Patricia Lockwood: "My idea of ​​the internet is to roll in the mud like a little pig"

Patricia Lockwood: "My idea of ​​the internet is to roll in the mud like a little pig"

Patricia Lockwood: "My idea of ​​the internet is to roll in the mud like a little pig"

If an alien knocked on our door today and we wanted to like him, a candid and clairvoyant soul would not go to the Fundéu. In order for him to learn and truly connect with the #vibes of humanity, what a nice person would say would lend him a copy of Little is Talked About This. The 2021 Booker Prize finalist novel may give the rigid gatekeepers of language hives for being extremely online, but it is a complete and unconstrained immersion in our feverish and uncertain present, where the complexities of our virtual selves and physical. A book that has been written and is read as the internet is consumed in 2022: jumping from frenzy to boredom and from laughter to tears in two decontextualized scroll jumps, sometimes with SHOUTS in capital letters in search of a house and other times without commas because if We have almost no air left to continue being functional adults like in this very sentence, why are we going to write them if narrating our hasty drama is the best ally in a world in which everything is going to hell every second but we are still here because we are supported by the memes.

Published on February 7th in Spanish by Alpha Decay with skilful translation by Inga Pellisa —it's not easy to adapt expressions from internet culture to Spanish slang and she nailed it—, Poco se habla de esto is a sensory journey with two very defined stops. The first part delves into the routine of a Portal star (that's what Twitter is called in the book and should be nicknamed like that forever) who travels around the world talking about the feelings of the internet because an absurd tweet (“Can a dog be twins?”) took it as far as teens to respond with the crying face emoji. The second is a narrative about the conception, arrival, and loss of that protagonist's niece, a baby born with Proteus syndrome (a congenital disease that causes excessive skin growth and abnormal bone development, the same suffered by the elephant man in David Lynch's film) and for which his entire family lavishes love for six months and one day, time they shared with her.

Like its protagonist, the author Patricia Lockwood (Ohio, 1982), she is also famous in the Portal for her absurd wit and, like her, she has also had to overcome the loss of a niece with Proteus syndrome, Lena, to the one who dedicates the book. Because Little is Talked About This is also an exercise in heartfelt and sincere autofiction. A genre in which Lockwood doesn't mind being pigeonholed at all. “I don't think I get dirty or demeaned for saying it. I can't fool anyone. I am incapable of lying about my work material”, he explains in a Zoom conversation from his home in Savannah (Georgia).

The antithesis of yawning, nothing sounds conventional with this petite, alert, and quick-talking girl raised in the religious belt of the Midwest. If reading it is like a mental explosion of petazetas due to the magic of running into someone much smarter and more inventive than anyone would aspire to be, attending to her vital curriculum does not seem mundane either. Her father, a former U.S. military officer, conspiracist of the new breed, and lover of rifles, ordained himself a Catholic priest after watching The Exorcist 72 times—she would write about growing up under that delusional religious influence in her memoir Priestdaddy, one of the books of the year on virtually every 2017 list. At 19, she ran away from that home where Rush Limbaugh is prayed with almost as frenzy as Jesus to marry a stranger with whom she discussed poetry in chatrooms, the back rooms of the primordial internet. They call her “Twitter's Poet Laureate” for having gone over Twitter several times and because one of her poems, Rape joke, dedicated to her rapist, made internet history when it was posted on The Awl and blew up across the globe. As she writes her next book (“a collection of stories about the notes I took while having the coronavirus in March 2020 and going crazy”), Lockwood serves as a refreshing literary critic at the renowned London Review of Books. Let no one fear a change of record when having to write for who dictates the canon. His prose remains just as witty and free no matter where it is printed. “I'm not very good at matching the critical tone of the time. Mine is evident in all genres. Sometimes I read things I wrote when I was 18 and I sound the same. It is not easy to change that essence. The one that when, naturally, makes you sound perfect”.

Patricia Lockwood. Photo: Getty

Patricia Lockwood: «My idea of ​​the internet is to roll in the mud like a little pig»

Where everyone loves to hate Twitter, its protagonist lives in the glory of virtual chaos.

Yes, and it's interesting because when people read the part about the virtual experience, they see themselves reflected as in a mirror. Some said to me when reading it: "Wow, you do hate the internet" And it is not like that at all! The most correct definition of my idea of ​​the internet is to roll in the mud like a little pig. At first I loved being there because I could dabble in the language. I had never participated in the things that defined the pulse of my time. But not here. This was a very modern thing that I was participating in in a very physical, mental, linguistic way.

“Halluda is much more fun than helpful,” says its protagonist. The language, the tone, is crucial in the online experience. Do we write badly on purpose as if we were from a sect to recognize and embrace each other?

I was already prepared for this. In Priestdaddy I wrote about what it was like growing up in a subculture of the Catholic Church that was more of a cult. I come from a different place than the rest, I grew up in places where we would gather in circles, applaud each other and talk differently. What happens in digital language is very similar. If you think about it, subcultures are cults, the family is a sect, and if you look closely at every social unit, too. What defines them are shared rituals and language.

The novel reflects a paradox about networks: on the one hand, the desire for community and that we be rewarded in it; on the other, to aspire for our voice to sound unique, special.

We want acceptance, but also differentiation. When I arrived I was going my own way, with my own style and voice, but over time I realized that if I saw a funny photo or took an amazing photo of my cat, I was more likely to share it with a phrase in the language of the cats. memes. I think the more time you spend there, the easier it is for you to reach something that already exists, some constructive language that you can use. Using it will make you identifiable and more accepted.

Why are we so addicted to hyperbole and talk like lunatics in there?

In my head there are two kinds of hyperbole. There is a purely comic, funny. And then there's this guy who's not hyperbole at all, but who came along with the hysteria of today's political age. It is the one that expresses the need to match our tone with the mismatch of what is happening. With Trump we hit a ceiling and we have been stuck there.

Now that Trump has been kicked out of Twitter, is life better?

The immediate removal of her voice caused a feeling of mindfulness, like when everything goes silent and you're suddenly aware of even the blood pumping in your ears. There everyone looked around her and she said to herself: "What the hell are we doing?" But then it showed up as this collective longing for how we had organized our communication. People got poisoned with adrenaline. They'd look around again and say, "Wait, where's my kick for what I need to do, what I need to talk about, that thing, that kind of drive that makes me feel like I'm actually doing something?" That is the echo that his presence has left on Twitter.

Cover of ‘Little is talked about this’. Photo: Courtesy of Alpha Decay

“On slow news days we were left hanging from meat hooks, dangling over the abyss. On fast news days it was like we swallowed [Nascar] whole and we were going to slam into the wall.” Is time more elastic on Twitter? Why does it feel different?

That was the trend when Trump was in office. We get so used to that high that sometimes I feel like we want to get it back. I think people crave that intensity that we get used to, even if it's terrible. With the pandemic it is different. Now the fear is physical, life or death, there is no joy that we had when dissecting politics. We are more scared.

The first part dissects the self on the internet, it is more liminal, and the second is a journey towards grief. Did you initially think that the structure of the book would be like this?

No, it was originally going to be a book about the internet, but I didn't know how to finish it. I thought I could write about that time dilation in the virtual experience forever, but in the midst of that feeling of weightlessness, of not knowing how it was going to end, this situation arose in my own life. That break you feel in the middle of the novel was also a very physical break that happened to me. I had to look closely at myself and wonder if this was going to be like this, with two parts. And so it was meant to be.

Has it been healing to narrate that family loss?

If I worked on my niece's part for so long, it's because I felt that while I was writing about her, I was clinging to her memory. That during that time she could have her with me a little longer. It was very difficult to hand over the book and say that it was definitely over because I came to think that she would never die if she kept writing about her life.

The second is also a slap in the face of reality about the weight of religion on female bodies...

My sister and I grew up in a very Catholic environment. My parents were very involved in the pro-life movement, in sit-ins and demonstrations. I can't be a mother, so for me femininity is not related to motherhood, I don't perceive it that way. Since I accompanied my sister throughout this process, the important thing when writing it was to claim rights that were not present.

There was medical concern for the fetus's survival, but not for her sister's.

The hospital was religious. They discussed fetal survival in great detail, and that was a good thing, because my niece was going to be a person. But my sister was not taken into account. There was no mention of her body until her mother-in-law asked a question about how it would affect her. I think it wouldn't have been mentioned at all if I hadn't asked.

British novelist Hanif Kureishi said that a writer will be loved by strangers and hated by his family. He has written a lot about yours, how are you doing?

I'm very supportive, even my dad, but it's because he hasn't read my books. He ignores what he puts and thinks that there is something that is making him even more famous than he already feels. I guess that's the best way to take it. My mother cried with the audiobook in which I read Little is said about this. My sister has given me her heart. I think that everything the book has achieved is like a flower that we can offer to my niece somewhere, our gift. But there will be no family sequel. When people give you that unconditional love and show that they trust you, you are more likely to be careful and never write about them again.

Tags: Internet|Books|Patricia Lockwood|Social networks|Twitter

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