Did you put me in your book?
Sigrid Nunez on memory, Emmeline Clein on anorexia, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on exile at the Ritz
This week at Public Seminar, we’re reading books that affirm and complicate our sense of self. Josephine Houman shares a personal response to Emmeline Clein’s Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm. Albert Nguyen charts a walking tour of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s homesick life in New York City. And Chloe Cheimets reviews The Vulnerables, Sigrid Nunez’s novel on reading and remembering in the pandemic.
The Little Prince Haunts New York
Albert Nguyen
To most New Yorkers dressing up extravagantly for the holiday season, the war I still live with is a relic—even as it plays out in the everyday lives of Vietnamese New Yorkers. I was troubled by the thought that the divisive war might be a relic of the past, when for me, it is very much alive. I can imagine Saint-Exupéry feeling something very similar, watching an indifferent city go by.
Forget This Book
Chloe Cheimets
The tension between the slipperiness of our memory for events and the stubbornness of our feelings about them is ripe material for a pandemic novel. In describing a writer sheltering in New York City, Nunez captures both the parade of bizarre incidents during COVID-19, and the collective sense of confusion and unease. The Vulnerables is both an attempt to pin down a moment in time, and a rumination on how tricky such an attempt can be.
The Hunger Artist
Josephine Houman
*Please note that this review contains extensive discussion of eating disorders.
During the decade that I battled anorexia, every morning would start the same way: still in bed and lying on my back, I would draw symmetrical circles with my fingers around my protruding hip bones, mentally measuring and rejoicing in just how concave the valley of my stomach was after a night’s sleep. I would wrap my right fingers around my left wrist: thumb and index finger connecting first, then thumb and middle finger, thumb and ring finger, thumb and little finger. My left fingers would follow suit, checking the circumference of my right wrist, the anxiety diminishing with each overlapping pair of fingers. I would bend my legs, my knees leaning into one another, as I placed two knuckles, side by side, between my thighs. Thank god, they still fit.