Fall So Hard Motherfuckers Can't Find Me

Lynda Barry has my back. Or, I think she would if we ever met. Her 2008 book, What it is, is 30% writer’s guide, 30% autobiography and 50% visually-dynamic existential freak out/cure for said freak out. “But that’s 110%!” you might be thinking to yourself. And you’d be correct in your calculations, which is why mathematics is an inappropriate mode for me to talk about how much Barry’s book is meaning to me right now.

It all started, like these stories often do, with a harmless trip to Milwaukee. After a solid breakfast of freshly sugared donuts my girlfriend, her brother, her brother’s girlfriend, and I decided to make a quick stop at Boswell Book Company. While perusing the graphic novel section, my girlfriend’s brother’s girlfriend (from now on, my GBG) pointed out What it is and told me that, as a writer, I’d probably be into it. I opened the large book and randomly (as much as anything in this life happens randomly) flipped through its pages, finally landing on page 39 where I found the following:

"There are certain children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way that crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight. And when these two come together you get a fairytale, a kind of story with hopelessness in it."

After reading the material I immediately did two things:

1. Tried to hide my scrunched-up, pink-eyed, about-to-cry tear face from my GBG.
2. Bought the book.

After reading What it is in its entirety, the providentially placed passage on page 39 was set in even more powerful context. Barry had a childhood and a half. She loved the arts, had a wild and vivid imagination and a good heart, and felt things in ways that other children found weird and adults found concerning. She was told, as many overtly creative young people are told by American authority figures of various brass, to shut up, sit still, and keep her odd ideas to herself.

            And she did keep them to herself for a while, and in that time of creative hibernation (artistic slumber/unconsciousness) a part of her started to die. And the remarkable thing is, no one seemed to care. In fact, the people in her life (parents, peers, teachers, etc.) were perfectly happy with Barry’s spiritual atrophy. It meant they didn’t have to worry about what she was going to say or do. Her silence (both physical and emotional) was a sign of health. The idea, of course, is that if someone isn’t complaining they can’t possibly be miserable, right?

            Barry’s childhood memories struck me especially hard because they were so reminiscent of my own. Some of the clearest images in my hazy past-life history-thoughts contain people I wanted to like me (parents, peers, teachers, etc.), telling me in no uncertain terms that everyone would probably be better off if I wasn’t so weird/talkative/energetic/creative. So I wasn’t anymore. And people liked me. And everyone went about his or her business pretending that we all loved ourselves. And there was a lot of silence.

            People not being allowed/encouraged to be/express themselves can go on kind of fine for awhile (even decades), but it almost always ends in someone crying in a bookstore in Milwaukee. Somewhere along the line, sensitive children who are told by adults they are too sensitive have their emotions straightened out like teeth are straightened out. Then, everyone lives in the fairytale world of no-feelings and the adults think “That worked out well just like we knew it would, because thoughts and feelings are like teeth, they just need to be straightened out from time to time.” And then, maybe in a bookstore in Milwaukee, the oversensitive child realizes the fairytale is threaded with a plot of hopelessness, and really isn’t a fairytale at all but a tragic comedy. But no one is laughing; there’s still only silence.

            Barry gives the sensitive children-now-adults one option to combat the fairytale-hopelessness and silence: write/make stuff. Making things implies that life can be better; it implies there is a future that is better (or at least more complete feeling) than the one we currently inhabit. Often, making stuff doesn’t feel like enough. Writing simple words on simple paper feels like it is no match for the years of “shut up/sit still/be normal.” And maybe it isn’t enough. But there is something important, maybe even essential, about making noise in a world that would rather you be silent. There is something important, maybe even essential, about declaring vitality in a world that would rather you die quiet. 

The Mark of a Good Book

"You haven't read Invisible Man?" asked my friend in Columbus, GA. We sat around on her porch smoking cigarette after cigarette and drinking bottles of beer. I hadn't and I prepared myself for the onslaught of "Oh my god, you've gotta read it!" and "It's definitely YOUR book!"

I don't know how I've graduated high school and college without reading this canonical piece of literature. But I was never interested in it. Now that I'm 28 and I'm having one emotional crisis after another, I've turned to the book for answers.

I only did it after the umpteenth person questioned my literary prowess. I went to Noah's bookshelf (yes, he's read it too) and got started on it. And now that I'm halfway through it, I can honestly say that Invisible Man is changing my life.

Every page holds some sacred nugget of knowledge. All of it's characters are pivotal to the story and hold some importance in my own life. After I've finished a chapter, it's usually customary for me to take a break, but I keep going until I feel like I'm drowning.

The physiological response to reading so much Ellison, might need to be measured. After I've found a proper stopping point, I swim furiously back up to the surface and inhale sweet air. When I've folded down a page corner to mark my space, I'm exhausted. I've learned something new about myself, some new about the world and I'm simply exhausted.

Is that the mark of a good book?

I tend to believe it might be. I'm shocked that I let this one get away from me for all of these years. This book seemed to have been written for me. A young naive man following a carefully the orchestrated plan set by someone else, is being introduced into the world under the most strenuous circumstances. If he can learn to navigated this circumstances, he might be able to recognize himself as a full human being.

It's difficult for me not to take such a personal approach to a book. I'm guilty of asking: "Yes, but how does it all relate to ME?" Not all books are for that. But I feel that Ralph Ellison wrote this text to included everyone. Not just the invisible black man, but the invisible human in a world of industry and the invisible young person grappling with life lessons they were never prepared for.

As I've mentioned, I'm only halfway through the book. I'm positive that when I finish the book that I will have the deflated yet uplifted feeling after all good books. I'll be mildly depressed about leaving the characters behind and forging a path of my own. My thoughts will have to return to my own head instead of mingling with the nameless narrator. My own neuroticisms will have to be just that. My own. I'll feel lonely.

But I believe that's what a good book is suppose to do. It allows you to escape, on a bus, at work, in the doctor's office, into its pages until it has no more to give. And believe me, I love taking and taking.