Year in Reading 2015

End of year lists. A bit played out and commenting on them being played out is too. But I think it's important to look back on what this year meant for me, literaturely. Along with starting to volunteer at Open Books as well as working on an event with Asymptote (stay tuned!), I've been writing more, sometimes for money, sometimes creatively, sometimes not at all (more often than I should). But the bones of a novel came out of it. If you're reading this blog and are interested in reading a surrealist tale about language, identity, memory, and perception, with indulgent experiments in form and more namedrops to philosophers, writers, musicians, and other pop culture references than I probably should have made, I will absolutely let you read it while I figure out where to go with it next.

But enough about what I wrote, here is what I read:

Albertine Sarrazin - 'L'Astragal'

Walking through City Lights in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I told myself: "don't over-do it." For one, new books require $$$. For two, I'd already purchased about a half dozen books at other bookstores and space was limited in my backpack. But being at the ground zero of Beat literature, I knew I had to purchase something here. My plan was to buy a book published by City Lights itself (which I did). But I didn't expect to find French writer Albertine Sarrazin's 1965 auto-biographical novel L'Astragal.

"The sky had lifted at least thirty feet." So the book begins, with our anti-heroine Anne escaping from prison, breaking her ankle (the astragal of the title) as she leaps from the prison wall. Sarrazin writes poetically. "The shock must have cracked the pavement" and she equates every passing second to that of a century in agony. The healing process lasts nearly the entire first half of the novel: "where the explosions in my toes are less frequent," and later: "my leg frozen into a painful rigidity."

Hopelessness and hope, fog, suffering, distrust, neglect. Waiting. Sleep that doesn't come. Restlessness and restiveness. Emerging themes and the ones that Patti Smith, who wrote the introduction for the 2013 edition of this translation, found so evocative to give her her own strength, boldness, and identity, wandering through the Greenwich Village in late 60s New York City. Smith's praise: "A female Genet? She is herself. She possesses a unique highbrow poet-detective deadpan style."

Coffee. Smoking. Drinking. Mascara. Anne's life on the lam. Our anti-heroine is almost glamorous. But she is still a criminal. Why are we so attracted to her? "When it comes to drinking, I'm always for it." She's troubled, this Anne, this Albertine (this Smith, this reader). We must remember: she's not to be idolized anyway. Not in the way most heroes are. But she can be in the way that the faults we see in her are the ones we see in ourselves. You don't have to smoke or drink or wear mascara to relate to her feelings about neglect, distrust, or hopelessness.