September 2024
Tension, mires, & humidity - Oh My!
Folks,
Somebody dropped a dome over Greensboro a few days ago and turned this lovely city into the Everglades. Since then, we’ve been sitting in fetid pools of our own sweat and sucking at air through snorkels. The cat has contracted a bacterial infection.
This month’s Spotlight Long Read, Derf Backderf’s graphic memoir My Friend Dahmer, is probably the wrong sort of book to read when everything - the weather, the politics, the demands of students - feels oppressive. But Backderf’s memoir, which chronicles his childhood acquaintanceship with Jeffrey Dahmer, makes a pretty good case that in some ways nothing was as oppressive as 1970s adolescence.
Any book about Dahmer risks doing the whole true crime thing where you either romanticize the serial killer or you completely dehumanize them. Backderf manages to do neither. He gives us a portrait of a young man who is severely disturbed, but who is also failed by every adult in his life. At the same time, it makes clear that Dahmer was wholly responsible for his own crimes. That what he did was his choice, and it was a choice he was capable of making differently. Complex, complicated, tragic.
Serial killers not your thing? Not really mine either. Samanta Schweblin’s short story “An Unlucky Man,” this month’s Spotlight Short Read, is custom-made to slice through any mire—reading, environmental, political, existential. It’s unputdownable. And it’s unforgettable, let me tell you. A master class in creating tension and immediacy. If you read it, let me know what you think in the comments. (Thanks to Emma Murray, who originally shared the story with our writing group, and who so excellently described the story as creating an “atmosphere of expectation.”)
That’s it from me this month.
Your friend in reading,
E
Becca’s Pick of the Month
This month, Becca picked up the first volume of the Young Adult graphic novel Heartstopper from a 14-year-old and couldn’t stop reading it. Five volumes later, she says, “It’s a high school love story set in England between a nerdy boy and a rugby lad. But don’t say ‘rugby lad,’ that sounds weird.”
What got her hooked? “They’re just two very sweet boys, and some of their friends are sweet too. And then, I don’t know. You can read them really fast.”
