, if incorrectly: the art monster enters on the sixth page of Offill’s novel, not the first. On the first page of, you’ll find the following: “Antelopes have 10x vision, you said. It was the beginning or close to it. That means that on a clear night they can see the rings of Saturn.” Which is just as fascinating, frankly, but hasn’t spurred a hundred wan thinkpieces.
These misreadings are minor, but they point to a larger confusion. Both reviewers read some degree of randomness into Offill’s fragmented structure, taking the white space around the quotes about Buddhism and attention as an invitation to read them in isolation. But Offill’s sections function precisely in relation to the ones before and after: the juxtaposition makes the joke . The narrative is as meticulous and intentional as the seamlessly plotted scenes of more traditional novels.
In the second half of the book, her own art monster ideations behind her, the narrator—excuse me, the wife—grapples with her husband’s infidelity and the churning, consuming question of what, exactly, they are going to do next: Divorce? Stay? Move away? Move on? Her dissociation shines a secondary light on the gem of, illuminating further depths in its slim pages.
Don’t get me wrong: I, too, dog-eared the page graced by the art monster. I, too, have idolized the idea of her and emulated those who appear to fit the bill. I have worshipped all the usual dead geniuses, who refused marriage or were wrecked on its rocks, whether because or despite a matter for biographers. I have needed my bad behavior to be justified. I have needed my pain to be worth something. “I had ideas about myself,” the narrator ofsays of her 20-something experience. “Largely untested.
For the second half of the book makes it clear: marriage can be monstrous; it can make monsters of husband and wife alike. No longer “you” and “I” but strangers, unrecognized and feared—by each other, by themselves. The dismantling of the dichotomy works both ways: you needn’t be a monster to do your work, it’s true; you might become a monster nonetheless, with no work to show for it.
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