the haunting began mysteriously
plus some titillating book recs
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Dear friend —
Some own haunted houses; I own a haunted car. I didn’t buy it haunted — the haunting began, mysteriously, while I was in Austin last month. One morning, I got to my street-parked Civic to discover the side windows gone. Someone broke into my car! I despaired — until I realized nothing was missing, no glass broken. In fact, it was just that the windows were all the way down. The seats were damp and strewn with dead leaves and twigs — there’d been a rainstorm the night before.
Who’d broken into my car only to lower my windows in the middle of a rainstorm? What did this mean?
I pondered these questions the rest of the day and night, then returned to my car the next morning — to find the trunk gaping open. I’ve really been broken into this time! I thought — except once again, nothing was missing.
Why would someone force open my trunk, then not take anything? I wasn’t sure if I should be pleased or offended that the miscreant didn’t want my stuff.
After that, things stayed calm for a week or so, long enough that I started to relax. I moved from Austin to Dallas. Then one evening I got to my parking spot — to find my car missing. They’ve finally stolen it! I thought. As if on cue, thunder rolled. The sky started pelting me with thick sprays of water. (It rains a lot more in Texas than it does in Los Angeles) Soon I looked like a drowned gwisin risen from the dead. In this state I began walking aimlessly around the neighborhood — when three blocks hence, I spotted my car parked in an unfamiliar spot.
What would drive someone to move my car, simply to let me know they could do it? Then again, what drives anyone to do anything — especially anything difficult, like writing a book? That last question is one I’ve been mulling over pretty much all my life as I enter fictional worlds through reading. These worlds are so engrossing that I’ve become very spacey while going about my so-called real life — so spacey I forget to put my windows up, close my trunk, or remember where I parked.
I’ll try to take better care of my car and myself going forward. In the meantime, I recommend these books.
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (Vintage, 2020)
Why write a novel hoping it’ll one day be adapted into a script and turned into a TV series — when you can just skip a step and write a novel as a screenplay? That’s what Charles Yu did — and his National Book Award-winning work is already on its way to becoming a Hulu series. Interior Chinatown stars one Willis Wu, an actor who plays “Generic Asian Man” but has hopes of one day playing “Kung Fu Guy” — the pinnacle of achievement an Asian actor can aspire to.
Of course, the entertainment industry portrayed in the novel is a proxy for America at large — where Asian Americans feel oftentimes like they’re playing a role on stage trying to fit into proscribed roles, shrugging off racist incidents, and accepting glass ceilings. Somehow Charles inserts a lot of humor into this work — even as he details how painful it is to be seen as forever foreign in the only country you can call your own. This novel’s especially interesting to read at a time when Steven Yeun is being crowned Hollywood newest it boy — and anti-Asian hate incidents are on the rise. Charles himself has an insider’s perspective on the entertainment industry, as he’s worked on Westworld and other shows. Read his book if you like hilarious hijinks punctuated by sobering soliloquies on what it feels like to be nonwhite in America.
Buy Interior Chinatown at Bookshop
Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar (Little, Brown, 2020)
Say you write a novel starring a Pakistani-American who’s won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama — when you yourself are a Pakistani-American who’s won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Readers and critics will get pretty curious about how much of the novel’s true to life — though of course, like many writers, Ayad’s been asked such questions about his work long before he even penned Homeland Elegies.
This award-winning novel reads like a memoir-essay, with long passages dedicated to ruminations on race, identity, and America — especially for muslims post 9/11. But a lot happens too! The protagonist befriends a billionaire, adapts to a high roller lifestyle, fucks indiscriminately, contracts syphilis, makes a bunch of money, and so on. The protagonist’s father too goes through his turbulences — from serving as a doctor to Trump to seeing him elected president to getting sued to developing a gambling problem. The story’s about the relationship between father and son, citizen and country, money and agency, muslims and America. Read it if you like your complex sociopolitical dilemmas shot through with glitzy Billions-esque titillations.
Buy Homeland Elegies at Bookshop
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell (Melville House, 2019)
If you’re a writer, you probably heard early on in the pandemic that Shakespeare managed to write King Lear while in quarantine. Then in late 2020, you maybe found out bestselling author Edan Lepucki’s new short story about the pandemic was already online as an Audible original (Love you Edan!). And now, thirteen fucking months into the pandemic, if you, like me, STILL haven’t managed to produce anything of substance, you should probably pick up Bay-area artist Jenny Odell’s book, which asks: Why the fuck do we think we need to be so fucking productive all the time anyway?
This book is less a how-to guide than a collection of foundational essays to get you thinking about the way you spend your time. Do you feel unanswered emails constantly gnawing at the edges of your mind? Stress in your leisure time about increasing your Instagram following? Dream about escaping it all at a deserted island or perhaps a fancy high-end rehab? If so, why? Jenny points to the problems of our attention economy, which monetizes our every actions and jams up social connections. The antidote is a redirecting of our attention back to those things that matter more, which in her view are our local communities and the natural world. Why tweet, after all, when you can listen to actual birds singing? Read it if you like self-help books that don’t actually offer you any tips but make you ponder deep, interesting thoughts while staring off into space.
Buy How to Do Nothing at Bookshop
Once a month, I share book recommendations. Shape it by recommending a read!
Love,
Siel
Three links you might love:
Welcome to the YOLO economy. Apparently a lot of people are quitting jobs and experimenting with their lives right now. Will we all become nomads?
British book prizes are getting scammed. “The organizers of at least five British awards received emails asking them to transfer prize money to a PayPal account. One of them paid out.”
Exvangelical TikTok is adding followers. “If the New Atheist movement of the early 2000s devoted itself to intellectual combat with the claims of Christianity, the more recent ‘exvangelical’ movement elevates personal stories of people who have walked away.”
How did you like Dallas compared to Austin? I really want to read Interior Chinatown, that’s so interesting he wrote it as a screenplay.