Things Are Against Us
Page 18
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1 As Audre Lorde said, ‘The power you waste is being used against us’ (https://youtu.be/OUXj0BVQkpw).
2 ‘Bride beaten by new husband… because he couldn’t get her dress off’ (Daily Mirror, February 16, 2015).
3 Directed by George Seaton (1947).
4 ‘If you put money in the hands of women, they can do magic.’ UN women’s representative Comfort Lamptey, speaking about Margaret C. Snyder’s life’s work (New York Times obituary, February 5, 2021).
5 Modern (1950).
6 As Audre Lorde wrote, ‘Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women’ (The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, Penguin, 2017).
NB. If this book results in one extra multiple orgasm somewhere, aided by a repentant man who’s finally seen where his true responsibilities lie, my work here is done. The hills should be alive with the sounds of ecstasy.
SOURCES
Things Are Against Us
Previously unpublished.
The Underground Bunker
First published in the Irish Times, July 8, 2019, under the title ‘Did we really massacre Indians, enslave Africans and poison rivers for this hellhole?’.
Trapped Family Fingers
First published in The Globe & Mail, October 12, 2019, under the title ‘It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad country’.
Three Strikes
First published in The Baffler, March 2015.
A Spell of Patriarchy
First published in the New York Times, December 26, 2019, under the title ‘Patriarchy Is Just a Spell’.
Third-Rate Zeros
Previously unpublished.
Consider Pistons and Pumps
First published in The Baffler, September 5, 2016, under the title ‘Womb Up, America!’.
The Woman of the House
First published in The Guardian, December 28, 2012, under the title ‘The Little House books as feminist classics’.
The Lost Art of Staying Put
First published in The Baffler, December 2017.
Bras: a Life Sentence
First published in Deliberately Thirsty, ed. Sean Bradley, Argyll Publishing, August 2000.
Morning Routine Girls
First published in The Baffler, October 2015, under the title ‘Distressed Cut-Offs: The morning angst’.
Sing the Unelectric
First published in Aeon Magazine, January 24, 2013, under the title ‘Sing the Body Unelectric’.
Ah, Men
Previously unpublished.
Take the Money Honey
First published in The Evergreen: A New Season in the North, Volume IV, ed. Lucy Ellmann, The Word Bank, 2019; based on a talk given at the Poisson Rouge, New York, March 18, 2015.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to commissioning editors Mark Medley, Martin
Doyle, Valerie Cortes, Chris Lehmann, John Summers, Peter Catapano, Justine Jordan, Sean Bradley, and Marina Benjamin.
It’s nice to be asked.
ALSO BY LUCY ELLMANN
Sweet Desserts
Varying Degrees of Hopelessness
Man or Mango? A Lament
Dot in the Universe
Doctors & Nurses
Mimi
Tom the Obscure
Ducks, Newburyport
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Here’s the THING: Lucy Ellmann is extremely shy. She’s so awkward and self-conscious that meeting strangers, or almost anyone, exhausts her. She’s lousy at remembering names. She cannot add or subtract. She hates having appointments in her diary and prefers to wear the same outfit every day. She’s a fretful iconoclast, much prone to anger. She’s also distrustful, lazy and easily hurt. She is not a team player. She prefers interrupting people to organising them, and cries if she doesn’t get her way. She fears she’s neglected everybody she knows, and vice versa – not to mention people she doesn’t know. She can’t stand protocol, committees, business hours, ceremonial occasions, public performances and filling out forms. And she never wants to be carried through a crowd on a palanquin. Otherwise, the world’s her oyster!
She has written seven novels, including Sweet Desserts (Guardian Fiction Prize, 1988), Dot in the Universe, Mimi and Ducks, Newburyport (Goldsmiths Prize, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, 2019), and an illustrated book for adults, called Tom the Obscure. Born in the USA, she now lives in Scotland. This is her first book of essays.
PRAISE FOR LUCY ELLMANN
‘Lunatic and splenetic and distinctive…I begin to suspect [Ellmann] may be some sort of genius.’ Telegraph
‘A true original.’ Guardian
‘Ellmann’s comedic brilliance is sui generis on any continent.’ Paris Review
‘In a class of her own.’ Cosmopolitan
‘If there were a laureate for anger, it should go to Lucy Ellmann.’ Scotland on Sunday
‘A CAPITAL case of comic genius.’ Independent
‘Funny, angry, sarcastic and utterly individual.’ Observer
PRAISE FOR DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT
WINNER OF THE 2019 GOLDSMITHS PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2020 JAMES TAIT BLACK PRIZE FOR FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION SHORTLISTED FOR THE SALTIRE PRIZE FOR FICTION
‘That rare thing: a book which, not long after its publication, one can unhesitatingly call a masterpiece.’ Erica Wagner, chair of the judges, Goldsmiths Prize
‘The unstoppable monologue of an Ohio housewife in Lucy Ellmann’s extraordinary Ducks, Newburyport is like nothing you’ve ever read before. A cacophony of humour, violence and Joycean word play, it engages—furiously—with the detritus of domesticity as well as Trump’s America. This audacious and epic novel is brilliantly conceived, and challenges the reader with its virtuosity and originality.’ 2019 Booker Prize jury citation
‘Far and away the best book I read this year—this century even—is Lucy Ellmann’s funny, frightening and incredibly addictive Ducks, Newburyport…Ellmann encapsulates existence in the 21st century, its dimensions and its contours, while offering an intense portrait of motherhood, of mothering and of being mothered.’ Australian ‘[A] triumph.’ Guardian
‘Resplendent in ambition, humour and humanity…
In Ducks, Newburyport, Ellmann has created a wisecracking, melancholy Mrs Dalloway for the internet age.’ Financial Times
‘A novel that rewards perseverance, is truly unique, and feels like an absence in your life when you finish it.’ Observer
‘Sei Shonagon [and] Walt Whitman…are the intellectual company Ellmann keeps…Ducks, Newburyport [is] as accumulative, as pointed, as death-addled, as joyous, as storied, as multitudinous and as large as life.’ New York Times
‘Breathlessly brilliant…An extraordinary achievement of wit and imagination…This isn’t just one of the outstanding books of 2019, it’s one of the outstanding books of the century, so far.’ Irish Times
‘A sublime literary enactment of how guilt, grief, rage, regret, compassion, and every other emotion swirls and ebbs in unbalanced defiance of rational logic…If art is measured by how skillfully it holds a mirror up to society, then Ellmann has surely written the most important novel of this era.’ Paris Review
‘An impressive feat.’ Sunday Times
‘Magnificent…Ellmann has produced a domestic epic of modern American life in the Trump era.’ Prospect
‘Perhaps the most intensely real depiction of the life of the quotidian mind I’ve ever witnessed…[A] Joycean achievement…A colossal feat.’ Spectator
‘What thrills is the novel’s density, vibrancy and, crucially, its innovation…Turn to any page and you’ll find it tightly packed and working overtime to redefine what the novel can do.’ New Statesman
‘The time and care that [Ellmann] lavishes on her narrator seem like their own form of political speculation—that every individual is owed an unending devotion, and that such devotion,
applied universally, might change the fate of the world.’ New Yorker
‘Full of wit and intelligence…one of the most intriguing, charming and genuinely funny characters I have come across in recent years.’ Herald
‘Effervescent…Ellmann has made a case that a richer, less regimented language leads to a more vibrant and capacious mind, and has thus crafted the entrancing Ducks, Newburyport into a celebration of all that words, and the minds they build, can contain.’ Chicago Review of Books
‘This is a powerful and deeply felt indictment of American moral failure, a fearful, dazzling bloom of conscience… A grand, mimetic achievement.’ Nation
‘Timely, fresh [and] possibly one of the most important books of the decade.’ Los Angeles Review of Books
‘A bravura feat: a stream of consciousness, a transcript of the world under modern conditions, and (as a consequence of Ellmann’s fierce and succinct wit) very funny.’ Scottish Review of Books
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Copyright © 2021 by Lucy Ellmann
The moral right of Lucy Ellmann to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Sections of this book have previously appeared, in modified form, in various publications. For a full list, please refer to the ‘Sources’ section at the end of the book.
First published in the United Kingdom by Galley Beggar Press Limited, 2021 Published in Australia and New Zealand by The Text Publishing Company, 2021
Cover design by Imogen Stubbs
Text design and typesetting by Tetragon, London
ISBN: 9781922458070 (paperback)
ISBN: 9781922459428 (ebook)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.