Monday, October 09, 2006
Kelly and Shelley, the Perfect Twofer
Not wanting to make “a big social deal” out of rounding up compatriots, I went alone to a reading last night at KGB bar. It was the last time I will underestimate my friends’ taste and enthusiasm for literature. I ran into Mary, Ericka and Jenny at the door, and we had a mutual whiskey/book love-fest that was long overdue.
I’m never going to be tired of Kelly Link or Shelley Jackson, genre-defying writers so good they have me reading fiction again, and even make me feel better about the stuff I wrote in college.
Kelly Link came to me via BoingBoing, and I have become hooked on the free audio downloads at Telltale Weekly. My favorite short story had been The Girl Detective, until last night I read from my brand-new and lovingly signed copy of Magic for Beginners.
I read “The Faery Handbag” which, like much of Link’s work, is so beautiful and distracting you almost forget she’s really telling you a story about loss and the struggle for connection. Her characters are so real, their problems are so pedestrian and their affections so familiar (Scrabble, Buffy) you forget they’re made-up or can slip away and get lost inside a purse. I wept just a second for my Grandmother, who isn’t even slightly dead, then later, fell asleep charmed and intrigued once again by Kelly Link.
But I dreamed instead about Shelley Jackson and the ampersand on her right arm. That I saw words from her project Skin tattooed all over people’s bodies. I dreamed of a word released for publication on my own body, saw it, all the possibilities, and longed and pined to be one of the 250-550 left of the six thousand or so applicants hoping to become a Word. I wrote her an email last night after meeting her, explaining why I was interested in the project but completely forgot to mention that I want to also because it’s the only way I will get to read the book in its entirety! Participants will be the only ones to receive a hand-bound (by SJ) copy. She also kindly signed my new copy of Half Life and drew a two-headed woman for me.
Shelley Jackson is the reason my friend Ericka has the word “the” tattooed on her forearm.
Half Life is about a world so populated with conjoined twins that they’ve formed a formidable minority population and have pride marches and their own vernacular — they’re “twofers” who rather pity the singletons, except for the main character whose twin has spent the last fifteen years sleeping. Highlights from the book read by Jackson included a poem sung by a two-headed (and dead, i think) kitten that is an indictment of a cruel mother on behalf of her helpless son.
I feel a tangential, familial affection for Ms. Jackson because of the way she uses the body as vehicular man-slaughtering metaphor. If her stories are like dreams, they are the kind that startle you wake with a gasp or a choke, and haunt for days. If her stories are just sleep or body parts, they’re sleeping feet all numbness and prickly pain that force you to grimace and stomp in a consuming tortuous way that actually feels better than it sounds.
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