Read Miranda July

I undeleted this blog for a second time. I plan to utilize it for book reviews (maybe music, tv and movies...whatever is in front of my face at the time) and better updates about my work. Etcetera. All writers have them. Let's be a writer, shall we?

Presently I'm reading (or preparing to read) No One Belongs Here More Than You, a collection of short stories by Miranda July. My first Miranda July experience involved Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides, Middlesex). You could say it was a menage, I'll allow it. Jeffrey Eugenides, perhaps my top-most favorite author, edited a wonderful and eclectic collection of love/anti-love stories called My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead. The anthology spans numerous decades--maybe centuries, I'm not sure--and it pulls from the oeuvres of classic greats such as Faulkner, Joyce, and Nabokov (who I find annoyingly verbose, but whatever), and it features contemporary lesser-knowns such as Miranda July.

Something That Needs Nothing is a witty tale about an 18-year-old girl's pathetic and painfully one-sided infatuation with her girlfriend (later, ex-girlfriend). I hate using the words "honest" or "real" when describing stories, so I'll refrain here. But July's story is a relatable and often humorous rendering of how embarrassing and pathetic we are in the wake of heartbreak and losing a significant other (who never really loved us) to another:

I could not let her leave the building. I ran down the hall and threw myself on her. She shook me off; I locked my arms around her knees. I was sobbing and wailing, but not like a cartoon of someone sobbing and wailing--this was really happening. If she left, I would become mute, like those children who have witnessed horrible atrocities. No one would understand me but those children. [...] Before they pulled away, I shut my eyes and hurled myself onto the sidewalk. I lay there. This was my last hope--that Pip would take pity on me.

As someone who jokes her way through difficult things, I fell in love with this story and immediately wanted to gorge myself on July's prose. Several months and one amazon.com wishlist later, I have the yellow version of No One Belongs Here More Than You (see also: green, pink, and orange). What makes me love her more is the fact that she is also a filmmaker, screenwriter, poet, and actor. Quintuple threat! She's also cute to boot.

Anyway, I hope to some day be a quintuple threat while maintaining my humble good looks. In the meantime, I'm reading this book.