Issue 02 — Rage
TW: language around violence! kidnapping! weak metaphors! Some of the recommendations below mention sexual assault, violence, and war.
Welcome to the second issue of WHYRT! I’m not great at small talk—and I am very aware that I’m playing it fast and loose with the whole “monthly-ish” schedule of this bad boy—so let’s just jump in! Below are some reading suggestions that will help you find, appreciate, and dare I say honor, your rage. Is writing about rage in the year 2020 a little too on the nose? Sure is! But I’m nothing if not heavy-handed. And I am really nothing if not a very angry person.
I’m going to use anger and rage pretty interchangeably here because I don’t know anyone who is *just* angry anymore—their anger, and mine, have either completed its final Pokémon evolution into a rage, or I don’t know, they’ve been living in a bunker with no human contact or internet access (jealous!). Up until this year, I have felt victimized by my own rage: I think that is a definitive experience of anyone who isn’t a cis-heterosexual-white-male (but for the two of you subscribed here: hi, welcome! How brave!), so I’m sure you understand. Nevertheless, for context, I need to share with you a line I read in 2017 that has haunted me for the last three years, “I stalk my own anger, like a spy in the bushes—I watch it.” I was, and still am, quite envious that the writer’s anger was their prey, not their personal-predator. My anger stalked and pounced on me frequently enough that I was in a permanent state of hyper-vigilance and yet was always surprised by the emotional-kidnapping. By the time I wriggled out of my rage-made-hostage situation, it was too late to laugh at the reveal that the perpetrator of this crime was me.
Now up until this year, let's say this summer, I ran from and resisted my rage with everything I had, or felt debilitating shame for succumbing to it. But I also, from a very safe distance, thought fondly and secretly of its potential. Maybe it’s living through this year, or maybe it’s being dumped over FaceTime recently after spending half a decade with someone, or maybe it’s the combo that’s led to some sort of internal-Stockholm-Syndrome, but I am in the process of accepting that my rage and I, we are one and the same. I am my rage. My rage is me. It's officially and formally my life force and my kryptonite, and I am a-ok with that! I am the Hulk now. My anger is my fountain of youth and my Dorian Grey mirror. Now the words of wiser women than I might jump in and remind me that feelings aren’t facts, and what defines us can oppress us, but at time of press my rage is here to stay, and it’s welcome to.
The recommendations below fall on a wide spectrum of rage. Some of them are open and explicit in their fury, some of them a bit more subtle or abstract. Whether you identify with your rage or don’t, whether you admire your anger from any distance or run in fear of it, these books illuminate the facets of rage we don’t widely acknowledge or accept—they show us unexpected symptoms of rage and the benefits of embracing our anger. However you choose to name the themes of the stories below, the rage they depict is both predator and prey.
No. 1
Marking Time
(Book #2 of The Cazalet Chronicles)
by Elizabeth Jane Howard
It feels a bit weird to recommend the second book in a series not enough people have heard about BUT bare with me! Jia Tolentino recommended The Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard in Interview’s “Ask A Sane Person” series, calling them “a five-book series with horrible covers that has fallen out of print; these books are due for a revival and a mini-Ferrante craze, I think” and she is not wrong! Book one sets the stage for this sweeping, generational-family drama, starting at the precipice of World War II and is both frothy and piercing. The series depicts repressed English women and their mostly asshole husbands, lavish manses, and Interwar attire, as well as wounding truths and meditations on witnessing and processing fascism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and all the other horrors that seem to perforate being a human, no matter the era. Book two centers female rage without explicit execution. Through the family dynamic played out through Marking Time, the rage we have all felt towards the adults who undermined our points of view because of our youth is aptly recounted, as is the anger that follows the mourning of realizing how human our parents and caregivers are. The anger and disbelief felt around WWII have eerie parallels to the lives we’re leading in this pandemic. Despite its long-ago setting, Marking Time remains timeless in its assertion that rage is cyclical and pervasive.
It’s For You If You’re For...
Cabaret, The Crown, unironic Downton Abbey merch, textile crafts, cocktail hours (RIP), and linen pantsuits.
No. 2
Self Care
by Leigh Stein
Slate published an article this October with a pithy subhead that read “to hell with self-care, let’s just throw tantrums." So I guess, despite the wellness industry’s best efforts, self-care isn't going to save us. The concept of self-care had an adjacency to certainty but true proximity to control. This year especially we are all in one of the stages of grief over these two feelings. But fear not, because one of the last safety nets we do have left is rage.
Control and rage are deftly explored in the lacerating novel Self Care by Leigh Stein. Self Care follows three women, two of whom have founded The Next Big App that monetizes “feminist” self-care to a degree we millennials are all far too familiar with, and the third attempts to maintain her autonomy amidst their dynamic and society's unrealistic expectations of contemporary womanhood. Of the two founders, one exerts control in obtuse ways, the other subverts it—Leslie Pariseau called Self Care “an updated, feminized riff on American Psycho.” This novel illustrates anger through the slowly-bursting seams of each characters’ attempt to control themselves and each other. Self Care will be a time capsule for the last four years: a prescient, although fictional, account of the demolition of #girlboss feminism. I read Self Care right as The Wing was crumbling, the trash fire of Bon Appetit aglow, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurd parallels between the narrative I was devouring and what I was witnessing in the zeitgeist. Self Care is funny, horrifying, subtle, and poignant in its observations on female rage, capitalism, and public accountability. This book will make you angry, not at Stein, but at just how relevant the farcical world she built is.
It’s For You If You’re For...
How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right? by Pandora Sykes, the Maybe Baby newsletter by Haley Nahman, green beauty vs clean beauty debates, Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino, The Devil Wears Prada, Goop’s legal settlements, and communal workspaces + outdoor fitness classes (remember those?).
No. 3
Ghosts
by Dolly Alderton
If you don’t know, Dolly Alderton is every Commonwealth-passport-holding’s fantasy best friend since her Sunday Times dating column and especially since her memoir Everything I Know About Love. Alderton’s first foray into fiction covers a year in the life of London cookbook author Nina who joins the world of online dating and dives head-first into what should be a promising new romance, while also dealing with her beloved father’s creeping descent into dementia. Ghosts is a clever play on the concept of its namesake as Nina finds herself ghosted by so much more than just a romantic partner.
This rec circles the slow burn of rage in its visceral summaries of the pain and anger of being left with silence and dishonesty from the ones you love. We all know heartbreak is an incredibly congenital, physical state to be in and Alderton illustrates it as such with language that is so accessible and yet still acute. Under her watch, the complexities of transmuting anger into healing are presented with ease, wit, and warmth—without judgment or posturing (a lot like Nora Ephron’s Heartburn). You will feel a familiar rage reading such plainly beautiful depictions of the burden of consciousness women carry when dating, among other aspects of being.
This is a great book for the recently broken-hearted or for the long-term disillusioned heart—or really just anyone with a heart—not just for its sincerity, but for the comic relief that can be found in states of emotional pain. The novel’s wedding scenes provide great takedowns of the industry, and the caricatures of every cliche of the "them vs us", “married vs single” dynamics will have you laugh out loud at their relatable absurdity. Nina’s friend Lola is a scene-stealer and if there is a sequel about her love life and or just a book of her sex jokes then consider me pre-ordered!
It’s For You If You’re For…
Cherishing yourself, Rachel Khong’s perfect novel Goodbye, Vitamin, The Marginy’s Pinot Gris, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman, Leanne Shapton’s Joni Mitchell Grocery List, dreams of swimming in the Kenwood Ladies' Pond on Hampstead Heath, and The Alchemist's Garden A Song for the Rose Eau de Parfum.
Want to keep reading?
Click here to read the rest of this issue of wait, have you read this? Better yet, click the big button below to subscribe.