GROUND TO A HALT

MY NERVES ARE SHOT, though it hasn’t actually gotten bad for me at all yet. It’s seven in the morning. The kids are still sleeping, stayed up late yesterday, spent forever playing Fortnite, even taught me the basics—how to construct fences or walls, and how to destroy them with a pickax. But the destruction gave me no satisfaction. I handed the controller back, unable to get what I needed from the game.

While the kids were playing, I got a letter from the headmistress of my younger son’s school about plans for the following week. On its second page was a bad translation of a quote attributed to

books December 2018

Heike Geißler

Anne Boyer is an expert in fresh ruptures, new avant-gardes, manifestos, and life (or some such thing). Her book A Handbook of Disappointed Fate (Ugly Duckling Presse) helps me to regain focus when my sight is blurred. It helps me to believe again in tenderness when I shout for radicalization and acts of revenge. Anne Boyer writes: “Many lambs work for years to steal fire but do not know what use a lamb has for flames.” I am such a lamb. Forlorn. Misled. Raised on its predators’ rules. But it is never too late to learn when we have the right handbooks. The handbooks that perform their knowledge,