Stormy Stormy Books
December 07, 2022
I think 10:04 could be titled Weather. See the previous entry where I highlighted their similarities as autofictions. Another (this is extraneous?): Lerner and Offil’s avatars hedge with alcohol. If it cannot be remembered, it didn’t happen. So really, everything has and has not happened. Both novels deal in possibility. Inevitabilities too. Of the interpersonal and global varieties. Which bridges us to another point of comparison: how they scale. The noise, of the climate, the web, political theater, and of all the other voices near and far looms large in both works. But it is a backdrop, for each also captures minutely and often mundanely the interior experience of one individual only, drops in a plotting storm. Weather is a work of compression, almost violently so––i.e., its pattern of clipped passages, half-scenes, 96% lean sentences, etc. 10:04’s compression is evidenced in its time structures, how scenes are entered at an atomic level, or how they elongate to feature all of time, here, before, the dinosaurs, and forever. When does history end? Existential threats menace each work––their project then, to focus on “the possibilities of feeling opened up in the present tense of reading” (Lerner 71), or the present tense full stop. They are of similar essence, materials, born out of similar fears, arrive at similar solutions. And then there’s the obvious. Perhaps I could’ve led with this, saved everyone the trouble. 10:04 is bookended by storms. It is a stormy book, its narrator prone to rapid swings from high to low, hot to cold. What do you call it when “the world rearranges itself” around you? Weather.
(7 December 2022)
P.S.
This is the worst ‘batch’ by far. I really could have led with the storms thing, how storms feature in both. I’m still not sure I understand how Weather works, but this was a worthy attempt at classification. Perhaps, in getting at the simplicity that is its sword, I overcomplicated things. I felt vindicated when I read Lerner’s acknowledgements and saw Offil’s name. What do they talk about when they talk about literature (Carver reference. Do they like Carver? I feel like Offil might)?