#Lydia Millet

[dk-thrive]

To keep me company, I have both dreams and memories.

— Lydia Millet, My Happy Life (‎Soft Skull, March 1, 2009)

#Lydia Millet #dreams #memories #past #recall

[seemoreandmore]

I have always wished the present to resemble memory: because the present can be flat at times, and bald as a road. But memory is never like that. It makes hills of feeling in collapsed hours, a scene of enclosure made all precious by its frame. -Lydia Millet, My Happy Life

#Lydia Millet

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

This fall, Millet will publish her 12th novel, “Dinosaurs,” a quiet, penetrating character study of a middle-aged New Yorker named Gil who, devastated by a breakup, buys a house in Phoenix, sight unseen; walks across the country to get there; and becomes enmeshed with the family who lives next door. (One side of their house is glass, so Gil can see right inside.) He becomes especially involved with their son, whom he tries to protect from a neighborhood bully. When dead quail and raptors start appearing on Gil’s property, he buys SWAT gear and night-vision goggles to catch the person gunning them down. In the confrontation that ensues, the shooter scoffs, “They’re not your birds.”

“Well,” Gil says, “in a way, they are.”

How we treat animals always reveals something about our capacities for cruelty and compassion, and one arc of “Dinosaurs” concerns how Gil takes responsibility for the creatures — human and nonhuman — around him. But for Millet, animals are more than props in a human drama; she’s interested in them for their own sake. In some novels, sex or desire is the key to all meaning. Millet says those impulses inevitably lead back to the quagmires of self-projection, narcissism, fantasies of ego. Animals are something else, entirely other. Protecting them, in life and art, is a way of protecting our connection to the most mysterious cosmic forces — of getting closer to (or at least becoming aware of) what lies outside the self. “The animal that is nature, and that whole world of plant and fungi, that’s deep time, that’s evolution,” Millet said. “You can call it God, you can call it nature, you can call it whatever, but nature through time, that is as close as you can ever come to God.”

Despite her critical success — she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for her story collection “Love in Infant Monkeys” and for the National Book Award in 2020 for her novel “A Children’s Bible” — Millet has not, like so many of her peers, pursued a life in academia. Instead, she works 30 hours a week writing and editing news releases and other communications at the Center for Biological Diversity, an activist group devoted to protecting endangered species. She likes the health insurance, but that’s not the reason she keeps the job. Millet is “deeply devoted” to the center and its staff. “Writing and conservation are both aspects of vocation for me,” she said. She wouldn’t feel like herself if she didn’t write novels and stories, but “it feels self-indulgent to do only that. It’s not the same as action.”

#arizona #Lydia Millet #nature #humanity #climate change #environment

[judgingbooksbycovers]

​Dinosaurs: A Novel

By Lydia Millet.

#Lydia Millet #animals #books #book covers #birds #dinosaurs

[unalm]

27.

Comme d’habitude elle avait raison ; dès qu’il appuya sur le bouton de la porte, il sut que ce type était un loser. Colère rentrée, rage en roue libre.

181.

Il se rendit progressivement compte qu’il n’était pas en colère. Sa colère s’était dissipée. Il lui avait dit ce qu’il savait et à présent il n’était plus en colère. Une impression de déception persistait, d’amertume – à cause de l’inamovibilité du passé, peut-être, de l’obstination de ses souvenirs déplaisants, maintenant implantés à jamais en lieu. Peut-être car leur mariage avait été, dans son esprit, une union pure, aujourd’hui altérée, adultéré.

#2023 quote #lumières fantômes #lydia millet #alister #rage en roue libre

[litandlifequotes]

It is not learning we need at all. Individuals need learning but the culture needs something else, the pulse of light on the sea, the warm urge of huddling together to keep out the cold. We need empathy, we need the eyes that still can weep.

 Oh Pure And Radiant Heart by Lydia Millet

#lydia millet #novel #book #book quote #quote #words #reading

[soprabito]

Lydia Millet. Le case, l'immaginazione, l'America

Lydia Millet / Le case, l’immaginazione, l’America

View On WordPress

#America #case #cose belle #immaginazione #leggere #letture #libri #Los Angeles #Lydia Millet #perdite #Prendere o lasciare

[7r0773r]

A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet

At that time in my personal life, I was coming to grips with the end of the world. The familiar world, anyway. Many of us were.

Scientists said it was ending now, philosophers said it had always been ending.

Historians said there'd been dark ages before. It all came out in the wash, because eventually, if you were patient, enlightenment arrived and then a wide array of Apple devices.

Politicians claimed everything would be fine. Adjustments were being made. Much as our human ingenuity had got us into this fine mess, so would it neatly get us out. Maybe more cars would switch to electric.

That was how we could tell it was serious. Because they were obviously lying.

We knew who was responsible, of course: it had been a done deal before we were born.

I wasn't sure how to break it to Jack. He was a sensitive little guy, sweet-natured. Brimming with hope and fear. He often had nightmares, and I would comfort him when he woke up from them—dreams of hurt bunnies or friends being mean. He woke up whimpering "Bunny Bunny!" Or "Donny! Sam!”

The end of the world, I didn't think he'd take it so well. But it was a Santa Claus situation. One day he'd find out the truth. And if it didn't come from me, I'd end up looking like a politician. (p. 27)

***

If you could be nothing, you could also be everything. Once my molecules had dispersed, I would be here forever. Free.

Part of the timeless. The sky and the ocean would also be me.

Molecules never die, I thought.

Hadn't they told us that in chemistry? Hadn't they said a molecule of Julius Caesar's dying breath was, statistically speaking, in every breath we took? Same with Lincoln. Or our grandparents.

Molecules exchanging and mingling, on and on. Particles that had once been others and now moved through us.

"Evie!" said Jack. "Look! I found a sand dollar!"

That was the sad thing about my molecules: they wouldn't remember him. (pp. 36-37)

***

On the second day it was discovered that the twins were missing. Their parents hadn't noticed before, figuring they were with us. The mother's bottom lip was so chewed up from the Ecstasy it had swollen halfway down her chin.

Jack and Shel went looking and found Kay. She was sleeping in the fishing shed, surrounded by small rodent skeletons and junk-food wrappers. It was curious, Jack said: the skeletons were fresh.

As far as we knew, she was a picky eater who usually insisted on white bread with cold cuts. On the other hand, her mouth was smeared with what looked a lot like dried blood. She smelled rancid.

Don't ask, was our approach. We marched her back to her parents.

There was no sign of her sister. (pp. 80-81)

***

"They say God in the book, said Jack. "But me and Shel figured it out. God's a code word. We figured it out!"

"Do tell, said Jen.

"They say God but they mean nature."

Shel signed.

"And we believe in nature," Jack interpreted.

"OK,” said Terry. "How about Isaac and Abraham? Was it nature that told a guy he had to knife his son to death?" Shel signed a bunch more. He stood up, agitated.

"Nature gets misinterpreted," said Jen. "Shel says."

"Plus it's a story," added Jack. "Things are symbols." (p. 87)

***

The headlight shut off and the front doors of the van opened. Burl and Luca got out. David flicked on a flashlight. Duffels and sleeping bags were unloaded. I was relieved and not sure why—maybe because that was all.

Just the four of them. No parents had come along.

I felt a new rush of dizziness, looking at the ones who'd returned. Behind them, hazy, I thought I could see the absent parents when I squinted. The night blurred. Or maybe just the shapes of them, their effigies. Or no, it wasn't them, I realized—was it?

It was them and not them, maybe the ones they'd never been. I could almost see those others standing in the garden where the pea plants were, feet planted between the rows. They stood without moving, their faces glowing with some shine a long time gone. A time before I lived. Their arms hung at their sides.

They’d always been there, I thought blearily, and they'd always wanted to be more than they were. They should always be thought of as invalids, I saw. Each person, fully grown, was sick or sad, with problems attached to them like broken limbs. Each one had special needs.

If you could remember that, it made you less angry.

They'd been carried along on their hopes, held up by the chance of a windfall. But instead of a windfall there was only time passing. And all they ever were was themselves.

Still they had wanted to be different. I would assume that from now on, I told myself, wandering back into the barn. What people wanted to be, but never could, traveled along beside them. Company. (pp. 139-40)

***

"So if God stands for nature, then Jesus stands for science. That's why they call Jesus God's son. It doesn't mean actual son. God doesn't have sperm."

"Goodness! You know the birds and bees!"

"Darla. He's not in kindergarten," I said.

"It just means science comes from nature. See?" (p. 142)

***

"What happens at the end?" Jack asked me.

He was sick by then, but I was going to make sure he got better. Whenever I wasn’t at his bedside, I was researching symptoms and diagnoses. How to repurpose the medicines we had. Home remedies.

I wished the angels were still with us. Luca. And Mattie.

Or even the owner. Descending in her black chariot. Where was the owner when we needed her most? 

Still I was dedicated. If it was the only fine thing I ever did, the single worthwhile thing, one day he'd be all right again.

"The end of what, Jack?"

"You know. The story. After the chaos time? It wasn't in my book. But all books should have a real ending."

"They should."

"She said the real end wasn't even in the kids' version. She said it wasn't nice. Too violent. She said that children couldn't handle relevation."

"I think she said Revelation."

"So what happens after the end?"

"Let me think. Hold on a minute. I'm thinking."

"Think better, Evie."

"OK. Slowness, I bet. New kinds of animals evolve. Some other creatures come and live here, like we did. And all the old beautiful things will still be in the air. Invisible but there. Like, I don't know. An expectation that sort of hovers. Even when we're all gone."

"But we won't be there to see them. We won't be here. It hurts not to know. We won't be here to see!"

He was agitated.

I held his hot hand.

"Others will, honey. Think of them. Maybe the ants. The trees and plants. Maybe the flowers will be our eyes."

"Flowers don't have eyes. That's like something Darla would say. It's not science, Evie."

"You're right. It's more like art. Poetry. But it still comes from what they used to call God, doesn't it?"

"What they used to call God, he murmured.

He was happiest when I was there talking to him, but he was getting so tired in those days. So very tired.

"You had it in your notebook, right? You wrote it down yourself, didn't you."

"I wrote it down."

"I think you solved it, Jack. In your notebook. Jesus was science. Knowing stuff. Right? And the Holy Ghost was all the things that people make. You remember? Your diagram said making stuff.'

"Yes. It did."

"So maybe art is the Holy Ghost. Maybe art is the ghost in the machine."

"Art is the ghost."

"The comets and the stars will be our eyes," I told him.

And I went on. The clouds the moon. The dirt the rocks the water and the wind. We call that hope, you see. (pp. 222-24)

#lydia millet #book quotes

[salonnierealexis]

#environment #climate change #lydia millet #nature #place #anthropocene

[melindacopp]

I wrote about Lydia Millet’s fantastic new book, Dinosaurs.

#amreading #book tumblr #bookblr #literary fiction #book review #Lydia Millet

[dk-thrive]

It is not learning we need at all. Individuals need learning but the culture needs something else, the pulse of light on the sea, the warm urge of huddling together to keep out the cold. We need empathy, we need the eyes that still can weep.

— Lydia Millet, Oh Pure And Radiant Heart (Mariner, July 3, 2006)

#lydia millet #kind #kindness #human #help #empathy

[almoststardust]

Others joined the class, more every day. First there were just Jack and Shel. Then Juicy went, then Rafe, then Jen and Sukey, with the baby. Everyone. Some mornings they all went to sit in the barn. I'd watch from the open door and see them looking studious, their faces faithfully turned forward. They could have been children in school in a bygone era. In France when there were sun kings and halls of mirrors, in England before the world wars. Children who sat there learning from their teachers, full of trust. Secure in the knowledge that an orderly future stretched ahead of them.

Lydia Millet, A Children's Bible

#lydia millet #knowledge #prose

[spohkh]

when ppl are giving away books that u have been wanting to read……. what better euphoric feeling is to be found??? none!!!!

#picked up a copy of ‘a childrens bible’ by lydia millet!! #beaus books

[judgingbooksbycovers]

​Sweet Lamb of Heaven: A Novel

By Lydia Millet.

#Sweet Lamb of Heaven #Lydia Millet #books #book covers

[your-dandy-king]

Eleven years of vocal training have prepared me for this... Or maybe not. I don't know how Bessiéres' afterlife nightmare opera place thing works...

I guess what I want to say is - I have some expertise in singing, so if that could possibly help, I'd be glad to come along. I don't think it's too wild to assume that whatever's alive about that place may like music.

Let me know what you think!

-Lydia-

((This is my first attempt to actively roleplay here. I have no idea how this is done, but I really wanna learn. Starting with a self-insert because I don't really wanna start by immediately butchering a historical character 😅))

That small bird that Murat left behind and in charge of his mail may be dumb and horny enough to try to have sex with his perch, but he manages to handle correspondence pretty well. When he isn't shredding it, anyway.

To Madame Lydia,

King Murat wished to go in alone to find Bessières. However, if you have any interest, your inquires should be directed to @murillo-enthusiast.

Thanks and can I have a millet?

#letters from the public #the bird

[irisopranta]

Get to know me tag

Last song: The opening to Rune Factory Frontier. It's such a bop

Currently reading: I just finished Mermaids in Paradise Lydia Millet and need to look through Libby to see which one to pick up next.

Currently watching: nothing at the moment, though I need to watch the new season of Horimiya to see what they decided to animate from the manga.

Current obsession: Nothing new, just my stupid otp. 

Tagged by: @otherworldseekers and @alexoisxiv (For the reminder) Thanks!

Tagging: @e-dragoons, @reikatsukihana, @pinxli, @thefrostflower, @the-unending-journey, @yloiseconeillants, @sasslett, @umbralaether, @thebrassbat, @ainyan, @unbloomingmoonflower, @elf-simp, and whomever.

((Want to be tagged for silliness, like this post.))

#ooc #about the mun