(no subject)
Rivka Galchen is my new best friend. Or my new bicycle.
You've had this experience, right? Where you read something someone has written and it really excites you, and in a way you think, "this author understands me. She knows what I like." That's how Atmospheric Disturbances made me feel. Like David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, there was nothing about it, plot-wise, to suggest that I would be so taken with it. A psychiatrist's wife is missing. Maybe. That's it! But describing AD by its plot is like describing gelato by its ingredients--they don't convey how the combination of thickness and sugary cold tastes so much more satisfying than ice cream. Atmospheric Disturbances has a lot of stuff in it that could be described as Pynchonesque, interesting pop science, and a lot that could also be described as Fortean.
I'm reading a short story by her now, called "The Region of Unlikeness" from the March 24th issue of the New Yorker. It has some echoes of Atmospheric Disturbances--Upper West Side coffee shops and the New York Post are two--and it has an undercurrent of Forteana.
Like Atmospheric Disturbances, the New Yorker story's main theme is "what if?" but not in a Twilight Zone-y way. In fact, "Unlikeness" is almost anti-TZ, but in a loving way. Galchen even references TZ at one point, knowing that we know what she's doing.
In "Unlikeness" Galchen showed that not only does she know what I like, she knows what I'm like: "We would get together and Ilan would go on about Heidegger and “thrownness,” or about Will Ferrell, and Jacob would come up with some way to disagree, and I would mostly just listen, and eat baklava and drink lots of coffee. Then we’d go for a long walk, and Ilan might have some argument in defense of, say, Fascist architecture, and Jacob would say something about the striated and the smooth, and then a pretty girl would walk by and they would talk about her outfit for a long time. Jacob and Ilan always had something to say, which gave me the mistaken impression that I did, too."
Whenever I finish readings something by her, I feel like I just finished having coffee with my best friend and I already miss her.
You've had this experience, right? Where you read something someone has written and it really excites you, and in a way you think, "this author understands me. She knows what I like." That's how Atmospheric Disturbances made me feel. Like David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, there was nothing about it, plot-wise, to suggest that I would be so taken with it. A psychiatrist's wife is missing. Maybe. That's it! But describing AD by its plot is like describing gelato by its ingredients--they don't convey how the combination of thickness and sugary cold tastes so much more satisfying than ice cream. Atmospheric Disturbances has a lot of stuff in it that could be described as Pynchonesque, interesting pop science, and a lot that could also be described as Fortean.
I'm reading a short story by her now, called "The Region of Unlikeness" from the March 24th issue of the New Yorker. It has some echoes of Atmospheric Disturbances--Upper West Side coffee shops and the New York Post are two--and it has an undercurrent of Forteana.
Like Atmospheric Disturbances, the New Yorker story's main theme is "what if?" but not in a Twilight Zone-y way. In fact, "Unlikeness" is almost anti-TZ, but in a loving way. Galchen even references TZ at one point, knowing that we know what she's doing.
In "Unlikeness" Galchen showed that not only does she know what I like, she knows what I'm like: "We would get together and Ilan would go on about Heidegger and “thrownness,” or about Will Ferrell, and Jacob would come up with some way to disagree, and I would mostly just listen, and eat baklava and drink lots of coffee. Then we’d go for a long walk, and Ilan might have some argument in defense of, say, Fascist architecture, and Jacob would say something about the striated and the smooth, and then a pretty girl would walk by and they would talk about her outfit for a long time. Jacob and Ilan always had something to say, which gave me the mistaken impression that I did, too."
Whenever I finish readings something by her, I feel like I just finished having coffee with my best friend and I already miss her.