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A review by brice_mo
An Image of My Name Enters America: Essays by Lucy Ives
3.5
Thanks to NetGalley and Graywolf Press for the ARC!
Lucy Ives’s An Image of My Name Enters America reads like Susan Sontag for the terminally online, moving breathlessly and comfortably from Lacan to 4chan memes to My Little Pony. It’s an absolute blast.
The book is comprised of five essays that shuffle along, starting as one thing before morphing into something else entirely. There’s an interesting tension at play here—re-reads are almost certainly necessary if one is to appreciate the scope of what Ives is attempting, but so much of the writing’s spark is in its immediate, off-the-cuff energy.
This momentum makes An Image of My Name Enters America a little incoherent and so earnest that one almost wonders if it’s a very complicated joke. It’s the wonderful kind of cultural criticism that welcomes its own silliness so that it can be genuinely serious. I think “Earliness, or Romance” is exceptional, shapeshifting between a reflection on the film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and an exploration of how our cultural notions of love are situated in the same cruel optimism that Lauren Berlant wrote about. Oh, also there’s mention of naming one’s Oregon Trail avatar after genitals. Strangely, it works, resulting in a lovely call to care—a yielding of our expectation for romance to make us feel fully known.
That said, this can be a deeply frustrating book for the same reasons that it can be very fulfilling. It’s all over the place. If you ever slip from Ives’s wavelength, it’s an absolute plummet, almost ensuring that you will be lost for the remainder of the essay. The difference between ambling and rambling writing is simply readers’ patience, and I think Ives tests it often. Occasionally, you might stumble over the detritus of what feels like an earlier draft of an essay, and it’s grating. It didn’t ruin the experience for me, but I’m sure it will for many readers.
An Image of My Name Enters America won’t be for everyone. In fact, I think it won’t be for most people, but it’s still worth diving into. These are thought-provoking essays that occasionally prod at the heart. Lucy Ives is a challenging writer, and it feels exciting to see a great mind at work, even in moments when it isn’t clear how it works.
Lucy Ives’s An Image of My Name Enters America reads like Susan Sontag for the terminally online, moving breathlessly and comfortably from Lacan to 4chan memes to My Little Pony. It’s an absolute blast.
The book is comprised of five essays that shuffle along, starting as one thing before morphing into something else entirely. There’s an interesting tension at play here—re-reads are almost certainly necessary if one is to appreciate the scope of what Ives is attempting, but so much of the writing’s spark is in its immediate, off-the-cuff energy.
This momentum makes An Image of My Name Enters America a little incoherent and so earnest that one almost wonders if it’s a very complicated joke. It’s the wonderful kind of cultural criticism that welcomes its own silliness so that it can be genuinely serious. I think “Earliness, or Romance” is exceptional, shapeshifting between a reflection on the film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and an exploration of how our cultural notions of love are situated in the same cruel optimism that Lauren Berlant wrote about. Oh, also there’s mention of naming one’s Oregon Trail avatar after genitals. Strangely, it works, resulting in a lovely call to care—a yielding of our expectation for romance to make us feel fully known.
That said, this can be a deeply frustrating book for the same reasons that it can be very fulfilling. It’s all over the place. If you ever slip from Ives’s wavelength, it’s an absolute plummet, almost ensuring that you will be lost for the remainder of the essay. The difference between ambling and rambling writing is simply readers’ patience, and I think Ives tests it often. Occasionally, you might stumble over the detritus of what feels like an earlier draft of an essay, and it’s grating. It didn’t ruin the experience for me, but I’m sure it will for many readers.
An Image of My Name Enters America won’t be for everyone. In fact, I think it won’t be for most people, but it’s still worth diving into. These are thought-provoking essays that occasionally prod at the heart. Lucy Ives is a challenging writer, and it feels exciting to see a great mind at work, even in moments when it isn’t clear how it works.