Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicycle feature in which authors shed light on their recently released books by comparing them to weird things. This week Jennifer Wortman writes about This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love , her debut story collection published by Split Lip Press.
If This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love were the title of an Ernest Hemingway novel, it would be The Sun Also Sets.
If my book were a Western Buddhist classic, it would be called Start Where You Aren’t.
If my book were a volume in the Harry Potter series, it would be the one where Harry’s a morose adolescent who’s all, Why won’t Dumbledore look at me?
If my book were a passage from the Bible, it would want to be the one where Dinah’s family agrees to let her rapist marry her if all the males in his tribe get circumcised, and while they’re recovering from their circumcisions, Dinah’s brothers descend and kill them all. But it would probably just be a bunch of begats, except instead of names there would be a list of personal failings and disappointments and complaints.
If my book were a travel guide, it would be called Wherever You Go, There You Are.
If my book were a diagnosis from the DSM-5, it would be major depressive disorder and/or is it bipolar II and/or is it generalized anxiety disorder and/or is it OCD and/or BPD and/or STOP FUCKING LABELING ME.
If my book were a new age self-help bestseller, it would be The Power of Hiding in Your Bed and Sleeping Way Too Much and Having Bad Dreams That Will Destroy You When You Wake Up or Having Good Dreams That Will Destroy You When You Wake Up.
If my book were an Arnold Lobel story, it would be the one where Owl makes tea from his own tears plus the one where he thinks the moon is chasing him plus the one where Toad won’t get out of bed until Frog tricks him by falsifying the calendar.
If my book were a cookbook, it would be the Joy of Not Cookingand also There Is No Joy and also No, There’s Lots of Joy: Stop Being Such a Pessimist.
Jennifer Wortman is the author of the story collection This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love. (Split Lip Press, 2019). Her fiction, essays, and poetry appear in Glimmer Train, Normal School, Electric Literature’s The Commuter, DIAGRAM, The Collagist, Brevity, North American Review, Confrontation, The Collapsar, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Colorado, where she teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop and serves as associate fiction editor for Colorado Review. Find more at jenniferwortman.com and follow her on Twitter at @wrefinnej
