what should I do with my shame
This Week in Reading:
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
A Visit From the Goon Squad is a novel told as a series of interconnected short stories, each from a different perspective. A minor character from one story becomes the protagonist in the subsequent one. One chapter is told by the best friend of a high school student in a relationship with an older record producer, and the next is written from the perspective of the producer’s young daughter, on a family safari trip. Another chapter is formatted as a PowerPoint presentation. The book covers a huge swath of time, extending from a darkly nostalgic exploration of the 1970s punk scene in San Francisco to a Margaret Atwood worthy future where people communicate through handheld devices and infants are the most powerful purchasing group in the music industry.
Each of Egan’s characters has their own distinctive voice—the variation in protagonists proving that the most tertiary figures in any given story have lives just as dynamic and complex as the current narrator’s. Instead of making the world seem more connected, this structure amplifies the isolation of the characters. To realize that the people that are mere footnotes in your life have lives just as rich and nuanced as yours is to acknowledge that you are a mere footnote in their lives as well— your turmoil and triumphs as invisible to them as theirs are to you. The world is large, and everyone is so small and alone in it.
When Bennie, a punk rocker turned record producer, is overtaken by memories of past regrets, he writes them down in a list, as if hoping that transferring these events to paper will remove them from his head. His assistant, Sasha, asks what he keeps scribbling, and he shows her, finally ready to confess, repent, face judgment. But when she reads the list— “Kissing Mother Superior, incompetent, hairball, poppy seeds, on the can” — she thinks it is a list of potential song titles. In another chapter, Sasha brings a date home and he immediately hones in on her table of pickpocketed items, the screwdriver and scarf and bath bomb she was unable to stop herself from stealing from strangers. Confronted with the collection of her greatest shame, he doesn’t recognize what he is looking at. Personal humiliations, when finally offered out from our darkest core, don’t even register to others.
Shame is a form of grief— grief for a former image of ourselves that has been forever tainted. We thought we were better than this: wiser, kinder, more savvy— and now that has been disproven. Shame fills the chasm between our projected identity and our actions.
I’m a relatively unselfconscious person. For the most part, I no longer find existing to be absolutely embarrassing. (Though it continues to be so in parts: love— still embarrassing, writing— the most embarrassing). I am honestly, fine, with most parts of myself. But I still carry shame, for previous iterations of myself that were weaker and meaner. I have old regrets and past embarrassments that squirm within me, things that still feel uncomfortable to discuss. (And if you think I’m going to list them in a mass email you are out of your goddamn mind.) Perhaps, if I told you about them, you would tell me that they are no big deal, perhaps they pale in comparison to the shame you carry. Would that unburden me? To know that I am the only one judging me for my inner agonies? Or would it simply invalidate my shame, making me more invisible in the process.
I’m not going to argue that shame is purposeful or healthy— it’s not. Shame is a spent battery in your pocket. Whatever initial motivation it provided to not repeat the same mistakes long depleted, it is a dead weight that can’t be thrown away— slowly leaking corrosive acid. It’s not good for us, but where should I put it?
Decades after she leaves the music business, Sasha’s daughter grills her at bedtime. “‘I want to know every bad thing you’ve done,’ I say. ‘Including dangerous and embarrassing.’ I stare at her until she looks away. ‘You can’t,’ Mom says.” Sasha has tried to leave her shame behind, fled to the desert to raise a family and make collages out of grocery receipts. Over time, the shame fades, a little bit, as we grow further away from our old selves, and build new images of ourselves to shatter. Her daughter can’t know her shame because Sasha can’t bear to share it with her, or maybe because, even if she knew, she wouldn’t understand. Maybe no one can truly understand every bad thing Sasha has done besides Sasha herself. Perhaps shame can only be held by one person alone, perhaps it is the most personal thing we have.
Studio-ing
Studio work has been slowing down over recent months because I'm *whispers* applying to MFA programs, which has me stressed out of my goddamn mind. I haven't really talked about that publicly so just throwing that into the void: I'm applying for grad school and applications are very stressful and very expensive and I might not get in and if I do I might not be able to afford to go! Guess we'll find out!!!!!!
Further Reading:
Short story collections that hit a similar note of wrenching loneliness: Self Help by Lorrie Moore, Isle of Youth by Laura Van der Berg