No One Belongs Here More Than You

Human yearning for affection and validation is a relatable topic again and again. The short stories are very much gorgeous in their sadness, but on occasion they flip from pathetic characters to reprehensible ones: “The Sister” (about one man into teenage girls and one into the other man, who leads him on with the promise of a teen sister and feeds him xtc to get him in his bed) made me sick to my stomach to an extent that I can't remember any book doing, which I suppose isn't the worst compliment I could give. Beyond that, topics like sex work and deformity aren't necessarily tackled as well as race and sexuality, so less than perfect in terms of woke points, which is still more than we can expect from most literature.

This quote for me seems to embody the thread connecting each of the stories:

“You seem incredibly faraway to me, like someone on the other side of a lake. A dot so small that it isn't male or female or young or old; it is just smiling.”

A yearning for connection, despite ultimately untraversable separation. Regardless of the fixation on desperation, Miss July has a way with words.

“The interesting thing about Positive is that it never mentions HIV. If it weren't for the advertisements-Retrovir, Sustiva, Viramune-you would think it was a magazine about staying positive, as in upbeat. For this reason it is my favorite magazine. All the other ones build you up just to knock you down, but the editors at Positive understand that you have already been knocked down, again and again, and at this point you really don't need to fail a quiz called “Are you so sexy or just so-so?” Positive prints lists of ways to feel better, kind of like “Hints from Heloise.” They seem easy to write, but that's the illusion of all good advice. Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself.”

and a personal favorite:

“...letting go of mammalian pride.”

‰ЫПI hated my job, but I liked that I could do it. I had once believed in a precious inner self, but now I didn‰ЫЄt. I had thought that I was fragile, but I wasn‰ЫЄt.‰Ыќ

‰ЫПWe grew still and stared at each other. It seemed incredibly dangerous to look into each other‰ЫЄs eyes, but we were doing it. For how long can you behold another person? Before you have to think of yourself again, like dipping the brush back in for more ink. For a very long time; you didn‰ЫЄt need to get more ink, there was no reason to get anything else, because she was as good as me, she lived on earth like me, she suffered as I did. It was she who looked away and pulled the sheet to her chin.‰Ыќ

Miranda July needs to go and get the pretentious teenager edited out of her by some creative writing professsors. The girl's got potential – her style is great, and I feel like I'd enjoy reading her... IF she stopped writing about one-note caricatures of broken women lamenting their tortured lives and wallowing in quirky, edgy activities to make their time move faster.

It's like reading MySpace. It's got about the same depth and meaning.

I really love Miranda July's writing but many of these stories were so aimless and too often over before I could grasp what I was supposed to take away from them. There were definitely a few that I liked (i.e. the longer ones) and I would definitely be interested to pick up some of her long form work.