- Who is the I? The I of Matthew, or of transitioning? Who was young, once, and dumb? Not a negative to not know who. It shows time past through that unknowing.
- Original pairing juxtaposing these two things, opens to a wider audience. Trans to faith, and faith to trans.
- Toying with structure, but torn on it. Like the idea of the footnotes state outright that they are a sign of having done the legwork.
- Wanted more space to get into the transition narrative up front before the footnotes come in, because there’s more intimacy there, oriented it much more, and the footnotes gave it much more
- (They actually like the footnotes dropping out because then they were excited for the footnotes to come back; cf the amount of space they take up on the page vs Seasons)
- Angie: Footnotes within the footnotes added to spiraling nature in Seasons/struggle of ownership, doesn’t work as well in this one because there is less of a struggle in this context. Doesn’t serve the same purpose. Lenore: opposite, more invested in them because it led to more engagement.
- If publishing separately, there’s no guide teaching you how to read just this one.
- P.3 “The story of identity, the story of coming to terms with existing in some particular way, is as much an interpolation into the whole of us as anything.” as anchor point for the rest of the reading
- The page breaks are a little awkward because content is gripping enough that then have to turn page back after finishing sentence to get to footnotes
- Looking for permission to skip the footnotes for the time being and come back later
- Re: justifying myself - It’s really great; it was done well in Seasons because it was very well controlled and gives the reader permission to jump around. Is there a theme beyond Job that would help the reader jump around. Could e.g: the lawyer voice justification to dad be a footnote, or justifying clinical language to myself — I’m really into this, actually; the more cohesive theme of justification works in context with Job, too.
- Bits of narrator voice in the footnotes is kind of orienting
- Voice is strong, but organization started to falter p.8 (language choice — get rid of pregnant silences, etc), anecdotes aren’t tied together quite as well.
- So many asides in footnotes, don’t expect them to be in the main text, too; more signalling on the page to show diversions and deferrals
- “Oh! It’s gonna be about cars!”
- Wanted more liberties to be taken with the footnotes
- First intro to Jill is filled with love; so much drama but we still love.
- What measures/passes time? Theme is seasons which meter time, what about this? Age?
- Find some themes and ask “is this section touching on one of these? Can I cut it?” Just to tighten it up.
- Messy in-between space
- Collisions (literal and metaphorical) (we think of it as being negative/destructive, but it can jolt you into awareness and gratitude, memories can be collisions of a sort)
- Justification
- Passage of time through rites of passage
- Maybe more trans joy to counter the pathological nature of identity
- It being in the middle does give it more permission to be messier/have lapses
- Physicality is welcome, need more especially toward the end (if nothing else, we don’t know who the ‘he’ is) (more about the couch!)
- “There are ways around being the go-to person” could stand to come up again later, Job as the go-to person for piousness, me as the go-to person for being Andrew’s foil
- “co-text” - “a refrain of deferral”
Favorite lines:
- Lenore, p9 - “I don’t imagine this was actually true w conversation with gender, every time got close, close to the wrong me, remember as story, etc”
- Angie, p16 - “I can’t even seem to write about this without leaning heavily on the clinical.” (just how much justification I feel the need to put in there)
- Jenny, p13 - “I felt the way it ground up against me, a sort of road-rash of the self”