Composing the Decomposed: A Review of Amelia Gray’s Threats
Threats
by Amelia Gray
FSG Originals, February 2012
288 pages / $14 Buy from Amazon
You’re in someone else’s body but you’re not really in someone else’s body, you’re in your own body, lying next to someone else’s body. “An embarrassment of childhood odor” – is it coming from your body? – steams around you, and you may or may not be wearing a fireman’s suit. This is what it feels like when Franny dies.
Franny: a large woman who wears five layers of lipstick and “smells like stones.” Franny: your wife. How she died, although you were there with her when she did, remains a mystery, even to you. A mystery: this is what it feels like to live.
This is also what it feels like to read Amelia Gray’s debut novel, Threats, out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux last month. To read it is to succumb to the emotional torpor and physical disorientation that is life after the death of a loved one. This means: a fair amount of hallucination, an undertone of deep sadness, intermittent boredom, and shots of curious paranoia. This means: laughing out loud and worrying that you shouldn’t be laughing because, hello, someone died and life is sad. This means: being as confused as David (our numb hero) is when he receives the “threats” the book is named for, finding a terrifying note in the crack behind the mirror, not worrying about what it means, or else worrying a lot, wondering who the hell has left it for you, who might be out to get you, and if Franny might be – tragically, for that would mean she’s left you – still alive.
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April 13th, 2012 / 12:00 pm
April 13th, 2012 / 12:00 pm
A D Jameson—
Reconcile the following two thoughts:
- The only market for poetry today is other poets.
- There are too many MFA programs, and too many poets.
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Brooks Sterritt—
What kind of sandwiches do you like to eat? What kind of sandwiches do you like to make? Have you ever enjoyed a sandwich made by a stranger and attempted to make a copy of your own in private? Have you ever stolen a sandwich? Have you ever stolen food? Have you ever stolen anything that was quite expensive? Have you ever committed a felony? Are you a criminal? What is the most exotic animal you’ve ever ridden? Are you interested in ambergris? What is the longest you’ve ever gone without eating? Do you read anything that makes you think it is possible to interact with humans in consistently positive ways? Have you ever had sex on a plane? Have you ever seen anything no reasonable person would believe? What’s the best way to kill an hour? What is your favorite color? Do you know anybody named Fanny who is under 40 and isn’t British? Ever been inside a pyramid? How long have you gone without showering? Ever met a venerator of Satan? What do you think about globalization and the internet? What can you tell me about the “dark web?” How about that line from Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… that mentions a “27-inch Zenith” which has in the interim become a respectably-but-not-shockingly-large TV size? Do you think you’d be one of the people refusing to administer shocks to someone with a heart condition if ordered to do so by an authority figure? Have you ever been really, really star-struck? Has anyone you’ve told about being star-struck appeared bored by your experience? Have you ever had intercourse on [a] psychedelic substance[s] and thought you were inside an octopus or that you were an actual octopus? What do you think about the narrative possibilities of a series of questions? Have you ever owned an Erector Set? If someone hasn’t read P.P. is s/he also allowed to construct a series of questions in book form and plaster excerpts in public places and make vimeo videos with celebrities and porn stars reading from the series and still love J.J. for implanting the image of an arm inserted elbowdeep in a male vulva in his/her mind and for coining (among xxxxxxx) pronouns “shis” and “hrim?” What’s your sign, birl? Have you ever been dangerously close to murdering someone? Maiming? Do you take the national security of the United States of America seriously? Would you take a bite out of a human heart (and not even necessarily swallow) for $3,500 (or for nothing if you must) if a donor had stipulated in THEIR will that THEY would donate $3,500,000 to all cancers if someone did the heart biting thing and took money for it.com? Do you ever slip into certain modes of thinking/speaking based on your level of ______? Does heavy whipping cream always sound erotic to you? Ever listen to “I Like It Rough” on repeat while beating yourself in the face with a velveteen hammer just to “see what happens?” EP UPI RBRT make coffee at night then put it in cup and place the cup somewhere so it can cool off and not “attract attention” then after it has cooled off place the cup next to your bed so it will be there when you wake up because if you wake up without the cup there you might not be able to get up and make coffee and you also like the shudder induced by the cold bitterness? Have you ever seen your name on a blimp/”met” Jason Schwartzman? Do you think I spelled it correctly without looking it up? Do you know what an SP-1200 is? What is the most notable song (and only one I can think of right now) referencing the SP-1200? Wanna go inside a pyramid?
Sean Lovelace—
Some have serious heat. Some have flavor. I’m looking for both. What is your favorite hot sauce? Links would be fine.
Gay Sunshine, 1971
I remember the first time I thought a guy was hot. It was an ad in The Saturday Evening Post, a really American magazine and there he was, tall and blonde with his suit jacket slung over his shoulder like Sinatra and he was says into the camera Hey Mom and Dad can I have $20,000 for college. And that seemed like an enormous amount of money at that time and I knew my family wasn’t going to help me do anything like that – especially since I was considered dumb but I tore the page out of the post and stuck it on my wall. I figured it would appear to be about my absurd dreams of going to college but I knew it was about that guy. And my brother knew as well. My brother was a chubby guy named Edward who lived across the hall. I’ve met Edward Field since then who is a poet and he has made the name okay but in my family both my fat brother and that sadistic bastard uncle Ed both marked the name as anything but good. I mean I don’t know why I hate my brother so much since he was my first lover if I may be so perverse. I guess it’s because despite his devotion to sucking my cock when we were kids he didn’t actually want to be perverted. He wanted to be dad which he is today but I remember what his glee looked like when disgustingly for the first time I got off. He would come into my bedroom in the morning and I would pretend. Pretending seemed to be what befitted the baby brother. I was ten when our game began. First he’d play with my nipples which made me both crazy and sick because I thought he wouldn’t do this if we had any sisters so he’s making me like a girl but that’s when my boner would begin so I knew I was sick too. Kind of like him. But the look on his face when he took my tiny cock in his mouth was really bad like he was eating bad food. It was just like he was ashamed by what a pervert he was and of course the fact that he made himself sick was what made it okay for me. To be quiet, to softly groan, to put the pillow over my mouth so I wouldn’t make noise and mom wouldn’t come up and afterwards I got paid. He’d throw seventy-five cents on my bed or sometimes only fifty like we were in some western but in the movies cause on teevee they never went that far. Sometimes we went really far. It seemed to me at the time. If Mom went shopping on Saturday morning he’d be right there in my room and he’d be sniffing my asshole and licking it like a dog and once in a while shoving a finger in with the help of some Vaseline. READ MORE >
On Gender & Violence, inspired by Meghan Lamb’s “Girl”
After reading, and then listening to the recording of, Meghan Lamb’s gut-punching whirlwind “Girl” in the newest issue of the always excellent > kill author, I feel compelled to respond.
What is going on with that piece? It’s so absolutely mesmerizing, so uncomfortably pleasurable, so sick and disgusting and lyrically beautiful, so caustic and terrifying, so violent and raw.
In part, I think the appeal for me comes from the shock of becoming the text.
…IMMA ROAST ON YOUR TITTIES LIKE THEY WAS A ROAST LIKE THEM GOOEY GROSS UDDERS OF YOURS WAS A ROAST IMMA BROAST YOUR SHIT BITCH IMMA BROAST YOUR DITCH BITCH…
That voice echoes other voices I have become or other voices that have become me in the past, and when it gets inside it resonates in a particular way that simultaneously evokes both uncomfortable and pleasurable sensations.
Do you recall that scene in David Lynch’s Wild At Heart between Bobby Peru and Lula Fortune in the motel room?
Blurbs I’d Like to See
“This book threw me to the floor, naked and racist, desperately gasping for air. A work that could truly only have come from [author’s name]’s extended pregnancy.” – Harper’s
“Bubbling with humility.” – The Independent
“<;-)” – Cynthia Ozick
“The Justin Taylor of the fixed gear scooter generation. Joshua Cohen for your gay Jewish nephew. Just because you don’t get it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. The codes of these satin pages will bleed you dry with their suggestive, yet ultimately fustian, message. Not to be missed by any fans of Bearbaiting: 2100.” – Paul Auster’s great-great-granddaughter
“If films are the new books, this book is an old film. [Author’s name] tucks you silently into bed and turns out the light on charity.” – New York Times
“[A blurb by a hotdog].” – a hotdog at Gray’s Papaya (6th Ave/8th St. location)
“My girlfriend loved your TV show when you used to have one.” – The Guardian
“Like fingernails across the chalkboard of a Brooklyn coffee-shop. Like music played on a broken giraffe’s carcass. [Author’s name] has given us a gift more permanent than HIV/AIDS, more lasting than the Lincoln assassination, and your kids will be talking about it long after you’ve become the bigot.” – Muareen Corrigan (for NPR)
“An invalid wakes at dawn with a banana-clip necklace. This novel won’t tell you the answer to any age old question, but it may find you choking on a half eaten bagel on the city bus.” – Frank Peretti
“If Nabokov, Updike, Lish, and Baker suffered from psoriasis, [author’s name] can be said to have eczema.” – The Millions
“I was left with a tacit boner.” – Erik Stinson
I am enthusiastic about boredom
My friend Maya told me about this guy who tried to hit on her by making fun of her weight and then kicking her under the table.
I said, ‘That’s an interesting strategy, I always wondered if a strategy like that would work.’
Then I thought about my own strategy, which generally involves waiting for something to happen and not forcing things on the other person.
I felt like my strategy was fucking stupid and just as terrible as that other guy’s. READ MORE >