The formatting of the arc was so weird I couldn’t read this. Need to pick it up in physical form, I think there’s footnotes

Thanks to NetGalley and Graywolf Press for the ARC!

Lucy Ives’s "An Image of My Name Enters America" reads like Susan Sontag for the terminally online, moving breathlessly and comfortably from Lacan to 4chan memes to My Little Pony. It’s an absolute blast.

The book is comprised of five essays that shuffle along, starting as one thing before morphing into something else entirely. There’s an interesting tension at play here—re-reads are almost certainly necessary if one is to appreciate the scope of what Ives is attempting, but so much of the writing’s spark is in its immediate, off-the-cuff energy.

This momentum makes "An Image of My Name Enters America" a little incoherent and so earnest that one almost wonders if it’s a very complicated joke. It’s the wonderful kind of cultural criticism that welcomes its own silliness so that it can be genuinely serious. I think “Earliness, or Romance” is exceptional, shapeshifting between a reflection on the film "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" and an exploration of how our cultural notions of love are situated in the same cruel optimism that Lauren Berlant wrote about. Oh, also there’s mention of naming one’s "Oregon Trail" avatar after genitals. Strangely, it works, resulting in a lovely call to care—a yielding of our expectation for romance to make us feel fully known.

That said, this can be a deeply frustrating book for the same reasons that it can be very fulfilling. It’s all over the place. If you ever slip from Ives’s wavelength, it’s an absolute plummet, almost ensuring that you will be lost for the remainder of the essay. The difference between ambling and rambling writing is simply readers’ patience, and I think Ives tests it often. Occasionally, you might stumble over the detritus of what feels like an earlier draft of an essay, and it’s grating. It didn’t ruin the experience for me, but I’m sure it will for many readers.

"An Image of My Name Enters America" won’t be for everyone. In fact, I think it won’t be for most people, but it’s still worth diving into. These are thought-provoking essays that occasionally prod at the heart. Lucy Ives is a challenging writer, and it feels exciting to see a great mind at work, even in moments when it isn’t clear how it works.

A disappointing DNF for me. I have requested, been approved for and finished 10+ books since this arrived on my shelf. It's been months now. For some reason - even 20% in - I'm just not connecting with it. I think in large part that's due to the poorly formatted ebook. I primarily read on my kindle and the eARC I received was missing the essay titles, so I am <i>just now</i> having to go back and find out where each started and stopped (aside from b/w essays 1 and 2). I realize it may make me sound a little dumb, but I think I read straight through from there as if it were a novel. The start of the second essay was only obvious to me because I started losing interest pretty quickly from its start.

My other hang up was how dense and wordy the writing is. Maybe I'm in more of a rush than I should be, but I constantly felt like I had read SO MUCH for hardly any payoff.

As a mood reader I'm well aware of my need to give books a break sometimes, and give them another go after a palette cleanser or two. I tried that here. For months. This just isn't for me, unfortunately.

I don't think it's the book's problem though, I'm confident it's a "me" thing.

{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Lucy Ives and publisher for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!}

An Image of My Name Enters America is an excavation of Ives's history and well as the collective American history; Ives weaves moments from her own life and holds them against the suppressed and often forgotten about past. These essays are whip-smart, imaginative, and insightful; you will feel smarter having just read them. A book to read; an author to watch.

Thank you Graywolf Press and NetGalley for the digital copy in exchange for an honest review! Available 10/15/2024!

Totally brilliant essay collection: roving, curious, hilarious, incisive.

The essays pivot, from (say) My Little Pony to the Zoroastrian book of creation to Rene Girard back to the Blair Witch Project, seamlessly and seriously taking all topics as worthy of intellectual attention while also being very funny, while moving stealthily to rewarding and illuminating conclusions. They're also "personal" without being mundane—serious about life, but slightly bemused with the self. Lucy Ives is an incredibly interesting writer—Elif Batuman and Patricia Lockwood come the closest, but nobody's doing it like she is!