Amusing Anthologies: The Anecdotal Wonders of Bob-Waksberg’s ‘Someone who will Love you in all Your Damaged Glory’
Apart from the title being immensely long, I had no initial impression of this book. If anything, I’m pretty sure you thought the same! However, what came to pass in my time of reading this, was certain to be one of the best anthologies I’ve ever experienced.
Who is Raphael Bob-Waksberg?
There are many reasons why an anthology (i.e. short story collection) can be great. Some stories—as in Ted Chiang’s Exhalations, are great because the individual tales evoke ethical dilemmas surrounding sci-fi, especially in highly inventive and original ways. Another great short-storyist would be Émile Zola, who is unabashedly in-touch with naturalism and dark topics on human nature, such as death and tragedy in The Flood and war.
This time, however, it was different. I’ve never quite come across a work like this, where each and every tale was absolutely bizarre and unhinged…and strangely enough, enjoyable?
Not a single story was something I could’ve ever dreamt up; perhaps this was something owed to my limiting mind or creative abilities. To a bigger extent, though, this is likely because of Bob-Waksberg’s genius.
If you aren’t familiar with his name, Raphael Bob-Waksberg is one of the screenwriting geniuses behind the American comedy-drama, Bojack Horseman. Though I haven’t gotten around to watching it, Bob-Waksberg’s witty inflection shines through this piece, and given the countless number of Bojack Horseman memes that inundate my social media pages, it’s high time that I should pick it up. It’s on Netflix, for anyone who’s considering.
The cover for Bob-Waksberg’s debut novel
As for this book, it’s considered to be Bob-Waksberg’s debut novel; one that took several years and much toil to eventually reach our shelves.
My picks from the short story collection
Now that we’ve done a short and crisp introduction of Waksberg’s background, it’s time to dive into the novel’s contents. As the title is quite a stretch, it would be better cast into an acronym: SWWLYIAYDG. Or, The Book, as I have just created and will continue to use.
SWWLYIAYDG (i.e. The Book) is extremely comical and emotional. The stories are all so invariably different that I find it hard to share about all of them in an encompassing manner. Nevertheless, some stories had me keeling over from laughter and smiles, while others melted the icy fixtures of my stone-cold heart. To pinpoint a few, my favourites from the collection include m4w, A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion, Rufus, The Average, and More of You That You Already Are.
What makes this book great
I consider it a triumph for any author to retain a reader’s interest, and even emotionally engage them in bite-sized stories that range between 4-80 pages per story. Yet, he managed to achieve such a feat; and stunningly at that!
For additional context, I don’t actually like short stories, albeit some from Calvino and Zola, but this was a treat. The writing is extremely compelling and quick to read, and the stories are immersive, funny, and, to put it quite simply, heartfelt (—which is quite an understatement).
The Book also ropes you into imaginary worlds with topsy-turvy physics and out of left-field terminologies, such as worlds where weddings have half-blind love-demons and you have to sacrifice a bunch of goats to appease the Stone God; the point-of-view from a dog who dubs humans as ManMonster and stuff toys as LittleSoft; and even a poem titled: the poem. Go figure.
Evidently, what you’re getting is not just varying lengths and types of short stories, but short stories, poems, prose, and more. It’s a pretty fun way to read a book-cum-scattering-of-well-written thoughts. Nonetheless, throughout it all, I remained and am still emotionally connected to the events in The Book. Now that’s a power I’d like to have, if I ever was an author.
And though The Book adopts a light and comedic tone, it also sheds some truths about the world that our minds may gravitate to whenever we are kept awake at night.
“He had this really amazing party trick where sometimes he could go a full hour without even once being suddenly reminded of the paralyzing truth that his life was finite and unrepeatable.”
Hence why I described it as “comical and emotional.” Few authors know how to achieve this, but Bob-Waksberg does a fantastic job of skillfully balancing the two. Instead of leaning too much into being overly-sentimental, or much too like the people who spit truisms as if they’re earth-shattering nuggets of wisdom, Bob-Waksberg handles both in a tasteful manner.
Sometimes, ideas are recycled, but the ways they’re presented are different; this succinctly captures the essence of SWWLYIAYDG, and is what makes it so good.
A fun tidbit
Like many readers, I usually just sweep through that section. Yeah, the one where authors drone on and say—”I would like to thank so-and-so, so-and-so, this-very-important-person, of-course-I-need-to-include-my-wonderful-husband, etc…”
Yet, a stunning revelation about this book is that even when it was coming to a close, the Acknowledgement page was as heartwarming and entertaining as the rest of the book.
In his final remarks, Bob-Waksberg writes:
“Finally, I would like to thank my wife. About half of these stories are from before I met her and half since, and I’m convinced if you lined them all up in the order they were written, you could pinpoint the moment where my heart became whole.”
Awe. For all the horrendously discouraging and down-hearted stuff I read, I doubt that I have loved an anthology as completely as this—with its flaws and everything. Maybe that is the power that resides in Bob-Waksberg’s debut novel.
Beyond that, I guess you could say that I am a certain someone who will love it in all its damaged glory. Maybe you’ll learn to do that too, with this novel.
“…because I want to believe our love is special—that it’s bigger and more interesting than any love that anyone else has had before—but the heartbreaking truth is my love for you is so consistent and predictable and boring.”
By: Yuki Koh Suat Nee
ReadNUS Editorial Team