Synchronicity N'at

Or: "When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong."

A couple of months ago, I took my kids to my favorite bookstore, Vroman’s. On one of the front tables, I felt pulled toward a stack of Sarah Chihaya’s Bibliophobia. I flipped through it and gathered that it was a book about reading. I might’ve just purchased it if I had what I’ve heard other people describe as a “steady income,” but instead I took a photo, which is how I remind myself to request a book from the library, which is what I ended up doing.

Now, to understand what happened next (internally, in my mind) you have to remember my motivations for writing that essay, “I Speak for the Housewives,” which was to attempt to place a metaphorical stick in the bicycle spokes of the literary critic Merve Emre’s point of view re: the ethics of writing about one’s own children.

In case it’s not obvious, I’m mostly kidding; I wasn’t trying to send Emre over the handlebars (metaphorically-speaking!). I was frustrated by what I see as this kind of academic/ literary elite gatekeeping when it comes to representations of motherhood. (Emre writes regularly for The New Yorker, a magazine I’ve only ever been rejected by.) Put another way: The New Yorker is a place for serious things and well, women writing non-academically about their children = “not what we’re looking for at the moment.”

But I’m getting off track! I felt compelled to make my argument and so, I did. And in the process, I enjoyed imagining Emre as a somewhat cold-hearted academic, a woman succeeding in a man’s world, and therefore, the foil to my own identity as a soft touch, as a woman not succeeding in the world at large. And yet, who had nevertheless still found so much meaning there (in the ruins?).

So, you can imagine how I felt when all of a sudden Chihaya introduces a female co-worker named Merve(!), who essentially comes to the rescue after Chihaya suffers a nervous breakdown. As I was reading it, my jaw must’ve dropped. No! It can’t be… But: Chihaya is an academic in the literary world and the Merve who comes to the rescue in her memoir is also an academic in the literary world. And well, how many literary academics named Merve can there be? I stopped reading and flipped to the acknowledgments section in the back to confirm my suspicions. This is what it says:

In everything that came before and everything that came after: Becca Crawford and Merve Emre, I don’t know where I’d be without you.

My guru, Carl Jung, coined a term for moments like these: synchronicity. (Definition: “the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.”)

It felt synchronous not just because: of all the new releases, I had to go and pick up this one, the one that would throw a stick in the spoke of my Merve-Emre-is-a-cold-hearted-Beee-icycle. But also in the sense that my most recent post here was all about my issues with smart people who cannot update their belief systems with new information, who show little to zero intellectual humility, people who proudly refuse to even dialogue with those who have opposing views.

But wait, there’s more (synchronicity)! More complications to Emre’s and my seemingly competing opinions!

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to tell you what happens next in Bibliophobia, which is that after Chihaya’s breakdown, after she’s released from the hospital, she cannot read. It’s a huge problem as, in her own words:

Reading was my whole life, whether I liked it or not: My work life and my home life were built around reading, my physical space constructed by walls of books.

And so what does Emre do? She invites Chihaya to come and stay with her and her family in London. Chihaya accepts.

We had made no plans about what I’d do when I got there, except, I supposed, be under constant supervision by Merve and Christian and their two small boys. They lived in a little hobbit house built into the wall of the college, which didn’t afford enough privacy or space for any kind of suicidal shenanigans. Besides, the children! It turned out everyone was too busy to make plans for me, which was an incredible relief.

With nothing else to do during the day while the kids were at school, Chihaya accompanied Emre to work. And while Emre indeed comes off as rather nurturing, she is still no-nonsense. A busy writer. And when Chihaya doesn’t know what to do with herself while Emre is clearly working, Emre encourages her to read. Chihaya resists, saying she can’t. But Emre stays firm, not unlike a parent refusing to be pulled into her child’s world or specific emotion.

I identified with Emre in this moment; she’s not denying Chihaya’s symptoms; but rather she believes that Chihaya can read. And so she encourages / demands that she try. She also has a very specific, thoughtful, book recommendation: Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai.

And well, whaddya know? Chihaya gives it a shot. At first the words look “Greekish” but she doesn’t give up. She tries again. And slowly, the words begin to make sense. She starts to be able to read again!

I kind of wish that mental health professionals would take note here. What if, along with pharmaceutical options, it was also standard to ask a suffering patient: “Do you have a good friend with young children? Could you go and stay with them for a few weeks?”

As much as I enjoyed Bibliophobia, it was frustrating to witness how Chihaya, left to her own devices, i.e. without a friend like Merve, seemed so stuck. I understand that this is one of the frustrating things about depression. You are stuck. Even still, I kept thinking as I read that her intellect alone would not save her from herself, from her illness.

Take the following passage for example, in which she’s discussing what she loves about Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being¹:

I too had a feeling of profound too-muchness, but I never had enough mental space to sort it all out. My mind felt full, too full, of ideas and stories—mine, my family’s and friends’, from books. Sometimes this felt exhilarating, sometimes frightening, sometimes just like a headache. I wondered if I had a brain tumor, or inanely, if my thoughts could become a brain tumor. I always thought that if, like an air mattress, I could somehow find a big release valve (one of my ears maybe) and let all the things filling my head out with a whoosh, I would feel less bloated, my head empty in a health way, ready to be filled again with new thoughts, new stories.

When I read this, what I wanted Chihaya to do was to go outside and do interval training. Funny, not funny. (Things you don’t say to someone in the throes of a deep depression: “Have you tried exercising?”) And yet… when I feel super stuck or “too much” or straightforwardly insane, I try to do something physical until I find a new feeling. I love to get on a treadmill and run as fast as I can for a quarter mile. (1:38 is my personal best!) Perhaps I’m wrong #stayhumble but I also kept getting the feeling that academia was not helping. There were too many rules. Too much critiquing. Not enough letting loose. And yes, for me, I go back to having kids. Because with kids, so very often, there are no rules. And: your intellect cannot save you!

And here comes the irony: how will academics access this life-saving information if us mothers are not writing about our children? (Ha.)

But seriously: Bibliophobia is a serious book that takes the life of the mind seriously. It takes books seriously. It honors something that I love: the close read, the dissecting of a text. And yet… when Chihaya’s depression keeps her from being able to do the work required to get tenure, and therefore, instead she gets fired (what a system, by the way), as a reader I rejoiced. Now you can actually live! I thought.

And though Chihaya doesn’t seem to come to this conclusion, and though other people may think this is a dangerous way of thinking: because of this, I saw her depression, her illness, as a path to salvation. To saving her. It’s a very Jungian take (#synchronicity), so of course I would see it that way.

And now for my paid subscribers, the “n’at” portion of the newsletter. (N’at is Pittsburghese, which is to say that I went home for spring break and have important things to report from there.):