People That I want to Marry, Vol. 2: Aimee Bender

    

So, I thought that a nice gush-a-thon would be good for Friday, and I decided that we'd take a slight detour from The Clive (by the way, I was so happy to see that so many of you like-minded ladies also love Clive, though..I suppose technically you're the competition...). The gal I want to praise to the high heavens today is Aimee Bender. I know that her name isn't very magical, it's actually a little dull. And I know she doesn't look so much like a magical person, but she is. Oh she is. She has three books currently in publication that are all her own, two short story collections: "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt" + "Willful Creatures" , and one novel: ""An Invisible Sign of My Own" (which can be gotten for super-cheap, according to the Amazon listing).

It's hard for me to articulate just how wonderful I think she and her work are...it's that temporary it-means-so-much-to-me brainmush. In an interview that I read recently with Alan Moore (comics demi-god) he said a bit (much more succinctly than I ever can) about the basic, overarching feeling that art gives.

AM: "You can’t get inside somebody else’s skin. We’re all quite lonely. If art has a real function, then surely part of it must be as a way of communicating mind-to-mind, often in ways that language alone can’t manage. A piece of music can say things that words couldn’t. A genuine piece of art -- we hear it or we see it -- it makes us feel less alone".

And that is precisely why I am in love with these books. My friend Mark was so certain that she was some sort of kindred spirit of mine that I bought all of them, and while reading them, I feel suddenly not alone in the least. (Thank you, Mark). Yes, her stories are mad, whimsical little fairy tales, but they are also morbidly mundane at times, a little erotic (more than a little erotic sometimes), terribly witty, and  human and warm. They feel so much like home to me. Often I feel like crying, or start to cry while reading, but not tears of sadness for a tragic character or a sad story, but tears of utter relief and happiness and comfort that there are others who live in the same...world...as I do. I know that many of you guys live in my same world too. Or at least a close-by neighbor.

My final piece of evidence of her greatness is that I only finished "Willful Creatures" last week. I have been saving the very last story for a while, unable to bear the thought of it all being finished (for a while at least). And it was a little sad when I finally bit the bullet. But then I thought about the fact that even if there are never any more Aimee Bender stories, I will never live in a house in which these three aren't right there with me. That way, I'll never ever be completely alone.