#elizabeth mccracken

[bookaddict24-7]

"The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder."

-Elizabeth McCracken

[mythoughttherapy]

"Truthfully, this is the fabric of all my fantasies: love shown not by a kiss or a wild look or a careful hand but by a willingness for research. I don't dream of someone who understands me immediately, who seems to have known me my entire life, who says, I know me too. I want someone keen to learn my own strange organization, amazed at what's revealed; someone who asks, and then what, and then what?”

—Elizabeth McCracken, The Giant's House

[becausegoodbye]

"If, despite everything, I began work on a memoir and wrote down everything I remember for sure about my life—all of my life—I might be able to assemble a pamphlet. If I wrote down everything I know about fiction: a second, smaller pamphlet. What I believe: it makes a difference how tall people are, how short, how much they weigh. How they move; how it feels to be them, temperature, hips, itch, swoon. Young writers sometimes catalog every thought and emotion of a character without knowing their weight or their gestures. But if you don't take your characters' bodies into account, your work is in danger of being populated by sentient, anguished helium balloons. I tell my students all the time, Don't forget your characters' physical selves. If your characters feel distant, remember their specific gravity on the earth. If you know what a character is doing with her hands, you might know what she's doing with her head. If you know her feet, you may know her soul."

Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

[writerly-ramblings]

Books Read in March:

1). Garments Against Women (Anne Boyer)

2). Our Spoons Came from Woolworths (Barbara Comyns)

3). Enter Ghost (Isabella Hammad)

4). During the Reign of the Queen of Persia (Joan Chase)

5). Animal, Vegetable, Junk (Mark Bittman)

6). The Gospel of Orla (Eoghan Walls)

7). State of Wonder (Ann Patchett)

8). Occasional Prose (Mary McCarthy)

9). The Hero of This Book (Elizabeth McCracken)

10). The Tea Ceremony (Gina Berriault)

11). Double Blind (Edward St. Aubyn)

12). Rapture (Susan Minot)

13). Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work (bell hooks)

14). The Friend Who Got Away (ed. Jenny Offill and Elissa Schappell)

15). The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood (Belle Boggs)

16). Birnam Wood (Eleanor Catton)

17). How to Think Like a Woman (Regan Penaluna)

[meghanmcc]

[bookquotesforthesoul]

I came to understand: Your family is the first novel that you know.

Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book

[wellesleybooks]

Another great list of books shortlisted for an award. First presented in 2016, the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award honors a work of fiction from the previous calendar year that speaks with an “American Voice” about American experiences. Congratulations to all the authors and their publishers.

[goodgriefnd]

"Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving." Elizabeth McCracken

I saw this quote today and I cannot find the source beyond the author, does anyone know the book it is from?

It really perfectly captures that isolating feeling in grief, where time seems to stop, where it all seems to still, yet the world, although may briefly acknowledge your loss, seems to just move on, to forget you in your grief.

[anokatony]

'The Hero of this Book' by Elizabeth McCracken – A “Novel” about her Mother

‘The Hero of this Book’ by Elizabeth McCracken – A “Novel” about her Mother

  ‘The Hero of this Book’ by Elizabeth McCracken     (2022) – 177 pages   We could all spend some time thinking about our mothers. Your birth mother, that woman who went through all that trouble to bring you into this world, surely deserves it. We love our mothers, and most of us could write nice things about them. If we couldn’t, it would probably make for a more interesting book. Elizabeth…

[weirwoodforest]

It was my mom’s birthday on Tuesday and I got a Sad Mom Grief Book that I heard about on the podcast Reading Glasses and I’m debating on starting it tonight but also I am Scared

[queer-ragnelle]

All three! Apologies. I want to learn as much as I can about him.

You got it!

The first text that Galahad appears in is the Vulgate. His predecessors and legacy are first described in The History of the Grail; then he’s conceived, born, and raised during the Lancelot books; finally in Post-Vulgate he’s a knight on Grail Quest where he achieves his life’s purpose and passes away. Additionally, here’s A Companion to The Lancelot-Grail Cycle which may help you navigate the text.

Another book I suggest for your Galahad research is The Legend of the Grail by Nigel Bryant and Norris J. Lacy. It’s got a lengthy introduction about the history of the Grail story and touches on all the characters who’ve achieved it throughout Arthurian literary history including Perceval, Gawain, and of course, Galahad. Each chapter is taken from a different text and newly translated by Nigel Bryant for this publication. It’ll give you an idea of the progression of the Grail story which eventually led to Galahad and introduce you to some adjacent texts that may be of interest.

The next medieval text that includes Galahad is La Tavola Ritonda. It’s mostly a Prose Tristan story, but does cover the whole Grail Quest with a fun Italian Galahad named Galeazzo/Galasso. I enjoy this one a lot! Regarding Galasso specifically, it’s an interesting take on the character—he’s described as very gracious and he wields a cool named sword. Plus his purity grants him necromancy powers—at one point he convenes with the dead and doesn’t bat an eye. Just keeps on adventuring. Focused. In his lane. Pretty neat!

After that comes probably the best known Arthurian text, Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. I’ve attached the version of this story abridged by Keith Baines. It’s much easier to read with proper formatting to add quotation marks to dialogue and tighten up the prose. This one also comes with A Companion to Malory which I found exceedingly helpful in breaking down the sometimes convoluted plot threads and character dynamics present in Malory’s story. Many of the essays I’ve attached below relate to this text specifically.

Lastly I would be remiss to exclude The Arthurian Handbook by the goats Norris J. Lacy and Geoffrey Ashe. This volume not only covers medieval texts, but much of the art history that goes hand in hand with Arthurian literature too. There are many paintings, tapestries, stained glass windows, and murals featuring Galahad highlighted in this book. It also includes family trees, heraldry, and maps which can help you conceptualize things detailed in writing throughout the Vulgate.

Now I’m going to list essays without descriptions since there are so many and the titles are pretty self explanatory.

Absent Fathers, Unexpected Sons: Paternity in Malory’s Morte Darthur by Cory Rushton

Born-Again Virgins and Holy Bastards: Bors and Elyne and Lancelot and Galahad by Karen Cherwatuk

Constructing Spiritual Hierarchy through Mass Attendance in the Morte Darthur by David Eugene Clark

Disarming Lancelot by Elizabeth Scala

Galahad, Percival, and Bors: Grail Knights and the Quest for Spiritual Friendship by Richard Sévère

'A Mayde, and Last of Youre Blood': Galahad's Asexuality and its Significance in Le Morte Darthur by Megan Arkenberg

Gender and the Grail by Maureen Fries

Malory and Rape by Catherine Batt

Mothers in the Grail Quest: Desire, Pleasure, and Conception by Peggy McCracken

Seeing Is Believing and Achieving: Viewing the Eucharist in Malory's 'Sankgreal' by Sarah B. Rude

Wounded Masculinity: Injury and Gender in Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte Darthur" by Kenneth Hodges

And that about covers it! This should give you plenty to work with. Beyond these, we’re left with literature outside the medieval era, which is a different conversation. No doubt Alfred Lord Tennyson had a huge influence on how Galahad is perceived today, but that’s irrelevant to a discussion regarding medieval source material, and a topic for another time. Hope this helps you out and you learn all you want to about Galahad!

Take care!

[gawrkin]

Arthur's Affairs by Peggy McCracken

(Found in The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend, by Elizabeth Archibald)

Courtly Love in Action, for Arthur this time...

[...]

[...]

Ms. McCracken asking the real questions here

[mumblingsage]

Speaking of book recommendations after I just shared a post of them...one of the ladies I volunteered with had a shit year a few years back, losing her son and other family members. With my sympathy card I sent her a typed list of books on grief and grieving that had helped me after losing Theriac (Joanne Cacciatore's Bearing the Unbearable, Louis LaGrande's Healing Grief, Finding Peace: 101 Ways to Cope with the Death of Your Loved One, and Raymond Moody's Life After Loss are all pretty short, accessible, and offer a board first aid kit. Also, you could do worse than to grab some of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's lectures.). Apparently it really helped her, and this past weekend she told me she still had the list and passed it on to a relative of hers who lost her husband this year.

Not all of the advice in every book is going to help; there are some aspects of grief I doubt any book can actually help with. But the recommendations are successful, I'd guess, because a) reading can occupy your mind when you're grieving (and you might as well read about grief because you're not going to be distracted from it), b) learning something new helps people feel more in control of their life & environment and can offer a sense of hope, c) even if the recipient never reads any of the books, being given a book list is a way to say "I care about you and want to help" which is a good message to send. From my own grief experience I also think it's especially powerful to hear "I went through something similar to you and this is what helped me" - it's proof there's life on the other side.

Anyway, 2 more book recs for 2 quite different end-of-life outcomes, which I think you should ideally read before any of your loved ones die so you can actually use the information (also, honestly? Very helpful writing research):

Final Journeys and Final Gifts by Maggie Callanan -- a hospice nurse's guide to the kinds of decisions, conflicts, and sometimes puzzling behavior and experiences encountered when a loved one is in palliative care. Journeys is the more broadly practical book (from the 'writing research' perspective, it also offers some great examples of conflict, memorable scenes, and psychology insights); Gifts looks particularly at spiritual experiences at the end of life, including end of life visions (which happen to all kinds of people and can be a good thing to be prepared for regardless of your own spiritual beliefs). If Gifts proves fascinating, a more recent book on the subject of end of life experiences is Death is But a Dream.

I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye: Surviving, Coping and Healing After the Sudden Death of a Loved One is for the opposite end of experience, where a loss is abrupt and unexpected. It offers advice, myth-busting, and real-life stories from people who are bereaved through suicide, crime, and accidents. I recommend this for everyone because 1) It could happen to you (speaking as someone it's happened to multiple times) and having some knowledge ahead of time will not make it less painful, but could make it less bewildering, 2) It could happen to your loved ones, friends, and co-workers, and you can be more supportive with some knowledge, 3) Back to writing research: this book's information on myth-busting, how grief affects children at different ages, tips for coping when a loved one's' death is part of a tragedy that brings media attention, and vivid examples of the various ways real people have responded to grief can make you a more accurate writer. And I'll be honest, as someone who's Been There, when I read a book that was clearly written by an author who hasn't Been There and hasn't even tried to figure out what it's like, it's ranges from annoying to offensive to actively painful. [Also, if you want to do better at understanding+ depicting grief, read grief memoirs: Elizabeth McCracken's An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination is about miscarriage but resonated so strongly with my very different grief experiences, so I think it's tapping into something, if not universal, at least very broad; Sonali Deraniyagala's Wave, about the loss of multiple generations of her family in the Boxing Day tsunami, manages to depict events and feelings that verge on the indescribable.]

[bleachbleachbleach]

Reading Update

Not Bleach-related, but since this is where I've been putting my writing updates, in my mind it's also where my reading ones should go. I basically only get to read things May-August, so I've been on a tear. But I keep reading things I don't end up liking? Which, HELP. WHY.

It makes me feel like such a hater, or someone who's too closed-off to things outside of my expectations that I automatically, anti-intellectually hate it, but then I'm like, okay, but I have not picked up a single fanfic this year that I did not think was brilliant. I have seen three movies this year I thought were brilliant (Fancy Dance, Evil Does Not Exist, and the Haikyuu movie, the last of which is definitely 100% like the other two)! I have read a lot of really fantastic article-length creative nonfiction that I also found brilliant!

MAYBE I JUST DON'T LIKE BOOKS.

Books I Really Liked

The Souvenir Museum - Elizabeth McCracken

Flux - Jinwoo Chong

Run Me To Earth - Paul Yoon

Shadow Life - Hiromi Goto

I know I just said "not Bleach-related," I actually think some Bleach folks would be into a lot of these, depending on where your specific interests within Bleach lie.

The Souvenir Museum had fabulous character work, and I love what I'm beginning to feel is something signature about McCracken, in that most of these stories were realist New England fiction and then out of the blue she slid one in there that was sorta-supernatural and also about cannibalism. Love that for her! Love that for me.

Flux is a speculative time travel thriller, but where it stands out is how much trust it places in its audience to follow along and hop in medias res with all these characters and premises. There's no extraneous exposition or explainers; it just drops you in the deep end and it's so much fun. There's also a lot in this book that is about TV and fandom and while I usually find it hard to buy into depictions of these things this book gets it so, so right for me. And the dialogue is fantastically tight and snappy and so full of life--I loved Part 1 in particular, and the book is worth it just for that!

Run Me To Earth is beautiful. Trenchant, haunting. Each character feels like a small poem, living and breathing and doing their best to avoid unexploded ordinances while riding a motorbike. And bonus Inuzuri vibes for me

(And Shadow Life I already talked about here. That's the one where a lady traps Death inside of her vacuum cleaner.)

Books I Am Actively Annoyed By

All That’s Left Unsaid - Tracey Lien

Your Driver is Waiting - Priya Guns

The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu - Tom Lin

AKA "maybe I just don't like genre fiction." These were a mystery, lesbian thriller, and western, respectively, and the whole time I was basically like, "we're really just doing this, huh?" In each of these, the character work wasn't strong enough to make the story, and I guess from each I expected more critical engagement with the genre? And not "we're going to un-self-consciously depict and then slaughter a bunch of bloodthirsty Indians because THAT'S WHAT WESTERNS DO." These were all books that sounded theoretically interesting to me but in practice were very not.

Nonfiction That I Wish Had Been Better

Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals - Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Dear Elia - Mimi Khuc

What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape - Sohaila Abdulali

Mott Street - Ava Chin

How to Read Now, Elaine Castillo

Eating Wildly - Ava Chin [DNF]

I think I'm just a pop nonfiction hater, because my issue with all of these is that they often felt like too-superficial treatments of their subject or seemed extremely (sometimes intentionally) undercited. Multiple of these kept making assertions about having developed an original thesis/practice or never having seen X in the world, when that's simply not true. These just make me think about all of the stylistically brilliant, incredibly thoughtful creative nonfiction being published online/in magazines, and how pale these book-length treatments feel in comparison.

(Almost) Everything Else

River East, River West - Aub Rey Lescure (this is the Naruto hentai book)

Our Missing Hearts - Celeste Ng

I Would Meet You Anywhere - Susan Ito

Tea: History, Terroirs, Varieties - Kevin Gascoyne

Bowlaway - Elizabeth McCracken

Book I Could Not Physically Read Because I Hated it So Much I Couldn't Stand It

The Leftover Woman, Jean Kwok

Future Reads

Four Treasures of the Sky - Jenny Zhang

Pnin - Vladimir Nabokov

Miko Kings, LeAnne Howe

A Bestiary - Lily Hoang

[czolgosz]

i went to a used book sale today... procured:

railroad color history: new york central railroad (brian solomon & mike schafer) — i'm not actually that into trains but it appealed to me.

the complete guide to the soviet union (jennifer louis & victor louis) — travel guide from 1980

an anthology including the big sleep (raymond chandler), "the undignified melodrama of the bone of contention" (dorothy l. sayers), "the arrow of god" (leslie charteris), "i can find my way out" (ngaio marsh), instead of evidence (rex stout), "rift in the loot" (stuart palmer & craig rice), "the man who explained miracles" (john dickson carr), & rebecca (daphne du maurier) (i already have this one..) — it's volume 2 of something (a treasury of great mysteries) which annoys me but whatever

an anthology including "godmother tea" (selena anderson), "the apartment" (t. c. boyle), "a faithful but melancholy account of several barbarities lately committed" (jason brown), "sibling rivalry" (michael byers), "the nanny" (emma cline), "halloween" (mariah crotty), "something street" (carolyn ferrell), "this is pleasure" (mary gaitskill), "in the event" (meng jin), "the children" (andrea lee), "rubberdust" (sarah thankam mathews), "it's not you" (elizabeth mccracken), "liberté" (scott nandelson), "howl palace" (leigh newman), "the nine-tailed fox explains" (jane pek), "the hands of dirty children" (alejandro puyana), "octopus vii" (anna reeser), "enlightenment" (william pei shih), "kennedy" (kevin wilson), & "the special world" (tiphanie yanique) — i guess they're all short stories published in 2020 by usamerican/canadian authors

an anthology including the death of ivan ilyich (leo tolstoy) (i have already read this one..), the beast in the jungle (henry james), heart of darkness (joseph conrad), seven who were hanged (leonid andreyev), abel sánchez (miguel de unamuno), the pastoral symphony (andré gide), mario and the magician (thomas mann), the old man (william faulkner), the stranger (albert camus), & agostino (alberto moravia)

the ambassadors (henry james)

the world book desk reference set: book of nations — it's from 1983 so this is kind of a history book...

yet another fiction anthology......... including the general's ring (selma lagerlöf), "mowgli's brothers" (rudyard kipling), "the gift of the magi" (o. henry) (i have already read this one..), "lord mountdrago" (w. somerset maugham), "music on the muscatatuck" (jessamyn west), "the pacing goose" (jessamyn west), "the birds" (daphne du maurier), "the man who lived four thousand years" (alexandre dumas), "the pope's mule" (alphonse daudet), "the story of the late mr. elvesham" (h. g. wells), "the blue cross" (g. k. chesterton), portrait of jennie (robert nathan), "la grande bretèche" (honoré de balzac), "love's conundrum" (anthony hope), "the great stone face" (nathaniel hawthorne), "germelshausen" (friedrich gerstäcker), "i am born" (charles dickens), "the legend of sleepy hollow" (washington irving), "the age of miracles" (melville davisson post), "the long rifle" (stewart edward white), "the fall of the house of usher" (edgar allan poe) (i have already read this one..), the voice of bugle ann (mackinlay kantor), the bridge of san luis rey (thornton wilder), "basquerie" (eleanor mercein kelly), "judith" (a. e. coppard), "a mother in mannville" (marjorie kinnan rawlings), "kerfol" (edith wharton), "the last leaf" (o. henry), "the bloodhound" (arthur train), "what the old man does is always right" (hans christian anderson), the sea of grass (conrad richter), "the sire de malétroit's door" (robert louis stevenson), "the necklace" (guy de maupassant) (i have already read this one..), "by the waters of babylon" (stephen vincent benét), a. v. laider (max beerbohm), "the pillar of fire" (percival wilde), "the strange will" (edmond about), "the hand at the window" (emily brontë) (i have already read this one..), & "national velvet" (enid bagnold) — why are seven of these chapters of novels....? anyway fun fact one of the compilers here also worked on the aforementioned mystery anthology. also anyway Why did i bother to write all that ☹️

fundamental problems of marxism (georgi plekhanov) — book about dialectical/historical materialism which is published here as the first volume of something (marxist library) which is kind of odd to me tbh

one last (thankfully tiny) anthology including le père goriot (honoré de balzac) & eugénie grandet (honoré de balzac)

[bookquotesforthesoul]

I missed my mother. I mean, I kept missing her, but in a theater the missing took on a bodily quality.

Elizabeth McCracken, The Hero of This Book