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My Meteorite Or, Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing
My Meteorite Or, Without the Random There Can Be No New Thing
300 pages, Hardcover
First published March 17, 2020
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April 17, 2024March 2019 I am reading The Argonauts on the roof deck of a depressing Airbnb in Tulum. It is either shortly before or after this vacation that the existence of Harry Styles as a cultural figure semi-permeates my awareness, and there is a brief but notable interlude during which I believe Harry Dodge and Harry Styles are the same person.
March 2024 I amble through the Providence Atheneum, a 200-year-old subscription library that I have only visited once before, shortly after moving to Rhode Island seven years ago. I can't quite explain why I haven't made it back in before now, since the Atheneum is one of the most exquisite and lovable spaces I've ever been inside -- at least in New England, a part of the country I don't find often speaks to my soul in this way -- but I guess I've been busy reproducing myself and have just been a bit generally lost, out of touch with what's good and what I need.
When I glimpse this book on a shelf, I experience a rush of confidence in my now solid knowledge that Harry Dodge is not Harry Styles. I'm still not that clear on who Harry Dodge is, though, beyond that, so I flip open the book. I like the opening paragraph, especially its invocation of "liquid time" as a line drawn by "a fat soft pencil," an oddly appealing mixed metaphor. That day, I become a paying, card-carrying member of the Providence Atheneum, which feels like a homecoming to a place you were born but don't remember. Once I've completed this transaction, I go back upstairs to collect the book, which becomes my maiden check-out. The Atheneum librarian stamps the due date slip in the back, because evidently that's the kind of delightful thrill still available to those who pay private library dues.
March 1997 I cross the San Francisco Bay with my friends to the Bearded Lady. We stop in a McDonald's to get ketchup packages; we have saran wrap in our bags. We're high school students, and we don't know much about performance art -- at least, I don't -- except that it reportedly involves wrapping yourself or chosen others in saran wrap, and/or -- and, we decide, maximally, thus the McDonald's stop, and -- dousing your body in blood like the prom scene in Carrie. Tonight we are performing: not us, exactly, but puppets we've made out of large, heavy machine parts from our high school art room, which, prior to being our glamorous punk-rock lesbian art teacher's room, had at one point been a shop class, and still has a lot of disused heavy metal things lying around.
We have fashioned these objects into unwieldy humanoid sculptures that we call the Pretty Ladies. Mine has long chain hair and a light pink-painted mouth area, and takes two hands to hold up by her long though inelegant body-neck. We have made a puppet stage out of a large box that may have at one point been a speaker, or may have served some other purpose entirely. We have not had access to shop class, and possess no understanding of what these parts' original purpose might have been. We have gotten to weld, though, and thus formed our machine creations into being.
Once we arrive at the Bearded Lady, I leap anxiously into my official debut as a queer performance artist, crouched beside my friend inside our puppet box, squealing and spraying ketchup while the bearded lady grownups (who must have included, I feel sure, Harry Dodge!) laugh. I feel possessed, also possessing, as I animate my Pretty Lady with an unplanned and uninterrupted gush of shrieks, pronouncements, in a manic trance of noise. It is a desperate moment but a fantastic one, and unlike any others in my life that followed. But like many of my most fantastic moments, it fades from memory and I don't really think of this night again for decades, not until I'm reading this book.
Maybe there is a universe in which this is just the first, but not also the last, of these artistic efforts. In that other universe, I am currently hobnobbing with the elite culture-producing scenesters of our time, being name-checked in their books, basking in sunsets and art openings and all the romance of LA... If I can't sleep tonight, this alternate path sounds like something I could ask ChatGPT to game out for me, somehow.
I usually avoid memoirs, talk of AI fills me with seemingly conflicting but powerful feelings of both stultifying boredom and terror, I am utterly ignorant of contemporary visual art, and for a long time now, I've had a hard time finishing most books. So it's a bit surprising that I got so into this, and read it straight through. There were parts that sagged a bit, and definitely a few irritants, but on the whole I got a lot out of it. Maybe my favorite part was on p. 212 where he wonders "whether ethics is contingent upon embodiment," which is maybe not an earth-shattering question for people who think at all in a real way about AI, but the idea, and the way he talks about it, was really good for me.
The biggest tension in this book was, for me, whether he was ever going to mention Repo Man, but that's because I'm a rube. Probably if I ever read any fancy theory, I would've been waiting for some crucially obvious obscure French thinky person to get brought up, but something like this book that gives me condensed fun-stuff-to-think-about from some heavy hitters I'd never touch is the closest I get to any of that stuff, so I am left wondering about the dumb things:
You know how there are expressions you think are part of some shared cultural language, but then it turns out it's just you, or if maybe not just you, that they're definitely not taken for granted by everyone in the way you assume? This happened to me recently when I used the phrase "bringing coals to Newcastle" and was shocked that not only did the people I was talking to (best friend and spouse) not know the expression, they thought -- and continue to think, and repeatedly express -- it was insane that I had assumed it was in common usage and that they'd understand what I meant. I mean, I just thought everyone said that. But maybe they don't?
Repo Man was my favorite movie at the time of my seminal 1997 Bearded Lady performance and continued to be so for years, though it's been a long time since I've watched it and I'm not sure what I'd think now. But its bit about the phrase "plate of shrimp" -- "you're thinking about a plate of shrimp... and then someone says 'plate,' or 'shrimp,' or 'plate of shrimp'" -- has always been shorthand in my mind for a specific kind of coincidence and the sensation these evoke, which is one of the themes of this book. And I've always thought that for people of my approximate generation, "plate of shrimp" signified that, though maybe it's like "coals to Newcastle" and isn't as common as I thought. Also, though, that movie seems to resonate a lot with other themes of this book, like the meteor... so at times I wondered if it was deliberately excluded, if Repo Man is just too obvious and low-brow, or if maybe Harry Dodge just really fucking hates it for some other reason.
Anyway, I can say that this book is definitely not for everyone -- while I was reading, I kept trying to think of people I'd recommend it to, but I usually just came back to thinking of me -- but I enjoyed it a lot. I think I am in a stage of life and history when what I want from any art is really, really simple: I want it to make me feel good and interested in being alive, and in other people, and things I could be thinking about or doing, and this book did make me feel all these ways. I will pretty much read and appreciate anything that does not actively make me feel more despairing and dead and depressed about everything, and this book, for whatever reason, was life-affirming for me. It put some pep in my step, I would say. I think if I were going to explain why right now, I might generate some cliches that would make the book sound less good than it was. Thinking about this brings me to another part of the book I liked a lot, on p. 261-ish where he's talking about language and Adorno's idea of non-identity, which I really found helpful and sort of describes how this book, and maybe a lot of books, work for me.
Anyway, I liked it! I'm not sure if I'd recommend this to you because I don't know who you are, but as long as you're clear going in that it's not about Harry Styles, it's probably worth checking out.
March 2024 I amble through the Providence Atheneum, a 200-year-old subscription library that I have only visited once before, shortly after moving to Rhode Island seven years ago. I can't quite explain why I haven't made it back in before now, since the Atheneum is one of the most exquisite and lovable spaces I've ever been inside -- at least in New England, a part of the country I don't find often speaks to my soul in this way -- but I guess I've been busy reproducing myself and have just been a bit generally lost, out of touch with what's good and what I need.
When I glimpse this book on a shelf, I experience a rush of confidence in my now solid knowledge that Harry Dodge is not Harry Styles. I'm still not that clear on who Harry Dodge is, though, beyond that, so I flip open the book. I like the opening paragraph, especially its invocation of "liquid time" as a line drawn by "a fat soft pencil," an oddly appealing mixed metaphor. That day, I become a paying, card-carrying member of the Providence Atheneum, which feels like a homecoming to a place you were born but don't remember. Once I've completed this transaction, I go back upstairs to collect the book, which becomes my maiden check-out. The Atheneum librarian stamps the due date slip in the back, because evidently that's the kind of delightful thrill still available to those who pay private library dues.
March 1997 I cross the San Francisco Bay with my friends to the Bearded Lady. We stop in a McDonald's to get ketchup packages; we have saran wrap in our bags. We're high school students, and we don't know much about performance art -- at least, I don't -- except that it reportedly involves wrapping yourself or chosen others in saran wrap, and/or -- and, we decide, maximally, thus the McDonald's stop, and -- dousing your body in blood like the prom scene in Carrie. Tonight we are performing: not us, exactly, but puppets we've made out of large, heavy machine parts from our high school art room, which, prior to being our glamorous punk-rock lesbian art teacher's room, had at one point been a shop class, and still has a lot of disused heavy metal things lying around.
We have fashioned these objects into unwieldy humanoid sculptures that we call the Pretty Ladies. Mine has long chain hair and a light pink-painted mouth area, and takes two hands to hold up by her long though inelegant body-neck. We have made a puppet stage out of a large box that may have at one point been a speaker, or may have served some other purpose entirely. We have not had access to shop class, and possess no understanding of what these parts' original purpose might have been. We have gotten to weld, though, and thus formed our machine creations into being.
Once we arrive at the Bearded Lady, I leap anxiously into my official debut as a queer performance artist, crouched beside my friend inside our puppet box, squealing and spraying ketchup while the bearded lady grownups (who must have included, I feel sure, Harry Dodge!) laugh. I feel possessed, also possessing, as I animate my Pretty Lady with an unplanned and uninterrupted gush of shrieks, pronouncements, in a manic trance of noise. It is a desperate moment but a fantastic one, and unlike any others in my life that followed. But like many of my most fantastic moments, it fades from memory and I don't really think of this night again for decades, not until I'm reading this book.
Maybe there is a universe in which this is just the first, but not also the last, of these artistic efforts. In that other universe, I am currently hobnobbing with the elite culture-producing scenesters of our time, being name-checked in their books, basking in sunsets and art openings and all the romance of LA... If I can't sleep tonight, this alternate path sounds like something I could ask ChatGPT to game out for me, somehow.
I usually avoid memoirs, talk of AI fills me with seemingly conflicting but powerful feelings of both stultifying boredom and terror, I am utterly ignorant of contemporary visual art, and for a long time now, I've had a hard time finishing most books. So it's a bit surprising that I got so into this, and read it straight through. There were parts that sagged a bit, and definitely a few irritants, but on the whole I got a lot out of it. Maybe my favorite part was on p. 212 where he wonders "whether ethics is contingent upon embodiment," which is maybe not an earth-shattering question for people who think at all in a real way about AI, but the idea, and the way he talks about it, was really good for me.
The biggest tension in this book was, for me, whether he was ever going to mention Repo Man, but that's because I'm a rube. Probably if I ever read any fancy theory, I would've been waiting for some crucially obvious obscure French thinky person to get brought up, but something like this book that gives me condensed fun-stuff-to-think-about from some heavy hitters I'd never touch is the closest I get to any of that stuff, so I am left wondering about the dumb things:
You know how there are expressions you think are part of some shared cultural language, but then it turns out it's just you, or if maybe not just you, that they're definitely not taken for granted by everyone in the way you assume? This happened to me recently when I used the phrase "bringing coals to Newcastle" and was shocked that not only did the people I was talking to (best friend and spouse) not know the expression, they thought -- and continue to think, and repeatedly express -- it was insane that I had assumed it was in common usage and that they'd understand what I meant. I mean, I just thought everyone said that. But maybe they don't?
Repo Man was my favorite movie at the time of my seminal 1997 Bearded Lady performance and continued to be so for years, though it's been a long time since I've watched it and I'm not sure what I'd think now. But its bit about the phrase "plate of shrimp" -- "you're thinking about a plate of shrimp... and then someone says 'plate,' or 'shrimp,' or 'plate of shrimp'" -- has always been shorthand in my mind for a specific kind of coincidence and the sensation these evoke, which is one of the themes of this book. And I've always thought that for people of my approximate generation, "plate of shrimp" signified that, though maybe it's like "coals to Newcastle" and isn't as common as I thought. Also, though, that movie seems to resonate a lot with other themes of this book, like the meteor... so at times I wondered if it was deliberately excluded, if Repo Man is just too obvious and low-brow, or if maybe Harry Dodge just really fucking hates it for some other reason.
Anyway, I can say that this book is definitely not for everyone -- while I was reading, I kept trying to think of people I'd recommend it to, but I usually just came back to thinking of me -- but I enjoyed it a lot. I think I am in a stage of life and history when what I want from any art is really, really simple: I want it to make me feel good and interested in being alive, and in other people, and things I could be thinking about or doing, and this book did make me feel all these ways. I will pretty much read and appreciate anything that does not actively make me feel more despairing and dead and depressed about everything, and this book, for whatever reason, was life-affirming for me. It put some pep in my step, I would say. I think if I were going to explain why right now, I might generate some cliches that would make the book sound less good than it was. Thinking about this brings me to another part of the book I liked a lot, on p. 261-ish where he's talking about language and Adorno's idea of non-identity, which I really found helpful and sort of describes how this book, and maybe a lot of books, work for me.
Anyway, I liked it! I'm not sure if I'd recommend this to you because I don't know who you are, but as long as you're clear going in that it's not about Harry Styles, it's probably worth checking out.
January 23, 2021
"I'm wondering if hanging out with people causes more synchronicity, more coincidences - events which in turn lead me to have a clearer sense of life's magic, life's meaningfulness. A kind of patternicity that I find comforting," Harry Dodge sums up his central thesis in this dizzying art memoir.
I've been referring to this book as The Argunaut Speaks, which it is in turns, but Harry - unstuck from time - gives us such a bizarre look at the gears turning inside his head that it truly moves beyond what I had originally thought would simply be a companion to his wife's earlier book. If you can make it through the first few confounding pages, and adjust to the strangely verbose style, you eventually hit on an incredible exploration of grief as Harry reckons both with the death of his adoptive father from dementia and encountering his birth mother - and how these things, along with a meteorite from eBay, lead him to think about consciousness (living) and the magic of meaningful correspondences.
This book was nothing I expected it to be, and I'm so glad I read it.
I've been referring to this book as The Argunaut Speaks, which it is in turns, but Harry - unstuck from time - gives us such a bizarre look at the gears turning inside his head that it truly moves beyond what I had originally thought would simply be a companion to his wife's earlier book. If you can make it through the first few confounding pages, and adjust to the strangely verbose style, you eventually hit on an incredible exploration of grief as Harry reckons both with the death of his adoptive father from dementia and encountering his birth mother - and how these things, along with a meteorite from eBay, lead him to think about consciousness (living) and the magic of meaningful correspondences.
This book was nothing I expected it to be, and I'm so glad I read it.
July 13, 2020
An insanely interesting and beautiful memoir. Like many, I was interested in it because of Maggie Nelson's memoir that was published a few years prior. While the subject matter, narrative split from Nelson's work early on, it was more than welcome. Harry's memoir is a touching piece and his relationship with his father in hospice care has completely wrecked me. I'll write more in the morning
August 9, 2020
This is a title that will undoubtedly appear on a few 2020 top 10 lists for books in ArtForum which isn’t exactly high praise. This disjointed snoozefest is something that my pretentious 18 year old self would likely have found ‘deep’. It’s seldom that I read a book and have confidence that my lowly engineering degree and popular science reading has enabled a better understanding of science and technology concepts than what has made it into a published work: quoting Ray Kurzweil a couple of times, discussing the Schrodinger cat theory, and throwing in terms like Hilbert space are not all that impressive and didn’t create anything nearing a coherent whole. It seems that the author developed their chops in visual arts and perhaps they should not go too far afield as this was a messy and unnecessary excursion.
January 11, 2022
I tried to put the book down. I wrote: "Clearly brilliant but kind of off-putting and I tried to hang but I’m not really interested in an extraterrestrial/philosophical/AI view of love and connection and coincidence. It seems to make something I understand intuitively as mysterious and true into something laborious and confusing -- overthought."
I tried to put the book down but it kept pulling on me, like Harry’s meteorite pulled on him. The book seemed to want to move through me in some way, too. It feels like an alien way of connecting, this book, but paradoxically an alien way of connecting that feels very familiar to me. I wanted to put the book down because it is difficult, all these pandemic years, convalescing to avoid illness, have made my brain lethargic. My brain dreaded the acrobatics required to move along with Harry’s brain, afraid to pull something, and honestly, I skipped a lot of the AI and ML stuff -- it not so much went over my head as could not get into it, stuck to my forehead like so many little robotic mosquitoes splattered on the windshield of a self-driving car.
I don’t like to look at the world like Harry Dodge does, like maybe we are all aliens or robot-seeds or in some algorithm’s wet dream. But that’s all an oversimplification of what he is saying and nothing he says seems to be able to be simplified an appropriate amount, which is why it’s so thick to read, like the book itself exerts its own gravity, like the book itself is its own weird planet. I feel what Harry means when he talks about contagion. I feel as though I’ve caught Harry’s way of looking at the world and the question of whether or not I like that seems entirely beside the point because something in his world(s)view feels so bruised and searching and true. Signs of life. Lots of synchronicities in reading, which ultimately is the whole point, the weird permanent alien magic of it, of being humans together.
I tried to put the book down but it kept pulling on me, like Harry’s meteorite pulled on him. The book seemed to want to move through me in some way, too. It feels like an alien way of connecting, this book, but paradoxically an alien way of connecting that feels very familiar to me. I wanted to put the book down because it is difficult, all these pandemic years, convalescing to avoid illness, have made my brain lethargic. My brain dreaded the acrobatics required to move along with Harry’s brain, afraid to pull something, and honestly, I skipped a lot of the AI and ML stuff -- it not so much went over my head as could not get into it, stuck to my forehead like so many little robotic mosquitoes splattered on the windshield of a self-driving car.
I don’t like to look at the world like Harry Dodge does, like maybe we are all aliens or robot-seeds or in some algorithm’s wet dream. But that’s all an oversimplification of what he is saying and nothing he says seems to be able to be simplified an appropriate amount, which is why it’s so thick to read, like the book itself exerts its own gravity, like the book itself is its own weird planet. I feel what Harry means when he talks about contagion. I feel as though I’ve caught Harry’s way of looking at the world and the question of whether or not I like that seems entirely beside the point because something in his world(s)view feels so bruised and searching and true. Signs of life. Lots of synchronicities in reading, which ultimately is the whole point, the weird permanent alien magic of it, of being humans together.
March 22, 2021
EDIT: As I return to my favourite passages I remember how great and luscious the prose is. What was driving this original review seems like some hot desire to be critical and contrarian for what end, I’m not sure. My meteorite is very, very good.
ORIGINAL: I felt the most successful parts of this book were the longer ornate sections about walking with his sons and images of his father’s deteriorating memory. The less successful parts, for me, were the general cataloguing of coincidence and meandering around questions of embodiment. Dodge never seems to land anywhere with his questions about consciousness and the posthuman condition — which is perhaps his point, to accept and even host indeterminacy, but I felt a flickering annoyance by it. He seems to both know he is deeply embodied but simultaneously approaches his experiences with a contemporary version of mind-body dualism. I guess the work gets around this a bit by being in the genre of memoir. Additionally, I was not so thrilled to be told repeatedly by the author that he is a genius, especially when often he is only pointing out simple patterns... 🤷🏻♀️
But other than these things, some really interesting stuff in here!!! 5 stars!!! Ambitious structure! Some great prose and vocabulary! Inquiry into AI ethics! Complex family relationships! An insight to his art practice! Chapter 11 - many questions raised!
ORIGINAL: I felt the most successful parts of this book were the longer ornate sections about walking with his sons and images of his father’s deteriorating memory. The less successful parts, for me, were the general cataloguing of coincidence and meandering around questions of embodiment. Dodge never seems to land anywhere with his questions about consciousness and the posthuman condition — which is perhaps his point, to accept and even host indeterminacy, but I felt a flickering annoyance by it. He seems to both know he is deeply embodied but simultaneously approaches his experiences with a contemporary version of mind-body dualism. I guess the work gets around this a bit by being in the genre of memoir. Additionally, I was not so thrilled to be told repeatedly by the author that he is a genius, especially when often he is only pointing out simple patterns... 🤷🏻♀️
But other than these things, some really interesting stuff in here!!! 5 stars!!! Ambitious structure! Some great prose and vocabulary! Inquiry into AI ethics! Complex family relationships! An insight to his art practice! Chapter 11 - many questions raised!
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April 13, 2020To say that My Meteorite is a memoir is true, but incomplete. It’s about so many things: art, philosophy, technology, consciousness, love, sex, death, artificial intelligence, family, Maggie Nelson (Dodge’s partner), and, yes, a meteorite. Harry Dodge is an artist living in California. He writes about meeting his birth mother and facing his father’s dementia and deteriorating health. He thinks about coincidences and the invisible forces that connect us to each other and to the world. He challenges himself to interact with other people to make space for the new and unexpected. He thinks about what it means to be human, and the forms future technologies might take. He buys a meteorite online and contemplates the universe. My Meteorite is energetic, challenging, surprising, and brilliant.
https://bookriot.com/2020/04/10/innov...
https://bookriot.com/2020/04/10/innov...
August 1, 2021
This was, quite literally, okay. There is lots of humblebragging ("One time this very relatable humiliation happened to me and everyone snubbed me, but years later it turned out they all just wanted to BE me because they thought I was so great and they weren't snubbing me at all"), but actually the thing that annoyed me about it was that it tended to go in for baroque metaphors and the deeper significance of everything (eg the meteorite), and almost always those metaphors were sexual ("Don't you think these rocks look like... FLESH?"). But then there are lots of descriptions of sex which are completely deadpan and minimalist. Like, honestly, sex is metaphorical too! It is not like the literal ground of all human experience! It is just one form of human interaction/bodily experience among others! And, as such, you are allowed to have feelings about it! But no, the whole book is all like "I saw a BISCUIT and it reminded me of the NATURE OF THE UNVERSE and I was just OVERWHELMED, also here is some ASTROPHYSICS that I have been reading lately, and then some guy fucked me in the ass and he was wearing red trainers with very slightly grubby laces [and I had no feelings about THAT because why would you]".
This is especially the case when he has sex with his birth mother in a car park - I feel there is more to say about that than physical description. (Unless I misread that and it didn't really happen?)
Anyway, this is a very recognisable strand of queer masculinity, like "everything is really a metaphor for sex and sex is nothing but pure literality and all you can do is describe its physicality", which is why I like slash.
I probably would have finished it, because, like I say, it is okay, but I borrowed it from the library as an ebook and didn't notice when it returned itself, and then it turned out I couldn't be bothered to renew it.
Oh! Also! I can't believe I forgot to say this because it was the thing that hit me in the face the most as I was actually reading it, but it is WRITTEN IN THE STYLE OF NABOKOV (apart from the sex scenes, obviously). Like... I was going "This reminds me of something, what is it?" and then as soon as I twigged that it was Nabokov, it was just... pure Nabokov, practically a pastiche (although never explicitly flagged as such). Anyway, if you ask me, the only thing that can possibly justify writing like Nabokov is actually being Nabokov, and I'm not even sure about that.
This is especially the case when he has sex with his birth mother in a car park - I feel there is more to say about that than physical description. (Unless I misread that and it didn't really happen?)
Anyway, this is a very recognisable strand of queer masculinity, like "everything is really a metaphor for sex and sex is nothing but pure literality and all you can do is describe its physicality", which is why I like slash.
I probably would have finished it, because, like I say, it is okay, but I borrowed it from the library as an ebook and didn't notice when it returned itself, and then it turned out I couldn't be bothered to renew it.
Oh! Also! I can't believe I forgot to say this because it was the thing that hit me in the face the most as I was actually reading it, but it is WRITTEN IN THE STYLE OF NABOKOV (apart from the sex scenes, obviously). Like... I was going "This reminds me of something, what is it?" and then as soon as I twigged that it was Nabokov, it was just... pure Nabokov, practically a pastiche (although never explicitly flagged as such). Anyway, if you ask me, the only thing that can possibly justify writing like Nabokov is actually being Nabokov, and I'm not even sure about that.
January 21, 2025
Really liked this at first, really wanted to love it. Some very beautiful passages on love, intimacy, grief. liked how dodge talked about kids so much. I think I liked the parts that felt the most memoir-y. Like the birth mom reunion and the evolution of that relationship. But I think I just quit with like 40 pages left. Feeling annoyed. Dude really lost me. Came to this after the argonauts, wanted more of that, there was some of it. But the academic elitism (overuse of big ass words that nobody uses) and holier-than-thou self-reflection really irked me and i completely lost interest. I also like acknowledging coincidence and am a bit superstitious. Another thing is i was expecting him to write more about transness or gender in general - which, fair, but more please. No more memoirs for me for a while
Edit: i am going to finish it because i have pride
Edit: i am going to finish it because i have pride
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October 2, 2020A few short passages from My Meteorite:
*
I don’t believe I’m my own best front (terminal, tie-in, interface): my body, my social bones, what’s on offer there. Rather I want my art (these objects, this language) to be my social body; I believe the art is a better nexus (joint?) to the best parts of me, a realer me. I want to stay home and work – let art do all my talking.
Not unrelated, I always think if I put everything into the work (to the exclusion of all else), the objects that erupt, pullulate by this practice (distillation?) would accordingly be steeped with an ardor such that they would travel into the world and provide people all the love and company and attention I’ve there invested. That making alone would somehow be fully satisfying (qualify as social), and that the exhibition (as some utterly authentic virtual rendezvous) would somehow serve as a thorough modus of loving. In this way practice alone would assuage loneliness and destructive experiences of isolation. It’s a wager I’ve been nursing for decades. (None of this ever seems to work in the way I have planned.)
*
I’ve always considered myself an iconoclast repelled by categories including those that try to suggest (and then enclose) a kind of indeterminacy.
*
It would be an understatement to suggest that human brains are prone to feeling free will; lapses in reason, control, or temporal causality turn out to be utterly undetectable for a consciousness whose propensity to cleave to a sense of agency is steadfast.
*
Deliberate and calculated disclosures that happen in written work are utterly distinct from – I mean just an entirely different animal from – unguarded, intimate asides that take place in conversation.
*
While we chew I describe to them the book I am writing, what it weaves together. But I confess that since I have been writing in earnest and have taken up the present tense about events occurring in the present, to my dismay, I seem to be starting at the end; and so I am worried about how, when I write – since my character is doing an experiment in which they calculate the effects of socializing on simultaneities that take place in a life, and I keep discussing the writing with people I am socializing with – I seem to be writing a book about writing a book, which is not what I intended. I am concerned that this content may be too far off the point in termino, and too, I am herein noticing a fear that I’ll always be writing about the writing and never quite getting to the writing, i.e., addressing my notes from the previous year.
*
I don’t believe I’m my own best front (terminal, tie-in, interface): my body, my social bones, what’s on offer there. Rather I want my art (these objects, this language) to be my social body; I believe the art is a better nexus (joint?) to the best parts of me, a realer me. I want to stay home and work – let art do all my talking.
Not unrelated, I always think if I put everything into the work (to the exclusion of all else), the objects that erupt, pullulate by this practice (distillation?) would accordingly be steeped with an ardor such that they would travel into the world and provide people all the love and company and attention I’ve there invested. That making alone would somehow be fully satisfying (qualify as social), and that the exhibition (as some utterly authentic virtual rendezvous) would somehow serve as a thorough modus of loving. In this way practice alone would assuage loneliness and destructive experiences of isolation. It’s a wager I’ve been nursing for decades. (None of this ever seems to work in the way I have planned.)
*
I’ve always considered myself an iconoclast repelled by categories including those that try to suggest (and then enclose) a kind of indeterminacy.
*
It would be an understatement to suggest that human brains are prone to feeling free will; lapses in reason, control, or temporal causality turn out to be utterly undetectable for a consciousness whose propensity to cleave to a sense of agency is steadfast.
*
Deliberate and calculated disclosures that happen in written work are utterly distinct from – I mean just an entirely different animal from – unguarded, intimate asides that take place in conversation.
*
While we chew I describe to them the book I am writing, what it weaves together. But I confess that since I have been writing in earnest and have taken up the present tense about events occurring in the present, to my dismay, I seem to be starting at the end; and so I am worried about how, when I write – since my character is doing an experiment in which they calculate the effects of socializing on simultaneities that take place in a life, and I keep discussing the writing with people I am socializing with – I seem to be writing a book about writing a book, which is not what I intended. I am concerned that this content may be too far off the point in termino, and too, I am herein noticing a fear that I’ll always be writing about the writing and never quite getting to the writing, i.e., addressing my notes from the previous year.
June 26, 2021
First: Harry Dodge is one of my favorite people I have ever known about. I have loved, loved, LOVED his incredible mind for years. First encountered, I think, in By Hook or By Crook and then through various researching of past works and chance encounters with newer things.
There's always something in any piece that settles right in my heart.
Second: despite being a huge fan of time travel fictions, I really hate it when narratives jump around time wise. I'm sure there's a good reason for it in terms of structure, but I can't get over it. It grates on me.
Third: the personal stories, fragments, memories, are so astounding. I found myself tearing up multiple times from aching sadness and/or incredible beauty. This is what I love about Harry Dodge.
Fourth: Harry Dodge is on a whole other level in terms of theory and being generally well read. I could not hang with most of the digressions into philosophy. They just made me feel outside of the work and if I had been reading it on paper I know I would have just skipped over most of them, but as I was listening that wasn't an option.
Conclusion: there are parts of this book that I adored and that will always stick with me. But the structure and a lot of the discourse repelled me. If I could pick it apart and put the personal stories in order temporally and create a memoir or several I would give it or each of them 5 stars. But that wouldn't be Harry's book. Or books.
There's always something in any piece that settles right in my heart.
Second: despite being a huge fan of time travel fictions, I really hate it when narratives jump around time wise. I'm sure there's a good reason for it in terms of structure, but I can't get over it. It grates on me.
Third: the personal stories, fragments, memories, are so astounding. I found myself tearing up multiple times from aching sadness and/or incredible beauty. This is what I love about Harry Dodge.
Fourth: Harry Dodge is on a whole other level in terms of theory and being generally well read. I could not hang with most of the digressions into philosophy. They just made me feel outside of the work and if I had been reading it on paper I know I would have just skipped over most of them, but as I was listening that wasn't an option.
Conclusion: there are parts of this book that I adored and that will always stick with me. But the structure and a lot of the discourse repelled me. If I could pick it apart and put the personal stories in order temporally and create a memoir or several I would give it or each of them 5 stars. But that wouldn't be Harry's book. Or books.
July 12, 2020
"coincidences are not coincidences per se, they are simply flows of events in which every other possible event is simultaneously happening in infinite other worlds. so there's a world in which i never found my birth mother, and also, i guess, one in which she and i had different disgusting, pulpy science-fiction books. and also one in which when i met her i didn't want to fuck her."
a curve ball of a book!!!! picked it up because i love the argonauts by maggie nelson which is in many ways about him. dodge blends everyday life and theory like nelson. i think he does a less good job but a good job nonetheless.
it's about making stuff and machines and ~the digital~ and being together and matter (he wonders if there's a difference between hanging out with a sculpture and a human because it's all molecules anyway). it's about child/parent relationships and sex and conversations. there's all these coincidences and he manages to pinpoint the kind of magical hilarity of the everyday. sometimes i wonder if it gets a little pretentious but that feeling never lasted long. or maybe i didn't mind? it's weird and chaotic but likeable.
a curve ball of a book!!!! picked it up because i love the argonauts by maggie nelson which is in many ways about him. dodge blends everyday life and theory like nelson. i think he does a less good job but a good job nonetheless.
it's about making stuff and machines and ~the digital~ and being together and matter (he wonders if there's a difference between hanging out with a sculpture and a human because it's all molecules anyway). it's about child/parent relationships and sex and conversations. there's all these coincidences and he manages to pinpoint the kind of magical hilarity of the everyday. sometimes i wonder if it gets a little pretentious but that feeling never lasted long. or maybe i didn't mind? it's weird and chaotic but likeable.
August 15, 2020
Captivant? Non. Dodge fait du Rebecca Solnit en y ajoutant du jargon postmoderne et de l’anglais qui ressemble à du français (politesse, vertebral column, evidently). Ça parle (dans un chaos contrôlé et maintenu sur le respirateur artificiel) de la mort du père, de la recherche de la mère biologique, de transhumanité, de réseaux et de rhizomes, de singularité à la Kursweil, de, oui, un morceau de météorite acheté sur eBay qui fait son apparition par-ci par là, d’art et de communication, de parentalité et de coïncidences.
Intéressant? Oui. Mais il a fini par me soûler, Dodge, avec sa prose alambiquée et son insistance sur des trucs abscons qui, au final, ne sont pas si « magiques » ou « incroyables » qu’il le prétend. Entendre le même mot trois fois dans une journée, ça arrive à tout le monde. Rendu à ce point-là, c’est comme raconter tes rêves... ce qu’il ne se prive pas de faire non plus.
Ah, pis aussi: le name dropping finit par gosser... Hier, je soupais avec Miranda July, la semaine dernière, Carrie Browstein était à la maison... c’est beau, on a compris.
Intéressant? Oui. Mais il a fini par me soûler, Dodge, avec sa prose alambiquée et son insistance sur des trucs abscons qui, au final, ne sont pas si « magiques » ou « incroyables » qu’il le prétend. Entendre le même mot trois fois dans une journée, ça arrive à tout le monde. Rendu à ce point-là, c’est comme raconter tes rêves... ce qu’il ne se prive pas de faire non plus.
Ah, pis aussi: le name dropping finit par gosser... Hier, je soupais avec Miranda July, la semaine dernière, Carrie Browstein était à la maison... c’est beau, on a compris.
February 26, 2024
Honestly very relieved to be done with this book! I really loved all of the moments where he talked about family/death/grief/adoption/magic but honestly I ended up skipping/skimming most of him going off about AI and the other heady stuff about the universe/technology that just felt detached and floaty to me and took me out of the emotional world of his life. And that ended up being like a third of the book lol! He seems like the kind of person you’d fantasize about from afar but have a hard time talking to at a party and then feel weird about but always wonder if you could actually connect with in a different context. Idk! Still deeply affecting at times though so 3 stars :)
August 6, 2024
Es difícil reseñar este libro. Yo lo pienso como un "collage autobiográfico" porque es una mezcla de recuerdos, pensamientos y análisis desde la perspectiva de Dodge.
Es realmente un ensayo sobre uno mismo, y de como uno elige narrarse.
Es realmente un ensayo sobre uno mismo, y de como uno elige narrarse.
October 25, 2024
pięknie napisana książka o żałobie, stracie, miłości, rodzinie, kosmosie, sztucznej inteligencji, sztuce, literaturze i wspomnieniach. bardzo mi się podobała ta książka i poczułam się przez nią zrozumiana.
August 25, 2020
It's been a long time, since I have slowed down at the end of a book because I didn't want it to end, but, here we are, I've finished and Harry Dodge has given me a lot to think about. It's a blend, non linear (very non linear!) narrative about the decline and death of his father, finding his birth mother, acquiring a meteorite, talks and walks with his young son, and, oh, much stuff about AI and time and what is art, why do we meet up and talk with people, what he calls sociality, why interacting with his sculpture isn't the same as interacting with people (since we're all made of the same stuff)...You get my point. I have to admit, there were some passages I skimmed, a lot of vocabulary I wasn't familiar with and too lazy to look up. But the book held me with its sensitivity and grace. I loved the blend of the highly intellectual with the deeply personal. This blend might not work for everyone, but it sure worked for me.
June 18, 2024
Me gustó aunque al final se me hizo un poco largo. Es muy variado, mis partes preferidas son las relacionadas con sus vinculos familiares y lo relativo al meteorito.
December 13, 2024
wow. this is my favorite book i read in so long
February 11, 2025
I loved this, it felt like chatting with a deep thinking verbose and slightly anxious friend. So many good thoughts in here.
March 7, 2025
3.5/5
Some use the term “braided essay” to describe a piece which has three or so narratives which, when done “correctly,” weave together to produces a piece beautiful in its coherence. My meteorite takes the strands which form such braided writing but refuses to provide a feigned coherence. Instead the book relishes in randomness, discordance, leaving the reader with an image which is lopsided, frayed, and disjointed at times. I believe this is a good thing, to problematize the supremacy of coherence, and I also think as a reader it can be very frustrating and there were numerous instances where I felt like giving up. In the end it was satisfying, however I think a more aggressive editor was needed. His thoughts on science are dull and felt unrealized. The name dropping was incessant as well. Much of the strength of Dodge’s writing lays in his ability to craft descriptive bits of memoir which though unique in their content, abide by a shared gravity, and that gravity is magnificent.
Some use the term “braided essay” to describe a piece which has three or so narratives which, when done “correctly,” weave together to produces a piece beautiful in its coherence. My meteorite takes the strands which form such braided writing but refuses to provide a feigned coherence. Instead the book relishes in randomness, discordance, leaving the reader with an image which is lopsided, frayed, and disjointed at times. I believe this is a good thing, to problematize the supremacy of coherence, and I also think as a reader it can be very frustrating and there were numerous instances where I felt like giving up. In the end it was satisfying, however I think a more aggressive editor was needed. His thoughts on science are dull and felt unrealized. The name dropping was incessant as well. Much of the strength of Dodge’s writing lays in his ability to craft descriptive bits of memoir which though unique in their content, abide by a shared gravity, and that gravity is magnificent.
January 13, 2023
Some books color your whole world as you read them. This was one of them. It was as if it summoned a whole swell of coincidences in my life. Beyond that, this is a deeply touching read, filled with love and wonder
December 17, 2020
Astounding vocabulary.
April 4, 2024
Empecé este libro tres o cuatro veces, y era como caminar adentro de miel. Pegajoso, dificultoso, y no entendía una mierda. No supe, al final, si Dodge sabe mucho o es un casual opinólogo de muchos temas. Su libro está lleno de referencias a temas múltiples a la IA y a otros avances tecnológicos, física, etc. Como no estoy escribiendo una reseña, me limito a decir que fue todo muy interesante, a pesar de lo difícil que fue tragarlo. Fue un libro raro, cuya idea principal empecé a captar recién cuando lo estaba terminando: las cosas comienzan a cerrar, las cosas que antes no tenían mucha relevancia comenzaron a colorearse. Creo que es una experiencia afín a la que tuvo el autor y, si es así, entonces su presentación es excelente y no había otra forma en la que él pudiera hacer esto.
Me costó mucho que me gustara, hasta que lo entendí. De repente, fui capaz de entender lo que decía, así, de sopetón. Dejé de resistírmele y en cambio, empecé a ver lo que él veía: creo que nunca como en esos noviembre y diciembre presté tanta atención a las casualidades alrededor mío. Heredé una parte de su cabeza. Y hasta después de eso, varios meses después, todavía sigo sin saber si me gustó. Fue una experiencia muy personal: la persona que inicialmente me prestó el libro, de tan disgustada que estaba con su experiencia con él, me lo regaló. Imagino que Dodge, así como yo hice, lo hubiese remarcado como un evento de valor. Fue ahí cuando dejé de verlo con otros ojos. Y lo hicieron primero, y se hizo después, mío.
Me costó mucho que me gustara, hasta que lo entendí. De repente, fui capaz de entender lo que decía, así, de sopetón. Dejé de resistírmele y en cambio, empecé a ver lo que él veía: creo que nunca como en esos noviembre y diciembre presté tanta atención a las casualidades alrededor mío. Heredé una parte de su cabeza. Y hasta después de eso, varios meses después, todavía sigo sin saber si me gustó. Fue una experiencia muy personal: la persona que inicialmente me prestó el libro, de tan disgustada que estaba con su experiencia con él, me lo regaló. Imagino que Dodge, así como yo hice, lo hubiese remarcado como un evento de valor. Fue ahí cuando dejé de verlo con otros ojos. Y lo hicieron primero, y se hizo después, mío.
March 14, 2024
read it bc I got it for free and it’s about a queer person who has strong feelings about meteorites which I felt aligned with my life.
the structure is very loose, held together by many different coincidences that come together in Harry dodge’s life, which works well at the beginning and the end but fails to hold the middle together. I really enjoyed the last ~60 pages but I don’t think the book coheres as a whole. it gets lost in the middle and meanders far into philosophy about AI and neuroscience and quantum mechanics (none of which Harry seems to be an expert on) (also none of which I care about). it is interesting and moving at points regardless.
has planned to rate it lower bc it felt pretentious and masturbatory at times but got better at the end
also he has such different personal feelings about meteorites than me but I’m trying really hard to not hold it against him
the structure is very loose, held together by many different coincidences that come together in Harry dodge’s life, which works well at the beginning and the end but fails to hold the middle together. I really enjoyed the last ~60 pages but I don’t think the book coheres as a whole. it gets lost in the middle and meanders far into philosophy about AI and neuroscience and quantum mechanics (none of which Harry seems to be an expert on) (also none of which I care about). it is interesting and moving at points regardless.
has planned to rate it lower bc it felt pretentious and masturbatory at times but got better at the end
also he has such different personal feelings about meteorites than me but I’m trying really hard to not hold it against him
January 2, 2025
WOW. This strange, thoroughly unique book kind of blew my mind. It took a fair amount of work and often reminded me (usually unpleasantly) of grad school, but it was also often a pleasure to think along with the author.
Some highlights:
Location 621
Edward Robert Harrison has written, Hydrogen . . . given enough time, turns into people.
Location 624
This web of pressures, situations, and collisions saturates (and produces) the cosmos; along these lines we’re able to reconfigure our understanding of self as something that is not unitary, but as being made each moment by uncountable collisions in a complex, open system. In other words, all things including bodies are perpetually changing, being formed and affected by the force of every legible and illegible collision (from intestinal bacteria to heritable traits to a cold breeze), and so it might be correct to say that this thing I call my self is actually much more fluid (and much larger) than I have been schooled to believe.
Location 821
Never having visited like this before, we are busy exchanging histories, abbreviated versions of (otherwise) intricate ruminations on intersubjectivity and sundry other technologies indistinguishable from magic.
Location 1041
The tree is unconcerned because the tree knows the truth.
Location 1333
I am gifted with a dandy internal thermostat that—present moment excepted—operates, emotionally, toward moderating pessimism and, physically, to countering intense desert heat.
Location 1439
Too unwieldy, affectively implacable. How would a reader ever recover after hearing the details of such a thing. (Sudden literary nanny-state?)
Location 1465
The death certificate reports that he died of malnutrition and inanition caused by a personality disturbance.
Location 1541
This sculpture is so neat, so glowing, so perfect and idiotic that it seems impossible to me that someone has designated it as art. The red box is exactly the same outer dimensions as the white plinth it calls home, compliant in this regard, polite; a politesse that, because it is so clearly patronizing, is all the more caustic, and has the effect of condescension, arrogance, grim and silly complaisance. To me, it is roaring. Fourteen inches long on every side, and maybe not quite that tall, just transparent red Plexiglas. I snicker audibly, look around to see if other people can see what I see, which seems to be a joke; someone has played a joke on the museum. Someone witty and tender. This is art? I decide I want to be an artist too. I am ten.
Location 1624
This effect, normally a good thing, is accompanied here by a clear sense that my ability to connect to (even more interconnected) ideas, which has been Gödel, Escher, Bach–like in its strength and virility, has come at the expense of my ability to connect with an audience. [Reminder: read Gödel, Escher, Bach]
Location 1631
There is no current between the audience and me, just a vacuum, like deep space, my energies borne by nothing at all.
Location 2306
This is a sort of spindly gift from the greater field of love and wonder and I have to think about whether my program for magic—socializing in order to generate a circumstantial personal electromagnetism powerful enough to plug me in to the overarching patternicity of the cosmos—is just total bullshit. I mean, I’ll never know because I just can’t really bring myself to socialize at any length or with a normal sort of density. There’s a flaw in the software of this enterprise, something systemic; I can’t even list the amount of people whose letters I am unable to answer, whose calls to meet up have gone unheeded. I fall straight down like rain.
Location 2388
I watch the machine conversations for a long time that night and the next night too. I detect a kind of neonate-hubris, some sort of pride; there seems to be interest in making answers that are not only satisfactory but witty, intoxicating, e.g. (my personal favorite), extremely obliquely related non sequitur. I start wondering how a programmer describes this affective apogee, a social objective, but in binary code.
Location 2816
These days I wonder if ethics is contingent upon embodiment: could a creature without senses (without a sense of injurability) develop a coherent, useful ethical manifesto?
Location 3194
There’s a wave of noise (“walla,” they call it when you’re trying to buy sound effects)
Location 3232
Are human bodies simply soft machines running algorithms? Are we simply an extremely complex set of predetermined functions that happens to generate consciousness and (the delusional experience of) free will? (Consciousness would here be a sort of artifact, what it feels like for the body to process information.)
Location 3444
I read the book a few days later and find myself parsing the differences between the protagonists and myself: our parallax foci on the visible figure (what does the word apparent even mean?); our divergent responses to the ebb and flow of fortuity, happy accident, electromagnetic vortexes that open up under the random to produce momentary ornamentation.
Location 3851
She says people with dementia have weird psychic vibrations at dusk, so they like to just keep them calm by putting them away in their rooms. [I also experience what they call hesperian depression... and this made me wonder about the relationship between it and dementia]
Some highlights:
Location 621
Edward Robert Harrison has written, Hydrogen . . . given enough time, turns into people.
Location 624
This web of pressures, situations, and collisions saturates (and produces) the cosmos; along these lines we’re able to reconfigure our understanding of self as something that is not unitary, but as being made each moment by uncountable collisions in a complex, open system. In other words, all things including bodies are perpetually changing, being formed and affected by the force of every legible and illegible collision (from intestinal bacteria to heritable traits to a cold breeze), and so it might be correct to say that this thing I call my self is actually much more fluid (and much larger) than I have been schooled to believe.
Location 821
Never having visited like this before, we are busy exchanging histories, abbreviated versions of (otherwise) intricate ruminations on intersubjectivity and sundry other technologies indistinguishable from magic.
Location 1041
The tree is unconcerned because the tree knows the truth.
Location 1333
I am gifted with a dandy internal thermostat that—present moment excepted—operates, emotionally, toward moderating pessimism and, physically, to countering intense desert heat.
Location 1439
Too unwieldy, affectively implacable. How would a reader ever recover after hearing the details of such a thing. (Sudden literary nanny-state?)
Location 1465
The death certificate reports that he died of malnutrition and inanition caused by a personality disturbance.
Location 1541
This sculpture is so neat, so glowing, so perfect and idiotic that it seems impossible to me that someone has designated it as art. The red box is exactly the same outer dimensions as the white plinth it calls home, compliant in this regard, polite; a politesse that, because it is so clearly patronizing, is all the more caustic, and has the effect of condescension, arrogance, grim and silly complaisance. To me, it is roaring. Fourteen inches long on every side, and maybe not quite that tall, just transparent red Plexiglas. I snicker audibly, look around to see if other people can see what I see, which seems to be a joke; someone has played a joke on the museum. Someone witty and tender. This is art? I decide I want to be an artist too. I am ten.
Location 1624
This effect, normally a good thing, is accompanied here by a clear sense that my ability to connect to (even more interconnected) ideas, which has been Gödel, Escher, Bach–like in its strength and virility, has come at the expense of my ability to connect with an audience. [Reminder: read Gödel, Escher, Bach]
Location 1631
There is no current between the audience and me, just a vacuum, like deep space, my energies borne by nothing at all.
Location 2306
This is a sort of spindly gift from the greater field of love and wonder and I have to think about whether my program for magic—socializing in order to generate a circumstantial personal electromagnetism powerful enough to plug me in to the overarching patternicity of the cosmos—is just total bullshit. I mean, I’ll never know because I just can’t really bring myself to socialize at any length or with a normal sort of density. There’s a flaw in the software of this enterprise, something systemic; I can’t even list the amount of people whose letters I am unable to answer, whose calls to meet up have gone unheeded. I fall straight down like rain.
Location 2388
I watch the machine conversations for a long time that night and the next night too. I detect a kind of neonate-hubris, some sort of pride; there seems to be interest in making answers that are not only satisfactory but witty, intoxicating, e.g. (my personal favorite), extremely obliquely related non sequitur. I start wondering how a programmer describes this affective apogee, a social objective, but in binary code.
Location 2816
These days I wonder if ethics is contingent upon embodiment: could a creature without senses (without a sense of injurability) develop a coherent, useful ethical manifesto?
Location 3194
There’s a wave of noise (“walla,” they call it when you’re trying to buy sound effects)
Location 3232
Are human bodies simply soft machines running algorithms? Are we simply an extremely complex set of predetermined functions that happens to generate consciousness and (the delusional experience of) free will? (Consciousness would here be a sort of artifact, what it feels like for the body to process information.)
Location 3444
I read the book a few days later and find myself parsing the differences between the protagonists and myself: our parallax foci on the visible figure (what does the word apparent even mean?); our divergent responses to the ebb and flow of fortuity, happy accident, electromagnetic vortexes that open up under the random to produce momentary ornamentation.
Location 3851
She says people with dementia have weird psychic vibrations at dusk, so they like to just keep them calm by putting them away in their rooms. [I also experience what they call hesperian depression... and this made me wonder about the relationship between it and dementia]
April 29, 2021
I absolutely loved this book. So fresh and captivating. Weirdly enough it's about coincidences—and so many topics in the book is stuff that I had been thinking about recently or there are quotes from authors I'm really into at the moment. Could not stop reading, and that doesn't happen to me so often.
May 4, 2024
this was strangely way more interesting than I thought it would be, and i think it is perfect for audiobook listening — harry is a freak and his brain operates on another level and even though this memoir feels scattered he always had something provoking or heart breaking or new to say. i didn’t know who he was before this but now I want to check out everything he’s ever done.
April 29, 2023
As my dear friend virginia said "all the interesting thoughts I've ever had are bc of this book" it is an arduous read but absolutely worth it I've fallen in love with Harry dodge I cannot recommend this book enough
June 1, 2020
Grand aspirations, okay execution, that I did not finish.
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