Richard Chiem - About sociopaths and animals.I can dance so symmetrically for so long it feels like nihilism. I can make my body a catastrophe

Richard Chiem, You Private Person, Scrambler Books, 2012.


“Considering how much I love Richard Chiem’s writing, and given how its uncanny snare and sweep of life’s especially agile, prompt, messed, lithe, sharp, and heartbreaking things leaves me stiffed of summarizing words, I think I’ll just nominate his work for immortality.” —Dennis Cooper


“Richard Chiem writes of all the weirdness and ooziness and tenderness of young love, with such lucid specificity. Like some beautiful film from the 70s, but also distinctly now. Because I also love how in this book he documents the tremors of contemporary existence, of living and working in a city, measuring days not in coffee spoons but in cigarettes and Simpsons episodes.”—Kate Zambreno

“Richard Chiem’s YOU PRIVATE PERSON is a bustling prism of a thing, full of passages that actually lead somewhere off of the paper. His words have brains that have bodies that wake you up in the way waking can be the best thing, like into a warm room full of good calm remembered things that feel both like relics and new inside the day. Here rings a wise and bravely sculpted book packed full of stunning thankful color.”—Blake Butler

This is Chiem's first published book, he has two e-book's out and approximately one hundred million short stories published online. He obviously went hard for You Private Person: it's heart is beating and it is drenched in sweat.
The organization of this book is nebulous, there are two major story lines which are formed by numerous connected shorts: sociopaths and animals. There are a number of short stories inserted which may or may not be related to the greater story lines. Potentially your call. The erotic is in every nook and cranny then spread blanket like over the whole. Here it is the worthless drug while love is a distant memory, if that. Life and work: a chronic ache, some nagging beast with its bilious claws dug in. Chiem's world is real. Hyperreal. The colors ring through the pages, even a glance at the angles and edges will mar your eyes. There is humor but it is a blown leaf.
Sociopaths, the first series of stories, is simple in its conception yet complex in its acrobatics. The events revolve around two characters in a relationship, plus three others which act as catalysts of action. The action here is portrayed bluntly; there is little suspense in the plot. It is the feelings, movements, relationships and various ideas however which carry the story. The subtleties and small motions of the character are able to betray deep pasts, cogitations et c. The characters flesh out a little more than just simple abstractions yet exist in a half world of personality. As such we are left to determine the motives of some of their actions; Chiem never lets us know them deeply. This might be a flaw in another writer but Chiem effectively uses this to form a sort of mystery in them. The characters are in certain ways vary familiar and yet unhuman. They could be us even, or perhaps twisted shadows of ourselves. As with the people around us we often think we know them, have their traits pinned, yet come to find that circumstances will push them to extreme actions and unthinkable reactions. Notable in Chiem's writing is the ambiguity which serves to write much of the story off the page. He throws us bits and pieces which we may use to determine for ourselves whole other stories which lie behind the one in the book. Sociopaths is also notable for a number of winding extended sentences and while a few are clumsy, others are deftly pulled off.
A second series of stories titled Animal is even bleaker than Sociopaths. We find the boxer River and his girlfriend Sam entwined in a relationship with Mary. Time is a manipulated variable here, Chiem slowing it down or speeding it up at his will. Often River and Sam will be engaged in a low stakes, every day activity then for no apparent reason break into hysterical fighting. Again Chiem provides us with only the barest of clues as to the history of these three but it is evidently fraught with drama. Writing this way, writing the spaces between the letters, illustrating the events that precede or follow the action as Chiem does here is a tricky endeavor. If executed well the reader is left with a lofty and magical story which engages the imagination long after the book has been closed. This is extremely difficult however and if done without the required grace it can be confusing. Chiem seems to utilize the method in both of these stories and is very close to nailing it. Both Sociopaths and Animals are enjoyable stories but the "writing off the page" doesn't always connect. I do hope however that this is a method which Chiem continues to employ as he seems to have a good grasp of it and could certainly make it shine in future writing.
Chiem's shorter, less traditional stories are his strong suit. He nails it in his gripping second person account of a car accident How to Survive a Car Accident. Baby is Going to Die Tonight portrays a nameless ageless dreamy love, the missing details causing us to beg for more. Cutty depicts a relationship at the heart of which is an unequal power struggle. Told partially in texts these poetic missives often communicate more than the characters are able to convey verbally. They offer a beautiful release, the last one holds a key which turns the story after it is read. Planet B Boy holds some of my favorite lines in the book. This story describes a masterful b boy practicing and competing. It heavily references a movie which I haven't seen and I suspect that understanding the movie would illuminate certain part of the story. Regardless there are two lines here which demonstrate perfectly Chiems sparkling, head cocking ability for description:
"He says: I am going to see what's happening. He says, I can dance so symmetrically for so long it feels like nihilism. I can make my body a catastrophe" and
"He has danced every day for the past few years with a signature presence. All the muscles in his arms glow in open tension"

He takes the ordinary and presents it to us in a new way which feel strange yet strangely fits, bends our synapses into new configurations, opens up rooms which are illuminated in a benthic light.
While there are a number of themes touched upon in YPP the recurring meditation is young love which is seen from every facet: the ache of desire, the ease of long term, the burn of long distance, the rut of forgetting. Good, bad, ambivalent, apathetic. It is all here. Many of Chiem's character have different surfaces but similar cores. We see different angles of love from roughly the same subject. Thus YPP is something of a monograph, a comprehensive study of the subject. His view is dark, and in the world we live in one could hardly find fault with this. But he conveys the darkness beautifully, and with heart. This is a book in which you will find lines which will stymie you for hours, weeks, until one day, in the midst of personal tragedy it will click, it's meaning suddenly revealed. This will be a book that you find more beautiful every time you read it, that you will keep beside your bed in order to open in the middle of the night to read, at random, one line. - Sam Moss


1.
Here’s what happens: Bridget takes the keys from my sweatshirt pocket and walks into the mail area, where every resident of The Oaks gathers their mail.
I stay with Lenny, our German Shepherd mix. While he vacuums the area around the trashcan with his nose, Bridget scoops the contents out of our box.
She says, “Oh, look what you got.”
I say, “Is it a book? I’m expecting something from California.”
2.
Back in our apartment, which has 2-bedrooms and 1.5 baths, Bridget asks if I want whiskey and freshly squeezed watermelon juice over freshly frozen watermelon ice cubes.
I taste the watermelon in my drink. I feel like I’m in Barranquilla, Colombia. Bridget is preparing butternut squash gnocchi. The whiskey in my drink, even though you can’t see it, is Benchmark.
As my body warms and loosens, the less I want to read THE VOICE OF THE MOON, which is an Italian book by Ermanno Cavazzoni made into a major film by Federico Fellini, and the more my attention breaks toward YOU PRIVATE PERSON by Richard Chiem.

3.
Here’s how it happens: I look at the spine. I see the name of the book and the name of the author but not a mark from the press: Scrambler Books.
I go to our bookshelf and grab EVERYTHING IS QUIET by Kendra Grant Malone, also a Scrambler Books production, and I look at the spine: title, author, and the name of the press.
Noteworthy.
I walk back to my stool, which is one of two bought at Walmart. I admire the cover of YOU PRIVATE PERSON, designed by Mark Leidner. I feel anxious from the jumble of cars smothering what could be planet earth on the cover. I don’t say it but I think it.
I think, “I hate fucking cars.”
The font interests me. It’s not Helvetica. To be honest, I don’t know what it is. Then again, I don’t know many fonts other than Helvetica.
Three contemporary writers blurb Richard Chiem’s book on the back.
Dennis Cooper says, “… I think I’ll just nominate [Chiem's] work for immortality.”
Kate Zambreno says, “… measuring days not in coffee spoons but in cigarettes and Simpsons episodes.”
A Simpson episode is 22 minutes.
Blake Butler says, “… full of passages that actually lead somewhere off of the paper.”
Under the blurbs is a narrow ISBN barcode, similar to Publishing Genius. To the right of the ISBN barcode is,

FICTION $12
SCRAMBLER BOOKS

4.
Here’s what happens: I see the CONTENTS. The contents seems a lot like a poem. I almost feel like it’s a meta-contents. I flip the page and scan the back of the contents and the number 18 stands out. I think, “There are no other numbers on this page.”
I flip the page back to the front side of the contents and the number 1 stands out. I see how the contents works. This books has 18 short stories in all, and two – ‘sociopaths’ and ‘animal’ – are slightly longer short stories, composed of multiple chapters under headings of their own.
On the page after the contents, there is a dedication,

for Frances Dinger

And on the next page there is a quote.

“The first fiction is your name.”
-Eileen Myles

I read this to Bridget because I like INFERNO by Eileen Myles a lot.

On the front of the next page I see the word/title ‘sociopaths’ and I turn the page and read at the top ‘animals with expression’ and I start, not knowing what to expect.

5.
I drink some watermelon whiskey and read,

Cigarettes can levitate you and the bare weight you have very bored in your head and you have never known you were unhappy until the feeling leaves you like imagined geese from hills eager for migration.

I think about Blake Butler’s blurb and I feel like he definitely read the first sentence. I want Richard Chiem to do this more. This sentence moves and does not wait for the reader. If you’re like me, this is the kind of sentence you reread three times or more, until you’re satisfied enough to read the next sentence.
And I’m happy there are other sentences like this throughout ‘sociopaths’ to keep me on my toes, following the migrating geese. Richard Chiem knows what it means to use a comma. He is sensitive to the pause of a comma. He knows when to use one and if he can get away without using one.
Kind of like minimalists, sensitive to what one additional word can do to a single sentence, how one word can tip the balance and, in the end, weaken the sentence, which is connected to the story, Richard Chiem takes this approach not with words, which he uses with soul, but with commas, which he disciplines.
Prose is sometimes pushed into new molds, to see if it works better. Do away with paragraphs (Bernhard), do away with some apostrophes (McCarthy), do away with quotes (Saramago), do away with some commas (Chiem). Stylized writers build their own rules. Rarely do these rules tend toward more syntax. In my experience, these rules shed layers, working toward the skeleton of language, toward whatever Bruce Lee meant when he said, “When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, he can fit in with any style. ” By taking away from language and syntax writers are moving toward a more streamlined universal code, something that doesn’t need rules, but is intuited.
6.
‘sociopaths’ has six parts. I want more of this story, don’t want it to end. The pacing is right, scenes and characters develop without drag, the story is fresh, like it’s growing into something larger than its parts. I don’t feel it’s going to end too soon, leave me in the cold. I feel there’s a chance ‘you private person’ is going to be a novel starting with ‘sociopaths’ and ending with ‘when she pets the back of my neck I can be an animal’.
I get comfortable on my bolster.
Day 2
1.
Wait. I forgot a detail.
I forgot to write,
“Here’s what happens: I turn to the end and see www.scramblerbooks.com with their logo, which is beyond my level of description. I want to say it’s an S that is actually uncuffed handcuffs spinning in an atomic orbit. I turn to the next to last page and see a b&w picture of Richard Chiem.
“Frances Dinger took it.
“Richard isn’t looking at the camera. I read his bio and say,
“‘He’s born the same year you are Bridget.’
“‘She says, “Really?”‘
“I drink watermelon whiskey and read his bio aloud,
“‘Richard Chiem (b. 1987) currently lives in Seattle with his girlfriend and their loud cat. In 2008, he survived a car accident. This is his first collection of short stories.’
“I show Bridget Richard’s picture and she says,
“‘It’s always interesting seeing what details writers include in their bios.’
“Survived a car accident.
“Here’s a picture of Richard Chiem at a reading in Seattle,

“Richard is the human body farthest to our left, looking at (and probably talking with) the person off camera. He’s wearing the same style beanie and glasses as in his author picture.”

2.
On page 37 I make my first marginalia using a mechanical pencil.
Page 37 is toward the end of a story called ‘imagining Greta Gerwig’. Richard Chiem writes,

she thinks, the best dreams are when you wake up and discover you have been drooling the whole time on your pillow.

I write this in the margins, “Not true, WORST dreams for me end up with the most drool.”
For Richard Chiem to write a story in which he says ‘the best dreams are when…’ and go on to describe what is specifically my worst dream, is uncanny.
This isn’t the first time I feel SHARED EXPERIENCE with this book.
It’s giving me friends.
A popular song on the radio gives me friends, too.
Dopamine is involved in both instances.
3.
On page 44, in the story ‘the same thing we do every night Pinky’, I make my second marginalia in response to something I think a lot about after I finish the book.
It’s from a transcript of a voice recording. In it a person tells a story beginning,

- This guy comes up to me on the street and gives me a dollar.

And I’d like to quote the whole page because it’s beautiful. The pop culture reference is exactly what I need, because the guy who gives him a dollar,

… looks astonished. While missing the crosswalk too, he watches me peer up from the dollar and opens his mouth. He nearly caresses my face when he reaches out and embraces my shoulder. Something softer for a moment replaces the air, as though lighter air. The man frighteningly resembles Bill Murray with a beard…

And,

His look is very serious and ebbing into the slowness of the atmosphere with his blue eyes, his presence is this gentle wave thing. It’s surreal but okay. Bill Murray tells me, No one will ever believe you.

In the margins on page 44 I write, “Bill Murray prank.”
I know these moments happen. I know it because I’ve seen pictures of Bill Murray serving people drinks in bars. It’s possible, and it happens in the book, and I believe it really happened. I believe Bill Murray gave someone who wasn’t asking for a dollar a dollar, and said no one will ever believe him.
It’s great to think about.
4.
By the middle of the book my marginalia is unrestrained.
On page 46, which is all in italics and part of the story ‘the same thing we do every night Pinky’, which is about the Bill Murray prank, I read what seems to be further development of ‘sociopaths’ at the very beginning of the book. I immediately become interested.
It’s about Thom, who is friends with Richard and Mary (characters in ‘sociopaths’) but apparently isn’t anymore. Richard and Mary ignore his call, and instead Thom leaves a long message about Bill Murray giving him a dollar, only the story isn’t true.
Thom is infatuated with Bill Murray.
5.
I write marginalia everywhere. Clearly the book provokes Thoughts Through Activity. I don’t want to bore you with my notes. More often than not they are too personal to be of any value to anyone but myself, which is fine.
Like I don’t want to mention this note on page 87, but I will. In response to,

She belongs to a particular space on the carpet, a certain cushion on the sofa, the middle of her bathtub, and the space between her bed and wall.

I write, “Effective characterization of an introverted person.” In these short pieces (that sometimes read like flash fiction) Richard demonstrates how a character can be fleshed out in short order. It’s all about the details he mentions. If you find the right details, you don’t need to mention much.
6.
The other stories in ‘you private person’ not associated with ‘sociopaths’ don’t stand out in my brain, that is, except for ‘how to survive a car accident’, which is about how we’re at the mercy of cars and everything else around us, constantly threatening our survival.
Richard Chiem wouldn’t have been able to write this if he hadn’t, like his bio says, survived. But there are no tips on how to survive, only a second-person narrative of the actual car crash and the mental and social confusion that follows the event. It’s almost as if he were saying, “You want to know how to survive a car accident? By living to write about it.”
7.
The book ends on pages 138 and 139. Like all good books, you want to get even more from the writer. As if the writer hasn’t done enough already, you want something to carry around inside you.
And this book, meaning this writer, leaves with a short piece concerning Mary, the same Mary in ‘sociopaths’ is my guess, but it could be the Mary from ‘animal’, if they are different people.
This time Mary takes a shower with an unnamed first-person narrator, whom I believe to be Richard from ‘sociopaths’ even though it could be Richard from ‘animal’. Either way, both Richards are estranged from Mary by the end, so to END end on a story where Mary is with some unnamed first-person narrator, well, it is all a bit foggy, and my only complaint about the book: this intentional ambiguity, this carrying of characters (or at least their names) from one narrative to another. But, like Eileen Myles says in her quote, “The first fiction is your name.”
This last story is called ‘when she pets the back of my neck I can be an animal’ and it does a lot in the space of two pages. For me, Richard Chiem shines when his subject is a young couple. He doesn’t need to have the plot of ‘sociopaths’ or ‘animal’ to bring this couple to life, but the fact that he does have these plots, full of psychology and action, along with a young couple, makes these slightly longer short stories endearing.
There’s also a touch of humor/irony in this last piece.
First the narrator (Richard?) says,

Suddenly [Mary and I] know we will live for a long time and survive everything.

And then, at the very end, this young, invincible couple drives backward on a highway on their way to the airport, and that’s where they leave us. This is probably not literal but instead a statement about how reckless people can be simply because they think nothing bad could ever happen to them. Or at least they live fuller lives if they operate under that assumption. - @herocious

theopenend.com/

1. I appreciated what I imagined was the time spent in deciding the titles for the individual stories. They seem to be an art form in it of itself and are often cast aside with boring, one word placeholders in other collections. But these seem like really good tweets, or prompts for possible flash fiction.

2. I was intrigued before even opening the book. Between the nice cover art by Mark Leidner and the trio of blurbs on the back cover that force you to not only start reading but, when you’re done, place the book face down so as to show off the insanely nice and potent words of Dennis Cooper, Kate Zambreno, and Blake Butler.
3. It’s a small book, under 150 pages, but the actual size of it and layout of the pages w/r/t to font, spacing, etc, make it feel much more hefty and somehow more important.
4. This is the first thing I read from Scrambler Books. I have certain small presses that I’m comfortable with purchasing pretty much anything and everything they release. If this book is any clue to Scrambler’s future intentions than I plan on adding them to my queue, to the detriment of my bank account.
5. I’ve never read Chiem before this. I went back and found some of his stories online. They didn’t disappoint. I love it when an author is able to bridge the difficult gap between lone stories in online journals and a fully formed collection in print.
6. I’m jealous. I’ll admit it. Chiem is born a year after me and he’s a hell of a writer. He’s put together a collection of stories that I aspire to replicate in my own way. This book has a maturity behind it that hides the fact that this is his first published book.
7. “The first fiction is your name,” Eileen Myles. Seems like a perfect quote to open the book. It put me in a subdued and contemplative mindset before the first story.
8. There is something in this book for everyone. As much as I hate when I read the previous statement in a review for this book, it’s true. Short fiction, some prose poetry, fragments of stories, linked narratives.
9. You’ll definitely feel a little better about the future of the short story after reading this collection. Chiem is a young writer who has a stranglehold on his craft, who has finely tuned his pen to hear the whispers of our society, the forgotten people, the discarded images are given a second home.
10. The opening paragraph of the book is perfect. It combines his greatest gifts as a writer: his pitch perfect sense of how to put together a sentence and his ability to allow himself the freedom to wander with his thoughts while still maintaining the discipline to reign it all back in and bring the reader to a larger point, usually profound yet understated. “Cigarettes can levitate you and the bare weight you have very bored in your head and you have never known you were unhappy until the feeling leaves you like imagined geese from hills eager for migration. Birds are so fun to imagine. This all comes from years of wanting to know how to fly standing out on balconies pretending sex is the name same as flight because surely geese can feel in the air like I do when her eyes go crossed when bedrooms soften after foreplay when language works much like animal speech. Only by repeating each other’s names. I do believe all birds are named Chirp.”
11. The dialogue throughout is real. Have you ever read books and just sort of skip over the dialogue because you realize that the writer is using it as a dumping ground and it’s not really serving any real purpose or doesn’t seem plausible? Well Chiem’s dialogue is the exact opposite. It serves a vital purpose, it is real, echoes of truth and lack of bullshit are appreciated (by me) when listening to how a person speaks in a book and Chiem, more times than not, has the rhythms and cadences of his characters down so well that I feel that I’m waiting at a bus stop overhearing a couple argue, or am at a party eavesdropping on a conversation.
12. “The older I get the more I realize life is all about nodding at people and looking them in the eye.” YES. I wish my parents or a teacher or my guidance counselor or my therapist told me this earlier. Would’ve saved a lot of time and headaches.
13. Picking a favorite story from a collection you adore is like choosing a favorite kitten from a litter of newborns. Sorry to all the other adorable whiskers but “what if, Wendy” is the one I’m taking home with me.
14. In the Wendy story Chiem puts sex at the forefront. While this is done way too much in contemporary literature and often comes off as a cliché he handles the topic with wit, dry humor, and poignancy that moves the story beyond shock value and actually delivers emotion behind the passion, heartfelt moments in between the animal urges of two young people.
15. This quote pretty well sums up the honesty and straightforwardness of the Wendy story:
“Have you ever done anal? Jesse asks her.
Yes, she says. I love anal.
She pauses and says, There is something perfectly wrong about it. I tend to love things I’m not supposed to.”
16. There’s a panoramic quality to the book. Chiem paints a portrait (multiple ones) with his words, creates a world that transforms the mundane and ordinary aspects of everyday life into beautifully detailed, intricately woven moments that elevate these character’s actions into something larger than life.
17. The best word to describe this book is raw. It’s unpolished in the best sense. His writing is polished, shows an attention to detail and craft but it’s his willingness to leave his subjects vulnerable and bare, without luster, that gives the book its backbone, creating a larger character that floats above the book throughout.
18. Found myself shaking my head as I was reading. This happened at least once a story and didn’t matter if I was reading it in public. I didn’t care, I had to. Even if the events written about hadn’t happened to me I could somehow relate to them, empathize in some cases. Chiem’s ability to observe, analyze, and deconstruct everyday things gave me a peek into a different mindset. It was as if I were looking through a different set of binoculars, really expensive ones that gave me a better vantage point.
19. I felt as though I’d been given the greatest gift a writer can give to a reader: empathy and understanding.
20. I’m really proud (weird, I know) to have this book on my shelf. It makes me happy to have friends come over and find this title, tucked away amongst other better known titles. I want to lend it to them, all of them, to share this book’s magnetism, its beauty. I was even thinking of getting a second copy just so I could go to my local library and shelve it (stealth like) with a note in it saying, “For free, just pass it on.”
21. Flip to a page, any page. Now pick a line, any one, doesn’t matter which. Read it. You’ll like it. That’s what makes a good book in my opinion. Chiem’s book is a collection of stories but more so a collection of interlinked ideas and thoughts and sentences and words jumbled together in such a fashion that you could read this in one sitting, go from start to finish or read individual stories at your leisure and still be affected by this book.
22. While some of the topics broached in this collection may not be deemed profound (who’s doing the judging?) it’s the details, the everyday ambiguities that Chiem magnifies, showing it in all of its beauty and ugliness at the same time.
23. Fuck the “20 Under 40 List.” Richard Chiem is on my 10 under 30 List, or whatever shortlist/arbitrary ranking system you want to replace mine with. Point is, he’s young, he’s talented, and he’s overlooked and shouldn’t be. Watch out for him!
24. I don’t like comparing writers but find it’s useful. Chiem’s dialogue and understanding of character is similar to Tao Lin but his dreamscape like prose, infused with a poet’s touch for the perfect word, and ability to ensconce his stories with a deeper layer of both beauty and ugliness; it’s this duality that elevates him above this comparison. In short, he’s like that really good short story you read recently from your favorite online journal written by an author you’ve never heard of before.
25. Consider the book’s ending. “Heat ribbons move in the air off the pavement and white lines. Exiting off the highway, she makes a contemplative yet happy face, taking off her sunglasses. Her eyes turn hazel from hazel. She says she felt really safe earlier when our arms touched each other in public and we made eye contact standing next to a fat man in the elevator in the parking garage where we first met casually. For fun she drives backwards on the 405.” This last sentence is beautiful in its simplicity and uniqueness. Having a book end on a such a lovely crafted sentence (and paragraph) makes me happy and sad at the same time. Happy because, well, there’s nothing better (to me) than a nice ending to an engaging book. Sad because I want the beauty to continue, if only for just another sentence to see if he can replicate its splendor. - Patrick Trotti