CHAPTERS: Jami Attenberg
Every (life) chapter has at least one memorable moment, sentence, or story.
Every (life) chapter has at least one memorable moment, sentence, or story. What are yours? In Chapters, I ask creative people to reflect on the stories of their lives and respond to any of the below prompts (in whatever way they wish).
In the latest installment, we hear from
—New York Times bestselling author and creator of #1000wordsofsummer—who shares literary recommendations, summer reflections, and notes on time.
Jami’s Chapters
I. Slow Story
I have been speedy my entire life. (This is sometimes to great success, and sometimes as a deficit.) However, living in New Orleans for the last eight years I have had to slow down. It’s too hot here to move too quickly. In general, I am less in a hurry. I know this behavior, for me, is directly connected to this city. Now, I recognize the value of contemplating one’s own pace, which can certainly change over the course of our lives. It’s an interesting thought exercise to reflect on pace in terms of where you live. How it’s changed from city to city (or wherever you’ve lived), and if you’ve been conscious of it or not. How does where you live impose a pace on you or, alternately, release you from having one? When I spend time in New York or bigger cities in general I find myself having to adjust. It is always nice to come home to the regular rhythms of my life, but sometimes I wonder what my life—or my pace, anyway—would be like if I had stayed in a busier place.
II. Short Story
This is one of the better short stories I’ve read in recent years, dark as night, and funny, too, by Tony Tulathimutte. He has a new book coming out in September called Rejection that I’m really interested in reading.
III. Scary Story
I would read anything Patricia Lockwood writes, whether it’s poetry, memoir, or fiction. She does some exceptional writing for the London Review of Books. I was riveted by this tale of Tricia’s husband getting dramatically and painfully sick mid-flight and then landing in a foreign country and having to contend with how to care for him. It begins: “It was a perfect day, and we paid for it.”
IV. Their Story
If you read only one of these stories today, read this personal essay by Mary Gaitskill on weird body cults, artists' residencies, and menopause. One of the things I loved about it is that it’s one of those pieces that could only have been written in retrospect after years and years had passed. Sometimes we write things in the heat of the moment, and we can’t see the whole story. Sometimes we need a little time to sit still with something to really understand just what happened. The years only make us wiser but also, even more specifically, ourselves.
V. Your Story
My story is that I love to write about women and their relationships with each other and how they communicate. I’m also interested in how they feel about work and how having (or not having) a job can impact a woman’s sense of self. I try to find hope in these topics, even as I offer up flawed protagonists. My new novel, A Reason to See You Again, explores these ideas through a family of women over a four-decade span of time in America. It moves quickly but also takes its time, as only a book can.
VI. Summer Story
I’m writing this to you in August, the most useless month of the year, at least in New Orleans. The heat is getting to us all. I’m a walker, and now I can only walk around in the heat early in the mornings. I try not to walk too late in the day because I do get heat sickness, mostly dizziness or drowsiness, and my brain gets a little melty. But sometimes, when I don’t have any plans for the night, I’ll do it anyway, take a walk at around 6 pm, when the sun is still out. Maybe I’ll walk for an hour, down to the park by the river. Plenty of people are out there, hoping to catch a breeze. Then I’ll come home and take a cool—but not cold—bath. And then I’ll sleep like a baby. It’s the only good thing about the heat. The sleep. I don’t sleep with the air conditioning on, just an overhead fan. And I sleep on top of the covers. Sometimes I’ll put on a white noise machine. And it’s just a gorgeous rest for the night after that. It’s my way of making peace with the heat.
VII. Travel Story
One of my favorite online presences is Sara Emami. Not only does she use her design skills to help support the rights of Iranians, but she also does incredible color stories that I find extremely nurturing and soothing. But this recent post of hers is more of a travel story. It’s this gorgeous vacation she took specifically of a home she rented in Liguria, Italy. It reminded me of a place I rented in Catania that had frescoes on the ceiling. Italy does everything better than anyone else.
VIII. Time Story
This wasn’t one of your prompts, but I made up my own category—I hope that’s OK! I really loved this story on how time works in the Olympics by my friend Dodai Stewart. It’s sort of the inverse of a slow story in a way because it’s about going really fast, but then it’s also about the tiniest amounts of time, which makes me think about things being slow or at least smaller or more compact. Anyway, it kind of blew my mind to think about these small increments of time. All the things that can happen when you’re just taking a breath.
Thank you, Jami!