rcsyink's review against another edition
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Unfortuantitley I didn't get all the literary references but aside from the spiritual layer, it was very insightful and somewhat soothing.
emsemsems's review against another edition
4.0
‘What if a work of fiction simply ended with pages and pages of descriptions of plants? If it doesn’t already exist, I think I must sit down and write it.’
Makes me wonder what ‘hoya’ (plants) Cain has in her ‘garden’ because (although I don’t do it anymore) I used to have a mad/stupid amount of ‘hoyas’ (because it’s (at least in my opinion/experience) a very ‘crazy plant person’ sort of plant to have; so when you get into it, you start to ‘exchange’ cuttings with other ‘crazy plant people’ (by post/mail too), and it can get really out of control if you’re not good enough at killing plants ‘naturally’?). Before I get carried away with plant ramblings, I will say that I enjoyed Cain’s writing/essays. And because of this, I am quite keen to read her novel, [b:Indelicacy|52115847|Indelicacy|Amina Cain|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1583414395l/52115847._SY75_.jpg|70730157].
‘—but I find myself always returning to Clarice Lispector and Duras, and now Ferrante and Townsend Warner in my thinking, but also when I write, and I’ve realised that it might make sense to focus on them through writing for an extended period of time. It’s said that it only takes a few seconds for the body to tense up, but that to relax completely takes much longer, more like twenty minutes—Regardless, I also like reading these books because of the state of mind in which they put me.’
Cain introduced (other) ‘books’ to the readers so well without ‘carelessly’ spoiling it/them for prospective readers, and I really appreciate that. Enjoyed the book, mostly, but there’s just one thing that I would have preferred to be written differently. It’s so anal of me to feel this way, but I felt a bit annoyed about how she felt compelled to sort of be apologetic and guilty about her ‘love’ for solitude towards the end of the book. As if the two or more ‘loves’ cannot coexist? As if one love has to be suppressed in order to allow the progression/continuity of other ‘loves’ in her life (this is just my view of it, she probably meant well)? I just wanted her to be unbridled and aggressive about loving all that she loves.
‘One reads or writes a novel like one goes out to walk in the heat, or into the rain, to buy persimmons and butter.’
‘The flowers that look like bright yellow balls, with soft little pine tree-like leaves, are standing in their bucket of water, not far from a large bowl of tangerines—How could I not think of Lolly, especially in the blustery seasons? I was glad I left my commonplace desk. I went back to it with those images in my mind. For me, fiction is a space of plainness and of excess.’
But on the other hand I also completely understand why she had to sort of tone it down and ‘explain herself’ — and be like ‘I love solitude but I love the people I love too’ (which felt sort of unnecessarily cringey to me; but a better reader/someone who appreciates these sort of ‘sentimental’ superfluity might appreciate that more). I don’t want to quote or even talk about [a:Benjamín Labatut|5343297|Benjamín Labatut|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1601105305p2/5343297.jpg] so often, but (it’s inevitable? I do not want to go back to being the person I was before I read his writing/work — I don’t know how to explain it/this better; read his books if you’re curious) Labatut told a crowd of people at a literary festival once that his first thought when his daughter was ‘born’ (to loosely paraphrase everything except for the swearing as that’s basically lingua franca) — ‘what the fuck, I can never be fully alone now?! (with a completely serious face, with no ‘comic relief’ added afterwards)’ I love that he didn’t have to ‘explain’ that he actually ‘loves’ his daughter anyway or whatever. Explaining ‘love’, or more precisely to feel obligated to explain ‘love’ — is just not ‘it’? Because to me, it is (or should be (in my personal opinion that is)) self-explanatory.
‘I want to write with that kind of expansiveness, into one’s life and the landscape one is in. It is like a needle piercing the sky. Writing of spending time with one’s mother, the conversations they have in a spring that is really a late brutal winter, not understood by her mother at all. Loneliness on the moors, becoming Emily Brontë, ice and interiors, the house and the mind—in Carson’s writing. I admire it, and I feel so much when I read it, but how can I feel cradled in something so difficult? It’s the writing itself that does that, the details, the setting, the cutting through, taking off one’s clothes.’
If a writer mentions Carson or the Brontë I like best in a book, and also write about them well? Use them well? I wouldn’t know how to ‘not care’ or feel ‘indifferent’ about their book. Because I’ve read that particular Carson poem (basically stuck with it, in my head forever), it just makes reading Cain’s essays a little bit more layered and exciting for me, and I really like and appreciate that. Confessedly, I read Cain’s book twice. I postponed my written thoughts/review (for the first read) for too long as I felt like I needed to read it again quickly again (and I think I enjoyed it even more the second time).
‘Even though I’m a writer, it’s not always language I’m drawn to first. When I start writing a new story, I often begin with setting. Before plot, before dialogue, before anything else, I begin to see where a story will take place, and then I hear the narrative voice, which means that character is not far behind. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about landscape painting and literature, and perhaps as an extension of this I have started to think through the idea of character and landscape as similar things, or at least as intimates, co-dependent.’
Even though I don’t fully share Cain’s views (above, as I’m definitely more drawn to ‘language’?) I think it’s beautiful the way she approaches ‘writing’. I’m definitely more ‘language’ obsessed; and I know this because I realised recently that I don’t watch many films (or at least specifically these recent years) even though I have a long mental list of films I really want to watch at some point (but for some reason never find enough ‘motivation’ to); and at least half of the films I’ve watched most recently were done essentially because of friendly/social reasons. But with books, the pull is just fucking irresistible? It’s far more addictive. Lydia Davis has a book on writing (which focuses a lot more on ‘language’ and ‘translation’) [b:Essays Two: On Proust, Translation, Foreign Languages, and the City of Arles|50403450|Essays Two On Proust, Translation, Foreign Languages, and the City of Arles|Lydia Davis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1585190798l/50403450._SX50_.jpg|75365876], and I think I can definitely read that a few more times just because I am but a little obsessed with it. I’m not necessarily saying that it’s a ‘better’ book than Cain’s (they’re quite different even though they talk about similar things), but I do strongly think that it would be a complementary reading to Cain’s.
‘To be in favour of solitude is not to be against community or friendship or love. It’s not that being alone is better, just that without the experience of it we block ourselves from discovering something enormously beneficial, perhaps even vital, to selfhood—It’s hard to see someone fully when another person is always attached to them. More importantly, it’s hard for us to see our own selves if we’re not ever alone.’
flynxnguyen's review against another edition
3.0
Yet, I have never kept a diary. Or I have tried, but it never stuck. Again and again I would begin: with a very short entry, or else with a long one that would come to stand on its own, there in the beginning of a notebook, followed by all of those blank pages. I don't know if, when I wrote essays, I was actually returning to the same space, if somehow I had managed to get back to those empty pages, managed to get back to a pasture of thought. And now that it is done, I am keeping a real diary for the first time in my life, or is it a pasture, mostly because when I can't, or don't have time, to work on my novel, I can still write there. Sometimes I trick myself when writing in my notebook; sometimes I end up working on the novel after all, in those pages. And that is the best reason to return to it, that it brings me closer to something I haven't otherwise been able to get to, or that can't get to me. I want to go further into my writing, into my thinking. "And do I?"
neledeich's review against another edition
5.0
“Maybe I’ve not kept a diary because imagined lives have been more interesting for me to write down than my own. Yet my life comes into my fiction too, and now I am writing of it here, attached to my reading and my writing.”
Makes me want to read all the books and write my own. I find it interesting how she feels like she now is the most unauthentic she has ever been, for me the reader I rarely read something that feels so authentic to me as her writing does. Got a lot of book recommendations as well as writing advice out of this.
Makes me want to read all the books and write my own. I find it interesting how she feels like she now is the most unauthentic she has ever been, for me the reader I rarely read something that feels so authentic to me as her writing does. Got a lot of book recommendations as well as writing advice out of this.
betweenbookends's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
4.25