What Waiting Really Means

by June Akers Seese

In this slim volume of fragile prose, small-press author Seese acknowledges her spiritual and stylistic mentor, Joan Didion, whose sense of "only disconnect" pervades this aphoristic memoir of a middle-aged woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Mary from Detroit — the narrator with no last name, and a vaguely ethnic background — in fact descends into madness for a brief time. And during that period, she moves into an apartment in a poor neighborhood, away from her husband, and aches from the side-effects of her therapeutic drugs. Really, though, her craziness is hard to distinguish from her ordinary life of waiting at home, reading randomly, smoking cigars, knitting afghans, and staring out the window. Admittedly not a liberated woman, she also concedes her mean-spiritedness, the legacy of a father who likes to go rabbit hunting at Eastertime. Framed by Mary's memory of her best friend who died from cancer at an early age, this witty little book skitters nervously from topic to topic, recording Mary's clever apercus, chronicling her odd habits, and cataloguing her obsessive dreams. With a husband who builds for a living, Mary moves to the boom of Atlanta, where they live in a big old house with an unusual history, having served as a home for the blind. Very Didion-like, Mary attends the trial of the Atlanta child-murderer and, after that, afternoon matinees of schlock movies. But she warns, "If you're looking for the point, forget it." Not as mired in meaninglessness as she claims, Seese's sophisticated narrator shares a number of hard-earned insights ("Wives have time to stare out windows, and we have windows in every room"). If therapy can't connect Mary to her feelings, neither does her 65-year-old lover with heart troubles. After all, marriage is a headache for which there is no aspirin. A brittle first novel that amuses with every crack.

Genres: Fiction, Novella

88 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1990

About the author

June Akers Seese, the instructor of Callanwolde’s Memoir courses, is a novelist who has also taught “Women and Fiction”, “The Fictional Process”, and “Style and Politics in the work of Pearl Cleage and Grace Paley” in the Callanwolde writing program. Recipient of a 2001 Yaddo Writer’s Fellowship, Ms. Seese is the author of two novels, Is This What Other Women Feel Too? and What Waiting Really Means. She has also written a collection of short fiction, James Mason and the Walk-In Closet, which includes two novellas and nine short stories; all published by Dalkey Archive Press. Her most recently released books, Some Things Are Better Left to Saxophones, A Nurse can Go Anywhere and Collected Short Stories, and Whose Coffee is It? are available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com. Her latest collection of short fiction, Three Lots and a Tarpaper Shack: The Detroit Stories, is forthcoming in 2014.

Reviews

[Rand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Value.

That elusive, illusory concept haunts my mind long after having finished turning the eighty-eight pages of this novella which I obtained for less than the price of a pack of cigarettes.

Recently, from thoughts elsewhere, I began seeing objects and experiences (books especially so) as investments more in terms of time than money (that books and other salacious objects may alter consciousness is a plus). And this is perhaps bleedingly obvious to you already, but lost monies may be recouped in excess but there is no turning back the clock.

There is not always a tomorrow.

But, this book: in terms of the time spent between when I first heard Garima mention this one to the time in which decided to order a copy, used, to the time spent waiting for the time available to read this little treasure, to the time in which I decided that I was ready to finish reading the book, to the time in which I decided to wait for the afterglow to set in fulsome or such that which perhaps you too may share in this (or that) ore. Wait.

What?

Just contrast that with all the waitings we've all done more out of compulsion than true desire and, then just try to get a feel for the value of the timestamps steam-lifted off of intercepted envelopes soon to be (re)marked Return to Sender.

There's only so much time with which to play. You could read this book while waiting for the doctor or at a bus stop or for your husband to return or for the clothes to dry or for the sun to show again. You have already spent more time ever waiting for an advert to end than it takes to read Seese's words (all of them, not just this one, though this one seems as apt an entry-point as any).

This book is the sort which is difficult to explain why or how what works works. Just know that it does. At least for me right here and now. (If you require the driving force of a plot or clean-cut delineations of time, how are you still reading my drivel??) The use of a consistent, simple cliche-free narrative voice is certainly a part (not to mention the ways in which that voice differs/defers from the scant biographical details afforded to us of Seese herself) as is my own desire to know how the Other operates. And then there's the title's very suggestion itself and the way in which reading Seese's words here becomes an exercise thereof until all that the reader is left with is the desire for more.

Two samplings from this book:

"I thought about getting a job. I looked over some bookstores in the neighborhood, but, though I like to read books, I do not like to yank them out of boxes or fiddle around with a computer. My degree is in history, and I am drawn to facts."

&

"You can cut a child's mind so deep that neither doctors nor gimmicks nor true love can patch it."

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered this strange little book in 2006 and was struck by its bold and jarring content as well as its obscurity. I googled the author and found her to be fairly uncelebrated, though she seems to be a precursor to wonderful (and more noted) writers like Lydia Davis, Diane Williams, and Mary Robison. Fans of those writers should seek out this gem.

[Rudy Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

i’ve begun a month of reading biography style prose, I enjoy a memoir and this definitely read like one, it was beautiful in it’s vagueness

[Isabella]

good and also bad

[Alexia Trejo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh to be a woman… I would like to read more from this author.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tiny novel, told in short short stories. The voice is strong and witty, knowing and desperate and hugely honest. I was a little disappointed in the ending, as it seemed to be thrown in to be mildly shocking, rather than illuminating the story itself, but I do want to read more by this author and it made me think I might try this approach for my own novel. Thanks, Nance Knauer, for sending it to me!

[Inggar Prambandhani · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a complicated story for me. But through this book, I can create extraordinary ideas by reviewing this book.