Against Backstory

Impatience, narrative excess, and inventing women in yellow coats at 5 a.m.

I was trying to read this book, a highly lauded bestseller about a woman whose husband cheated on her. I really tried, meaning I skipped the lengthy ruminations about ospreys, hoping it would get better, hold some universal or at least some practical truth.

But I had to give up. I simply did not care. I was mostly interested in the fact that her mother or grandmother was famous. I think it was Bebe Buell. But I’m not even sure now. Is this why she got a contract?

It’s not that I’m jealous. I certainly didn’t wish I had written the story about recurring osprey motifs and a younger replacement. It’s an old tired fucking hat and the birds only served to hold the ramble together, to symbolize something.

Which brings me to my question: what is even worth writing about? What doesn’t bore people? I just can’t do it. I’m too impatient. I hate backstory and too much detail.

In my story, a woman in a yellow coat walks down a cobblestoned street smoking a Parliament. She has a mild form of Tourette’s but people find it charming, refreshing, because she is the daughter of someone famous. It helps that she’s skinny too. If she were fat and blousy in old stained sweatpants and diabetes, who would pay attention?

Does it matter where she’s headed? A subway stop? A church to weep in the pews? A film premiere? Or home to heat a frozen lasagne from Trader Joe’s and watch Love Island?

I’m in my bed in a crisp white cotton nightgown my mum left on the pillow for me. I slipped into it and then into the crisp white sheets with red poppies. There’s nothing wrong with me, but my whole body aches. I want this night to last forever even though I have nothing to say.

The birds just woke up. It’s already 5 a.m. Soon my mum will get up, grab the paper, read the obituaries, do the crossword. She’ll worry about my dad, his tumor recurring. He has an appointment tomorrow.

If I stay here I can stretch time and postpone bad news. I can take the woman with the yellow coat and her stupid cigarette and do whatever I want to her. Get her mugged or murdered. Fall in love in a café. Get swallowed by a wormhole. I don’t know yet.

She might make a friend today, a potbellied man with a moustache called Monsieur Moreau. Or a pale suicidal girl named Julia.

You see my problem? It’s infinity. It’s jet lag. It’s being an impostor.

And maybe that’s the problem with books like that too—nothing ever arrives fast enough to feel necessary.

Everything is held up just long enough to feel like meaning might be coming, but it never quite lands.

Or I’m just not patient enough to wait for it.