There are mysteries to be solved; then there are mysteries defined by their mere existence, where “cracking” them defeats the purpose, antithetical to their intention to dazzle or to embed a barbed dread into our very fibers. The difference lies in a mystery’s structural integrity, which, much like a building, will dictate its lifespan. But if a structure can be built, it can be disassembled; reverse engineered to show others how it was done. In other words, no more mystery; we may have acquired knowledge, but we are left feeling empty, no longer useful. 

How can you measure the structural integrity of the mystery if it’s born from a burst of inspired agenda-less energy? A formless vapor yearning to take shape by seducing its opposition, blending into its contrast until the “you” is surrounded. You’re not only trapped; it’s finally figured “you” out, or it’s firm to communicate it will die trying.

This is the anti-world of Lindsay Lerman’s What Are You, a book so enraptured with a catharsis that it almost doesn’t want it—that would mean its end, its death. The convenient afterglow of climax? No, this is all about the process, the unraveling by further tangle. It’s a book that nearly transcends review or judgment. I was challenged, even taunted by the book; it injected such insecurity I couldn’t arrive at my own conclusion without consulting others first. 

“Derek! You wanna book club the new Lerman?” I yell across the house. 

“I already fucking did it!” he hollers back, half-resentful, and I’m not sure if he heard me right since we’ve also been arguing about chores, and it was his turn to push Jake Blackwood onto his side so he’ll stop snoring. We’ve been sleeping all summer. 

The others ask me what the book is about. 

“I don’t… know?”  

Eventually, I’ll confidently acclimate to that response to Lerman’s confrontational observance of the unknown. Three months later, it’s stayed with me, haunted me, and actually paralyzed my attempted eloquence. 

In its six parts, comprised of forty-nine short chapters (chapter sixteen is no more than the single line What Are You?), Lerman has taken us all for a sharp left turn—anyone who was expecting a repeat of her debut I’m From Nowhere will be bewildered, like being led into the middle of the forest at night then forced to find their way back home alone. This is a fluid thread of fascination/repulsion essays seeking questions rather than resolutions, a paradoxical tantrum protesting the depths of the floor dropping while stomping it further down, inch by inch, until freefall.

Even the snags on the way down strangely affirm Lerman’s contrarian epic. Like her preoccupation with digression, where at times she’s almost too inquisitive in the gamut of everything “you” might be; and just when we get somewhere, there’s a “maybe/maybe not,” “perhaps,” “I’m not sure,” that can be sort of infuriating—an unnecessary breaking of Lerman’s otherwise effective hypnosis. After grappling with my own initial uncertainty about What Are You, now I can’t help but think this shoulder-shrugging could be a legitimate part of the journey, led by a disembodied voice yearning to deduce between possession and abandonment. And since Lerman is an authority on conceptual dissection with a Ph.D. in philosophy, it’s in her very nature to ask questions; even if it means constantly doubting her answers. It’s a neurosis that expands the mind, one could argue.

And what are we doing here if we’re not trying to push the borders out? What Are You might not have been the book from Lerman we expected, but it proves she’s in full control of what she offers; and if we believe we’ve figured her out, What Are You will be the book we actually needed to confirm our fumble.  

   

Derek finally comes out of his room, drowsy yet sincere with his eye contact. He hands me a piece of paper.

 
“Sorry, man. Here…”

 

 

---

The Right Reader

—on Lindsay Lerman’s What Are You (Clash Books, 2022)

 

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It is easier, safer, and wiser to avoid you. I am not the right reader.

____

 

I flip to any page and am met with technically adept language – – – drawn out, tense ruminations on possession, desire, creation, and control. Many of the sentences could be credibly taught in creative writing workshops on “evocative” language. For the right reader, the narrator’s flood of tightly crafted meditations will be “hypnotic,” and perhaps “haunting.” For the right reader, an intimate familiarity with the narrator’s thoughts will be “seductive.”

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The decision to present these reflections entirely in the second person craves this very intimacy, and, for the right reader, it will undoubtedly work. For such a sweeping narrative encapsulating creation, death, and the universe it is a remarkably taut work. The themes can be absorbed in reading only a few paragraphs, at any point in the text, in any section, and in any order. This repetition, for the right reader, will be proof of its power. In another reader’s hands it may be evidence of a dull ride, the same notes written and rewritten and overwritten until the effect is more personal religious text than engaging literature.

 

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The language itself will be, I suspect, for the right reader and the right reviewers and the professional blurbers, the key to unlocking the work’s power and beauty. Other readers may find the language desperate and devoid of surprise. There is very little mystery in this work, the wrong reader will surmise, despite its desire for mystery. There are two excellent lines, early on in the book, where the narrator says: “Some of you are special. Many of you are not.” I, the wrong reader, felt this way about the sentences themselves and about the sections and fragments making up the entire work. The many that were not dulled the blade of those that were.

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Many of the themes are present in Lerman’s previous work, I’m from Nowhere (Clash Books, 2019). I am a huge fan of this book. The themes unfolded through an interesting, engaging narrative told in wonderfully rendered fragments that, when taken together, wove a unique story of a widow navigating her place in the world as an object of the male gaze. Narrative has been replaced in What Are You with fragments of memories, addressed to a “you” that participated in the recalled events. The “you” can both pull us in and push us away in equal parts. The effect could be described, generously, as being let in on a secret. For the wrong reader, these hints and references to places & parties long past, may just demonstrate all the actual interesting scenes we’ve missed out on. What Are You is more “letter to the universe” than novel and this, for the right reader, will be one of its many selling points.

 

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I will read Lindsay Lerman’s next book and the one after because she is that talented and that bold. There are few writers working today in America with her capacity to enthrall. And I will hope, selfishly, as a reader is all too often, that she does not write the same book and then the same book again, stripped barer and barer each time still of the artifice and scaffolding of literature until it is simply a solemn prayer. And I say this knowing, very well, that the right reader will want exactly that.