Volume 1, No. 40: Obsessions + Baci di Alassio
Volume 1, No. 40: Obsessions + Baci di Alassio
Greetings, book and treat people! It is week two of Cookie Extravaganza. Here’s your weekly peek into Cookie Headquarters:
As a reminder, it’s not to late to take my reader survey! I’d love to hear from you.
It seems fitting to send out a newsletter about obsessions while in the midst of one of my own obsessions (cookies, obviously). These books are about the things that consume the authors and characters. What they can’t stop thinking about, what they return to again and again and again. There’s a well-known piece of writing advice: write about your obsessions. I don't know where it comes from or if a particular person coined it, but I get it. The things that fascinate us endlessly often make great stories.
The Books
Backlist: The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (Memoir, sort of, 2016)
This is not so much a book about obsessions (although, certainly, it is) as it is a book about what is reveled when you look at something over and over and over, from many, often contradictory, angles. It’s about the process of examining—self, thought, the world—and examining carefully, methodically, with intensity.
On one surface, it’s a memoir about Nelson meeting and falling in love with her partner, their decision to have a child, Nelson’s pregnancy, and the birth and first year of her son’s life. On another surface, it’s a mediation on queer family making and queer and trans relationships in general. On another surface, it’s a literary reaction to the many writers, artists, philosophers, and psychologists who have influenced Nelson throughout her life. On another surface, it’s a queer feminist critique of traditional gender roles. On another surface, it’s an exploration of the nature of identity.
It’s a hard book to read and it stretched my brain in all the best ways. I read it slowly and carefully; even so, there were moments where the meaning eluded me; passages that required a context I didn’t have. This isn’t a critique, but praise: this is a book that’s worth the challenge, and one I’ll come back to again and again.
The book, as I read it, is about becoming. Nelson argues eloquently that the human condition is one of constant, ever-changing, evolving becoming, that we are always in motion, and that identity is not static, despite the fact that we insist on building binaries and punishing those who dare to live outside of them.
Over and over, in many different contexts, she explores this idea of becoming. She writes about her own identities and the identities of her partner, and the ways that, for both of them, these identities are constantly shifting. Being trans, being queer, being a mother, a parent, a partner—these identities, like all identities—can be understood as states of becoming. They are not static, stationary, final, but dynamic, fluid, malleable.
Much of the book concerns outward shifts in identity, and the disconnect between how those shifts feel to the person living them, and how they are perceived and defined by the world. When writing about the vastness of trans identity, Nelson asks, “how to explain, in a culture frantic for resolution, that sometimes the shit stays messy? How to explain that for some, or for some at some times, this irresolution is ok—desirable, even—whereas for others, or for others at some times, it stays a source of conflict or grief?”
Throughout the scope of the book, Nelson and her partner Harry, meet and fall in love. The two of them become partners. Nelson gets pregnant. Harry transitions. They become parents. She examines and catalogues these shifts with beauty and grace.
About the experience of being pregnant while her partner undergoes top surgery, she writes:
On the surface it may have seemed as though your body was becoming more and more “male”, mine, more and more “female”. But that’s not how it felt on the inside. On the inside, we were two human animals undergoing transformations beside each other, bearing each other loose witness. In other words, we were aging.
About finding out the sex of her child:
As my body made the male body, I felt the difference between male and female body melt even further away. I was making a body with a difference, but a girl body would have been a different body, too. The principal difference was that the body I made would eventually slide out of me and be its own body.
Nelson deftly dispenses with the idea that humans come in one of two genders, or that particular experiences can only be matched with particular identities. “Indeed,” she writes “one of the gifts of genderqueer family making—and animal loving—is the revelation of care-taking as detachable from—and attachable to— any gender, any sentient being.”
To be human is to hold a shifting identity. But accepting that truth is difficult for so many of us, perhaps because we live in a culture obsessed with the idea of arrival—that illusive state where we will finally become who we were meant to be. Nelson understands that, beyond our entry into this world and our exit out of it, there is no absolute arrival. If we stop thinking about identity as something with an endpoint, it’s much easier celebrate the beautiful messiness of the journey.
“The presumptuousness of it all,” Nelson writes. “On the one hand, the Aristotelian, perhaps evolutionary, need to put everything into categories—predator, twilight, edible—on the other, the need to pay homage to the transitive, the flight, the great soup of being in which we actually live.”
The Argonauts is a smart and powerful exploration of that great soup of being where we actually live, in all our contradictory, imperfect, and glorious becoming.
As I wrote this, I realized that I’ve focused, somewhat, on my own obsessions: the identities we hold and their endless malleability; the absurdity of heteronormative boxes. This is another thing I love about this book: someone else could have written a review that mentioned almost none of these things, that focused instead on psychology, or motherhood, or the book’s unusual hybrid structure, or its literary criticism aspects. There is so much here.
Frontlist: The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel (Graphic Memoir)
I didn’t plan for this newsletter to feature two authors who are so deeply enmeshed in queer literary culture, but here we are. This book is much more directly about obsessions than The Argonauts. It’s a chronological record of Bechdel’s life, by decade. She uses her obsessions with various sports, exercise regimes, and outdoor activities as a lens through which to explore her work, relationships, and inner life. Her fascination with exercise (in many different forms) acts as the memoir’s backbone, a jumping-off point. She veers off on all sorts of tangents, and though a good chunk of the book is outward-facing, she always comes back to her own relationship with the physical world, and her physical body in the world.
Yes, she writes about cycling, cross-country skiing, team sports, LL Bean and the rise of outdoor gear, and many other forms of physical activity and exercise-related phenomena. But the book isn’t so much about exercise as it is about examining an obsession in order to better understand the self. It’s about creativity and aging and seeking. It’s about the various spiritual and emotional holes that Bechdel has attempted to fill with exercise—sometimes successfully, sometimes disastrously.
Like her other books, this one is full of the words and thoughts of various artists, thinkers, and writers. She’s mostly interested in Jack Kerouac, the Romantic poets (particularly Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy), the transcendentalists, and several Buddhist teachers and philosophers. I found some of these deep-dives into history and philosophy more interesting than others, but Bechdel’s own interest in them is fascinating on its own. I enjoyed reading about Margaret Fuller, but even more, I enjoyed reading about Bechdel’s relationship with Fuller’s work. It’s a real pleasure to watch her untangle her own thoughts, to get to witness the way she engages with poets, writers, and artists who have come before her. This is something I’ve come to appreciate in all of Bechdel’s books. She’s so interested in her own thought process, in analyzing not only her emotions and past experiences, but why she thinks the way she does. Why certain books or writers or schools of thought or forms of exercise have been so influential to her identity. Why she keeps returning to the same questions, again and again.
All of these intellectual musings on bodies and minds and the connections between the spiritual and the physical makes this a hefty and satisfying read. But it’s also a deeply moving memoir. I wasn’t expecting to be so moved by it. It’s powerful to see Bechdel’s whole life laid out like this. She takes us through each decade, from childhood through to her late 50s. Each chapter explores fitness and exercise—both whatever Bechdel was into at the time, and broader cultural trends (exercise videos, spin class, Crossfit). She write about how these various trends show up in her life, and so the book reads, partly, like a personal history of various American fitness industries (many of them disturbing and extractive).
But all of this fitness talk is only the backdrop. Mostly, she writes about her life. Her family, her relationships, her writing career, aging, all the change she’s experienced over the years. Both Fun Home and Are You My Mother? are books with an intense, narrow focus. This one is broad; a snapshot taken with a wide-angle lens.
Bechdel’s work has meant a lot to me. Pieces of her previous books show up in this one. The hard parts of writing those books show up. Her creative process shows up. Getting to luxuriate in this longer story she’s chosen to tell about her life—a story about the work she’s made and the places and people she’s loved, about her joys and uncertainties and weird obsessions and inner turmoil—it hit me right in the heart.
Upcoming: The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka (Fiction, Knopf, February 22)
It’s been ten years since Otsuka’s last book, the brilliant The Buddha in the Attic, so when I heard she had a new one coming out, I may or may not have done a little dance.
Here’s the opening of The Swimmers:
The pool is located deep underground, in a large cavernous chamber many feet beneath the streets of our town. Some of us come here because we are injured, and need to heal. We suffer from bad backs, fallen arches, shattered dreams, broken hearts, anxiety, melancholia, anhedonia, the usual aboveground afflictions.
I immediately knew I was in the hands of a master. This is how I felt after reaindg the opening paragraph of The Buddha in the Attic. There’s something about the way Otsuka makes sentences that takes my breath, every time. Her writing is so assured. Every word, the perfect word. Every string of words, a beautiful song. Each paragraph, a small world. This book did not go where I expected it to go, not once. It spun off in so many directions. 159 pages, infinite stories. It’s into split into five chapters, and each each chapter reinvents the whole book. It is, at times, extremely disorienting.
But Otsuka is there, the whole time, quietly guiding the reader along. She never wavers. She knows where she’s going. All I could do was sink in and let the book wash over me in waves. Each change in POV a delicious shock; each new wrinkle in the plot a small revelation, a small heartbreak; every subtle redirection a bracing jolt.
The book opens in the second person plural. It’s collectively narrated by a group of recreational swimmers who all belong to the same community pool. They are all obsessed with their swimming routines and the pool itself. Then a mysterious crack appears in the bottom of the pool, and they begin to worry what it means: will they have to give up their beloved laps? As the pool officials try to determine the origin of the crack, the swimmers keep swimming. But the looming presence of the crack becomes harder and harder to ignore.
Then the POV switches and narrows, zooming in on one of the swimmers, Alice, an elderly Japanese American woman in the early stages of dementia. This is only the first of several switches in structure and POV. With each one, the book becomes something else. It is both subtle and stark. It is mesmerizing and heartbreaking, a novel that’s continually shapeshifting into a new story.
I won’t give you any details about all of these beautiful shifts. This book is an excavation, an act of discovery, a thing that it reveals itself only as it is being made. It’s about memory and the absence of memory. It’s about how we see ourselves and how others see us, about knowing and unknowing, about mothers and daughters and the ordinary magic of routines. It’s about swimming laps, and aging, and loneliness. It’s about what makes a person. I’m still untangling all the threads of this startling novel, and I expect I will be for a long time to come.
It’s out on February 22nd and you can preorder it here.
The Bake
This is one of the first cookies I ever made for Cookie Extravaganza, back in 2016. I’ve been making it every year since, because I am obsessed. It’s the perfect cookie: chewy and nutty and chocolatey. I always make a double batch now so that I have enough to keep for myself.
Baci di Alassio
These are delightfully chewy cookies made with hazelnut flour, cocoa, and egg whites, and sandwiched together with a creamy chocolate ganache.
Ingredients:
8 ounces hazelnut flour, toasted (You can either grind hazelnuts in a food processor or buy pre-ground flour. Either way, spread the flour on a baking tray and toast for 8-10 minutes at 325 before using.)
35 grams (1/3 cup) cocoa powder
250 grams (1 1/4 cups) sugar
3 egg whites
pinch of salt
2 Tbs honey
1/3 cup heavy cream
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
Preheat the oven to 350. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Make the cookies: In a medium bowl, combine the hazelnut flour, cocoa powder, and sugar.
Using a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, or handheld beaters, beat the egg whites and salt on medium high speed until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the hazelnut mixture into the egg whites, followed by the honey. This will take a little while. You’ll end up with a relatively stiff dough, but it should be pipeable.
Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a medium fluted tip (or cut the tip off a ziplock bag and use that). Pipe small rounds, about 1-inch in diameter, onto the prepared baking sheets. They don’t expand much, but leave a little space between cookies. Bake for 15 minutes, until just firm. Let the sheets cool on a wire rack.
Make the ganache and assemble: Put the chopped chocolate in a small heatproof bowl. Heat the cream in a small saucepan over medium heat; remove when small bubbles start to form around the edges of the pan, just before it boils. Pour it over the chocolate and whisk until smooth and shiny. Let cool for 15 minutes in the fridge or 30 minutes at room temperature. Keep an eye on it—you want it thicken up enough to spread easily, but if you let it go too long it while get too thick.
Using a clean piping bag (or another ziplock), pipe a small dollop of ganache onto the bases of half the cookies. Sandwich with the remaining cookies, pressing lightly to seal. Let sit at room temperature (or in the fridge) until the ganache is fully set.
The Bowl & The Beat
The Bowl: Classic Roasted Roots
These simple roasted roots always remind me of being a farmer in my twenties, discovering the deep joy of cooking. I don’t make roasted roots like this that often anymore. I’m more inclined to roast a particular root with a particular seasoning. But I was obsessed with this dish for a while. There were a few winters where, in my memory at least, I basically subsisted on these roots. I made a big batch last week and it made me immediately nostalgic. This is comfort food, food that reminds me what it felt like to be a young person newly enamored with cooking and sharing food, and with the pleasure of growing and preparing vegetables.
You can flavor these however you want. But I like to make a batch like this every now and then, with noting but salt and pepper. Then, over the course of a week, I transform them: toss them with some chili flakes and cilantro in a quesadilla, pile a fried egg on top for breakfast, puree them with some chicken broth for a soothing soup, mix them up with grain and cheese for a satisfying dinner…you can make them into whatever you want.
Cut up your roots. You don’t have to cut them into nice even chunks, though you can. Use whatever you want. The batch I made this week had carrots, parsnips, gilfeather turnips, celeriac, rutabaga, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and garlic. Beets are good, so is winter squash. Fennel and leeks are nice! Radishes, too. Pretty much anything goes. Dump your chopped roots on a baking sheet and toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast at 425 for 35-55 minutes, depending on the size of the pieces. Stir once about halfway through.
The Beat: Baggage written and read by Alan Cumming
This delightful memoir is next up in my series of audiobooks I loved but didn’t mention here while I was listening. I don’t read that many celebrity memoirs, but Alan Cumming is just so charming. This book is very different from his first memoir, which was about his abusive father. This one is mostly a collection of stories about his long career. He shares anecdotes from various movie sets he’s been on, recounts love affairs, and is generally hilarious, generous, and warm. I especially loved hearing about his time starring in Cabaret on Broadway. His narration is magic. I could have listened to him talk forever. I gushed about it some more in my review for Audiofile.
The Bookshelf
Around the Internet
I wrote a love letter to Saga, a follow-up to my first love letter to Saga, which I wrote back in 2017. It’s full of spoilers, so beware.
Now Out
Hooray! Crip Kinship by Shayda Kafai and Tell Me How to Be by Neel Patel are both out! I loved both of these books for very different reasons.
The Boost
I am notoriously bad at reading anything other than books. I have no problem with a 500 page novel or a 20 hour audiobook, but forward me an article and there’s a 98% chance I won’t read it. I’m the same way with podcasts. Can’t do it. I’m not sure why I’m like this. This year I tried to trick myself into reading more articles/online essays/etc. by adding a tab to my reading spreadsheet and setting a goal to read 25 longform pieces. I did not achieve this goal. But I did manage to read some! Here are a few I loved:
Zeyn Joukhadar on the sacredness of his trans body. (Catapult)
Robin Wall Kimmerer on abundance. (Emergence Magazine; I highly recommend listening to this one!)
Callum Angus on climate change and gender. (Catapult)
As always, a little bit of beauty to send you on your way: I was made for this season.
That’s it for now! I’ll be back on Friday with a special edition featuring my favorite nonfiction reads of 2021.