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kynesha's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
njahira's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
merlaux's review against another edition
“You lived as far from me as any god I’ve known, and what I would later identify as insecurity and frustration and fear of loss and rejection felt in that moment like reverence.”
mayanaomi's review against another edition
5.0
The way I ached.... stole this book from my dear friend and haven't given it back because I like to reread for a nice cry (plus, quarantine business). A quick read, but well worth it.
johnsp8's review against another edition
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
margaret_adams's review against another edition
Picked up at Powell's in Portland from the small press prose section; read twice in an afternoon, gulp gulp gulp.
When I finally let go, you said, We can still talk, and I lied: That’s right. No one is dying.
But I knew better. It happens all the time.
codalion's review against another edition
3.0
I always feel a little sad reading books that the authors were clearly sorry, then defiant, then sorry to write. It's an element of confessional writing that I'd like to see less of in the world--partly for compassionate reasons, partly for irritable ones, I think. I see someone's novella or mini-novel about obsessive love, in this case Tatiana Ryckman's I Don't Think of You (Until I Do) and I want to say, you don't have to spend so much time flinching; the flinch itself is defensive; and while here I suppose the flinch is a narrative feature, I could have done with less of it. I look at a blurb like Exploring the narcissism inherent in infatuation, exposing the awkward, disorienting state of passion, and articulating the comic nature that permeates the melodrama of our wanting existence and I cringe because it, itself, sounds like a cringe--the narcissism? Melodrama?
Narcissism as a word gets worn out like an old T-shirt, but never more so when describing, well, the experience of having your own emotions; the fact is I'd be pretty unhappy to imagine that anyone who was in love with me wasn't kind of embarrassedly, creepily, angrily obsessed with me some of the time. Because fuck, I spend about seventy percent of my natural existence in a state of embarrassed, creepy, angry obsession. Oftentimes it's with a stupid Medium article or an overrated book. I can only hope that some of it will end up being with a person someday. Freddie didn't sing can anybody find me somebody to appreciate?
I think this is an unfuckable feature of other millennials I am always trying to avoid on dating apps. Cringing. I can't muster the urge to message somebody who is already half-bashfully half-bitterly staving off criticism in their three-sentence bio.
This all sounds like I didn't like the book. I did, actually. I think, cringing aside, it's a pretty great, pretty raw, pretty real (and very digestible) expression of what it feels like to be waiting for someone to call, and the insane-feeling convolutions a mind goes through dealing with that hunger, which starts to feel hallucinogenic, and not in a fun way or a sexy way, but in a kind of emotionally hypoglycemic way. It's like Dorothy Parker's "A Telephone Call" without the obligation to sound sane.
There are two things I do want to mention or acknowledge about it, though, and they are of a piece. One is that the narrator relates what amounts to obviously kind of an internet porn addiction. To be clear, I'm not against the inclusion of this, and I appreciate when books about modern life are a little more honest about modern life. However, in being honest about something I find profoundly ugly, it did in fact make me think about the ugliness; the willingness to transpose civilian selves onto sex workers as symbols for either our own desires or our own outraged dignity is something I've been thinking about (as I'm currently also reading a nonfiction book with some proposals and assertions about the legal status of sex work, not all of which I agree with) and "faceless porn actors as backdrop for my own loneliness and longing" is kind of the ubiquitous epitome of this. Except no person is faceless and no person is backdrop, and the people who are filmed in streaming internet porn, as I hope anyone willing to think about it knows, cannot always be ethically or honestly termed 'workers.' Worker has a certain free and positive connotation as a word. I know that consumption of the fruits of brutal abuses and deaths abroad is what we do all the time in the States, including when we buy clothing or food; all the same, I don't really regret refusing to date or hang out with anyone who uses internet porn any more. I know I go to Target too, but I still don't find smug defiant defensiveness of abhorrent inhumanity to be a very appealing trait in a potential fellow.
The other thing, related, is there is a point where the narrator refers to rubbing one out to "Asians" in cheap eBay lingerie ads. As an Asian I can certify it is always interesting to see where the word "Asians" pops up in an otherwise Asian-free narrative. It's never anywhere you want it to be. But Asians, people in porn films, Asian people in porn films--just the world's ugly decorations, for when you're alone and sick of looking at stuff people talk about in MFA programs.
There's a hole in the world like a great black pit.
Both of those things are terribly ordinary and if I couldn't stand people talking about ordinary things I don't respect, I definitely couldn't read books and I also couldn't go outside or interact with society or be anything other than independently wealthy. Still working on that independent wealth! I guess it's telling that it all irritates me more from things proximate to my social circles, the literary, the artsy; probably I don't expect much from people I, well, don't expect much from, but there's a reason Lena Dunham grinds so many people's gears. Their bad gears.
Essentially, what I'm coming back to is: the other thing about confessional writing is that I, like many judgmental Americans, am suspicious of it. I feel bad for that, and it's very hypocritical of me, as I always have a desire to confess. But the fact is confession is one of the tools of cagey narcissistic manipulation we're all familiar with, especially in the literary community. I probably don't have to type "Junot Diaz" here. The very act of voluntary confessing or self-deprecating is surely inviting absolution, flinching away from someone else's judgment; it's just cruel of them to continue judging afterward, right? And not encouraging the confessions? But what alternative do we have -- a lot of shoving things into closets and pretending no one goes to Pornhub? That Twitter phenomenon where the adult world is peopled solely by ex-bullying victims, and all the bullies seem to have mysteriously died off after high school?
I don't know. I really ought to be kinder to confessional writing for that reason. I like baring my ugly soul too. But I think there's a reason I, and others, fantasize about getting found out more than about crying out; there's something we find more legitimate about confessions under duress or which lead to automatic consequences. The image of someone confessing to a crime they will be jailed for is a terribly noble one. The image of someone confessing to something that's passed its statute of limitations seems like the first pitch for an agented memoir.
But owning up to stuff only when shaken or when facing the clink--what a despicably medieval notion for a medieval heart. There's got to be some other way.
The thing about this book is that it's not owning up to anything particularly bad, which comes around to point 1. It seems to be that I'm allergic to having my sympathy courted too much by people who would've already had my sympathy in the first place. Or, at least, to perceiving that that's what's happening.
I get it, though. There really is nothing more insanely wide and also convoluted than the entire human life led between the time you text that person and the time you respond.
Narcissism as a word gets worn out like an old T-shirt, but never more so when describing, well, the experience of having your own emotions; the fact is I'd be pretty unhappy to imagine that anyone who was in love with me wasn't kind of embarrassedly, creepily, angrily obsessed with me some of the time. Because fuck, I spend about seventy percent of my natural existence in a state of embarrassed, creepy, angry obsession. Oftentimes it's with a stupid Medium article or an overrated book. I can only hope that some of it will end up being with a person someday. Freddie didn't sing can anybody find me somebody to appreciate?
I think this is an unfuckable feature of other millennials I am always trying to avoid on dating apps. Cringing. I can't muster the urge to message somebody who is already half-bashfully half-bitterly staving off criticism in their three-sentence bio.
This all sounds like I didn't like the book. I did, actually. I think, cringing aside, it's a pretty great, pretty raw, pretty real (and very digestible) expression of what it feels like to be waiting for someone to call, and the insane-feeling convolutions a mind goes through dealing with that hunger, which starts to feel hallucinogenic, and not in a fun way or a sexy way, but in a kind of emotionally hypoglycemic way. It's like Dorothy Parker's "A Telephone Call" without the obligation to sound sane.
There are two things I do want to mention or acknowledge about it, though, and they are of a piece. One is that the narrator relates what amounts to obviously kind of an internet porn addiction. To be clear, I'm not against the inclusion of this, and I appreciate when books about modern life are a little more honest about modern life. However, in being honest about something I find profoundly ugly, it did in fact make me think about the ugliness; the willingness to transpose civilian selves onto sex workers as symbols for either our own desires or our own outraged dignity is something I've been thinking about (as I'm currently also reading a nonfiction book with some proposals and assertions about the legal status of sex work, not all of which I agree with) and "faceless porn actors as backdrop for my own loneliness and longing" is kind of the ubiquitous epitome of this. Except no person is faceless and no person is backdrop, and the people who are filmed in streaming internet porn, as I hope anyone willing to think about it knows, cannot always be ethically or honestly termed 'workers.' Worker has a certain free and positive connotation as a word. I know that consumption of the fruits of brutal abuses and deaths abroad is what we do all the time in the States, including when we buy clothing or food; all the same, I don't really regret refusing to date or hang out with anyone who uses internet porn any more. I know I go to Target too, but I still don't find smug defiant defensiveness of abhorrent inhumanity to be a very appealing trait in a potential fellow.
The other thing, related, is there is a point where the narrator refers to rubbing one out to "Asians" in cheap eBay lingerie ads. As an Asian I can certify it is always interesting to see where the word "Asians" pops up in an otherwise Asian-free narrative. It's never anywhere you want it to be. But Asians, people in porn films, Asian people in porn films--just the world's ugly decorations, for when you're alone and sick of looking at stuff people talk about in MFA programs.
There's a hole in the world like a great black pit.
Both of those things are terribly ordinary and if I couldn't stand people talking about ordinary things I don't respect, I definitely couldn't read books and I also couldn't go outside or interact with society or be anything other than independently wealthy. Still working on that independent wealth! I guess it's telling that it all irritates me more from things proximate to my social circles, the literary, the artsy; probably I don't expect much from people I, well, don't expect much from, but there's a reason Lena Dunham grinds so many people's gears. Their bad gears.
Essentially, what I'm coming back to is: the other thing about confessional writing is that I, like many judgmental Americans, am suspicious of it. I feel bad for that, and it's very hypocritical of me, as I always have a desire to confess. But the fact is confession is one of the tools of cagey narcissistic manipulation we're all familiar with, especially in the literary community. I probably don't have to type "Junot Diaz" here. The very act of voluntary confessing or self-deprecating is surely inviting absolution, flinching away from someone else's judgment; it's just cruel of them to continue judging afterward, right? And not encouraging the confessions? But what alternative do we have -- a lot of shoving things into closets and pretending no one goes to Pornhub? That Twitter phenomenon where the adult world is peopled solely by ex-bullying victims, and all the bullies seem to have mysteriously died off after high school?
I don't know. I really ought to be kinder to confessional writing for that reason. I like baring my ugly soul too. But I think there's a reason I, and others, fantasize about getting found out more than about crying out; there's something we find more legitimate about confessions under duress or which lead to automatic consequences. The image of someone confessing to a crime they will be jailed for is a terribly noble one. The image of someone confessing to something that's passed its statute of limitations seems like the first pitch for an agented memoir.
But owning up to stuff only when shaken or when facing the clink--what a despicably medieval notion for a medieval heart. There's got to be some other way.
The thing about this book is that it's not owning up to anything particularly bad, which comes around to point 1. It seems to be that I'm allergic to having my sympathy courted too much by people who would've already had my sympathy in the first place. Or, at least, to perceiving that that's what's happening.
I get it, though. There really is nothing more insanely wide and also convoluted than the entire human life led between the time you text that person and the time you respond.
kavanomo's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Intense and emotional. You'll startle when you find yourself in the pages and wonder - god, so that's what it looks like in words.