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Questioning the existence of a 'self' as a memoirist writing about the self

Also: reading about monogamy, men's 'equality crisis,' and an orgasm cult.

Tracy Clark-Flory

Oct 23

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No “take” this week. No essay. Just a quick little peak at what I’ve been feeding my heart and brain right now.

Monogamy by Adam Phillips

I’m slowly pulling thread for a future Dire Straights episode on monogamy that asks: What is it? Why is it? Clearly, I had to buy this book titled, simply, Monogamy. It’s written by a psychoanalyst and basically consists of a bunch of aphorisms about monogamy, fidelity, and desire. It’s alright. Maybe a little too cute. A little too impressed with itself. But I did underline these passages:

There is comfort in danger. This is the truth that the monogamist dreads, and the unfaithful rarely let themselves notice.

Coupledom is a sustained resistance to the intrusion of third parties. The couple needs to sustain the third parties in order to go on resisting them. … Two’s company, but three’s a couple.

We need our rivals to tell us who our partners are. We need our partners to help us find rivals. We need so many people to make desire work, to make it desirable.

All We Want is Everything by Soraya Chemaly

I just started reading a review copy of Soraya Chemaly’s book, which systematically analyses male supremacy—in our homes, schools, workplaces, and the hallways of political power.

I’m only a few chapters in, but it’s already so refreshingly clear-eyed and morally grounded in its assessment of our current moment—take, her reframing of men’s “loneliness crisis” as an “equality crisis.” I double-underlined this bit:

It is remarkable to watch the media describe declining heterosexuality in terms of women’s demanding “higher standards” and not in terms so many men’s persistent desire for dominance and rejection of equality. … When people claim that we are “destroying families” and “being too picky,” they are saying that the ideal hetero relationship and family depend on women’s subordination.

Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor

I picked this one up used for like $2 at Pegasus in Berkeley.

I want to joke that reading this is part of a post-memoir-writing crash-out. You write about the self, an inner journey of discovery, and wrangle it all into a single coherent narrative, only to question the very existence of a self. But I actually think that this book’s story of self-discovery—or “finding myself,” as the subtitle puts it—is about stumbling onto a broader and more interwoven sense of identity and existence. Also, I’ve been doing this kind of reading—for a few years now (quietly and somewhat bashfully, which is probably something to write about).

Anyway, I dig this book. Just one of many passages I’ve underlined:

The self may not be something, but neither is it nothing. It is simply ungraspable, unfindable. I am who I am not because of an essential self hidden away in the core of my being but because of the unprecedented and unrepeatable matrix of conditions that have formed me.