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Wild Animals: A Student's Retrospective on Lucy Ellmann



They say

the hen can lay.

I don’t know

but they know.

(poem by Lucy Ellmann)



For the better part of two years I have been working my way through Lucy Ellmann’s most recent publication, Ducks, Newburyport, a novel told from the perspective of an unnamed Ohio housewife. The book contains one sentence that stretches over one thousand pages, comprising various random words, interjections, thoughts, and statements starting with the phrase, “the fact that__.” The housewife is deeply concerned about the state of the country, the state of her children, and the state of her health, among other tedious anxieties of her daily life as a wife and mother. I last left off at about halfway through the book, page 534. It’s not exactly an easy book to travel around with and I can’t imagine reading it on my phone, not to mention the fatigue that comes with staring at a wall of text. To experience reading Ducks is unlike anything. It consumes your mind, your vision, like a Barnett Newman painting spreading red infinitely in your periphery. I would find myself beginning thoughts with “the fact that” and writing journal entries in quick, exasperated sentences, mimicking what I had been reading. Ducks, Newburyport defines the phrase ‘stream of consciousness’ in literature. It’s an exhausting endeavor, one must absolutely take breaks from reading or else they might be sucked in and drowned, or otherwise lose their mind in the sea of words; but it's worth it. It’s like plunging your hand into a sack of beans or fitting together jigsaw pieces. I love reading along and finding my own associations with the narrator's thoughts, sometimes just one word. The entangled threads of this woman’s life are so captivating, despite being so ordinary. Her life is familiarly tragic. Her mother is dead and she misses her, she had cancer, she had to leave her job as an educator as a result, she divorced and remarried and had four kids in between all of that. The narrator in Ducks is overwhelmingly real, and not just for her experiences but for the post-industrial American pattern of thought. According to the author herself, this is the intent:


“my narrator could be from anywhere. We all have thoughts, memories, worries, associations, dreams. I was interested in burrowing deep into a consciousness… You never even know what you yourself are thinking, or not without years of therapy anyway…Ohio is meant to stand for America as a whole.” (Feathers and Ellmann 2019)


Ellmann has seven published novels, her most celebrated being Sweet Desserts (1989) and Ducks which was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2019. She has also written several published short stories and multiple articles for the Baffler. She and husband Todd McEwen run (or ran as it hasn’t been updated since the start of the pandemic, I’ve since sent an email inquiring about their plans to continue) a website dedicated to helping “serious writers of fiction” with editing their works. The two determine that workshops and formal classes that teach creative writing are largely unhelpful. I can’t decide if I agree with the sentiment. Sometimes I feel like each writer deserves a one-on-one crit session with someone dedicated to tearing apart their work, who doesn’t have to worry about marching to the beat of a group. Sometimes I want a big group of people to applaud me and kiss me on the forehead. Ellmann’s opinions are captivating. Lucy Ellmann is a radical feminist (and I’m crossing my fingers hoping that she includes trans people in her beliefs, I haven’t come across anything to suggest otherwise), an anti-capitalist, an anti-racist, an environmentalist—although I believe you can’t be just one of those things without being all of them. She firmly believes in the necessity of a matriarchal society, largely based on cultures of the past. From her piece in the Baffler, “Digging Matriarchy,” she opens with the statement: “matriarchy[is] economically, politically, judicially, environmentally, socially, sexually, medically, and mentally necessary.” (Ellmann 2017)

Lucy Ellman loves to write a list. As do I. Her writing style is humorous, neurotic, paranoid and frank. She loves the casual, conscious voice and her brand of humor often relies on puns, absurdities, and plays on words.


“Human history is now just about patriarchy, with all of matriarchy relegated to prehistory. How we cling to this itty-bitty stretch of boy time…punctuated by the much-heralded shift from BC to ADHD…The Greeks and Romans, no slouches when it came to misogyny, at least retained a few goddesses to keep things lively. After that, women are hardly mentioned again until Jane Eyre, as if all the Rochesters in the world reproduced themselves by parthenogenesis. Don’t give us any ideas, bud.” (Ellmann 2017)


I think, unknowingly, I stole part of my own writing identity from her. Her deprecating tone of voice is familiar, as is the rapid pacing and general frustration with the world. As I research her, more and more I find a kindred spirit. (I really hope she isn’t a TERF.) Her and I share a similar approach to writing, “My novels are generated by my preoccupations at the time. The principle I stuck to was simply writing the book I wanted to write. There’s no point in writing anything but that.” (Cain and Ellmann 2019) I choose what I write by throwing a metaphorical dart at an idea, and that’s typically what I go with. If it's on my mind, it probably needs to be written out and about. We have concerns about women and babies. It’s comforting to know that a woman in her sixties and I share similar feelings about a person’s autonomy when it comes to motherhood. In my stream of consciousness piece, “The Aquarium,” which pales in comparison to the brick wall of text that is Ducks, Newburyport, I walk the reader through an aquarium filled with children, defined by the space they take up as well as the empathy the narrator has for them. I tend to write about parents, parenthood, kids. In my current state, I am young and occupied with myself. I am viewing the world through an anxious pane of glass and trying to swim through it. The thing is I like kids. I think if I gave it a good try, I could be a good parent, I may even find it rewarding. But that’s all I get. A try. And if I’m wrong, I don’t get to back out. Nevertheless, I can’t handle a baby right now, and that decision is being taken from me and others. It’s a scary reality, every day of my life. It chokes at my throat, so much so that I wrote another short piece in an attempt to describe the feeling. I wrote “Full” for Nosebleed magazine, in which a young person swallows a fleshy parasite that takes over their body and forces them to feed on other people. It sounds heavy handed with context, but I promise it also attempts to draw parallels to the housing crisis. After all, homes are like mothers. Or maybe mothers are like homes. Lucy Ellmann is particularly occupied with motherhood in Ducks, Newburyport. In between the barrage of thoughts, there are small breaks of narrative, describing a mother mountain lion who cares for her cubs and practices survival. These breaks are literal and figurative, switching the perspective from human to wild animal. Interestingly, in contrast, the format of the lion’s narrative is broken up into actual, legible sentences. The lion’s thoughts and intentions are clear, unburdened by human preoccupations blurred by the rush of modernity. The reader gets to view two mothers, both alike and different in their instincts and nature, both attempting to survive, both willing to do anything for their children.


“I…feel the power and meaning of motherhood are widely overlooked…in service to patriarchy…People don’t talk enough about how tiring, boring, enraging, time-consuming, expensive and thankless parenthood is. Why must we keep pretending it’s a joy? Sure, there are delightful elements: children are endearing and fascinating…you get to play with toys again and read children’s books and remember your childhood. But illness, worry, conflict, overcrowding, the relentless cooking, the driving, the loss of privacy, the repression of your own sexuality, the education dilemmas, the lack of employment prospects, and all the wretched insanity of adolescence – these are big deterrents…Thought, knowledge, adult conversation and vital political action are all put on hold while this needless perpetuation of the species is prioritized. Having babies is a strong impulse, a forgivable one, but it’s also just a habit, a tradition, like weddings or putting butter on popcorn.” (Cain and Ellmann 2019)


Ellmann supports the choice to have or to not have children, although she believes that to not have children is to preserve one’s identity and individual function in progressing society. Ducks, Newburyport could very well be the amalgamation of her experienced feelings on motherhood. The narrator in Ducks is a good person, she worries about being a good mother, especially to her oldest daughter, Stacey, who we get the sense is estranged from the narrator as most teenage girls are from their mothers. It’s no secret that the narrator is overwhelmed. The frantic format of the novel is evident of that itself. What Ellmann is saying is that motherhood is difficult, that sometimes mothers have regrets and sometimes mothers are so busy with their children's lives that they end up feeling half of who they were before they had children. Ellmann received criticism for the above statement she gave in an interview with the Guardian, but Michelle Ruiz of Vogue offered her support and talked about her own experience as a mother.


“I have to fight hard to be a productive writer and to be politically engaged…because so much of my time, energy, and brain space is devoted to taking care of small children…We are allowed to say it’s hard and rage against the lack of federal paid leave for all, but only to a point. We are careful to punctuate our complaints with cheerful declarations about how much we love our kids. But both can be true: I love my kids so much it hurts, and, right now, being a mom makes it harder to be the writer I really want to be.” (Ruiz 2019)


Maybe what Lucy Ellmann means is that right now is not the best time for parenthood. We’ve got bigger shit to worry about, for the future people as well as the now people. The baby-crazy culture is all too much, I mean, a massive forest fire as a result of a gender reveal party? I bet Lucy Ellmann had a field day when she heard that bit of news. There’s no third places (Butler and Diaz 2016), the country is run by cars, we have an overwhelming population of houseless persons, wage disparity, police violence, expensive healthcare, right-wing politicians want more kids, God forbid any trans ones, so they write up legislation to restrict abortions, to fill up the workforce. (Radde 2023) The pressure placed on parents, particularly mothers, could be relieved if there was more quality community support, but we can’t achieve that without action. Are average women so busy being mothers that they aren’t involved in the creation of spaces that consider them? I feel that I can’t speak much on the concept, I have no children. But I have the capacity to and I maintain the choice to not. It all just seems so messy.

What I admire about Lucy Ellmann is that she is unafraid to oppose the status quo, that of literature and the confines of the patriarchy and capitalism. I want to absorb every aspect of her writing style, and while I think some of her pieces are confusing and maybe too radical, or otherwise far too ironic for my cognitive ability, I want to know more about why she thinks what she thinks. It’s inspiring to find someone who writes like I want to.

 
Sources
Butler, Stuart M., and Cameron Diaz. 2016. ““Third places” as community builders.” Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/09/14/third-places-as-community-builders/.
Cain, Sian, and Lucy Ellmann. 2019. “Lucy Ellmann: 'We need to raise the level of discourse.'” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/07/lucy-ellmann-ducks-newburyport-interview.
Ellmann, Lucy. 2017. “Digging Matriarchy.” the Baffler, no. 34 (March). https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/digging-matriarchy-ellmann.
Ellmann, Lucy. 2019. Ducks, Newburyport. N.p.: Biblioasis.
Ellmann, Lucy, and Todd McEwen. n.d. “About | fictionatelier.” fictionatelier. Accessed March 22, 2023. https://fictionatelier.wordpress.com/about/.
Feathers, Lori, and Lucy Ellmann. 2019. “Lucy Ellmann, a Great American Novelist Hiding in Plain Sight.” Literary Hub. https://lithub.com/lucy-ellmann-a-great-american-novelist-hiding-in-plain-sight/.
“Lucy Ellmann.” n.d. The Baffler. Accessed March 22, 2023. https://thebaffler.com/authors/lucy-ellmann.
Radde, Kaitlyn. 2023. “Arkansas Gov. Sanders signs a law that makes it easier to employ children.” NPR. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/10/1162531885/arkansas-child-labor-law-under-16-years-old-sarah-huckabee-sanders.
Ruiz, Michelle. 2019. “Author Lucy Ellmann Said What Women Aren't Supposed to Say About Motherhood.” Vogue. https://www.vogue.com/article/lucy-ellmann-motherhood-comments-controversy.

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