Joseph McElroy
Was in a mood to read some fiction this week. All the books I've been reading up until now were going a little stale so I decided maybe it'd be cool to find another thing.
So then I found out about this pretty promising book called Women and Men by Joseph McElroy, whom I found through this BookTuber (book YouTuber) named PaperBird. Actually the book wasn't discussed in any of his videos (at least I don't think so); I read about it in one of his blog posts. He has a Blogger too (link to his site). His Blogger actually inspired me to want to make a blog on here, instead of WordPress (which became not free all of a sudden, which was surprising) or Medium (which has either a lot of coding how-to tutorials or self-improvement guides that are cranked out by like the same three people, so not really the space I wanted to write).
I actually got a book recommendation from him before, with Edouard Leve's Suicide and Autoportrait, so when he talked really excitedly about McElroy's behemoth of a book, I knew I had to see what it was about.
And so far it's interesting. The first chapter hit really hard; describing this scene about a woman giving birth while her husband watches her. How she feels "invalid", hopeless, and almost objectified while giving birth. This image of a man and woman trying to share the pain of bearing a child. And lines like this:
I'm on the second chapter now, where the writing gets a little bit more experimental. The guy is compared to Pynchon and Gaddis so I wasn't expecting an easy read, but the layer of metaphors is so thick I'm not even sure what is referring to what anymore. Something about tapeworms in the gut which may or may not be about children during conception?
Just like what I do with anyone I find interesting, I looked up McElroy on Wikipedia. There weren't a lot of details that stood out to me, seemed like a guy mostly immersed in the world of academia, which I guess is a little different from the people I'm used to reading who were born in the 30s? Pynchon made planes for the U.S. Navy before dedicating himself to writing; DeLillo, who like McElroy was born, raised and continued to live in New York City, actually worked in advertisement for two years before watching movies for like two years? and then becoming a full time writer. And I'm always hesitant about writers from academia, just because after reading works from a few of them, I can always kind of feel the pressure of academia in them. I guess I'm thinking about John Barth's Lost In The Funhouse, where Postmodernism somehow became more like, when I write words I don't want to make sense.
I have a few more thoughts on McElroy, including this essay I read by him called Neural Neighborhoods. And of course, the gosh darn book. I'll make a separate post I think.
So then I found out about this pretty promising book called Women and Men by Joseph McElroy, whom I found through this BookTuber (book YouTuber) named PaperBird. Actually the book wasn't discussed in any of his videos (at least I don't think so); I read about it in one of his blog posts. He has a Blogger too (link to his site). His Blogger actually inspired me to want to make a blog on here, instead of WordPress (which became not free all of a sudden, which was surprising) or Medium (which has either a lot of coding how-to tutorials or self-improvement guides that are cranked out by like the same three people, so not really the space I wanted to write).
I actually got a book recommendation from him before, with Edouard Leve's Suicide and Autoportrait, so when he talked really excitedly about McElroy's behemoth of a book, I knew I had to see what it was about.
And so far it's interesting. The first chapter hit really hard; describing this scene about a woman giving birth while her husband watches her. How she feels "invalid", hopeless, and almost objectified while giving birth. This image of a man and woman trying to share the pain of bearing a child. And lines like this:
Reading this during my lunch break at work made me unexpectedly emotional.The hand went away and she had hold of something else but it was the ceiling he’d never looked at that she wanted to grip though it was beyond the birth of her baby which was happening and happening.
I'm on the second chapter now, where the writing gets a little bit more experimental. The guy is compared to Pynchon and Gaddis so I wasn't expecting an easy read, but the layer of metaphors is so thick I'm not even sure what is referring to what anymore. Something about tapeworms in the gut which may or may not be about children during conception?
Just like what I do with anyone I find interesting, I looked up McElroy on Wikipedia. There weren't a lot of details that stood out to me, seemed like a guy mostly immersed in the world of academia, which I guess is a little different from the people I'm used to reading who were born in the 30s? Pynchon made planes for the U.S. Navy before dedicating himself to writing; DeLillo, who like McElroy was born, raised and continued to live in New York City, actually worked in advertisement for two years before watching movies for like two years? and then becoming a full time writer. And I'm always hesitant about writers from academia, just because after reading works from a few of them, I can always kind of feel the pressure of academia in them. I guess I'm thinking about John Barth's Lost In The Funhouse, where Postmodernism somehow became more like, when I write words I don't want to make sense.
I have a few more thoughts on McElroy, including this essay I read by him called Neural Neighborhoods. And of course, the gosh darn book. I'll make a separate post I think.
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