giggles and tears
I was groggily sitting on the subway a few days ago when I noticed that the woman sitting across from me was crying. I felt sorry for her and tried to avert my eyes until I realized that she was reading a book. Then I was intrigued. Which book could possibly evoke such raw emotion at 9 am on the F train? The book had no dust jacket, so I wasn’t able to make out the title. It shall remain a mystery, sadly.
But that got me thinking: which books out there strike such a nerve that they prompt visceral reactions?
Elizabeth McCracken’s The Giant’s House is my go-to tearjerker. McCracken constructs every sentence of her fantastical debut novel so immaculately, with such grace and searing insight, that it’s impossible to avoid a flood of emotion. For chuckles I turn to Patricia Marx’s Him Her Him Again the End of Him, the most wonderfully neurotic novel about romantic obsession ever. For sheer gross-out factor, I remember that I had to take numerous breaks from reading The Hot Zone—Richard Preston’s nauseatingly detailed descriptions of the symptoms of the Ebola virus made me dizzy. Gah.
And then there’s Love Is a Mix Tape, one of the first audiobooks I listened to when I started working at eMusic. There I was, sitting at my new desk, intently listening to music critic Rob Sheffield read his affecting memoir of his relationship with fellow critic Renee Crist, whose life was cut short at the age of 31. Sheffield’s narration felt so personal. He could be some guy I knew, just talking about music and love and loss with casual intimacy—the perfect recipe for giggles and tears. So engrossed was I that I totally tuned out everything else around me, which probably made me look insane: one minute I’d be sitting with a dopey grin on my face, and a few minutes later I’d be all misty-eyed. Way to make an impression on new coworkers, that’s for sure.
So now it’s your turn. Which books make you laugh, cry, wanna hurl, etc.?
Weird, a lot of my favorite writers are these sullen macho jerks who just write about whiskey and stuff and it all feels a bit removed. Carver, etc. So I guess… I remain unmoved. Hahaha.
I am right now reading David Foster Wallace’s Consider The Lobster. His essay Authority and American Usage made me laugh out loud more than once.
For sudden, punch-to-the-gut, humour, nothing has ever yet topped the moment near the end of Jasper Fforde’s The Third Bear in which a whole sequence of conversations that has taken place over the course of the entire book suddenly pays of as the set-up for the most elaborately-conceived pun I have had the pleasure to encounter. Just knowing that I had been suckered so completely and taken so aback had me giggling like a madman there on the sofa.
Well, since I’m male and boys don’t cry, I guess I’ll just list some of the things that have stopped me in my tracks (emotionally):
Jim Harrison’s Letter’s to Yesenin (poems); Junot Diaz’s “Nilda” (when he gets to the line, “What’s the point of all this? He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone.”); Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son (“Work,” Car-Crash While Hitchhiking,” etc.); John Bricuth’s Just Let Me Say This About That.
I think the last time I teared up actually reading something was (and Randy mentions him) reading some of the tributes, etc. after David Foster Wallace died. Funny how that can happen with someone I’ve only read and never met.
Another instance of when I cried at my desk: reading about how Foster Wallace marked his students’ papers with smiley faces. That tiny detail. Sob.
I went through three boxes of tissue reading the last Harry Potter book. I can admit things like that because I’m a girl.
I also find myself consistently moved to tears any time I re-read any of Frank Herbert’s classics, don’t ask me why I couldn’t really explain it.
Aside from the very modern and the quasi modern I tend to find that the authors who move me best are the classic writers. Hawthorne, Bronte, Williams, Shakespeare….There is a reason some writers are timeless.
I’ve been reading too much chiclit (I can’t believe I’m admitting that) lately to truly say I’ve been brought to tears in a bit.
The books that make me cry are always by Terry McMillan. I love how she writes about stuff I can relate to.
I wept uncontrollably after reading 26A by Diana Evans. Powerful stuff. It was the last book to do that to me. But Ian McEwan can also pack an emotional punch, and Jose Saramago always finds a breathtaking way to horrify our very best sensibilities.
I had an intensely physical reaction upon completing Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” back before anyone had really heard of it and before it started being read in high schools. I literally could not let go of the book, like it was my most prized possession in the entire world and felt like if someone pried it from my hands that I would just die.
And I’m not exactly the most over-dramatic person.
I always feel intensely happy while reading, and for a bit after I’ve finished reading, Salinger’s Raise High the Roofbeams Carpenters/Introduction to Seymour. Everything just seems ok for a while.
I also have strong reactions to Kafka (who Buddy Glass, if not Salinger himself, was also a big fan of), especially the Trial and the Castle; something like a strong feeling of identifying with the feeling of the writer – like he’s saying what I feel but could never come up with the words for.
I did get misty-eyed at the end of Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book. Endings like that get me.
bastard out of carolina totally wrecked me. the TV movie, not so much.
I laugh out loud all the time reading David Foster Wallace. I can open to any page in Infinite Jest and be drop-kicked by his sardonic wit, his observations, his genius level command of the English language and all it’s quirks and quarks. Now though that amazed laughter has turned to sobs in the face if the loss of him from this life. totally rolled around on the floor in a perplexing admixture of delight and grief when i read hi piece on Federrer.
Then there’s the emotional stuff, I was destroyed, absolutely demolished and torn to pieces by Audrey Neifenegger’s TIme Traveler’s Wife. Holy Crap! some really really really good writing and probably the most heartbreakingly beautiful romantic depictions in all of the literature.