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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
Interesting at first, but enough already. I had to quit 2/3 through.
A writer's diary is a multi-faceted story. On one hand it is the daily account of events, on the other it is a touchstone of memories, a wellspring of inspiration. A single event leads to a memory, which leads to a story. Where it all leads often the writer doesn't know.
Heidi Julvatis's new memoir The Folded Clock is a series of short diary entries with topics ranging from the art of creation, parenthood, dating, and seemingly random events. The reader gets to see her inner self, unvarnished. We can see how her writer mind works, taking ("stealing") ideas from the everyday and working them into her stories. Even the title of the book comes from her daughter. We also see her life as a lover, as a wife, as a parent, and as a daughter. We see her inner guilt, her selfish side. It is all revealed in short snippets told over a period of two years. The timeline of the entries does not seem to matter. Collectively, the reader is treated to see life through the author's eyes.
The short entries range from nuggets of wisdom, insecurity, and a key to creativity. Each entry could be fleshed out into a short story or a book and it is a fascinating insight to the creative process. Having read two of her novels (The Uses of Enchantment and The Vanishers) one could pick up pieces of the diary stories and how they were woven into the narratives. One could compare this to Dorris Lessing's The Golden Notebook in all that it reveals.
Favorite Passages:
I have stolen names and I have stolen titles, two at this point; I intend to steal more. (I will at a future point, steal the title of this book from my daughter. We will be at a lunch following a visit to an Egyptian museum in Berlin; we will have bought a book on hieroglyphs. We will be trying to learn the picture letters, one of which is based on a drawing of folded cloth. "folded clock?" My daughter will ask. "Folded cloth," I'll correct. And then I'll pickpocket the accident.) p38
I acted sad because I was sad. Our tree would never be the same. It might even die. The damage wasn't insignificant. I wanted to be the conduit of sadness—and of the appreciation of passing time and mortality—by interpreting the significance of the loss of the tree for my kids. I could tell this wasn't happening. I could tell they were more interested in my reaction to the tree. I thought ahead to a point in time when this behavior might become symbolic of who I was or, depending on my life status, am. I do not think it unwise to view all children as future tattletales. Such a perspective forces you to better (and with greater care) behave, lest your conduct be chronicled later and prove revealing in ways you did not intend. If and when my daughter told her own children about her memories of the big hurricane, maybe the only takeaway she'd recall would involve me. I was the object lesson. My mother, she was undone by the possible death of a tree. P.95
She's episodic, I'm narrative. I see connections everywhere. Life is one big plot trap. She's a woman who has lived many fantastic yet disparate and self-canceling lives. She's a rebooter, a category shape-shifter. I entered a track in my twenties and stayed on it and on it. She's my occasional fantasy; I don't know if I'm hers. But I suspect this is why our relationship is strained occasionally. We remind each other of who we aren't. P167
The people in our house were my fault. Our fault, but really, my fault. I'm not being a martyr. I'm speaking realistically, in a manner reflecting the consensus reality of the situation. No men at this party were standing around talking about quitting their jobs to they could be a part of—sorry, live—their children's lives. No men listening to these men were thinking defensively to themselves, Fuck off, or after a moment's reflection, You're so right, actually. No men would be writing about these conversations tonight in their diaries. My husband would absolutely write about these issues in his diary tonight if he kept one. He worries about and buys all of our children's dothing—the pants, the underwear the sneakers, the socks. He keeps constant tabs on who needs what, and then he buys it. But to the greater world, these pantsless children reflect more poorly on me than they do on him. Women are responsible for the people in the family having pants. P218
Heidi Julvatis's new memoir The Folded Clock is a series of short diary entries with topics ranging from the art of creation, parenthood, dating, and seemingly random events. The reader gets to see her inner self, unvarnished. We can see how her writer mind works, taking ("stealing") ideas from the everyday and working them into her stories. Even the title of the book comes from her daughter. We also see her life as a lover, as a wife, as a parent, and as a daughter. We see her inner guilt, her selfish side. It is all revealed in short snippets told over a period of two years. The timeline of the entries does not seem to matter. Collectively, the reader is treated to see life through the author's eyes.
The short entries range from nuggets of wisdom, insecurity, and a key to creativity. Each entry could be fleshed out into a short story or a book and it is a fascinating insight to the creative process. Having read two of her novels (The Uses of Enchantment and The Vanishers) one could pick up pieces of the diary stories and how they were woven into the narratives. One could compare this to Dorris Lessing's The Golden Notebook in all that it reveals.
Favorite Passages:
I have stolen names and I have stolen titles, two at this point; I intend to steal more. (I will at a future point, steal the title of this book from my daughter. We will be at a lunch following a visit to an Egyptian museum in Berlin; we will have bought a book on hieroglyphs. We will be trying to learn the picture letters, one of which is based on a drawing of folded cloth. "folded clock?" My daughter will ask. "Folded cloth," I'll correct. And then I'll pickpocket the accident.) p38
I acted sad because I was sad. Our tree would never be the same. It might even die. The damage wasn't insignificant. I wanted to be the conduit of sadness—and of the appreciation of passing time and mortality—by interpreting the significance of the loss of the tree for my kids. I could tell this wasn't happening. I could tell they were more interested in my reaction to the tree. I thought ahead to a point in time when this behavior might become symbolic of who I was or, depending on my life status, am. I do not think it unwise to view all children as future tattletales. Such a perspective forces you to better (and with greater care) behave, lest your conduct be chronicled later and prove revealing in ways you did not intend. If and when my daughter told her own children about her memories of the big hurricane, maybe the only takeaway she'd recall would involve me. I was the object lesson. My mother, she was undone by the possible death of a tree. P.95
She's episodic, I'm narrative. I see connections everywhere. Life is one big plot trap. She's a woman who has lived many fantastic yet disparate and self-canceling lives. She's a rebooter, a category shape-shifter. I entered a track in my twenties and stayed on it and on it. She's my occasional fantasy; I don't know if I'm hers. But I suspect this is why our relationship is strained occasionally. We remind each other of who we aren't. P167
The people in our house were my fault. Our fault, but really, my fault. I'm not being a martyr. I'm speaking realistically, in a manner reflecting the consensus reality of the situation. No men at this party were standing around talking about quitting their jobs to they could be a part of—sorry, live—their children's lives. No men listening to these men were thinking defensively to themselves, Fuck off, or after a moment's reflection, You're so right, actually. No men would be writing about these conversations tonight in their diaries. My husband would absolutely write about these issues in his diary tonight if he kept one. He worries about and buys all of our children's dothing—the pants, the underwear the sneakers, the socks. He keeps constant tabs on who needs what, and then he buys it. But to the greater world, these pantsless children reflect more poorly on me than they do on him. Women are responsible for the people in the family having pants. P218
Her writing is excellent and funny. Her subject matter I didn't always find enthralling, but I'll never write journal entries the same way again.
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Exhaustingly pretentious garble poorly disguised as artistic originality.
Some parts were laugh out loud funny, but most parts you had to slog through. It feels less like a diary and more like a series of circulating punchlines. Honestly, it makes me reconsider the detriment of humor to a story--if you throw out too much up front your audience comes to expect it and then it's difficult to not keep building up jokes again and again. Very intentionally written--the opposite of a diary I suppose? Personal opinion, but the irreverence to her unborn child also made me cringe.
I always pace when I talk on the phone. One night I paced my parents' unlit living room for an hour, not knowing that I had a bleeding gash on the bottom of my foot. I turned on the lights when my call ended to discover thousands of stains on the rug. After my parents yelled at me, we marveled at the shape of my talking travels, the places in the living room I visited time and again, and the outlier areas to which I made only one or two forays, because the topography was more challenging, or the view less spectacular. We understood our living room differently after that.
Julavits continued to surprise me throughout this book. Her wry sense of humor and vulnerability have been refreshing and even inspiring to read. She is completely unlikeable and because of this so relatable. Swirling with self-deprecation, quirks, mishaps, and disagreeable people; we tumble through her life and thoughts and time always with unexpectedly beautiful writing. I savored her sentences as she does while reading, underlining words over and over to try and make them my own even if temporarily.
Brilliant
Heidi Julavits can take the most common, heavy sorts of feelings and lift them up with her language till our case of the doldrums gleams gold in the light. I apologize for being so flowery. Blame the book. It has me very acutely aware of my words and my ability (perhaps inability, hm?) to be casually charming and witty. I digress. The Folded Clock is a profound piece of writing and I hult recommend it. You will cry and laugh and maybe feel the urge to scope out EBay for trinkets.
Heidi Julavits can take the most common, heavy sorts of feelings and lift them up with her language till our case of the doldrums gleams gold in the light. I apologize for being so flowery. Blame the book. It has me very acutely aware of my words and my ability (perhaps inability, hm?) to be casually charming and witty. I digress. The Folded Clock is a profound piece of writing and I hult recommend it. You will cry and laugh and maybe feel the urge to scope out EBay for trinkets.
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
fast-paced