There's something terrible about the way normality asserts itself. About the way that summer insists on happening.
"Flesh" by David Szalay did not grip me for most of it. I did not love it. Part of it may be a resistance to identifying with Istvan, the main character. A person isolated, stumbling from one thing to put his dick into another. Failing upward, then returning indifferently to a baseline.
There is part of a chapter toward the end that unbottled it for me. "Flesh" is the story of Istvan, a Hungarian who moves through life in that classic sturdy oak way. Stoic to a fault, the book relays countless conversations of people saying "Okay" to each other as a way of touching one another like signposts on opposite sides of the road.
And yet, when Istvan's son, who is only ten (too young for pornography, his parents think) is caught tossing a porno mag into the trees after being asked what's under his shirt by his curious father, it clued me into something that was there the whole time. This stoicism, male reticence to connection, an intentional aloofness when it comes to emotion.
It reminded me of my dad at my mom's funeral. My aunt had given me a heads up. She's chatty. "I find it doesn't really hit me until I see the casket. Lying there." She was filling the quiet as we drove to the funeral home in downtown Cloquet. Not wrong, though. I turned into the room and there she was, in that box, lying there. The last few times I'd seen her she had a brace on her wrist (zoom, texted photos), having fallen in an icy parking area few months before her death. I was overwhelmed, and said I was sorry to my dad. Sorry for his loss. He patted me on the shoulder and said "That's right." Like he couldn't even accept that this was happening to him. Yes, look at her, there she is. Mom is dead. Okay.
The book moves on from his son and wife shortly thereafter, an illustration of the pattern in male pattern masculinity, I guess. I didn't find it particularly interesting. But is this a Flaubertesque hat trick? He's reflecting me back to myself and I'm saying I don't like it. It must be the sexuality that turns me off about Istvan, makes me fear identifying with him. I can be such a prude.
This has got me thinking of Minneapolis, and how much I admire my friends in the fight. Posting "Ice Out" messages, praising Alex Pretti and Renee Good without hesitation. In the wake of the Kirk assassination, I'd thought of an essay. Surely After Kirk would be a good title? And how had things changed? There's a latent narcissism when it comes my writing, I think. I can tell Eugene that it's about expression, but I've been so stuck up in my head with regard to writing for so long (since mom died, really). Going over the same short story, looking for the hook that will unlock it for me. I went so far as to start a totally different novel in search of the hook. the last puzzle piece that will make this project I've been writing for 14 years now make sense.
What changed, after 𝖪̶𝗂̶𝗋̶𝗄̶? The narcissism mutated into a self-censorship. I can't possibly draw too much attention to myself, and what could I possibly say that would draw such attention? Nobody reads this. And yet somehow, the desire to impose an erasure upon myself wins out.
The quote above, from "Flesh", about normality asserting itself, applies to a post Kirk world. You see images of JD Vance and Erika Kirk in her pleather pants and the upholstery rights itself – tight! firm! attention!
Then again, this notion of summer and its inevitability. I look at Minnesota and I'm not so sure about that. The fighting and resistance against a very real and insidious menace. Minnesota gives me a measure of hope. You can't ask more from home.
