I wrote a book (again)
My second book, Transference, will drop on February 22nd with Tolsun Books, a small, independent house here in the American borderlands. Having published my first book, You’re Not Edith, with a NYC house, I can tell you the experiences are quite different. Both have their pros and cons. I will not enumerate them here.
When my first book went on sale for preorder, like Transference is available for preorder now, I “celebrated” by drinking alcohol. Lots. This is how I celebrated all things as an adult: tons of booze.
Alcohol punctuated my life — my failures, and my successes.
I wasn’t even really a daily drinker (a bit so toward the end of my “drinking tenure”), but someone for whom drinking often felt “necessary.” These days, my eyebrows raise at anything that feels too “necessary,” for is the thing necessary-good? Necessary-evil? Necessary-neutral? These questions must always be asked of that which feels “necessary.”
When I say “wrote a book” I don’t mean I sat down and did something as impressive as write a novel or some great work of history. I mean that over time, I wrote a bunch of essays about various matters and issues and events that became a collection that then became a book.
This is the way my first book, You’re Not Edith, also came together.
When people ask me “What is Transference about?” this is a difficult question. Transference is about many things. It is about what the word “transference” is about — denotatively and connotatively. It is about home and desire, loss and gain, teacher and student. Transference is about what always catches up to us, what we carry, and what we cannot leave try though we might.
My late, great agent, Cicily Janus, used to tease me about how shitty I was as a self-promoter. I told her I didn’t like bragging. She said that “bragging” is not the same as “promotion” and I said that “Promotion is just bragging for money.”
I still don’t like bragging, but I really quite liked Cicily, and I still miss her.
In Cicily’s honor, here’s my plug for Transference:
America’s hottest new collection of literary autobiographical nonfiction is Transference by Allison Gruber.
This. Book. Has. Everything.
It has Zima Malt Liquor, those puppets from that Phil Collins video in the 80s, stage iv breast cancer, army base inoculations, mountains, dead dogs, and crying on Zoom with kids!
When I finished You’re Not Edith, I had just finished treatment for stage ii breast cancer. When the book went on sale, I was 35.
When I finished my second book, I was teaching high-school online while getting surgeries and treatments for stage iv breast cancer. When the book went on sale (today), I was 45.
Maybe, all this time, cancer has just been the universe’s way of seeing to it that I actually finish a writing project once every decade.
(In re: cancer, my PET scan was delayed until next week. Insurance/scheduling/America stuff. This was fine by me as I was in no mood for a PET scan this week.)
Fuck cancer.
This is a post about books, and the unlikelihood of publication, and other nonmalignant matters.
And I’m celebrating, tonight, with music and tea. And trail mix. I’m titrating off of sugar though you’d never know it when my co-worker offered me a tier of cookies today, and I inhaled them like a dog. When I came home from work, I noticed my hands were shaking and then I reflected and realized all I had eaten during the day was water, coffee, and cookies.
Whoops.
And it feels good to have finished another book. To let this collection go into the world. I am proud of myself. There were moments, particularly during the editing process, when finishing Transference felt insuperably difficult. Frankly, there were days when the work of writing felt frivolous, meaningless, shallow when held up to the light of what was happening in my own backyard, my own workplace, my own body.
These days, I think of writing as a tool for deep connection and exploration. No longer do I really fret over “sales” or reviews. (A little nervous with regard to the latter, but a bad book review ain’t shit once you’ve had your first “bad” PET scan. In You’re Not Edith, I think I wrote something about cancer being the “Academy Award” of diseases. This still feels true.)
If I’m being honest with you, reader, most days I write for the sheer pleasure of writing, to travel to the places only this act can take me. Today, during a wonderfully peaceful prep hour, I crafted a lesson plan in which I made use of my know-how as a writer to show students how they might write about something as arbitrary as, say, Galileo’s finger, and it was fun.
Sometimes, in the current iteration of American public education, I forget about the “fun” of teaching. Perhaps this is why the universe found me with really young students at this time in my life — very young people are always seeking, always trying to find a way for “fun.”
Today, during “Circle” (when we circle up, as a school, and talk about student chosen topics), I literally fell off the yoga ball I was sitting on. I moved back, rolled, and went down. I was not injured, and Old Me would have been mortified. I am telling you this story, reader, because I surprised myself today. I rolled off the ball and 1) fell with the grace of a stunt actor — seriously, I did this crazy slo-mo Matrix-style tuck-n-roll and 2) leapt up after falling and said to my kids, “Ta-da! We all awake now? How’d you like my trick?” and 3) after a moment of stunned silence, they burst out laughing. And then I was laughing, too. As I sat back down on my yoga ball, shaking off my fall, I remarked to the kid next to me, “I still can’t believe I just did that.”
And “that” was not “fall” — I fall all the time because I’m a klutz — but “that” was 1 ) I fell gracefully and 2) I jumped back to my feet and made a joke about the fall so quickly that my young, nimble students were astonished.
Little did they know, I was just as astonished.
Be good, hooligans.
