For a few years now, I have been curious to read Lucy Ellmann’s towering achievement in experimental literature “Ducks, Newburyport.” As someone who gravitates towards fiction that takes risks (both good and bad), there was something alluring. The intimidating size of nearly 1,000 pages would be enough to turn some off, but the idea of creating a story out of a single sentence made me excited. This was going to take the practices of modernist authors I have fallen in love with and find the next plausible juncture. Plain and simple, the journey into Ellmann’s vision was “all over the place.” There were as many moments where I saw the greater potential to transcend its medium as well as times where I felt like yawning and never return to the book.
And yet I think it’s because it was all presented as one sentence that you remain hooked. You want to see how every topic intersects with each other and how ideas will return 300 pages later. This is ultimately a character study of a housewife with a career in baking, so there’s real-time actions intersecting with thoughts. As she recalls her complicated history, the reader will have an ADHD-style break into reality that shows her connection to this mortal coil. Beyond any greater criticism, I think Ellmann’s biggest success comes in keeping us inside the protagonist’s mind. Every page may have an exhaustive level of detail and topic jumping to the point you can argue nothing happens in 60% of the story, but I still can’t say I hated the experience.
The main reason that I chose “Ducks, Newburyport” was because of a personal challenge I’ve dubbed “Summer Reading.” Around May or June, I pick a book that’s roughly 1,000 words and spend the next few months working through it. I started with “Les Misérables” and have worked through many of the classics, including more contemporary epics like “Infinite Jest,” “Under the Dome,” and “IQ84.” There is something about being immersed in ambitious vision that makes me lean forward. I love getting to the middle section where it feels like things slow down and you’re left with some of the most human moments. It’s the center of the journey, where small claims have been made but the larger goal hasn’t been reached.
For a novel like “Ducks, Newburyport” however, it’s impossible to reach the same conclusion. I would argue the larger thesis isn’t straightforward. My bigger takeaway is that Ellmann’s novel is so radical that I had to relearn how to read traditional novel structure afterwards. Even authors who this book reminded me of – James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” – have an A to Z structure that makes you understand their larger intention. For Ellmann, there was a need to break free of conventions and understand that the mind doesn’t work in a linear fashion. As a selling point, this may be compared to the “Penelope” chapter of “Ulysses” just because of its rambling nature. However, I’d argue Ellmann is far less artistic in how she goes about the unraveling. It’s thought after thought after thought after thought. Even the way it’s one long sentence is frankly disappointing because it’s less about finding parallels and more replacing punctuation with the same phrase. While it helped me know where to cut off for the night, the tedium limits the level of fluidity that the reader can experience.
Maybe the reason that I’ve chosen to highlight this novel as being essential to understanding my 2024 is less because of structure and more because of how it encouraged me to reconsider reality. There’s a lack of nuance that suggests we’re getting anything as indirect as an average Alice Munro story. We understand the protagonist’s deepest thoughts and while she rarely discusses her wants and needs in obvious ways, they read like an established mind where we’re getting bits and pieces before having to put things together. I don’t know if there’s a greater reward with outlining everything, but you come to realize Ellmann is attempting to write The Great American Novel™. In the social media age where ideas are running past your eyeballs nonstop, it’s hard to process anything with deeper rationale. It takes time to reach the “a-ha!” and, even then, it won’t come at a convenient time. Maybe it will be the middle of the night or three days later.
More than anything, this was an amazing book to read amid a presidential election. The summer marked the period where things were starting to prepare for the final race to the finish line. While many expressed burnout over Joe Biden being an incumbent candidate, there was still that hope of finding reason within the madness. As I read the book, I watched a live broadcast of news anchors try to make sense of the first presidential candidate assassination I’ve seen in my adult life (despite being less than six months since, it hasn’t been the last somehow). The fallout as his fans took to drag acts of wearing bandages over their ears at The RNC only made the madness more surreal. That was all before Biden dropped out amid concern of being too old (even the knowledge of getting Covid-19 prior to a debate didn’t help) and let Vice President Kamala Harris take over the spot. Add in Charli XCX suggesting “Kamala is Brat” and it felt like the election was approaching madness. Given that this was on Twitter, a platform owned by a cabinet member of the next administration known for perpetuating misinformation and doctored images, it only adds to the befuddlement of reducing politics to a meme for an album that was celebrating the messiness of womanhood and featured a remix where Billie Eilish recounts the color of Charli XCX’s underwear. Before things wrapped up, Ethel Cain took to Instagram to complain about people being irony poisoned and how it was ruining our ability to have serious conversations. Not to be outdone, there were news articles in November about how releasing Wicked (2024) before the election could’ve swayed voters who saw The Wizard as a fascistic leader to have voted for a liberal candidate. Never mind that it was based on a musical celebrating its 20th anniversary based on an older book adapted from a series of books that inspired a popular 1939 Judy Garland film. Not since Hadestown’s “Build the Wall” have people misappropriated musical culture as meaning something it’s not. At time same time, all of this reflects the lack of cultural permanence of the Tony-nominated musical Suffs which was co-produced by Hillary Clinton and designed to make people vote for women’s rights before, ironically, watching the second female presidential candidate lose in eight years.
Reading the book feels reminiscent of the previous paragraph. Every detail I used can be traced back to the election narrative, though it may not necessarily relate to the sentences that surround it. Ellmann manages to weave them together with more personal goal and achievements as they relate to a protagonist living in Ohio around 2017. In some ways, it was the start of this new chaotic way of thinking, where realism was fading in favor of convenience. It’s a time that sometimes feels more innocent if just because there were still ties to the feel good vibes of Barrack Obama. Larger agendas weren’t clear. “Ducks, Newburyport” is a study of what it means to worry in the modern age, where you’re more self-aware than ever. There is a helplessness to be a hero or believe that America is as altruistic as the lesson plan in second grade wanted you to believe. The panic felt new, and you wanted to avoid fading into dissociation because that would mean giving into submission. Even as someone struggles to afford everyday necessities and experience happiness with loved ones, there is a need to keep searching for that answer and, somewhere in the 1,000 pages of “Ducks, Newburyport” is where Ellmann finds them. It’s not necessarily the final statement before the much welcomed period, but maybe a dozen or so pages before. Even then, the average person has multiple revelations throughout a single day, so those dedicated to wading through the banality of baking and watching TCM will find the ways how our mind think best the further away from the topic we get. It’s almost like we’re straining too hard to find answers and that makes it run further away. Finding it while discussing the work of Howard Keel is not as strange as you’d think.
Which is all to say that you wake up every morning and process the news. You have to let that intersect with personal accomplishments without letting it consume you. There are days where progress feels futile while others are full of surprises. My version of 2024 had that in fits and starts. It’s difficult to say “I had a great year” when there’s so much to the contrary. Ellmann’s gift comes in forcing you to empathize so much with her character that every tangent becomes endearing. It burrows into your mind and you feel like you are back in 2017. The datedness of this text thrills me because there are endless points where I thought, “I remember that!” So much gets forgotten – even more-so in an accelerated timeline – and realizing how much you retain is shocking. The sense of survival becomes an underlying theme throughout the text, and it serves as a piece of optimism even as the reader learns more about her dysfunctional family and health concerns. For someone whose life seems so trivial, she has so many unformed thoughts deserving of coming out.
It's something that exists within all of us. While there is a public presentation that we all share, I’m sure our inner monologues are a lot messier and feature topics we’re a bit too ashamed to bring forward. I’m not accusing “Ducks, Newburyport” of presenting anything problematic, but there were times where she recognizes that if she spoke her mind it would upset others. Her place within the hierarchy would dwindle and soon she’d be nothing but the crazy old lady. There is self-awareness of how we have unspoken desires that ruminate and potentially fester, driving us mad. In a year like 2024, it’s hard to not feel that way without fear of upsetting people on a basic liberal/conservative divide. Even Twitter, which sold itself as a town square for free speech, now feels like the place for metaphorical public lynchings. There is a fear of authenticity, and it’s best to just assimilate and process thoughts indirectly in the privacy of your own home.
This is not my favorite novel I read this year. My retention skills are very low and I think reflects its inability to latch onto a greater appeal. This isn’t “Ulysses” where among its unintelligible prose is a greater understanding of life. Ellmann has a lot of points where you feel immersed in a larger American anxiety from 2017. By pushing aside nuance and clarity, she has created a vision that resonates as a portal to the past. It’s unpleasant, overlong, and confusing. That’s how it felt to live then. Even if I haven’t been to Ohio in decades, I feel like I’ve been there living my own meaningless life processing everything that distracts me from my emptiness. Because of that, I think this is a triumph of the medium. I couldn’t even tell you every stray thought I had while composing this essay. Ellmann’s ability to make the abstract tangible is a feat that I find commendable, even if it’s like my own mind and mostly exists as Teflon.
My hope is that as a society we can find some ways to “decompress." The swirling nature of our busy body culture is exhausting and I think we’re doomed to reach a breaking point. The hyperawareness can only hurt us in the long run. What is our lives if we’re fixated on every piece of tabloid drama competing with political scandals and our own mental illnesses? There has to be sensibility within all of this. I’ve found stepping away and sitting in the nothingness to be a good chance to just let every thought fight it out. While I naturally will begin worrying when I tap back into the larger world, those moments of peace are what I chase. I’m fine with not being aware of the tertiary. I need to find ways to emphasize what’s important. We need to see past the irony and see the humanity. It’s difficult, but I hope as the next phase of America begins to take shape that “Ducks, Newburyport” served as a good reminder of why we should never stop thinking about what our lives need the most.
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