Swimming with Miranda July

Swimming with Miranda July

1. Miranda July's new novel, All Fours, sat around a while before I picked it up. Pre-publication copies bear the title's release date, sometimes right on the spine. You could sort them chronologically. I sometimes do.

2. And then you can look at your books, and there's no kidding yourself. You've had that one since it came out three years ag0–in fact, a couple months before that, even! You're never going to read it, are you?

3. All Fours, however, was a stylish pleasure. The narrator / protagonist immerses herself in projects, sometimes long-term, sometimes short-term; ranging from quixotic to quotidian.

4. The narrator / protagonist is unnamed, so let's just call her Marcel.

5. After reading the novel's last page, I went swimming. Around lap four, I remembered the Miranda July story about someone teaching themselves to swim, or maybe inventing a stroke, or pretending to swim in front of the mirror.

5. That story was great! It's in No One Belongs Here More than You, which I can safely remove from my shelf because if I'm not going to open it to check the title of that story, I can certainly re-buy it whenever I want it. In the story, as I remember it, a protagonist engages in a very individual, partly physical, personal project. Like Marcel in All Fours!

6. The book–the protagonist?--obsesses on one's authentic self, but thankfully without that word, "authentic." There's been an interesting little run of thought lately, about how maybe the individual isn't even a real thing, or at least worthy of all that post-mid-century existentialist primacy and valorization and stuff.

7. A nice acquaintane (from my retail life) said hi as I walked to the public pool, towel over my shoulder. Somehow in the course of five seconds I managed to say something weird and awkward back to him. This wasn't part of a project, or an artwork. I was just being my authentic self, without even trying! While swimming, I thought: it's okay to be yourself, at least a little. I just read a whole pretty great novel about it!