No one belongs here more than you

She has an odd sense of humor. Click through her page writing on the stove: http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

It makes me think I'll like her stories a lot. Thanks for the recommendation!

You can read the first story online here, if you would like a preview. I'm reading it now.

I liked the title for than the book itself.

What?

I really loved the story I just read. That woman is bent in the best possible way.

"I'll tell you about Vincent. He is an example of a New Man. You might have read the article about the New Men in True magazine last month. New Men are more in touch with their feelings than even women are, and New Men cry. New Men want to have children, they long to give birth, so sometimes when they are crying it is because they can't; there is nowhere for a baby to come out of."

"Are you angry? Punch a pillow. Was it satisfying? Not hardly. These days people are too angry for punching. What you might try is stabbing. Take an old pillow and lay it on the front lawn. Stab it with a big pointy knife. Again and again and again. Stab hard enough for the point of the knife to go into the ground. Stab until the pillow is gone and you are just stabbing the Earth, again and again, as if you want to kill it for continuing to spin, as if you are getting revenge for having to live on this planet, day after day, alone."

"At moments he would pause and squint up at the sky and I would think that he was constructing the perfect question for me, a fantastic question that I would have to rise to the challenge of, drawing from everything I knew about myself and mythology and this black Earth."

"They had pictures of children on their refrigerator. They had friends, and these friends had given birth to more friends."

Ha! Good detective work.  And you're welcome.  I bought it in green myself, carried it around for two weeks, then gave it to someone.   I missed it so I bought it in orange.  Yes, it eventually got released in four different colors.  Orange and green have been easier to find in the bookstores, of late.  I haven't tried to accessorize it to my wardrobe, though.  I guess I'm not 'New Man' enough. 

Cool that you found "The Shared Patio" from Zoetrope and free for everyone to read.  The book is an anthology of stories that have all been featured elsewhere, like Zoetrope, The Paris Review, Tin House, and Fence.  Each story has its own little pedigree from the prior acceptance of some magazine editor, which I'm sure made the book an easier deal.  It's almost impossible for an unknown author to get a first book deal based on a collection of short stories.  Novels are a much easier sell; the market for them is much larger and hungrier and less discriminatory.  So you can count on all of these stories being pretty punched-out great.   

I found another story online through her wiki page and read that too. Also, read a couple of interviews. I emailed my sister to get her New Yorker password to read a story of hers online there. (Haven't heard back yet.) I'm obsessed!

I'm going to try to get her book tomorrow. I want to see if I can get it at a bookstore since I can't wait for it to be shipped!

I meant to say "the title more".

oh and if you click through her page long enough she started out writing on top of the fridge, but it makes a poor eraser board, so she moves to the stove. I LOVE her!

Oh, you read it and didn't like it at all?

Hey, that tyrannosaurus might have liked the stories quite well, he just liked the title even better!

Not that it helps me understand, really.

I'm glad I've shared my MJ obsession with at least one person who can see the reason for it.

Thanks Mirka

Are you kidding, thank you!

Hey, somebody tell me when you've watched the film, too.  I'd love to hear some first reactions to the film or to any of these stories.  Even better, I'd love to hear some cultivated responses that come to you after you've steeped your brain in the same story twice, with time for reflection in between. 

What do you think she's on about?  What's her view of relationships or sexuality, for example, and how does it speak to you?

Are the confused and sometimes age-inappropriate expressions of sexualty in Me and You and Everyone We Know a point of interest for you?  Do you think it's tastefully treated?

Make sure to post spoiler warnings if you need to hit much detail to make a point. ))><((

I watched the short film that you posted. I loved the oranges. The oranges reminded me of the tangerine in Franny and Zooey. I'd like to know if July is a fan of that novel or if it's just a coincidence. That 4 minute movie packs in so much humanity in the dialogue, in the acting, in the idea of how people perceive themselves and each other. I was impressed.

I don't want to watch her feature until I've read her books.

Also, I need to read the short story collection to get at her title for it. It's haunting. It's almost a reply to the short film.

Good observations.  What a strong question at the center of the short:  Are you anyone's favorite person?

Good call on reading first, too.  But no one who breaks it will be cheating themselves.  The film is not an adaptation of any story in the book, and it probably draws almost as much from MJ's collaboraters as from herself, as films are known to do.  So it's a very different entity with just a few of the same flavors and existential provocations running through it, but a completely different storyline and different characters. 

The audio version seems like a good listen,

http://www.audible.com/adbl/entry/offers/productPromo2.jsp?BV_UseBVCooki...

Listen to the sample. It's of The Shared Patio, so you don't have to worry about spoilers if you already read that story on the Zoetrope page linked above, and below for your convieience,

http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=292

Thanks Bug.  How would you like to hear one of her short pieces in its entirety?  A real performance piece.  During the Monica Drake intensive, I posted the following link to a great Studio 360 episode. 

Just open here and scroll down to the bottom of the page.

After listening, consider the following, which I posted for the workshop participants:

1. Use of Language: particularly a) pronouns b) repetition

2. Narrative Distance: How close do you feel yourself to the characters and/or the narrative voice?

3. The Title: Would this piece work with any other title? If she'd called it "The Test" or "Surprise, We Love You" or "Life of Someone" would she have gotten away with (1. Use of Language b) repeating "this person" so many times? Did the repetition dictate the title choice? Does the device work for you? Would you call this piece "experimental?"

4. Production Values: If you feel yourself drawn in very close to this voice (2. Narrative Distance) as I did, how much of that would be achieved by just the words on the page, and how much relies upon Miranda July's unique skill as a performance artist combined with the sound effects and high production values of Studio 360?

5. Does writing become something else--a performance art--when we receive it in this fashion? Do you think different rules apply for a performance artist with a clear intent for this kind of delivery versus a writer who only gets to rely upon words on the page?

6. Reading this story without the auditory cues, do you think you'd know the intended narrative distance? Would you hear certain things in a whisper, subdued, internalized, repeated, part of an internal landscape?

7. If you were editing Miranda July, would you have kicked this piece back to her, all marked up? Would you have told her: "You've repeated the phrase 'this person' too many times. Isn't there another way to say it?" Would you have challenged her on the use of mundane and repetitive adverbial phrases like: "really really." Or would you have heard all of these things as an integral aspect of the voice she sets out to create, even without hearing her read it?

Wow. The Shared Patio just blew me away. How awkard and amazing. I've had No One Belongs Here More Than You on my wishlist for a while because it looked like something I'd read, but I'm definitely buying it myself now.

The Shared Patio. Wow. So quiet and lovely, almost like a dream.

My favorite line was:

You can see that I'm perfect?

It was just like; bam. And that's that.

I already posted this one, but I posted a bunch so I'll let it stand alone like a line from a dream. I love it so much.

"They had pictures of children on their refrigerator. They had friends, and these friends had given birth to more friends."

I agree that whole scene in front of the refrigerator was great. I have never been so interested in the eyes of a whale before.

Whoa!
I got it with this cover which I think is rather fetching:

I don't want to say anything about the book (other than I loved it) before I have a chance to read over the stories again. This means tracking the book down first-everyone loves it and since I read it about a year ago it's been out on lends. The stories are fabulous. I found them heart-warming; so funny and excruciating (which I'm finding is a big draw for me lately).

I came to the book after seeing Me, You and Everyone We Know. [SPOILISH]My favourite part in the film is when the two leads have just met and are walking along a road together towards the guy's car, having this typical getting-to-know-you, rom-com-esque conversation, very witty and sparkling. When they reach the car she gets in with him. In a rom-com they would drive away together towards happily ever after. In this film however he yells at her to get out of the car because she's a virtual stranger. It's funny but it's awful to watch, really embarrassing, too real; like the kind of thing you'd torture yourself over again and again if it happened to you...only times at least ten.[SPOILISH]

I'll have to watch it again!

Curious that you say that.  I've had some ruminations for days about returning to this thread with a very specific intent to talk about her use of dream logic.  But I didn't want to be double and triple posting to push a thread I started.  Thanks for the posting, more good people; you've spurred me on.

The Shared Patio took the top of my head off.  Months and months after hearing "This Person" from that Studio 360 episode, I finally stood in a  bookstore with MJ's collection in my hands and I read The Shared Patio just because it's the first story in the book.  I almost couldn't finish, because a part of my brain started screaming with some terrible mixture of rapture and indignation as her narrator, aroused from her nap and called to duty, just hovered in front of those photos having happy, wonderfully schizoid little thoughts and observations while Vincent was maybe dying.  I mean, you don't refuse help, when you're called on to assist in an emergency, and I didn't know whether I could take her literally or not, or whether it was all dream, of if I should be in love or pissed off, and it was terrible and beautiful at the same time, and it evoked every gut-wrenching, heartbreaking time I've ever been in love with someone vastly more insane than myself.

I put the book down like I'd just accidentally handled a poisonous snake.  I thought, That's a pretty little snake, it's beautiful, but I'm not ready for the full bite yet.  I actually made myself wait for weeks to buy it and to read more of the stories.  Weeks later, a friend fed me some homegrown mushrooms and I started telling him about The Shared Patio while tripping, and in recounting it, I realized it had taken the top of my head right off.  It did that thing that Emily Dickenson told me was the only way to recognize real literature, and that threatens to make me gush in such an awful way, that I'll turn most normal people off to whatever I'm talking about.  So the next day after this time-release revelation, I got the book and made it my own secret little thing for a while, like a mini religion, like posting about it here would be some sort of infidelity.  It puts me beside myself.  And it's not even fair that she's that good.

But dream logic.  Check out "This Person."  Either reading from the book or listening from the link, or both.  Pure dream logic.  There's that telling moment when she'd like to return to the great picnic where every person she's ever known is celebrating her existence--even every creep she's ever known has let down the guard, the awful game, and revealed his buddhanature, the secret teacher underneath all appearances.  On the table is an offer of no loose threads and perfect love, complete reconciliation, and a higher form of existence; and somehow, she just can't make herself return.  She's gone to check the post office box like that's important, and then home to check the messages where there aren't any new ones--trivia, obsessiveness, inertia, an addiction to banality and self-absorption. 

And getting back to the picnic then becomes just this impossible moving-through-molasses, can't-get-there-from-here proposition.  Wouldn't it be better to sink into the warm bath of primordial selfishness instead, hold your breath for a really long time, return to the womb.  When you can't win the non-existent olympic sport of staying under forever, you'll re-emerge unchanged, born into yet another life where you're hurt by creeps and you chase after trivial obsessions.  It's pure dream logic, and yet it's also more real and complete than the slice of waking life that most people think is everything.  it's a journey through one of those heaven realms that we touch sometimes, but where we can't remain.

She kills me.

.

Vig, I wish I could write like you so I could do justice to The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson and how incredible it is.

I went to three bookstores looking for Miranda July's book, but finally had to order it from Amazon. I just finished a collection of shorts called Kissing in Manhattan by David Shinkler and it's alternately horrific and magical. I'd like to recommend it to you. Parts of it were difficult to read, and you may think I'm a sick puppy if you do read it. But I love this book. I feel like I can't look at people today after reading it. I feel like this:

..if I should be in love or pissed off, and it was terrible and beautiful at the same time, and it evoked every gut-wrenching, heartbreaking time I've ever been in love with someone vastly more insane than myself.

So, would you recommend Kissing in Manhattan ahead of The Gargoyle, then?  I'm sure both are great.

As long as we're quoting some lines, here's one of my favs from MJ's This Person:

"Certain jerks and idiots and bastards appear from time to time, and it's as if they've had plastic surgery; their faces are disfigured with love."

Mark, I'm quoting you in my previous post! It's not from the book I just read. But I like the July quote from The Person. I haven't listened to it. I started to, but I can't focus on listening to a story for some reason. I drift off in my head even at live readings.

I can't choose between the two books I mentioned. I think that Kissing in Manhattan is more of a "fix" for you if you are hankering for more July. In fact, it came up in my recommendations from Amazon when I ordered the July book as 'other customers that bought this book, also bought'. The Gargoyle is a personal favorite, but I can't vouch for it in the sense that it's a universal book. I loved it, Barca Boy loved it. We're both good readers.

Oh, I read your post.  I got that you were quoting me, but to stop the blushing I wanted to join the earlier game of quoting favorite lines from Mirkanda July<-oops, that was an honest typo.  Maybe it means you should be famous!

And you gotta listen to This Person.  It's only about 8 minutes long and the Studio 360 sound design is fabulous.  It's worth using headphones if you don't have excellent external speakers for your computer.  And I'm same as you when it comes to extended listening.  I can do audio books in the car because it's a perfect accompaniment for driving and so much like good radio, but sitting in my room, I drift like crazy and I'd rather be reading.

aha, okay, I get it now. Yeah, July is very quotable.

I will try to listen to it again. I really just prefer to read. Especially if it's the first time for the story.

mirka wrote:

aha, okay, I get it now. Yeah, July is very quotable. I will try to listen to it again. I really just prefer to read. Especially if it's the first time for the story.

Well, no pressure.

I guess you are still waiting on your Amazon order then.  Or it landed but you haven't had time to read it. 

While I hate to set expectations too high, let me just say this: As much as I like The Shared Patio and This Person, they aren't the best stories in the book.  I'll keep the two I think are best written on this card that's palmed in my hand, and you can check with me on it after you've had time to formulate your own reading experience. 

Oh, kewl, Vig Pup, thanks for the This Person audio link. I look forward to listening to it.

Are you familiar with Kelly Link? Have you read her story Some Zombie Contingency Plans? If so, I'd like to pose a question to you. Why does Will take Leo at the end of the story?

http://lcrw.net/kellylink/mfb/Kelly_Link_Magic_for.htm#SomeZombie

I'm still waiting for the July book, I think I'll get it Monday.

Hi Bug! Bug recommended the Schickler book Kissing In Manhattan on a thread and provided a link to this story.

I love the cult..so many good books, so many excellent readers.

I got my copy from Amazon in (amazingly) three days. I got it in the mail Friday and was finished Friday night.

Overall, I really liked it. The Shared Patio was definitely my favorite, but I liked a lot about the rest of them. I'm probably way off base here, but there was something about the stories I didn't like. Individually, they were all pretty great, but cohesively, it just seemed like the same "voice" was telling each story. Maybe that's what she was going for (kind of like Knockemstiff where Pollock is obviously trying to keep the stories together), but it just seemed like the same voice over and over and I got tired of it.

I don't know. Other than that, I really liked it.

Maybe you read the book a little too fast.  I like to give each short story in a collection a little bit of its own breathing room.

My feeling is that several of the stories do have the same, or a very similar narrator, which I'm guessing is an extension of Miranda July, her real personality modulated through some of her favorite performance artist quirks.  I think a signature sense of humor, and a few signature stylistic choices show up pretty consistently throughout the collection.  Also, some thematic choices, like deviant sexuality.  And either you're enthralled by that personality style or you're not.  But I don't find an absolute uniformity to the voice, from one story to the next.  I think about three of the stories depart radically from her baseline, and in quite interesting ways.

For example, what did you think about the male narrator who's set up to date the non-existent sister?  And how about the woman of greater maturity we seem to be reading in How to Tell Stories to Children?  I thought the narrative voice was convincingly 50 or 60 years old and wisened by the end of that story. 

I tend to do that (read things to fast), but if it's too good to put down, I'll finish it in a night. I binge on books, I guess.

I read The Shared Patio online and was blown away, but maybe it's because that style isn't one I'm familiar with, so it was the inital introduction to it that blew me away. Once I read an entire book that had seperate stories but the same "voice" thread (I can't really put into words what it is) keeping them together, I became a little disenchanted by it. I agree with you on the few stories that deviated from the others, but there was still something in them similar to the rest. I wish I could put it into words better, but I'm just not as good as my fellow culties when it comes to reviews.

I think I'd have been more satisfied if each piece was a seperate book instead of a collection of short stories. Make sense?

I think I'd have been more satisfied if each piece was a seperate book instead of a collection of short stories. Make sense?

Yeah, that makes sense.  In fact, I touched upon this in my starting post,  how some readers are just more satisfied with novels than with short stories and very short stories.  Slam all of these stories together and read them fast and they could lose some of the magic.  If each had been made to grow up into a novel, it would make a mandatory breathing room for each story.  I can see that. 

The collected short stories of a single author is more of a convenient delivery form than anything else.  The individual stories are not units of composition within a unified work.  Each chapter in a novel is a unit of composition within a larger work that needs to appear in exactly the order it falls.  But not so here.  This is a collection of singles.  I'm sure there were readers who came to "The Shared Patio" when it first appeared in print in Zoetrope, and "Making Love in 2003" when first published in The Paris Review--with maybe several months separating those readings, and each story sitting like a jeweled island amid the work of other writers, not more MJ, and within a journal possessing a different shape and feel and differest editorial characteristics and artwork, and one story was read with a latte in a crowded coffee shop while it was raining outside and another story was read in the park on the hottest day of summer. 

You and I are both coming to these stories late for most of them to be new to us in this pressed-together form.  So it takes a little willing suspension, a little act of imagination, to parcel them out as individual units and not mind the fact that she hits her stride in the same way more than once.    

It arrived today! My copy is lemon yellow. I was hoping for orange, but yellow is my second favorite color.

From reading above, it seems I should pace myself and just read a couple of stories a day. I'm not sure if I can.

Sweet.  Just think of it as one of those chocolate bars made to break into sections.  You break off one or two pieces and wrap the foil on it again, making promises to yourself that you'll never keep. 

I read, on average, three or four stories per sitting with this book, across three or four sittings, but I read each one slowly and savored the language. 

She won't jerk you through her plots by the nose like a mystery/suspense author, where the story or plot values are so strong that the language is secondary and you start burning at the eyelids just to find out what happens and be done with it.  She's a true literary author like Palahniuk or Clevenger, where the language is immaculate and its own reward all the way through. 

Stories like these, I look at them like flowers and read each one with the practiced moment-to-moment ease and ear for sound I use when reading poetry. 

The language is immaculate. I read Swim Team aloud to a friend last night before I would consent to eat dinner!

I was reading aloud and laughing at the same time. These stories are truly amazing.

Yeah, I'm diving into the coach's bowl with you right about now.  I can only imagine your dinner table conversation.  So glad you're getting into these.

Swim to me, he'd say, but she was too scared, and it actually takes a huge amount of upper-body strength to swim on land.

No way I could read this story aloud right now and keep a straight face. . . would need to be better rested and up to my best deadpan routine.

Just because of that last quote, I'm going to get the book as soon as I get some cash.

Oh I loved swim team! It made me sad and happy at the same time.

Yep, that line had me busting up when I read it. My friend wanted to read the story himself because I was laughing so much it was hard to follow. But, I pulled myself together. He was stunned at how such a funny story could end the way it did.

Almost every other page has a post it on it because of things I want to reread or point out to people.

I just finished This Person and am going to allow myself 1-2 more. I don't want to burn through this one.

He was stunned at how such a funny story could end the way it did.

I'm stunned at how much she can accomplish in five pages.  The way she sets it up, as delivering backstory about a missing year in her life, an explanation to the boyfriend, it's a brilliant frame.  Plus, she's calling into question the reliability of her narrator--the inventive lies the narrator told her parents in letters at the time about what she was doing, the fantastic nature of what she was "really" doing, the "true story" sounding absurd but almost too far-fetched to make up--it all cascades together to do impressive work in a very condensed form.  Add to that what stunned your friend-- she gets you laughing so hard you don't see it coming when she breaks your heart, the Amy Hempel effect, and man oh man.  Nobody achieves this kind of compression without a story feeling crowded or rushed.  It's what I meant when I said, "And it's not even fair that she's that good."

oh god

One woman still had the napkin on her head, possibly asleep.

Interesting. I read Something That Needs Nothing and remembered that I read it a couple of years ago in The New Yorker and at the time thought to myself, write this name down. And utterly forgot about her until now. So thanks again.

I am permitting myself one more story tonight.

General observations..so many things do smell like pee. Potato is a good name for a dog.

Interesting. I read Something That Needs Nothing and remembered that I read it a couple of years ago in The New Yorker and at the time thought to myself, write this name down. And utterly forgot about her until now. So thanks again.

You're welcome.  I think I first heard her name from Will Clarke.  Around the time he taught our very first intensive in 2006.  MJ's first breakout-level stories must have started hitting in places like Zoetrope just about that time.  But I didn't chase after reading her despite a glowing endorsement from someone I respect.  I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes; but it was the kind of endorsement Chuck would laud upon the likes of Amy Hempel.  I would be thrilled if every new issue of a lit magazine contained a Miranda July story, and I could just stay home reading those.  Something like that.  So it sat there in my brain waiting for the right time.

I read through the book once just looking at the strength of all of her various openings.  Something That Needs Nothing has a great first sentence:

In an ideal world, we would have been orphans. 

Well, I don't have good news to report. After Something That Needs Nothing, I became increasingly annoyed by her 'voice'. There were lines that struck me as immaculate, but overall, I no longer enjoyed the stories. I felt almost suffocated in what I guess felt to me like the author's narcissism. This minute identification with one's inner life and some was too cute for me. I found the last story was unconvincing. The 50 year old character sounded like a teenager to me.

Wow, too bad.  For my money, "Making Love in 2003" and "How to Tell Stories to Children" are two of the strongest stories in the book.  And "minute identifcation with ones inner life," when done as well as she does it, is one of the greatest joys of literature.  Instead of suffocated, I feel charmed by it, and inspired to pay greater attention to my own.  In a world full of business, politics, and stories geared for mass media like you see on television, I turn to books precisely for a deeper immersion in the inner life. 

You know, in "outer" life we're reduced constantly to functional roles.  For one person, you'll be just another voter, for another, just another customer in the drive-thru, for still another, just another patient in the emergency room.  And for yet another, " just one of my ex's."  People do this sort of reduction of other people to stay efficient and to make their own lives more manageable.  But that doesn't make it right.  When I step into stories like these, with a narrative voice that goes unflinchingly into the inner life, even at the risk of seeming "cutesy" at times, it reminds me to take a greater joy in my own depths.  In terms of this particular collection of stories, I felt that magic all the way through.  Sorry that you didn't.