"Existence Is Relation"

A few predictions for 2024, and some favorite reads of 2023.

The title of this edition comes from Christian Wiman’s essay “My Christ” from Image Issue 117 and his December book, Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair (which at currently unavailable in many places as it reprints, because I guess the publisher underestimated how much we need entries against despair). More on that later.

First, some predictions for the coming year.

1. It’s gonna be rough.

Wow, going out on a limb, Nostradamus!

I know. It’s not exactly a bold prediction. Two atrocious wars are going on, a lot of smaller conflicts that don’t get much coverage, ongoing effects of climate change, a housing crisis with no clear leadership toward solutions, AI disrupting every creative and educational field, and, here in the States, a very consequential election. And the end-of-year prize might be a “Christian” Nationalist who doesn’t believe in the peaceful transfer of power.

It’s going to be bad and it’s going to feel bad and not because we’re not hopeful enough. We won’t wish our way out of it, and saying the right things on social media (or finding the One Pure Platform) won’t get us out of it, either.

This is not despair; this is just living in reality. And I’ve been thinking a lot about how to exist in that reality without moving into despair and the spiraling, ruminative anxiety that can steal away days.

2. We’re going to write anyway.

Many of us will be writing anyway. That may be because we want to, or may be because we have to.

This past semester, in my correspondence with a student in distress about the world and how events were affecting them personally, I wrote:

I think of what the act of writing or making art offers (and what it can’t do) at times like these. It can be a direct response to acts of violence and war—a kind of lament or crying out, whether that’s in fiction, poetry, or essay work. It can be political and persuasive. It can be an escape or comfort, a conduit for emotion and the processing of thought. We can “write the world as we wish it to be¹” in our stories—our chance to play God and be the kind of creator with divine power we wish we had. Many have said, “Writing is thinking.” Thinking via the act of writing can move us toward something in a way that the more immediate mode of reaction, as necessary and human as it may be, ultimately cannot. It can help us move through something, take us deeper in and help us find a path out. I really believe that.

Counterpoint: it’s also fine to not write. Sometimes that is what’s needed. Maybe you’ve heard this saying about relationships, that they come to you for “a reason, a season, or a lifetime”? I think writing can be that way. It may be a major driving force for you to exorcise a particular experience, and once you do that the drive is satisfied. It may be something you do for a chunk of time and enjoy, and then lose or let go of. It could be a forever thing, but who knows?

Maybe this isn’t or won’t be your writing season. If that’s the case, I hope you can be at peace with or even enjoy the absence of it. If it is still or going to be your writing season, I’m here, too.

3. My tenth novel will come out.

I feel pretty confident in this prediction. Kyra, Just for Today comes out on March 5. Which is Super Tuesday in the presidential primary. How…super! My last three books were pandemic releases and affected by related issues, so this just feels right for publishing in the 2020s.

Can I entice you into a pre-order? Pre-orders help authors so much, especially in the current bookselling environment. Thank you for your consideration.

4. The 49ers will go to the Super Bowl?

It’s been a fun season for Niners fans. Just when it seemed like they couldn’t lose, they lost a bunch! Then they made a comeback. Then wobbled again! But I think we’ve got as good a chance as we’ve ever had to make it.

People are sometimes surprised to hear I like football, but I grew up in San Francisco during the Joe Montana, Dwight Clark, Jerry Rice years and then was still there through the Steve Young (and still Rice!) era and everyone was a football fan. During their landmark 1981 season, VCRs were new and most people didn’t have them (and DVRs were but a dream), so, naturally, my middle school would sometimes get a tape of a big game and play it in the school auditorium in lieu of education in case any of us had missed it or just wanted to watch it again.

So it makes me happy to predict I’ll be watching the old home team on the day of our great American spectacle.

5. My life is going to change a lot.

I’m pretty confident about this one, too. If you listened to the This Creative Life podcast in 2023, you know it focused on pivots and reinventions. I’ve got my own pivot going, after a year of considering how I would like the next ten years of my life to look and feel, within the limitations of reality.

I’ve made some decisions and some moves. I’m not trying to be cagey or make it sound like I’m going to pop up in a month with huge news or something, but I am being circumspect because there are many unknowns right now.

(At my age and stage, people seem to immediately jump to ?divorce?, but that isn’t it. I need my husband to co-parent a very sassy cat, and we still are better off together all around. Though I do sometimes want to divorce the cat.)

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And now, after those very low-risk predictions, here are a few of my favorite reads of 2023, some I’ve written about before and some new ones:

🔗 Longreads online

• Christian Wiman’s “My Christ” in Image. Wiman is primarily a poet, and his essays are essentially another form of his poetry. This one speaks to the mystery of the relationship between all things in all time.

  …the connection between us and the world is both absolute and absolutely contingent. We know in our bones that this is so, and sacred, and we know in our bones that we can never know that this is so, and that lack is also sacred.

  I’m going to take Wiman’s “existence is relation” into 2024 as a kind of prayer and declaration.

• David McGlynn’s short story “Rule Out,” in the same excellent issue of Image. (Hmm, maybe you should subscribe!) I have always loved the short story form, but am also pretty picky. This is exactly what I like.

• This in-depth piece on General Mark Milley and his time with DJT, by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic. Ignore the title if you have no appetite for that patriot/savior framing; I think the important stuff brought out here is not about Milley but about our system of government and Trump. Earlier I referred to DJT as a Christian Nationalist, but that’s giving him way too much credit for having convictions. No matter one’s feelings about the so-called options available to us in the national election this year, it’s crucial to stop Trump, and this piece highlights many of the reasons why—though there’s certainly no shortage of them.

• This interview with/profile of Martin Scorsese, an artist who knows he’s mortal, and always has interesting things to say about the state of the art and audiences.

📚Books

• Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein (not Wolf). The perfect 2023 deep dive into where we are and how we got here.

• Whalefall by Daniel Kraus. A thrilling, gross, fascinating, moving, page-turning novel. (And if you read the novel, read this commentary after.)

• The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family by Ron and Clint Howard. An extremely kind and cozy memoir that hits on Gen-x nostalgia, dad feelings, and filmmaking. Great on audio.

• First Love by Gwendolyn Riley. It’s just been so long since I discovered a new novelist that I like, and this one hooked me with its stark, simple way of presenting a complicated story.

• The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta. I’m not really on the same faith page as Alberta, and it lacks some key perspectives, but it was helpful in sorting through wtf has happened and made me feel less crazy and a touch more hopeful that there are still people in the church who also see that its current course is fatal. (I think what the book doesn’t entertain, that I certainly did while reading, is that many of the issues the church is facing are baked into the doctrine, not extant despite it.)

• Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere by Maria Bamford. Bamford isn’t for everyone, but she is for me, and this is a good audio choice over reading the printed book so that the humor can do its most. She frames her life through the lens of the cult of family, the cult of 12 step, the cult of fame, the cult of marriage. This got me through an eternal train ride in the fall.

• Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash. A bit of a cheat because I’m only halfway through and it’s not out until March, but I’m excited for others to read. Dark, subversive, thought-provoking, and funny—just like the Maggie I know. Imagine a crime novel told from the POV of the whip-smart daughter of a couple caught up in the Satanic panic a la the McMartins, and you get some idea of whether it will be your thing.

Happy New Year! Tell me about your predictions for this year and your favorite things about last year.

1. I can’t remember if this is John Gardner, or Sue Ellen Bridgers paraphrasing Gardner, but this is how the wording of this idea has become cemented in my mind.

The Inbox Variations is the monthly-ish newsletter of author Sara Zarr. Find out more about Sara and her books at www.sarazarr.com.