Pups and Prose 01 (and an Abstract Tangent about The Orange Suitcase)

Ajax (our dog) took a liking to Joseph Riippi from the moment he stepped foot in our apartment. There was something about Joe–his height, his manner of talking to animals, his tendency to turn every conversation into a conversation about books–that left Ajax feeling incredibly comfortable in his presence. Poor Joe couldn’t do a whole lot without Ajax either staring at him, resting his stupid dog head on Joe’s book, or trying to lick his face.

Fortunately, Joe took a real liking to Ajax, too. They ended up liking each other so much that Joe decided to read him a story from an old issue of The Quarterly that I happened to have hanging around. Unfortunately, Ajax isn’t exactly the best listener¹:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqZJQdPvnj4

We took a liking to Joe (although we never tried to lick his face) after reading his first book, Do Something! Do Something! Do Something!, which is an incredibly complex-yet-simple story about the way three people consistently surprise, disappoint, and fulfill themselves. As great as Do Something is, there’s something even more compelling about his new book The Orange Suitcase, a collection that’s such a perfect little exploration about the significant moments in an young writer’s life.²

The Orange Suitcase is a book I love, but as of recently I’ve a hard time explaining what I love about it. It wasn’t until Molly Gaudry recently broke down the linguistic styling of two specific stories that I was able to verbally communicate what’s so beautiful about Joseph’s narrative. Molly concludes by saying that “this kind of reading experience is refreshing—to be asked to do some legwork of our own, to be given choices, to figure for ourselves just how, exactly, the narrator of this book feels about these many something(s) that make up his life.” This couldn’t be more spot-on: in the 34 stories that make up The Orange Suitcase, the reader is only given the context of the book’s narrative and must make their own definitive assumptions. I can’t say I had been actively thinking about those sort of stylistic decisions while I was reading, but I can assume that this might have been what I was going on in my subconscious.

I realize that all I did there was paraphrase Molly, but why I point this out is because I found myself invested in the more optimistic parts of The Orange Suitcase.³ What I’m trying to add to this conversation is something so blatantly obvious that it feels very silly and pointless to even bother saying: I was very happy while I was reading The Orange Suitcase. There are so many ugly things happening in the world that it’s sometimes so hard to slow down and appreciate what’s beautiful. Fortunately, that is exactly what the the narrator of The Orange Suitcase is so frequently doing: watching and witnessing and conversing with the things and events and people that surround him. What’s so brilliant about The Orange Suitcase is that most of the overly-analytical exposition that is so frequently sprinkled across the literary landscape is stripped away, and the reader has nothing to cling onto besides the beautifully poignant observations and conversations this narrator is paying such close, specific attention to. There is nothing in this text that is telling me what to feel or think, so I get to bring my own emotions to it and I frequently found myself happy to be getting to know these people.

I think this is why the last story “An Exchange”⁴ is my absolute favorite. I don’t want to ruin the ending for you, but it’s one of those things that will make you want to reconsider every conversation you’ve ever had about love and art and how those things are intertwined. I remember reading the last line and just smiling about it, putting the book down and thinking that there are more than a couple of beautiful, beautiful things in this world.

I wish every text made me feel this way, but they don’t, and that’s what’s so incredibly compelling about The Orange Suitcase: it’s one of the few books that’ll cut through you in a good way. And I’m really looking forward to whatever Joe wants me to feel next.

Notes:

¹This was a really fun video to make. We liked it so much that we’re turning it into an online reading series we’re calling Pups and Prose/Poetry. Keep checking back for more installments.

²and it’s make sense for the reader to wonder whether or not this is autobiographical text. I myself was thinking about this in great detail when I was reading TOS, only because I vaguely remembered Joseph introducing some of these stories as “non-fiction stories, but not really” at a reading last October. I’m not sure if any of this matters anyway, and I’m about to try to explain why.

³Which is not to say that my reading was right and that Molly’s was wrong–just that we’ve focused on different elements. And since we’re talking about Molly,  I’d like to thank Molly for her evaluative opinion of the text in question: many of us have talked about it, but Molly was the only one to take a sophisticated analytical approach to Joseph’s stylistic choices. More of us should be doing this. I am indebted.

⁴I should admit that I’m secretly a little mad at Joe for the title of this chapter: there are actually two exchanges. Admittedly, the first one only exists to provide context for the second one, so maybe I shouldn’t be nitpicking.