Manual Para Mulheres de Limpeza By Lucia Berlin
Hay muchas razones por las que nunca he escrito y probablemente nunca lo haga. Una ―la más fácil y directa― es que hay ya suficientes buenos libros y demasiados malos, y tengo claro que lo único que yo sería capaz de hacer, en el mejor de los casos, sería engrosar la cuenta de estos últimos. Pero, si quiero ser sincero conmigo mismo, tengo que reconocer que carezco de historias que contar y no soy ni tan siquiera capaz de imaginar de dónde pueden sacar los escritores las ideas para sus libros.
Muchos autores usan detalles de su propia vida para apuntalar sus relatos, para darles estructura y veracidad, e inventan el resto. Algunos recurren a su historia o la de su familia como base para su primer título; siempre es más fácil dar tus primeros pasos en terreno conocido. Entonces, superado el desafío del debut, se adentran con creciente confianza en el incierto mundo de la creación literaria.
Lucia Berlin vivió tantas vidas durante sus 68 años, y las vivió con tanta intensidad, que nunca tuvo que buscar inspiración más allá. Ella misma es protagonista, o al menos un personaje principal, de sus relatos. Tanto es así que si los ordenásemos cronológicamente y cambiásemos algunos nombres tendríamos una autobiografía completa, o una colección de sus cartas más personales. Su estilo brutalmente directo y su honestidad subrayan este efecto de confidencia íntima: “I know, I romanticise everything, (…) I exaggerate a lot and I get fiction and reality mixed up, but I don’t actually ever lie.”
Sí, su estilo es directo y aparentemente sencillo, pero solo aparentemente. Los relatos están concienzudamente trabajados hasta conseguir el tono y el ritmo perfectos. Son, además, un ejercicio de estilo perfectamente consciente. En el relato titulado Point of view, Lucia Berlin desvela el secreto de Chéjov (a quien admiraba y quiso emular) para no incomodar y finalmente aburrir al lector con las miserias cotidianas de sus personajes: no permitirles hablar en primera persona. En boca del personaje el drama se convierte en lamento ―algo que nadie tolera por mucho tiempo―, pero cuando es el narrador el que cuenta la historia, el lector asume que algo de interés tendrá el personaje si el autor ha decidido emplear tiempo y esfuerzo en narrar su historia. Tiene sentido. Lucia Berlin, siempre rebelde, solía hacer justo lo contrario en sus relatos.
Relatos que hablan, entre otras cosas, de la necesidad de integrarse, de pertenecer a algo o a alguien. Hablan de la niña con la espalda deformada de la que se ríen sus compañeros de clase, de la mujer de 19 años con dos hijos y un divorcio rechazada por su familia conservadora, de la adolescente protestante en un colegio católico, de la limpiadora que no puede conseguir trabajo porque las “señoras” piensan que está demasiado educada ―pero divorciada y con hijos tampoco puede aspirar a una ocupación mejor. Pero es la siempre rebelde Lucia Berlin la que habla en estos relatos, y por mucho que ansíe integrarse, tendrá que ser sin dejar de ser ella misma, sin renunciar a un ápice de su independencia.
Los protagonistas de estas historias son personas en apariencia normales y corrientes. La mujer de la limpieza, la recepcionista en la consulta del médico, la profesora suplente… personas en las que generalmente no reparamos y sobre las que damos por sentado que viven vidas monótonas y planas.
La vida de Berlin no fue monótona, ni tampoco fácil. Su padre era ingeniero de minas y Berlin pasó su infancia en estado casi silvestre―una libertad a la que nunca más fue capaz de renunciar―en remotos campamentos mineros en Alaska y el Medio Oeste. Durante la guerra tuvo que trasladarse a vivir a Texas con la ultraconservadora familia de su madre, alcohólica y racista, donde su abuelo abusó de ella y de su hermana. Después fue una adolescente rica y privilegiada en Chile, hipster en el Nueva York de los años 50, alcohólica dando tumbos entre México y Estados Unidos en los 60 y enfermera de un hospital en Oakland en los 70. Con 32 años se había casado 3 veces, tenía 4 hijos y varias adicciones y enfermedades, que la llevaron a frecuentar hospitales, centros de rehabilitación y alguna que otra cárcel. Lucia Berlin vivió todo eso y más, y en A Manual for Cleaning Women lo cuenta sin darle mayor importancia, con la naturalidad de quien repasa sus vacaciones familiares o el día en la oficina.
A todo lo anterior hay que añadirle ―como si no fuera suficiente― un agudísimo sentido de la observación. No debió ser fácil vivir junto a esta mujer, decidida a vivir sin concesiones, capaz de leer el alma humana como un libro abierto y a expresar sus opiniones le pesara a quien le pesara. Para los lectores, en cambio, esto es un regalo: del hecho más intrascendente Berlin podía arrancar las ideas más incisivas.
Cars drive by. Rich people in cars never look at people on the street, at all. Poor ones always do . . . in fact it sometimes seems they’re just driving around, looking at people on the street. I’ve done that. Poor people wait a lot. Welfare, unemployment lines, laundromats, phone booths, emergency rooms, jails, etc.
Leyendo algunos de los textos en este libro no podía evitar pensar ¡Dios, es el mejor relato que leído nunca! Y sé que eso no es verdad; de hecho, no existe tal cosa como “el mejor relato que uno ha leído nunca.” Pero algunos son tan buenos… Por ejemplo, en el que da título a la colección, mientras recorre en autobús la ruta de las casas en las que está empleada, la narradora combina anécdotas sobre su trabajo como mujer de la limpieza con fragmentos de su vida, rótulos de comercios, reflexiones, anuncios, consejos para otras limpiadoras ―recuerda mover ligeramente los muebles para que parezca que has limpiado detrás de ellos. E intercalada en esa vívida crónica cotidiana que podría describir la rutina de miles de personas, fogonazos de una terrible soledad, porque el dolor no puede no ser parte de la vida cuando se vive sin reservas.
Lo más curioso es leer 43 relatos acerca de los mismos pocos personajes, volviendo una y otra vez a los mismo escenarios y situaciones, y siempre encontrar algo nuevo y fascinante en cada uno. Escritos a lo largo de más de 30 años, Lucia Berlin extrae una historia distinta de una misma memoria a medida que madura como escritora y como mujer. Lo que no cambia es la descarnada honestidad con que están escritos. Soledad, tristeza, vergüenza, rechazo comparten casa, oficina, clínica o celda con un insaciable apetito por vivir y una inagotable capacidad de amar. Y si uno puede divertirse mientras hace todo eso, mejor.
I don’t mind telling people awful things if I can make them funny.
En el último relato incluido en el volumen, titulado Homing, Berlin se lamenta de que los cuervos que está observando con fascinación desde el porche de su casa solo han captado su atención por casualidad; podría haberse perdido el espectáculo y no se hubiera dado ni cuenta.
What else have I missed? How many times in my life have I been, so to speak, on the back porch, not the front porch? What would have been said to me that I failed to hear? What love might there have been that I didn’t feel?”
Sinceramente, después de haber leído A Manual for Cleaning Women cuesta creer que alguien que vivió tan intensamente haya podido perderse algo. Lucia Berlin Lucia Berlin, wrote about complex subjects with effortless clarity—her no-nonsense short stories were written with amazing depth and breath. She used examples from her own life to illustrate the human experiences through very personal psychological aspects.
Phenomenal introduction….of the highest praise for Lucia Berlin: excellent and fascinating.
“Strangers will tell you their whole life story” ..…
“Mama will ruin your favorite movie” ….
Every topic, every theme — in no chronological order — including potato chips and the kitchen sink were explored….
….dreams, humor, sorrow, death, addiction, abuse, estrangement, sobs, sickness, denied peace, working class women, marriages, childhood, sisters, parenting, babies, violence, housecleaning, therapy, alcoholism, sobriety, prison, teaching, writing, nursing, cities, streets, states, countries……
and every emotion fill these forty-three stories.
God, life, sin, faith, Mexican bars, or cowboy bars, the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s,
walk or climb for miles, grandfathers, kissing, plays, Italian movies, Albuquerque, Berkeley, New Mexico, Mexico City, Colorado, Chile, California, Adobe houses, gin and tonic, music, books, poems, coffee, Patsy Cline,, Walt Whitman, people who are not afraid to be corny, the desert, the foothills, dust storms, dancing, coyotes, pregnancies, unwanted pregnancies, people who remember things,
quiet men, chatterbox women, sadness, sweet things, writing short stories……
“Only write about what you feel”…..
reading over and over, roommates, thinking about Joe, pizza, beer, Jane Austen, chamber music,
English major in college,
janitors, old couples,, cottonwood trees, stars, college dorms, a sore face from smiling, happiness in Chile, weekend adventures,
Hot Springs, read out loud, track meets, house mothers, jealousy, being in love, the future, love for a Latin person, uninspiring advice from Mama, sister Sally, nicotine, feeling pretty and grown-up, flirting, more Gin, ships in the harbor,
“no one was ever going to hurt me again”….
shame, lots of drunkenness, more abuse, Alaska, frozen lakes, skiing, silence, polar bears, fishing, wolves, Grizzlies and mountain goats, Theaters,
Cast parties, bad behavior, babies ripped from a mother‘s breast, eskimo women, Texas,, war, money, poverty, drinking more and more, home, traveling, loneliness, traveling schools, runaways, expelled from school,
“once I didn’t speak for six months and Mama called me the bad seed”….
…..blackouts for more drunkenness, Arizona, a little happiness for short sober periods, fear, sneering, self protection, elegance and beautiful things, poker playing with priests, young pretty, and having a future was hard on Mama, (poor pitiful mama), husbands, kids playing outside, old cars, pregnancy, exhaustion, frustration, hopelessness, grief, disability, construction jobs, coAddicts and enablers,
cough syrup, TV watching, Levi’s, sunsets,
“what’s the matter with me, I was crying again?”….
the lousy things about drugs,
El Paso, jail, emergencies, three failed marriages, single motherhood, four sons, teen years In Santiago, maid work, nursing, teaching,
cap drivers, neighborhoods that flashed by, skating as a kid, pretending, and not being able to pretend, nail polish, fancy clothes, dangerous drug scoring, babies, valium pills, a baby and a drug free bed in a house filled with drugs and people shooting up with heroin, mountain mining towns, going overseas, tall and childlike, The exclusive Radcliffe school for girls, a scholarship, dressed like a ragamuffin and lived in the slums, the library, accused of stealing, stealing, accused wrongly, kids at Saint Joseph hated the poverty kid,
Home was bad and school was bad… both were scary..
more ‘not talking’,
playing jacks as a kid, mothers yelling, dark humor, characters re-appear in stories, (a few interlinked stories),
“so happy to have a friend”….[Hope was a true friend]
childhood games played with a knife,
“Looking back… It seemed I went through a type of orientation”…..
learned cuss words in English in Spanish, kids play, adolescents, adulthood, travel, helped roll out bread on a ping-pong table, afternoon of washing bloody menstrual rags, welfare, food stamps, Taco Bell, Solidad prison, in fighting and yelling, little houses in Oakland, fear, afraid to go outside, illegal immigrants, prejudice bigotry, loneliness, despair, misogyny, exhaustion, ETC…..
Self-deprecating—unsentimental (yet sad)—HARD KNOCK LIFE stories….INTENSE - PERSONAL - SEMI-AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL -storytelling.
Brutal - but brilliant writing…..
Lucia Berlin died in 2004.
Lucia Berlin I had never heard of this author before until coming across it in Goodreads. I am once thankful for this website…if it weren’t for several readers who said that they really liked this book, I would not have read this great collection of short stories. The book consists of 41 short stories by Lucia Berlin primarily pulled from her books published from 1981-1999. The book presents a good chunk of her writing as her total number of short stories written is 76.
The average length of the short stories are 8-15 pages, shortest one is 1 page and longest one is 31. Lucia Berlin battled alcoholism for a number of years of her life — I only bring that up because there are a lot of alcoholic characters in her stories, and because we are told in the foreword by Lydia Davis that many of the stories are based on events in her own life. One of her sons said, after her death, “Ma wrote true stories, not necessarily autobiographical, but close enough for horseshoes….Our family stories and memories have been slowly reshaped, embellished, and edited to the extent that I’m not sure what really happened all the time. Lucia said this didn’t matter: the story is the thing.” Lydia Davis in the Foreward states that Lucia did invent fictional characters and events…so this collection shouldn’t be read as a memoir verbatim.
I thought the writing was extremely good. Her writing was evocative. Not verbose. Most of the stories held my attention. One of her stories made me tear up (Mourning). Some stories were very sad, and some perhaps not for the faint of heart. In fact Maureen Corrigan in her review of the book on NPR [National Public Radio] says “If you want consolation or uplift from your short stories, look elsewhere.” A link to her review is below.
I made special note of five stories I really liked: “Stars and Saints,” “Good and Bad,” “Electric Car, El Paso,” “Grief,” “Mourning,” and “Homing”. I should also note that she did something interesting…there were two short stories that were separate from each other but that were linked….one began “Silence” (320) where the other left off “Stars and Saints” (p. 17).
I still remember one phrase that I really liked — a protagonist was looking down from a roof onto a highway some distance away and saw the cars as “a bracelet of headlights”. Oh, and I learned a new word: ‘alpenglow’ (an optical phenomenon that appears as a horizontal reddish glow near the horizon opposite to the Sun when the solar disk is just below the horizon. This effect is easily visible when mountains are illuminated, but can also be seen when clouds are lit through backscatter.).
Lydia Davis at the time of this collection was published (2015) said that: “I have always had faith that the best writers will rise to the top, like cream, sooner or later, and will become exactly as well known as they should be — their work talked about, quoted, taught, performed, filmed, set to music, anthologized. Perhaps with the present collection, Lucia Berlin will begin to gain the attention she deserves.”
I second that. 😊 And indeed it did gain her attention — I just went to Wikipedia to see if there was something of interest to post with my review and was so glad to see that this book “hit The New York Times bestseller list in its second week…The collection was ineligible for most of the year-end awards (either because she was deceased, or it was recollected material), but was named to a large number of year-end lists, including the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2015”. 😊 Here is the link to the Wikipedia webpage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucia_B...
Reviews:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/bo... (Jim: The reviewer [Dwight Garner] very much liked the collection but thought it could be shortened by 50%. And that is my only criticism of the collection - if one could call it that: I would recommend reading maybe several stories at a time and making a decision to read this over a matter of weeks….rather than trying to do it in one long slog without looking at other books, which is what I did.)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
https://www.npr.org/2015/08/24/432748...
Lucia Berlin I first met Lucia Berlin in 1991 as the significant other of one of her sons, who remains my closest friend. Though I knew she wrote short stories, it was something that was mentioned in passing and I never seemed to make the time to read them. I am thankful that I didn't. My age and experiences have just added to the thrill of discovering her writing now. I wish you could be here to see this, Lucia. Your time has come.
I was a little afraid to read this book. What if I didn't like it? Or think it was good? I wanted to have a good perspective so I read new stories by Alice Munro, Hilary Mantell, Elizabeth McCracken, Edith Pearlman… and then I started A Manual for Cleaning Women. I'm not sure what I expected but I did not expect the brilliance that I found. I absolutely LOVE this book. I have laughed out loud, I have shed tears and marveled at the language. But more than anything, I see myself in a different way with the light of her writing shining on me. Entertainment Weekly has it right. If you read one book this summer, read this one. Lucia Berlin Warning: Skip the two introductions to the book, unless you want to know how many of the stories end before you read them. In the case of the audio book, skip ahead to track 15 of CD 1. What were the people who wrote the introductions, and then the people who let them do it, thinking?!
A beautiful collection of short stories that inspire compassion and imagination. The multiple audiobook readers did well. Given how the book is autobiographically inspired and the author was fluent in Spanish, it would have been better if the readers had checked the occassional Spanish words included. Also, would have enjoyed knowing who each reader was. Lucia Berlin
read & download ↠ eBook or Kindle ePUB Ü Lucia Berlin
Manual Para Mulheres de Limpeza reúne o melhor da obra da lendária escritora norte-americana Lucia Berlin, comparada a escritores como Raymond Carver, Richard Yates, Marcel Proust e Chekov.
Com um estilo muito próprio, Lucia Berlin faz eco da sua própria experiência - tão rica quanto turbulenta - e cria verdadeiros milagres a partir da vida de todos os dias. As suas histórias são pedaços de vidas convulsas. Histórias de mulheres como ela: mulheres que riem, choram, amam, bebem, vivem e sobrevivem. Histórias de mães e filhas, casamentos fracassados e gravidezes precoces. Histórias de emigração, riqueza e pobreza, solidão, amor e violência. Seja em salões de cabeleireiro, lavandarias, consultórios de dentistas ou colégios de freiras, nestas páginas acontece o inesperado. Testemunham-se os pequenos milagres e tragédias da vida, que Lucia Berlin trata por vezes com humor, por vezes com melancolia, mas sempre com comovente empatia e extraordinária vivacidade, como se as personagens e os lugares - extraordinariamente reais, saltassem da página. Manual Para Mulheres de Limpeza
I know already, just four stories in, that this will be a 5-Star read for me. And that a few weeks from now—because I am reading slowly, to savor each bit— I will struggle to pick my favorites from the forty-two short stories collected here. So this review contains tidbits from those stories which most capture my heart and brain and I will update as I move along.
Angel's Laundromat
A laundromat . . . that transient, warm, sad space . . . where we watch others sorting, folding, watching us... But mostly we're all just waiting. It's a waiting space. One of the loneliest. Berlin captures this loneliness, and the chance encounters possible if we happen to catch the eye of someone else sitting in those miserable molded plastic seats.
Dr. H.A. Moynihan
Wherein a young girl yanks out all her Grandpa's teeth. Not quite as vicious as it sounds, but also not for the faint of heart. Fabulous. Brutal.
Stars and Saints
Lucia Berlin comes up with these sentences, buried amidst all her brilliant sentences, that make me ache to write. This, That day on the playground I knew that never in my life was I going to get in. It's a brilliant opening line, don't you think? One I'd like to craft an entire story around. Yet it's just one in a collection of such lines in this wry, strange and sad little story.
A Manual for Cleaning Women
Oh. This. Ache. Melancholy. Grief. The beauty of being present. Like the laundromat, Berlin takes us into another transient, lonely space. Here it is a city bus, where one sees the same faces traveling the same routes, where relationships are built from habit and shared experience, in those brief, moving encounters.
El Time
Every high school teacher's nightmare: the student who is smarter, stronger, full of cunning and allure.
Her First Detox
A mother of four sons, a successful teacher, awakens in a detox unit without any knowledge of how she got there, or memories of her most recent binge to become the darling of the ward. Sweet, tender, devastating.
Emergency Room Notebook, 1977 and Temps Perdu
Both stories gleaned from the author's experiences working in hospital wards. Good deaths and bad deaths, Code Threes and Code Blues. Spare, unflinching, brilliant.
Todo Luna, Todo Año
A middle-aged English teacher on holiday at a Mexican beach resort. Love, tragedy, scuba diving. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.
Melina
Short story perfection. One of those you'd teach in an English class because it's so elegantly, precisely constructed, with a BAM ending.
Unmanageable
The horror of alcohol addiction rendered in three tight, devastating pages.
Strays
I read this aloud, because the language was so powerful. The sentences like knife cuts and hammer blows. The content so upsetting. This story will stay with me for a long time to come.
Grief, Fool to Cry, Panteón de Dolores, Mama, Wait A Minute
There are a string of stories, starting with the aforementioned Todo Luna, Todo Año featuring the two sisters Sally and Dolores, connected but not- each is a sketch, a study, a new angle on the motif of these sisters' shared and disparate experiences. Sally, long a resident of Mexico City, is dying of cancer; Dolores arrives to care for her, and their perspectives are threaded through in moments of reflection and tangled action/reaction. Mexico City, in its frenetic rush to live and die furiously, noisily, with color and music and trampling feet, becomes a character in its own right.
Carmen, Mijito
Berlin conveys despair in such a way that despite yourself, you cannot look away. These young woman speak directly to the reader with such a lack of spite, bitterness, regret; their lives are a series of horrors, yet each moves through like a bird through a storm cloud. The best and worst of the human condition live in these stories.
Silence
A young girl's voice, heard/no heard, as she navigates the terrible world of adults, seeking beauty. Will she end up just like them?
Sighs, the rhythms of our heartbeats, contractions of childbirth, orgasms, all flow into time just as the pendulum clocks placed next to one another son beat in unison. Fireflies in a tree flash on and off as one .The sun comes up and it foes down. The moon waxes and wanes and usually the morning paper hits the porch at six thirty-five.
Time stops when someone dies.
Time stops with each story in this collection. These are not easy reads and I needed a deep breath and some distance after each story. But Berlin's is some of the most astonishing writing I have read. Ever. It pains me that it has taken so long for us to recognize her power and mastery, that she will never know how deeply she has affected this new generation of readers. But do yourself a favor. Make it a priority to read this collection- take all the time you need, dip in and out, but know that you will finish a different human being than when you started. Lucia Berlin my becoming-a-genius project, part 16...maybe? (and one of my favorites of the year! find my list: https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.co...)
if you've had the misfortune of digitally encountering me before, you probably know what that means: i pick up the collected works (almost no entries have actually met this parameter) of various Respected Authors (a category that apparently depends on my mood) and read a story a day (except most saturdays, or when i'm slumping, or when i forget, or when i read more than one like the teacher's pet suckup i am) until i become a genius (which is funny because it will never happen).
anyway, this triumphantly fails to meet all guidelines. this is a selection of lucia berlin's stories, berlin is a recent entrant into the canon if she's there at all, i already accidentally read the first 17 stories, and i am dumber than ever.
so i'm not sure this can count as a genius project even if i'm being nice to myself. but i just remembered i make the rules so. f*ck it.
the past projects:
PROJECT 1: THE COMPLETE STORIES BY FLANNERY O'CONNOR
PROJECT 2: HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES BY CARMEN MARIA MACHADO
PROJECT 3: 18 BEST STORIES BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
PROJECT 4: THE LOTTERY AND OTHER STORIES BY SHIRLEY JACKSON
PROJECT 5: HOW LONG 'TIL BLACK FUTURE MONTH? BY N.K. JEMISIN
PROJECT 6: THE SHORT STORIES OF OSCAR WILDE BY OSCAR WILDE
PROJECT 7: THE BLUE FAIRY BOOK BY ANDREW LANG
PROJECT 8: GRAND UNION: STORIES BY ZADIE SMITH
PROJECT 9: THE BEST OF ROALD DAHL BY ROALD DAHL
PROJECT 10: LOVE AND FREINDSHIP BY JANE AUSTEN
PROJECT 11: HOMESICK FOR ANOTHER WORLD BY OTTESSA MOSHFEGH
PROJECT 12: BAD FEMINIST BY ROXANE GAY
PROJECT 12.5: DIFFICULT WOMEN BY ROXANE GAY
PROJECT 13: THE SHORT NOVELS OF JOHN STEINBECK
PROJECT 14: FIRST PERSON SINGULAR BY HARUKI MURAKAMI
PROJECT 15: THE ORIGINAL FOLK AND FAIRY TALES OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM
PROJECT 16: A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN BY LUCIA BERLIN
STORY 1: ANGEL'S LAUNDROMAT
sheesh. you can immediately tell lucia berlin was That Bitch.
i kept rereading paragraphs but it could have either been due to lack of focus on my part or because i really wanted them to sink in, like when you replay your favorite song because you weren't appreciating it enough.
let's err on the side of positivity for once.
rating: 3.5
STORY 2: DR. H.A. MOYNIHAN
this made me dearly miss my grandpa, who - while not a maniacal and disturbing dentist indulging in raging alcoholism - was a kind of ornery old guy with a penchant for jack daniels.
or maybe it was just that phoebe bridgers' cover of summer's end came on shuffle while i was reading this.
either/or.
rating: 4
STORY 3: STARS AND SAINTS
i have spent, as i write these little notes in my little notebook that i will later transfer to my little goodreads, most of the past 48 hours in public. as someone with untreated (but diagnosed!) anxiety that is rapidly devolving into agoraphobia, that means i have spent most of the same period believing myself so horrifically awkward it warrants execution.
this made me feel better.
rating: 4
STORY 4: A MANUAL FOR CLEANING WOMEN
i always expect a lot from title stories.
here, i was right to.
rating: 5
STORY 5: MY JOCKEY
a one pager. bold.
update: i later learned this was one of the only stories lucia berlin wrote to be recognized in her lifetime, so i feel stupid for not liking it as much as some of the others...but i don't. so.
speaking my truth.
rating: 3.75
STORY 6: EL TIM
i hated reading this but that was maybe the point?
this felt like ottessa moshfegh, and surrounded by the other stories in this collection it made me like ottessa moshfegh less.
rating: none
STORY 7: POINT OF VIEW
i just fell in love.
i'm in love with this story.
it'll be an autumn wedding and you're all invited.
rating: 5
STORY 8: HER FIRST DETOX
i'm like 1/8 of the way through this collection and already dreading finishing it.
rating: 5
STORY 9: PHANTOM PAIN
it do be like that. that's all i can say.
rating: 4.5
STORY 10: TIGER BITES
all of these stories are:
- excellent
- semi-autobiographical
- in an endlessly confusing way.
rating: 4.5
STORY 11: EMERGENCY ROOM NOTEBOOK, 1977
very grateful for a year to ground me. i have no f*cking idea when most of these take place.
rating: 3.5
STORY 12: TEMPS PERDU
too gross for me. i'm sensitive.
rating: 3
STORY 13: CARPE DIEM
i am getting some anxiety rep with devastating accuracy here.
rating: 4.5
STORY 14: TODA LUNA, TODO ANO
well f*ck. this was nice.
this book is giving me so precisely what i need that it feels like a prescription.
i read this on a plane fleeing the same goddamn place the protagonist of this story is fleeing.
rating: 4.5
STORY 15: GOOD AND BAD
i love when i feel kind of meh about a story and then i come back here to write that and see the title i noted down earlier and go OH! well that changes things.
rating: 3.5
STORY 16: MELINA
this one is kind of basic and silly, but with the same stunning writing, and it made me remember the others are truly brilliant.
rating: 3
STORY 17: FRIENDS
like the last one, but improving from the cliché and trite.
rating: 4
STORY 18: UNMANAGEABLE
addiction is very scary.
the least hot take of all time, but this story knocked the sense out of me.
rating: 4
STORY 19: ELECTRIC CAR, EL PASO
allow me to reflect on what the hell this one means.
rating: none
STORY 20: SEX APPEAL
in a shocking twist, it turns out the men of hollywood have ALWAYS used their power and charisma to be f*cking disgusting.
rating: 3.75
STORY 21: TEENAGE PUNK
i am such a d*ck. here i am adoring this book for like 18 consecutive stories and then have two i like but don't love and nearly pitch a fit.
thanks for winning me over anyway, lucia.
rating: 4.5
STORY 22: STEP
good song. one of vampire weekend's best.
lucia berlin published three volumes of stories in her time, none of which garnered much attention, and then this little number was published a decade after her death and near-inexplicably sold more than all three of them combined in a matter of weeks.
this may include most of the stories in those three, but i don't care. this is good enough that i'm tracking down all of them.
rating: 4.5
STORY 23: STRAYS
it's a metaphor, see. you put the double meaning right in the title but you don't give it the power till the ending.
rating: 4.5
STORY 24: GRIEF
well now i am just petrified of having my relationship with my sisters turn out like this.
more importantly, people just don't go on holiday like they used to. that's something i've learned from this project.
rating: 4
STORY 25: BLUEBONNETS
people are scary. in multitudinous ways for countless reasons.
men especially.
rating: 3.5
STORY 26: LA VIE EN ROSE
a few days ago, i was fleeing a place i hate and had run out of reading material just before my flight. the universe smiled upon me because there was an outpost of one of my favorite indie bookstores in the terminal (and when is there ever anything but hudson news anymore), and then full on grinned because there was exactly one copy of this book left - which had been on my to-read list since i saw it in the non-airport location of said bookstore.
so i grabbed it, spent the remaining time before my flight walking around, boarded, sat in my seat, hit shuffle on my spotify (in which i only have, like, 2 playlists named variations of songs i like with hundreds of entries), and thought my thoughts.
for some reason, i was turning the phrase la vie en rose around in my head, thinking of lucy dacus's cover of that song, wondering if it was still in my playlist because i hadn't heard it in a while, when boom - the song ends, the next song plays, and it's la vie en rose. out of hundreds. right at the moment i considered it.
i was so stunned i wanted to take my earbuds out and tell someone, but i am not that person, so i did a :o face to myself and picked this book up. skimmed the table of contents, which i don't usually do but for occasions with short stories.
and then - no f*cking way. a story, midway down the list's second page: la vie en rose.
life is quite fantastic, from time to time.
this is pretty wonderful too.
rating: 4.5
STORY 27: MACADAM
little and lovely.
rating: 4
STORY 28: DEAR CONCHI
even lucia berlin's love stories are so realistic it hurts my feelings. reading this story at the same time as a rom-com felt like a moment to moment reality check.
rating: 4
STORY 29: FOOL TO CRY
lucia has so many self-insert names for herself. lou, lu, carlotta, dolores...but at the same time there's like 5 stories about each one. are they the same character? are they not? am i supposed to put two and two together or would that make seven? ARGH.
anyway, any protagonist who says things like I decided to use the word dear instead of expensive from now on and answers the question what do you find boring with Nothing, actually. I've never been bored is a special favorite to me.
AND a great last line? lucia, you spoil me.
rating: 5
STORY 30: MOURNING
reminds me of that sally rooney quote: “If people appeared to behave pointlessly in grief, it was only because human life was pointless, and this was the truth that grief revealed.”
but this is prettier and subtler.
rating: 5
STORY 31: PANTEON DE DOLORES
these stories are so good i want to mansplain them. the reversal of the traditional definitions of lonely versus alone...
rating: 5
STORY 32: SO LONG
i paused this story halfway to buy every lucia berlin book i could find.
rating: 5
STORY 33: A LOVE AFFAIR
i can't keep adoring multiple characters per story like this. i'm a hater. i'm not built to hold so much in my heart.
rating: 5
STORY 34: LET ME SEE YOU SMILE
so it turns out a story about an adult sleeping with a minor is never going to work for me. not if the genders are reversed, not if it's written by sally rooney, not if it's written by lucia berlin. f*cking grossos.
i will say it's funny how lucia wrote a self-insert character and then had every other character compliment her at length.
rating: 2.5
STORY 35: MAMA
killer of an ending.
rating: 4.5
STORY 36: CARMEN
carmen, from the latin, name of the roman goddess of childbirth.
god f*cking damn, lucia.
rating: 5
STORY 37: SILENCE
these perfect stories oh my god. i feel like i'm going insane. too much five star content at once, it's hurting my brain functioning, i'm destroyed, i'm melting, it's the wicked witch of the west without the flying monkeys over here.
rating: 5
STORY 38: MIJITO
the empathy here. i can't even review these beyond exclamations anymore.
rating: 5
STORY 39: 502
another new name for lucia's fictional versions of herself: lucille. far out.
rating: 4
STORY 40: HERE IT IS SATURDAY
oh god. this time lucia wrote a character that is herself so that every other character can compliment her, but this time it's a freedom writers / finding forrester / white savior goes to school situation. the character's last name is even six letters beginning BE.
thanks for making it a slight bit easier to say bye, lu.
great ending, though.
rating: 3
STORY 41: B.F. AND ME
silly and little and nice.
rating: 4
STORY 42: WAIT A MINUTE
this was so beautiful and real that i spent the whole story trying to keep it at a distance. i knew if it clicked into place for me it would be too, too much.
f*ck. it still was anyway.
rating: 5 but more if i could
STORY 43: HOMING
the last one. i'm sorry for what i said about you making it easier to say bye, lucia. i didn't mean it.
oh, no. of course this one would be extraordinary.
i want to cry.
rating: 5 and still more if i could
OVERALL
this book knocked me out. i don't know what to tell you. never in my life has a collection of stories done anything like this to me.
i'll be thinking about this forever, in a million different ways.
rating: 5 Lucia Berlin Lydia Davis, en el prólogo al libro, nos dice que “Parte de la chispa de la prosa de Lucia está en el ritmo: a veces fluido y tranquilo, equilibrado, espontáneo y fácil; y a veces entrecortado, telegráfico, veloz.” Gustándome la mayor parte de los relatos, mi entusiasmo con el libro se debe más a los segundos, los entrecortados, los que parecen saltar caprichosamente de memoria en memoria.
Seguramente tenga toda razón Davis cuando adjudica el adjetivo espontáneo al primer bloque de cuentos. Sin embargo, son los del segundo los que a mí me han transmitido un mayor aire de libertad, una mayor sensación de verdad, de falta de filtros, y más me han emocionado. A esa capacidad para emocionarme se suma (más bien, se multiplica) su capacidad para sorprenderme, su inteligencia para sugerir mucho con muy poco, su habilidad para envolver en sonrisas, ya compasivas ya alegres ya amargas, la tristeza, la desilusión, la añoranza que rezuman muchos de sus relatos.
Lucía es una mujer con un enorme atractivo físico y personal, con una mirada que te atrapa y te somete, y no me refiero solo a sus ojos, preciosos, sino también a como esos ojos ven, a como esos ojos nos ven y, por encima de todo, a como ven a Lucía. Contradiciendo a la cita de Huidobro que encabeza uno de los mejores cuentos (“A ver esa sonrisa”), esa mirada, esos ojos, atraen más que la tumba, quizás porque trasmiten lo mismo que ella. Cualquiera hubiera podido advertirle aquello que le auguró una adivina: tendrás muchos amores y muchos problemas. Estar cerca de ella debió de ser lo más parecido a estar en el cielo y en el infierno al mismo tiempo, incluso de forma simultánea. Una persona impredecible, contradictoria, intensa tanto para lo bueno como para lo malo, incapaz de evitar la tentación, de sustraerse al placer del momento o de evitar el dolor momentáneo sin que las consecuencias que sus actos puedan tener sobre sí misma o en los demás pasen en ningún momento por su cabeza o tengan la fuerza suficiente para retener sus instintos. Alabo el conocimiento que tenía de sí misma y su valentía al afrontar su interior y hacernos partícipes de él (fantástico y terrible la verdad de Silencio). Y, aunque nos pone delante su infancia y la relación que mantuvo con su madre, no tengo la impresión de que Lucía se parapete tras ese escudo, al menos no totalmente. En fin, qué terrible y qué maravilloso tuvo que ser estar a su lado. Lucia Berlin My foundation as a writer was shaped by these stories. I first read most of them in 1984, when I went to grad school in writing at U of Colorado in Boulder. Lucia was one of several wonderful profs I had there, but it was her stories alone that I read, with awe, and said, THAT is what I want to do!
Quiet awe, by the way. That's the beauty of these stories. No kings or dukes or ladies in waiting losing their heads or fighting for the crown. No grand sweeping anything, no boisterous narrator, showing off. But no boring MFA stories full of pretty sentences about nothing, either. Just raw, gripping tales about switchboard operators, cleaning ladies and shy little Protestant girls trying to fit in in Catholic school.
They are immediately engaging, with that voice, that draws you in with its candor as well as its insight. Lucia had an extraordinary ability to gaze right inside of people, sort of an emotional x-ray vision, with the people in her lives and her characters. (Of course those are the same--or the latter came from the former. She had that uncanny ability in life, and spilled it seemingly effortlessly onto the page.)
Fifteen years later, when I published Columbine, you can witness my attempt to emulate Lucia on every page. I hope I was worthy. I keep reading her, trying to get closer to the Lucia ideal, though I never will. My favorite story is My Jockey, and I've read it probably 100 times. If I can do what she did there, once, ever, that will be enough.
(I was lucky enough to read this book in galleys. It's coming out Aug. 18.) Lucia Berlin LA DONNA CHE CADDE SULLA TERRA
La vita o la si vive o la si scrive, diceva Pirandello.
Lucia Berlin invece l’ha vissuta e scritta, prima vissuta e poi raccontata, ma anche contemporaneamente.
Non è stata certo l’unica ad abbinare vita e arte, ma a lei sembra riuscito particolarmente bene, il connubio è pressoché perfetto.
Pensai: voglio un uomo che per salutare suo padre lo bacia.
[Irresistibile] Lucia Berlin a 29 anni.
C’è un’ironia particolare nelle parole della Berlin, che taglia tutto e niente, tutti e nessuno: chi scrive, chi racconta, non ne rimane incontaminato, protetto.
Un’ironia che fa venire in mente le infermiere, la loro indifferenza come arma contro la malattia: combattila, sconfiggila, ignorala, se vuoi.
E se al posto della malattia si mette la vita, mi è facile riconoscere questa particolare ironia.
Un’ironia che però non eleva mai chi racconta, e chi scrive, sopra il soggetto raccontato, non lo rende giudicante, ma sempre empatico, partecipe, vicino, coinvolto.
Grazie, gli sussurrai, e grazie a Dio, forse…
Berlin scrive come se avesse fretta, come sembra aver vissuto, da un posto all’altro, da un lavoro all’altro, da un amore all’altro, da una storia all’altra: i suoi racconti saltano avanti e indietro, qui e là, due parole e un nuovo fatto, un’altra storia è aggiunta, senza perdersi in lungaggini, senza sprecare parole, evitando anche i verbi se non sono indispensabili (Il profumo delle rose e la muffa del suo maglione, scrive in ‘Buoni e cattivi’, senza aggiungere altro, solo quello che serve).
Non è soltanto che questi racconti sono quasi tutti corti (dieci pagine di media): è la quantità di cose e fatti e ricordi e spunti e vita che contengono e racchiudono.
Max telefona e dice ciao. Io gli dico che mia sorella sta per morire. E tu come stai? Chiede lui.
Lucia Berlin mi fa pensare a Marilyn Monroe: la stessa ansia e capacità di vivere e bruciare.
Un’ansia che è sete di vita. Come se qualcosa non bastasse mai.
Sarebbe, però, una Monroe con pochi film all’attivo, perché Lucia non ha scritto molto, e sarebbe una Marilyn perfino più bella.
Così bella, uno sguardo che attraversa, così limpido da far male, che mi fa pensare a quell’altra creatura che ci ha deliziato dal grande schermo solamente per una manciata di film, imprimendosi indelebile nella memoria (la mia sicuramente), prima di scegliere la carriera di principessa.
Il panorama dalla finestra del salotto di amici. Non per niente la strada si chiama Grand View.
Pagine affollate di giovani studentesse, suore cattoliche, infermiere, donne delle pulizie, tossici, alcolisti, randagi, donne con più matrimoni alle spalle, ambientate in collegi scolastici, lavanderie a gettone, ospedali, centri di disintossicazione, studi medici, in Alaska, in Idaho, Montana, Arizona, Cile, New Mexico, in Messico, California, Colorado.
L’isola di Alcatraz, con l’ex penitenziario, vista dall’alto di Russian Hill.
Tutte le cose che lei è stata, i lavori che ha fatto, i posti dove ha vissuto.
Sono narrazioni comprese in brandelli di conversazione, capaci di cogliere l’attimo nel senso più letterale del termine.
Capaci di cogliere l’ironia anche dove sembra assente.
Capaci di affrontare argomenti insoliti, strani, per esempio come succede che possano essere divertenti i funerali.
Talvolta gli stessi personaggi ritornano, come se Berlin avesse progettato una sorta di romanzo: soprattutto due sorelle, Sally e Dolores, con la prima malata terminale di cancro, le si incontra spesso.
Il ristorante Chez Panisse al 1517 di Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, citato. Molti di questi racconti sono ambientati, tutti o in parte, nella Bay Area, soprattutto a Oakland e Berkeley. Shattuck Avenue è una delle strade principali di Berkeley, e Chez Panisse è probabilmente il ristorante francese più celebre di tutti gli Stati Uniti.
Poi finalmente t’imbatti in un racconto lungo, quello pi�� lungo, ben trentasette pagine, a Lucia sarà girata la testa scrivendolo, così lungo le sarà sembrata una quaresima: e ci sono cambi di io narrante - finora ti ha abituato a voci di donne, adesso all’improvviso c’è anche un uomo, più spesso la voce narrante è maschile, e ti senti gradevolmente spiazzato – la storia è più rotonda dettagliata e strutturata del solito, c’è un caso giudiziario, un processo, ma sia l’uno che l’altro si risolvono in poche righe, tutti il racconto è sui personaggi, quello che fanno, e quello che sentono – e arrivi al finale, per la prima volta molto cinematografico, al punto che cominci a immaginarti il dolly che si alza lento e i due personaggi che si allontanano diventando piccoli, e ti rendi conto che questo è l’attimo che Lucia voleva cogliere, e cercava, lo ha inseguito per tutte le trentasette pagine, ed era qui che voleva arrivare, a Jesse e Carlotta, che Jesse chiama Maggie, scendono dalla macchina di John, una Porsche decapottabile, lei è stata assolta, i due si allontanano sotto la pioggia. Si chiama ‘Fammi un sorriso’, e il sorriso Lucia me lo ha proprio strappato.
Spesso nominata, la fermata del Greyhound di Oakland. Greyhound è la compagnia di autobus più famosa degli US, porta praticamente ovunque (e ferma più che ovunque, i viaggi sono lunghi).
Iniziò a scrivere poco dopo i vent’anni, alcuni suoi racconti uscirono su riviste, ma la prima raccolta fu pubblicata nel 1981, quando aveva ormai 45 anni. La definirono “one of America's best kept secrets” perché è morta poco nota, nonostante un National Book Award vinto nel 1991, il riconoscimento vero, il successo, se tale si può definire, è arrivato postumo.
La Vida in New Mexico dove è ambientato il bellissimo racconto ‘Randagi’.
Carver le è prossimo, non solo per stile e temi, ma anche per percorso esistenziale: il nomadismo, la trafila dei numerosi lavori manuali, l’insegnamento di scrittura creativa (Berlin anche nella prigione della Contea di San Francisco).
È morta a Marina del Rey (accanto a Los Angeles) il giorno del suo sessantottesimo compleanno con un libro in mano.
Pucón in Cile, con il lago davanti, dove è ambientato ‘La vie en rose’.
Bridget Read nel numero di agosto 2015 della rivista Lit Hub sottolinea come lo sguardo da estranea della Berlin è perfetto per affrontare una forma di racconto prettamente americana: l’uso stupefacente di colloquialismi e tic linguistici per creare subito personaggi che rimangono impressi, l’abilità nel trasformare luoghi qualunque come una lavanderia a gettoni e scene ordinarie di turismo balneare, con pochissima azione, in interi ecosistemi di personalità e di umanità, rafforzano l’idea che la prospettiva di una scrittrice donna sia la più adatta ad analizzare un paese di contraddizioni, un posto in cui capire chi viene ripulito e chi si occupa della ripulitura è vitale.
Quest’ultimo concetto fa riferimento al doppio significato che può assumere il titolo originale della raccolta, anche titolo di uno dei racconti, A Manual for Cleaning Women, letteralmente “Manuale per donne delle pulizie”: ma, se ‘cleaning’ diventa il verbo e ‘women’ l’oggetto, potrebbe essere interpretato nel senso di ‘Manuale per pulire le donne’.
La donna che scriveva racconti. Lucia Berlin