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The Great Fall 2024 Book Preview
With the arrival of autumn comes a deluge of great books. Here you'll find a sampling of new and forthcoming titles that caught our eye here at The Millions, and that we think might catch yours, too. Some we’ve already perused in galley form; others we’re eager to devour based on their authors, plots, or subject matters. We hope your next fall read is among them.
—Sophia Stewart, editor
October
Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera, tr. Lisa Dillman [F]
What it is: An epic, speculative account of the 18 months that Benito Juárez spent in New Orleans in 1853-54, years before he became the first and only Indigenous president of Mexico.
Who it's for: Fans of speculative history; readers who appreciate the magic that swirls around any novel set in New Orleans. —Claire Kirch
The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson [NF]
What it is: An exploration of Black Americans' pursuit and visions of utopia—both ideological and physical—that spans the Reconstruction era to the present day and combines history, memoir, and reportage.
Who it's for: Fans of Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments and Kristen R. Ghodsee's Everyday Utopia. —Sophia M. Stewart
The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard, tr. Martin Aitken [F]
What it is: The third installment in Knausgaard's Morning Star series, centered on the appearance of a mysterious new star in the skies above Norway.
Who it's for: Real Knausgaard heads only—The Wolves of Eternity and Morning Star are required reading for this one. —SMS
Brown Women Have Everything by Sayantani Dasgupta [NF]
What it is: Essays on the contradictions and complexities of life as an Indian woman in America, probing everything from hair to family to the joys of travel.
Who it's for: Readers of Durga Chew-Bose, Erika L. Sánchez, and Tajja Isen. —SMS
The Plot Against Native America by Bill Vaughn [F]
What it is: The first narrative history of Native American boarding schools— which aimed "civilize" Indigenous children by violently severing them from their culture— and their enduring, horrifying legacy.
Who it's for: Readers of Ned Blackhawk and Kathleen DuVal. —SMS
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich [F]
What it is: Erdrich's latest novel set in North Dakota's Red River Valley is a tale of the intertwined lives of ordinary people striving to survive and even thrive in their rural community, despite environmental upheavals, the 2008 financial crisis, and other obstacles.
Who it's for: Readers of cli-fi; fans of Linda LeGarde Grover and William Faulkner. —CK
The Position of Spoons by Deborah Levy [NF]
What it is: The second book from Levy in as many years, diverging from a recent streak of surrealist fiction with a collection of essays marked by exceptional observance and style.
Who it's for: Close lookers and the perennially curious. —John H. Maher
The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister [F]
What it's about: The Haddesley family has lived on the same West Virginia bog for centuries, making a supernatural bargain with the land—a generational blood sacrifice—in order to do so—until an uncovered secret changes everything.
Who it's for: Readers of Karen Russell and Jeff VanderMeer; anyone who has ever used the phrase "girl moss." —SMS
The Great When by Alan Moore [F]
What it's about: When an 18-year old book reseller comes across a copy of a book that shouldn’t exist, it threatens to upend not just an already post-war-torn London, but reality as we know it.
Who it's for: Anyone looking for a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery dipped in thaumaturgical psychedelia. —Daniella Fishman
The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates [NF]
What it's about: One of our sharpest critical thinkers on social justice returns to nonfiction, nearly a decade after Between the World and Me, visiting Dakar, to contemplate enslavement and the Middle Passage; Columbia, S.C., as a backdrop for his thoughts on Jim Crow and book bans; and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where he sees contemporary segregation in the treatment of Palestinians.
Who it’s for: Fans of James Baldwin, George Orwell, and Angela Y. Davis; readers of Nikole Hannah-Jones’s The 1619 Project and Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, to name just a few engagements with national and racial identity. —Nathalie op de Beeck
Abortion by Jessica Valenti [NF]
What it is: Columnist and memoirist Valenti, who tracks pro-choice advocacy and attacks on the right to choose in her Substack, channels feminist rage into a guide for freedom of choice advocacy.
Who it’s for: Readers of Robin Marty’s The New Handbook for a Post-Roe America, #ShoutYourAbortion proponents, and followers of Jennifer Baumgartner’s [I Had an Abortion] project. —NodB
Gifted by Suzuki Suzumi, tr. Allison Markin Powell [F]
What it's about: A young sex worker in Tokyo's red-light district muses on her life and recounts her abusive mother's final days, in what is Suzuki's first novel to be translated into English.
Who it's for: Readers of Susan Boyt and Mieko Kanai; fans of moody, introspective fiction; anyone with a fraught relationship to their mother. —SMS
Childish Literature by Alejandro Zambra, tr. Megan McDowell [F]
What it is: A wide-ranging collection of stories, essays, and poems that explore childhood, fatherhood, and family.
Who it's for: Fans of dad lit (see: Lucas Mann's Attachments, Keith Gessen's Raising Raffi, Karl Ove Knausgaard's seasons quartet, et al). —SMS
Books Are Made Out of Books ed. Michael Lynn Crews [NF]
What it is: A mining of the archives of the late Cormac McCarthy with a focus on the famously tight-lipped author's literary influences.
Who it's for: Anyone whose commonplace book contains the words "arquebus," "cordillera," or "vinegaroon." —JHM
Slaveroad by John Edgar Wideman [F]
What it is: A blend of memoir, fiction, and history that charts the "slaveroad" that runs through American history, spanning the Atlantic slave trade to the criminal justice system, from the celebrated author of Brothers and Keepers.
Who it's for: Fans of Clint Smith and Ta-Nehisi Coates. —SMS
Linguaphile by Julie Sedivy [NF]
What it's about: Linguist Sedivy reflects on a life spent loving language—its beauty, its mystery, and the essential role it plays in human existence.
Who it's for: Amateur (or professional) linguists; fans of the podcast A Way with Words (me). —SMS
An Image of My Name Enters America by Lucy Ives [NF]
What it is: A collection of interrelated essays that connect moments from Ives's life to larger questions of history, identity, and national fantasy,
Who it's for: Fans of Ives, one of our weirdest and most wondrous living writers—duh; anyone with a passing interest in My Little Pony, Cold War–era musicals, or The Three Body Problem, all of which are mined here for great effect. —SMS
Women's Hotel by Daniel Lavery [F]
What it is: A novel set in 1960s New York City, about the adventures of the residents of a hotel providing housing for young women that is very much evocative of the real-life legendary Barbizon Hotel.
Who it's for: Readers of Mary McCarthy's The Group and Rona Jaffe's The Best of Everything. —CK
The World in Books by Kenneth C. Davis [NF]
What it is: A guide to 52 of the most influential works of nonfiction ever published, spanning works from Plato to Ida B. Wells, bell hooks to Barbara Ehrenreich, and Sun Tzu to Joan Didion.
Who it's for: Lovers of nonfiction looking to cover their canonical bases. —SMS
Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lobato [F]
What it's about: Through the emanating blue-glow of their computer screens, a mother and daughter, four-thousand miles apart, find solace and loneliness in their nightly Skype chats in this heartstring-pulling debut.
Who it's for: Someone who needs to be reminded to CALL YOUR MOTHER! —DF
Riding Like the Wind by Iris Jamahl Dunkle [NF]
What it is: The biography of Sanora Babb, a contemporary of John Steinbeck's whose field notes and interviews with Dust Bowl migrants Steinbeck relied upon to write The Grapes of Wrath.
Who it's for: Steinbeck fans and haters alike; readers of Kristin Hannah's The Four Winds and the New York Times Overlooked column; anyone interested in learning more about the Dust Bowl migrants who fled to California hoping for a better life. —CK
Innie Shadows by Olivia M. Coetzee [F]
What it is: a work of crime fiction set on the outskirts of Cape Town, where a community marred by violence seeks justice and connection; also the first novel to be translated from Kaaps, a dialect of Afrikaans that was until recently only a spoken language.
Who it's for: fans of sprawling, socioeconomically-attuned crime dramas a la The Wire. —SMS
Dorothy Parker in Hollywood by Gail Crowther [NF]
What it is: A history of the famous wit—and famous New Yorker—in her L.A. era, post–Algonquin Round Table and mid–Red Scare.
Who it's for: Owners of a stack of hopelessly dog-eared Joan Didion paperbacks. —JHM
The Myth of American Idealism by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson [NF]
What it is: A potent critique of the ideology behind America's foreign interventions and its status as a global power, and an treatise on how the nation's hubristic pursuit of "spreading democracy" threatens not only the delicate balance of global peace, but the already-declining health of our planet.
Who it's for: Chomskyites; policy wonks and casual critics of American recklessness alike. —DF
Mysticism by Simon Critchley [NF]
What it is: A study of mysticism—defined as an experience, rather than religious practice—by the great British philosopher Critchley, who mines music, poetry, and literature along the way.
Who it's for: Readers of John Gray, Jorge Luis Borges, and Simone Weil. —SMS
Q&A by Adrian Tomine [NF]
What it is: The Japanese American creator of the Optic Nerve comic book series for D&Q, and of many a New Yorker cover, shares his personal history and his creative process in this illustrated unburdening.
Who it’s for: Readers of Tomine’s melancholic, sometimes cringey, and occasionally brutal collections of comics short stories including Summer Blonde, Shortcomings, and Killing and Dying. —NodB
Sonny Boy by Al Pacino [NF]
What it is: Al Pacino's memoir—end of description.
Who it's for: Cinephiles; anyone curious how he's gonna spin fumbling Diane Keaton. —SMS
Seeing Baya by Alice Kaplan [NF]
What it is: The first biography of the enigmatic and largely-forgotten Algerian artist Baya Mahieddine, who first enchanted midcentury Paris as a teenager.
Who it's for: Admirers of Leonora Carrington, Hilma af Klint, Frida Kahlo, and other belatedly-celebrated women painters. —SMS
Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer [F]
What it is: A surprise return to the Area X, the stretch of unforbidding and uncanny coastline in the hit Southern Reach trilogy.
Who it's for: Anyone who's heard this song and got the reference without Googling it. —JHM
The Four Horsemen by Nick Curtola [NF]
What it is: The much-anticipated cookbook from the team behind Brooklyn's hottest restaurant (which also happens to be co-owned by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem).
Who it's for: Oenophiles; thirty-somethings who live in north Williamsburg (derogatory). —SMS
Seeing Further by Esther Kinsky, tr. Caroline Schmidt [F]
What it's about: An unnamed German woman embarks on the colossal task of reviving a cinema in a small Hungarian village.
Who it's for: Fans of Jenny Erpenbeck; anyone charmed by Cinema Paradiso (not derogatory!). —SMS
Ripcord by Nate Lippens [NF]
What it's about: A novel of class, sex, friendship, and queer intimacy, written in delicious prose and narrated by a gay man adrift in Milwaukee.
Who it's for: Fans of Brontez Purnell, Garth Greenwell, Alexander Chee, and Wayne Koestenbaum. —SMS
The Use of Photography by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie, tr. Alison L. Strayer [NF]
What it's about: Ernaux's love affair with Marie, a journalist, while she was undergoing treatment for cancer, and their joint project to document their romance.
Who it's for: The Ernaux hive, obviously; readers of Sontag's On Photography and Janet Malcolm's Still Pictures. —SMS
Nora Ephron at the Movies by Ilana Kaplan [NF]
What it is: Kaplan revisits Nora Ephron's cinematic watersheds—Silkwood, Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle—in this illustrated book. Have these iconic stories, and Ephron’s humor, weathered more than 40 years?
Who it’s for: Film history buffs who don’t mind a heteronormative HEA; listeners of the Hot and Bothered podcast; your coastal grandma. —NodB
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The Philosophy of Translation by Damion Searls [NF]
What it is: A meditation on the act and art of translation by one of today's most acclaimed practitioners, best known for his translations of Fosse, Proust, et al.
Who it's for: Regular readers of Words Without Borders and Asymptote; professional and amateur literary translators alike. —SMS
Salvage by Dionne Brand
What it is: A penetrating reevaluation of the British literary canon and the tropes once shaped Brand's reading life and sense of self—and Brand’s first major work of nonfiction since her landmark A Map to the Door of No Return.
Who it's for: Readers of Christina Sharpe's Ordinary Notes and Elizabeth Hardwick's Seduction and Betrayal. —SMS
Masquerade by Mike Fu [F]
What it's about: Housesitting for an artist friend in present-day New York, Meadow Liu stumbles on a novel whose author shares his name—the first of many strange, haunting happenings that lead up to the mysterious disappearance of Meadow's friend.
Who it's for: fans of Ed Park and Alexander Chee. —SMS
November
The Beggar Student by Osamu Dazai, tr. Sam Bett [F]
What it is: A novella in the moody vein of Dazai’s acclaimed No Longer Human, following the 30-something “fictional” Dazai into another misadventure spawned from a hubristic spat with a high schooler.
Who it's for: Longtime readers of Dazai, or new fans who discovered the midcentury Japanese novelist via TikTok and the Bungo Stray Dogs anime. —DF
In Thrall by Jane DeLynn [F]
What it is: A landmark lesbian bildungsroman about 16-year-old Lynn's love affair with her English teacher, originally published in 1982.
Who it's for: Fans of Joanna Russ's On Strike Against God and Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story —SMS
Washita Love Child by Douglas Kent Miller [NF]
What it is: The story of Jesse Ed Davis, the Indigenous musician who became on of the most sought after guitarists of the late '60s and '70s, playing alongside B.B. King, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and more.
Who it's for: readers of music history and/or Indigenous history; fans of Joy Harjo, who wrote the foreword. —SMS
Set My Heart on Fire by Izumi Suzuki, tr. Helen O'Horan [F]
What it is: Gritty, sexy, and wholly rock ’n’ roll, Suzuki’s first novel translated into English (following her story collection, Hit Parade of Tears) follows 20-year-old Izumi navigating life, love, and music in the underground scene in '70s Japan.
Who it's for: Fans of Meiko Kawakami, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Marlowe Granados's Happy Hour. —DF
Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik [NF]
What it is: A dual portrait of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, who are so often compared to—and pitted against—each other on the basis of their mutual Los Angeles milieu.
Who it's for: Fans or haters of either writer (the book is fairly pro-Babitz, often at Didion's expense); anyone who has the Lit Hub Didion tote bag. —SMS
The Endless Refrain by David Rowell [NF]
What it's about: How the rise of music streaming, demonitizing of artist revenue, and industry tendency toward nostalgia have laid waste to the musical landscape, and the future of music culture.
Who it's for: Fans of Kyle Chayka, Spence Kornhaber, and Lindsay Zoladz. —SMS
Every Arc Bends Its Radian by Sergio De La Pava [F]
What it is: A mind- and genre-bending detective story set in Cali, Colombia, that blends high-stakes suspense with rigorous philosophy.
Who it's for: Readers of Raymond Chandler, Thomas Pynchon, and Jules Verne. —SMS
Something Close to Nothing by Tom Pyun [F]
What it’s about: At the airport with his white husband Jared, awaiting a flight to Cambodia to meet the surrogate mother carrying their adoptive child-to-be, Korean American Wynn decides parenthood isn't for him, and bad behavior ensues.
Who it’s for: Pyun’s debut is calculated to cut through saccharine depictions of queer parenthood—could pair well with Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby. —NodB
Rosenfeld by Maya Kessler [F]
What it is: Kessler's debut—rated R for Rosenfeld—follows one Noa Simmons through the tumultuous and ultimately profound power play that is courting (and having a lot of sex with) the titular older man who soon becomes her boss.
Who it's for: Fans of Sex and the City, Raven Leilani’s Luster, and Coco Mellor’s Cleopatra and Frankenstein. —DF
Lazarus Man by Richard Price [F]
What it is: The former The Wire writer offers yet another astute chronicle of urban life, this time of an ever-changing Harlem.
Who it's for: Fans of Colson Whitehead's Crook Manifesto and Paul Murray's The Bee Sting—and, of course, The Wire. —SMS
Stranger Than Fiction by Edwin Frank [NF]
What it is: An astute curveball of a read on the development and many manifestations of the novel throughout the tumultuous 20th century.
Who it's for: Readers who look at a book's colophon before its title. —JHM
Letters to His Neighbor by Marcel Proust, tr. Lydia Davis
What it is: A collection of Proust’s tormented—and frequently hilarious—letters to his noisy neighbor which, in a diligent translation from Davis, stand the test of time.
Who it's for: Proust lovers; people who live below heavy-steppers. —DF
Context Collapse by Ryan Ruby [NF]
What it is: A self-proclaimed "poem containing a history of poetry," from ancient Greece to the Iowa Workshop, from your favorite literary critic's favorite literary critic.
Who it's for: Anyone who read and admired Ruby's titanic 2022 essay on The Waste Land; lovers of poetry looking for a challenge. —SMS
How Sondheim Can Change Your Life by Richard Schoch [NF]
What it's about: Drama professor Schoch's tribute to Stephen Sondheim and the life lessons to be gleaned from his music.
Who it's for: Sondheim heads, former theater kids, end of list. —SMS
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer [NF]
What it is: 2022 MacArthur fellow and botanist Kimmerer, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, (re)introduces audiences to a flowering, fruiting native plant beloved of foragers and gardeners.
Who it’s for: The restoration ecologist in your life, along with anyone who loved Braiding Sweetgrass and needs a nature-themed holiday gift. —NodB
My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor by Homeless [F]
What it is: A pseudonymous, tenderly comic novel of blue whales and Golden Arches, mental illness and recovery.
Who it's for: Anyone who finds Thomas Pynchon a bit too staid. —JHM
Yoke and Feather by Jessie van Eerden [NF]
What it's about: Van Eerden's braided essays explore the "everyday sacred" to tease out connections between ancient myth and contemporary life.
Who it's for: Readers of Courtney Zoffness's Spilt Milk and Jeanna Kadlec's Heretic. —SMS
Camp Jeff by Tova Reich [F]
What it's about: A "reeducation" center for sex pests in the Catskills, founded by one Jeffery Epstein (no, not that one), where the dual phenomena of #MeToo and therapyspeak collide.
Who it's for: Fans of Philip Roth and Nathan Englander; cancel culture skeptics. —SMS
Selected Amazon Reviews by Kevin Killian [NF]
What it is: A collection of 16 years of Killian’s funniest, wittiest, and most poetic Amazon reviews, the sheer number of which helped him earn the rarefied “Top 100” and “Hall of Fame” status on the site.
Who it's for: Fans of Wayne Koestenbaum and Dodie Bellamy, who wrote introduction and afterword, respectively; people who actually leave Amazon reviews. —DF
Cher by Cher [NF]
What it is: The first in a two-volume memoir, telling the story of Cher's early life and ascendent career as only she can tell it.
Who it's for: Anyone looking to fill the My Name Is Barbra–sized hole in their heart, or looking for something to tide them over until the Liza memoir drops. —SMS
The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, tr. Philip Gabriel [F]
What it is: Murakami’s first novel in over six years returns to the high-walled city from his 1985 story "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" with one man's search for his lost love—and, simultaneously, an ode to libraries and literature itself.
Who it's for: Murakami fans who have long awaited his return to fiction. —DF
American Bulk by Emily Mester [NF]
What it's about: Reflecting on what it means to "live life to the fullest," Mester explores the cultural and personal impacts of America’s culture of overconsumption, from Costco hauls to hoarding to diet culture—oh my!
Who it's for: Lovers of sustainability; haters of excess; skeptics of the title essay of Becca Rothfeld's All Things Are Too Small. —DF
The Icon and the Idealist by Stephanie Gorton [NF]
What it is: A compelling look at the rivalry between Margaret Sanger, of Planned Parenthood fame, and Mary Ware Dennett, who each held radically different visions for the future of birth control.
Who it's for: Readers of Amy Sohn's The Man Who Hated Women and Katherine Turk's The Women of NOW; anyone interested in the history of reproductive rights. —SMS
December
Rental House by Weike Wang [F]
What it's about: Married college sweethearts invite their drastically different families on a Cape Code vacation, raising questions about marriage, intimacy, and kinship.
Who it's for: Fans of Wang's trademark wit and sly humor (see: Joan Is Okay and Chemistry); anyone with an in-law problem.
Woo Woo by Ella Baxter [F]
What it's about: A neurotic conceptual artist loses her shit in the months leading up to an exhibition that she hopes will be her big breakout, poking fun at the tropes of the "art monster" and the "woman of the verge" in one fell, stylish swoop.
Who it's for: Readers of Sheena Patel's I'm a Fan and Chris Kraus's I Love Dick; any woman who is grateful to but now also sort of begrudges Jenny Offil for introducing "art monster" into the lexicon (me). —SMS
Berlin Atomized by Julia Kornberg, tr. Jack Rockwell and Julia Kornberg [F]
What it's about: Spanning 2001 to 2034, three Jewish and downwardly mobile siblings come of age in various corners of the world against the backdrop of global crisis.
Who it's for: Fans of Catherine Lacey's Biography of X and Joshua Cohen's The Netanyahus. —SMS
Sand-Catcher by Omar Khalifah, tr. Barbara Romaine [F]
What it is: A suspenseful, dark satire of memory and nation, in which four young Palestinian journalists at a Jordanian newspaper are assigned to interview an elderly witness to the Nakba, the violent 1948 expulsion of native Palestinians from Israel—but to their surprise, the survivor doesn’t want to rehash his trauma for the media.
Who it’s for: Anyone looking insight—tinged with grim humor—into the years leading up to the present political crisis in the Middle East and the decades-long goal of Palestinian autonomy. —NodB
The Shutouts by Gabrielle Korn [F]
What it's about: In the dystopian future, mysteriously connected women fight to survive on the margins of society amid worsening climate collapse.
Who it's for: Fans of Korn's Yours for the Taking, which takes place in the same universe; readers of Becky Chambers and queer-inflected sci-fi. —SMS
What in Me Is Dark by Orlando Reade [NF]
What it's about: The enduring, evolving influence of Milton's Paradise Lost on political history—and particularly on the work of 12 revolutionary readers, including Malcom X and Hannah Arendt.
Who it's for: English majors and fans of Ryan Ruby and Sarah Bakewell—but I repeat myself. —SMS
The Afterlife Is Letting Go by Brandon Shimoda [NF]
What it's about: Shimoda researches the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, and speaks with descendants of those imprisoned, for this essay collection about the “afterlife” of cruelty and xenophobia in the U.S.
Who it’s for: Anyone to ever visit a monument, museum, or designated site of hallowed ground where traumatic events have taken place. —NodB
No Place to Bury the Dead by Karina Sainz Borgo, tr. Elizabeth Bryer [F]
What it's about: When Angustias Romero loses both her children while fleeing a mysterious disease in her unnamed Latin American country, she finds herself in a surreal, purgatorial borderland where she's soon caught in a power struggle.
Who it's for: Fans of Maríana Enriquez and Mohsin Hamid. —SMS
The Rest Is Silence by Augusto Monterroso, tr. Aaron Kerner [F]
What it is: The author of some of the shortest, and tightest, stories in Latin American literature goes long with a metafictional skewering of literary criticism in his only novel.
Who it's for: Anyone who prefers the term "palm-of-the-hand stories" to "flash fiction." —JHM
Tali Girls by Siamak Herawi, tr. Sara Khalili [F]
What it is: An intimate, harrowing, and vital look at the lives of girls and women in an Afghan mountain village under Taliban rule, based on true stories.
Who it's for: Readers of Nadia Hashimi, Akwaeke Emezi, and Maria Stepanova. —SMS
Sun City by Tove Jansson, tr. Thomas Teal [F]
What it's about: During her travels through the U.S. in the 1970s, Jansson became interested in the retirement home as a peculiarly American institution—here, she imagines the tightly knit community within one of them.
Who it's for: Fans of Jansson's other fiction for adults, much of which explores the lives of elderly folks; anyone who watched that documentary about The Villages in Florida. —SMS
Editor's note: We're always looking to make our seasonal book previews more useful to the readers, writers, and critics they're meant to serve. Got an idea for how we can improve our coverage? Tell me about it at sophia@themillions.com.
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Alana Massey Says Bitches: Be Crazy
New York-based culture writer Alana Massey summons ghosts and goddesses in her debut collection of essays, All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers. It’s the only party where you’ll find Lux Lisbon from The Virgin Suicides sashaying past Fiona Apple and Anjelica Huston. Massey regales readers with essays about these famous women using playful syntax and startling anecdotes to craft a collection both familiar and revelatory.
Massey spoke with The Millions by phone about her book, the allure of celebrity, and a reworked battle cry, “bitches: be crazy.”
The Millions: How do you feel about this thing that you have been obsessing over for the past year or so in different ways?
Alana Massey: I finished it in December 2015. I didn't look at it really again until maybe last summer...Then I didn't read the book in full until mid-November when I recorded the audio book. That was when I sat down and didn't just read it for the first time, but read it for an audience of people in a sound group -- who don't mean to look intimidating [but] they're staring at you talking your own words.
Next week it comes out and that's when the bigger kerfuffle around it happens. There are going to be straight reviews that have no emotional connection to it and are going to be completely based on the style and prose and the merits of my authority to tell certain stories this way. I understand that's going to come but the stuff that has happened so far has been so affirming.
My second book is overdue. I changed the deadline for it. I want so badly to have the full breadth of reactions to the first book [first] to make sure if there are glaring errors in the way I write or approach things, that I can make up for it in the second book. I do believe in feedback. I do believe that writing is a service in certain capacities. Some people write because they have a story inside them and they want to be creative people. They do it for their own artistic expression. Maybe it’s my Protestant blood for hundreds of years but I'm just like, “No. There should be use in it. It should help people. It should have an action item at the end even if that action item is 'think differently about yourself and others and be kind to women,'" which is a very shortened version of what I hope happens from [this book].
TM: That was sort of my take away with it. This book does tell a lot of different stories. Anything that has a personal element can be a little navel gaze-y. I think that this has an empowering overall message primarily to young women and women who are in their late-20s to mid-30s who grew up with a lot of the book’s subjects. I thought the essay on The Virgin Suicides was really helpful; that story resonated with me too -- their obsession with death, the way they were reduced down to plot devices to bring these anonymous men to maturation.
AM: I don't know if you had this experience of The Virgin Suicides, but I was obsessed with it as a teenager. I wanted to surrender to that narrative of just being a fantasy object in a teenage boy’s mind. Watching the movie later, I realized, “Oh no, I shouldn't want that. This shouldn't be written in a dreamy way. This is a tragic, horrible thing these boys are doing -- and not in a cute-horrible way. In a really insidious this-is-boys-in bootcamp-for-being-in-the-patriarchy kind of way.”
TM: Why do you think that it is young women are so drawn to these fucked-up characters, be it Lux from The Virgin Suicides or Sylvia Plath — or even Courtney Love? Why do you think we want to find some sort of identity in them? Why do we want to be like that?
AM: I think that so many of us feel like we have as much rage inside us as Courtney Love lets manifest in her life. We think we are the saddest girls in the world when we are sad.
The way that celebrity functions now...they have this exclusive deal with the elements in that they're special. They're different. Their skin glows differently. There is just something special and anointed about famous people. I feel like there are people -- like the Kardashians or people who get famous of their own volition, like Gigi Hadid and Bella Hadid. Justin Bieber started on YouTube. The idea of celebrity used to be that you could never be like these people. I think now it's more if you just have the right voice trainer and the right tummy tea and you use this makeup, you can absolutely be famous and glamorous and all of these things.
I think there is an impulse inside of us that's like if I just got angry enough and met the right rock star, I could be Courtney Love. My thing with Lux Lisbon was: I am definitely as sad as her and probably smarter than her. If I just get skinny enough, people will be in love with me the way they're in love with her -- and that was barrier to entry.
The way that people have responded to the book has been interesting in that there's been multiple reviews that say, "Oh, you know there is definitely some filler in these essays." I can handle criticism -- okay yeah, I know that some are stronger than others. But everyone I talk to is so certain that the essay they like the most is the strongest one. That's really heartening because it means people who do have those attachments are really gravitating to particular pieces. I think that that's what's exciting because what I hope happens is you came for the Britney and Winona but you stuck around for the Dolly Parton and the Anjelica Huston. You came for Amber Rose but you learned a lot about Nicki Minaj. That's important. I hope the entire universe of it is an opportunity for empathy and forgiveness both of the self and of the celebrities we have punished for things that are not punishable offenses.
TM: I had a couple of different favorite essays. I think that the ultimate favorite was one about the ex-girlfriends. I really, really appreciated the line about, “We like our ex-girlfriends and ex-wives one dimensional. We like them to act alone.” That really does call back to misogyny and the way it demonizes these women. You never hear shit about ex-boyfriends or ex-husbands in the same way that you hear it in the feminine sense. Why do you think that is? Is it just because of misogyny and the patriarchy?
AM: In the same way you hear about how women in the workplace are more likely to spearhead a project and credit their friends, their colleagues. "Oh, it wasn't all me. These people helped." I think that happens with women’s relationships, too. They don't lay 100 percent of the blame on their ex in a way that men do and have been taught is acceptable. I do think that misogyny does have this way it functions socially...I think this happens in the Winona Rider essay. Women are supposed to be characters in a hero narrative rather than themselves.
Because men are so routinely socially rewarded for basic decency that has always been the responsibility of women, they have a skewed sense of what kind of behaviors they are entitled to. When women butt up against those behaviors and say, "No, I'm not going to act this way. I'm going to assert my power." When we talk about a woman in a breakup, we catch her in her breaking point. We crystallize her in the moment she broke rather than in the long period of time before it got to the point that it got to. We forgive women less frequently.
We believe in the validity of male emotions more than we believe in validity of female emotions. We are a society that doubts women who report their own experiences of what a man was like or what an experience was like. That's rape culture, too. It functions across numerous variations on how relationships work. Maybe he's this. He's a good guy at heart...We make excuses for men left and right, back and forth. It's really not a courtesy we do to women...
If I was in a relationship and we broke up and I went into my bedroom and cried for a month and didn't eat but didn't bother my boyfriend or didn't talk shit about him...That is like a really unhealthy state of mental health. We don't call that woman crazy. We call her crazy when she calls out a man for what he did. We don't call her crazy if they break up and she moves to Paris and doesn't talk to him. It's only when she says, "Fuck you. You did a horrible thing. I'm getting back at you. I'm doing a thing. I'm asserting my power. I'm taking your money. I'm taking your land. I'm burning down your house because you have wrecked my life," that we consider them crazy because they are breaking the mold of we-don't-talk-about-what-men-do-wrong. We forgive men. We understand masculinity is complicated thing. These women are like, “Nope.” They have crossed this social line that they get punished for. That's why I view that essay as a battle cry. “Bitches be crazy” should have a colon in it. Go buck wild. Make them afraid that you will fucking tell on them -- that you will not go quietly because ill treatment is ill treatment.
TM: You said that you are already halfway through your second book. What's that about?
AM: I'm working on a reported narrative about the function of emotional language and how it informs gender experiences and perceptions in the workplace and what it could potentially mean for the future of the workplace given today's demographic.
TM: I think that the sentiment of men just wanting to be loved echoes in All the Lives I Want, as well -- speaking to your experiences dancing and with other sex work with these men who seem to want to be cradled. They want this intimacy. It was really interesting because like you had said before, society paints women as being the hyper-emotional ones, the ones that are weeping because they don't have a boyfriend. But men are the ones who are willing to even shell out money to have these experiences that feign intimacy while women are finding camaraderie with other female friends or other projects. It's interesting.
AM: We are so used to not getting what we want. We are kind of okay with it. We don't panic. I don't want give away everything that is in the upcoming book. Sex work is one of those ones that you have pretend so hard that you're not doing it for the money to the point that it becomes dangerous. You can make the most money pretending you don't want the money or you don't need the money or that, "Oh, it sucks that we met in these circumstances because I would totally be into you -- but we met in these circumstances, therefore, you have to keep paying me." Men really have become horrible about it.
Men are much more likely to believe sex work is not work. They don't want to believe that loving them is hard. They don't want to believe that it is laborious to engage with them. They believe their beating hearts are fascinating and that they should fascinate whomever they are fascinated by. They don't understand how ordinary they are. It's really dangerous for the person who encounters that person who has to keep up the lie for as long as they can.
They think they're the first person who ever wanted to connect with you. It's like, “Dude. look at me. I'm a hot young girl who can clearly string several sentences together. You're not the first one who thinks they know the real me.” They have such a concept of themselves as special.
The same thing happens in [the essay looking at Lost in Translation,] “Charlotte in Exile.” Guys thought, "Yeah. Bill Murray, what a cool, sexy guy that I want to be." I'm like. “He's a horrible husband and father--”
TM: Hasn't that also been the status quo, too? A lot of the sitcoms that we grew up with in the '90s starred a blubbering incoherent, overweight, kind-of-old dude married to this hot sharp lady who is just fawning over him.
AM: I mean, The Simpsons. How did Marge Simpson end up with Homer Simpson?
TM: Because a man wrote it.
AM: Yeah. I mean in the same way there's just so many of these stories that you hear about Maggie Gyllenhaal was told she was too old to play -- I think it was Harrison Ford's wife...It was preposterous...
I think it's really funny that, as much as I dislike Melania Trump, when she married Donald Trump and they were having a press conference some reporter was like, "Melania, would you be marrying Donald if he didn't have a ton of money?" Without missing a beat she was like, "Do you think he would be marrying me if I wasn't exceptionally beautiful?" She was very aware of that. There's this idea of the gold digger. It keeps coming back to the book where it is like, “Do you think that that old man who came into the strip club and who had been like a sharp business man -- made his billions, was involved with the Koch brothers -- do you think he went in there thinking that, 'Maybe these nice girls will think I'm attractive? Maybe we will really connect.’” That was transaction. A billionaire man always has more power then a young single mother. I don't care how brittle his bones are. He is the person who has power in that dynamic and the optics of it suggest otherwise.
TM: We talked a little bit about how you want women to walk away from reading this book feeling empowered, feeling less alone, feeling that they have been understood. How do you want men to walk away from this book? What do you hope that they take from it?
AM: It's interesting because I honestly thought men would really hate it. Then I have encountered several men who haven't...I have been using the word “forgiveness” a lot. I think that self-love has a really high threshold but that self-forgiveness is a more gentle way of being with yourself...When it comes to men, I want them, if they were people who have participated in contributing to the narratives of how we talk about celebrities and how we think celebrities but then also how that has been reflected in their personal lives, to see the body of evidence. When they return to relationships with women, whether those are romantic, friendly, professional, familial, and seeing why women felt a certain way, acted a certain way, and trying to better know the interior lives of women.
The impetus and expectation for women to be doing the introspection on behalf of themselves and on behalf of men is so unfair. I hope this book can be manual for being...Like case studies in here's why not to tell your girlfriend she could get her body back. Take Britney Spears. Here's why you shouldn't be calling an exceptionally angry woman who has been treated poorly crazy. Maybe anger is a rational response to the world...
I think celebrities are our modern-day fables. They don't just have to be cautionary tales. They can be instructions for better living. We know the stories. I think that right now we use the stories really haphazardly and really poorly when we could be using this really well to make the world more gentle and more empathetic and more rich with the full dimensions of women's experiences.
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