When I read Lydia Millet's most recent novel Sweet
Lamb of Heaven, I was struck by the way she guides us
in exploring language, or more specifically,
something that might be called deep language if you
ask the right people.
I was struck by the way the story moves along dynamically
while also keeping language at the forefront of the narrative
in the form of questions.
Is there a pre-verbal voice or essence
that connects every living growing creature?
Is that God or at least part of what we might call the divine?
Early on in the book, Anna, the narrator,
watches her daughter protect a ratty mouse, a dog eared,
broken spined, finger smeared, picture book,
and thinks it's almost possible to believe that everything
in the world is precious, that each humble item that exists
has a delicate and singular value.
It's possible to believe that all matter should
be treated tenderly.
And as the story continues, we consider
what it means to be protected, what
it means to treat all manner tenderly,
what it means to be connected even for a short period of time
to something like a divine.
There's a skill in bringing in all these threads.
And so definitely weaving them together.
I picked up on language and trust
because those are things I've been
thinking about in my own work.
But of course, people's experiences cannot be easily
reduced to one or two through lines.
And as portrayals of experiences,
neither can Lydia Millet stories.
She is the author of 11 works of literary fiction,
including Mermaids in Paradise, 2014, the novel Magnificence,
2012, a story collection called Love
in Infant Monkeys, 2010, a finalist for the Pulitzer
Prize, and the novel My Happy Life, 2002.
She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012 and lives
in Tucson, where she also writes op-ed columns for the New York
Times and works at the nonprofit Center for Biological
Diversity.
Please join me in welcoming Lydia Millet.