I get reticent whenever I set out to blog about how very glad I am to have read the Coming & Crying anthology, so let me begin by hiding behind four sentences from a Martin Amis novel I started tonight:
Sexual intercourse, I should point out, has two unique characteristics. It is indescribable. And it peoples the world. We shouldn’t find it surprising, then, that it is much on everyone’s mind.
But here’s the thing: Coming & Crying is not a sexy book. Not to me, at least. I’m grateful for that. Quite grateful, actually. Titillation comes cheap these days. Free, really. Look up at a billboard. Turn off your spam filter. There’s no need to pay hardcover prices.
Don’t buy this book because I told you to. It may be all wrong for you. Maybe you’re too young. Maybe you’re offended by sexual frankness. It’s even possible that the range of behavior depicted in the anthology’s true stories will go well past offending you and genuinely trouble you.
As I said, though, I’m glad to have read it. Quite glad.
There’s a depth to it, an authenticity, a vulnerability, a gutsy baring of some of the hungers and hurts that make us human. That’s why I’m reblogging this particular post, with an Australian reader writing about what this book may mean to patients with brain injuries and an American creator writing about how she’s “so glad, so taken aback, so goddamn happy, that sometimes it gets to be like this.”
- David Quigg, 11/15/2010
Just thought you might like to know by book arrived in Melbourne, Australia today :) I have never made the noise i made when i recognised the packaging on the bench when i got home, i think it was somewhere between a bleet and a cry of surprise semi uncoordinated with a half leap.
I have been waiting so long to hold it that i am finding it difficult to open it to read i just want to look at it and touch it for a while. My housemate has been obsessed with katie west for ever! She will love the photo from her i found inside with her telltale bird markings :) I am training as an occupational therapist specialising in sexual health with patients recovering from an aquired brain injury and this book will take pride of place in my office next year when i graduate. It will be worn, dog eared and dearly loved by many very soon! (i already have a long list of people who want to read it)We know that People put things into the world for many different reasons, some of which you realize are petty or small or just plain unrealistic, some of which you still hope for in faraway, abstract, maybe even never admitted to yourself ways. Some you might just give up on.
But I think this—this actual talking to people, getting an email when they get this thing you’ve helped make in the mail (something that has taken far too long than it should, I might add, and we’re so sorry), just to say how much it means and to thank you for it—I think this might be one of those things you imagine in your heart of hearts but usually forget, something you let go of because that’s not really How Things Work. I am so glad, so taken aback, so goddamn happy, that sometimes it gets to be like this.
