Iscoditorii: un an de cugetări, băutură, tristețe și lecturi

by Anne Gisleson, Raluca Miheșan (trad.), Adina Cobuz (trad.)

Anne Gisleson și-a pierdut surorile gemene, și-a văzut casa distrusă de uragan și a fost martoră la sfârșitul tatălui ei, răpus de cancer. Alături de Brad, soțul ei, descoperă că și prietenii lor trec prin aceleași crize și încearcă să facă față acelorași traume: moartea celor dragi, căsnicii cu probleme, conflicte cu copiii, cariere nesigure.

Împreună alcătuiesc un „club de lectură dedicat crizelor existențiale“: prietenii citesc, iar în ultima joi din fiecare lună se întâlnesc la un pahar de vin și stau de vorbă despre cărțile vindecătoare. Vocile se întrepătrund, de la Ecleziast, Iov sau Iona până la Epicur, de la Shakespeare, Tolstoi sau Kafka până la Joyce, Cheever și poezia postmodernă. Lecturile și conversațiile cu prietenii pe marginea lor o ajută pe Anne să împărtășească, în anul de după moartea tatălui, povestea nespusă a familiei sale. Totul într-un New Orleans devastat de uragan, halucinant și fermecător, care-și caută și el forța de a merge mai departe. Sunt pagini impregnate de suferință, dar și de înțelepciune și, pe alocuri, autoironie, cu deplină sinceritate. Iar această călătorie interioară devine un amestec rar și paradoxal de delicatețe și brutalitate existențială, în care poți răzbate datorită cărților și prieteniei.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Books About Books, Philosophy, Biography, Biography Memoir, Grief

282 pages, Paperback

First published August 22, 2017

Reviews

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many of us, as we get older, go through an experience that divides our life into "before" and "after," whether it's the death of a loved one, a health crisis, a divorce or breakup, a job loss or financial failure, or some combination of these and other factors. In The Futilitarians, the illness and death of Anne Gisleson's father is the impetus for her and her husband Brad to form the Existential Crisis Reading Group (ECRG) with some friends and family members. The goal of the group is to select readings (both fiction and nonfiction) that teach the members something about what it means to be alive when darkness and catastrophe seem to be all around us, and to discuss those readings once a month at Gisleson's New Orleans home.

Gisleson's father's death from cancer, a tragedy in and of itself, is not the only crisis she struggles with in this memoir; years before, her twin sisters Rebecca and Rachel had committed suicide within 18 months of each other. At that time, Gisleson's father had told her that if she ever wrote about the suicides he would never speak to her again as long as he lived—and she believed him. It was only as she was grieving her father that she suddenly realized she was free from this prohibition, and her struggles with the two suicides become the core of this book.

As Sherman Alexie put it in his recent memoir, grief is circular; you keep coming back around to it no matter how much time goes by. That's certainly what happens here. But even as Gisleson works through her complex feelings about her sisters' suicides and her father's death, she also manages to incorporate other worthy topics. The Futilitarians is divided into twelve chapters, each corresponding to a monthly meeting of the ECRG. Using this as a framework, Gisleson talks not only about her personal grief but also about her friends' and family members' situations, the death-row inmates her lawyer father and brother represented pro bono, and, most strikingly, about life in New Orleans, its rituals and customs, what's changed since Hurricane Katrina and what has remained the same.

Somehow Gisleson is able to keep all these balls in the air. Her accounts of the ECRG meetings are always thought-provoking and expand into the other themes she's addressing without feeling forced. This is her first book but I was impressed with her writing, how it delves into complicated topics in a way I've never quite seen it done before. The book is poignant and sad, but never hopeless.

My own "before" and "after" happened about 9 years ago and it has been a long and confusing road to regain some equilibrium. I finally felt I'd done so about 4 or 5 years ago, but now I recognize that there's really no finally being done with anything. You may be sad or numb or you may be happy, but none of those states is permanent. Given the state of the world at the moment and my own particular confusion—not serious right now, but always present—I suspected this was a good time to be reading The Futilitarians, and I was right. This is one of the best books I've read so far this year. I'll be surprised if I read anything else in 2017 that tops it or that feels more relevant.

I won this ARC in a Shelf Awareness giveaway. Thank you to the publisher.

[Cristians. Sirb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cartea asta-i menită s-o citești împreună - în paralel - cu cineva iubit. Mai este cartea asta și o călăuză ce te ghidează - prin tristețea toamnei ori prin interminabilele ploi de primăvară - către speranța unei improbabile întâmplări ce va să vie.

Pentru mine, e posibil ca volumul lui Gisleson (un nume dificil de reținut) să fi fost traducerea/apariția anului la Humanitas (după atâta literatură mediocră, storcătoare de lacrimi femeiești)!

Îi rămân recunoscător lui Cristian Pătrășconiu - îmbietoare recenzia dumisale din Revista 22, altfel - să fi zărit ISCODITORII doar pe un stand de librărie, în veci nu mi-ar fi atras atenția. Dată fiind logoreea aia promo de pe coperta întâi (nu cea mai elegantă), în nici un caz nu m-aș fi lăsat convins să mă apuc de lectură.

Or, ar fi fost o pierdere imensă să n-o fi citit!

La prima vedere, este încă o carte cu coperta I mânjită (românește) de un titlu excesiv de explicativ. Ca pentru nătângi.

La a doua vedere, însă, este un volum pe care îți dorești imediat să-l ai acasă și “in print” (eu citindu-l în format eBook), să-l cumperi la nesfârșit și să-l dăruiești imediat tuturor apropiaților despre care știi sigur că l-ar savura, obligându-i apoi prin șantaj emoțional să-ți împărtășească părerea lor.

Prin această scriere, Anne Gisleson atinge imaginara graniță dintre eseu, reportaj, autobiografie, ego-ficțiune și exorcizarea prin cultură (și prin consum moderat de vin sau de whisky) a unei suferințe copleșitoare.

Este tot O ODISEE: călătoria spirituală în căutarea unui tată pierdut, a cărui cunoaștere ai tot amânat-o (ori a fost imposibilă) pe timpul vieții. Încercarea de a desluși cât de vinovată ești, cu ce ai contribuit la gramul acela de decizie care a cântărit decisiv în sinuciderea surorilor tale gemene.

https://revista22.ro/cultura/suferint...

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Existential Crisis Reading Group

My participation over many years in a book group with friends attracted me to Anne Gisleson's 2017 memoir of her reading group, "The Futilitarians: Our year of Thinking, Drinking Grieving, and Reading." While our book group reads novels, Giselson's group focused on "existential" philosophical issues about finding meaning and purpose in life in the face of tragedy, loss, and superficiality. Her group covered a broader range of literature than my book group, and generally shorter selections, including philosophy, religion, poetry, biography, and more.

To be more specific, I wanted to read this book when I learned that one of the writers considered was the American idealistic philosopher, Josiah Royce (1855 -- 1916), through a collection of his early writings, the "Fugitive Essays". I have read a substantial amount of Royce. He is not widely read today, especially the posthumously -published (1920) collection of rare works researched and gathered together as the "Fugitive Essays" by his student, Jacob Loewenberg.

A teacher of creative writing in New Orleans, Gisleson and her husband founded their existential crisis reading group (ECRG) at the end of 2011, and it was dubbed "The Futilitarians" by the participants. Consisting of about a dozen members, the book met monthly with a different person responsible for choosing the texts each month and leading the discussion. The book usually met in members' homes, but sometimes elsewhere, and the meetings featured snacks and ample quantities of alcohol in addition to the books and discussions at hand. The group consisted of people of varied ages and educational backgrounds, but all were somehow driven by a search for finding meaning under a philosophy and condition loosely described as existential.

The ECRG made some excellent reading choices as shown in Giselson's memoir. The group began with Epicurus and Ecclesiastes and continued through many works, ancient and modern, well-known and obscure. The group read Tolstoy, Dante, Shakespeare, Kafka, and Satre as well as figures including Jacques Brel, Shel Silverstein, and Clarice Lispector. I was pleased to see the inclusion of the Irish writer George Moore's 1906 book, "Memoirs of My Dead Life" which is little known today.

"The Futilitarians" held a lot of promise, but for me it was only partially fulfilled. The focus of Giselson's memoir is less on the reading group and more on the events of her own life and to an extent the lives of other participants in the group. There is a lot to discuss. Giselson's father had just died and, some short years in the past, Giselson had lost her two youngest twin sisters, each of whom committed suicide about a year and one-half apart. Then too, Giselson's life had become chaotic during the time of Hurricane Katrina. She describes at great length how she and her family had been forced to leave their beloved New Orleans and the difficulties they and their fellow citizens felt in the following years in rebuilding their city and establishing their lives.

The materials in the book make a fitting and interesting subject for a memoir. The book, however, goes on with them far too long and too repetitively at the expense of the books and the reading which are the apparent subject of the story. The events of Giselson's life and the readings of the ECRG are interlaced not always convincingly. The group members have interesting things to say about their readings but much of the time the books are glossed over in favor of the author's own personal experience which helped lead her to form the group. While interesting and moving, her story tended to ramble and to be self-centered. There is also a good deal of discussion about drinking. I would have much preferred a greater attention to the books and the discussions of the ECRG.

The philosopher Josiah Royce is featured in the final chapter of the book. Still tipsy after some New Year's drinking, the author goes to the philosophy section of a used book store in the hope of finding a book for the ECRG. She had no knowledge of Royce but when she happens upon his "Fugitive Essays" she purchases the book, describing doing so as one of the few good decisions she had been able to make when under the influence. When Giselson opens the book a few days later, she turns to Royce's essay, "Doubting and Working" and is moved by the doubts Royce expresses about the possibility of human knowledge when individuals are beset by finitude and by their own demons. She quotes a lengthy passage from Royce's essay about the value of skepticism and honest doubt and about the need for perseverance in the search for the truth. Giselson finds that Royce's wise words were mirrored in the search and in the discussions of the ECRG. She determines to continue with the group and with her own search for meaning in her life. Apparently, with some changes in membership, her ECRG is still meeting and reading.

I found this book got too heavily involved in Giselson's own story and was overly long. Still I enjoyed learning about the ECRG and sharing in its discussions. I enjoyed learning about the books the group read, and I particularly liked the attention Gisleson gave and the wisdom she found in an early essay of Josiah Royce, particularly because Royce receives little attention in popular literature.

Robin Friedman

[Cindy Burnett (Thoughts from a Page) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 - 4 stars

The Futilitarians is a weightier book than I normally choose to read, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The book is heavy on philosophy, a subject I honestly did not know very much about before I read The Futilitarians. Anne Gisleson and her husband Brad chose to create the Existential Crisis Reading Group (nicknamed The Futilitarians) to focus on the question of how people move on in the face of great loss. Anne lost two younger sisters to suicide, weathered Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and lost her father to cancer. Feeling burdened by her many losses, she strove to find a way to carry on using the group’s monthly meetings and reading choices as a path to recovery.

Gisleson chronicles a year of the Futilitarians’ meetings including their reading choices for each month. I enjoyed some months more than others but learned a lot as I followed her path to find meaning in her life. I am glad I received it as part of Little, Brown’s Ambassador program; I doubt I would not have chosen it myself, and it was well worth the read. All opinions are my own.

[Maria Roxana · Rating 5 out of 5]

O carte care mi-a mers la suflet!

”Uimitor cum adăpostim în noi toate aceste identităţi în acelaşi timp, etalându-le oamenilor în funcţie de aşteptări şi dorinţă (..)
Deseori, printr-o decizie obişnuită, chiar acccidentală, ne îndreptăm acţiunile într-o anumită direcţie… De obicei, nu ştim nimic despre destinaţia finală sau despre rezultatul care ne aşteaptă, iar curentul ne poartă pe o traiectorie a vieţii care nu poate fi schimbată. Fiecare decizie e ca o crimă, iar noi păşim tot înainte, călcând peste cadavrele tuturor eurilor noastre care nu vor exista niciodată.
Când am citit pentru prima oară rândurile acestea, nu m-am putut abţine să nu râd, pentru că erau aşa de brutale şi de adevărate. Pe măsură ce îmbătrâneşti, toate corpurile eurilor tale născute prematur pot să se adune grămadă în jurul tău, dar fiecare decizie e şi propriul său act de creaţie. Acesta e unul dintre miracolele sinelui – continuăm să ne creăm pe noi înşine în mijlocul carnagiului personal”

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

One for angsty, bookish types. In 2012 Anne Gisleson, a New Orleans-based creative writing teacher, her husband, one of her sisters and some friends formed what they called an Existential Crisis Reading Group (which, for the record, I think would have been the better title for this book). Each month they got together to discuss their lives and their set readings – both expected and off-beat selections, everything from Kafka and Tolstoy to Kingsley Amis and Clarice Lispector – over wine and snacks.

One of their texts, Arthur Koestler’s The Act of Creation, proposed the helpful notion of the Trivial and Tragic Planes. The Trivial is where we live everyday, and the Tragic is where we’re transported when something awful happens. Gisleson had plenty of experience with the latter: not just the suicides of her younger twin sisters, a year and a half apart, and her father’s death from leukemia, but also the collective loss of Hurricane Katrina. She returns again and again to these sources of grief in her monthly chapters structured around the book group meetings, elegantly interweaving family stories and literary criticism.

I found the long quotes from the readings a little much – you probably shouldn’t pick this book up if you don’t have the least interest in philosophy and aren’t much troubled by life’s big questions – but in general this is a fascinating, personal look at what makes life worth living when it can be shattered any second. I particularly loved the chapter in which the book club members creatively re-enact the Stations of the Cross for Easter and the sections about her father’s pro bono work as an attorney for death row inmates at Angola prison. Sometimes it really is a matter of life and death.

Favorite passages:

“Generations of parents have put their children to bed in this house and even if I haven’t quite figured out the why and the how of living, others have found reasons to keep moving things forward. In quiet moments I can feel the collective push of these ghost-hands on my back, nudging me on.”

“As you get older all the bodies of your stillborn selves may pile up around you but every decision is also its own act of creation. That’s one of the miracles of the self—that we keep creating ourselves amid the personal carnage.”

“this is something many of us do intuitively, giving our woes more texture and universality through art.”

Josiah Royce, from “Doubting and Working”: “Doubt not because doubting is a good end, but because it is a good beginning. Doubt not for amusement, but as a matter of duty. Doubt not superficially, but with thoroughness. Doubt not flippantly, but with the deepest—it may be with the saddest—earnestness. Doubt as you would undergo a surgical operation, because it is necessary to thought-health.”

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book by the premise of an existentialist book group. But I plodded along through much of this book - especially the reading discussions - which felt superimposed. This book wasn't really about the members of the group or even the readings, but about Gisleson's own grief - and I wish she had stuck with that focus. Her writing came alive when she wrote about New Orleans and the post Katrina rebuilding and about working through her own personal losses.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anne Gisleson's memoirs dealing with her father's death and her twin sister's suicides 18 months apart is quite a heavy read. Her husband had his own losses he was grieving through as he lost his partner and mother to his son very early in their marriage to cancer. Combine that with suffering through Hurricane Katrina and life's daily offerings, there is a LOT of pain in here.

Together with their friends (who had many pains, as well), Ann and her husband, Brad, start a book club, the ECRG in which they really delve deeply into the meaning of these books. I can attest that I did add several of those books to my TBR pile.

A book dealing with loss, comfort and healing. Not your basic summer beach read at all.

Thanks to Little, Brown and Company and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

[Sonya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm giving this memoir five stars, not because it is perfectly written, but because it is so well-considered by the author and because for me it's the right book for our perilous and uncertain time. If ever there's a need for community and doubt and an exploration of the Tragic vs. Trivial planes of existence, it's now.

The memoir covers a single year, 2012, of monthly meetings for contemplating works of art that question our purpose. Woven into analysis of the works that were chosen is the story of Gisleon's family history: her challenging and larger than life father and all his contradictions, the elision of her mother from hard truths about family secrets, and her tragic sisters' early and self-chosen deaths. It seems at the beginning like this might be superficial, but it's anything but. I felt a connection to the stories and the primal need for community that comes through deliberative acts of wanting to learn more. New Orleans and the catastrophic Katrina also play a major role in this memoir, brought more to light and to bear by the hurricane in Houston.

I would like more people to read this book.

[NOLaBookish aka blue-collared mind · Rating 5 out of 5]

In short: I think this ranks as one of the best memoirs to come out of the South in some time. I’ve been waiting for someone to use the Katrina timeline to illustrate the pain and random brutality that is so normalized here that it is often clichéd in the retelling. Gisleson's take on New Orleans life is important in that she is a native of the city and it has been my experience that that is a too - small group writing about New Orleans in recent years. Her tender and often witty memoir frames how the city shapes - and sometimes breaks - family and friends, leaving the survivors to live with the absurdity of existence where most of one’s day is wrapped up in the practical matters of life even as the tragic stays near, ready to overwhelm one’s own thoughts and fears when the night falls. Or, when it is made personal via the faces or actions of the other souls that populate the city, sitting on bar stools at breakfast time or dancing for tips on Bourbon Street.
As a writer, she seems to have known that she will write about her family tragedies and confesses that when she told that to her father at his regular lunch spot at the Rib Room, he calmly told her that he would stop talking to her if she did. Just like most Southerners would and do, she waited until he passed to do so. His story defines this book, just as his personality and aspirations defined the family life even as he kept his own secrets that are only partially understood by his children even to this day.
The overt search for meaning in the post-Katrina era is captured by the group of friends who begin to meet as the Existential Crisis Reading Group. Gisleson offers entertaining descriptions of the attendees, and what they offer each other in terms of solace or clarity but its the moments of solitary musings about her family, her own history, and the city are what make this memoir. While discussing Borowski’s 1946 painful short stories “This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” (illuminated by his own concentration camp experience) she makes an excuse to take her child to bed so she could instead lie in the dark, listening to the group through the open transom in the next room. Even though slightly removed, the presence of friends comforts her as does the house, with its mark of previous generations who lived there before.

Not surprisingly, essayist Joan Didion, author of the brilliant book about her own family tragedies in "The Year of Magical Thinking" is mentioned; Gisleson originally considers Didion’s defense of writing painful truths about other people as “we tell ourselves stories in order to live” and dismisses it. Then, as she realizes her own urgent need to tell these stories she concludes that Didion may be right after all. And that addressing the murky emotions that people live with after horrible things happen is the furthest thing from futility and instead, is pretty close to transcendence which may lead, finally, to peace.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this so much more the second time. I liked it before, but when I first read it in 2017, the chaos that Trump’s first year in office created in this country was sucking up most of my mental energy and my grant writing work got what little was left. This is a book that makes you think and my bandwidth was limited. Now that the world’s settled down somewhat and my recent retirement has gifted me a little more reading time and brain power, I was able to better appreciate The Futilitarians: Our Year of Thinking, Drinking, Grieving, and Reading on the second go-round. {Sidenote: IMHO, the title of the book sounds much more nihilistic than the contents of the book actually are. It’s actually a lively and hopeful account of working through life’s inevitable travails with resilience and appreciation.}

Author Anne Gisleson documents the goings-on of her monthly Existential Crisis Reading Group, which she co-created with a friend who wanted to read and discuss philosophy. Gisleson’s reasons included wanting to find some comfort to help deal with the personal grief of recent sibling suicides (plural), her father’s serious illness, the occurrence and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in her hometown of New Orleans, as well as the more quotidian issues most middle-aged people face as they navigate life. Reading and discussing philosophy would be a way of “interrogating life” in 2012 for her, her husband, Brad, and their friends, and reconciling the intersection of realms she calls the Trivial Plane and the Tragic Plane.

As Gisleson moves through the year using the framework of the ECRG’s readings and discussions, she also describes her place in the world as one of eight siblings in a 6th generation New Orleans Catholic family, her family’s place in the community, the meanings of its rituals and how its cyclical annual celebrations can order and regulate a life. The setting was a significant bonus for me, as I’ve been to New Orleans a couple of times and love its unique culture and atmosphere. I love place-based narratives, as I believe our environment substantially influences who we become and how we see and experience the world. Home, whether it is a place of origin or adopted later, anchors and, to a large extent, defines us, and that connection is very much evident in Gisleson’s story.

I won this in a Goodreads Giveaway, and am glad to have a copy in my personal library to re-visit every now and then.

Recommended.

[Melora · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much more a personal memoir than a book about a book group (the “our year” in the subtitle led me to expect a broader approach to the group's experiences), Gisleson organizes her musings on grief, loss, renewal, and what might give life meaning when one is faced with loneliness and death, around a year of book group meetings. Gisleson, a mother of young children and third daughter in a tight knit family of eight children, works through feelings of grief and futility over the loss by suicide of her two youngest sisters, of her father by cancer, and of the terrible destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina on her city, New Orleans.

For some reason it took quite a while before I really felt engaged by this one – for the first half or so, Gisleson seemed a little too angsty and self-indulgent. By the June meeting, though, which included John Cheever's story, “The Swimmer,” I was hooked. I really enjoyed the way the different readings, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama, offered such varied perspectives. One of my favorite bits, though, was from a piece Gisleson wrote and presented at a literary event, with a background story of her father's death, a condolence letter from one of her lawyer father's death row clients, and the John Cusack movie, “Hot Tub Time Machine,” (and a nod to Dante, lost in the dark wood, “midway on our life's journey”)...

”Though I'm starting to think that the dark wood isn't really so bad. Sometimes you run into people you know, sometimes sympathetic strangers. There can be camaraderie there, like, Hey, we're here together in the dark wood, can I pour you some more of this bourbon, can you recommend a good book? Was the letter from Death Row another low branch across the path or was it the murky green light that filters in between branches? And what about your kids? They're happy enough, they're fine, you can hear them in the sunny clearing nearby and you can always go join them. Sometimes you think it would be nice if we could widen these paths, make it easier for our kids when it's their turn in the dark wood. But I think the best thing we can do is make sure they're equipped. They can bring their own machetes, their own bourbon.”

[sologdin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Effective memoirs are normally ‘confessions’ in Northrop Frye’s sense in the Anatomy of Criticism, wherein Frye argues that the confession developed from Augustine and Rousseau, using a “stream of consciousness technique” to opine on “some theoretical and intellectual interest in religion, politics, or art,” and always “inspired by a creative, and therefore fictional, impulse to select only those events and experiences in the writer's life that go to build up an integrated pattern” (op. cit. at 307 et seq.). The ostensible pattern in Gisleson’s confession is a year’s worth of essays that record the monthly meetings of a book club; the underlying pattern is “the core of the [Existential Crisis Reading Group] project: the necessity of others in our search to find meaning in ourselves” (239).

The reading group doesn’t take up traditional existentialist writings, though the author makes useful reference to a tertiary resource, A Concise Dictionary of Existentialism; presenting this as the source certainly indicates an ‘authenticity’ in the authorial persona, which is perhaps the most important existentialist virtue. The text demonstrates concern for this virtue elsewise, such as the critiques of parenting as a performance (137), self-oriented theatrics regarding the death of another (184), and the writer’s own relationship to Catholicism (218).

Otherwise, there’s a touch of Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ argument—itself of heideggerian pedigree—in the reflection that she had been “baffled by the figure of Pontius Pilate—he didn’t seem evil but he didn’t help either—but as I got older I recognized that he typified a certain dangerous species of adult, those who wield empty authority, the sorry-but-my-hands-are-tied bureaucrats” (82). (This is incidentally also the ‘bureaucratic libido’ described by Mark Fisher in Capitalist Realism--“the enjoyment that certain officials derive from this position of disavowed responsibility” (op. cit. at 49).)

Similarly tangential to canon, Lispector, sometimes claimed for existentialism, is cited for the proposition “Perhaps love is to give one’s own solitude to others, for it is the very last thing we have to offer” (233) (but cf. Rilke, also claimed for the movement at times: “I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.”) And French Nietzschean Bataille is cited for the proposition that

the erotic act involves the attempt to destroy one’s personal, day-to-day identity (the state of discontinuous existence in which we all live) in order to become closer to death (which is where we reenter continuity). Disrobing is a key part of this. It helps destroy individuality, because our clothes are part of the symbolic order by which we define ourselves. (92)

—as applied to the station of the cross wherein Christ is stripped of garments. God is dead, but only after some hard fucking (Kazantzakis and Saramago are correct after all—though that’s not exactly controversial: as Herbert Marcuse maybe said, ‘Hey everybody, we’re all gonna get laid’).

There’s consideration of Sartre and de Beauvoir and Kierkegaard, and the book club read Koestler in his existentialist mode (his tragic/trifling analysis sticks with the author); I didn’t notice any recitations about Heidegger, for which silence we should be thankful. Given the subject matter, I thought initially that the absence of Camus’ remarks on suicide from the Myth of Sisyphus is incongruous—but upon further reflection I realize the question that Camus considered—one’s own suicide—is not the question in which Gisleson is interested—the suicides of others. That latter question draws considerable interrogation throughout the monthly essays, leading through the ethical background of--

“our failure of the one test god put before us (as Walker Percy put it), that of not enslaving other humans, was converted to the grand collective lie of charmed southern living we white children of a certain demographic grew up with, one that is impervious to the most liberal households, obscuring the monstrous reality of how and with whose blood our society was actually built and maintained. (123)

--to the staggeringly honest introspective moment that--

We helped them; their deaths changed us. I harbor a terrible guilty suspicion that the deaths of my sisters, their disappearance from the family structure, their removing themselves from it, made the rest of us who we are turning out to be, and maybe allowed us to do things we might not otherwise have ventured. (163)

This is no self-centered camusian excogitation, but rather a responsible and committed confession regarding the effects of a horrifying set of transformative traumas, the core of the project aforesaid.

After working through these things, inter alia, author ends the year “with renewed commitment to doubt” (250)—which skepticism militates in some ways against deciding the questions presented by existentialism, holding them in epoche; this as it happens might be structurally similar to Camus’ answer to the problem of one’s own suicide in the Myth of Sisyphus.

Recommended for readers searching for pineapples of malign ferocity.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt like the author didn't really decide what she wanted this book to be. Based on the title, I thought it would be about the book club, but it isn't. Though she does write and reflect on what the book club read, by the end of the book I still had no sense of who anyone else in the group was or what they thought about anything. The subtitle of the book is "our," but there's no our. A large part of the book is Gisleson working through her grief over both her father's recent death and the less recent deaths by suicide of her youngest twin sisters. Though we do learn quite a bit about her father, and the story the author tells of her and her sisters dealing with the things one of her sisters left behind is compelling, I still didn't get a very full sense of their family dynamic or relationships. The strongest personality in this book is probably the city of New Orleans itself. I wish these three parts of the book, the reading group, the family, the city, had come together better. There was just something that left me wanting at the end of the book, though, hey, maybe that's the point.

[Brandon Forsyth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fitting read for this tumultuous, heavy summer: wrestling with major questions of life and loss, informed by grief but celebrating life, Anne Gisleson's profile of her existential crisis reading group was something I truly savoured. The book details her struggle with her father's death and her sisters' suicides, and how a book club informed by novels, poetry and philosophy helped her find meaning again. Lyrical and free-flowing, the book moves between time periods as reading triggers the author's memories, and it allows for a nuanced portrait of her family, as well as reflections on topics as varied as Hurricane Katrina (Gisleson lives in New Orleans) and the death penalty (her father was a celebrated defense lawyer). It kind of feels like we're all going through an existential crisis this summer - Gisleson's book is a reminder that it is through community, through art and culture and discussion, but also allowing for introspection and self-doubt, that we can overcome this fear and truly live.

[Alina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fost odată o carte, care m-a pus față în față cu mine însămi. A fost o lectură neobișnuită pentru că m-a scos din zona mea de confort. Nu o recomand decât celor care sunt cu adevărat pasionați de citit. E o bijuterie literară, care s-a potrivit cu mine și cu anotimpul ăsta, făcut anume pentru a sta la taifas cu gândurile tale. Am iubit fiecare cuvințel din carte, și când voi simți că încep sa o uit, o voi reciti.

[Oana Strugariu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nicio noimă, cuvinte înșirate. N-am gasit un fir de care să ma leg, autori și cărți aruncați la întâmplare, personaje fara substanță, doar suport pentru un cerc de literatură din care nu am înțeles nimic.
O donez.

[Andrea (EvergreensAndBookishThings) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another review copy provided by Little Brown, as part of their ambassador program and it's not the kind of book I would have normally sought out, since I'm not big on memoirs and I figured the existential talk would be over my head. Admittedly, some of it is, yet Gisleson can compare Dante to Hot Tub Time Machine (!) and she intersperses the existential with such accessible thoughts on motherhood, sisterhood, marriage and life. And at it's heart, it is a beautiful and raw ode to her sisters who committed suicide years ago, the death of her father, and the city of New Orleans. It was very surreal to read it during hurricane season and all of the devastation that is happening right now. A memoir that reads like an atmospheric novel is impressive stuff. I haven't been back to New Orleans since Katrina, but The Futilitarians has me absolutely itching to return.
Visit Born and Read in Chicago for more reviews and bookish musings.

[Magen Stevenson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will keep this book on my shelf for a second go round, but only after I do more study in existentialism. Gisleson's story of repeated heartbreaking loss is very personal and she tells her family history beautifully, but I was lost on the weighty pieces of literature cited, although often quoted. it was also often difficult to emotional relate to her healing process and the way she expressed herself as the child of a prominent lawyer and member of an affluent family. She often overindulged in her own story, making others perception of people and events around her much more than they actually were. She came off as pretentious.
This is a pretty deep and heavy book, much more so than I typically read. I wanted to give it there stars, but for the average reader I feel like that would be a misrepresentation. Although, two stars could be a misrepresentation on my part due to the complexity of her subject matter.

[Karuseliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dacă faci abstracție de coperta I, titlu și textele de pe coperta IV, descoperi o carte valoroasă despre experiențe. Aici, este vorba despre Anne Gisleson, familia și prietenii săi. Volumul conține multe referințe filosofice, mai ales în prima jumătate, dar mizează în cea de a doua pe judecați, analize, valori și soluții personale. Iubitorii lui Joan Didion, Yalom (nonfictiune) sau Mishima, ca să dau doar câteva exemple, vor fi plăcut surprinși de această carte.

"Pe măsură ce îmbătrânești, toate corpurile eurilor tale născute prematur pot să se adauge grămadă în jurul tău, dar fiecare decizie e și propriul său act d creație. Acesta e unul dintre miracolele sinelui - continuăm să ne creăm pe noi înșine în mijlocul carnagiului personal."

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

While considered a memoir, this book is so much more. At its center is a book club like no other, but one I'd like to join (at least for a night). Gisleson's exploration of grief, Katrina, family, and community is filtered through a wide variety of literature as presented by the book club members. In some respects the book reminds me of Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, but travels in many more directions. You will want to note and remember something from each page, the writing is that good. Despite the seriousness and sadness of its topics, there is not a hint of self pity or sentimentality. Gisleson observes, considers, appreciates, hurts, and then writes this gem of a book.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was definitely in the minority with this book. I just thought it jumped around and did not follow any type of pattern which is what life is -- I guess I just could not find a rhythm to catch my interest.

It is a memoir of a year of a book club, dealing with the loss of twin sisters, recovering from Hurricane Katrina, and grieving her father all relating these life situations to literary writings from their book club.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant look at a book club and dealing with loss, getting older, and change. One of my favorite books that came out in 2017.

[Chanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved the concept; hated the writing style. It was written in such a detached manner. Ugh. I could barely tolerate sitting with this thing.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2012, Gisleson was emerging from a period of hardship and grief. She and a friend decided to form a book club and call it the Existential Crisis Reading Group (ECRG) or The Futilitarians. Still mourning her recently deceased father, the ravages of hurricane Katrina on her home and home city, and the long ago loss of her beloved twin sisters, Rebecca and Rachel, both to suicide, Gisleson found herself at a moment in life where gathering together with a group of friends to read and discuss existential writings and searching seemed like the perfect thing to do. So, together with her husband (who also experienced tragedy) gathered a group together to discuss existential works and in the process, hopefully, to lend some comfort to each other. This memoir covers the year they formed the group.

With an impressive reading list that included (but was not limited to) Kingsley Amis, John Cheever, James Baldwin, Tadeusz Borowski, Shakespeare, Kafka, Tolstoy, and several others, including a poet named Everette Maddox who's work I need to get to know, the group spends the year gathering and discussing and grasping for meaning and connection. Each chapter is dedicated to the group’s monthly meeting and Gisleson discusses their readings, their ensuing conversation, all while drawing connections to her state of mind and the memories of her beloved father and sisters.

From the outset of the book, it is very clear that Gisleson is an intellectual. The writing is heavy on philosophy and introspection; what else could be expected in a book about a book club? She is a creative writing teacher and her work combines her philosophical interests and her way with prose. There were many standout passages. To wit:

"Someone once asked if it fucked me up having two sisters who committed suicide. I gave a wrongish, three-beers-in answer ----"Yeah, when I think about it. But, wanting to cut that line of inquiry off, I didn't explain that I thought about it a few times and hour for the year and a half between their deaths and then for about another year after Rachel died. These continuous sucker punches to the gut wore me down in ways that weren't evident at the time, and maybe still aren’t. Subsequent years were textured by the fragile, damaged quality of a Metaphysical Hangover. The roiling uneasiness of aftermath gives way to despair, then teases you with moments of relief and normalcy only to pull you under with another current of grief."

The specter of her deceased loved ones permeates the book and as she works through her losses, she writes intimately of her memories, bringing the reader inside her family. I felt immersed in her (and their) stories and the moments when she writes about her relationships with her father and sisters read much a like a generational novel. There was no mention of her nephew but that could be for any number of reasons. Gisleson is a gifted writer. She also writes vividly about New Orleans both in the present as well as in memory, having spent her whole life there and witnessing the transformation post-Hurricane Katrina.

"After a few years, the city's transformation that accompanied the Rebuilding Hangover was followed by the stubborn, natural, but rather American forgetting, a collective survival mechanism, a getting back to "normal." But I think that once you've seen firsthand what the wholesale destruction of your home looks like, the memory of it forms a substratum in your consciousness, alive and molten under the optimistic layers of the reconstruction, under the new foundations and drywall, new roads and schools."

Overall, I am glad that I followed the coincidences that led me to this book. As someone who often lives introspectively, processing grief and alienation through reading (and sometimes drinking), the themes of this work resonated. I would love to start a similar book club post-Trump age (I don’t think I or anyone I know could take too much of existential reading that isn’t the news) and will make note of her reading list. I’m also happy to have learned about that family I wondered about all those months ago. It is a beautiful rarity for which I am grateful.

I would recommend this to philosophy readers, New Orleans-o-philes, anyone working through grief or loss.

[Cheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tragedy has visited Anne Gisleson so many times. In an effort to cope with the suicides of her twin sisters, her father's death, and the devastation of her hometown in Hurricane Katrina, as well as with the everyday crises that are part of life, she formed the Existential Crisis Reading Group (ECRG). Each chapter of The Futilitarians delves into the readings and discussions that took place in a given month for the first year of the group's existence, but Gisleson weaves her personal story throughout. There is no answer that the group discovers, they just touch bases with various ways of dealing with the human condition and take what seems, in the moment at least, to work for them individually. It's a very intellectual approach to emotional repair and it's also hard for a reader who is unfamiliar with some of the writings discussed to get much out of the highlights presented in the book -- in fact, the ECRG sometimes feels like a contrived excuse for writing the book. But Giselson's prose is so lovely that from the stories of her own experience I got a sense of how deeply grief can permeate and how, years later, it can unexpectedly bring pain.

*I received a free copy of this through a Goodreads Giveaway (thank you!) and was not asked for anything in return.*

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a memoir about dealing with grief, specifically about the book club the author formed to explore the topic as she was dealing with the loss of her twin sisters and her father’s death. The book club initially struck me as incredibly pretentious. The participants seemed like they were trying too hard to be literary and philosophical. The author didn’t share enough detail about the readings they discussed, leaving me feeling lost. Fortunately, within the first few chapters, she shifts to mostly talking about events in her life. The story was still grounded by the book club readings, but the focus was on her personal story. It helped that the later book club readings got more interactive and shorter, so more easily explained. I really enjoyed her story. I thought her writing style was beautiful and sometimes achieved the profundity she was aiming for. This wasn’t perfect, but it was lovely and I would recommend it to anyone interested in memoirs about coping with loss.

This review first published at Doing Dewey

[Jenni Paulsen Buchanan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book so interesting and inspiring that I had to go out and buy my own copy, AND a copy of the Concise Dictionary of Existentialism Gisleson mentions so frequently. This is seemingly two completely different narrative lines--Gisleson's grief over her sisters and her father, and the first year of the Futilitarians--but as with most things in life, the two inform each other, and end up wound around each other like strands of DNA. I was constantly moved by Gisleson's honesty regarding her complicated feelings about the memories of her sisters and father. I think this book memorializes them in the best way possible--not as figures who loom larger than life after death, but as beautiful and flawed humans. At the same time, I was constantly inspired by the readings and discussions of her Existential Crisis Reading Group, and was taking notes every step of the way for my own reading group!

[Savannah Wooten · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many thoughts about this book - the first being that it's not for everyone.

The book's kitschy premise (an Existential Crisis Reading Group) buries what it is actually "about" for most of the book - which is the author's emotional processing of tragedies past and present (memoir style!)

It's amazing, well written, and compelling - but if you picked it up for the book club, for stories about multiple participants, etc., it will surprise you by almost entirely derailing from the premise.

That being said -the author beautifully paints the people and personalities in her life, somehow tying them into a fabric that seamlessly includes hurricanes, suicides, death row inmates, charred fireworks, favorite restaurants, Japan, pregnancy, and beyond. This book made me remember how interconnected the painful & the beautiful are (and that life is about riding the wave of all of it!)

Big (although surprised) fan.

[Jackie]

Favorite Quotes:
*Quotes for this book are very interesting for me. First I listened 3/4 or more of the book, the author narrated it, which I always love. Then some of the quotes I enjoy are from the books or pieces that they read.

p.146
Funny, erudite, chummy, and biting, Amis's writing on drinking is a cocktail invitation to take issue with him, to enjoy the unresolvable argument that is humanity.

p.147
G.P. [general principle] 9: He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.

p. 148
A hangover is the visceral reality of a price being extracted. The uncomfortable grip of consequence.

"Everything shifts - the cadence of time, perception - when you're forced to confront this transformation, caused by your own self-poisoning."

Hangovers can exacerbate the thought that somehow we're not worthy of what we build up, including our relationships.

p. 174
We were now a city in survival mode, a city imperfectly striving to be better.

p. 178
What is our ethical responsibility to these communities that soon might be sacrificing so much for us?

Speaking with a mixture of existential resolve and fatalism, the soybean farmer explained that he knew the land and the consequences of working that land. No recriminations, no resentment. Know your natural environment. Work with it. And be prepared to pay the costs.

p. 194
"You can affect people, but can't make meaning for them."

p. 195
Fear of reprisal, fear of losing favor, fear of hurting him even more deeply than he already was. It never seemed worth it.

p. 197
And maybe Dad understood himself best in the intimacy of the visitation booth on Death
Row, where life is distilled down to questions of law and survival, of sin and atonement, more chances to make things right, especially for those who need it most, the guilty.

p. 199
"All equally vulnerable in our mortality. But Gerasim takes it one step further, suggests action. Since we're all defenseless against death, why not help each other out?"

p. 204
And it was interesting how people were communally affected and bound by the shifts in weather, how moods changed along with the seasonal gear hauled out of basements and attics.

p. 205
...but ultimately...the speaker lands on the impulse to destroy inherent in our species...

p. 211
I wish he would've opened up more, would've asked the right questions, freeing us to ask them, too.

...with its throbbing ambivalence and urgent doubt, occupying the highest and most lavish tower in the unwalled city.

p. 213
"How is it possible to want so many things / and still want nothing?"

p. 234
As Lispector points out, searching is a natural state for us animals. In a world that's constantly endangering our natural state, the search is made more difficult, even as searching has become such a routine function of our daily lives. We now have "search engines" prowling a vast conglomeration of human knowledge and information, but those same technologies, while helpful and world-expanding, are also vastly exploited to sell us stuff and dazzle us with our own self-fascination. The real search gets shut down.

p. 236
And even though unconditional love couldn't save her two youngest, her faith in it never wavered - she still reaches back through all of those harrowing, difficult years to her two jewels.

You can only love your hardest and do your best.

p. 238
Saturday was for anyone who might turn up.

p. 239
"Our expectations are diminishing us and how we experience the world. We miss too much when clouded by expectations."

p. 241
I made the mistake of going to the supermarket with expectations, when it was the lack of expectation and desire that made such an extraordinary experience for Lispector at the dinner party.

p. 245
Was I ever going to learn my limit? Learn that just because there's so much being offered, I don't have to keep consuming?

p. 246
Still, having been raised mostly by about a dozen auxiliary parents - aunts, uncles, grandparents - he must've felt like he was growing up in a swarm of opinions and judgment with no real authority.

p. 248
This skepticism wasn't new, it's something the species has been considering for millennia, but apparently we need to be reminded of it, often...It was already so difficult to see anything clearly, and now a fire hose of pronouncement and conviction, fact and analysis, misinformation and marketing, is aimed at our consciousness every time we turn on a device. So, do we give up having opinions? Give up on religious certitude and give in to nihilism? Give up social media? No, Royce admonishes from the nineteenth century, fountain pen in hand, we are active beings who just need to work at these things, find the right approach. Then he lays out what he feels is the most honest starting point for the search.

p. 249
Yet I still cling to my rule, and say, begin to search for truth by doubting all that you have without criticism come to hold as true. If you fail to doubt everything, doubt all you can. Doubt not because doubting is a good end, but because it is a good beginning. Doubt not for amusement, but as a matter of duty. Doubt not superficially, but with thoroughness. Doubt not flippantly, but with the deepest - it may be with the saddest - earnestness. Doubt as you would undergo a surgical operation because it is necessary to thought-health. So only can you hope to attain conviction that are worth having. If you do not wish to think, then I have nothing to say. Then, indeed, you need not doubt at all, but take all you please for granted. But who then cares at all what you happen to fancy about the world?