For someone to say, ‘oh maybe that’s not that low.’ That’s the eating disorder voice in my head saying: ‘if you put this weight in, someone’s going to sit there and say, oh, that’s not low enough.’ That the suffering isn’t deep enough. I definitely didn’t put weights in the book because I didn’t feel like it was necessary for the reader to have those – I think there’s a tendency to judge ones’ self by weights in general. Did you have to put any boundaries in place for yourself, or for your audience, when you were writing Gag Reflex? Obviously eating disorders can be a triggering topic to both write and read. I feel more observed now and I don’t like that as much. Because now my name is attached to it and maybe I just feel like there’s a stake in that. So maybe it’s incorrect of me to say that the internet sucks now, because I think that world does still exist – but because of me choosing to have a public facing persona as a writer, it’s changed for me. I think there are young people who do use Twitter and Instagram that way now. I think there was this level on anonymity in which you could exist and not reputation build. So, I definitely do miss the old internet. Or – everyone goes to the nightclub for a little bit, but then they all forget about it, and then they never go back. There’s maybe one person, and they’re kind of a creep and you’re like I don’t want to actually talk to this person. So, if you deviate from that, say you go down a back alley and you’re like, yeah, I’m gonna go to this different nightclub. It just kind of gets old after a while.īut – that’s where all your friends are. That’s what it feels like visiting social media. The weather in particular is never different, and the time of day is never different. It’s nice to see the same faces all the time, but then the buildings are always the same and the weather is always the same. It’s kind of like walking down the same street every day, but then you see the same faces. I hate that we all visit the same website every single day and sit on it, scrolling through. Yeah, I absolutely miss the old internet. The pairing works beautifully, allowing further commentary about how pain evolves in our aging bodies. In the final act protagonist, Lucy, identifies herself as Animals Eat Each Other’s Lilith, fusing the two worlds and connecting the bodily brutality contained within each book. In a thorough exploration of eating disorders, teenage pain, and the internet, Gag Reflex puts the blade against the skin, and takes an unflinching look at obsession.Īnother, unexpected thrill (though maybe not given that Elle is a proven powerhouse) is that Gag Reflex is a quiet and unannounced sequel. Comprised of a series of diaristic LiveJournal entries and set in garish throes of 2005, Gag Reflex follows Lucy, on the edge of finishing high school, and on the edge of her body itself, compulsively sharing her life online. She is the author of Animals Eat Each Other and short story collection, Nudes – but no blade is quite as sharp as her recent release, Gag Reflex. Elle Nash writes like she recently climbed out of a black hole, simply to invent the knife.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |