resonance
annotations from three recent reads
As a teenager, I spent a lot of time annotating books I enjoyed. I found it to be such a grounding habit/hobby. I’m not sure why I stopped, but I’m glad to be back in that flow again! In this letter, I’m sharing some quotes from three of my favorite recent reads:
MARTYR!
by Kaveh Akbar
“What distinguishes grace from everything else: Grace is unearned. If you've moved through the world in such a way as to feel you've earned cosmic compensation, then what you’ve earned is something more like justice, like propriety. Not grace. Propriety is correct, justice is just. There's an inescapable transactional quality: perform x good, receive y reward. Grace doesn’t work that way. It begins with the reward. Goodness never enters the equation.”
“I want them all to have been right to fear me… I want to be worthy of the great terror my existence inspires.”
“What was inevitable could still be what? Immobilizing. Eviscerating. And yes, surprising.”
“That was the high. Making something that would never have existed in the entirety of humanity had I not been there at that specific moment to make it.”
“And that was that. I think about it every day. You’re not the patient today, Sang. It’s lucky to be on the other side. It’s a good day when you’re not the patient.”
“You think there’s some nobility in being above anger?” Sang asked. “You can put a saddle on anger, Cyrus.”
"All those severe poets talking big about the wages of sin all the time," Zee added, “but nobody ever brought up the wages of virtue. The toll of trying really really hard to be good in a game that's totally rigged against goodness."
"You're a human being, Cyrus," Sang said, gently. "So was your mother. So am I. Not cartoon characters. There's no pressure for us to be ethically pure, noble. Or, God forbid, aspirational. We're people. We get mad, we get cowardly. Ugly. We self-obsess."
"Underneath being startled is the expectation of calm." Zee said, then paused. "I mean, a person gasps because the ease they were expecting was interrupted. I think probably your life hasn't taught you to expect ease."
“I couldn’t help laughing, but laughing didn’t need my help.”
ANIMAL
by Lisa Taddeo
“I saw myself as something greater than I thought I could be, and though certainly the feeling would fade, it still shone radiantly in that moment.”
“Vic once said to me, What do you have to fear, kid? You’ve lost so much. What is there left to fear?”
“I only took in art that could fell me.”
“Let me ask you something. Can you imagine what it was like for the child, growing up as the only child her parent could love?”
“I thought of the girls…who got to be eleven and twelve and thirteen, with unicorn stickers and slap bracelets. I did not get to be any of those ages. I was ten and then I was thirty, and then I was thirty-seven.”
“May you not go around the world looking to fill what you fear you lack with the flesh of another human being. That’s part of what this story is for.”
“Vic once said to me, Families are silly. The whole concept is silly. He said that because he didn’t want his family. But he would have wanted one with me. Me and him at the supermarket, pushing around a pudgy Vic Jr. in a cart, buying grape tomatoes.”
“People will call you names, she said. They are only hating themselves.”
“He looked at me. He had no conception of what I knew. Fathers never know that about their daughters. Partly it’s because they don’t want to know, but really it’s because they cannot know. It’s psychologically dangerous to see inside your daughter’s brain. And I knew so much more than most girls my age because of the way I listened.”
“And that just because you wanted connection, someone to make you feel protected, that didn’t mean you wanted someone to chain you up. To emotionally jail you.”
“A lot about Alice was a contradiction, but that was true of most beautiful women.”
“The hatred was misplaced and men like Tim, if anything, wanted you to hate them. If you told them they were not evil, they would say that yes they were. Men don’t necessarily want to be the bad guys, but they don’t want to be the ordinary ones, either.”
“You have to tell me the rest of the story, she said. We are getting somewhere.”
“when, really, strength was being unashamed to want what you want.”
“It’s what you think you are missing inside of yourself. I promise that you are missing nothing.”
“There is so much power in the way we obsess. If we could only harness it. If we would only redirect it.”
EXHIBIT
by R.O Kwon
“But still, if it’s going well, I turn powerful. I have my hair pulled high, topknot rising to God. I stop time. I’ve stolen fire, and I paint with light.”
“You want to dance on stage?” her mother asked. “Yes,” Lidija said. “It takes years to be a ballerina. It’s hard. Is this what you want?” But Lidija’s head was shaking. Impatient, she replied, “I am a ballerina.”
“Each yes had to ring loud, bright. It had to be full, a hallelujah.”
“If I could help you,” Lidija said. I waited, listening for a ghost’s rippling silk. “If I said that, Jin, would I be intruding?” “But what kind of help?” I asked, quiet. I couldn’t tell if she’d heard. Lidija closed a hand on top of fretful, knotting fingers. “Is it going to be just one kind?”
“It’s the gist of faith’s orphic pledge: loss repaid. Life going on. I held엄마’ s note; I kept it intact. I sat in the echoing church, then left. I put the note in my studio desk. If엄마 still had words to pass along, she hadn’t quite died. • Dear Lord, I thought that, if I lost You, I’d have to stop living. I kept going, in part, to still have the hope of finding You again. It’s absurd; Lord, it makes me laugh. But if, in the house of logic, my dead will not exist, I’m obliged to step outside. O Lord, each photo is for You. I spill light. I leak worship, and Lord, if I get it right, will You come back?”
“Still, Lidija’s point was made. Pitted against a clock, a pledge, she’d triumph.”
“I don’t want us dying, not in the ballet I’ll stage.” “Oh, I love that,” I said. I’d sat up, jolted. “People do love a dead girl.” “If we die, we’re quiet.” “With no opinions.” “It’s the ideal girl.”
“Put me to use, I prayed. I’d long to be a saint. Lord, I’d go as You’d will, rapt, alone in the desert, singing of You. Give me the hot schist buckling, pebbles rolling, a patch of dirt lifting me to the sun. On high, from this stylite’s column, I’d raise my hands to You. I aspired to the fanatic’s striving, a life of undivided light.”
“It lent people hope to think, Oh, if I do this, I’ll escape fresh pain. It’s nothing but a tale.”
“People calling, Do you see me? Others replied, with delight. I’m here. I do.”
a NECESSARY FICTION update:
Riverhead made this perfect animation for the book, and I love it so much! Here’s the full blurb by NYT bestselling author and National Book Award finalist, Kaveh Akbar below:
“I can’t believe how alive Eloghosa Osunde’s NECESSARY FICTION is, how supersaturated and smart. Osunde writes with the cataclysmic dazzle and sneaky spiritual ache of Denis Johnson, but pitches it toward us here in the digital age. I love their prose, their characters. “It’s not a small job to guard a tall gate,” they say, early on. What’s the gate? Hustle, heart, privacy, sex, yearning so strong it buckles you. It’s all here. The ink practically hovers off the page.”
Counting down to July 22nd is a welcome fixture in all my days at the moment. I can’t wait! Six months to go!!! Remember, you can preorder the novel here.
More from me soon,
Eloghosa <3
Thanks for writing, Eloghosa 🫶🏾 Can I pre-order Necessary Fiction from Nigeria?