Book World Thrillers and Art Monsters

Thrillers in the literary world and being between projects

I’m a sucker for a book-world-set thriller or mystery, especially now that I’m twitter-unplugged and missing the daily dose of main character energy that came with that platform. What fun to swan around in a hero’s professional jealousy for a while.

A quick list of recs published in the last year-ish for those similarly inclined:

• For You and Only You by Caroline Kepnes

• The Villa by Rachel Hawkins

• I’m Not Done with You Yet by Jesse Q Sutanto (forthcoming!)

• The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz

• Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

The last recommendation is my top choice, not only for the exposure of the horrors of appropriation and the literal ghost of stories past in it (as well as for the cutting satire), but also because the main character, whose voice you are forced to inhabit for three hundred pages, so desperately craves the “have written” and doesn’t seem to care at all for the “am writing” part of being a novelist.

Kepnes, too, hits on this reality in her most recent YOU book, which makes Joe Goldberg into a “guy-in-your-MFA” type, outwardly supporting his hopeful-girlfriend’s writing until she actually starts writing (tip-tapping all those words out like drops of water, boring into his skull). He, on the other hand, is not writing. He, on the other hand, cannot believe her professional good luck (hard work, actually).

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the self-centeredness it takes to be a writer, and a lot of those thoughts centered on a truly incredible book called Monsters by Claire Dederer. Her book is a memoir of the audience, implicating all of us and examining all of us as we take in the work of monstrous artists who have betrayed our trust in one way or another. As a memoirist, Dederer also implicates herself, drawing upon the “art-monster” trope. She writes:

Maybe, as a female writer, you don’t kill yourself or abandon your children. But you abandon something, some giving part of yourself. When you finish a book, what lies littered on the ground are small broken things: broken dates, broken promises, broken engagements. Also other, more important forettings and failures…. Those things have to get broken for the book to be written.

I gasped listening to this section, then nodded, then put my head down on the table. The shock of recognition was immediate and intense, and I wanted that brokenness. I missed it. I haven’t written in six months. I have edited and revised. I have dabbled and taught and thought about writing, but I haven’t put down concerted effort to create.

Is it because, for the first time in years, I am content and unrestless? My depression is treated and my children are hilarious and my day job is fulfilling. I have the urge to break something, but instead, I will read about broken artists, and then crack my knuckles and get back to the page. Art-monster around for a little while. That’s the plan for July. If you’re looking for a writing accountability friend in July, count me in. I’m there.