Revisiting Movable Type: Issue no. 2 Featured Writer Jennifer Haupt
Alone Together: An Introduction from the Editor—Jennifer Haupt
Excerpt from ALONE TOGETHER: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19
I’m an introvert, like many writers, considering the solitude my attic office a luxury. But I also need balance: coffee dates with friends, exchanging a smile of solidarity with the woman lifting weights next to me at the gym, and asking my local bookseller’s for their must-reads of the month. I depend on these daily interactions to energize me. All of these people are threads in my safety net, most without realizing it, helping to keep me buoyed above chronic, sometimes debilitating, depression. I know from experience that, too easily, staying home can turn from a luxury to a state of paralysis.
When the stay-at-home order was enacted, my connections with the outside world were frayed, as I was reduced to watching on screens as the killer virus swept through our country. Our president held press conferences declaring confidently: It will go away. I so wanted to believe him.
By the third week of quarantine, it was clear this was not going away anytime soon. Driving home this point, I received a devastating blow: the contract for my second novel was cancelled due to the plummeting economy. Of course, I wasn’t the only one who lost their livelihood. Unemployment claims surpassed 15 million and lines at understocked food banks stretched toward the horizon. Small businesses were going bankrupt by the scores, forced to shut down for a few weeks, then months. No one was really sure how long it would be before they could re-open, assuming they were still solvent.
This uncertainty, no end in sight, launched our entire country into a fugue-like state of shock.
Taking some kind of positive action, moving outward into the world again, became a necessity for my survival. I wondered, what could I do? I didn’t have money or powerful influence, but one thing I did have was my community of writers, some of whom had launched their own fundraising and awareness campaigns against social injustice. Jessica Keener had sent me and dozens of other authors an email the past summer, asking us to donate manuscript consultation services to raise money for organizations working to stop border and detention camp abuses. The action one person, reaching out to her community, and then those people widening the circle until it included hundreds stuck with me. (#authorsAgainstBorderabuse raised $17,000 in just three months.)
The tipping point was when I saw Roxane Gay on “The Daily Show,” explaining why she tweeted an offer to give ten people $100 each, no questions asked. She said, “In a better world, the government would handle this, but we don’t live in a better world.”
I wanted to live in a better world.
An idea began forming, a gut-feeling that energized me for the first time in weeks. Maybe I could rally authors to support the booksellers who had placed so many of our books into the hands of readers, and now needed our help. Long before the pandemic hit, independent bookstores were the pillars of a worldwide literary community and the mainstays of neighborhoods across the country, providing inviting spaces to connect over ideas and coffee. My local bookstores have been a big part of my personal safety net, as well as “must visit” cultural hubs when I travel. Perhaps most important, these business owners and their employees are also pillars of a democratic society, spotlighting books you might not find elsewhere and giving marginalized people a voice through author readings and other events.
I started by putting out feelers, posting on Facebook and sending emails to authors I knew through my work as a journalist and novelist. I made a concrete, to-the-point ask: Could they contribute an essay or poem about their COVID-19 experiences to a fundraising anthology for struggling indie booksellers? Within twenty-four hours, dozens of authors were onboard, and I became bolder, reaching out to a diverse range of writers I admired. During the next month, I jumped out of bed each morning, excited to see what would land in my email that day. Every poem and essay submittal was a potential fragment of the soul of what I called my Lovely Monster, not knowing exactly what I was creating.
Part of the tremendous unease during the pandemic has been recognizing we are in the midst of transformation, no clear sense of where it will lead and little reassuring guidance along the way. From the beginning, the missives arriving daily nourished me. There were stories of love triumphing over social distancing: The joy of a Zoom wedding, pandemic date night via steamy and funny texts, a mother and daughter growing closer through phone-in cooking lessons. There were also surprising, moving images of love intertwined with grief and comfort: a woman trying hard to connect with her estranged sister while social distancing, and failing. A man contemplating the comforting role of lavender in his ailing father’s life, his own life, and the tumultuous history of their Latino culture. A woman professing her devotion to aloneness, and realizing that her deep attractions are to nature, not humans.
The poems were mostly constructed of possibilities: images of something new cracking open, of a glittering road, of shedding our hatred and fear like a virus.
As the pandemic stretched into May, the stories and poetry reflected the rising anxiety and anger permeating our country. One woman worried about how her husband was handling quarantine and the inequity of how their Black community was being handled. Another woman drove to the grocery store daily, mostly to escape from her house, coming home exhausted from the anxiety of being in the world, and falling asleep dreaming of the sumptuous meal she’d make. A Black man contemplated the mask he has been forced to wear all his life.
And then George Floyd’s murder united so many of us in a grief that certainly was not new. His final words, “I can’t breathe,” sparked a connection that took us out of our dark COVID-19 fugue state. It had us asking a vast, overwhelming question that became the pumping heart of this book: What Now?
Uniting for a common good with 75 authors (55 in the print book and another 22 in the e-book edition) from diverse cultures and backgrounds was both a privilege and reward of putting together this Lovely Monster. She has developed a soul thanks to every one of them. She is our collective pain and our dreams. I hope she offers you what she has given me: possibilities. In telling our stories, we hope to enable you to tell your story. That’s the sweet spot of connections, where the healing happens.
ABOUT JENNIFER HAUPT
Bio: Jennifer Haupt has published essays and other work in many publications. She is the author of the novel In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills and Come as You Are.
Website: jenniferhaupt.com
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