I’m An Idiot: Don’t Fear Miranda July

���������������������� I think it’s mostly that I’m actually scared of Miranda July, frightened by her work, somehow. I’m not sure. Her story “Swim Team” was I think the first time I actually experienced actual work of hers instead of just getting second-hand commentary from friends, and that was January 2007, and that story still knocks me absolutely flat, is so gorgeous and sad and touching and sweet I feel silly every time I see it and realize I haven’t read it recently enough. This is all by the way me trying to process why it was I was so hesitant to read July’s The First Bad Man, her novel that’s just been released, and the truth is: I have no legitimate or good reason to be so hesitant. If you’re like me you likely have had more exposure to Miranda July the person than her actual work, which is too bad, just in that the signal:noise ratio’s all wacky when an artist’s work is grounded too much in Who the Artist Is. Plus I can at least admit this: Miranda July comes off as precious. There is���or seems, to this reader���an almost willful naievete and innocence to her that just makes my skin itch (this is me trying to admit to many levels of assholery; I’m not saying this stuff because any of these aspects of her are *true*).

So: I was and am anxious about Miranda July, which is insane and stupid, because what happens when I read her is I just get wrecked and wish I had the audacity she does. I got her The First Bad Man maybe two weeks back and sort of like (even though I’d requested the book, seriously) snickered or something about it. I’d been planning on reading it to enjoy not liking it (a soul-calcifying experience, certainly, but not without its ugly joys), a schadenread. Whatever. I don’t know why I keep trying to explain it all away. Her stuff makes me jittery (I wish I had some legit reason to have felt this anxious toward her. I think part of it’s that her face is almost always totally lineless���no laughing, no squinting; her face is so wide open it makes me anxious, makes me long for some screen).

Anyway, what happened was I started reading The First Bad Man and when my wife asked later that night once the daughters were asleep what I was reading I explained what I could: that it was this book that I’d been expecting to hate but was now so caught up in and moved by I felt weird and weirdly trapped. What I was getting was the experience we all hope for from art, of course: some shift, a changing, but my own BS and neuroses about July (who, again, wrote one of the all-time best stories ever, and why that’s not enough for me to overlook her so-open face and her [to me] weird art pieces [but it’s not like I’ve ever been to any of her performances or seen anything other than the two Big Release movies]) had gotten so in the way. A big temptation in reviewing or talking about this book is just to post this link to Ms Lauren Groff’s NYTimes review of the book and say YES EXACTLY YES, but there’s more to it than that.

What The First Bad Man actually did, to me, was blast��me open astonishingly. It’s the story of Cheyl, an early-forties severely alone woman who works at Open Palm, a women’s self-defense center which now makes its money selling self-defense-as-exercise DVDs. Her life’s recognizable to anyone who’s lived alone by choice for awhile: she’s maybe unnaturally fond of her systems (for instance using only one set of dishes, ever, washing them out every time post-use), which systems, she admits, prevent her from going off the rails, peeing in cups, letting the dishes pile up. It’s early on that this aspect of Cheryl’s revealed, and it’s the book’s whole heart: when alone, it’s hard to know What To Live For. That sounds silly, but, at least for Cheryl, it’s true. She’s ‘in love’ with a guy twenty years her senior, Phillip, with whom she believes she’s had lots of experience in past lives, and she believes there’s be more ardor and connection between the two of them eventually, if not in this life than later, and so there’s this thing of like: well, what’s the point of this life, right now? What’s the point of waking up? That shouldn’t sound depressive or anything: it’s just a matter of clarity and purpose. Maybe the point of this life is to let Phillip explore other relationships, and for Cheryl to learn how to be more open to other people’s experiences.

What happens to Cheryl is an upside-downing in the form of her bosses’ daughter Clee, a busty blond who moves in, disrupts everything in Cheryl’s life, and who then���this is where the book gets weirdest and, I’d imagine, will be hit hardest by whimsy in reviews (or quirky, or any of those other backhands)���begins a relationship with Cheryl, a hugely strange and equally hugely satisfying relationship predicated on scenes of violence (they act out scenes from Open Palm DVDs) and then this whole other realm of Cheryl’s own internal fantasizing, about which the less said the better (not because it’s gross���fantasies don’t really stick to the metric of gross/not gross���but because explaining it makes it sound so silly [here: Cheryl begins to spend a ton of time masturbating as she imagines herself as various men having sex with Clee] whereas when you read it, in the book, the fantasizing feels and reads and sounds not just emotionally-logical but necessary, the exact sort of move you’d expect/need Cheryl to make). What happens, eventually, is something like love, and also Clee gets pregnant, and PS this whole time there’s this whole other thing happening throughout the story, and the thing is: Kubelko Bondy, which is the name of the ur-baby Cheryl’s always scanning other babies hoping to find (go with it for a minute: she believes there’s some True Connection she feels to a kid, and that the kid’s soul is flitting around, somehow, baby-to-baby, and she is intentional in seeking out the eyes of babies, seeing if they’re Kubelko, and as weird as it sounds written flatly like this know that it reads and feels in the novel totally legit. Strange, sure, but legit [quick: write down all the things you do that yr sure are totally normal and not strange, and then share the list with someone]). The plot though isn’t really what you’re reading this book for: you’re reading it to be in the presence of Cheryl, to experience and see with her, to be offered what feel like sudden blossoms of wisdom or beauty or connectedness from ingredients you likely wouldn’t (I at least didn’t) guess could combine into such. Cheryl’s not alone at the end, by the by, which matters just in that the book will make you perhaps sniffle or cry a little, and further: if you’re a recent parent (July is, as am I), there’s stuff in here that’s gonna rip you up in the good ways.

Anyway: plenty. Miranda July is the Real Thing, and I’m a fool for each anxious minute I spent unsure if I was willing to enter into her fearless, strange, humbling, powerful work. One of the things she does is she seems entirely judgeless: Cheryl in The First Bad Man would be among my greatest fears to have to deal with���endlessly annoying, silly, foolish, etc���and yet in the book she’s perfect, someone loved enough by her creator to have her flaws shown hugely. It’s an incredible thing. Read this book, please. Read The First Bad Man. It’s so beautiful. It’s so strong. It’s so, so good.