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It Chooses You
"I have a confession to make: I only picked up this book because I had a slew of things I didn't want to do and I wanted a distraction. Little did I know I'd stumbled onto an ode to procrastination written by an evident master of the craft.
Struggling to finish a screenplay, Miranda July starts poring over items for sale in the PennySaver. She starts calling up the sellers and then interviewing them in their homes, photographer in tow. It Chooses You is a hybrid book comprised of interview transcripts, photographs and July's own writing: a funny, heartfelt commiseration about being creative, distractible, and in a funk, and also a book that is touchingly concerned with the non-electronic.
Most of the interviewees don't own computers, and the real, tangible things they are selling are invested with the sorts of stories only physical objects can contain, stories that end when the object is destroyed or thrown away or simply when the last person aware of its meaning disappears. July writes hilariously and compellingly about these stories and about trying (and failing) to tell them. If you decide to take a break from what you really should be doing to read this book, you won't be wasting your time."
Publisher McSweeney's, Irregulars
Publication Date 2011-11-15
Section Film / New Hc - Non - Fiction / Staff Recs / All Staff Suggestions / Margaret B.
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9781936365012
In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing the screenplay for her much-anticipated second film. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the PennySaver, the iconic classifieds booklet that reached everywhere and seemed to come from nowhere. Who was the person selling the ?Large leather Jacket, $10”? It seemed important to find out?or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay. Accompanied by photographer Brigitte Sire, July crisscrossed Los Angeles to meet a random selection of PennySaver sellers, glimpsing thirteen surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways. Elegantly blending narrative, interviews, and photographs with July’s off-kilter honesty and deadpan humor, this is a story of procrastination and inspiration, isolation and connection, and grabbing hold of the invisible world.
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