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Something sandwich >> Eleven random thoughts from and about The Book of Eleven by JULIET WATERS
2. The number 11 always makes me think of Spinal Tap, the loudest band in the world because their amps go to 11, when everyone else's only go to 10. 3. Here are 11 of the subjects that contain her brain lint: sex, movies, phones, pennies, cars, things she's not proud of but would admit for a small amount of money, sub-languages of Americana, food that doesn't have calories, comparisons between churches and malls, olive stunts she'd do for $5, death. 4. This book gets better as it goes along. 5. Still, after I finished reading the chapter "11 cases of feeling torn," I found myself thinking again about Spinal Tap, their album Shark Sandwich and its two-word review "Shit sandwich." I felt torn between whether my two-word review of this book would be "List sandwich" or "Lint sandwich." This was a pleasant, harmless distraction from the fact that no one would get this joke. 6. Rosenthal is a Chicago-based writer and columnist whose column "15 megabytes of fame" runs weekly in the Chicago Tribune online magazine. Her thoughts have been called Seinfeld-esque. Some of them are, but some of them are also George-esque, as in manure being "ma" followed by "nure." (Which starts me thinking again if "Ma" and "Nure" sandwich would still qualify as two words). Too many of them are Erma Bombeck-esque, and an unforgivable few are Cathy-esque. 5. Rosenthal writes that "compartmentalizing the world into tiny, manageable pieces gives the compartmentalizer an addicting sense of security." She also writes,"I feel safe and happy around people who make lists, for I know that if they say they will do something--say, fax me an article or order theater tickets--they will write it down, which is an absolute precursor to actually doing it. Then they will fax me/order the tickets so they can cross it off their list. This is simply the way list-people operate." 6. I agree with the first part, but frankly I'm a bit wary of list-people. I worry about people whose lives feel incomplete because they bumped into a friend and thus couldn't cross off "dry cleaning." Whenever I have a day where I've crossed everything off my list, I start worrying that nobody cares enough about me to fuck up my plans anymore, or worse, that there's no one in my life that I care enough about to fuck up my plans for. 7. Nevertheless, my favorite short story, "An Interest in Life," by Grace Paley, is about list-making. My favorite paragraph in it is: "In the middle of my third beer, searching in my mind for the next step, I found the decision to go on Strike It Rich. I scrounged some paper and pencil from the toy box and I listed all my troubles, which must be done in order to qualify. The list when complete could have brought tears to the eye of God if He had a minute. At the sight of it my bitterness began to improve. All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar." 8. Amy Krouse Rosenthal's interest in life is all of these things. 9. As she points out, anyone could have probably written this book, which is part of its peculiar charm. 10. This is a small book that could be like The Prophet for Seinfeld fans, if Kalil Gibran didn't actually have anything profound to say but just wanted to get people thinking. 11. She swears to God that her dentist confessed that he didn't floss. The Book of Eleven by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Andrews McMeel Publishing, hc, 122pp, $15.50
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1. In the first of 11 very short introductions to The Book of Eleven--An Itemized Collection of Brain Lint, Amy Krouse Rosenthal explains why she chose to make a book of 11 random thoughts on 23 random subjects. "A list of 9 felt too short. Letterman owns 10 and 12 seemed like a lot of work."