What Are You<\/a>, <\/i>a book so enraptured with a catharsis that it almost doesn\u2019t want it\u2014that would mean its end, its death. The convenient afterglow of climax? No, this is all about the process, the unraveling by further tangle. It\u2019s a book that nearly transcends review or judgment. I was challenged, even taunted by the book; it injected such insecurity I couldn\u2019t arrive at my own conclusion without consulting others first.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDerek! You wanna book club the new Lerman?\u201d <\/i>I yell across the house.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI already fucking did it<\/i>!\u201d he hollers back, half-resentful, and I\u2019m not sure if he heard me right since we\u2019ve also been arguing about chores, and it was his turn to push Jake Blackwood onto his side so he\u2019ll stop snoring. We\u2019ve been sleeping all summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The others ask me what the book is about.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t\u2026 know?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eventually, I\u2019ll confidently acclimate to that response to Lerman\u2019s confrontational observance of the unknown. Three months later, it\u2019s stayed with me, haunted me, and actually paralyzed my attempted eloquence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In its six parts, comprised of forty-nine short chapters (chapter sixteen is no more than the single line What Are You?<\/i>), Lerman has taken us all for a sharp left turn\u2014anyone who was expecting a repeat of her debut I\u2019m From Nowhere<\/i> will be bewildered, like being led into the middle of the forest at night then forced to find their way back home alone. This is a fluid thread of fascination\/repulsion essays seeking questions rather than resolutions, a paradoxical tantrum protesting the depths of the floor dropping while stomping it further down, inch by inch, until freefall.<\/p>\n
Even the snags on the way down strangely affirm Lerman\u2019s contrarian epic. Like her preoccupation with digression, where at times she\u2019s almost too inquisitive in the gamut of everything \u201cyou\u201d might be; and just when we get somewhere, there\u2019s a \u201cmaybe\/maybe not,\u201d \u201cperhaps,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not sure,\u201d that can be sort of infuriating\u2014an unnecessary breaking of Lerman\u2019s otherwise effective hypnosis. After grappling with my own initial uncertainty about What Are You<\/i>, now I can\u2019t help but think this shoulder-shrugging could be a legitimate part of the journey, led by a disembodied voice yearning to deduce between possession and abandonment. And since Lerman is an authority on conceptual dissection with a Ph.D. in philosophy, it\u2019s in her very nature to ask questions; even if it means constantly doubting her answers. It\u2019s a neurosis that expands the mind, one could argue.<\/p>\n
And what are we doing here if we\u2019re not trying to push the borders out? What Are You<\/i> might not have been the book from Lerman we expected, but it proves she\u2019s in full control of what she offers; and if we believe we\u2019ve figured her out, What Are You<\/i> will be the book we actually needed to confirm our fumble.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Derek finally comes out of his room, drowsy yet sincere with his eye contact. He hands me a piece of paper.<\/p>\n
\u00a0
\u201cSorry, man. Here\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n
The Right Reader<\/b><\/h4>\n
—on Lindsay Lerman\u2019s What Are You (Clash Books, 2022)<\/i><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
____<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is easier, safer, and wiser to avoid you. I am not the right reader.<\/p>\n
____<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I flip to any page and am met with technically adept language – – – drawn out, tense ruminations on possession, desire, creation, and control. Many of the sentences could be credibly taught in creative writing workshops on \u201cevocative\u201d language. For the right reader, the narrator\u2019s flood of tightly crafted meditations will be \u201chypnotic,\u201d and perhaps \u201chaunting.\u201d For the right reader, an intimate familiarity with the narrator\u2019s thoughts will be \u201cseductive.\u201d<\/p>\n
____<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The decision to present these reflections entirely in the second person craves this very intimacy, and, for the right reader, it will undoubtedly work. For such a sweeping narrative encapsulating creation, death, and the universe it is a remarkably taut work. The themes can be absorbed in reading only a few paragraphs, at any point in the text, in any section, and in any order. This repetition, for the right reader, will be proof of its power. In another reader\u2019s hands it may be evidence of a dull ride, the same notes written and rewritten and overwritten until the effect is more personal religious text than engaging literature.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
____<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The language itself will be, I suspect, for the right reader and the right reviewers and the professional blurbers, the key to unlocking the work\u2019s power and beauty. Other readers may find the language desperate and devoid of surprise. There is very little mystery in this work, the wrong reader will surmise, despite its desire for mystery. There are two excellent lines, early on in the book, where the narrator says: \u201cSome of you are special. Many of you are not.\u201d I, the wrong reader, felt this way about the sentences themselves and about the sections and fragments making up the entire work. The many that were not dulled the blade of those that were.<\/p>\n
____<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of the themes are present in Lerman\u2019s previous work, I\u2019m from Nowhere<\/i> (Clash Books, 2019). I am a huge fan of this book. The themes unfolded through an interesting, engaging narrative told in wonderfully rendered fragments that, when taken together, wove a unique story of a widow navigating her place in the world as an object of the male gaze. Narrative has been replaced in What Are You<\/i> with fragments of memories, addressed to a \u201cyou\u201d that participated in the recalled events. The \u201cyou\u201d can both pull us in and push us away in equal parts. The effect could be described, generously, as being let in on a secret. For the wrong reader, these hints and references to places & parties long past, may just demonstrate all the actual interesting scenes we\u2019ve missed out on. What Are You<\/i> is more \u201cletter to the universe\u201d than novel and this, for the right reader, will be one of its many selling points.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
____<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I will read Lindsay Lerman\u2019s next book and the one after because she is that talented and that bold. There are few writers working today in America with her capacity to enthrall. And I will hope, selfishly, as a reader is all too often, that she does not write the same book and then the same book again, stripped barer and barer each time still of the artifice and scaffolding of literature until it is simply a solemn prayer. And I say this knowing, very well, that the right reader will want exactly that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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