You might also flip to the beginning, hoping to discover that your introduction’s already there, already written—which is the feeling that this artifact has given you time and time again: that it knows your thoughts. The book is an object in furious motion, humming with its own energy, and all you might wish to do is touch it, alter its trajectory barely, so as to nudge it into universal view. Couldn’t I just say that you must read Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments? That I am here to insist this book become a banner in the wide world, as it is a banner already in my mind, one I march behind? And yet, cradling this earlier edition, I notice eight endorsements, all quite eloquent, all by women; could it somehow be that I am the first man to testify for this book? (I check an earlier edition, also on my shelf, and of course this isn’t actually the case.) Vivian Gornick’s memoir has that mad, brilliant, absolute quality that tends to loft a book out of context, then cause it to be admired, rightly, as “timeless”
What do You think about Fierce Attachments: A Memoir?
