{"id":467,"date":"2019-08-13T10:00:41","date_gmt":"2019-08-13T10:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/wordpress\/greenblotter\/?p=467"},"modified":"2019-08-13T10:00:41","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T10:00:41","slug":"review-of-durga-chew-boses-too-much-and-not-the-mood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/2019\/08\/13\/review-of-durga-chew-boses-too-much-and-not-the-mood\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Durga Chew-Bose’s Too Much and Not the Mood"},"content":{"rendered":"
Review by Marah Hoffman<\/h5>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nonfiction | Essays. 240 pages, FSG Originals: NY, New York, 2017. Paperback $15.00. Available Here<\/a><\/p>\n

The renowned essayist Phillip Lopate once said, \u201cthe reason I read nonfiction is to follow an interesting mind.\u201d Durga Chew-Bose’s essay collection Too Much and Not the Mood<\/em> reminds the reader why creative nonfiction is such a revered art form; her mind is a reader\u2019s wonderland.<\/span><\/p>\n

Durga sheds an honest, sometimes self-ridiculing light on herself, her evolution, and the way she perceives the world as a resilient, romantic daughter of divorced immigrant parents, and \u201cnook-person\u201d (a sensitive, introverted subset of humanity that she invented herself). The collection is not chronologically organized; it catapults from her twenties to that time when she was seven and then back to her twenties, giving the impression of a puzzle. The reader must slowly collect the complex pieces that compose Durga Chew-Bose. It is a fun process.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHeart Museum\u201d almost follows a stream-of-consciousness style in that it gains its momentum from tangents. These tangents have the same exciting effect as when a teacher randomly halts the lesson to discuss the peculiar events of their morning. The bridges Durga builds are unstable, but the reader doesn\u2019t mind jumping. Durga declares in the essay, \u201cthe best ideas outrun me. That\u2019s why I write.\u201d This philosophy is abundantly evident in \u201cHeart Museum.\u201d She goes from describing all the heart-stopping events our hearts, in fact, continue to beat through to discussing the memories of goldfish to imagining the teenage lives of her grandparents to defining nook people. Durga indeed bounds after her ideas, taking her readers along for the ride.<\/span><\/p>\n

Because I did not read \u201cHeart Museum\u201d in one sitting, there were times when I would pick up Too Much and Not the Mood<\/em> and find myself desperately trying to figure out the impossible question, \u201chow did I get here?\u201d But, eventually, I gained the good sense to give up. \u201cHeart Museum\u201d forces readers to practice living in the moment. There are many breath-taking, literary moments for readers to live in throughout \u201cHeart Museum.\u201d One example is when Durga explains the beauty of recognizing your smallness: \u201cthe muscle that builds from yielding to my aunt Jennifer\u2019s decades, to the scalloped edges of her memory, reacquaints me to my most atomic self: where I come from. Even when I was nothing, I was arriving.\u201d In the end, the reader does discover that Durga\u2019s tangents had a destination. She achieves her goal of compiling all the innate intricacies of her heart into a personal, relatable heart museum. Durga proves that it is possible to catch your best ideas, even if it takes ninety-three pages.<\/span><\/p>\n

Too Much and Not the Mood <\/em>does not slow down after \u201cHeart Museum.\u201d The collection’s second essay, \u201cPart of a Greater Pattern,\u201d starts with the startling first sentence, \u201cthe dead squirrel was, without a doubt, going to make me very late for school.\u201d Such a strange first sentence fills the reader with questions such as, \u201chow did the poor squirrel die?\u201d and \u201cwhy is it going to make her late for school?\u201d Durga, of course, like the wise writer she is, does not answer the questions right away. She lets her readers\u2019 curiosities flare.<\/span><\/p>\n

Part of the reason Too Much and Not the Mood <\/em>is able to maintain its speedy pace is Durga\u2019s structuring. All the essays utilize sentence fragments. By building her wonderland with small materials, the collection flows and the reader follows. In Durga\u2019s short, five-page essay \u201cThe Girl\u201d she displays her mastery of the fragmented sentences, \u201cThe flapping. The clinging. The sucking-in. This turned her on.\u201d Durga\u2019s writing is not flashy. It achieves its impact with subtle skill.<\/span><\/p>\n

The collection\u2019s sense of rush, strangely, makes the you stop and savor. You reread a line, not because you didn\u2019t understand it the first time, but because it wraps up an emotion so neatly and eloquently you can’t quite believe it. You are so grateful someone else understands. Durga highlights common emotions and experiences in her work like the intimacy of friendship, \u201cI love being in the vicinity of someone I confide in daily, whose posture is indistinguishable.\u201d Too Much and Not the Mood <\/em>resonates deeply.<\/span><\/p>\n

Durga\u2019s writing is raw and radiant; she possesses extraordinary literary endurance. The collection\u2019s title was inspired by an entry in Virgina Wolf\u2019s diary where she lamented the constant wondering of whether she had anything worth saying. It is quite clear Durga Chew-Bose has something worth saying.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review by Marah Hoffman Nonfiction | Essays. 240 pages, FSG Originals: NY, New York, 2017. Paperback $15.00. Available Here The renowned essayist Phillip Lopate once said, \u201cthe reason I read […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}