angst angst angst
the feeling that you're feeling is what many of us call a feeling
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I hope you read the title of this post in the way it was intended: like harry from potter puppet pals:
I myself am not a very emotional person. My own husband once called me a “cold, hard brick of logic”.1 Once when my drunk roommate brought home an equally drunk male coworker2 to crash at our apartment, I was called “the coldest person” he had ever met because I called him a cab and told him to leave immediately. I cherish these as the compliments they are.
But! Though my emotions run cold, and my heart is hard to find3, I enjoy a good angst filled emotional wallop in my literature. Indeed, books move me more emotionally than most real life interactions. Anyone else? That said, I do require my angsty, emo characters to amuse me, to have a distinct voice and not irritate me too much. Their melodrama must have a specific frequency that I can dial into and I don’t exactly know how to describe it, but I usually know it when I read it. And I definitely know it when I don’t see it on the page.
Today we meet some characters who just cannot and/or will not get their shit together in the emotion department. They brood, fixate and escalate, generally making things more complicated than they need to be. They feel intensely no matter the circumstance and that is the way they like it. Whether dealing with a relationship, a new school or a not entirely romantic but not only platonic love triangle, these people nurture their sensitivities, grow their grudges and cling to their internal passions with a steadfast dedication to make their lives as dramatic and difficult as possible.
On a cold, grey day find an uncomfortable seat by a window to periodically stare through as you sigh your way through one of these.
NORMAL PEOPLE by Sally Rooney
Set in Ireland in the 2010s, Marianne and Connell are from very different backgrounds and, though are high school classmates, they have no interaction. No interaction except for the occasions Connell picks up his mother from Marianne’s house where she works as the family’s housekeeper. Marianne and Connell soon discover a powerful connection exists between them and begin a deeply intimate relationship they keep secret from everyone else, for Reasons. As they attend university and move in to young adulthood, they cling together and break apart often as they redefine who they are as individuals and who they could be together.
Warning: Do not read this if you are anti-angst. You will want to throttle these sweet, stupid little dipshits constantly. However, violent thoughts aside, I did enjoy this once I accepted the reality of the heightened melodramatic world full of ‘pleasurable sorrow’ and indecipherable emotions. This follows both POVs in the third person, and the present tense lends an elevated air of immediacy and an out of control feeling as we aren’t given the safety of hindsight. There are some stark time jumps that leave the reader a bit bewildered about how events ended, reliant on little crumbs of information to puzzle out the context — a parallel I think to how mystified and lost M and C often feel while together and apart. Their deep connection is true, but so is their deeply rooted fear of rejection. This has no quotation marks4 and the voice is frank, almost flat and is very dialogue driven with a here and now energy that gives immense weight to seemingly small, innocuous moments and mannerisms. Its a bleak, jarring combination to have such intense feelings delivered at a remove but I enjoyed that juxtaposition.
As expected from an angsty book, this is very sexually and emotionally charged tapping into a deep abyss of capital F feelings as the characters find in each other a “personality with a peculiar influence” as the epigraph says. Marianne comes from a rich, abusive family while Connell is from a poor, loving one so their backstories provide a wealth of baggage re:class/family trauma that adds to their relationship anxiety and I found this fascinating and well thought through. Their social status flips when they reach university which felt realistic and true. Also true is the way Rooney plays with opposites; the characters will often feel one way but their actions and speech repress those feelings and they act out the opposite way, self sabotaging and confusing all involved. This felt quite human to me; events and conversations suddenly veering out of control and away from expectations as one person hides their true self out of self preservation but also attempts to placate or guess at the other’s motivations which in turn are often opposite to what that person truly feels/thinks. What goes on internally vs what is acted out externally is part of the maddening paradox of being human and Rooney explores this very well. I’ve read a few Rooney’s5 and this is my favorite. It’ll just require a certain acceptance of angst so check your mood and read accordingly.
extra credit: As we all know the tv adaptation of Normal People gave us the fabulous Paul Mescal and for that I will be forever grateful. He has a scene in this that so. emotionally. excruciating. I feel gutted just recalling it. He is so excellent that I even forgive him for Gladiator 2.6 The tv show itself I found to be equal or better than the book which is an immense rarity. Oh, skip the Conversations with Friends adaptation which I found so profoundly boring that I abandoned it halfway through the season.
Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn't know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it.
—.—
He has sincerely wanted to die, but he has never sincerely wanted Marianne to forget about him. That’s the only part of himself he wants to protect, the part that exists inside her.
THE IDIOT by Elif Batuman
As Selin begins her freshman year at Harvard in 1995 she soon develops a crush-like fixation on her Hungarian TA, Ivan. As the school year progresses, Selin and Ivan strike up an email correspondence7 though their in-person interactions remain awkward, aloof and enigmatic. Without any idea of what she hopes will happen, Selin follows Ivan to Hungary to spend the summer teaching English in the suburbs of Budapest. Try as she might for understanding and clarity, these continue to remain elusive to her in almost all aspects of life.
Light on plot and heavy on internal musings, this book is a long series of vignettes and streams of consciousness as Selin deals with the confusing indignities of life that are mostly mundane but built up to epic proportions in her psyche. Her voice is dry, comic, bewildered and smart though she would probably disagree. She interrogates and obsesses over the smallest, most normal interactions leading her to feel destined to become a writer against her will. Her meandering thoughts ricochet from the banal to the profound providing us with a whiplash of amusement as she asks things like “wasn’t it more authentic, more human” to spend as long dissecting the minutia of Ivan’s emails as it was on Balzac’s novels or declaring “I could feel the fabric of reality crumbling around me.” She is young, floundering and absolutely the source of her own malaise but I was endeared instead of irritated mostly because of her voice; she is constantly embarrassed and while not pathetic, she is a bit pitiful in the same way all who flail through life are. She is desperate to know but resistant to understand. The elements of life that she chooses to ponder and daydream over were often quite wise in their nonacceptance of the nonsense of life. Her deadpan observations reveal a puzzlement and introspection like she is studying the human race rather than a participant in it.
I especially enjoyed learning information alongside Selin as she attends class and would chuckle aloud whenever she’d recount one of her insane dreams or expressed her angst in her particular Selin way. There were also a few Hungarian worldviews that cracked me up8 and I enjoyed all the philosophical probing into truth, language, existence, relationships and life. The last lines bookended the title in a perfectly despairing melodramatic conclusion that I loved.
extra credit: Though it doesn’t need a sequel, it has one: Eithor/Or.
more extra credit: Elif Batuman on Writer’s Block, the Shame of Youth, and The Idiot, Her Great Novel About the Magical Early Age of Email - this calls Selin ‘the titular numbskull’. Yes.
I began to feel that I was living two lives: one consisting of emails with Ivan, the other consisting of school. Once, a few hours after getting an email from him, I ran into Ivan on the street. I knew he had seen me, but he acted as if he hadn't. He just kept walking and didn't say anything. Later I was walking to the gym with Svetlana and we passed a guy I knew from linguistics class. "Hey Selin, how's it going," he said. I paused to reply. Svetlana also had to stop walking, and so did the guy. None of us could go until I said something. But I thought and I thought, and couldn't think of what to say. After what felt like hours, I just gave up and started walking again.
—
I started to walk around the room, dazed with pain. I had no idea what to do with myself. I couldn't imagine how I was going to dispose of my body in space and time, every minute of every day, for the rest of my life.
THE RACHEL INCIDENT by Caroline O’Donoghue
Rachel is a journalist living in London with her husband and expecting her first child. When she receives the news that an old professor of hers is in a coma, she remembers back to a time of great personal and relational upheaval towards the end of her university experience. Back then Rachel lived and worked with her best friend James9 with whom she created an extremely co-dependent relationship. She “was 20 and [I] needed two things: to be in love and to be taken seriously” and so was drawn into a variety of interpersonal relationships, each delivering more drama than the last playing out against the backdrop of a politically and economically changing Ireland.10
This was so fucking funny, I annoyed all my companions while reading because of my constant snickering and they were all jealous of the terrific time I was having. Now I have no friends.11 We follow Rachel’s delectably unique commentary of a specific window in her life which mostly consists of shenanigans with James, and her on/again off/again boyfriend Carey, and the wider consequences of said shenanigans. I originally pegged this as one of those novels comprised only of an overly dramatic narration of the absurdity of the day to day12 but the plot is there, hidden inside the hilarity eventually asserting itself with a terrific blend of fate, intensity and human emotion. I just love when an author crafts something deeply intentional and it is even more gratifying to realize what I assumed was one thing is actually another AND it works. This pairs the ridiculous with the real in an extraordinarily funny and emotionally rich way and includes comically adept descriptions like
I was seduced by the concept of being wronged
My attraction to him came on like food poisoning
Harder to pin down than egg whites
and much more
In her youth, Rachel tends to mold her life around the men in it creating these odd ecosystems that are filled with distress, drama and wallowing but its all told in a hilariously, sharp voice tinged with bittersweet emotion that I couldn’t get enough of. There are tangible, realistic events here dealing with class privilege, love, career, family, reproductive health, friendship and selfhood. The intensity of emotion ranges from lightly comedic to heavily dramatic but these tonal shifts feel real and earned because they are written so well. The ending is sweet and surprising and I enjoyed every page of this book. It is one of my favorite types of novels; voicey, sharp and emotionally rich without ever being saccharine, shallow or stupid.
extra credit: yay! a tv adaptation is in the works!
I picked up that rage, and held on to it; I needed to remind myself why I hated Carey, because watching him lock up the bread shop was far too entrancing. The smell of pastry, the chocolate melting on my tongue, the bitter black coffee. I needed to remind myself of my anger, so I didn't inadvertently mix up good snacks with a good man.
if the rolling ladder brings you amusement or adds a new book to your nightstand then please!
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what angsty titles would you add to this shelf?
have you read any of these?
and i still dated him!?!
a complete stranger to me and she’d only just met him
once my young sweet nephew went around his family in a circle asking each of us where our heart was. when i said i didn’t have one he collapsed, wailing, and has never been the same since.
jk. he is fine and one of my favorite people.
who has feelings about this?
skipped intermezzo, didn’t sound interesting. anyone else read it and have thoughts to share?
a monumental ask as it was one of the most laughably terrible movies i’ve seen in the theater for years. i guffawed out loud at the end. of course, this was not paul mescal’s fault as his character was ‘written’ so poorly that to even call it a character is too strong a descriptor. watch this instead
a technology still in its infancy
i grew up in budapest so i know that there’s a very particular form of hypochondria some hungarians possess. once a teacher told me if i went outside with wet hair i’d go blind for two weeks like his aunt. another time i was told that sitting on that cold stone step like that would mean i wouldn’t be able to have kids. reader, i stayed where i was.
she was “colonised by James on a molecular level”
yay! more irish angst!
jk. i have like 4
see the idiot
I see your “stone cold brick of logic” from your husband and I raise you “you’ll never be capable of love” from my father after I had broken up with my fiancé at the time. This is why you and I are friends 🌈
Thank you for putting The Rachel Incident in your newsletter again because I was just reminded of how I never got to finish it! My library loan expired, and due to sharing a Libby account with three people (so we can all use each other’s different catalogues 😅), my hold must have been removed and forgotten!
Also Normal People needs to move up my list, and this confirms that. It has been on there for awhile because I want to read it before I watch it and I want to watch it because Paul, obviously.
As someone who purportedly does not enjoy angst, I’m surprised to have read two of three on this list. I also really enjoy The Rachel Incident - it was funny enough to not be totally weighed down by angst (Normal People, not so much).
I loved the footnote about Hungarian hypochondria. One of my favorite parts of living abroad is learning different cultural attitudes toward health. When I was in Argentina and starting to get sick, an Argentinian I was working with told me to eat some sugar (not like a candy bar, but plain spoonful of sugar) because it helps “energize the body” and fight the illness. In China, the solution to everything was drinking warm/hot water, which I’ve honestly taken with me as a practice.