The Heavy Season

A bit of a book review, more moodlin’ than maudlin:

A conversation went deep at the Little Ripon Bookshop the other night, discussing how family stories are shaped and told (in reference to Kate Grenville’s Restless Dolly Maunder, a not very sympathetic fictionalization of her grandmother’s life that was shortlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize). The book group’s ideas ranged around legacies: not financial storehouses or objects, but bodies of experience, the tally sheet of remembrances, both good and bad—and how, depending on who is telling the tale, this could vary widely in its fondness.

I have what my friend Colette calls an aptitude for self-referencing, in that, what I do is because it’s important to me, not necessarily out of concern for what others might think. I love this about myself. I think it shields me from a lot of the anxiety I see others suffering, the ones who are (to me) overly concerned what others think about how they look or act or present in the world.

But also, I recognize that I’m not entirely self-referencing. I do worry about what some people think of me in this life. I want my friends and other loved ones to see me as I really am and having seen that, to regard me highly nonetheless. After I leave this life, though, I guess I’m not all that attached to what people will think. I’ll be dead, right? It’ll be interesting to sit on the ghostly sidelines and see how it all plays out, but I won’t be able to influence opinions. I’ve done things people have probably not liked. (I’m reading lots of ghost-y literature, perhaps in training for haunting you all from beyond the veil, but mostly to help me write The Next Thing, so after-images are very much on my mind).

In a way, this is how I’m feeling about having a book published. As I was writing and certainly during the final rounds of edits, after which there would be no more opportunities to improve Playing Army, I firmly had the reader in mind. I wanted to be sure I was saying what I wanted to say, in the way I wanted to say it (there’s that self-referencing element) but also I wanted all of you to enjoy it, to get it, to think it was good. After it was done-done, though, I didn’t feel the anxiety I was expecting about how it would be received. It was done. Readers were either going to like it or they weren’t.

I wonder what Restless Dolly Maunder would think of this unflattering portrait her granddaughter has painted of her. Angry, ambitious, restless Dolly Maunder who was born in the wrong place and time (late nineteenth century rural Australia) to make much use of her talents and energy. I’d like to hope she doesn’t care a whit that her family history isn’t being kind to her. I hope she’s learned the lessons of the mistakes she made, especially in regards to being so parsimonious in showing affection and love to her children. But I hope she doesn’t feel apologetic in the least for having striven more than what the world allowed her. This feels particularly relevant right now.

Restlessness. Lately, I don’t seem to want to hibernate in the dark days like I used to. Maybe it’s because I feel the winding down of my own clock that the season of death makes me sleepless instead of sleepy. I’m beset with thoughts that I’m doing the writing thing all wrong, that others have book marketing all figured out while I poke along, self-referencing and just doing the promotional things I feel like doing, even as I feel stretched and that I’m doing too many things, too incompletely. But maybe the things I’m fretting about don’t matter. I’m pleased with the book I wrote and I like how The Next Thing is shaping up even though it’s going to take forever to write it at the rate I’m going.

Maybe I’m just stressed out about the writing group I’m leading during November, and the Pink Tea/Book Reading I’m doing on Veterans’ Day—both of which I love and am very much looking forward to. Maybe it’s silly and self-aggrandizing to ever worry about reaching a jillion readers, when I already have all of you.

Thanks for letting me ramble, and thank you, as always, for playing (Army)!

In other news, here’s the 2020 Mustang Bullitt that’s currently parked in our spot: