon. Very rarely can I find what I want in this store. Though I did get BEE’s latest there. But that’s BEE. And they only had a couple copies. Otherwise, it’s all bestsellers and some classics and shit.
I didn’t know Greg Shaw that well, but I actually worked for him for a few weeks in their headquarters located somewhere in Glendale, or what I think is Atwater Village. Why he hired me because a friend at that time recommended me. My job was to build record shelves. Yes, that never happened. I was let go as I should and didn’t look back. He was a quiet soul, and at the time, he was still married to his Bomp partner (I believe she owns Bomp these days), but there was tension in the office because her boyfriend worked there as well. But Greg is an important Los Angeles citizen. Bomp was the only place to get an Ork single release (Richard Hell, Television, etc.). There must have been an invisible tunnel between Bomp and NYC at that time. Great, great store.
There are record stores here in Los Angeles, and there are numerous wonderful bookstores as well. Both new and used, and sometimes a combination of both. Off the top of my head, all in my area (Silver Lake/Echo Park/Atwater Village), there are Skylight Books, Stories, Alias Books East, des pair Books, Secret Headquarters Comics, Artbook at Hauser & Wirth, Hennessey + Ingalls, A Good Used Book, and The Last Bookstore. And I’m sure I’m missing some others in my area. And there is the West side as well, but I’m only talking about my neighborhood areas. I’m (we) are very lucky to have these bookstores and record stores. I love Los Angeles.
Dennis,
Here’s the video of your “Container” reading… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMvJKD3eVNI loved it! Even being (too) early writing, it still gives me a synesthesia-like response. No Pineapple Express here. The weather’s been pretty normal other than last month we had a huge ice storm which was annoying but beautiful.
I went to see an opera based on Gus Van Sant’s ‘Last Days’ at Disney Concert Hall last night. https://www.laphil.com/events/performances/2452/2024-02-06/last-days#:~:text=Last%20Days%20is%20a%20Royal,and%20produced%20by%20HBO%20Films. I like Van Sant’s HBO film a lot, but it had me wondering about how it would translate into an opera. Turns out it was awesome! One of the coolest, weirdest things I’ve seen at DCH. It was conducted by Thomas Adès (who is a sexy hunk of a conductor). He’s been in LA a lot, making me think he might be on the short list to replace Dudamel. We are trying to figure out if we can make the trip to Paris for Paris Ass in May. We are eager and hopeful, but trying to figure out the $$$.
Hi
I will start reading her this year, I wanted for long time and it is definitely the time and Def writer for me. Thanks for sharing this book with us
That Container reading video I liked, thank you for sharing Justin
It is for me one of the highlights on Wrong or maybe my fave!
I figured you have read tons of things about Corll I did not know it was the first serial killer you read about.
I want to discuss many things about all that but maybe it is for another time.
I want to read the book about him The man and the candy and the book about Randy Kraft Angel of darkness.
These things affect me very much but I want to know. How on earth they operated in the same period and doing all that under the radar haunts me.
I can’t imagine how it was being around during that time nor I have idea as I grew up in entirely different environment (it was no paradise or hellish as well but in different ways)
I sold one copy of All Out in the Open today to the neighbour girls and told them to tell me their fave poems and drawings when they are done
SMASH!!
Good vibes from Crete
Hi.
So I started the marbled Swarm but I stopped around the page where you talk about cutting. Sorry if that makes me really sensitive but I promise one day I might pick it back up!
Its something a bit too precarious for me right now. Ive enjoyed it so far.
Are you interested in Emo culture? I dont think I make a good one because the trademark skinny jeans arent something I hate wearing. Idk. I hate alot of emo music like its so fucking bad PATD fallout boys….ya know my chemical romance is actually pretty decent. The others suck and the band members seem unbearably annoying anyways.
I think that….idk. I gave my bus money to homeless person outside a CVS except two dollars for one bus ride. One bus ride is all i’ll need if it comes down to it. People tend to romanticize the concept of suicide jumps, but im thinking at the end of the day you wont see your body so why should it matter? I say this because recently ive been reading about people who kill themselfs st Niagra Falls and everyone always talks about regret but why does regret matter if the person is dead. Theres no God, ya know? You die, ya die. So I mean for all the person knows theyre falling into the watery mists of a gaping cascades.
I havent seen the movie Babe!! AHHHH I should should I? I love snowball the pig dictator in Animal Farm, his cute lil hoofs. I think maybe i could get into occultism and I know someone who has a satanic bible, the Anton Levoy one.
A while ago I used to intentionally hurt mydelf etc and that made me feel something at least. I think maybe if I find some sort of divine power in some occuyltist encounter that opens your eyes and you r grtdj anyways.
Astrology is bullshit theres this girl who believes in the most brain-dead mystic ideas, like she gets all her dumb fucking knowledge from social media and thats why she is so dumb.
She liked the movie saltburn which makes her even dumber. A superficial movie trying to impose some intelligent “shock”
Thats why I love occultism, dark magic, the stuff people think you shouldnt do because its “unethical” but thats trully how you break the walls of our ephimerermal world. Not fucking stupid “Daily horoscopes” and “Egg masks” from social media
Theres this things ive discovered
Have you ever been in a cult? Im thinking they arent as bad as people say they are, as long as you dont mind being degraded into some divine purpose.
Im realizing this all comes full circle in an odd way, like theire is no distincntion in what I write and the person in the book who is my own projection of a feeling.
I dont even want to finish it it just seems kind of odd. the book
See you soon….maybe (as they say in France?)
oh would you like to see something im working on? Im creating a new body and i think ill burn it, but its an art statue. its a obsessive project im working on.
Hey, Den. Not much, finishing a slew of paintings of bugs, working on bigger stuff; the tarot is moving along, plus three other paintings in process, one graphic novel fully scripted with the other 3/5s complete and production sketches beginning for both. Going to serlialize both GNs online simultaneously, use profits from the paintings & prints to finance printing the Kammerer/Carr story first, in order to leverage funding for printing the second (my queer bluebeard). Finessing plans, checking paper stock, keeping plates spinning, etc.
Canned the old job. Finding a temp one for four, five months until we hit eject on the South and move to Chicago. This puddle of cess that calls itself a city has taken twenty-one years from me but I’m taking the reins back. Made an excellent veg lasagna & finished a painting for my husband yesterday. Good art day, up to the very end, when i managed to open my knuckles bagging up all the recycling. Groovy signs & portents. Time to put the pen down ’til tomorrow.
Stay cool,
-D
(it’s crazy. siegfried’s 36. i have tools in my studio that are older than the man i am going to marry. how did i make it to 47? the lightbox my granddad made is older than both of us…)
Your blog is indeed interesting to talk about! It feels like the perfect example of the kind of moral seriousness I’m trying to argue for. So much of the internet is devoted to lessening itself so it can sell more but this remains a bastion of demanding attention. The Finnegan’s Wake of the internet (but more interesting) (in my humble opinion).
Joy Williams has been one of my favourite discoveries through the blog. Do you have a favourite work of hers? And yes, I lost your reply in the P.S. yesterday, but I’m down for Présences éléctronique on Sunday (I’ve just seen 7038634357, who I absolutely love, is playing!) Have you guys already snagged your tix? I’ll go in today or tomorrow to get some, I think. Should be great! xT
Dear Dennis! Caesar here reporting after…almost a month and a half? Sorry, many things have been happening that have prevented me from coming to the blog (I finally got engaged, I started psychiatry, I’m writing something for a writing grant, looking for a job, about to start college again, a chaotic country).
How are you doing? I must say that my country is not destroyed yet but it is more and more in crisis (big increase in taxes, food, public transportation, etc) because this government is led by clowns who call “caste” to everyone who is not in favor of their ideas. A few days ago they managed to stop a Law that initially had 600 articles, then 300 and now it was shelved until further notice due to lousy logistical decisions that they did not realize. It’s a relief even though our president is getting more and more fascist, spending more time on Twitter reacting to troll memes than being a real figure. I don’t know if you saw 2018’s Suspiria by Luca Guadagnino (I finally spelled his name right) but there’s a dialogue that resonates with me a lot right now, spoken by Dakota Johnson’s character: ” why is everyone hell-bent on believing that the worst is over? Everything is a mess, what’s outside, what’s inside, what’s to come” (in reference to the historical context of the movie after WWII) I ask myself the same questions.
I always vent here so I apologize, I hope the movie is going well!!!!
Are you working on anything else right now? A few days ago I got a digital copy of “Ugly Man” (I’m so sorry, Dennis, but here books are exorbitantly priced, you practically can’t buy them, that makes me want to cry because I always buy a lot of books and this year how much more will I be able to buy two or three, maybe four with luck) and I love it!!!! Sometimes I forget that I need something more sordid than my reality to escape it so thank you so much.
By the way post, I love Joy Williams, she is one of my favorite writers, I read most of her short stories and her novel “The Changeling” (fabulous) plus I have “The quick and the dead” and “Harrow” (her last publication I think) on hold. I didn’t know anything about this novel and it sounds very interesting so I’ll write it down. Thanks for the space as always. Sending you kisses and hugs <3!!!! C.
PS: have you seen "Pobres Cosas" ? Great movie! It reminded me a bit of your work! Yorgos Lanthimos is amazing and Emma Stone is dazzling! Which films are your favorites to win the Oscar?