Miranda July is a breath of fresh earnestness in a world of smirking irony. She is abnormally kind and thoughtful, obsessed with the minutia of life in a way more in line with the true meaning of Buddhist mindfulness than any of the celebrity monks that make all the new agey wanderers bow in “fill my empty soul up� reverence. She wants you to fill your own soul up.
“With what?� You might ask. July advocates artfully for a special blend of the young and the old. She asks you to relocate your original, profound wonder at the world and all its ordinary complexities. And at the same time, she pushes you to develop a commitment to seeing the sensitivities in fragile human beings—something only the wise are capable of in this increasingly harsh and flashy world.
Her always unique, sometimes bizarre collection of short stories encompasses all of this in literary form. The pieces range in context and approach from a lonely young woman recounting how she taught some senior citizens to swim in her kitchen with giant bowls of water, to a old man who has retired from the purse factory he spent his life working in and is manipulated into sex with one of his former co-workers.
July explains herself best. Some of my favorite lines:
I pressed my lips against his ear and whispered again, It’s not your fault. Perhaps this was really the only thing I had ever wanted to say to anyone, and be told.
Someone is getting excited. Somebody somewhere is shaking with excitement because something tremendous is about to happen to this person. This person has dressed fro the occasion. This person has hoped and dreamed and now it is really happening and this person can hardly believe it.
I have a dog! I nodded. What’s his name! The boy looked sad for a moment and I realized he did not actually have a dog. I felt honored to be chosen as the person who believed he had a dog. I was the right woman for this job; he had chosen well to choose me.
How does anyone let go of anything? My book was a long glove clasping the dark shape I had loved…I fell into the eyes of every person I passed on the street. Food seemed impossibly strange. Children thought I was a child and tried to play with me, but I could neither play nor work, I could only wonder why. Why do people live at all.
Then Sue suddenly stepped out of the bathroom holding her robe in one hand, naked. She had discovered she couldn’t put it on because it wasn’t really a robe, it was nothing. All the women paused and fell silent, and Ellen and I quickly looked at each other. Our nakedness was recalled, like a seizure in the air. There was no apology in her eyes, no love or caring. But she saw me, I existed, and this lifted the beams off my shoulders. It takes so little.
If you are down for a little quirk and a lot of heart, then you belong here, reading July’s stories, reconnecting with your own flawed, wonderful humanity. In fact, no one belongs here more than you.
Next week: Sperm Counts by Lisa Jean Moore
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I adore "Me and You and Everyone We Know" so I was thrilled when you mentioned this a couple weeks ago. I'll have to check it out. Thanks!
I love just about everything Miranda July does, and whenever I came across a story from this collection in a magazine I couldn't get enough. But when I finally had the collection in my hands... eh. July is one of those writers who create really awkward, painfully self-aware characters. There is a lot of beauty in her stories, but mostly I feel like there's a lot of sadness and desperation. She wants you to fill your soul up, yes, but the things her characters find to fill their souls are never things I would choose for myself. The woman who has an affair with her boss's wife? The girl who becomes a stripper when her girlfriend dumps her in a strange city? These are not stories about happy people, and that's okay.
And just in case you think I'm saying to not bother reading this book - I'm not. You should. She rocks, just not in the way I was expecting.
I think this book has a lot more in common with her performance art than her films, so anyone not previously familiar with her work is probably in for quite a surprise. That said, the website for this book is one of my favorites of all time.
Glad to see you praising the book; it's great stuff overall.