NOBHMTY - Spoiler thread

[JeffKamin]

Just finished. It had been a while since I read a collection of short stories by one author. I found the longer they were, the more invested I was. A few of the shorter ones didn't affect me as much. I really enjoyed a lot of her characters and observations.

My standouts right now are:
The Swim Team
Something That Needs Nothing
I Kiss a Door
Making Love in 2003
Mon Plaisir
Birthmark How to Tell Stories to Children

I am going to listen to her read these before we meet, too.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/No-One-Belongs-Here-More-Than-You/Miranda-July/e/9780743299398#RGG

Anyone else with thoughts or comments yet?

[dirtworship]

Little more than half way through. Kind of mixed feelings. While some of the stories have stuck, none of them have had any "Wow" for me.

Second reading maybe?
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Fnord

[MHerman39]

I found the stories followed a kind of pattern.

Person is unhappy -> Something offers them happiness -> They realize it's unreality -> They choose unhappy reality over happy unreality.

My guess is the lack of variety is going to bother people. It's like having an album of only heartbreaking ballads and no uplifting rockers. (EM0!!1!1!) I liked it but it's probably not for everyone.

[JeffKamin]

Mike, I like your theory, but I am not sure the characters willingly choose the unreality and unhappiness. Do you have an example in each?

The Moves could definitely be a two minute pop punk uplifting rocker. And I think The Swim Team is a fun 4 minute tune with harmonies.
Mon Plaisir could be read to have a happy ending. Could be?

[MHerman39]

Yeah, maybe the word choose is out of place. There are these characters who are unhappy, get placed in a happy unreality and then return to unhappy reality. It is worth noting which ones have the character choosing to acknowledge this contradiction.

I think Swim Team is a good example because the very act they are taking part in is 100% imaginary. At the beginning of the story she talks about being unhappy in Belvedere taking part in the R.E.A.D. program which you can imagine she was doing for the fulfilment of it. Then there's this happy unreality where she actually feels fulfilled by teaching these old people to "swim." Then she leaves Belvedere (she references spending only a year there) and the old people go on to die. Much later (long enough to be certain the old peopel are dead) she reflects on her coaching after seeing her ex-boyfriend with someone new and, depending on how you read the phrase "saddest swim coach ever", missing this unreality makes her sad or realizes missing this unreality makes her pathetic.

Some of the stories require a little more shoehorn than others. But I stand by my assertation July is following a pattern of placing her unhappy characters in a happy unreality only to return them to the unhappy reality by the end of the story.

[SaraBlair]

I love all things strange, therefore I love Miranda July. However, that does not mean I loved the book. I liked a lot of the stories in the collection, but I also hated some.

Things I liked about the book: July's writing style - Eccentric in its own right. There are no schools of writing working themselves out in her. She just does what she does, and as a result she's completely original.

Things I did not like about the book: At times July seems to be trying too hard to be eccentric and as a result ends up straining her writing and characters. Also, a few of the stories are a bit creepy and hard to read just because of that strange, dark sexual stuff.

Overall, there were a lot of laughs here, lots of poignant intimacy, some fine writing…and unfortunately, sometimes a little too much "Miranda." My favorites include The Swim Team, The Man on the Stairs, Ten True Things. and A Sister. My favorite quote from A Sister:

"Blanca came in and out of my life over the next few weeks, but she never came in far enough for me to see her. I failed to meet her in so many different ways that I began to know her anyway. I knew the qualities of her particular absence. I dressed up for it. I wore a suit I had never gotten the hang of in the seventies, but now it felt all right. It's an unusual suit because it's light beige, almost off-white. You don't see that color much in big amounts, suit and jacket both. It became my uniform for not meeting Blanca."
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SaraBlair

[Jess]

I finished this morning when I couldn't fall back asleep at 4AM. I too liked the stories Jeff listed, but felt that a whole collection of "Miranda" (SaraBlair's idea) was a little too much. I also agree with Mike's idea, and want to add that I got an overall feeling of loneliness. Quirky loneliness. So much, I kind of wanted to find a way to call the author and make sure she's ok.

Plus, in reading the whole collection, I imagined all the narrators being July at whatever age the narrator was, because they . Except for The Sister, which has a male narrator.

I think these stories would be much stronger standing alone rather than as a collection. I skipped around in my reading, and noticed that at the end of the book, some of these stories were previously published in lit mags. While reading those, I tried to think of them on their own, and that made the whole experience better because I wasn't thinking about the other quirky, lonely stories.

I don't read many short stories, not sure why, but maybe because I like long narratives and getting to know who's who. Good pick for B&B because it was refreshing and should make for an interesting discussion. Plus it got Jake to read a book.

[MHerman39]

Jess, I don't know if it was loneliness. It was more the negative of something else.

To root back into "Swim Team", Coach wasn't feeling lonely. It was more she was missing this time in her life when she had this purpose when she felt fulfilled.

I think a better term for what you describe as loneliness is longing. July is writing about characters who are longing for something they don't (and I'd say realistically can't) have.

Do you agree?

[Beth]

I agree with Jess that there's a whole lot of loneliness in this book. Many of the narrators reference not having friends, wishing for friends, imagining how great it might be to have a friend who comes over and leaves her hair gel on the dresser by mistake... Often the character has no strong connection to the very few people in her life (or his, in A Sister), and when there IS a strong tie to a person, the relationship is usually dysfunctional, disintegrating, or both.

I also agree that a lot of the narrators started to feel pretty same-y to me. They all seem to view the world in an almost identically quirky, distant way--as if they're viewing life as an observer and not a participant. Sexual encounters are almost always described as if they happened by accident or as if there was some non-sexual goal in mind (comparing the size of body parts, for example), which to me loses its impact when it happens over and over again from the mouths of supposedly different narrators. Unless they ARE all supposed to be the same narrator somehow?

I did enjoy the book, but I think I would have appreciated the stories more as individual pieces if I hadn't read them in a collection.

[elihoughton]

Miranda July presents sexualized children in a few of the stories and in her movie. Why does she do this? Was she a sexually extroverted teen? Does she wish she was? Does she personally have a thing for teenagers? Is she making a point or does she include this merely for shock value?

Also, why does Miranda July get away with it? I imagine that if we read a story collection by John Updike where a 24 year old man has sex with an autistic 14 year old girl, someone would at least have brought it up at book club. Does she get away with it because she is a woman? Is it her writing style that makes it seem like it is not a big deal?

Just saying, is all.

[kateherr]

Very interesting, Eli! Is this one of the two things you didn't say during the meeting? 'Cause you should have said that.

Unfortunately, having slept through the movie and not having read most of the book, I can't really comment.

[JeffKamin]

Eli didn't mean it, Mr. Updike. May you rest in peace.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090127/ap_en_ot/obit_updike