Adrián Astur Álvarez reviewed Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin
Review of 'Axiomatic' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
It has taken me longer to write a review of this collection of essays than it took to read them. Tumarkin creates an emotional throughline that is compelling all while building a devastating point, summed perfectly by something an old prof of mine used to say, "All loss... it's all loss."
Take this passage, from History Repeats Itself:
"How about all those people for whom their life does not feel precious? Why not is often the easy bit to get: they were abused, abandoned, beaten to the point of forgetting they had a body, betrayed, humiliated, caught out by their socioeconomics like a mole in a spring trap. They were not loved or not loved enough. Lost someone, witnessed something, got into drugs or drink early, missed having their mental illness diagnosed, all of it, none of this. A harder question is can the feeling your life's worth shit …
It has taken me longer to write a review of this collection of essays than it took to read them. Tumarkin creates an emotional throughline that is compelling all while building a devastating point, summed perfectly by something an old prof of mine used to say, "All loss... it's all loss."
Take this passage, from History Repeats Itself:
"How about all those people for whom their life does not feel precious? Why not is often the easy bit to get: they were abused, abandoned, beaten to the point of forgetting they had a body, betrayed, humiliated, caught out by their socioeconomics like a mole in a spring trap. They were not loved or not loved enough. Lost someone, witnessed something, got into drugs or drink early, missed having their mental illness diagnosed, all of it, none of this. A harder question is can the feeling your life's worth shit be fixed, whether from the outside or inside out? Can it? All the services offering legal aid, food, counseling, employment (tedious employment), shelter, they cannot get close to this worth-shit feeling. I do not mean the needs they take aim at sit at the bottom of Maslow's pyramid (let's blow up the dumb pyramid). I mean the feeling's impervious to being messed with, it is too deep and diffused, a mystery even to its host, it is precognitive, it is metaphysical, both. And when the feeling is there it skews the survival instinct, instills that take-it-or-leave-it sense. Force of gravity's just too weak to pull you in. To keep you in. People, plans, debts, windfalls. Intangible stuff that holds you in - just not strong enough to stop you giving it away. 'The weightlessness of giving up.' I came across this expression in Kristina Olsson's [b:Boy, Lost|17406924|Boy, Lost|Kristina Olsson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1361493880l/17406924.SX50.jpg|24246574]." - pg 108
As the collection's title suggests, Tumarkin's project takes aim at the self-evident truths we derive from history and reform and our relationship to progress and, of course, trauma. The profound dialectics each essay is structured with create both a fascinating prose style and a fit form for each argument, which tends to arrive at conclusions not dissimilar to the state of a sweater when you pull on a thread to investigate where it ends - a clump of thread and no sweater. It is disorienting and with each essay I was left with feelings of anxiety, depression, and grief. Oh joy! So yes, not exactly book you get in the mood for but at the same time, living in the world in this age had me primed for a good devastation.
I highly recommend this to anyone struggling both with the mechanics of essay writing (these will jolt you out of any funk) and for any reader who struggles, or wants to struggle, with a crisis of meaning in our post-recovery movement era.