Before I started reading Fierce Attachments, I found myself ruminating over Jonathan Lethem’s introductory writings about Gornick’s “rectangle.” Gornick writes that this special space for memory “flowered without warning into thought, radiant shapely thought […] the sentences were trying to fill in the shape […] my insides cleared out into a rectangle, all clean and uncluttered space.” Her description made me think about getting in the zone as a writer. Feeling propelled by a sentence, then a series of sentences, then pages that help you discover more of what you have always dreamed of putting into words. Then I wondered what had initially cluttered her. Was it unnecessary information? Was she swamped with memories that didn’t carry as much meaning as one initially expects?
Lethem goes even further and uses Gornick’s rectangle as a metaphor for the entire work. He argues that the book “encompasses, not only her life, but […] her readers’.” When I first read this passage I thought: “that’s ridiculous!” Then I wondered how, as writers of our own stories, we include perfect strangers [our readers] in conversation with our experiences? What are some strategies for including a reader? How is Gornick successful or unsuccessful in doing so?
I found her writing to be very entertaining—we learn to navigate her Bronx home as if we’re living there too. Her details are vivid, specifically when she describes the smells of laundry drying from clotheslines and the sounds within and outside her family’s apartment. She takes considerable time with her description of faces. She also uses small objects to unlock people’s lives or to connect larger stories. A great example of this is lace. Lace is used to usher in the demise of Nettie. Gornick looks out the window and sees a prostitute wearing lace, and the reader is left wondering if this woman is Nettie. The dialogue between mother and daughter was also complex. Later, I found out that some of these interactions were fabricated. Yet, I couldn’t help wondering why I was so invested it what was going on. I kept asking myself: where is the rectangle happening and how am I fitting into it? Am I okay with the fact that some of the rectangle comes from her imagination?
Gornick writes about her mother’s shit talking, but suddenly corrects her reader. Its as if Gornick is talking to a friend or sibling. She explains that her mother described Mrs. Roseman as always having “a pot of some kind of shit cooking on the stove all da long, by the time her husband came home from work it tasted like my grandmother’s old shoes. But my mother’s voice was affectionate not indicting.” At that moment I realized she was talking directly to me. I’d assumed that her mother was gossiping, but Gornick uses this moment to go into detail about her mother’s involvement in Socialist politics, and later, the incident that caused her to have a deep respect for Mrs. Roseman.
I’m wondering what other people thought about this idea of the rectangle. How is it that her story is so localized, yet speaks to so many women’s own mother-daughter relationship/experience?
One thing that surprised me when I read your post was the quote, "my insides cleared out into a rectangle, all clean and uncluttered space.” This makes the rectangle see as a positive thing that opens up room for creativity within her. I guess, I had only been seeing it in a negative light, something that was constantly "closing in" (190). She explains that the rectangle, "It's a fugitive, a subversive, an illegal immigrant in the country of my being...I can;t naturalize the immigrant." (190) But perhaps it can be both negative and positive...?
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