Review: The Fifty Year Sword by Mark Z. Danielewski

image via Goodreads

title: The Fifty Year Sword

[support an independent bookseller and purchase at Strand]

by: Mark Z. Danielewski

genre: fiction

pages: 285
published: 2005

source:  New York Public Library

The Fifty Year Sword was originally published in 2005 as a limited edition, and is usually only performed on Halloween night as a live shadow show.  This month, however, it was re-released by Pantheon Books and I jumped at the chance to get my hands on a copy.

Like Danielewski's previous work, the story being told is as important as how it's being told, which is as important as how it looks as it's being told.  As in House of Leaves, which used multiple fonts, colors and text layouts to delineate the different parts of the story, The Fifty Year Sword uses five different color quotation marks and illustrations that resemble embroidery to tell the tale.  

And what a tale it is:  the plot follows the local seamstress, Chintana, as she attends a local Halloween party where she watches a mysterious storyteller tell a tale to five rambunctious orphans.

Haunting and lyrical with strong characterization, this story written in verse is a quick read (I finished it while doing laundry), but still leaves quite an impression.  Definitely recommended.

Rubric rating: 8. 

Rapid Fire Reviews!!!!!!

My stack of books "to be reviewed" is out of control, so let's get right down to it:

title: Henry and June [purchase here]

author: Anais Nin

pages: 274

genre: nonfiction (diary)

published: 1986

source:  New York Public Library

Henry and June features collected entries from Nin's A Journal of Love (1931-1932) and tells of her powerful love affair with Henry Miller.  One of Nin's strengths is her ability to take complex, personal matters of the heart and lay them bare with such intelligence, insight and raw honesty.  Eloquent, brave and intensely personal, Nin's journal was nothing short of riveting.

Rubric rating: 9

title: Oracle Night [purchase here]

author: Paul Auster

pages: 243

genre: literary fiction

published: 2003

source:  New York Public Library

This was my first time reading Auster and I was impressed.  The man KNOWS how to tell a great story.  Oracle Night's plot is nothing short of brilliantly constructed.  It follows author Sidney Orr who, while recovering from an illness that almost killed him, buys a new blue notebook at a neighborhood stationary shop and starts working on a new project.  His next nine days are nothing short of bizarre. 

Auster's strength is his ability to create a story so compelling and so riveting...and the last 40 pages are nothing short of genius.  

Rubric rating: 8

title: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? [purchase here]

author: Jeanette Winterson

pages: 230

genre: memoir

published: 2011

source:  I won this book playing Name That Author on Book Riot 

(the answer that week was Vladmir Nabokov)

This book has been my subway read for the past two weeks, and having Winterson's company on my morning and evening commute as been nothing short of delightful.  In this memoir, she takes on topics such as literature, her childhood, religion, and sexuality, each with wisdom and humor. Make no mistake, Winterson's childhood was crazytown, but she handles the topic with such balance and generosity and grace...the result is moving.  

Rubric rating: 7.5

Review: How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti

title: How Should A Person Be?  [purchase here]

author: Sheila Heti

pages:  306

genre: fiction

published: 2012

source:   I received an advanced reader's copy from Henry Holt via 

LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review.

"Most people live their entire lives with their clothes on, and even if they wanted to, couldn't take them off.  Then there are those who cannot put them on.  They are the ones who live their lives not just as people but as examples of people.  They are destined to expose every part of themselves, so the rest of us can know what it means to be human."  (p.60)

Expose herself she does.  And how.  Part confessional, part fiction, Heti doesn't hold anything back as she explores the title's question: How Should a Person Be?

This novel is far more conversationally driven than action driven, which really works for the topic Heti has chosen.  Things do happen (the main character, Sheila, meets her close friend, Margaux; Margaux and another artist named Sholem have an "ugly painting" contest; Sheila and Margaux go to Art Basel in Miami) but the most compelling aspect to the piece were the characters themselves, presumably based on people in Heti's own life (Heti is friends with Canadian artist Margaux Williamson, acted with Sholem Krishtalka in Williamson's 2006 film "Teenager Hamlet", and co-wrote The Chairs Are Where The People Go with Misha Glouberman, and all appear as characters in the story).  Part narrative, part philosophy, part transcript, part self-help guide, the narrative structure really works.  

Heti is supremely gifted at conveying largely universal truth and sentiment in fresh and original terms, something all writers aspire to...and she does it with such frankness and ease!  I read the first 150+ pages in one feverish sitting on a Greyhound bus ride from NYC to Baltimore, and found myself underlining passages and flagging pages far more than usual.

A few gems:

"They like me for who I am, and I would rather be liked for who I appear to be, and for who I appear to be, to be who I am."  (p. 3)

"We don't know the effects we have on each other, but we have them." (p. 25)

"The only one you are given is the one to put a fence around. Life is not a harvest.  Just because you have an apple doesn't mean you have an orchard.  You have an apple. Put a fence around it." (p. 300)

There was a bit of a dip toward the middle of the book; I felt like it was on a slightly different pace than the rest of the narrative.  And there was an entire chapter (Chapter 14: Sheila Wanders In The Copy Shop) that's only purpose seemed to set up a recurring line ("He was just another man who wanted to teach me something.") and, in my opinion, could have been cut entirely.  But other than that small detail, I found the book fresh, insightful, vibrant, sagacious, exploratory, original and enormously honest.

Rubric rating: 8.  I am absolutely adding The Chairs Are Where The People Go and Ticknor to the list of books I want to read that will probably distract me from completing my 30-Before-30 Literary Bucket List.

Review: The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family

title:  The Sisters:  The Saga of the Mitford Family [purchase here]

author: Mary S. Lovell

pages: 611

genre:  biography

published:  2001

source:  New York Public Library

"Of course, the whole point of muck-raking, apart from all the jokes, is to try to do something to about what you've been writing about.  You may not be able to change the world but at least you can embarrass the guilty." ~Jessica "Decca" Mitford (p. 481)

The Mitfords are a fascinating family.   

I came to this book via an NPR list of recommended titles, and when I read the blurb, I was intrigued.  A little bit about each of the girls (and Tom):

Nancy Mitford (as photographed by Cecil Beaton!!!): eldest of the seven (!!!) children; author of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate; friends with Evelyn Waugh (!!!); spent most of her adult life in love with Gaston Palewski, who though he enjoyed her attention, still maintained romantic relationships with many other (sometimes married) women.

Pamela Mitford:  arrived after Nancy; nicknamed "Woman"; probably the least controversial of the bunch; preferred farming to scandal.

Tom Mitford: only boy; died relatively young 

Diana Mitford:  next after Tom; infamous for her first marriage to Bryan Guinness, and then relationship with and later marriage to Sir Oswald Mosely, noted Fascist; spent the better part of World War II in a jail cell for social ties to Hitler

Unity Mitford:  so enamored with Nazi politics, she learned German, moved to Germany, and found a way not only to meet Hitler, but to become his close friend; shot herself (and survived) when Germany and England declared war.

Jessica "Decca" Mitford:  politically very different than Diana and Unity in that she was a Communist for years; eloped to Spain with Esmond Romilly (a Churchill descendant); later moved to the US and, after Esmond's death, married Bob Treuhaft and worked in support of the Communist Party and civil rights; wrote The American Way of Death, an indictment of the funeral industry's exploitative practices.

Deborah "Debo" Mitford: youngest; was growing up in the midst of all the controversy stirred up by her elder sisters; married Andrew Cavendish and became the Duchess of Devonshire and an accomplished businesswoman.

Mary S. Lovell does a wonderful job of trying to avoid redundancy, to not only to consolidate all of the source material on the Mitfords that has accumulated over the years but really present each of the sister's perspective in a non-judgmental way (which is no small task when discussing the polarizing opinions and decisions of Diana and Unity!!!).  I was particularly struck by the delicacy in which she handled Unity's developing relationship with Hitler and Diana's imprisonment during WWII.  She presented the facts, expressed how the family reacted, and let the reader have their own reactions.  

The entire biography was superbly well-researched, yet felt completely accessible considering that I had zero prior knowledge of the Mitford sisters (having been born post 1980).  One thing that makes this bio stand out was the access she had to the remaining Mitford sisters.  Near the end of the biography, Lovell discusses the other biographies written about various members of the Mitford family, each with varying degrees of access to the sisters themselves.  Lovell, because of her access, was able to really speak to how the sisters themselves felt and reacted during different points of the family history,  What I appreciated though was that, for her access, she really tried to present the women as the complex human beings that they were, faults as well as triumphs.  

Rubric rating:  8.  Check out Mitford related postings and pictures here.  Apparently there's a Mitford tumblr.  Who knew??

Further books I'll be checking out:

1.  The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford 
2.  Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford
3.  Nancy Mitford by Harold Acton
4.  The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
5.  Wait for Me!  by Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire

Update:  I've now finished 5 of the 30 titles (25 to go!) on my 30-before-30 literary bucket list, with two more in progress.

Classics:  
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald **
Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger **
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy **
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Pale Fire by Vladmir Nabokov


Contemporary:  
Arcadia by Lauren Groff  (in progress)
Celebrity Chekhov by Ben Greenman
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe
Blindness by Jose Saramago **
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruiki Murakami
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart 
Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
Men in the Off Hours by Anne Carson
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson **   (in progress) 
The Descent of Alette by Alice Notely **
Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky
The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal
The Old Child and Other Stories by Jenny Erpenbeck (review coming soon!!!!!!!)

Spirit Seizures by Melissa Pritchard

Nonfiction/Essays: 
The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell 
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

The Possessed by Elif Batuman
Zona by Geoff Dyer
Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford


** rereading

Review: Darling Beastlettes by Gina Abelkop

title:  Darling Beastlettes [purchase here]

author:  Gina Abelkop

genre:  poetry

published: 2011

source:  I purchased a copy at her reading at the Mustard Beak.

"Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words."

~Paul Engle, New York Times ( 17 Feb. 1957)

Have you ever read something and come across a phrase or a line that made you stop and think "DAMN I *wish* I had written that!"?  That happened more than a few times as I read Darling Beastlettes over the weekend.  Gina's stunning collection made the 2 1/2 hour Greyhound bus ride to Hartford, CT surprisingly enjoyable (despite the dude sitting next to me who took  "Greyhound bus" to mean "moving booze-free karaoke bar" and rapped aloud to himself for all 2 1/2 hours...with choreography...).

Poet Gina Abelkop, founder and editor of feminist press Birds of Lace, is supremely gifted at creating haunting, otherworldly images and turning out gorgeous verse.  At the heart of her poems are women, real and imagined, recognizable and authentic.  Adroitly observant, the themes Gina tackles aren't new (gender roles, sexuality, femininity, love, lust, etc) but they feel that way due to the welcome freshness and honesty of her perspective.  

My favorite stanza from "Heather in Curls":

"Ask for a hideaway bedroom, one with a secret fireplace, a stack 

of fabric that leads in well-tread steps to another country, one with mountains. 

You can cry over them as much as you'd like, they'll be there forever."  (p. 39)

A snippet from "Greta" (my FAVORITE piece in the collection):

"...At night

opened her breast like a gushing fruit

and fed reveries of love.

Nightingale wanted some

she could crawl inside.

Others looked upon her snidely,

ripped at her raw chest, 

wouldn't fit,

closed their own in return.

All this gore and nothing." (p. 61)

GAH!  Just...wow.  Brutally observant, her delivery is at times as fanciful as it is raw...which isn't easy to pull off without coming across a tad manic (which she does not).  As I said in a previous post, I don't know much about what experts say makes a poem "good," BUT I know what speaks to me, and Gina does.

Rubric rating:  8. I am absolutely keeping an eye out for her future work :)

You can read poems by Gina Abelkop at:  La Fovea, Two Serious Ladies, and Everyday Genius, among other places (check out her blog for a far more comprehensive list).  And if you happen to be in LA, check her out at The Empty Globe at Pieter Projects w/ Kate Durbin @ 8pm, or at the Saturday Night Special Reading Series @ Nick's Lounge, both on May 25th.

Review: Salinger's "Franny and Zooey" & "Celebrity Chekhov" by Ben Greenman

This week I knocked two titles off my "30 Before 30" literary bucket list.  Not bad at all...

title:  Franny and Zooey [purchase here]

author:  J.D. Salinger

genre: short story & novella/fiction

pages: 201

published: 1961

source:  New York Public Library

I certainly have nothing wildly original to contribute to what's already been written about Salinger and his work.  Originally published in the New Yorker and focused on the youngest of the Glass children, Franny focuses on the genesis of Franny's spiritual/existential crisis and the companion novella Zooey tackles Zooey's reaction as Franny brings her breakdown to the family home in Manhattan.  Salinger's narrative voice is so strong and his characters so dynamic and vibrant.  My favorite scene takes place in the Glass family bathroom as Zooey's bath is interrupted by Bessie, his meddlesome mother. Whether meant as a religious parable or love story, it's certainly thought-provoking and rife with memorable moments and enviable dialogue (I *wish* I could be as intentional, witty and, when appropriate, eviscerating as Zooey when I speak!).

Rubric rating:  8.  I wasn't crazy about Catcher in the Rye the first time around (but then again, the first time around I was a 14 year old girl) and Franny and Zooey made me want to give it another shot.

title:  Celebrity Chekhov [purchase here]

author:  Ben Greenman

genre: short stories/adaptations

pages: 205

published:  2010

source:  New York Public Library

The circumstances surrounding my reading of Greenman's Celebrity Chekhov were, fittingly, Chekhovian.  In March, I was seeing someone who is a fairly substantial Chekhov enthusiast.  He had taken me to see Chekhovek!  (which we decided must be Russian for "bad acting"), a staging of a series of Anton Chekhov's short stories, which piqued my interest in Greenman's "celebritization."  (More on my life's Chekhovian plot twist post-rubric-rating.)  Thankfully, Greenman has a far deeper understanding of Chekhov than the men of Chekhovek!...

Greenman's premise is simple:  he believes that Chekhov's understanding of human nature and error is timeless.  In his introduction he says:

"Chekhov drew his characters from all levels of Russian society in his time: peasants, aristocrats, intense young clerks, disappointed wives.  Today, in America, we have a simple way of identifying these flawed specimens of humanity ruled by ego and insecurity.  They are called 'celebrities.'"

My personal favorite story:  Greenman's retelling of "The Death of a Government Clerk" entitled "The Death of a Redheaded Man," where he recasts the government clerk as Conan O'Brien and the general in the Department of Transport as Larry King.  Super insightful and pitch perfect recasting.

Rubric rating: 8.  I am a New Yorker junkie, so I figured I'd love this collection.  Really want to move his collection "What He's Poised To Do" up in my insanely long "to read" list.

And how were my circumstances Chekhovian, you ask?  Chekhov's characters tend to wear their emotions on their sleeves and are usually either pining over someone they can't have (Chekhov is HUGE on unrequited love) or battling distinct dissatisfaction with their lives and circumstances.  In my case, the gentleman I was seeing, whom I had developed pretty strong feelings for, has recently discovered he does not feel the same about me and ended our affair.  After dealing with the sadness, more bitter than sweet, I've been in a pretty intense state of ennui.  I would laugh at how life has imitated art...if I wasn't so weary...maybe I should work?  

30 Before 30 Literary Bucket List: 2 down, 28 to go!

Classics:  

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald **

Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger **

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy **

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

Pale Fire by Vladmir Nabokov

Contemporary:  

Arcadia by Lauren Groff

Celebrity Chekhov by Ben Greenman

Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe

Blindness by Jose Saramago **

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruiki Murakami

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart 

Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

Men in the Off Hours by Anne Carson

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson **

The Descent of Alette by Alice Notely **

Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky

The Leopard by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal

The Old Child and Other Stories by Jenny Erpenbeck

Spirit Seizures by Melissa Pritchard

Nonfiction/Essays: 

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

The Possessed by Elif Batuman

Zona by Geoff Dyer

Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford

** rereading

Review: Open City by Teju Cole

title:  Open City  [purchase here]

author: Teju Cole

genre: literary fiction

pages: 241

source:  I received an advanced reader's copy via Netgalley 

in exchange for an honest review.

"We experience life as a continuity, and only after it falls away, after it becomes the past, do we see its discontinuities.  The past, if there is such a thing, is mostly empty space, great expanses of nothing, in which significant persons and events float." (p. 144)

The past (if there is such a thing) heavily influences the present day of Teju Cole's novel Open City.  The novel follows Julius, Nigerian-born psychiatry resident as he walks around New York City's many neighborhoods during his off hours and ponders each area's unique history.  And that's pretty much the most action you get over the course of the novel:  Julius takes a lot of long walks.  He thinks about New York, his job, his few friends and his family.  He goes on holiday to Brussels, does more thinking, relays the experiences of the people he meets, and talks more about history.  Not much happens.  So if you NEED plot-driven, fast-paced narrative, this is not the book for you.

I, however, do not.  Cole didn't need a lot to happen to create a thought-provoking, quietly beautiful portrait of one man.

I loved the way that Cole gently held our hand as he slowly developed the character of Julius over the course of the book.  Julius, being a psychiatrist, was brilliantly and fittingly rendered as someone who looks at the world in a detached, almost clinical way, observing more than participating at times.  There are several lovely scenes were we learn a lot about Julius through watching him interact with strangers as he gathers their stories and experiences (as psychiatrists are so adept at doing in and out of their office).  One part of the narrative where I think Cole's talent in character development especially shone:  there's a chilling scene late in the book between Julius and the sister of a childhood friend named Moji (which I won't reveal here as to not spoil and/or influence your reading experience, but it starts on 223 in Part Two, Chapter 20, and ends on page 227) where she reveals something so personal and difficult to him, and his reaction to her revelation (to reference a specific story about Nietzsche) says an incredible amount about the inner workings of Julius' mind.  So much of the book was about "definition":  how our past defines our present, how an area or a people are defined by collective experiences, how others define us, and how we define others and ourselves.  

"To be alive, it seemed to me, as I stood there in all kinds of sorrow, was to be both original and reflection, and to be dead was to be split off, to be reflection alone." (p. 178)

Rubric rating: 8.  This is one of those works that I feel like I'll come back to again and again, and each time, see something different and get a bit more out of it.  

Rapid Fire Reviews!!!!!

title:  In Red

author: Magdalena Tulli

pages: 158

genre: literary fiction

published: November 2011

source:  New York Public Library

Translated from Polish by Bill Johnson, the main character in Tulli's In Red is the fictional town of Stitchings.  Part portrait, part magical realism, Tulli creates a town from which there may be no escape, chronicling the life and death of an ensemble of the town's figureheads.  Chaotic, claustrophobic, and intensely lyrical, Tulli's strength lies in her insane command of language to create the mood and atmosphere of the piece.  

Rubric rating: 7

title:  There But For The

author: Ali Smith

pages: 236

genre: literary fiction

published: September 2011

source:  New York Public Library

One evening, Miles Garth attends a dinner party at the home of Genevieve Lee, and between the main course and dessert, leaves the table, walks upstairs and locks himself in the Lee's spare bedroom.  And refuses to leave.  For about a year.

Smith tells the story from the perspective of four individuals with varying relationships with Miles, and through each, the reader is able to assemble a portrait of the man that is Miles Garth, and Smith's strength lies in her ability to at once create these personal pictures of each character while at the same time examining the themes of separation and connection.  

Rubric rating: 7

title:  The Psychopath Test

author: Jon Ronson

pages: 288

genre: nonfiction-psychology

published:  2011

source:  New York Public Library

Note to the single ladies:  I happened to have this book with me one Friday night as I waited to meet a friend at a bar, and three different men approached me to flirt/ask about the book.  Apparently, this book is a man magnet.  Unanticipated bonus ;)

While investigating the origins of mysterious packages sent to neurologists around the world, Ronson becomes fascinated with the DSM-V and the characteristics of psychopaths.  He wonders:  could some of the most successful and powerful individuals be, in essence, psychopaths?

I really enjoy Ronson's narrative style.  I felt like I was with him in his head as he discovered new information and revised his thinking, which is something readers don't usually get to experience in nonfiction.  Hilarious, thought-provoking, disturbing and insightful, The Psychopath Test is not to be missed!

Rubric rating: 8

Review: Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence by Geoff Dyer

title:  Out of Sheer Rage:  Wrestling with D.H. Lawrence

author:  Geoff Dyer

pages:  232

genre:  memoir

published: 1997

source:  New York Public Library

So, I may have a small intellectual crush on Geoff Dyer.

Hear me out.

Out of Sheer Rage is a memoir of sorts as Dyer writes a book about his attempt to write a book on D.H. Lawrence, and it's far less a study of Lawrence and far more an analysis of the author himself.  Unexpectedly though, as I read, I felt myself regressing to a deluded, giggly school girl, gushing every few pages "it's, like, he TOTALLY gets me!"  There were times as I read where I wondered where Dyer obtained the transcript of my inner monologue (though his way with words is far more eloquent than my silent ramblings).  Check out some of Dyer's eerily accurate brilliance:

On getting in our own way/the lies we tell ourselves:  "The perfect life, the perfect lie...is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do.  People need to feel that they have been thwarted by circumstances from pursuing the life which, had they led it, they would not have wanted; whereas the life they really want is precisely a compound of all those thwarting circumstances.  It is a very elaborate, extremely simple procedure, arranging this web of self-deceit:  contriving to convince yourself that you were prevented from doing what you wanted.  Most people don't want what they want:  people want to be prevented, restricted....That's why children are so convenient:  you have children because you're struggling to get by as an artist- what is actually what being an artist means- or failing to get on with your career.  Then you can persuade yourself that your children prevented you from having this career that had never looked like working out.  So it goes on: things are always forsaken in the name of an obligation to someone else, never as a failing, a falling short of yourself." (page 126-127)

On freedom:  "Unless, like Thelma and Louise, you plunge off the side of a canyon, there is no escaping the everyday.  What Lawrence's life demonstrates so powerfully is that it actually takes a daily effort to be free.  To be free is not the result of a moment's decisive action but a project to be constantly renewed.  More than anything else, freedom requires tenaciousness." (page 138)

On personal credo: "You'll regret it:  there are worse mottoes to live by.  Successful people say that it is stupid to regret things but the futility of regret only increases its power...Looking back through my diary is like reading a vast anthology of regret and squandered opportunity. Oh well, I find myself thinking, life is there to be wasted." (page 169)

Just the tip of the iceberg.  Funny, personal yet universal, clever, intelligent, challenging:  I couldn't put this book down and, given the massive fine I've incurred with the NYPL, I'll probably have spent the equivalent of two copies by the time I return it.  I regret nothing.

With its focus on process, this memoir serves as almost a pseudo-AA meeting of sorts for the aspiring author: by reading Dyer's account of his struggles with writing made me, at least, feel as if I wasn't the only one having the same day to day issues just trying to write, and to be the version of myself I want to be.

Rubric rating: 8.  I've already scoured the library for everything Dyer's written.  So excited to start The Ongoing Moment, where Dyer tackles photography and photographers.