Over the weekend, I prepared a blog post reviewing Ander Monson’s latest book of nonfiction, Vanishing Point. The review discussed the form of memoir and genre-mixing and the lyric essay. It asked questions like: what is memoir, anyway? What should it be? What should be at stake for the author and the reader in memoir? Is this book actually memoir, despite it’s declarative subtitle. And yesterday, as I read and reread the post I couldn’t hit publish. I realized last night it’s because I don’t care about any of these things.

Two Asides Before We Begin

1// I’m a chump. Last week, I happened upon a short review of Vanishing Point on the wonderful blog of nonfiction, Brevity (extension of Brevity Magazine). The review was short. Really short, and I posted a chump-ish comment about how it should be longer. Then I got an email from the editor, Dinty Moore, a person I will definitely try to convince to be my friend when I meet him. The note was kind and it occurred to me that I should write a review, rather than post chumpy comments. So what if David Shields already reviewed it in the New York Times.

2// Full disclosure: Ander is my thesis advisor, so I have a bias. He also didn’t make fun of me once when I ignorantly told a bartender to give me some special beer in a pint glass, not the tulip glass, which increases the bias. (This becomes important in his book, in which he discusses his sophisticated understanding of beer, of which I have none.)

Shall We?

In his latest book of nonfiction (not to be confused with the soon-to-be-released book of poetry, The Available World), Monson examines the form of what memoir is or might be, and its relationship to content, or a life. The subtitle of the book is Not a Memoir, which is intriguing, provoking, self-conscious…and not exactly true. There are elements of memoir, poetry, essay and various experiments. “All writing is tied up in memoir,” he says.

What’s more interesting to me is the way he’s questioning and pushing form, which is of course a vague thing to say. An example, then. In his essay, Solipsism, which also appeared in the Best American Essays of 2008, Ander composes an essay entirely for the internet (originally), with endnotes (and then sidenotes in the print versions), in the web design software program, Dreamweaver. (He does not mention how and why the web-only essay was translated into print. Did his agent request it? Did he personally submit it to The Pinch, where it first was printed? Do writers continually have to submit things to journals for eternity? Does it matter?) Anyway, the essay (lyric, probably, if you’re one for labels) discusses the technology of writing, from the electric typewriter to letterpress to offset printing and now to Dreamweaver. (Why Dreamweaver, I wonder, more than InDesign? Dreamweaver for the web, InDesign for print?) The question here and reappearing throughout the book is about how the way we write affects what we say and ultimately our view of the world and of ourselves. How does technology change us? (I’m speaking in the universal we, the collective hive of human minds.)

Printed matter is undeniably different than content created for the internet, or with a web-based audience in mind. Aside from the physicality of the thing, there is the way we perceive each form. In the collection of essays on design, Looking Closer 5, Ellen Lupton writes about the birth of the user (preview here), in which a web-based audience (the user) expects to feel productive while scanning the web. A reader of print, on the other hand, expects to feel contemplative and in the mode of processing information. To write an essay specifically for the web, with a virtual audience in mind is to ask us to reconsider how we perceive and enter into our digital spaces (and our literary spaces). And then, to have that essay printed into an artifact is to ask us again to read the thing differently. To read it more slowly and consider it in terms of a traditional form, even while it discusses these web technologies.

Additionally, as Ander touches upon, the internet is at once an alone-place as well as a space in which we can connect with a potentially infinite audience. Whereas books might not be available or translated, the web can possibly reach a broader audience and be more easily transformed into an appropriate language. (Although we should point out that only 26.6% of the global population has access to the internet, while a whopping 82% of adults are reported as literate. Print lives!) In both print and web forms, though, we don’t always know our audience, interestingly, and must believe somehow that there will be an audience. In both forms, the writer or creator of things is alone at least cognitively during the process and then connected upon publication, we believe. So we have interesting parallels and the cross-pollination of forms and modes of reception.

These concepts are not just relevant to this essay. Ander creates websites for his books. Not in the way that publishing houses create drop pages to supposedly promote a book and an author’s events. Ander codes these websites which are infinite, where there are infinite links and choose-your-own-adventures. Where there are pictures and all the journal-like randomness of the internet mixed with philosophical meanderings. Where you can find words in his book and type them into searches on his web page to find out more, to deepen and dissect the secrets. He is thus creating a magnificent bridge between the world of the book and the world of digital space. Two environments, totally different, connected inextricably.

Whether we are discussing what Ander’s work does for literature or design or the internet, he is undeniably thinking about the now. He is, for instance, writing about the web; bringing us to jury duty with him; bringing us to President Ford’s funeral; eating a bag of Doritos while typing away. He represents us, now, and it’s interesting because it asks questions of us. It does not seek to give us answers necessarily, but to propose new or other ways of thinking. Perhaps it simply shows us the pursuit of answers as inherently worthy. (This is what the lyric essay is or does, according to Shields. According to D’Agata.) Monson’s book asks us to believe that the moments in between the larger moments of our lives mean something, which is freaking beautiful.

Have a Beer with Ander

Ander is coming to New York City this week. Thursday night, at 7pm, he’s reading at the McNally Jackson Bookstore and on Saturday at 5pm, he’s reading at the Living Room downtown. Check him out. Buy him a beer. He’s a funny human.