What Are You

by Lindsay Lerman

Radically imaginative and intense, challenging language to be slow and fast, soft and hard, drunk and sober, What Are You performs its own destruction and recreation. Hypnotic, dreamlike, lyrical essays tell the story of a woman trapped in a destructive love affair with the universe. Her understanding of power, desire, and complicity must be transformed again and again. Addressed to an amorphous you, Lerman wrestles with the forces of birth and death, creation and destruction―going deep into the subterranean strata of consciousness and back.
“You exist in an endless series of iterations. You keep spinning out and out and out. Sometimes you take the form of a person and people, but you don’t stop there. You are the places where people go to enact every hidden, silent fantasy―the cruelty and the beauty too―and you are the fantasies themselves, and the economies that shape and regulate them. In my dreams I never fly, but I do breathe underwater.”

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Essays

188 pages, Paperback

Published June 14, 2022

About the author

Writer, Translator, Editor

Reviews

[Thomas Kendall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that is emotionally and intellectually sincere necessarily dissolves the artificiality of any such easy distinction between the two categories and points to a totality we can never inhabit as ourselves. 'What Are You' is just such a work. Life and Death are not oppositions in Lerman’s novel but are instead flows and rip tides operating within one another. They are in turn ruled with merciless honesty by desire, the gravitational pull of which wells itself into the identity of both the narrator and the various incarnations of You that are addressed throughout the novel. That desire drives both life and death is the ultimate triumph of life, i think, and what I imagine keeps the narrator of the work able to return to themselves. An eternal return is an eternal going and this is a book with a rare commitment to totality. And totality is excessive. Excessive, not gratuitous. Life will destroy You. This ought to be welcomed as long you know how to return.

I’ve always found the word soul almost icky..though it helps to remember that Foucault wrote that the soul was formed by the practices imposed upon the body. The strange soulful shapes of tortured things. Tortured into existence. This is a book with undeniable soul, that charges you with a reckoning of the raw material of your own life. 'What Are You' shamelessly dares the reader to live.

[Charlene Elsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lerman’s prose evades categorical thinking and forces you to reconcile yourself to the fact that individuals and their worlds are dynamic, reflexive, and reciprocally determined. It’s a slippery book that demands we deal with it in its full complexity, without recourse to the simplifying unities we would normally use to reduce people to what they aren’t. Lindsay Lerman is insidiously powerful, and this book makes you feel it. Purgatory in the sense of catharsis, a text for devouring and devotion.

[Mike Thorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Check out the Craftwork interview with Lindsay.

"It suffices for a short time to follow the trace, the repeated course of words, in order to perceive, in a sort of vision, the labyrinthine constitution of being."
— Georges Bataille, Inner Experience

"Shaking inside, tremor like the shimmer of light over water, no plain point of emanation but from everywhere, marrow and substance; blood and guts."
— Kathe Koja, Skin

" ... and yes I said yes I will Yes."
— James Joyce, Ulysses

What is fiction? What is theory? Why do we write? What are you?

Lindsay Lerman's What Are You is a process of thought. As signaled by the title, it's a question that becomes a declaration (a syntactical gesture that Lerman deliberately returns to throughout the text). Theory punctuates deliberately fragmented evocations of subjectivity, and the result is a sort of quasi-self-portrait that does away with the mirror to perceive the "self" as it relates to the world. Bold, ambitious, unblinking.

[Ben Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

You.
You know what you are.

A cathartic collection of “hypnotic, lyrical essays” examining the nature of creation and destruction. A brutal reckoning of the abusive and predatory forces in the world. I felt like I was miles deep in the ocean, caught in a slipstream of life and death while reading this. Powerful words Lindsey.

[Autumn Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dark and claustrophobic, hateful romance with a ubiquitous presence that can't be escaped. It often reads more like a prayer or a psalm than a piece of fiction. It draws you in with a hypnotic lull.

[C]

It was refreshing to read something this openly earnest.

[Dave Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

In some ways, this feels like the book I’ve been waiting for my whole life.

I have been calling myself a feminist since I was a but a shy, sheltered 16-year-old, diving headlong into Alice Walker, Gloria Steinem, Erica Jong, and Inga Muscio to impress my first girlfriend while my friends were mostly still reading Michael Crichton and Star Wars novels. It’s a designation I still proudly claim. And yet, while those vital writers remain some of the most formative of my literary life, in the many years since my first, earnest baby steps, the concept of feminism has evolved into something more nuanced and … let’s say customizable, both in its meaning to me personally, and its place in modern society. Not all women are feminists (even if, in theory, they should be). Many men still won’t claim to be feminists (even if, in practice, they are). I think it’s fair to say that just calling yourself a feminist isn’t even a particularly radical act anymore (even for a man), so much as it’s just another feed, or filter, or bubble—a signifier—a lens through which we do or don’t view the world. Something else it is likely not, is an ethos that will ever be adopted wholesale (even if it’s someday legally and/or numerically achieved), and understanding why that is is maybe more important, and more useful, than endlessly trying to will it into existence. Thanks to the political weaponization of basically all media, the age of choir-preaching social movements is enjoying its imperial apex with no end in sight even as I type this sentence, but the harder, more emotionally draining work that will (hopefully) bring us out of the echo chambers and into a brighter, more thoughtful, and more open-minded future is that which finds ways to push beyond all those bubbles, and filters, and feeds, and gets us to actually listen to each other again; gets at the core substance of what makes us human.

And so, Lindsay Lerman’s What Are You feels like the book I’ve been waiting for, because it is undoubtedly a feminist text, but it is one written for—and arguably even to—everyone. Men and women. Boys and girls. It takes that time-honored 2nd wave mantra—“the personal is political”—and selfie-mode flips it for the age of #MeToo and millions-strong Women’s Marches, but also goop-style self-care and Spotify branded Feminist Friday playlists. Feminism may not be radical anymore—but because of that seismic shift, we’re now seeing whole new generations of women writers speak to their own experience of womanhood in broader, messier, and more revealingly honest terms than ever before. To put it more bluntly, it’s a lot easier to write about your actual feelings when you don’t have to spend the first 100 pages convincing people you’re allowed to have them. The personal will always be political, but with so much of the heavy lifting done, the political has never before felt so personal.

Addressed to a multivalent, catchall “You,” What Are You feels instantly unique in its confrontationality as Lerman seems to be, at first anyway, working through a cumbrous back catalogue of erstwhile lovers—some requited, others not—some cherished over time, others rotted black with age—some good, some bad, most decidedly in-between, but all meaningful—all tributaries to the “river” she now “holds in [her] hands”; all pieces of what she understands as her present-day “self” (a slippery bugger of a thing which she doggedly seeks to isolate and define throughout). Early on, she refers to the book as an exorcism, and it quickly becomes clear what she means: What Are You is a disentanglement from ghosts; a reckoning with the past. As she glides fearlessly from one self-immolating Dear John letter to the next, splitting her heart wide again and again, she draws for us a circulatory map, from the earliest, most painful lessons of girlhood, through the breathtaking dangers of headstrong adolescence, to the endless cycles of growth, decimation, and rebirth that we eventually come to think of as stable adulthood. The further along you go, the bigger the map unfolds—upward and down, out and around, and eventually back in upon itself—until it becomes something closer to a globe; an entire world of doubts and desires; of hard-won truths and profound uncertainties.

Most of the “Yous” in question feel distinct, and all are intensely personal, but it’s not always easy to tell which, if any, are the same You revisited (though I’d be willing to bet that the recipients will know exactly when they’re being spoken to). By writing ostensibly in the second person, but maintaining authorial command via the first, Lerman spares no one—least of all herself—in autopsying these romantic dead. Each one took something from her, but each one gave her something as well, even if that something was (perhaps, more often than not) a better understanding of the countless ways in which men can (and do) hurt the women they claim to love. Her incisive interpersonal snapshots are somehow both as intimate as diary entries, and as universal as our greatest songs of love and heartbreak, and through them a kind of photomosaic effect begins to take hold. This one was cruel in the right way. That one was kind in the wrong one. This one was beautiful, but selfish. That one was brilliant, but lost. One in particular—perhaps the worst of the lot—posed a key question somewhere along the way, which she claims as her own and revisits time and again: “Are you ready to suffer?” Whether this is with regards to his love, her work, or the nature of life in general, the answer is, and for Lerman seemingly must be, a definitive yes. But when you step back from all these heartrending portraits in miniature, the larger picture revealed is that of a woman who survived; who conquered them all (save the best, the only one worthy, who died too soon and caused a suffering all his own); who breached every barrier they threw up, swam hard against their sea of pressing shadows and grasping limbs, and surfaced to pen the last word on every single one of them. Lerman isn’t content to just return the male gaze here. She dazzles it blind.

Indeed, for all my years of sensitive lad posturing and rooftop-proclaimed feminism, I felt shame at how casually and repeatedly What Are You cut me to the quick, outlining my own past failings with the opposite sex in exacto-knife prose. All the times I was too distant or callous; too possessive or paternalistic; too pushy or manipulative; too drunk or high; the times I broke trust; the times I remained silent in the face of wrongdoing; the times I came off like an asshole, or a psycho, or a self-pitying, narcissistic fool; the times I maybe even came off as dangerous. Even if I couldn’t see it in the moment—even if I didn’t feel it within my “self”—looking back on my life through the lens of this book, I knew them afresh, and I ached for each dredged memory of a time when I could and should have done better. I would challenge any man who calls himself a feminist or an ally to read this book and not see yourself somewhere in it; to read this book and not, at least for a moment, despair, both at the folly of how enlightened you thought you were, and the magnitude of all the work you’ve yet to do.

That said, once you swim way out into What Are You’s oceanic depths, the femininity of it all takes a little bit of a back seat to even larger concerns. The “Yous” start to feel less like shitty ex-boyfriends, and more like discreet pieces of Lerman’s own psyche personified (though by the time I figured that out, the difference seemed almost semantic). Consequently, as she tags into more internally pitched battles (artistry vs. ambition, recklessness vs. fear, self-destruction vs. hope) What Are You becomes less a book about being a woman, and more a book about being alive (though, to be clear, still and always very much a book about being a woman alive). It grapples with the most untenably enormous of philosophical questions: what it means to take risks (and the very real difference between taking risks as a woman and taking them as a man); what it means to know one’s self (ditto); what it means to be an artist (to live!), and what it means to truly live (are you ready to suffer?). And in being so ferociously honest throughout—so radically generous with both her voracious outer life and her inspired inner one—Lerman arrives at these big questions having earned the authority to answer them. Maybe not for everyone—I think even she would concede that the codification of “authenticity” as a singular, achievable quality is deeply problematic and kind of stupid—but definitely for herself, and probably for more folks than most. If gurus and sages and philosophers and priests have earned the right to wager guesses on these matters, then Lerman has too, and for me, her best guesses hit powerfully home.

In this way, What Are You deserves two of the most elusive and improbable descriptors a piece of writing can be afforded in our era of perpetual, ephemeral content churn: this book feels both dangerous, and timeless. From here forward, for as long as people continue to pick it up, it will matter to them. They’ll read it, and it will change their lives. They’ll quit their shitty jobs; leave their lousy partners; make their own bold confessions. They’ll learn new languages; buy plane tickets; talk to strangers. They’ll dance, and sing, and love with abandon. These things may help, or they may not, but the trying is the point. The not knowing is the point. The living is the point. This book will make you question everything. If you’re stuck, it will help you get unstuck. Wherever you are in life, it will make you want to get up and run until you absolutely fucking drop. And wherever you drop, it will make you look around, take a deep, wondrous breath, and immediately start imagining where you might run to next.

It is, in many ways, the book I’ve been waiting for my whole life, which is not to say that I’ve come away from it feeling like I now finally know and understand the feminine experience (I learned long ago that the most important thing for any man to know and understand about feminism is that it’s a moving target, and that women are not a bloc to be known and understood en masse, regardless of what our various filters and bubbles and feeds might have us believe), but rather that it is a book that lets you in—lets everyone in actually—on a bit of the secret; both a key, and a door, to at least one woman’s most intimate and closely guarded experience of a life lived to the utmost. The constant push and pull between independence and desire; the tidal ebb and flow of needing to play the roles carved out for you, and also wanting to break free of them when you just can’t stand it one second longer; the warring urges to possess and consume everything life puts in your path, and to be possessed and consumed entirely by one other perfect soul. It’s all there, and in the end, we are all part of the “You,” to whom these words are addressed. I feel unbelievably lucky to have gotten to read them and write about them here. What Are You is a dangerous read for the ages. May we all take the risk.

[Toilet Sweat]

Why, Lindsay…I never knew you were so…deep. I’m pretty deep myself. Size really does matter. Ordinary boys just couldn’t satisfy me. The universe was a friend of my dad’s. I didn’t give a damn about the age difference. I can only count in inches. As you well know, the universe is large, quite a lot larger than the large intestine, and constantly expanding. I can still feel the bristle and burn of every star in the night sky manifesting in and out of my wormhole at the speed of light. Ever welcomed an entire asteroid belt up inside your teensy-weensy wazoo? I have. Before too long, my pretty young gape became a supermassive black hole.

But there’s such a thing as too big. I eventually had to settle down. Upon a hemorrhoid donut. It’s been such a long time since then. I’m a mother now (quintuplets) and limit my fun to the occasional felch. Hubby gets so backed up during his business trips. Gosh, listen to me! Sometimes I don’t even know who I am anymore. I’d love to talk more about the universe with you. You should look me up on FetLife. My username is Penisforeskin

[Alice M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as part of Elle Nash's 'Goth Book Club'.

'What Are You' changed what I thought narrative nonfiction could look like. I had a deep conversation with it, in pen, in the margins. The essays are engaging, intense, short enough to eat a whole handful at a time. They kept my attention even though they rarely dipped into the details of the physical world. In trying to describe a series of 'you' who influenced her life as friends, guardians, lovers, Lerman feels out the boundaries of self and other. There's nothing concrete here, which there shouldn't be: we all have a parade of yous containing us, and the boundaries between what we've made ourselves and what other people have made of us are fractal and hazy.

This book informed my own subsequent work in fiction, reminded me I can really do whatever I want on the page, and the only person I have to answer to, ultimately, is myself.

[Lorraine Tosiello · Rating 4 out of 5]

This powerful book is a series of searing and searching essays, written in the first person to an undefined "you," and exploring "that particular darkness that accompanies the burning" of the artistic temperament. The writing is erotic and philosophic, horrific and comforting all at the same time. I would say it is Kafkaesque in the spirit of his quote "There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe...but not for us."

This book is mesmerizing, poetic, intimate, existential, raw, intense and completely compelling.

Kudos to Lindsay Lerman and her publishers, Clash Books, who have produced an artistic, intellectual important and edgy book.

[Joshua Chaplinsky]

A hard book to describe. Introspective yet abstract. A transformative journey of self-discovery. A "Dear John" letter to the cosmos.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Would give it 100 stars or infinity stars if I could.

[Sam Heaps · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something on every page of this book stopped me. With beauty, power, relatability. An incredible book to have in the world.

[M Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still reeling from this. Haunting, challenging, otherworldly, visceral. Gorgeous writing and style alone had me stopping every other line to absorb it and truly feel the words. Familiar concept yet feels completely new. Could have potentially been reduced to the "sad girl" trope, but instead, completely obliterates it and reinvents it.

Praying the insta and tiktok books girlies don't reduce it to quotes

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, thank you to Clash Books for sending me a copy of Lindsay Lerman's What Are You. I was so happy to open this package! Also, Lindsay is great on Instagram (100% recommend following her), and What Are You's cover is GORGEOUS. Seriously, this cover is amazing. It's a perfect match to the book, which is also hazy and moody and fantastic.

I really can't describe what What Are You is about per se. It's written in a series of essays addressed to an undefined you as the narrator tried to work through her love affairs with the universe. I know that doesn't actually describe this book at all in any real detail, but you just need to read it. I was so impressed by Lindsay's writing. Line by line, her essays are beautiful. I just went along with the vibes, and if I got confused it didn't even matter. I also love a series of short essays, which this is, which helps my grad school broken brain.

I can't wait to read more of Lindsay's work. What Are You came out yesterday so go get a copy! You need it in your life.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

… It’s just a sexy way of adapting to the impossible demands of late capitalism or whatever the fuck we’re barely living through—a defensive tactical decision dressed up as ontology—because it has required a constant upgrading, remaking, and forgetting of ourselves, moving with it where it tells us to go, doing what it tells us to do, in order to survive.

A darkness that belonged to you began to penetrate me. It grew and grew and grew within me. I watched with wonder and confusion as I welcomed it.

The dark wilderness stalks you. I can see it. I see it in your eyes. Nothing you could do could cover it all the way up. Not the drugs. Not the drinks…

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it when "you" was clearly the source of desire. That was when the conversation between narrator and "you" was most meaningful, interesting.