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Ranger Liu

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These Violent Delights

by Micah Nemerever (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

read in December 2020

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Ranger Liu said: " read #4: as i get farther from teenagerhood these kinds of books about teenagers make me more and more sad and angry, i think, probably because i feel like i missed out on so much. which is paradoxical and insane in itself to feel, because nothing in read #4: as i get farther from teenagerhood these kinds of books about teenagers make me more and more sad and angry, i think, probably because i feel like i missed out on so much. which is paradoxical and insane in itself to feel, because nothing in this book is really an experience worth pining after, but is nonetheless Formative and Real in a way that i don’t really have much to compare with. hence fomo for a book about two little fruits who end up murdering someone. and all the rest. i am 22 now, just about, and the first time i read this i was 20, just about, and. in the interim i suppose i have changed a lot. i know i have changed a lot. but i wonder if it was for the better or if it was more like paul. i am now five years removed from what, i guess, i’d consider my first debilitating experience with queer romance in a fairly similar but incredibly one-sided version of paul and julian. and i guess that’s maybe why i keep coming back to this, not just because there’s an unsettling amount of me in paul (or paul in me) but also because some watered down version of this could have happened to me, if i had slightly better taste. or rather, slightly better luck in my taste, i suppose. and i guess in effect some watered down version of this did happen to me, and happened in what i fantasized, and petered out to an entirely unsatisfactory end. five years out, but i suppose it’s the first that sticks with you.
in any case, all that to say i cried multiple times while reading this, and sometimes at the most bizarre moments. and not for any reasons i would have expected. a lot has happened and changed and then changed back for me, since the last time i read this, and i guess part of it is that i paid more attention this time, and part of it is that i get more out of it each time i read it, and part of it is that i’m definitively in my depression era, and part of it is that i haven’t yet changed enough to read this and not find echoes of myself in it. which, again, litmus test. this book does to me what everyone says the bell jar does to them, which, i guess, also litmus test. there’s just. some excruciating detail given to way too familiar thought processes, and then the most casual descriptions of the most mind blowingly tender and absolutely unhealthy interactions.
all this to say, still five stars because of how much it makes me go insane. there’s parts that are a touch repetitive, especially near the end, and i’m on the fence this time around about whether or not i really understand paul’s last choice in a way that makes it make sense to me. there’s a few baffling lines that make absolutely no sense to me. i still have trouble parsing the reality of the relationship versus how much of it is paul being paul. which, i suppose, is the beauty of it. unreliable narrator and all that. i keep coming back and back to this. will certainly return for a fifth time. hopefully under better circumstances.

read #3: same as the second time, i think. i guess the beginning is just slightly worse than the rest of it, but the rest of it is so good that it’s kind of inevitable, i suppose. it is more interesting this time around to be reading this from a slightly less insane and less depressed perspective, and to recognize past preoccupations of myself in the characters rather than present personal issues. still, as always, causes intense psychological damage. but in a better way this time around, i think. i’m getting the hang of their dynamic a bit more, and i can see a bit clearer how everything is going wrong and going on etc. i’m also very glad that i read this Now, as opposed to in the middle of last semester, and that Now i have enough perspective to see…..certain parallels…..that i may have ignored a few months ago. and there’s just like. so much obvious non goals in this book. but at the same time. i do wish somebody would be murderously obsessed with me in a reciprocal manner. i feel like i Deserve thst, perhaps, as Paul would like to think. and there is just. a lot of Paul that i used to be. and i really don’t know how i got through this book even a year ago.

read #2: yeah i went into this liking it less than the first time and then it was exactly as good as i remembered. this is one of those books that makes me glad i read The Canon in some form, and honestly i feel like there were so many layers i still didn’t quite get. would not object to reading this meticulously in a classroom setting. it’s so strikingly clear that it was written by a queer person, just like all the interpersonal things and self worth things and how much Paul is just a little too relatable and how all those little manipulations are so on the money. big brain hours from him, clearly. it’s like the 70’s toxic dysfunctional version of the song of achilles. still a five star read hands down

read #1: don’t even know what to say abt this other than, like, either ive been reading shit books my entire life or authors just suddenly decided that they’re gonna describe complex interpersonal psychology/manipulation/emotion/whatever the fuck you call it that happens when people connect with each other, whatever that is, that authors just suddenly decided that this was the year they were gonna fuck shit up and really just describe it all in excruciatingly accurate detail. like, this is the gritty repressed serious men version of plain bad heroines basically, but with slightly more murder. definitely very reminiscent of black chalk even though i don’t remember how that one went anymore. i think if i had read this book at age 16 i would have flipped my shit and just been in a coma for weeks on end. seriously. i keep going back and forth on being utterly baffled that they were 17? i think? and being like yeah, that tracks, the first time really kind of happens Like That huh and it seems like a common thread among queer folk that the first time you fall in love is like being run over in ye olde trolley problem. though in this case i guess it was more like operating ye olde trolley problem and then getting on the tracks themselves. idk. all of that aristophanes, cut in half soulmates shit is enough to make me go batshit, but combined with that author’s note on anger and being afraid of your own anger and that whole dissection of paul whittling himself down for different people, that whole code-switching thing, and paul’s complete inability to believe he’s ever deserving of anything resembling love..........that shit hit different. like, there’s a very clear difference between queer tragedy written by straight authors and queer tragedy written by queer authors and this book just nails that latter one. and it’s awful and ugly and Tragic, obviously, but it’s all that character work and that Anger and the hiding and the little inner philosophies that makes it real. and that’s why it’s interesting and good and not just sensational and gory like all the straight authors love to make it all out to be. idk man. heavy but oddly comforting.

edit: i also didn’t realize until i read the chloe gong book that “these violent delights” is a quote from romeo and juliet which, like, definitely makes this book even more bonkers. i don’t even know anything about romeo and juliet beyond the very basics but like....that ending.... ...more "

progress:

(page 37 of 460)
"why is paul like this. why am i like this. i will never be over these motherfuckers. why did nobody pull a julian fromme on me in undergrad. maybe i really will go to seattle just so i can still be a student and have the possibility of experiencing this kind of fucked up toxic homosexual codependency as a student." — Jul 17, 2024 11:49AM

Dec 19, 2022 09:48PM · see review